The #1 Thing That Made Our FIRE Grind Easier (and More Fun!)

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello my dear listeners, as you may or may not know, my husband Carl and I have a new YouTube series on the BiggerPockets money YouTube channel called Life After Fire. And as a very special bonus, we are going to be airing these episodes here on the podcast on Wednesdays. So without further ado, let’s get into it. Hi there. My name is Mindy Jensen.

Carl:
And I’m Carl Jensen,

Mindy:
And this is the Mindy

Carl:
And Carl

Mindy:
On Life After Fire, where we talk about what happens after you reach financial independence. Why do we call the show Life After Fire? Because we’re talking about and talking to people who are living their best lives after reaching financial independence. Carl and I just returned from the Economy conference in Cincinnati. Diana, Miriam has created an awesome event for 500 attendees with eight main stage speakers, four additional workshops and breakouts in a variety of topics designed to get people talking to other people just like them with similar interests. It was originally planned just for a Saturday and a Sunday, but it has spread into a Thursday pre-party Friday, urban Hike, foing or fouling, which is like football and bowling. I’ve never done that one before. I’ve heard good things, but it just, I don’t know. I’m not very good at bowling, so I don’t think I’d be very good at foing or fouling. How is it pronounced? Carl, do you know how that’s pronounced?

Carl:
I have no clue. I don’t think they even know how it’s pronounced. It was invented by, I think some drunk Ohioans in someone’s basement, maybe a college dorm. No clue.

Mindy:
I don’t think it’s related. It’s just Ohio though. I think it has spread out. Anyway, if I’m pronouncing it wrong, so sorry, email Carl because I’m not going to probably change that. And Friday night is speed friendship, which I really, really love. There’s a bunch of tables that seat like eight people and you sit there and you introduce yourself to eight different people over the course of, I dunno, 15 minutes or something. And then some of you get up and move and some of you stay and it’s all coordinated. I’m glad I don’t have to make up these rules, but you meet a ton of people. I think I went to five or six different tables that night and I met whatever eight times, five or six is, I met a ton of different people and it’s such a great way to start off the event and it ends with a big party at R Geist, enormous tasting room and Beer Garden. Carl, what was your favorite part of the economy conference?

Carl:
Before I get into that, I will state that eight times five is 40 and eight times six is 48. I think you just asked that.

Mindy:
I said I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t say I wanted to know what it was, but thank you for showing me up and being able to do math in your head like that. Carl, for the win,

Carl:
I’ll put outs on multiplication tables after we’re done.

Mindy:
So Carl’s favorite part of economy is the nerd part.

Carl:
It is the skyline. Chilly. I absolutely love it. No, it is actually not that. How long do I have to talk?

Mindy:
What do you mean? How long do you have to talk? Just tell people what your favorite part of economy is.

Carl:
No, no. I got to tell a little story. I might talk for two or three minutes here. When I first discovered financial independence, I think I found the Mr Money Mustache blog, JD Roth, and I thought I would dip in and out of this. I would just read a bunch of blogs, figure out what was wrong with my money, get my money straight up my savings rate, and then I would close my browser tab and I would never read any of these people again or interact with anything that ever had to do with financial independence again. And then somehow I got roped into going to a Camp Phi. I think this is around 20 16 20 17. Camp Fire is a weekend gathering with 59 other people. At the time, it was absolutely terrifying. Did you go to that one or was it just me by myself?

Mindy:
I didn’t go until January of 2018 In Florida?

Carl:
Yes. So that one might’ve been me by myself in the thought of me, a severe introvert hanging out with 59 strangers, absolutely terrified me. But then I got there and I’m like, wow, this is actually pretty cool. I don’t feel like I’m an introvert around these particular subset of people. I feel like we have a lot in common. If you have money stuff in common, you tend to have a lot of other things in common. Plus it’s nice just to be able to talk about money, which most people AB who people steer away from that. It’s like religion and SEX, you don’t want to talk about those, but these people would talk about net worth and their second sentence. So I’m like, this is pretty cool. So I think people go to these conferences with the intention of learning about money and maybe 72 Ts how to get their 401k straight, but then they come out of it with a community and that’s what they return for and that’s why we keep going back to these things.
My god, we discovered all this in 2012 and here we are in 2025 and we’re still going to these. Maybe we’re addicted. So my favorite part back to your original question is the community. It’s meeting new friends and seeing these old friends. A lot of them have become our friends in real life and some of ’em, I feel like our economy friends that we see when we’re Ohio, they haven’t had a chance to come out here yet to visit us in Colorado and we haven’t had a chance to see them. But if I did like Mr. Funicular, John in Pittsburgh, I would definitely look him up if I went to Pittsburgh and I think we’re actually going to meet up here in Colorado. The community is my main takeaway. Having fun people to have good conversations with and spend my time with and have a bowl of Skyline Chili with too Your favorite.

Mindy:
That is not my favorite. Please don’t tell lies about me. You just use that word funicular. What is that?

Carl:
Funicular. It’s a way to get up the mountain. It is a trolley type thing where there are two of them with a big pulley on top. So one goes up, one goes down.

Mindy:
Oh, like an ESUs park.

Carl:
Well, that’s a little bit different. This kind of balances each other out there on rails, so one kind of pulls the other one up.

Mindy:
Oh, that’s okay. Remember when I said that your favorite part was the nerd part? You’re not doing yourself any favors. You’re not proving me wrong here, Mr.

Carl:
Well, there is fun in funicular, so I’m correct here.

Mindy:
For me, it’s the opportunity for so many people to connect in one space, which I guess is very similar to what you are saying for people who might be new to the PHI community or new to in-person PHI events, it’s kind of awe inspiring to see so many frugal weirdos in one space, so many money nerds in one space. Carl, you and I live in Longmont, Colorado, which is absolutely filled with early retirees. You can’t swing a dead cat and not hit three of ’em. At least early retirees and five people all over Longmont. There’s nobody working here at all, and I sometimes forget that not everybody shares in this same community that we have, which is why you and I talk so much about the importance of in-person PHI events. Seeing the speakers on stage is awesome, but at this juncture in our PHI journey, I’m not really there to see the speakers.
I definitely watch all of the presentations because I think they’re really interesting, but they’re not really speaking to me personally. However, they are curated by Diana and they are such a wealth of information over a broad range of topics. It isn’t just eight people getting up there. You should contribute to your 401k, you should contribute to your Roth IRA this year. We had people talking about real estate writing a book for what you’re doing after financial independence. I want to have him on the show actually. He was really quite good. We had people talking about starting a business. Jess from the pioneers was there talking about Coast Fi and how you might be a lot closer to your FI number than you think you are. She has a really awesome calculator that she shared with people to give yourself an idea of what your coast fine number is.
You might already be there, which can be really reassuring for people in this kind of uncertain stock market environment that we’re in right now. The woman who talked about the different ways to invest the socially conscious investing, and when I hear that topic I’m like, oh man, this is just going to make me feel bad. And it was not. This is going to make you feel bad. It was like, Hey, this is the kind of stuff that this fund is investing in. Here’s an alternative fund. Here’s a way to look up your funds. It was a very interesting take on investing and she even had performance for each of these funds to show you that you aren’t sacrificing performance just so you can invest environmentally or more socially consciously, which I think is a really big concern for people in the fire community. It’s one thing to be like, oh, I would love to support all these socially conscious initiatives, but they pay nothing. And it turns out that’s not true. There’s a really great fund, what was it called? ESGV,

Carl:
I don’t think that was it, but it was a Vanguard fund. I know what you’re talking about. And it had outperformed V-T-S-A-X over a long term, which was quite surprising to me

Mindy:
Except in 2022 when it lost slightly more money than V-T-S-A-X did. V-T-S-A-X was down like 19.2% and this one was down like 20% or something. So there wasn’t a big swing either way. But you’re right, they did outperform V-T-S-A-X, which I thought was very interesting. And so there’s just a lot of different topics that you can talk about. Big Earn was there to talk about the safe withdrawal rate. Bill Benen says it’s 4% over 30 years and big earns of mathematician has a lot of numbers to support his scenario saying that it’s more close to 3.25% because your timeline is a lot longer. If you’re an early retiree, lots of different things to think about at this event, but also lots of downtime. You can meet people at the Speed Friendship on Friday and have a really great conversation with them throughout the whole weekend.
There’s lobby parties in all the hotels that people are staying at. It’s such a great event, but it’s 500 people. Carl, you didn’t want to go to campfire with 59 people. I can see how some people might be a little concerned about going to an event like Economy, which is 500 people, in which case you have your campfire, which is a lot smaller in most cases. I think there’s one that’s now up to 150, but a lot of them are 50 people, 60 people, 75 people that you are having a whole weekend with Friday night to Monday morning. That’s a really great option for in-person PHI events. One of the things that I think we take for granted, Carl, is the fact that we have so many people we can talk with about money.

Carl:
Yes, we probably do take that for granted because we are surrounded by them.

Mindy:
Another thing that I want to point out is the Economy Conference is 500 people. Diana’s already sold 350 tickets and that’s all that she has released so far. There’s still 150 tickets left. She has not yet released those. If you want to get on her mailing list, go to economy conference.com, that’s E-C-O-N-O-M-E conference like Economy, not mny economy conference.com and sign up to get on the mailing list. So when she releases those tickets is sure to sell out again. And just having all of these people around you is so beneficial to helping you stay on the financial independence path. Even when you have unexpected expenses, the stock market is going down, you’re feeling like you’re not going anywhere. These people in this community can share your experiences, share what’s worked for them, and it’s just all around a really great environment to be in.

Carl:
Yeah, it’s nice to have other people you relate to. If you tell them you went out and bought a 2008 Honda Element, they’re not going to, I think you’re destitute. They might give you a high five because you found a great deal on an old reliable car that’s going to get you where you need to go. So yeah, we are like a little miniature cult I think.

Mindy:
I don’t think we’re so miniature definitely a cult, but it’s a good cult. We don’t make you sell anything. Dear listeners, we are so excited to announce that we now have a BiggerPockets Money newsletter. If you want to subscribe to the newsletter, please go to biggerpockets.com/money newsletter. Alright, we’ll be right back after this.

Carl:
Welcome back to the show.

Mindy:
Carl. I want to talk a little bit about the concept of in-person FY events in general. We’ve already shared how much we love these events. For us personally, we’ve shared how they can be beneficial to somebody who is at any part of your journey on the PHI path, having other people who speak your language, who aren’t going to be like, oh, why are you saving your money? You don’t know what’s going to happen. I want to live my life now. They’re supportive. They are encouraging, and when you have a question, oh, does anybody know how to do a 72 T? Oh, I don’t. But I know that Eric Cooper does. I know that Darren and Jolene have done them. I know that there are people there that can send you to other people to have conversations with or even introduce you to other people to have conversations with, to get your questions answered. But economy is a rather large event. So for the Carls of the world, the introverts of the world who don’t want to speak with 500 people necessarily, and Carl has a great time. I have to rip him away from people to get him to go to bed so he can wake up the next morning, right? Pretty much, pretty much just say yes. Say yes dear. You’re correct.

Carl:
Affirmative.

Mindy:
That’s not what I said to say. So there is a woman named Stephanie who is from five friends.com, and she has created a list of all the PHI events that she is aware of. If you don’t see your event on there, absolutely let her know so that she can update her list. But her list is found at phi friends.com/events. That’s fi friends.com/events, and it is a fairly comprehensive list. I believe it’s a comprehensive list of all of the upcoming PHI events in 2025. She’ll soon be starting her 2026 list, but we have Fin Talk Scotland Camp, all the Camp phis, camp Mustache, which is a different type of event. It’s similar to Camp Phi, but a little bit different. Camp Phi Spain. The Economy Conference just wrapped up the Fin Talks cruises. I’ve been on that the last two years. You joined me this year.
Carl Kristen Knapp is starting PHI Travel. She has trips planned outside of the country, so there’s lots of opportunities to connect with people here and I hear what you’re saying. Oh, those are great, but those are traveling outside of the country. Those are traveling to different parts of the country and I can’t afford that right now. Well, don’t worry, you are in luck. Choose fi.com/local is a link to all of the local Choose PHI groups, and what makes it so amazing is that these are right near you. So they have a map where you can click on your state and it’ll list all, I’m in Colorado, Colorado Springs, south Denver, north Denver, Western Slope. There are lots of local events near you, and if you can’t find one near you, you could start one. Brad is super open to starting more local events because he wants people to connect. Carl, what is a local choose five meetup? Like?

Carl:
Ooh, I’m trying to think of the last one. It was in Los Angeles actually. I think there was about 15 to 20 people there. They usually meet at a coffee shop or maybe a room in a library, some kind of small business. Usually some of them might have a semi-formal structure like today we’re going to talk about X, Y, and Z. Others do not. You just sit there and talk to people. Maybe half the people there are returnees and maybe a third to the other half are new people that drop in and out. Yeah, very informal. People come and stay for as long as they want, but it’s yet another way to meet new people in the community. The last one I went to, we went to that and then we went to someone’s house and had dinner. So it was very nice. I think it’s a really nice way to connect with people.
If you happen to be in a new city like you’re traveling and maybe you don’t know anyone there yet or just want the insider scoop on wherever you happen to be at. I always ping these groups when I’m there saying, Hey, do you have a meetup going on? Or would anyone like to meet up? And I’ve never had at least some people not volunteer to, Hey, yeah, let’s meet up or let’s do something. So yeah, it’s super nice. I highly recommend that people connect with their local groups, and I know they used to be on Facebook. Brad’s moving that to, they’re moving that to a platform on Choose Fi. But yeah, the local groups are a great way to connect with your local community and people not so local.

Mindy:
Yes, we always try to hop in if we have some time when we are traveling just because it’s a great way to meet other people. But I have been to the NOCO Pistachios group up in the, I don’t think it’s a Choose Phi one, but there’s a No Coist group up north of Denver. There’s a So Coist group south of Denver meetup.com is another great place to find local events that are either have a nominal fee to attend or no fee to attend, and I think most of them have no fee to attend. So signing up and just checking it out, see what’s going on. The worst case is that you get there and there’s either nobody else you want to talk to or nobody shows up, but it’s never been the case when I’m attending an event. I’ve never had somebody like zero people show up. There could be five people there. You get just a more in-depth intimate conversation with five people or there’s 50 people there and you can find people that you want to talk to about the different topics that interest you.

Carl:
The last thing I’ll say in this whole topic is we have such a great community here in Longmont and we’re very welcoming, so if y’all want to move to Longmont or are just passing through, make sure you look us up. We have a meetup group for the MMM coworking space, and we have events there pretty much weekly. We have a potluck, which we’re actually going to tonight. We’re going to see Ryan Brennan, he’s going to be at the HQ and he organizes events where people come and volunteer in their local community. I know this July and Colorado Springs are going to be doing a bunch of trail rehabilitation I think. So he’s passing through. So next time you’re in Longmont, stop in and say hi at the hq.

Mindy:
Yes, we would love to see you and you can email what’s the HQ email address so we can set up a meetup before they get here.

Carl:
It’s HQ [email protected] or they could email one of us, [email protected] or [email protected].

Mindy:
Carl, I think that we have covered how much we love in-person FY events. There are paid FY events, there are free FY events, and if you are feeling stuck on your PHI journey, the next place you should go is a local meetup so that you can connect with other people who are just like you on the path to financial independence, who speak your language, who can share how they got out of a pickle that you might be in, a similar pickle that you might be in, or they can just give you words of encouragement. You can do it. You go, girl, go sir.

Carl:
Or just fun people to share your life with. After you retire, a lot of your friends might still be doing the nine to five thing and you just can’t sit at home watching reruns of I Love Lucy, or whatever the heck reruns are on TV now. You need to have people to go for a hike with or a bike ride or hang out with. And yeah, I’m going for a hike on Thursday with people from our local group.

Mindy:
Oh, well that sounds nice. Thanks for letting me know

Carl:
You’re invited too, I think.

Mindy:
Yeah, I guess so. Now I am. Alright. If you like this video, please click the thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to this channel for more videos about Life After Fire. This is Mindy and Carl signing off that wraps up this episode of Life After Fire on the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Carl Jensen. I am Mindy Jensen saying, see you caribou.