How to RETIRE BY 30! (With Cody Berman)

Nobody teaches you that financial independence is a spectrum. Here is the mindset shift that changed everything. 👉 Join Andrew's FREE Masterclass The Portfolio Pyramid: https://event.webinarjam.com/q05p7/register/o37wxuz?webinar_id=22 What You'll Learn in This Episode Why financial independence is a spectrum and how to find the right number for your specific life The two paths to financial freedom and which one fits your situation Why lifestyle inflation in the big three categories kills most people's FI timeline before it even starts How Cody tripled his income multiple years in a row and what he did with every extra dollar Why automation beats discipline every single time and which financial decisions you should never make manually How to buy 11 real estate units in 11 months and what that actually cost out of pocket The one conversation you need to have with your partner to get them on board with financial independence without a single spreadsheet Start Here Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Try Master Money Academy FREE for 7 days today! https://mastermoney.co/join/ 👉 Join Andrew’s FREE Investing for Beginners Masterclass https://event.webinarjam.com/q05p7/register/0o8z9io?webinar_id=21 👉 Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! https://expert-hustler-605.ck.page/6aa7bb9a79 Partner Deals Indeed → Get a $75 sponsored job credit ⁠http://Indeed.com/personalfinance⁠ Policygenius → Free life insurance quote ⁠http://policygenius.com⁠ Chime → Get more rewarding fee-free banking at ⁠https://www.chime.com/PFP⁠ Monarch Money → Up to 60% off | MEMORIAL DAY WAREHOUSE CLEAROUT ⁠http://www.monarch.com/PFP⁠ Shopify → Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at ⁠http://shopify.com/pfp⁠ Wayfair → Get 80% OFF on April 25th through the 27th ⁠http://wayfair.com⁠ DeleteMe → 20% off with code PFP ⁠https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ Tool/s Mentioned Retirement Calculator https://expert-hustler-605.kit.com/e6b8d4f8a2 Book/s Mentioned Retire by 30: https://retireby30book.com The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom The Latte Factor by David Bach The Millionaire Next Door Episode/s Mentioned 5 Side-Hustles That Can Turn into a Full time Income! https://youtu.be/bEIzgYWLi1I 5 Side Hustles That Can Turn into a Full time Income! Part 2 https://youtu.be/10C4zt9w8NQ 5 Side Hustles That Can Turn into a Full Time Income! (Part 3) https://youtu.be/jEkKQZVYLSg Watch Next How to Manage Your Money (and Still Enjoy Life) https://youtu.be/BWocw8B-xnY The Housing Market Is Rigged (Here's How to Beat It) With David Sidoni https://youtu.be/ccXY6vTNJu0 Focus on THIS in Retirement (Everything Else is Noise) https://youtu.be/afrCCLz4aJ4 How to Build Your Investment Portfolio (The Portfolio Pyramid!) https://youtu.be/Vn-NXfFWtfU How to Invest Your First $10K https://youtu.be/GCW1lfujZ2I Connect with Cody Berman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codydberman/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/codydberman/ X: https://twitter.com/codydberman Personal Website: https://codydberman.com Podcast: https://thefishow.com/episodes/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codydberman/ Connect with Andrew Instagram → https://instagram.com/mastermoneyco Website → https://mastermoney.co TikTok → https://tiktok.com/@mastermoneyco X → https://x.com/mastermoneyco LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-giancola-45027b340 YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@mastermoneyco/ Question for you: Where are you on the financial independence spectrum right now? Drop your target in the comments and tell us the one thing you are doing this month to get there faster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI Website Builder. I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer, or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

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• 1:29Andrew Giancola?

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• 2:14Andrew Giancola?

  Head to wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair: Every Style, Every Home.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  You can travel around Thailand for a year for $20,000. Like you don't need a $20 million software exit and to grind at the expense of your health and your family and your friends. I know this guy was like pushing himself to the limit. So I think a lot of people have this dream life that they idealize, but they don't actually understand how much it costs. Remember the first $5 I made online? It just feels different. It feels so good to make money yourself without a boss, without having to check in. Like you just make the money. You created the website. Maybe you recorded the podcast. You did whatever. You created the digital product. It's just, it's a different feeling. It just gets worse and worse. Like even when they do get that next bonus and they go from making 100 to 120K, then they just get a fancier car, then they just get a slightly bigger apartment, then they go on an extra vacation, and it's just this vicious cycle that never ends until...

• 3:18Andrew Giancola?

  So Cody, welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  I'm very excited to be here. It's been a long time coming.

• 3:23Andrew Giancola?

  I am so excited to have you here because I want to talk through kind of financial independence and you are someone who is amazing in the financial independence community because you started pretty young and you were able to reach financial independence at a young age as well. So can you kind of talk about your background and your journey to financial independence?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cut me off if I'm too long-winded here, but basically started back when I was 19 years old. I read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. That book completely shifted my just worldview, my mindset about money. Because up to that point, I always thought you had to trade your time for money on a linear basis. So like growing up, you know, lawyers made a lot of money, doctors made a lot of money. This person makes $100 per hour, this person makes $200 per hour. But until I read Tim Ferriss, I didn't understand that there were people who also made money regardless of whether or not they were working. There were people who made, you know, $100,000 a year just from real estate or from their stock market investments, and they didn't trade a single dollar or a single hour for that dollar. So like that whole thing of like you don't have to trade your time for

• 4:23Speaker 01

  money on a linear basis completely shifted my worldview and that's when I kind of went this full bore into financial independence. I started every saw house you could possibly think of. I had tried over 30 plus at this point. And so that was like 19, I discovered it 20, 21, I started actually making money. I'd graduated college and three years after that point, so 25 years old is when I officially hit financial independence through a combination of real estate, stock market investing and entrepreneurship, mostly digital products. And we can talk about all that stuff today.

• 4:52Andrew Giancola?

  Awesome. And I think that is one of the, the cool things is that Cody focused a lot of his time, as we'll talk about today, on increasing his income. And one of the big pieces as we, as we think about this is I think that's one of the biggest levers that you can usually pull. But it starts in when you kind of move backwards and you start from the beginning, it's kind of defining what financial freedom is. I think a lot of people are in the, you know, in the rat race and trying to understand, uh, you know, every single day they're working their nine to five and they don't really know what financial freedom is. So can you kind of tell us, or why do you think that so many people can't define what financial freedom is and what do you think they should do instead?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  So the interesting thing is, most people think retirement is an age, but it's actually a number. So there's multiple ways you can get to said number. The two main ways though are what I like to call cash flow phi or cash flow financial independence. And this is achieving financial independence through, you guessed it, cash flow. This is something like a small business or real estate. And basically what that means is that you're generating enough passive cash flow each month to cover your expenses. You never have to work again. Or you can do the nest egg method, meaning that you save up this big nest egg, this huge chunk of money. And through this thing called the 4% rule that we can talk about today, once you achieve a portfolio where you can withdraw 4% of that every year, and I'm sounding, this is a lot of jargon, a lot of math. So let's say you can, you live on, you know, $60,000 a year.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  If you can accumulate $1.5 million, 4% of $1.5 million is $60,000 a year. Once you get that $1.5 million nest egg, in theory, you can retire and you never have to work again. So those are kind of the two main ways to reach financial freedom. It's just that these aren't, it's not taught in schools. I mean, corporations don't want you to know this. They want you working there. So, um, yeah, that's, that's the reason why most people don't know about this stuff, but it's really just math.

• 6:36Andrew Giancola?

  It's really just math and working backwards. And that's why I think it's just so important to even. One of the things we talk about here, Cody, all the time is actually tracking your retirement number and looking at your retirement number on a yearly basis. Cause I think most people don't look at this enough and they don't think about this stuff enough. And really, most people think that financial independence is unrealistic. And I think when you start to, to talk to people about this, you talk about savings rates and you talk about all the things that you kind of did during your journey, which we'll talk about. I think this is something where a lot of folks will come and they have this instant reaction that it's unrealistic, even though in society, a lot of people are saying, hey, we gotta work more, we gotta work till exhaustion, those types of things. So why do you think people normalize kind of the grind to nine to five, but they feel like financial independence is something that's just unattainable?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  I think most people succumb to lifestyle inflation and just spending money on things that they don't truly value. Like so many of my friends and so many people I know, right when they start making real money, when they're 22, 23 years old, they get the fancy apartment, they get the thousand dollar per month car payment and all of a sudden they're living paycheck to paycheck, even if they're making six figures. So I think the reason why financial freedom feels so unattainable to so many people is because there's, there's no give, there's no gap between their income and their expenses. They don't have any money to invest in things like real estate or the stock market and they don't have the time, because they're so strapped for cash, to even think about a side hustle.

• 7:55Andrew Giancola?

  Right.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  And so I think people just, they kind of get in this rut and unfortunately it just gets worse and worse. Like even when they do get that next bonus and they go from making a hundred to 120K and they just get a fancier car, then they just get a slightly bigger apartment, then they go on an extra vacation and it's just this vicious cycle that never ends until 65 for most people.

• 8:12Andrew Giancola?

  And it's one of those areas where you, you look at this and the psychology behind it and most people are just kind of trying to impress their peers. I love, you know, if anybody's never read The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel kind of dives into the psychology behind this, but one of the cool things in that book that I love is where he says, hey, if there's nobody else in the entire world and you kind of look around and there's nobody else living on earth and you go and what car would you choose? Like, would you actually choose the car that you're driving, if you're driving a luxury car? Or would you go choose just the most, you know, effective or efficient car for your actual lifestyle? And that's one of the things that I love kind of thinking through and talking about because most people are just trying to impress people that are around them. So one big thing that you talk about, and we kind of just alluded to it slightly, is that lifestyle inflation piece where it is invisible.

• 8:57Andrew Giancola?

  And are there any common? Uh, you know, silent upgrades that you see people have, is it the car, is it the house? Or where do you see people getting tripped up the most when they are increasing their lifestyle over time?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  It is usually what I call the big three. And so that's for most people, the average American spender, housing, transportation and food. Those three categories make up 67% of the average person's spending. It's insane. Housing is like 33, transportation 17, and then food is somewhere between like 15, 16%. So whatever that is, 65, 66%. I can picture the pie chart in my head. That's where most people go wrong. And those are the, those are the categories where it just like really kills you. When you upgrade that apartment, when you upgrade that car, when you start going out to eat way more often than you're used to. It's really not like I always, I hate to throw shade at David Bach and his latte effect book, but like, it's really not the lattes that kill most people. Like you could get a $5 latte every day, whatever that is, 365 times five, you're looking at like 1,900 bucks.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Like that versus increasing your rent by $500 a month is negligible. So like, it's those big three categories that are really the sneaky ones. And someone's like, oh yeah, what's an extra? I'm going to upgrade to the 2026 version of this car. Like what's an extra $120 a month car payment? Or I'm going to upgrade to this nicer apartment or buy this big mansion. What's, you know, an extra $400 a month on housing? It doesn't seem like much, but like over the long term and you know, things can compound negatively against you.

• 10:21Andrew Giancola?

  Yep.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Those things can really come to bite you. And it doesn't even seem like a huge upgrade. It's not like you're getting a Lambo. You might just be getting the 2026 Nissan Altima instead of the 2019 one that you're driving. But those things add up.

• 10:32Andrew Giancola?

  It's for sure. And I think if you can control those big three expenses, when you're thinking about this, if you can control those big three, you can spend lavishly on a lot of other things that you truly value. And it comes down to figuring out what you actually value when it comes to spending. And so you look around and you say, hey, there are things that I absolutely love to spend money on. Maybe you love to travel and you want to spend more on those vacations. Then identifying that is going to be one of the most important things that you could do. Or maybe you love to, you know, spend more on golf. It doesn't matter really what it is, but if there are things that you love to spend money on, identifying those and then spending less on the areas that you don't care about is going to be really, really important. So. Lifestyle inflation is obviously a problem and we've seen this across the board. I see it with people all around me all the time and it is something that even,

• 11:17Andrew Giancola?

  you know, some lifestyle inflation, I think is somewhat healthy. And so a lot of us will kind of look at this and say, hey, uh, you know, I have kids or I got married and so I want to upgrade my housing situation. Or I just want to make sure that I'm, you know, spending a little bit more on the things that I actually value. But when people get raises, most of them obviously are going to increase their lifestyle to the level of that raise. So how do you tell people, how do you recommend that they kind of treat raises when they, when it, you know, when they get a raise at their job or when they get a raise or a big bonus or something like that? Is there a rule that you have with raises or is there a way that you think about this?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Before I talk about raises, just one caveat, because I think this is where the FIRE, the Financial Independence Retire Early community gets a lot of flack and just frugality in general is that people think I'm, or not, I'm, me being representative of the entire FIRE movement, that like we're against luxury. Like no, you can never drive the nice car. You can never get the nice house. That is the farthest thing from the truth. The, the very important thing is during those early years, during the first decade or less of your journey, that's when you need to kind of be frugal and hunker down. Like I think there's a time and a place. If you want the Porsche, go for it. If you want a 5,000 square foot house, go for it. But once you've built that financial foundation, because once you have reached financial independence and you have this extra income and you've reached cash flow or nest egg fee, like then you can add those luxuries back in.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  But during those early years, if you do not have the gap between your income and your expenses, that's what's going to kill you. Back to your raise question. So I like to automate everything. So I think where a lot of people go wrong is they're, you know, they're making a hundred K and then they get the raise. Now they're making a hundred 20 and they don't have any rules in place. They're, they're not investing a set percentage. They don't have like these rules and automation set up for their IRA, IRA, 401k, real estate brokerage account. And so I like to invest first and then spend after. It's kind of the profit first ideology. So have a set amount, like if you know you're getting a raise, like, okay, I'm going to make sure that I invest this amount this year. If you want to do that monthly, if you want to do that on lump sum, if they're getting a bonus, whatever floats your boat. I'm not here to judge and tell you what's right and what's wrong. But I think setting those investing parameters first and then spending whatever's left is

• 13:19Speaker 01

  the way to do it versus, okay, I'm, hopefully I have a little extra left now that I'm making more money. Usually that doesn't happen. We just kind of fill the void with stuff or another vacation or an upgraded car once we start making more money.

• 13:31Andrew Giancola?

  I couldn't agree more. And I think a lot of times people will say, well, where do I start? How much should I look at investing if I got a raise? Or how much should I kind of, you know, start when, you know, if I get a big bonus or whatever else? And I always tell people, and you tell me what you think, but I always tell people to start at the, with the 50 50 rule. Meaning 50% goes towards investments and then 50% can go towards the things that you love. You worked hard for that raise. If you worked hard for that bonus, you can kind of look at it at that starting point. Now, for everybody else, if your goal is financial independence and you want to achieve financial independence faster, you probably want to skew a lot of that raise or that bonus towards the investment side. Maybe you want to go 80 20, maybe you want to go 90 10. But that's the starting point is to kind of think through, okay, how do I feel about investing 50% of this raise? And how do I feel about spending 50% of this raise?

• 14:16Andrew Giancola?

  If it feels uncomfortable for you to spend that much, then increasing and kind of increasing that wavelength is going to be kind of where I look at that. What do you think about that? Or is there like a, a starting point you think people should look at if they really just want the answer fed to them?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  I might go more aggressive than you. I think when someone gets an unexpected bonus especially, like if you're happy with what your, where your life's at now and you're like, cool, the vacations are going on. You like your house, you like your car, whatever, like everything's fine. Just invest all of it. Like honestly, it sounds crazy and people just, when they get more money, that's why so many lottery winners go broke.

• 14:49Andrew Giancola?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  They have no system. They just get this huge pile of money and all of a sudden they just like spend like crazy on all these things that they think are going to make them happy. But oftentimes like their life is probably pretty good how it was before. So if you can, like if you're not in a deprivation situation and like, you know, that, that bonus isn't going to really change or move the needle for you, honestly, invest as much as you possibly can. Like if you want to get one nice thing, if you want to upgrade the phone, if that's really important to you, if you want to go on a vacation, that's really important to you. But like really focus and spend on what you value. Like write down your list of like, okay, these are the things I value. And I got this big bonus. I got this inheritance, whatever the lump sum might be. And then make sure you are spending in accordance with those values because too many people just spend just because it's there. They like can't think of anything else to spend it on. It's like, oh, I guess I'll, you know, buy this thing.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I have an extra thousand bucks. Like why not, you know, buy A, B, or C thing I don't really care about. I think that's the Trap that a lot of people fall into.

• 15:42Andrew Giancola?

  I couldn't agree more. And I think when you look at this, especially when I was in my twenties, I was really, really frugal in my twenties. And I am so happy I was that frugal in my twenties, because it set up this financial foundation. My wife's probably not as happy as I am that we set up in their twenties. But, um, but this is the area where I think it just set up the financial foundation. And I would be in that same exact camp. When I would get raises or bonuses, I would just invest the entire amount because I had nothing else I really wanted to spend money on. And so that's where personal finance becomes very personal for a lot of folks. And if your overall goal is that financial independence, I think it's going to skew, you know, as much as possible to investing those raises and bonuses. But like Cody says, you have to have a plan. And if you don't have that plan in place, this is going to be where it's going to get commingled in your checking account.

• 16:25Andrew Giancola?

  You're just going to spend it on random frivolous stuff and it's just going to disappear. Most people who get to the end of the month and real, you know, wonder where their money went or all their money just disappeared. That is going to be where, you know, a lot of people just don't have these systems in place. And so I kind of want to talk about systems because you emphasize systems over just discipline. And a lot of us, if we have to rely on our willpower, it's not going to happen over the long period of time. So why does discipline always fail long term?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  So this is where I like to draw analogies between finance and fitness all the time. This is where finance kind of shines. So imagine you could automate your body just going to the gym without having the motivation or the discipline. Like imagine that could just happen in the background. You actually can do that with money. Like if you have systems set up in the background that are just auto investing every month into like index funds, that stuff's just growing. Like you actually don't have to do anything. Like with the gym, you do have to have the discipline. You do have to have the motivation. You have to show up every day in person, lift the weights, do the cardio, whatever the thing is with money. Like you can click a button and have it set up for 20 years where you literally don't have to do anything else. It's funny. I think it was a fidelity study that found that the people with like the best returns in their portfolio were the people who completely forgot about their portfolio in the first place.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Cause they weren't going in there making like, you know, buy, sell, let me try options. Let me do all this stuff. They just had this thing set up on autopilot. And over the course of decades, that thing just took off, just went to the moon and that compound interest, that hockey stick growth. So I think that is a, that's a key piece of automation is just. Like you literally can set this up once you can set up auto invest at you know Van your Vanguard's your Schwabs your fidelity whatever floats your boat pick whatever one and just auto invest a certain percentage of your paycheck every single month or you know auto invest a certain percentage of your bonus or however you want to set it up again you people have different lives some people make freelance income some people have regular W2 jobs I'm sure there is a system you can figure out because I some people be like I can't auto invest my my income's lumpy it's like okay well there's some way that you can systematize this where you're

• 18:19Speaker 01

  auto investing like a certain percentage of your income however you earn it

• 18:22Andrew Giancola?

  Exactly and I think that was the one thing that once I started to automate my entire financial life I just spend so much less time doing it I just talked to somebody the other day and I had this conversation with them where they're in our our community in Master Money Academy and they learned we have this whole system on like how to automate all your finances and they are always always always in the weeds on their finances so they spent so much time just kind of thinking about their money and they automated their finances and like I don't know what to do with myself because I don't have to do anything anymore and like everything's just kind of happening on autopilot and it kind of just made them freak out at first and we had to kind of talk through that process of like hey you don't have to be so optimized this is actually optimizing you know for your entire situation so for those of you out there who are thinking through this like hey I don't want a budget I don't want to spend a ton of time on the you know some of my

• 19:07Andrew Giancola?

  dollars and thinking through where do I you know transfer all this money where do I think about this this is one of the most important things that you can do I think is automating your money because it just reduces your time spent in the weeds and that is where most people if they automate their money they're going to be so much better off and the way that I think about this for a lot of folks is in the corporate world I've had friends who you know sign up for their 401k and when they sign up for their 401k they don't look at it and then like three years down the line all of a sudden they look in their account they're like I can't believe how much money I have in this account it's because it's automation working for you and so you can do this with anything like Cody said with Vanguard with fidelity you can automate your money into these different accounts and now the beautiful thing is you can also auto invest you don't even have

• 19:49Andrew Giancola?

  to like back in the day you had to go and log in and still invest those dollars and now you can actually auto invest in all those different places which is why I love this so much so There's a lot of financial decisions we have to make day in and day out. And so when it comes to automating, which financial decisions should people not be thinking about every single day?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I think the amount you invest.

• 20:07Andrew Giancola?

  Yep.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  I even think where you invest for the most part. If you're not someone who likes analyzing stocks and 10 K reports and earnings reports and all this stuff. Like I have most of my money, quite honestly, and just like broad based index funds. And I have it auto investing for me every single month. It's not a decision I actively make. I'm like, hmm, what stock do I think is going to do really good this year? Like these, you know, reading this macro trend report, I think this A, B, and C stocks are going to do awesome. Like 99%, maybe like 95% of my finances are just on like complete autopilot. So that's one. It's just like the amount you invest. If you have, again, a steady paycheck or somewhat regular freelance income, just like decide a dollar amount or a percentage and just auto invest that. All the big platforms now, you literally don't even have to log in. It'll auto invest. You can just pick like a broad based index fund.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  You could say, I want to invest in Vanguard, VTSAX, like the total stock market index fund. It will literally just take the money out of your bank account, put it in that index fund, invest it. So you're not one of those people, unfortunately, who ends up with a bunch of money in like a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA, but it never got invested. So make sure that you're like, like you said before, in the olden days.

• 21:12Andrew Giancola?

  Yep.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Back when, even back when I first started investing, like I had to go in and manually invest that money. But now it's easier than ever. It's one click, set it up and you could have that thing running for decades. So I think that's, that's probably the most important one to automate, in my opinion.

• 21:24Andrew Giancola?

  A hundred percent. And I think that's the one where, again, if you, you have to set that up first and you set it up in a way because it allows you to pay yourself first. It allows you to actually get those dollars invested because too many people will like skip months if they're manually doing it. So it for sure is one of the, the biggest things that you can do.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  One thing I want to add, Andrew, though, because I think we're giving people a bad rep, just humanity in general, right? I'm like, you know, if you are making a hundred K and all of a sudden you make a hundred 20, you're just going to spend it. We're actually pretty adaptive in the other way, too. Like if you're making a hundred K and all of a sudden you're making 80 because you're just forcing $20,000 of investments, you'll learn to live on 80.

• 21:59Andrew Giancola?

  Yep.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Like humans are super adaptive. So like, if you can do the invest first methodology we've talked about before, most people are pretty adaptable. They're, you know, maybe they're just like automatically spend. Less money because less money is available. It's kind of like that, um, I forget the exact name of the, the thing where it's like you, the amount of time that you set yourself to like do a task, that's how much time it takes. I forget the exact name of the paradox that Elon Musk made it pretty famous. But it's like, if you have one week to do this thing, it's going to take you one week. If you have one hour, it's going to take you one hour. It's kind of the same thing with a budget. Like you have, if you have 50K to spend, you'll spend 50K. If you have 150K to spend, you'll spend 150K unless you have these systems in place.

• 22:35Andrew Giancola?

  Exactly. It gets it out of your hands, gets it into that spot. And especially if you want to hit these goals, like if you have a savings rate goal and let's say, for example, you want to save 35% of your income. If you want to go ahead and do that, automating it to the right places upfront is going to allow you to just have whatever's left over. Then you're going to go ahead and spend that. So I think that's really, really important for most people. And so if you were going to build one financial system this year, if you were going to set up one automation this year, outside of just investing, we kind of talked through investing there. What would be another one that you would set up? Would it be kind of automating your bills? I think that's a simple one that a lot of people do, or is there anything else that you would do there?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, automating your bills is a gimme. Like if you don't have that stuff on autopay, please do that. It's just like mental bandwidth you don't have to deal with. I, oh, it's, yeah, once I put everything on autopay, it's just like, it's such a relief. And you just know exactly how much is kind of coming out every single month. The other one I would say, and this isn't exactly an automation, but it does become an automation over time is building passive income in some way, shape or form. It doesn't have like some, something outside of investing. So whether that's, you know, starting some kind of a little mini business or maybe it's real estate, just something where going back to the beginning of this conversation, where your time is not linearly related to that money.

• 23:41Andrew Giancola?

  Right.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  So like, I'm, I'm such a huge proponent of starting a side hustle, even if you're someone who like has a really high powered corporate job. Just because like you gained so many skills and making five bucks, like your first $5. I don't know if you remember the first money you made online. Remember the first $5 I made online, it just feels different. It feels so good to make money yourself without the, a boss, without having to check in. Like you just, you just make the money. You, you know, you created the website, you, maybe you recorded the podcast, you did whatever, you created the digital product. It's just, it's a different feeling. Well, that's probably one, it's not exactly a system, but that's something I would encourage a lot of people to do. Even if you're someone with a really high powered job, even if you're making Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, it just flex that muscle. Doing something different is, you know, growth is good.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  So trying something different, getting that new skill, it might benefit you later on in ways you'd never realize.

• 24:27Andrew Giancola?

  I want to talk about this because income is a big thing that you did on your financial independence journey. And I want to kind of spend some time here because I think this is something where you are really an expert and is increasing your income over time. And you've done it kind of over and over and over again, a bunch of different ways. And for a lot of people out there and a lot of people that we talk to all the time in our community and everything else, they are looking for ways to increase their income and they are looking for ways to kind of find, you know, side hustles and or ways. We have this series that we talk about all the time called Side Businesses That Could Turn Into A Full Time Income. And what I'm trying to achieve in those episodes is to show you, hey, these are businesses that you could start on the side, nights and weekends, whatever else, that can turn into a full-time income.

• 25:07Andrew Giancola?

  So I kind of want to think of this early on as income is overall an accelerator to get to financial independence. So first, let's talk about this. When it comes to income, why is that the ultimate lever that you can pull? When it comes to trying to achieve financial independence and do you believe that?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  100% believe it and because income is infinitely scalable, whereas expenses can only drop to the floor. Like you can only get to zero expenses. You can't unfortunately get to negative expenses and all of a sudden that becomes income. Income, if you're making $40,000, like, yes, it would be difficult, but there's no reason you couldn't go from $40,000 to like $4 million.

• 25:42Andrew Giancola?

  Right.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  That's a crazy example, but like that's, is that 100x? I think that's 100x. Don't, don't math check me here. That's like 100x increase in your income. It's very hard to 100x decrease your expenses. It's just, it's way more difficult. So I think most people should tackle expenses first, but then income is that lever that you should just hammer. Like get the big, you know, the big three out of the way. Like if you can kind of get your housing, your transportation and food in check, especially those who are like living paycheck to paycheck. It's going to be much easier, especially if you're working a corporate job, to get those expenses in check and then turn back toward income. Once you get the expenses to a level where you're like, if I cut anymore, I'm going to feel super deprived. Then it's time to like really hit the income accelerator. And whether that's at your day job, maybe you're in sales and you just want to like really put the pedal to the metal and make way more money in sales.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Or maybe that's jumping to a different industry and doing a similar role in the industry, or it's starting a side hustle, or it's investing in real estate. Like, there's so many ways to do this. But if you are, if you don't pull that income lever, if your income isn't already super high, it's gonna be really hard to hit financial independence on a super early timeline. Like, for me, the reason I was able to, quote unquote, retire, hit financial freedom in three years, was because I just went ballistic on the income front.

• 26:51Andrew Giancola?

  And that is where I think if, if anybody is kind of listening right now, you're gonna see this all coming together. Because what we're talking about here is we want you to cut back as far as you can before you feel deprived. And so, once you cut back, that's only gonna take you a little bit of time. Like, once you start to cut back, you have that setup. Then we want you automating, obviously, your finances as well. So automating your money into your investments. Now you have this kind of system set up where you are optimized in terms of getting started to focus on your income. Then you can spend all of your time and your energy focusing on the thing that's gonna give you the, the ultimate leverage towards financial independence. So, talk about your income journey for a second. Let's talk through kind of how people can think about this. Because I'll tell you, for me specifically, my first job, I was making $30,000 a year as an entry-level person as a financial analyst.

• 27:35Andrew Giancola?

  And back then, I realized very quickly, I'm gonna be living paycheck to paycheck for a long time if I don't increase my income. So, I did a bunch of things. I went into Amazon Arbitrage, I started a blog, I had a side of the road Christmas tree stand. Like, I did all these different things to try to increase my income over time. So, kind of talk about your income journey. And then I want to kind of talk through some of the ways that people can think about income or increasing their income.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I have all of my numbers, like, income and expenses. I track meticulously. That's a benefit of being a personal finance podcaster and blogger over all these years. But so, back in 2019, when this journey kind of first started for me, I had worked half the year. I was in commercial real estate lending. I think I made $44,000. Actually, I'm gonna pull up my phone here, just so I can have the exact numbers. I think I made $44,000. And at the time, I was living on It's like fifteen hundred dollars a month.

• 28:24Andrew Giancola?

  Wow.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  It was super frugal. I was sharing an apartment in Boston. I was like sharing a room. My room was so small. I could literally touch my buddy Lou's hand while we're like sleeping. Our beds are that close.

• 28:33Andrew Giancola?

  Wow.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  But, you know, I was spending four hundred fifty dollars a month on rent in Boston, like a big.

• 28:38Andrew Giancola?

  That's a huge metropolitan city.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Usually expensive city.

• 28:40Andrew Giancola?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Um, I was driving a paid off car. I was like eating out very rarely, you know, going out pretty rarely. And so, yeah, my expenses were super low. I had made like forty four thousand dollars that year, but I was able, I was still able to save like sixty or seventy percent of my income, making forty four thousand dollars. So as my income started to increase, and I'm pulling up the exact numbers here so people can, uh, fact check me. All right, here we go. Okay. So, yeah, that was twenty nineteen. My income was forty four thousand and I was spending like eighteen thousand total that year. The next year I went full into entrepreneurship and I ended up quitting that corporate job. I was just like, I feel like I just had a calling to like try to just build businesses and kind of go out on my own. So that next year, twenty nineteen, my income jumped from forty four thousand, it doubled to ninety six thousand.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  My expenses went up a little bit, but it was like about two thousand dollars a month, called like twenty four thousand dollars a year. The year after that, twenty twenty, my income doubled again to a hundred ninety eight thousand. I was still spending twenty four thousand dollars a year. And the year after that, twenty twenty one, my income more than doubled again to four hundred and three thousand. I was still spending twenty four thousand dollars a year. So like, that's what I'm saying. Like I cut my expenses to the bone and then I just wailed on the income lever. So what I was making four hundred and three thousand dollars in twenty twenty one, spending twenty four thousand dollars, I had three hundred and whatever that is, thousand dollars to invest for my future. And so like the compound interest that that has paid me to this day is just like, like that money has more than doubled. It's insane.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Um, so just getting it right for those couple of years is what just kind of catapulted this whole financial independence journey and allowed me to have financial freedom in such a short timeline.

• 30:16Andrew Giancola?

  And that's where I think most people need to understand is look at Cody. Cody kept his expenses at the level where he was comfortable, but it was kind of like, he was still making sacrifices. But it was at the level that you were comfortable kind of keeping it there and then took the extra and started to put it towards financial independence. So first I want to talk through kind of. What did you do to increase your income over that timeframe? What were some of the businesses that you were creating? Or what was your thought process there? Did you try other things that failed? Or did you just kind of keep going on from there?

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Good question. Yeah, this is when I tried like 30 different businesses.

• 30:45Andrew Giancola?

  Okay.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  And at one point, so I had tried 30 over the span of this couple of year timeframe. But at one point, I had 19 different income streams. And I used to brag about it, but now I'm like, that was so dumb. Like some of these things, I would make $50 a month and I would be making like, you know, $2 an hour doing it. Like I was doing like online surveys for money. Like some of these income streams were just so silly. But honestly, looking back, like I learned so many skills. I learned what I liked. I learned what I didn't like. I became, you know, I had like, I was doing copywriting. I was like doing email marketing campaigns. I was editing podcasts. I was editing video. All these skills I now use today. Or if I don't use them today, at least when I hire people, I like kind of know what to look for and I can kind of guide them. So like I gained so many skills during that timeframe. And that's one thing I don't want people to be like, well, I don't want to try 30 side hustles.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  It's like, even if you don't do the side hustle in the future, you're going to gain a valuable skill. That's why, like I was saying before, even if you're in a high powered corporate job and you don't want to do a side hustle because it doesn't make financial sense, it might make sense just to better you, like to give you a new skill that you don't have. And you'd never know when that skill might come in handy down the road. So yeah, back to answer your question about all my side hustles and how I've increased my income. The ones I eventually kind of pared my side hustling down to was digital products. So I was creating a whole bunch of digital products to sell on Etsy, to sell on Shopify. That then became a whole community and course and template shop. And this whole thing called Gold City Ventures, that's like my main business today. Real estate was another one that has stuck and I've done pretty much everything under the sun in real estate.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  I dabbled in flips, wholesaling, syndications, long-term rentals, short-term rentals. Is that it? Yeah, I might've missed one or two, but dabbled in that. And then podcasting, I still do to this day and a little bit of like, kind of just like personal finance influencer for lack of a better term, creating content online. And that's kind of what, uh, over the last couple of years, I've really pared it down to. And those are the things that really catapulted my income over those couple of years.

• 32:34Andrew Giancola?

  And every single person that I know who has a business, especially online, that has a online business that's big, they've tried so many different. Things, the same thing I would try everything from, you know, I had a blog originally and then I had a second blog that was about like fitness. And then I would just try all these different things. I did retail arbitrage. I would sell things on eBay and it was just like, I would fail over and over and over again. And then finally you find the things that work and it's really just trying a bunch and testing out a bunch of these different things before you find something that works. So if someone was looking at, maybe they have a nine to five right now and they're listening and they're like, I want to try something on the side. If you were starting over right now in 2026, what would you start to look for? What would you start on the side? Would you do an online business? Would you do some sort of,

• 33:18Andrew Giancola?

  you know, physical business or how would you kind of think about that for a side hustle?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  The way I like to think about it, I definitely don't like be prescriptive. I hate when people are like, real estate is the only way or like, these are your products is the only way. Not the case. What I like to think about though is kind of back to the first thing I was talking about, that passive income. If you can do something where, you can either put in a bunch of time or a bunch of money or a bunch of effort at the beginning and then that thing is going to pay you in perpetuity. That is the type of side hustle that I look for. So like with digital products, with real estate, even with something like podcasting or YouTube. Like you're spending a lot of time creating this really valuable asset that then lives on forever. I know some podcasters who like discontinued their podcasts and they're still making money. They're still making affiliate income. Maybe they still have people join their membership.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Like from this asset that they created that still lives on. So like something that has longevity versus just trading your dollars for hours. Like I've done all the dollars for hour stuff. I was, I delivered Uber Eats on a bicycle in Australia. I lived there for six months. I was in this hilly region. I got a bicycle. Again, this is when frugati goes too far. I got a bicycle for $25 off of the Australian equivalent to eBay called Gumtree. It had one gear and I'm going up like these 45 degree, you know, steep hills. This is like the most brutal trade time for money side hustle ever. Like I got a couple of one star reviews because I sweat on people's food. It was brutal. Those are the types of side hustles I would stay away from. Now, there are a time and a place for those. Like, if you just want to go straight, trade your hours for dollars, that's totally cool.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  If you want to drive for Uber, if you want to deliver Instacart, like, that's, if you really got to bridge the gap and like, that's all you can do right now. You don't have the mental bandwidth to wait for a podcast or YouTube or a course or a digital product. So you don't have the time to kind of wait for those to bring you enough money to make a difference. That's fine. You can trade your dollars for hours. I'm really not like trying to hate too hard on those. But if you do have, if you're in a pretty comfortable position right now, if you're like, my financial life's pretty good and making all right money. I would definitely lean more towards something that is more scalable and more passive in the future.

• 35:14Andrew Giancola?

  And when you look at a lot of the, the online landscape now, so a big question that we get for a lot of folks out there is they'll say, well, what should I do online? Cause I don't want to do something, you know, that is like what you're saying, like Uber Eats or whatever else. Maybe they're in that good position. Are there any online businesses that you like or that you've seen in the past? That have worked really well for people that maybe someone who's working a nine to five could start as creating some of those little assets that can, you know, earn income in perpetuity?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  It really depends on your skillset. Again, I don't like being prescriptive. I think people have to lean into their strengths. Like if you're, if you're just in a regular corporate job, but you really like fitness, like maybe leaning into fitness is the way to go. Maybe you should create like some kind of, you know, PDFs with like some nutrition, like some keto diet or some like special workouts that you do, or I don't know, or build a community. Or maybe you're really into nature and then you lean into nature and like you're doing, maybe you're doing guided tours in the weekend. Like, there's no like right or wrong answer, I don't think, when it comes to building a side hustle, you know, on online side hustles. I guess the guided tours wasn't a good example there. But honestly, just, I think friction is the enemy here. So like, just lean into what you're interested in. Because if you're just going after the thing that's going to make you the most money, that's when people start to give up. And like, that's what I learned really fast early on.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  I'm like, I hate doing X, Y, or Z side hustle. I just picked this up because like Johnny over there said, I was going to make a bunch of money from doing it. But like, I'm not really excited about it. So like, if it's something that you're moderately excited about, like, maybe you're really interested in AI. Maybe you're really interested in video. Maybe you're really interested in digital products. Like, follow that passion a little bit. I, I don't like to follow your passion advice, but like, I am a big believer that friction is the enemy when it comes to side hustles because. You know, the best side hustle isn't the one that's going to make you the most money the fastest. The best side hustle is the one you're going to keep up with over years and decades.

• 36:56Andrew Giancola?

  Exactly, because really it does take a ton of time. And that was the big thing for me too, is I've tried to find those side hustles that you could focus on the actual skillset that you have. For example, if you're someone out there, let's say you're a teacher. And if you're a teacher, maybe your biggest skill is like you could do tutoring on the side online, or you could do, you know, just all these different things is look focusing on your skillset, because that's going to allow you to make the most money, eh? But also it's going to allow you to just, like, like Cody said, you're not going to quit. Like, it's going to be one of those things where you're going to enjoy it a little bit more because you're good at it, and it's not going to be as hard. There's not going to be as much friction. So you focus a lot on the income lever. And so you went and doubled your income multiple years in a row. What did you do with that income? Did you take it and kind of put it towards? Obviously, we've talked about investments and index funds, and we talked about real estate. How did you kind of split that up?

• 37:40Andrew Giancola?

  And did you invest it anywhere else?

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Most of it was in index funds and real estate. Good question. I had a little bit in crypto, nothing right home about like 3% of my net worth, maybe. But honestly, the lion's share was, yeah, just regular old plain index funds, like total stock market index fund and then real estate. So when I hit financial independence in 2020, again, the year right here, 20, early 2022, it was like right before my 26th birthday. So I say I hit it when I was 25.

• 38:06Andrew Giancola?

  That's awesome.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  I had about $500,000 invested in the stock market. And mostly just like the total stock market index fund. And I had 11 real estate units that I had bought using a total of $200,000 in down payments. So we were kind of like house hacking. We had like two, uh, two other triplexes and a duplex. And we were making like between $3,000 and $3,500 a month in cash flow after everything was said and done, after all the mortgages were paid, after we set aside money for reserves. So at that point, like we were spending probably $2,500 to $3,000. We're like, hey, we don't have to work anymore. Like, we were making, just from the real estate, we didn't have to work. And then we also had this $500,000 chunk of money sitting in the market that was just compounding year over year over year. So that was kind of the split.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Like, at this point, I think I'm slightly more index fund heavy than real estate heavy in terms of my total net worth. But it's been a pretty even split the whole way. I don't like being too into one thing. Like, I like having my, uh, my assets diversified a little bit just for protection.

• 39:04Andrew Giancola?

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• 44:10Andrew Giancola?

  Talk about the, the journey with real estate. So you, you have these 11 units that you utilize 200,000 of your own money. How did you do that? What were kind of the steps that you took in order to do that? Cause I know a lot of our audience here is really interested in real estate. We get a lot of questions on that. So what was your journey with that? What, how did you kind of think about that? Was it house hacking? Did you start there? And then how did that kind of expand?

• 44:30Speaker 01

  So we hit the ground running with real estate and this is in that year where I'd made 403,000 dollars and spent 24. We had a lot of gunpowder to work with. So like, we had so much money to just like invest and all it sounds like cocky. Yeah. But we just like, honestly, the, the amount, the delta between the income and the expenses was getting so big that I'm like, what, what do we do with this? So we, we started looking at real estate and we bought 11 units in one year. So in that calendar year. So that's when all the 11 units happened in like 11 months. So the first one was a house hack. We lived in the basement unit. There was a split, a split level duplex above us. So it was a three unit total and we lived in the basement unit. And so we went from paying, well, I went from paying as I was living in Boston, that 450 dollars a month.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  I went from paying for $50 a month in rent to now making $800 a month from this house hack. Because the amount we were bringing in from those two units was like $800 and you know, minus all expenses, minus mortgage, everything was about $800 or more.

• 45:24Andrew Giancola?

  That's incredible.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  The cost. So like, we were actually instead of most, you know, 99% of people are spending money on housing. We were making money on housing. So that was a huge shift. And then after that, we bought a duplex like a mile down the road. It was an off market deal, same seller. And then after that, we bought a three family two months after that. And then we bought another three family four months after that. So yeah, in a span of 11 months, we had 11 units.

• 45:48Andrew Giancola?

  That is incredible. That's like a overall is is just so amazing what you can do. And again, I want to remind everybody, think about this as this is the reason why you increase your income. Because you can take these extra dollars and you can absolutely change your life in a single year. If you can increase your income enough, which is why this is so powerful. Overall, and I'm with you, Cody, because I real estate is a big part of my strategy too. It's it's having, you know, investing in the market and real estate, having that diversification. I think is a really important thing for most people. And overall, I think that just diversifying in these other areas is just, it just helps tremendously for me. So you talk a lot about financial independence as a spectrum. And I'm going to tell you right now, my biggest overall struggle, and everybody, all my listeners know this because I talk about it a lot.

• 46:33Andrew Giancola?

  Is figuring out how much is enough. And I still struggle with that to this day. It is one of those things where my, every time something changes in my life. I feel like I just keep increasing the amount that I want to have to become financially independent. So my first initial goal was to become lean fi. And so when I did that, because I was really into Mr. Money mustaches, I'm sure you probably were too. I told my wife, I'm going to bike around town. And she's like, we're by an interstate, you're not going to go bike around town. And so this was this whole ordeal where, where that's how I was in my twenties. And so once we got to that point in time where we could hit that. Then I was like, all right, I just want to have a little bit more and I want to have a little bit more. Now my goal honestly is fat fire and for a lot of different reasons. And it's because I had kids and there's a lot of causes I want to give to and those types of things. But I just feel like the goalpost is always moving for me.

• 47:18Andrew Giancola?

  So can you kind of talk about why you, why you think financial independence is a spectrum? And the danger, we'll talk about what enough is at some point in time here. But the danger of people not understanding what their enough number is.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll talk about the spectrum part first. I think you kind of laid the groundwork perfectly. Like, there are different levels to financial freedom. There's like lean fi where it's like, I'm going to live extremely frugally. Let's say, you know, using that example from earlier where you have to save up 1.5 million dollars to live on 60K. Be like, actually, I think I could live on 40K a year. All I need is a million dollars invested using the nest egg approach. That's cool. That's like lean fi. If that's like a little less comfortable than you'd like to be, but like you can make it work, lean fi. Traditional fi is like the 60,000 dollars a year. You're like, I like spending 60,000 dollars. It feels pretty good. 1.5 million, done. Fat fi is when you're like, okay, I kind of want to increase my lifestyle. Like, I'm actually leaning into lifestyle inflation because I know that, you know, this X, Y, or Z thing is going to make me happier. Maybe in that case, you need, uh, what's, again, public math sucks. Let's say you need 80,000 dollars a year to spend.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  So then you're, it's like 2 million dollars is your fi number. Um, so it's just understanding that. And that's why fi is a spectrum. Like, there's different levels to fi. There's different types of fi. Some people like coast fi, where they'll like try to get, you know, call it 500,000 dollars invested by age 35, and then through compound interest. There's this like math thing called the rule of 72. It's basically like, divide 72 by your expected rate of return, and that's how long it takes for your money to double. So I'm just using this as a preface for this public math I'm, I'm going to embarrass myself doing. But like, let's say you have 500K invested and you expect a 10% return. It's going to double about every seven years. So like at 35, you have 500K. At 42, you're going to have a million. And then at 49, you're going to have like 2 million. And then at 50, God, 56, you're going to have

• 48:59Andrew Giancola?

  We won't hold you to it, don't worry.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  4 million.

• 49:01Andrew Giancola?

  Yeah.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  So like, a lot of people will just kind of get that initial number, and then they'll just let it ride. Like, you don't have to add any more to your investment pile. Once you hit this coast fi number, you can essentially live paycheck to paycheck. I mean, it's a little bit better because you have this like silent 500,000 dollar nest egg working for you in the background. But a lot of people do the coast fi strategy. So like, there's just so many different ways to do it. Or barista fi is another one where people will, they'll get pretty close to coast fi, but then they'll like, um, Work at Starbucks or like some other place with healthcare. So they're like making a little bit of money still to live, but they have, again, this like silent giant working in the background, compounding slowly, year over year, decade over decade. So like, there's just so many flavors to FII. There's so many different ways to hit FII. That's why I like to say financial independence is a special. It's not just like this one number. It really depends on you and your preferences. And that's why personal finance is personal.

• 49:47Andrew Giancola?

  Right.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  I know Morgan Housel, you mentioned earlier, he says that. He's like, personal finance is more personal than it is finance.

• 49:52Andrew Giancola?

  Right.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  I love that quote.

• 49:53Andrew Giancola?

  It's, that's the thing I think is, is most people need to note, because for me specifically, like, if you look at the, the spectrum of what kind of happened, my, mine turned into a, a spectrum just as I, you know, went on in life, where like I got married and all of a sudden I started to spend a little bit more. And then after I got married, then we had our first kid and we started to spend more. There's daycare costs, there's all these extra costs you have. Then I spent a little bit more at the second and the third. And then now I just, there's think, there's more things I want to do. Like, for example, this summer, we're going, you know, to, to travel a lot in Europe. And that's like one of our big goals, to spend time with kids. So we can, we can do that. And there's like, I'm going to see if that works. If I like that a lot, then my increase, you know, I want to spend more as I get, you know, later on down the line. So, um, this is just something where I'm trying to get that goalpost to stop moving. I don't know if, you know, I

• 50:37Andrew Giancola?

  ever will, but I also don't think I'm ever going to stop working. That's just one of those areas that I'm, that I'm kind of sitting at right now. So if someone's listening to this right now, and they're thinking through, well, how do I figure out what my enough number is? A lot of our audience knows like in the 4% rule and what that is, but how can they kind of work backwards, especially when it comes to thinking about the future? We talked about a little bit about inflation, and we talked about the future in terms of thinking about what your financial independence number is. Uh, how can they kind of think about or start to work towards that number? Is it just utilizing the 4% rule and working backwards? Or how do you actually think about that?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  I think one of the biggest misconceptions is how much your dream lifestyle costs. And going back to the Four Hour Work Week, the book that really changed my life, I remember Tim Ferriss telling this story about one of his buddies who was a founder. And I think he had like a $50 million exit, you know? He, he grinded for 20 years building some software company, had a $50 million exit. And Tim was like, why are you working so hard? The guy's like, so I can do whatever I want. He's like, he's like, like what? He's like, travel around Thailand for a year. Tim's like, you can travel around Thailand for a year for $20,000. Like, you don't need a $20 million software exit and to grind at the, you know, expense of your health and your family and your friends. I know this guy was like pushing himself to the limit. So I think a lot of people. Have this dream life that they idealize, but they don't actually understand how much it costs. And so when I ask people, they're like, I'm like, what's your financial freedom number? How much you need for financial independence?

• 51:56Speaker 01

  So like $10 million. I'm like, okay, why? And then they like go through the things they want and they're like, well, I really want, I want a private chef. I'm like, okay, like a private chef sounds fancy. You can get a private chef in some places for a thousand dollars a month. Who will make all your meals. Like they'll come to your house, cook your stuff twice a week, put it in your fridge. Like that's a private chef and some of them, I've seen them as cheap as a thousand dollars a month. Using the 4% rule, that's what 12,000 dollars a year times 25. That's like an extra 180K or whatever that you need for your FIVE number. So like, not that expensive. Some people like, I want to fly private. There is like semi-private companies now, like JSX that are operating on the West Coast. You can get a private, you can literally get in a private jet with 20 other people from like Vegas to LA for like 300 bucks. You don't need 50 million dollars. Or some people, there's just like, all these circumstances or traveling is another big one.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Like I want to be able to travel the world. It's like, I personally have traveled for six months and while I was super frugal at this time, this is back before I hit FIVE. I spent $9,500 in six months of traveling. And I was like, I mean, I was, yeah, I was. That's incredible. I was slumming it a little bit, but like I did it and I had a lot of fun and we were going out every weekend. Like it wasn't like, I just went there and just sat in my room the whole time. I had a great time. It was in Australia. Um, so there's just like, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what a dream life actually costs. So like, something me and my wife did was we just sat down like in, you know, backs facing each other. So like you can't see what the other person's writing. We just wrote down like our top 10 list of the things we value. And we actually redid that pretty recently and just to make sure that we're still aligned.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  And you know, it was at the top, it was like travel, it was like fitness, it was like spending time with each other, it was family. And so like if fancy house, a fancy car isn't on there, like then you shouldn't be spending money on it. Like do this with your spouse. If you're a single, do this by yourself. And if what you write down on that list is not aligned with what your credit card statement or what your bank statement shows, then you're going to make some changes. You're going to really figure out what the things are that you value and spend in accordance with those values. So I just did all my like tax work for 2025. And what do you know? It was all like travel and experience stuff at the top of the list. That's where we spend the most money on. I'm like, okay, good. We are very aligned. We, we say we like these things. We say that these are priorities and our money is matching that. But I see so many people that are like, you know, this is, these are the things I prioritize. But if you look at their calendar, if you look at their bank account, it's, it's very different.

• 54:07Andrew Giancola?

  How often do you look at that priority list? Do you kind of reevaluate on a yearly basis? And you know, doing it with with your partner? Is that something like you guys kind of sit down once a year and do it? Or is it something where you've kind of done it once and you're just sticking to it now?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  So doing that exercise, we hadn't done it in a decade. That one specifically, but what we do do every month that we have these like monthly money meetings. It's kind of nerdy, but we'll sit down and basically we have this. It's not just money meeting, actually. It's like everything meeting. I'll, I'll pull up the, the prompts for people who want to copy exactly what we do. We do this every single month and then we have a big one at the end of the year. We actually just recorded like last week or two weeks ago, our annual video to kind of recap all of 2025. But at the end of every single month, we kind of just go over a quick little laundry list. So our monthly review meeting, we go over money, real estate, health and fitness, travel, relationships, random, and then goals for the next month. So we do that every single month at the end of the month and it's just so eye opening. Like if there's something that we're not aligned on, or maybe there's like a money or real estate thing

• 55:03Speaker 01

  that I forgot to tell Lauren and like, um, this is the time where I can fill in that gap. Or if there's something that the other person's doing that's bothering us, whether that's now in our relationship or with money or whatever, it's just, it kind of opens the door to conversation. And that has been incredibly helpful. We've been doing that for a couple of years now and that just kind of helps us stay on track with everything.

• 55:20Andrew Giancola?

  And it's so important. My wife and I do the same thing where we kind of have these conversations and a big kind of goal meeting at the end of the year. But I do like some of your prompts, some of those I'm going to steal because I think some of those are really cool, especially the goals the next month and kind of going in there. Cause that's, I really like that. I think that's awesome. If you are trying to get someone on board with financial independence, maybe it's your spouse. It's like my wife and I had a lot of conversations to even kind of think through this process. Do you have any tips for getting somebody on board? Or is it kind of just showing, hey, we can have whatever we want in this life and we have this kind of setup. How do you kind of think about that and having that conversation with someone?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  If you're the type of person who's listening to this podcast or watching this interview, you're probably the money nerd in your relationship and that's exactly who I was. It sounds like that's who you were, Andrew. And so I went spreadsheet first at my wife and I'm like, look, we can retire by the time we're 30. And she's like, I don't even understand what I'm looking at. So that was the wrong approach. So I think the approach is kind of how luxury vacation companies do it. Like sell the destination. Not the journey. Don't be like, yeah, we're gonna cut down our expenses. We're gonna start these hot hustles like be like, imagine if we could just on a random Tuesday, go to the beach. How awesome would that be? Like sell the destination. That's how you got the other person on board. And then you can kind of, you know, build the plane as as you start to sell them on the on the experience on the destination.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  I wouldn't lead with the journey because that's usually boring and people don't want to hear spreadsheets and numbers and compound interest if they're not interested in this stuff. But they might be interested in, hey, what if we, you know, didn't have to have a boss? Hey, what if we could spend more time with the kids? Hey, what if we could travel for a month out of the year? And oftentimes that's what gets the person on board. That's exactly what worked with Lauren and yeah, the spreadsheet first approach unfortunately didn't cut it.

• 56:56Andrew Giancola?

  It's sales 101 is to sell the outcome, not what the actual features are because that's overall what the big thing is. And I think you have to do that. That's what I did do. I didn't need to say make same exact mistake where I kind of just threw it all at my wife and it's like, why are we spending on these random things? That's not the way to do it. So make sure you are selling out the outcome overall. So after financial independence, what kind of surprised you most about that life? Like I know you have your businesses now and you're able to do what you want. But what kind of surprised you most after you reached financial independence? Were there any surprises that you had in place? Or you just kind of loving life after that?

• 57:28Speaker 01

  I think a scary realization. So up until I hit phi, all of my decisions, most of my decisions were guided by money. Like I'm going to choose this accommodation because it's the most economical. I'm going to choose these sneakers because they're the most economical. I'm going to choose this profession. Like I literally went into finance because I Googled how to make a lot of money out of college. That was like, everything was just driven by money and guided by money. But now that I have enough money to spend and live comfortably, it's kind of a scary thing where now you can like do anything. Like if you don't do the thing that you say you're going to do, that is on you. It is nothing to do with money. Like so if, you know, if I'm not in the shape I want to be in, if I don't speak the language I want to speak, if I don't play the instrument that I want to play, that's on me. It's not because I don't have time because I don't because of this job. It's not because I don't have the money. Like it's kind of scary, but like

• 58:12Speaker 01

  everything just becomes a you problem. No longer money problem. It's no longer a time problem. It's a Cody problems. Like if I'm not where I want to be in any facet of my life, I have to really look at myself in the mirror and be like, is this actually a priority? Like and if I'm saying it's a priority, I need to build the systems to like make that happen. I think that was a huge change and just like, it was kind of a crazy, crazy realization. Kind of like when you kind of first launch into adulthood, like you, you know, you leave your house, you maybe go to college, you're like, wait, I can Eat whatever I want. I can do whatever I want with my day and all my parents breathing down my neck. It's kind of like the next level of that. I remember that that was such a crazy feeling like that first day going to UMass Samhurst and I was like, I can just basically do whatever I want. Like I know I want to get good grades and I want to, you know, stay focused on my health and relationships and stuff, but like I could just go and do whatever I wanted.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  It's kind of the same thing when you hit five, like there's, there's just no guardrails anymore. So it's kind of all on you.

• 59:02Andrew Giancola?

  That's a great comparison because that feeling, I think most people will remember that feeling, you know, the first day of college when you just, you're there and all of a sudden it feels like, wow, I could, I could kind of just, I'm free. I could do it.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's what it feels like. So that's all, that's a great comparison.

• 59:15Andrew Giancola?

  So before we wrap this up, I want to kind of just ask a bunch of rapid fire questions. We ask a lot of guests these, and these are just kind of fun to kind of think through. So first one is, what is the best money advice you've ever received?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Hmm. See if I can just pick one piece of money advice.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  I'm going to not call it advice because I didn't get, it was an advice, but it was in a book. I think I'm going to go back to the, your time and your money don't have to be linearly related. Like that just one foundational principle completely changed my life. I like owe everything to that book and just that whole ideology. If not, I might still be working in corporate finance, making $75 an hour, but like I'm still trading all of my hours for dollars and I was able to escape that because this one mantra.

• 59:59Andrew Giancola?

  It'll change your life once you realize that. The second one is, what is the best book you've read over the last year?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Over the last year?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Can I count a reread?

• 1:00:09Andrew Giancola?

  Sure.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Okay. Cause I am the type of person, I know you do a book a week.

• 1:00:12Andrew Giancola?

  Yep.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  I am more the type of person who will kind of, I'll love a book and then I'll reread it a couple of years later to see if it like changed me or see if I receive it differently. You know, because you're like, I'm in different points in my life. Like I reread the four hour work week. That's not my answer. But like I, there was so many things that I picked up on 10 years later that I didn't pick up on the first time I read it. So it was just like super eye opening. But the one for me, actually you mentioned earlier was Psychology of Money. Another really good one was Sahil Bloom's Five Types of Wealth.

• 1:00:39Andrew Giancola?

  Yep.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Both of those are kind of similar-ish and like the, the things that you learn about money and just like psychology and ideology and all that stuff. And yeah, those, those two books were really good. I'm more, I'm. I'm less inclined to read like a tactics driven finance book nowadays and more like a psychology driven finance book. Cause like I said, personal finance is more the personal than the finance. So that type of stuff, especially as the numbers start to get bigger and like these things start to compound and the goalposts keep moving. Sometimes farther than I want them to. I'm the same boat as you. I'm like, okay, I gotta ground myself and be like, okay, you know, life's pretty good. Like I gotta, I gotta work on the psychology piece, not the money piece.

• 1:01:12Andrew Giancola?

  A hundred percent. And I think that's the, the big thing too, is for, for those out there, if there are books that have, cause I do this too. If there are books out there that have had a huge impact on you, I go back and read them. Like the, one of my favorites originally was the millionaire next door. And I went back and read it like later on down the line. And I just keep like finding stuff that I like in there. And the same thing for business books and everything else too. You'll be in a different place in your business, for example, and you can kind of go back and read those books. And there's a lot more things that maybe apply now than they didn't, you know, they, maybe they didn't apply back in the day. So it's a really cool way to kind of think about that. So if you could change one thing or one financial decision that you ever made throughout your entire timeline. Would there be one that you would change or would you kind of just have your journey exactly the same as it was?

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  I was very fortunate. My journey was pretty smooth because I learned these things so early on. The one thing I probably wouldn't do when I was in my junior year of high school, I spent all of my money. To buy this like Volvo S40 with the sports package. I had like a spoiler on my car. I literally spent every dollar I had. I probably wouldn't, I didn't need that car and I would go back and just get like some crappy car that gets me from point A to point B. It was only $12,000, but like $12,000 to a 17 year old. Like that was all my money. I had spent years working to get that. So that's probably the one, again, it's not like a huge financial mistake because I was so fortunate to learn this stuff when I was like 19 years old. But yeah, I'd probably choose something a little more economical.

• 1:02:33Andrew Giancola?

  Absolutely. That's, that's one I think a lot of us probably have some stuff when we were younger. I remember like, one of the things that I did is when I was 19, I, I read this like investment newsletter and it was talking about this penny stock was going to go to the moon. And I, this is before I understood index funds and I went and bought this penny stock and lost all my money in one day and it was a whole ordeal. So. So awesome. And then the last question I have, and this is my favorite question is what does wealth mean to you?

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Wealth to me is spending my days doing what I want, when I want, with who I want. Like, that's the ultimate form of wealth.

• 1:03:06Andrew Giancola?

  It absolutely is. Well, Cody, thank you so much for coming here today, and I truly, truly appreciate you being here. Tell us all about, so Cody has a new book coming out, which we'll talk about in the intro too, but Cody has a new book coming out. So, talk about your book and talk about where people can listen to your podcast and everything else you have going on.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so book is called Retire by 30, fitting title. And so I want, even if you're not, if you're 50 years old watching this, like, this doesn't exclude you from, it's basically, if I had to name it something less flashy, it'd be hit financial independence as soon as humanly possible and then do whatever you want. But that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. So, Retire by 30 is the name of the book. You can get it at retireby30book.com or wherever you buy your books. Financial Independence Show is the name of my podcast. Been running that since 2018. We have hundreds of episodes with different guests, covering a whole sorts of different topics, all about how you can reach financial independence in a whole bunch of different ways. And, yeah, Cody D. Berman everywhere on social media is where you can find me and follow me. And, yeah, give me a shout out. Let me know if you enjoyed this episode. If you met me through Andrew, that'd be really cool.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  And, yeah, thanks for having me, man. This is awesome.

• 1:04:06Andrew Giancola?

  Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. And Cody's gonna come back in town next year, so we're gonna have him back again. So, we'll definitely do that and really, really excited for that. So, thank you again for being here. We really appreciate it.