From a Negative Net Worth to FI in Just 5 Years by Living Like a Stoic

Scott:
Hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Scott Trench and with me today is my co-host, the she Wolf of Wall Street. Amanda Wolf

Amanda:
BiggerPockets has a goal of creating 1 million millionaires. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting or what your investing philosophy may be to get to financial independence. Today’s guest, Darius Farru, is an international landlord business owner, author of eight books, and a financial educator who vowed to change his financial destiny by using the virtues of stoicism. Yeah,

Scott:
Stoicism kind of pops up every once in a while if you’ve been paying attention in the world of personal finance, tech, business, and a lot of these kind of thought leaders are really into stoicism it seems, or practicing stoics. I can label Tim Ferriss the author of the Four Hour Workweek as someone who has talked about stoicism. I believe Mr. Money mustache is a follower of stoicism, and so it kind of has this alignment with a lot of people who are in the financial independence, retire early space, and for others it may be a little off-putting because they don’t really understand it or don’t know what it is, or maybe in some cases don’t like some of the people that it’s associated with at the highest level. And today we’re really looking forward to defining what it is. I have dabbled in stoicism the way I’ve probably dabbled in Bitcoin in the past, and I think it’s a really fascinating school of thought.
It’s a philosophy from ancient Greece that really talks about how to pursue joy, and there’s a variety of techniques that go along with that, including understanding how to endure hardship, how to think about the worst, worst case scenario, plan for it, accept it, and then rejoice in the fact that it has not come true at this point yet. And there’s a lot of tie-ins to the discipline, the philosophy. I’m doing a bad job explaining it. Our guest today, Darius, is going to do a much better job as we move through today’s episode, but there’s a lot of really interesting tie-ins that a stoic philosophy has that are congruent with building wealth, like controlling the controllables, especially in the context of downturns in the market. And it’s also congruent with reaping the rewards of financial and professional success at the same time. So a lot of appeal to a lot of folks, and you may find yourself in alignment with a lot of the principles, even if you’re not a practicing stoic, and it could be something that you’d be interested in exploring further following the episode.
So with that lengthy monologue, should we bring in Darius Amanda? And if you don’t know what that is, stoicism is an ancient Greek school of thought, roughly based on living a life with virtue the highest good. This practice is based on knowledge and living in harmony by using logic, having a high tolerance of pain without letting emotion control you. I’m excited to stoke this fire. You see what I did there? I have give full credit to Eric, our producer here and see how Darius became financially free and how you can create a stoic path to wealth and ultimately retire like stoic and hopefully fairly early.

Amanda:
Today’s guest, Darius Farrow, is an international landlord business owner, author of eight books, and a financial educator who vowed to change his financial destiny by using the virtues of stoicism.

Scott:
Darius, welcome to BiggerPockets Money.

Darius:
Hey, thanks for having me,

Scott:
Darius. Where does your journey with money begin?

Darius:
So I have a classic immigrant story. I was born in Tehran and in 1987 and there was war at the time. So my parents fled the war and went to the Netherlands, which in terms of economy and mindset and culture is very similar to the us. The only thing that we don’t have is guns. But other than that, in terms of our mindset and culture and the fast-paced society, it’s practically the same. So I grew up in the Netherlands and my parents not having much money, always living from paycheck to paycheck. So in my household it was always about money or actually the lack of money. So when I grew up, I always felt this tension and I don’t know why, but even from a very young age, I always knew what was going on, that we weren’t financially well off. So that somehow created some responsibility with me, and I always had this very strong desire to become very wealthy and not just because I wanted to have a nice car or any other young boy’s dream when he grows up, but I just wanted to have freedom and not to worry about money.
So that desire really started in my childhood, and as I got older, I started to get more interested in the stock market and investing, and that’s how my journey really began.

Amanda:
Wow. So just to take it back one step real quick, do you still live in the Netherlands today then Darius?

Darius:
Yeah, but pretty much all my readers are in the US so I started writing 10 years ago, but I dunno, somehow the US readers connected more with my message than,

Amanda:
Okay. And then at what age did you move to the Netherlands and do you remember, because you said money was part of that story the whole time or the lack thereof. So when did you move to the Netherlands and do you remember some of those first memories around money or the lack thereof?

Darius:
Yeah, well, I was a year and a half, so I don’t remember anything from those times. But growing up in the Netherlands, I always noticed that we weren’t in a great neighborhood or when I wanted to get something, there was always argument about it at home when I wanted to have a new Nintendo console at the time, I looked at my mother was going through these meor catalogs and talking about, yeah, we should get this. And then my father not being cool with it, but eventually I would get my Nintendo so I would get the things that I wanted. So in terms of, I don’t feel like I really missed out on certain things, but it’s just the emotions and the feelings that were around having the things that we wanted or a normal child would want to have. So those were really my first memories growing up. So

Scott:
How did you begin making movements to building wealth? Where does that journey begin for you?

Darius:
Yeah, so I always wanted to have a job when I was in high school because all of my friends at the time had jobs and my parents told me to focus on school because also classic immigrant story, a lot of immigrants, their parents realized that one of the best ways to become financially better off than yourself is to encourage your children to get educated. So that’s what my parents also did, and they told me to get a job after high school. So I waited and during the summer after high school, I immediately went to apply for the best paying job at that time, which was to work in a call center. And I thought, wow, that’s great. I just have to sit and make a bunch of calls and I’m getting paid pretty good money. So that’s what I did pretty much like six days a week my entire summer and saving everything that I made because that was my first taste of making money. And I realized how hard it is because you just show up every single day and you have to do what you’re told. And I made the money and I was like, yeah, I’m not going to spend this. So I just saved everything.

Amanda:
So you get your first job, now you have money, and it sounds like probably the most money you really had ever been exposed to. So now you’re hoarding money. So when was it that you really started building the wealth, right? Because just hoarding money isn’t going to allow us to actually be able to build wealth. So what was your mindset like back then in those beginning years when you started working?

Darius:
In those beginning years, I really didn’t know what it took to build wealth. I watched movies like Wall Street and I thought, wow, these folks are making a lot of money buying selling stocks. Maybe I should do that too. So that’s how I got obsessed with the stock market. And basically it wasn’t until 2015 that I finally figured out how to build wealth over the long term. And in those early days, basically from the time I was 17 till the time I was 29 or 30, I just made one mistake after the other, I bought stocks and I sold them when I was down 60%. I thought that getting educated is the answer to becoming rich. So I got a master’s degree and I specialized in finance and I read pretty much every investing book there was and I couldn’t figure it out. I had no clue what I was doing and I was making a living, but I wasn’t getting wealthier, I was saving, and that’s great, but as we all know, there’s limitations to saving.
So I was always looking forward answer to getting back to, particularly in my case, the stock market because that was the thing that I always wanted to get into. And also I’ve been interested in real estate and I got into that as well, but the stock market always had this very big pull on me because I felt like it’s the greatest wealth builder on the planet. You can just do it from any place in the world. It’s so easy. And that’s exactly what makes it so hard. And it wasn’t until I discovered stoicism that I found out that managing my emotions was the most important thing because all those years that I failed was because I didn’t have my emotions in check, and I always made the wrong decision because I got too consumed by my emotions. So when I finally discovered stoicism, I started to apply the philosophy to my investment strategy.

Amanda:
After this quick break, we will get into how stoicism played a role in your journey to PHI and what happens next on your wealth creation endeavor

Scott:
And welcome back. So Darius, it sounds like you started with nothing as a teenager working this job in a call center. And again, the pivot point that I really want to get into next happens in 2015, and it sounds like you developed a lot of skills during that period, but can you give us some indication of the amount of wealth you were able to accumulate? I presume you didn’t go those 10 years and not accumulate anything. You accumulated something but didn’t maximize your potential from a financial standpoint during the, was it hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars?

Darius:
Yeah, in terms of number, I had 10,000 to my name in 2014. So I started a business with my dad in 2010 as I was writing my master’s thesis, and this was after the financial crisis, so there were not many opportunities because I wanted to climb the corporate ladder. And I thought to myself, this is a great opportunity. So we started a business in the industrial laundry equipment as a wholesaler and being an entrepreneur, I just paid myself enough to rent an apartment and I still remember my salary was about $1,300 or something, and that’s where I would live on. And because we live in cost of living where I live, like an hour outside of Amsterdam was at the time really low. It’s much higher now. So I didn’t build wealth, I just learned skills and I learned business. And then I thought to myself, well, I don’t have any money.
I have a lot of experience. Our business is doing well, my father is starting to earn more. Let him enjoy that. I’m going to find a job. And that’s how I ended up in London at the IT research firm, Gartner. And that’s where I learned how corporations work and working in sales and account management, et cetera, cost of living in London so high that I almost spent my entire salary every single month and I performed well. So I earned some bonuses, but after a year I realized I’m still not building any wealth. My net worth was just a few thousand dollars at the time. And after a year of being in that red race and spending all my money on rent and just going out and the things that you do when you live in an expensive city, I realized I have to stop. I need to find out the answer. I need to start a business or I need to start something because I need to start building wealth. And at the time I was 28, 29, so at that time I came back to the Netherlands and I moved back in with my parents. And from what I recall, my savings were about 10,000, the equivalent of $10,000. And I still had, I think I was paying off my student debt a little bit, but I still think I had student debt than 10,000 as well. So I had a negative net worth at that time.

Scott:
So at this point you have this negative net worth, you’re frustrated it’s been 10 years and you got nowhere on your wealth building journey, and that’s been a primary motivator. What changes, what’s the aha moment, the revelation that you have and how do things change and you begin to get this thing on track and because we’ve already set it up, how does stoicism play in, is this where stoicism enter your journey?

Darius:
Yeah, a hundred percent. So I felt really stuck. I wanted to earn more, I wanted to build wealth in my mind, I thought by the time I’m 30, I should be financially free. When I was in business school or when I was doing my master degree, I thought, yeah, just give me a few years, I’ll figure it out. And then a few years went by, nothing happened. So I was really stuck and I started to look for the answers in books. I started reading nonfiction books, personal development books, business books, and I like so many folks who started an online business, I read the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. And in that book he has a small section on stoicism and he talks about how it’s great for dealing with the entrepreneurial rollercoaster. So I was really curious and I started to read the original works of the stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca Epictetus, and I was immediately hooked and it gave me clarity.
And at that time, so I came back to the Netherlands and I thought to myself, I’m going to start some type of business. And I didn’t know exactly what that was. So I thought to myself, I have this opportunity to write a book because I always wanted to write. I had this desire to write, but I never had something to say. And after these years of struggling with my goals and not being able to accomplish them, I thought I should write a book about the inner turmoil that comes along with that phase of life. So I sat down and I started to write a book and it’s called Win Your Inner Battles. And I published it and I thought maybe I should start a blog to tell people about it. And I started to publish on social media or create a social media account and started publishing on medium.
And all of a sudden I had a bunch of articles that did really, so that’s how I really got started in this. And it was really the philosophy of stoicism that gave me the confidence to just ignore all the noise and focus on myself and focus on my skills and put them into practice. And that’s how I really got started on this entire journey that I’ve been on now because one of the things that I also learned was that if you become among the top performers in your industry, you get significantly higher rewards than if you are average or somewhere at the bottom. And that’s directly also from stoicism. The philosophy of stoicism is not really about being an emotionless person who never reacts to anything and isn’t harmed by anything or whatever. It’s about challenging yourself to become the best. And that’s what I love the most. And when I read about that, I thought I need to be the best at what I do.

Amanda:
Darius, I love that you just kind of clarified that for us of what stoicism means to you, because I think that the word carries a lot of weight in society today, and I think it can be associated with things that it can have a little bit of a negative connotation is what I’ll say. So the whole suppression of emotions, which is obviously just really, really unhealthy, but it sounds like from your side you’re saying it’s more around intentionality. That’s what it sounds like to me. Would you say that’s kind of on track with what you think stoicism is or what does it mean to you and what does it not mean to you?

Darius:
Yeah, definitely. And it is good that you brought this up because people generally think that the word stoic, which we often have this negative relationship with, or the lowercase word stoic, where a person who’s stoic, we think of, I don’t know, this old person maybe went through the war or something or is not reacting to anything and is emotionless, but doesn’t have anything to do with the philosophy of stoicism. And at the same time, there are also a lot of folks online who have read a few stoic texts or quotes and interpret it completely wrong, as in, oh, I need to use this to show that I’m so macho or so cool that I don’t feel anything and I can deal with anything in life. I also don’t think that’s true because if you read the works of the stoics themselves, you’ll really learn that it’s a philosophy of empathy and having understanding for yourself, but also for others because one of the things that I also love about some of the stoics, particularly Epictetus, is that he’s known as a very stringent philosopher that says, yeah, just focus on what you control.
If someone in your family or a loved one dies keep your emotions in check, et cetera. And of course that’s very hard to do, but at the same time, he also says, if a loved one is upset, find a way to console them. Don’t say, yeah, it’s wrong to have emotions. And I feel like a lot of folks don’t understand how to use the philosophy to become a better human being. And I think that’s ultimately the power of socialism. It helps you not only to challenge yourself to become the best version of yourself, but it also helps you to deal with your own emotions and other people’s emotions as well.

Scott:
We’re about to get into how the stoic philosophy gives us a strategy that we can apply to stocks in real estate and how it helps us handle losses in a portfolio as we move toward financial freedom. We’ll be right back,

Amanda:
And we’re back, and I want to get into how stoicism can shape your strategy, especially as it relates to real estate and achieving retirement. But first, how does this translate to finance overall?

Darius:
Yeah, so when it comes to finance overall, I think that any type of financial decision that you make comes with emotions. So if you have kind of a operating system for managing your emotions and making sure that you are always balanced, because I think that’s the ultimate goal, to feel that you are in control of life and we can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to the things that happen to us. And especially in finance or in investing, whether it’s in real estate or in the stock market, things are thrown at you all the time and you don’t control those things. I am a small real estate investor. I own two rental properties, and over these years I’ve had just a few small problems with tenants, but it always happened at the wrong time when I was on vacation or when I was going through a remodeling project of my own house.
So it always happens at the wrong time and it can kind of piss you off or at least can piss me off when those things happen. But that’s my first response. Then I need to remind myself that I don’t control what happens or when things happen, I just need to look at my actions because that’s the only thing that I control. And I think that you can basically apply this strategy not only to your investment investments, but also to your spending because especially with social media, I just have to spend five or 10 minutes on Instagram and I’m thinking to myself, yeah, I need to buy a new car, or me and my partner, we need to remodel our house. Social media does that to us, or we need to go on a vacation. And stoicism constantly reminds me to just stay grounded and just to stay on the path, stay focused on my own life and my own philosophy and the way that I want to live, which is to be free because I think having freedom is more worth it than to go on vacations or drive the latest car.

Scott:
I think that the appeal of stoicism, I think has a lot to do with the fact that stoicism does not disallow someone from wanting a lot more. It just provides a toolkit for dealing with the inevitable challenges on the way there, including loss, which is very congruent with investing, right? We invest because we want more and we know that the investments are not always going to play out, and there’s going to be hard times in there. And I think that’s why investors, there seems to be a lot of overlap with notable investors or influencers in the personal finance space or tech space and practitioners of stoicism perhaps because of that dynamic. Would you agree with that, Darius?

Darius:
Yeah, I totally agree with that, and especially the thing that you said about out wanting or having a desire to earn more or to become wealthy. I’ve also read on Reddit, there are a lot of these philosophy subreddits, and there’s one for stoicism where I saw this discussion of some guys who were saying, yeah, if you’re real stoic, you shouldn’t care about money. You shouldn’t have the desire to become wealthy because it goes against the philosophy or something. And I don’t agree that at all. In fact, you can find quotes from Seneca or Epic saying that money in itself is not bad. It’s fine to have the desire to acquire more money because it’s practical. The problem is when you have this crazy desire when you are too focused and too attached to your money as well, that when you totally become consumed by it and you end up being greedy, and then you want to just acquire money for the sake of having more.
And that type of dynamic is really detrimental for, I think, for your mindset and the way that you live, but also for your long-term wealth. Because we all know what happens when we get too greedy, particular in the public markets, when we want to jump on the latest train of whatever it is, meme stock or Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, that seems great, but you don’t know anything about. You think, oh, I can make a few bucks here, and then plays out differently. And then you have this negative emotion and negative feeling of losing money, and then you might think to yourself, I’m not going to do that again. So you kind of take a lot of future wealth from yourself away by getting swayed by all of these emotions.

Amanda:
Yeah. And earlier you mentioned a 60% loss specifically. That’s a very big number, right? A 60% loss pretty early in your journey. So as it relates to investing, how would or should a stoic experience losses? Because we can at face value, say, yeah, just leave your emotions at the door. What happens, happens. But how do you actually put that into place when you experience something like a 60% loss?

Darius:
Yeah, that’s a great question because as a stoic, I don’t think you would ever put yourself in that position in the first place because what I did at the time was I had this job when I was in college, and this is in 2007, I got this job at a bank, and then they offered me to get a three or four week training program to become a mutual fund advisor. And you could do this before oh eight where there were not that many financial regulations, but I thought to myself, I work at a bank, it seems like everyone is making a lot of money here. I should buy bank stocks. So I took pretty much all of my savings and I bought stocks of two financials, and then of course 2008 happens and the market keeps going down, down, down. And at some point I was down more than 60%.
And when that happened, I really felt that in my gut just throughout that whole experience. So that’s why I also stopped investing for many years. So as a stoic, you would never put yourself in that position because first of all, I was taking too much risk. I also didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was going on under the hood, and I should have never started to invest with all of my savings because when you start with a big amount of money, then you start looking at your portfolio with laser focus, and then you feel every single uptick or downtick, and that’s not a healthy way to invest. So as a stoic, you need to create some distance between yourself and your investments, whether that’s a rental property or the stock market. So for example, when I started investing, again, I started with small sums just to experience the ups and downs of the market because I feel that as an investor, you should look at your portfolio.
A lot of folks say, yeah, just invest in the stock market, invest in the s and p 500, which is what I do as well, but just don’t look at it. And I think that’s not the right way to do it because you should be involved. It’s your money. You should know what’s going on. You just shouldn’t react to what’s going on. You should be able to look at it and say, okay, when we’re down, you probably won’t feel good, but that’s normal. In a similar way, when you have a rental property, and particularly if you live in it before and then you decide to rent it out, you should just say goodbye to it, right? It’s no longer a house, it’s just a property. It’s just an investment. And in a similar way, your money is also not something that you earned with your time. It’s just a tool and it should work for you.

Scott:
So how do we use what you’ve told us so far it seems like how do you boil down the practice of stoicism and translate that into building wealth? What is a plan that stoicism will lead an investor to, and what are the tools that stoicism offers for an investor? To follow that bonus question, if you can tie in how taking a cold plunge fits into that long-term wealth creation plan.

Darius:
Yeah. Well, let’s start with the cold plunge most important part. Yeah, I don’t think that jumping in cold water does anything for your mind personally. I think that small exposure does a lot more to small increments of improvement over time instead of jumping straight in to cold water or improve. But when it comes to how we could apply this to our lives, so I created this concept that I call the stoic edge because when you look at successful investors, they always talk about having an edge if you want to beat the market. So for example, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have a size edge because they are so big and manage so much money, they can make investments that we can’t. They can buy entire companies. So that’s something that’s not easily attainable for an individual In a similar way, there’s also an edge called the Quant Edge.
Folks might’ve heard of Jim Simons who was a lot in the news last several months. He passed away. He was one of the most successful investors of all time beating Warren Buffet’s annualized return. And he did that with a quant edge by econom econometrics and hiring PhDs and having a fund like that also, I can’t do that. The individual investor won’t be able to do that. So what’s an attainable edge for us if we want to invest and not necessarily to beat the market because beating the market is an extremely high aim that only a few are able to do. What if we just say that we want to build wealth and profit from the stock market as a whole?
How can we do that? Well, by staying invested, and if you have a stoic edge, you can stay invested no matter what happens, whether the market goes up or down, you should be able to stay invested and keep investing. And how you can acquire that stoic edge is, in my experience, through three steps apps. First to invest in yourself and to not only acquire the skills but also become a stable human being and form the habit of investing because a lot of folks don’t see themselves as investors. Even if you invest, you might think of yourself as someone with a job who has made a few investments, but if you made one investment, I think you should look at yourself as an investor because that’s who you are, and you should behave like that as well and be responsible with your money. So I think that’s the first step to invest in yourself and then to get comfortable with short-term losses.
Because as a long-term investor or as a stoic investor, you should only invest in the opportunities that are proven and have a solid foundation investing in real estate or investing in s and p 500, not trying to pick stocks. So when you have that strategy, the losses that you take are generally short term. So when you see your portfolio going down, you can just accept it as something that’s normal. And once you’re able to do those two things, I think you can just sit back and let your money do the work because you can just repeat that cycle. And if you found a good strategy of investing in the stock market through the s and p 500 or total stock market, whatever that works for you, or you found a way to invest in real estate, you can just simply repeat that process and let your money just do the work.

Scott:
I think that there’s so much to in the practice of stoicism for investors at every stage of the journey, hearing what you say you’re saying here, because at the early stage, we have to reduce our wants and stoicism helps with that. And you have to do that for a long period of time. That is living below your means. You’re enabled to want more and be able to delay gratification and think through it with the toolkit that stoicism offers. You’re able to invest for the long term in riskier or more volatile asset classes like real estate and stocks that can come with lumpy problems, but higher long-term overall returns for this. And then stoicism does allow you to then reap the rewards of this success in a longer term sense responsibly and still constantly remind yourself, Hey, occasionally you will need to dip into the rolling up your sleeves efforts that got you there, and you keep yourself reminded of that.
And so I think that that’s the appeal of stoicism to a lot of people. And to me, I’ve dabbled in this, I’m probably one of those people that has misinterpreted it badly that you referred to at the beginning of our interview here. But those are some of the things that I’ve taken away from it and the toolkits offered to people who practice stoicism to be able to keep on the journey and stay disciplined and stay focused, but to always be willing and able to reap the rewards and go back if you need to when there’s problems that come up. How am I doing here, Darius? Am I fairly close? I see you nodding in agreement. Is that polite or is that because I’m reasonably close?

Darius:
I love it because you brought up reaping the rewards, which is also one of my personal goals as well, because I think life is too short to have this very stringent life and to always, well, I do think it’s always good to live below your means just in general, but to always just save as much as you can. And I love the fire movement, like early retirement, financial independence, et cetera. But I think that a lot of folks put a little bit too much emphasis on wealth acquisition because at the end of the day, life is about our memories because what else is there to life later on in our lives? We probably look back and the only thing that we remember are our memories, and it requires some money to make some memories in some cases. Now, of course, as they say, the best things in life are free, but we have to stay practical, right?
We also want to enjoy the wealth that we build. And I think that’s kind of a thing that a lot of folks forget, particularly those very financially responsible people. I could assume people who would listen to this podcast because if you are interested in real estate investing, if you’re interested in building wealth, you are generally more financially responsible than the folks who just live day to day and just spend everything they earn. So I think I’m glad that you brought that up because you also have to enjoy the wealth that you have built and actually also are building, because it doesn’t mean that if you’re on the journey, you should just always be super stringent until that moment that, oh, look, I’ll enjoy my life when my net worth is $2 million or whatever. And then that moment comes and then you think to yourself, maybe I should just keep going. So when does that moment come?

Amanda:
Yeah. So I have a question then, because it seems like you obviously have already embodied the idea and spirit of stoicism and kind of setting your emotions, acknowledging your emotions, but kind of setting them aside in places where you don’t want them to be the decision maker, if you will. But I would say there are probably some people out there who are listening to this podcast and are interested in money, interested in getting started, interested in hitting their goals, interested in doing that next thing, but maybe they haven’t taken that step yet. So for somebody who is new and looking to start, I guess, where would you say is a good place for them to begin their journey?

Darius:
Yeah, so personally, because I am always more attracted to the stock market, I feel like that’s the perfect place to start, even if it’s not with big amounts of money just to form the habit and to start seeing yourself as an investor. I think it’s very simple to start an automated investment into the s and p 500 an ETF. I personally own the Vanguard ETF, and it’s a low cost way of investing, and it makes sense to me because investing in the 500 greatest companies in the US makes sense because these are companies that we all use like Apple and Microsoft and Amazon and Tesla and you name it. And these companies have international exposure. So I understand the mechanism. If someone would tell me, yeah, pick a stock, then I would be like, uhoh, what should I do? Even if you have a business background or you have finance background, it’s very difficult to look at a company’s financials and it’s futures prospects, et cetera. So that makes it a lot more complicated and to keep things simple. And I think also that’s one of the things that I learned from Stoicism is that when you want to start something, just boil it down to the simplest action and how you can start today. And that’s really I think one of the easiest way to get started.

Scott:
So Darius, what do you do personally with your portfolio? And do you consider yourself financially independent?

Darius:
Yes, I am financially independent now also financially, but there’s also another part of financial independence in my book, which is independence. And I feel like I accomplished that before I accomplished my financial independence. So how I have my portfolio set up is that I have these two rental properties, and the first one I bought in 2017 with the first money that I earned with my writing in 2020 right before Covid. Throughout this time, I was also investing with smaller amounts, basically based on my income, I have this goal of investing at least 30% of my income. So as my income started to rise over these years, I kept investing more in the stock market. And now in total, what my portfolio looks like is that I have the real estate and then I have 90% of the money that I have allocated to the stock market in the s and p 500, and then 10% for speculating in individual stocks because that is my passion. I don’t think that everybody should do that if you’re not completely passionate about it. So I do own a few individual stocks, but that’s only 10% of my total stock market.

Scott:
Awesome. What’s the next big stock that’s going

Darius:
To boom? Well, I own actually a Dutch stock called Ian. It’s kind of the stripe of Netherlands, and they do payment processing for Uber and McDonald’s and a lot of large firms. And I’ve always been a Warren Buffett fan. So one of the things that I learned from Warren Buffett is to invest in businesses that you understand, and taking a small portion as a fee of a payment is a business that I understand, so it can be simpler than that. And I also understand corporate sales a little bit because of my experience. So I realized that if you have these multinational clients, something really weird has to happen to give them up. So these types of companies have this large client base, and even if they don’t acquire new clients, they will continue to grow their revenue. So that’s one of the stocks that I’ve owning for the last year now.

Amanda:
So Darius, you are obviously in a way different place in life than you were when you were a kid, right? I’m sure kid Darius looks at adult Darius like, wow, look at how far we’ve come. So before we hear how to retire stoic, when did the feeling of financial independence really sink in for you? When was it like, wow, I’ve made it, this is kind of awesome?

Darius:
Yeah, that’s really a good question, and it actually was a very specific moment. So my riding career started to take off around 2017. So the first two years was still kind of slow and steady growth, and then some of my articles went viral, and then my books went viral. And then in 2019, I remember there was this time when I was starting to look at my financials of the last year to do my taxes, and then I somehow discovered this account of audible sales, of audiobook sales. And I had never thought of it because I set it up when I published because I actually self-published my first books. It’s only now that my latest book is being traditionally published, but I self-published my first books, and I also did an audiobook of one of them. And then in 2019, I think, oh, what happened to that account?
So I log in and I realized there’s like seven, $8,000 in that account. And I’m like, oh, wow, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know that I had this money. And that was the first moment in my life where I was like, oh wow, okay. I feel pretty cool about the things that I’ve done until now. While at that time, my net worth was probably about half a million, the equivalent of dollars. And to be frankly, technically I was not financially independent. If I would stop working, of course my cost of living are not that high and I’ve never upgraded my lifestyle. So I would be okay, but not fully. So I would still have to do some work, but in my mind, I was already there because I felt like, okay, I’ve got this under control. I’ve invested in my skills and network and I have these products, and I have at that time one rental property. So that was really the first moment that I thought to myself, well, you don’t actually don’t have to be a multimillionaire to feel financially independent. So that was a huge win for me.

Amanda:
Yeah. The fact that you had reached a point in your life where you weren’t tracking down every penny that was owed to or available to you is surprise money, if you will. What is that Bob Ross, that’s like the painter. You remember the painter when you were a kid that was like, we don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents. It sounds like that was a very happy accident, Darius, for you to run into.

Darius:
Yeah, exactly. And especially for my younger self, I don’t think that would ever happen. I was holding onto every penny that I made like a mad man. And when I had that moment, I realized, oh, okay. I finally learned to let go. So that was a cool moment.

Amanda:
Yeah, I love that. So then how can someone retire a stoic, somebody who is interested in retiring like stoic?

Darius:
Yeah. I think retiring like a stoic to me means that you are finally ready to step back from active life and from busy life, but not necessarily to change your life when you retire. Why not just maintain your habits that you kind of built during your entire life? And if you’ve built sustainable habits like exercising and journaling and saving and investing, why not keep doing that when you retire? Why not keep investing in the stock market while a lot of folks say, yeah, well you should own bonds or you should own less volatile stocks, or maybe you should be more in cash. And I think to myself, why? Because if you spend your entire lifetime to practice managing your emotions, you build all of these great habits and you’re able to live a consistent and stable life when you retire, you can just maintain that strategy. And if you want to downsize or if you want to downgrade your lifestyle or move to a place where it’s cheaper, that’s also fine. It’s a bonus. But I feel like a lot of folks worry too much about retirement. And again, those are those financially responsible folks and those are the folks who generally are fine. I think retirement is just an extension of what we are doing now, just maybe at a slower pace.

Scott:
Well, Darius, where can people find out more about you and the new book you have coming out?

Darius:
So best place to learn more is on my website there is farru.com or stoic path to wealth.com, and I have more about my work and articles, et cetera, and the book as well.

Scott:
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on BiggerPockets money today and sharing a lot of wisdom around stoicism and how it applies to personal finance and early retirement. Really appreciate it and hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.

Darius:
Yeah, thanks for having me. And was a pleasure. Alright,

Scott:
That was Darius Faru. Amanda, what’d you think? I

Amanda:
Loved it. I think the idea of stoicism really has a little bit of a negative connotation in society today. It can be looked at as maybe even a little pretentious sometimes. But I think that his focus is really on just intentionality and knowing your own risk tolerance. That’s kind of what I took away from it. It’s knowing what you can handle, what you can risk, and I think it’s really just about knowing your own risk tolerance and spending your money and investing your money intentionally. So taking a step back from the chaos of life, social media, anybody surrounding you and being like, what do I want out of life? How do I find the most joy out of life? So that’s really what I took from it, and I really like that he kind of gave us a different view into what stoicism could mean. And what about you, Scott? What’d you think? What did you take away from the conversation with Darius around what stoicism is?

Scott:
Yeah, so I mean, stoicism, it seems to me it’s a philosophy. It’s a toolkit, though, more than that to me, that, and it empowers people to make better financial decisions long-term because it comes with, it’s congruent with all the things we want on the journey to financial independence, including allowing this desire for more, but a constant reminder of where we’ve come from, what the challenges to overcome and the acceptance of discomfort, and even taking joy in the journey and getting one step better at all times while constantly reminding ourselves of where we came from. Reap the rewards, but never forget the journey and never allow yourself to grow to too soft, too comfortable to go back and do the hard things that got you to where you are in the first place.

Amanda:
I love that. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Scott:
Perfect Way. Better summary. Well, Amanda, should we get out of here?

Amanda:
Let’s do

Scott:
It. All right. This is Scott Trench and Amanda Wolf from the BiggerPockets Money podcast. Signing off.

Outro:
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench. This episode was produced by Eric Knutson, copywriting by Calico Content, post-production by Exodus Media and Cris Mikkan. Thanks for listening.