J.L. Collins

And of course, I was now putting $50,000 towards buying what I wanted.

Yeah, so first of all, I would say it is much easier if you start on this path just as you're coming out of school before you have created some lifestyle that you then have to unwind.

Right.

So that's what I did.

And I wrote this book fundamentally for my daughter, who was in college at the time, who was also going to be at the beginning of her journey.

So I do have a lot of sympathy for people who come to it at a later stage in life and they have created a lifestyle that they become accustomed to, that if it doesn't allow them an aggressive savings rate will prevent them from ever being financially independent.

And there's no easy answer to that.

It's simply you're going to have to reconfigure your life so you are living on significantly less than you're earning.

And let's face it, as you just alluded to, most Americans are living on every bit of what they earn, and some of them are borrowing money to live on even more than that.

So I get that it's hard, and I think it's also one of the reasons that people on this path and who achieve FI are always going to be unicorns.

we're not going to take over the world.

And that's a controversial opinion in the FI community, because especially new people come to it.

And it just seems so obvious that this is a great way to live and to have the maximum number of options in your life.

Well, of course, anybody who hears about this is going to embrace it.

But the truth is that buying your

your freedom is not the highest priority for most people and it never will be.

So, you know, I coined a term at one of the talk was actually called the tyranny of must haves.

So if you talk to people and you say, you know, would you be interested in being financially independent?

I don't think you're going to get too many who say no, but then when you start talking to them about,

the savings rate they're going to need, then you hear things like, well, you know, we have to live in this house in this neighborhood and we have to have two least luxury cars and the kids have to go to these private schools.