Financial Independence Podcast

For Episode 68 of the Captain FI Podcast we are changing things up a bit and hosting a podcast Takeover!
I co-host a LIVE episode of the Catching up to FI podcast with Jackie Cumings Koski, recorded during the third annual FI Freedom Retreat in Bali hosted by Amy Minkley.
This is an awesome episode with lots of powerful stories and life lessons across a wide variety of FI experience - from relatively new starters, to experienced retirees!

On board today is Michael Quan, author of the book The FirePlanner, and the man behind the popular Financially Alert blog and the Breakthrough Millionaire Podcast. Michael reached FIRE in his early thirties and It was actually only after he sold his IT company to a larger provider and inadvertently found himself back in a nine-to-five corporate job that he decided he was going to pull the pin and FIRE at age 36, which is pretty impressive.
Post FIRE, these days, Michael is a stay-at-home dad in sunny San Diego. He loves raising his kids, spending time with his wife, and in his downtime, writing, podcasting, and financially coachinghis students and readers.
Michael's latest project has been setting upand running a real estate investor mastermind group, which he does a couple of times a month.
I really enjoyed my chat with Michael and he had heaps of awesome suggestions for learning resources and inspiration too!

Today, I have the absolute pleasure to be chatting toLiz from her awesome blog and amazing book that she wrote, Meet the Frugal Woods! Anyone who's been on the Captain FI blog knows that I'm a big fan of Liz and Nate, the Frugal Woods and they are literally living my dream!
They have an acreage in rural Vermont, which they call theFrugalwoods. There, they're raising their two beautiful daughters and they participate in a whole bunch of wholesome things. They're always gardening, the kids are always in the garden, and it really just looks like an awesome lifestyle.
Liz and her husband started working towards FI in 2014, both 29 at the time. They had white collar office positions and thought they were dream jobs but they realised they didn't actually feel fulfilled. They were forced to re evaluate and started to talk about other ways that they could live their lives.
Something that they really wanted to do was live innature. They were in Boston and did not feel energised, they wanted to be in the woods.
So they bought a property in rural Vermont in 2016 and have never looked back.
Liz has since enjoyed freelance writing, working one on one with clients doing financial consultations, writing for the Frugalwoods blog and she published the book, Meet the Frugalwoods which has been extremely popular!
This was a bit of a selfish interview as I wanted as much info as possible on Liz's homestead life so I can make this a reality for myself!

On board today is Phil Muscatello, the host and producer of theawesome podcasts, Shares for Beginners, Stocks for Beginners, ETFs for Beginners and Talking Companies.
Phil is not from a finance background, but he wants to learn more about becoming a better investor. So he hopes that his listeners come along for the ride and don't make the same mistakes that he has.
Phil actually has degrees in Media Production and Literary Studies. He played in some awesome, psychedelic, heavy rock cabaret bands in Sydney during the 80s, before moving into a more stable career in radio, working at the ABC, and TripleJ.
Phil describes himself as a seventies punk boomer, he loves playing guitar, ocean swimming, cycling, going to the gym, and anything to do with technology.
He grew up in Sydney, has always been interested in music, playing guitar, loves literature, arts and is an avid reader.
He went to UTS in Sydney and became a little bit of a political radical. After leaving university with a media degree, there was a recession and a lot of depair, as well as very limited jobs in media, so he ended up driving taxis for a few years before starting a career in radio, moving into commercial radio and then started his own recording studio.
He recorded one of the first podcasts in Australia, setting up his own server and fast forward to today, is still loving the podcasting!
Phil was incredibly interesting and had a thing or two to teach me too!

On board today is Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung from Canada, alsoknown from their popular blog, Millennial Revolution. Here's a quote from our guests, 'Money is the most important thing in the world'. Maybe a bit of a controversial take.
Whilst having money is certainly no guarantee of happiness, poverty is sure to make you miserable, and no one knows this better than Kristy, who has seen both ends of the wealthspectrum. Despite growing up in poverty and, at one point, living with her family on 44 cents a day, Kristy Shen, along with her husband Bryce Leung, went on to become self mademillionaires at the ripe old age of 31 and 32, going on to retire only a few years later.
Now, 40 and 41 Kristy and Bryce have spent the past decadetraveling, exploring new cultures, spending time with family and friends, helping others succeed with their financial goals, and expressing their creativity as authors and publishers, both in personal finance, but also, interestingly, with children's books.
How did they do it? Well, as students, analyzing potentialcareer paths, they weighed up training costs, effort, and future salaries to work out their optimum return on investment, and the pair both very mindfully chose to work in the developing field of software engineering.
Kristy's heritage taught her to avoid debt at all costs, and theimportance of a high savings rate. Kristy and Bryce took it to the next level, saving and investing on average 80 percent of their large software engineer incomes over their nine-year working careers. In 2015, they pulled the plug.
They retired from their engineering jobs to FIRE and travel theworld together. They blog at Millennial Revolution, and have published the book, Quit like a Millionaire, which I found particularly helpful and inspiring on my journey to FIRE.
They believe that money is the most important tool we have to improve our quality of life.Kristy and Bryce swear by the numbers which led them to financial freedom and enabled them to pursue their passions for travel, writing, and helping others.
Jump on board, this one's a long one but Kristy and Bryce were just so inspiring to chat to!