1954: How FIRE Parents Hack Childcare, Housing and Education

0:00Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of Ted's podcast, rethinking with Adam Grant. Let me share with you why smart finance leaders turn to Bill. They know that clarity isn't just helpful, it's strategic. As the intelligent finance platform, Bill uses AI to automate the busy work for nearly half a million businesses so they can focus on intentional growth. Eliminate the friction and start scaling with the proven choice. Visit bill.com slash proven to talk with an expert about automating your business finances and get a $250 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com slash proven turns and conditions apply to offer page for details. Shipping, building, admin, payroll, marketing. You're managing all the things. So why waste time sending important documents the old fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with stamps.com. Print postage on demand 24.7 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust stamps.com. Go to stamps.com and use code podcast to try stamps.com

1:00risk-free for 60 days. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter. For the moments you plan and the ones you don't. Built for the busy days that turn into all night's study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken. The times you're deep in your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto update throwing off your momentum. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to the way you actually work. Built with long lasting battery so you're not scrambling for the closest outlet. And built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. They don't build tech for tech's sake. They build it for you. Find technology built for the way you work at Dell.com slash XPS. Built for you. So money episode 1954, how fire, parents hack childcare, housing and education. You're listening to so money with award-winning

2:03money guru, Farneu Shkorapi. Each day in a 30-minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers, and from Farneu Sherself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons? Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer half your life. Welcome to So Money. One of the statistics that everybody talks about is USDA says you're going to spend almost $300,000 when adjusted for inflation per kid outside of college costs to the age of 18. So that works out to be around $17,000 a year. And we ended up spending around $5,000 for his first two years of life, despite the fact that we lived in one of the most expensive cities in North America. And I think one of the reasons for that is people don't know this about the USDA number is that the more money you make, the more kids cost. When you actually look at it, it's an average.

3:04But when you actually look at how much people make, the more money they make, the more they reported their kids to be expensive. Welcome to So Money, everyone. I'm Farneu Shkorapi. If you've ever looked at the fire movement, that stands for financial independence retire early. And thought, yeah, that's great. But what about when you have kids? Today's episode is for you, because for a long time, the unspoken assumption was this. Fire is for child-free tech workers, minimalists, people willing to live on lentils and spreadsheets. But what happens when you want both? Financial independence and a family. My guests today, Christie Shen and Bryce Liang, are some of the original leaders of the modern fire movement. The couple retired in their early 30s with over a million dollars invested. They last appeared on this show in 2019, where they shared their story, which has inspired thousands of people to rethink work, money, and freedom. And since then, they've had a child. Even after retiring early,

4:05even after achieving financial independence, the couple was still worried about the cost of becoming parents. And that's what makes this conversation so important, because if millionaires who retired at 30 are nervous about affording kids, what does that say about the rest of us? In their new book entitled Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One, Christie and Bryce tackled the financial realities of raising children without abandoning the principles of fire. They talk about resisting consumer pressure, hacking childcare, rethinking housing, taking unlimited family vacations and giving your child what they called a, quote, world-class education, regardless of your budget. Today, we get into whether fire is realistic when you're raising a family. The biggest myths about the cost of kids, how to think about childcare, housing, and education strategically. Here's Christie Chen and Bryce Leung. Christie Chen and Bryce Long, welcome back to So Money. It's been, oh gosh, seven years, lucky seven.

5:06Lucky seven. Oh yeah, yeah, it's been a minute. Thanks so much for having us back. Man, a lot of this happened since then, hasn't it? They say your money doubles every seven years. You're investments, right? If you've invited a market, so you are doubly rich. However, you have had a child since then, so maybe not. If you're poor, yeah, that's what everybody's saying. It's once you have a kid, then you will be begging your boss to let you go back to work. So thankfully, that has not happened. Yeah, the opposite has happened, it's like applying the principles of fire to child wearing, actually seems to have really worked out really well. And since the last time we talked to you in 2019, we're about like four years into retirement. Yeah, I think it was just maybe like one, definitely like less than 1.5 at the time. Maybe okay, close to 1.5, but not quite at 1.5. Yeah, and right now we're sitting at three. So it really has done that hockey curve thing, even since even as we were spending and as we were like living off of it and having a kid. So I'm happy to report that all this fire stuff really does work.

6:08Well, I want to talk about all of that. I want to talk about how becoming parents in parenthood has influenced or changed your approach to fire. But let's backtrack a bit because we have some new listeners who may not have been with us when you first were here in 2019. The two of you, original leaders of the modern fire movement, you both retired at age what, 30? 31 and 32. You wanted 32 with over a million dollars invested. Recap that story. Oh, for sure. Yeah, the crazy thing is we were not trying to follow the fire movement at all, Bethin. There was no fire movement. It was just a handful of bloggers trying to figure out what to do because the original script of get a job, work until your 65, buy a house and retire with the same job no longer applies. At the time, I was actually trying to buy a house and everything was super expensive. We lived in Toronto at the time. We were very similar to New York and that everything is really unaffordable, even though we had two engineering salaries.

7:09Every time you try to save money towards buying a house, the house price would keep creeping up. And then at the same time, I was also worried about losing my job. So these days, we're worried about AI taking over. Bethin, I was worried about outsourcing. And then one day, my coworker collapsed and almost died at his desk. His lung collapsed and he was rushed to the emergency room. And then he found out that from his doctor saying that he was working so many hours, it was as bad as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, even though he's never smoked in his entire life. So that was my wake-up call to stop chasing the script that we've been prescribed. Because I didn't even know if I was gonna have a job in the next year and never mind have a buy house and have a 25-year mortgage and try to retire at 65. That was just a dream that may have worked 20 years ago, but it didn't work at the time that we were struggling to try to get a house. So instead, that's when we discovered these, I think we discovered Mr. Money Mustache first. It was a blog back then that he was talking about how,

8:10if you save enough and put it into a portfolio, then you can safely withdrawal 4% a year. And that means you are financially independent, which means you don't need to have a job anymore. The portfolio, the passive income from the portfolio will pay for your expenses. So at the time, we did our calculation. And if you live on $40,000 a year, you would need a million dollars to be able to withdraw $40,000 a year without depleting the portfolio. And then that should be enough for you to live on. So at the time, when I discovered this, and I originally thought it was a scam, because I'm someone who actually grew up in my childhood, I lived on 44 cents a day. So first of all, becoming a millionaire was just a pipe dream. And then the fact that you can actually... Where did you grew up? I grew up in like a rural village in China and at the time, my dad was over... For a while, he was overseas. And then my mom was taken care of me by herself and she had shift work, very precarious work. So at the time, it was very hard to...

9:10Basically, like the idea of hot showers was something that blew my mind when I first immigrated to the West. And heating all that, all the amenities that we have today, that was just amazing to me. Like the first time I saw a grocery store, and the fact that you can just walk into a grocery store and there's all this food choices with off choices. And when my dad was showing me you could put this food into a grocery cart and then you wheel it. And I was afraid that we were gonna get arrested for stealing food because I had never seen that before. Like back in a village, you actually go up to a counter of a very small, mom-and-pop shop and then they hand you the merchandise and you pay for it. There was no putting it into the shopping cart. Like that scared the crowd out of me. I was amazed by libraries that you could have free books. You could take out free... I thought I was gonna get arrested for that too. It was a lot of worried about getting arrested. It was a very stressful childhood. But yeah, so from here, we share, we share a lot of the immigrants fear. Yeah, the immigrant fear. Yeah, yeah. So from that kind of background,

10:11the idea of being able to invest until your portfolio grows to a million dollars and then to have with this passive income that is the capital gains, the dividends and the interest of your portfolio that you don't have to work for, that money actually makes money and then that actually pays for your living expenses. I thought it was a scam. It was like, is this really possible? How is this possible? I did the math. I put it on a spreadsheet. It still seemed impossible. But after three years of discovering this financial independence retire early idea and strategy, we were actually able to retire at the ages of 31 and 32 and then we crit our jobs to travel the world and then a lot of crazy things happen after that. So once we started writing about it because we wanted people to actually know about the strategy and then we created a free workshop and that workshop has been there for over eight years now and there's actually people who have written in and said multiple people that they use the workshop strategies. They started with $40,000 when we retired

11:13which was around 2015 or 2018 maybe when they discovered the workshop. And then now eight years later, they are millionaires. They went from earning $40,000 to becoming millionaire in eight years. And more than one person wrote in and told us this. So it means we want mine that it's reproducible. Okay, so to clarify, that workshop did make you money and is making you money, right? So you're not just living off that $1 million. Yes. Yes. So there's some money that we made writing and side hustle work that we did. But we separated the portfolio that we retired on and everything that we earned afterwards we put into it as separate as brokerage account. So we see how the original portfolio did, how we would have done, had we not done all this extra stuff. And so when we left in 2015, we had a million dollars. Now I think what we're looking at is that original one million has become two and the side hustle stuff, like all the stuff that we've earned from that as well as invested growth from that has almost a million on its own.

12:14It's like from one to two and then an additional millions. So the total that we're looking at now is like $3 million which is a little mind blowing that we are actually able to, like not only has the portfolio maintained its value, it's actually gone up. And tell us, where do you live? What is your monthly cash flow? Or what are your monthly costs I should ask? Yeah, in the last few months, we've been traveling in Spain with our kids. So we actually did nomadic living for a while. Right now we are in Vancouver and that might change in the future. We might settle down, way decided with parents as parents is that you don't plan too much ahead. My A type personality of I need to have the next five year plan. The next 10 year plan. Once you become a parent, that goes out the window. You just figure out in his different stages what he's used to, what he likes and then plans change as time goes on. When we were in Spain, we were nomadic for three months and we used something called home exchange which is one of the most amazing things we ever we discovered as a family.

13:15So what you do is you can exchange your home with another person and then you basically stay for free when you travel and then they stay with you for free. So as a result of hosting a French couple in our apartment in Toronto, we were able to get something called the guest points. So there's no money involved. You're not paying them, they're not paying you. It's basically IOU points. You're able to use those points to stay with someone. We were able to be hosted in Valencia, Spain for a month and so that dropped our cost significantly. So it was about, let me see, when we were in Spain because we didn't really have to pay rent, it was less than $2,000. Wow, yeah, but it would have been maybe like three, it wouldn't have been too crazy even with the rent because when you actually travel outside of Canada in the United States, it's a lot less expensive than at home. Do you think like achieving fire, having a kid, multiple kids living in America, not being nomadic, is possible for a talk.

14:19Yeah, because we actually had to move back home. Oh, yeah, here's another thing that crazy thing that happened was, so after we were on your show and then the pandemic happened, we were actually dragged back to Canada and we had to live there for multiple years during the pandemic where we had to take care of Bryce's dad. Yeah, we definitely experienced living in an expensive place back to Toronto, one of the most expensive cities in Canada because of a family emergency. And we discover that even if you are not nomadic, it is still possible to you with a kid and I actually ended up spending much, much lower amount than the USDA numbers suggested. So one of the statistics that everybody talks about is, USDA says you're gonna spend almost like $300,000 when adjusted for inflation per kid outside of college costs to the age of 18. So that works out to be around $17,000 a year and we ended up spending around $5,000 for his first two years of life,

15:19despite the fact that we lived in one of the most expensive cities in North America. And I think one of the reasons for that is people don't know this about the USDA number is that the more money you make, the more kids cost. When you actually look at it, it's an average but when you actually look at how much people make, the more money they make, the more they reported their kids to be expensive. Which is interesting because did the kids suddenly get more expensive when you got a raise or when you got another job? Or is it because it's also part of a lifestyle inflation that happens because you think I have more money now. So I might as well put them in a better school. I might as well buy a bigger house. I might as well do X, Y and Z because I want to feel really good. I want to be a good parent and I believe that it'll be good for my kids to have all those things, which I completely understand. Everybody wants the best for their kids. But it made us question, is there another way to get the same results without spending all that money? And then that kind of blew my mind

16:20that we actually spent much way less than the USDA number, even though we lived, we had to be dragged back to one of the most expensive cities in North America. And to go back to you and answer your original question, is fire possible like being stationary? The vast majority of the people that did the fire thing are American and they have multiple kids and they own a home in the US. So we're like special snowflakes even inside that industry because we love to travel so much. And our lifestyle allows us to do this. But like people like Money Mustache and Mr. 1500 and these other and mad scientists and these other kind of early adopters of the fire movement, like they're all homeowners, they all live in one place and they all have kids. Yeah, like our version is one version of fire, but it is not the only version. In fact ours is like more of a special version. Was becoming parents part of the plan initially when you pursued fire? Was it a surprise to the two of you? It was an entire journey. Did it force you to recalculate for financial risk or any of that? Yeah, we definitely did not have

17:20our son as part of our original plans. We weren't even sure if we wanted to have kids at all. So yeah, the fact that he is definitely a plan, he's not a surprise and there was definitely a fertility struggle getting there. But yeah, surprisingly, even though he was not part of our original spreadsheet, when we quit, because we were able to live off such a low amount, the fact that the portfolio grew so much, it paid for his extra expenses and more. Yeah. And the fact that we end what we discovered is that having a kid is not as expensive as other people tell you it is, in which kind of inspired why we wanted to write the second book, which is apparently like a millionaire, is like how does all this stuff apply to fire? Do kids ruin everything? And the answer is no, not at all. And that really surprised us too. So that's the kind of message that we wanted to go back out into the world and turn it out there. Kids don't ruin everything. And if you, like kids, they can't absolutely ruin everything, but they don't have to, if you apply some of the lessons we learned from fire into parenting, makes a whole thing a lot easier.

18:20And as we were talking before, we started recording and you can, and you can snag some business class plates out of it if you're, if you're clever about it. Thanks for transitioning us, because I was gonna get to your newest book, which is subsequent to your first book, Quit Like a Millionaire. And you've got Vicki Robin, who gave you the front cover blur, Vicki Robin, of course, The New York Times best selling co-author of your money or your life, the iconic personal finance book of, I don't know, she's like the OG in personal finance. I got us originally thinking about, really thoughtfully about money, in a way that wasn't about spreadsheets. It was like the value of money, and what it means to us on a personal level. But parent like a millionaire is your new book, and we've gone to some of the principles already, things like just outsmarting big baby, right? Like it doesn't have a cost, several hundred thousand dollars. But let's drill down on childcare, because this is something that I would say

19:21is a systemic problem, is a structural problem, right? And parents, families have their hands tied in some cases, depending on where you live especially. But tell us your hacks. Yeah, I totally agree. It's definitely a systemic problem. It's not something that can be solved within a day. We have the same problems in Canada, the States. I've talked to some people in Europe, they even if they have subsidized childcare, it's very competitive to get those spots, even if they have free childcare. One of the things we discovered when we did the math is when people, a lot of people worry about, okay, if my entire salary is taken up by childcare, do I have to just quit my job? There's no other way to go about this. There's no other option. I can't, if I just, everything goes in, everything coming in, everything goes out. There's the only option is to quit your job. And once we did the math in the book, it's actually very surprising. It's not necessarily true that you have to quit your job. And the math actually shows that you'd have to spend 200,000 on childcare for it to make sense,

20:22to for you to completely give up your career. Because what happens is when you actually retain your career, and even if every single penny goes out and pays for childcare, there is a period in which you actually get back to black from red. And you will be able to claw that back and over the life of your career, you still make back that money and more. So the traditional belief that childcare is everything, every penny that I make goes out into childcare, I should immediately quit my job, that is not true. And it's definitely a systemic problem, and it's something that we can't solve in a second, but there are other strategy in the book that we talk about. For example, if you have a babysitting co-op, it's one of these things that you can do, depending on other people, if they have a more flexible schedule, can you perhaps trade babysitting services? And there's actually apps for you to track, how many hours you've taken care of their kids, how many hours they've taken care of your kids. One thing that we've actually used ourselves when writing this book is, yeah, daycare, combined with a co-working space, that became more popular after the pandemic,

21:25just because so many families had to take their kids out of school. And these daycareers popped up to fill the need. And if you have a flexible schedule, you can pay for as much daycare as you need, instead of paying for the entire one year in advance, or like months you have to commit to an entire year or multiple years. And those services have a different license. It's not a daycare license, and that you have to be on site. But if you're actually working in the co-working space, and next door they have child minors that take care of your baby, that actually saves you a lot of money, and it's a lot easier to run those services versus having a full-fledged daycare, in which you need a license for the parents to be able to leave the site. Let's talk about something we all love in theory, but don't always notice in practice, found money. This branded segment is brought to you by Boost Mobile and ACAST Creative Studios, and it's about how some of the most powerful financial wins don't come from earning more money. They come from spending less on things we already use every single day.

22:26When extra cash shows up unexpectedly, like a bonus or a refund, it feels great. I'm not denying that. But when you quietly free up money month after month without changing your lifestyle, that unlocks real momentum. And that kind of found money often comes from places we're not really paying attention to anymore. Most people think of found money as something that shows up out of the blue. Attacks refund, a work bonus, a gift, and those things are helpful, but there's another kind of found money that I think is even more powerful. It's the money you uncover by paying less for the same essentials, the stuff you're already using and already paying for. That's money you can direct towards goals that actually matter to you, paying down debt, adding to savings, investing, or honestly, just making your month feel less tight. I talk to listeners all the time who say they don't feel like they have any extra money. And when we start looking closely, we often find it hiding in plain sight, in recurring bills that haven't been revisited in years.

23:29Wireless bills are a big one. It's a necessary expense. It's not optional for most of us. And because it's so embedded in our daily lives, it's also something we rarely reevaluate. We sign up, we keep paying, and over time, the cost just becomes background noise. A lot of people are paying more than they realize simply out of habit. This is why I think Boost Mobile fits really naturally into this conversation about found money. Boost Mobile offers a $25 for ever unlimited plan. That's unlimited data, talk, and text for $25 a month. And the price doesn't go up over time. That's important because the whole point of unlocking savings from found money is that it sticks around. It's not a one-time win. It's something that improves your cash flow month after month. What also makes this work in real life is how easy Boost Mobile makes the switch. There are no contracts so you're in control. There are no minimum line requirements, and there's a 30-day money-back guarantee which takes a lot of the pressure out

24:31of trying something new. You can also keep the phone you already have, which honestly lowers the barrier for a lot of people. No new device to learn, no disruption, just a lower bill. I've seen this play out with so many people I talk to when they find one place to save, especially on something they use every day, it changes how they think about their money overall. It's not about deprivation. You're not cutting something out of your life. You're just paying less for it. And once people experience that, they start to look at their finances differently. They get more curious, more confident. They realize that small intentional changes can actually make a big difference. This is also why I'm such a fan of changes that don't require a lot of willpower. You don't have to remember to do anything every month. The savings unlock and just happen in the background. That's found money doing its job. At the heart of this is intentionality. Making money choices that align with how you actually live instead of just staying on autopilot. Found money gives you options.

25:32It gives you flexibility. And sometimes it gives you peace of mind, which is just as valuable as the dollars themselves. You don't need to overhaul your entire financial life to make progress. Sometimes one smart change is enough to get the ball rolling. If you've been looking for ways to create more flexibility in your budget without adding another thing to your to-do list, this is one of those changes that can quietly make a big difference. With Boost Mobile, you can keep the phone you love and switch to the $25 forever unlimited plan. That's unlimited data, talk, and text for just $25 a month with no contracts and no fuss. To learn more, visit boostmobile.com. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost unlimited plan. Thanks to Boost Mobile and Acast Creative Studios for supporting this episode and helping us think differently about where our money can work harder for us.

26:34Hey, small business owners, let's talk about how found can help you wrangle your finances once and for all. When was the last time you felt like you had your business finances totally under control? Every expense categorized, every receipt tracked, every invoice sent, oh, and you were prepared for tax season. If the answer is never, you're not alone. And that's what found is for. Found eliminates the clutter by giving you one platform that handles it all, banking, bookkeeping, invoices, and taxes. No more paying for multiple subscriptions and dealing with clunky outdated apps. Found is reimagining what business banking should be by putting your bookkeeping, invoicing, and tax tools directly into your business checking account. You can even send invoices for free and pay your contractors everything all from one app. As someone who's running two different podcasts, I have two separate businesses, two separate bookkeeping systems, two separate tax returns. Yeah, don't be jealous. If I could go back to when I was starting my business,

27:34found would have saved me time, money, and lots of tears. Take back control of your business today. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's f-o-u-n-d.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank member FDIC. Join the hundreds of thousands who've already streamlined their finances with found. These days, I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. If it's not well made and versatile, it's just not worth it to me. That's honestly why I love twins. The fabrics feel elevated. The cuts are thoughtful and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes high quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100% European linen, 100% silk, and organic cotton poplin. Lightweight cotton cashmere sweaters perfect for the changing seasons and can't miss seasonal colors and prints for spring. Quince works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. The Quince cotton cashmere sweater has become my go-to. It's light enough for layering,

28:35but it still feels luxe and, best part, it didn't cost what I thought quality cashmere would. Stop waiting to build the wardrobe you actually want. You don't need to cause it full of options. You need pieces that work. Right now, go to quince.com slash so money for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to qunce.com slash so money for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash so money. There's one place for the newest drops in wellness and performance and the biggest sale of the year. It's the drop by GNC, curating the best of what's new, handpicked by the pros who know what works. And right now, get it all by one, get 150% off during the semi-annual live-well sale. From crushing workouts to leveling up to nutrition and everything in between, get the best deals on the latest innovations. All the newness is all on sale right now during the live-well sale on the drop by GNC.

29:41Yeah, it was really interesting about the childcare paradigm that's in North America. In Europe, in China, like Christy grew up in China back in the 80s. And there wasn't a lot of government services that the Chinese communist government provided. And so a lot of childcare in China was based off of like social capital. Like it's saying that it takes a village to raise a kid. That was literally true back then, where they would have like kind of informal anties that would be part of the village, that her mom would just be able to just dump it. Oh, neighbors, yeah, my mom loved me with the neighbors for an entire day, lots of times. And they did the same for us. Yeah, everyone just helped each other. And this model is still true in China, it's still true in Scandinavian countries where there are these kinds of co-ops in which people take care of each other's kids and they just kind of exchange services without exchanging money. Here in North America, we commercialize in that relationship. We have to pay the access to services. So some of the stuff we wrote about is, okay, how do we take that whole, how do we take that social capital idea of it takes a village to raise a child

30:42and kind of bring it back? Because if the governments were doing such a good job that they were able to provide cheap subsidized services that were available to everybody, we wouldn't be having this problem. So if the society is not doing a great job of providing the service, maybe let's figure how we could help each other out. So that's where some of the strategies and the hacks come from. Christy, go back to that statistic. You said $200,000 is the point at which it makes sense to quit your job because that we would actually repeat that. Because who's quitting their job with making $200,000 a year? That's good money. That's the irony, right? The point is that it's like, it's a lot. It's a lot. The math we actually did it ourselves, so it's not actually from an existing statistic. Yeah, basically, we did the math in the spreadsheet. It told us that threshold is much higher than most people believe. Most people believe, okay, if daycare is costing, if it's costing me like 50,000 for my two kids, you go to daycare and I'm earning 50,000 after taxes,

31:44I should immediately quit my job because it doesn't make sense. But then when we actually did the math, it even if you continue the amount that you have to spend in daycare is so significant for you to quit your job. That even in that situation that I just described the 50,000, you can continue working and keeping your career and over the lifetime of your career, you will easily claw back that money that you spent because another thing that we forget, especially when we were new parents, is that daycare is not a forever cost. It is a shocking cost initially because you're going from not having to pay that at all to all of the sudden tens and thousands of dollars. So your mind immediately projects this, I'm gonna pay this forever. This is how much kids are gonna cost forever, but it is not a forever cost. And once they go to public school, that cost drops off. Yeah, it's because of the parent and let's be honest here at the mother, if they're keeping their foot inside of the labor market, they're retaining their working power, they're retaining their relationships, it's hard to leave a job for five years and then come back to it. And if you do even manage to come back to it, your earning power is probably gonna be a lot lower. And when we were writing that chapter,

32:45we were trying to figure out when we weren't actually expecting that answer, we were initially trying to prove the point of if it cost this much, you shouldn't quit your job. And then we actually did math, we're like, oh wait, no, the math actually says something completely different. It actually says that even if you're like, even if you're like break even during the daycare years, it still makes sense to stay in there because by the time the daycare ends, your earning power will be even higher and then you get all your salary back. So it only makes sense if daycare is so expensive that you're going into debt by working and you're losing so much money that even when you come back to work, you're not able to pay back that debt over the next 20 years of working. So that was what we realized. And we're like, oh hey, that actually goes against what the alarmist narrative is usually is, which is, daycare is so expensive, you may as well just give up. Yeah, we try to put on our scientists hats and think about what are some of these well-known beliefs that we've been told that kids are $300,000 per kid until age 17. If your job is not paying for daycare, you should immediately quit your job. All these kind of things that terrify parents from a financial standpoint,

33:46we try to scientifically prove that, hey, is this like we decided to see that's actually true or not? And a lot of the times it's actually not as scary as it is made out to be. Yeah, I got to wonder though, there is something called financial stress, have you heard of it? And being a new parent, coupled with the emotional stress and the financial stress, and now you're trying to still maintain and uphold the principles of fire, I wonder if you can give people listening some permission to say, put fire on pause for a few years, because it's a draining few years, if we're no other reason, you're not sleeping a lot, and you're not working with a lot of faculties, and a lot of things are gonna have to be put on the back burner, so it's okay if you can't be on the fire journey until maybe your kids are back in school or in school, I should say, and you're out of the childcare phase.

34:49Yeah, this book is actually not about fire and how parents can achieve fire. It's the lessons that we learned from fire to make parenting easier. So one of the concepts we discuss is how to plant trees instead of putting out fires. We're all volunteer firefighters now as parents, whether we want to or not. So I didn't volunteer, I didn't volunteer. Okay fine, I didn't volunteer firefighters, because we'd have no choice, it's just we're constantly putting out fires. How do we plant trees instead? So one of the things that we talk about is it's not so much about making parents go, you should do, you have this always homework to do. It's more, here's some of the lessons that we learned that can make your life easier. So I think one example of this is, instead of worrying about retirement, let's take a small micro expense that you have to do with like diapers. Dipers, every parent, unless you use one of those disposable ones, sorry, those washable ones. I think we use them both, but diapers. But you, so let's assume that you're not doing that. I'm not, yeah, no. But let's say you're spending $40 a month. More power to you man, if you can do that.

35:50Yeah, anyway, $40, let's say you're spending $40 a month. $40 a month on diapers is about $480 a year. So if you are just constantly just like buying diapers like on the go and just like refilling your supply and then not thinking about it, then that money is just a straight up cost. But we ask another question is, okay, how do you make diaper self-sustaining? And the answer to that is using the same principles that allowed us to retire from the fire movement is instead of just treating that as a cost and spending the money on that, how to invest some money in the stock market and the bond markets so that the passive income from those investments is enough to pay for your diapers. And then we teach people how to do that. So instead of putting out fires and always being like on your back foot, invest a little bit of time and effort to plant a money tree. So once you plant the tree and then start sparing fruit, you just take the oranges and then you eat them but you don't cut down the tree. And if you do that for diapers, for example, then you can have the tree pay for your diapers and that all of a sudden is an expense

36:50that you don't want to have to worry about. How do you both think about college and funding college within a fire framework? Are you in the camp of thinking we want our kid to have skin in the game or we're gonna fund five to nine plans or you know what? We don't know if college is even in the future. Yeah, we actually have a chapter called make the stock market pay for college. So the thing that is deterministic about college is that when your child is gonna go to college. So you actually have the set number of years to be in the market to use the stock market to your advantage. And another thing that we talk about is the college, the community college detour, which prices gonna explain. Yeah, so there's two kind of main things in that chapter. One is when you know that you have a well-defined investment time frame, which is 20 years or so from birth to needing college, that allows you to make some really interesting decisions because over like the stock market, specifically S&P 500 or any individual year, it can shoot up 30%, it can drop by 50%,

37:51it's a very volatile. But when you widen out your investment window into five year time frames and 10 year time frames and 20 year time frames, the results become a lot more predictable. So over any given 20 year time frame over the course of the history of the stock market, in any 20 year time frame, the stock market has never lost money. In fact, the worst performance that stock market has ever done in a 20 year time frame is 5%. And that's on one of these like 20 years that end on like a massive crash, like 1929 South crash, right? The average return is something like 12 to 14%. So if you know that, first of all, you can invest very aggressively so instead of balancing between the equities and bonds, you can just, you have our permission completely to go one in percent equities because again, 5% annual return is the worst that has ever happened on the stock market over that time frame. And the average return is more than double that. So knowing that it allows you to, and because you have that really long time frame, it allows you to run them. When you do the math, you realize that you don't have to invest

38:52nearly as much as you think you do because you have such a long investment time frame and you can pretty much depend on the investments making money during that time. And there's a second thing that we write about, which we talk to a lot of other fire people that have kids that are older, is that there are ways of reducing how much college costs. There's the stuff like the usual stuff like applying for bursaries, applying for a student aid, optimizing student aid and FAFSA and all that kind of stuff. But there are also some really interesting ones that people have discovered like using magnet schools and using community college as a way to reduce your costs. So many state schools have a, their articulation agreements with community colleges in which the credits are transferable. So you can graduate from college, but if you start inside of a community college, then the first couple of years are way cheaper, like less than half as much. Now, there is a requirement that in order to transfer into the college, the student has to meet a minimum GPA and keep the grades up. And that's our way of saying,

39:53they should have some skin in the game. College is not something that I think that my personal belief is not something that a parent should just pay for and that the kid just shows up and goes, okay, I'm getting some doing this now, they should have to work for it. And even if it's not, and they can help contribute to it financially, sure. But they, but another way of getting them to contribute to it and having skin in the game is making a requirement of, they have to work hard, study hard and actually get the grades that are necessary to actually graduate into college is one way of making sure that they have skin in the game. Because the worst thing that we do, a lot of people write in to us with a lot of like, student debt issues and the worst student debt issues are the ones that went into a lot of student debt, went into college and then failed out. Or realized this isn't for me. And so they got four years of a medical degree and then they didn't actually get the degree but they still have all the debt. That's the worst possible situation to be in because you don't have the earning power, you have the massive amount of debt and you can't get rid of the debt because it's non-dischargeable. Now, we don't want, obviously none of us want our kids that to fail out of a program.

40:53But if they are stuck into a program that they're really not good at, it's like, but it is a lot cheaper for them to discover that inside in a much lower risk situation rather than having to fail out and then realizing, oh, I have all the student debt now and I have no way of paying it off ever. So that's one solution that you can have that makes your job easier and be, does put some skin into the game because the kid now owns part of the solution and it also makes the situation of if they discovered that this program released it for them, it makes failing out a lot cheaper. Okay, last question. If your child grows up and doesn't want fire, and Chris, you why don't you answer this one? If they want a traditional career and they want to retire at 65 and buy the McMansion, sorry, how are you going to feel about that? That's actually one of the things we joke about all the time. It's like we do all this traveling and then we reach financial independence. What if our kid is like, mom and dad, stop making me travel. All I want to do is get a job and then live in one place because that could be it.

41:53Like this is their normal and then they want something that's different from their normal. And you know what, more power to him. If that's what he wants, yeah, yeah. If he wants to go the traditional route and that makes him happy, like I just want him to do something that he feels proud of and is actually something that he works for. And I 100% supportive of that path. If he wants to follow the traditional which is the exact opposite of what we did. Yeah, becoming parents realize there's only so much control that you have over your kid. Yeah. We could tell him to go to bed, but then what we say really doesn't matter. It really is more of a, it doesn't really matter what I think. Yes, yesterday we spent three hours putting him down for a two hour nap. It was a ridiculous waste of time. Oh, no. Yeah. I'll get you put him in the car because then, but then you're training him to sleep in the car. Yeah. He also doesn't like being in car. So that's another thing that's struggle there. We deal with it. But no means are we paired to next verse here. We're money nerds. So that's, we're like this whole parenting. We're struggling. Yeah, we're struggling just like everybody else.

42:56But I do have to admit compared to, there's a lot of moments in which we just collapse onto the couch at the end of the day. And we're just, oh my god, if I had to get up for work tomorrow, I don't know what I would do. Fire and getting your money situation on the control. It doesn't make parenting easy percent, but it definitely makes it easier. Yeah. My daughter, yesterday, she came onto my bed. I was working on typing on my laptop. And I was putting together a presentation for my so many members club. I have this private group that I do monthly workshops for. And she said to me, she's nine. Mommy, are you doing this because you have to or because you want to? Do you have an interesting question? That's a very precocious question. I think she was genuinely wondering, did someone put me up to this? Or like, I think she wanted to know like what the engineering behind it, what prompted it. And I said, no, this is like my doing. I initiated this. I have a program and isn't that cool? I get to decide what I put out in the world and I sell it.

43:56But she's like, how? Like, how does that work? I go, I promote it and people pay me for it. And she was like, wow, that's amazing. Can you have a boss? I was like, no, it's like I just, and I couldn't even believe the words that were coming out of my own mouth, honestly, at the moment. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, was she trying to guilt trip me? Like, because I was working during what I could have been playing with her. And she was like, do you have to be doing this? Or do you want to be doing this instead of sitting with me and playing Uno? And I was like, oh, but I think she wasn't. That's the best way to do it, to be honest. Your kids always keep you on your feet. That's the goal. Oh, yeah, they were watching everything. They know everything, even though we think they don't. But what I realized after 10 years of being fire evangelists, if that's even a job title, is lecturing and telling people what to do doesn't work, living your life and being happy. And other people seeing how happy you are, that tends to get people's attention. Have you spoken to J.O. Collins? He wrote Disappopathoral? He has been on the ship. Yeah, so he wrote that book for his daughter, Jessica.

44:59And he tried to do the exact wrong thing. And he's telling us not to do this, which is he likes all this money stuff. So at a very young age, he started trying to get her interested in fire and interested in money way too young to the point where he was reading her the Wall Street Journal when she was like six. And then she was like, Il, I don't know what this is. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't want anything to do with this. And for many years, she ran in the opposite direction. She didn't want anything to do with fire and investing this kind of stuff. But over time, when he stopped doing that and being like, okay, I guess she's just going to do the wrong thing. She started to see how different life is when you get this stuff under control. And then gradually, on her own terms, she came over to his side. And then I think recently a year or two ago, she achieved financial independence, quit her job and now she's always awesome. Yeah. This is awesome. So yeah, you're doing the exact right thing here, which is just, well, I did think, I said to her, I said, this could all be yours. And she just was like, what are you talking about? No. She was like, yeah, anyway, mom, whatever.

45:59I was like, okay, I guess it'll just die when I die. But anyway, thank you both for joining. This was in such a great conversation. It's been great to catch up. Your book is called Parent Like a Millionaire without being one outsmart, big baby, save on childcare and secure your family's financial future. Chrissy Shen and Bryce Long, thank you. Thank you so much for having us. It was great talking to you again. Thank you so much to Chrissy and Bryce for joining us. Their book again is called Parent Like a Millionaire without being one. I'll see you back here on Wednesday. And I hope your day is so money. I'll see you back here on Wednesday.

47:05Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of Ted's podcast, and I'll see you back here on Wednesday.