The Realistic, Repeatable Path to Investing for FIRE in Your 20s

Mindy:
At just 27 years old, my guest has already built a net worth of over $100,000 and is well on her way to financial independence. But what does it take to grow your wealth at such a young age? How do you stay disciplined, save aggressively, and still enjoy life in your twenties? Today we are diving deep into her mindset, strategy, and the steps she’s taking to achieve financial independence, whether you’re starting out or well on your way, this episode is great for what and all. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench is play and hooky today. So you just have me. I am here to remind you that 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 I truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone no matter when or where you are. Starting today, we’re going to discuss ways to invest early with a salary below six figures, how to pay down $80,000 of student loans and answer the question should you have a fine number. Anna, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m so excited to talk to you.

Anna:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Mindy:
How long have you been investing?

Anna:
So I started investing when I graduated college back in 2021. I just started out with my 401k. That’s how most people start out. I didn’t really know exactly what I was doing. Luckily my older brother helped me out a bunch. He taught me all about investing and personal finance and what I should be doing. So he eventually told me I should open up a Roth IRA. So then I also got into that. So it’s been about three or four years.

Mindy:
So he said, you should invest in a Roth. What did he specifically teach you about investing in personal finance?

Anna:
So he kept it pretty simple. He said that index funds are the way to go, right? That’s not new news. That’s what all the finance people will tell you to do. So he said, just automate your investments, set it into a retirement account or a taxable brokerage and just let it go.

Mindy:
Okay, so you’re right. This isn’t new. This isn’t sexy. This isn’t groundbreaking information, but it is absolutely the simple path to wealth. Oh, see what I did write there. Have you read that book?

Anna:
I have. That’s a good one.

Mindy:
What made you start investing right when you graduated college?

Anna:
I think a lot of it was my older brother. I didn’t really know much about investing at all. I mean, growing up we never talked about money. We didn’t talk about investing. So I really leaned on him to give me advice and help me out. And it was kind of like you hear about 4 0 1 Ks and you don’t really know what they are until all of a sudden you’re graduated and now it’s like, oh shoot. What actually is a 401k? How does it work? So I asked him all of those questions. He taught me the importance of it, getting your employer matched, just starting out that muscle of investing at a young age and get the habit of doing it and carry that through your twenties, thirties, forties.

Mindy:
Anna, do you invest anything in real estate?

Anna:
I do not currently invest in real estate. I don’t even own a primary residence either. We are currently renting.

Mindy:
Okay. And why are you currently renting?

Anna:
So we started renting right out of college. My husband and I graduated about a year apart, and we just rented an apartment while I was finishing up my grad school year. And then once I graduated, we moved to a house and just started renting that and we were kind of deciding where do we want to end up? We’re currently on the east side of Michigan near Detroit, but our family’s from the west side of Michigan. So we’re in limbo between jobs and things of like where should we end up? What should we do? We didn’t really have a good answer and didn’t know what we wanted to do. We decided renting was the best option. It was also around 2020 when prices were starting to climb and then they just kept climbing. Real estate was really expensive and we didn’t have any cash to buy a home or to put a down payment down.

Anna:
So at first it sounded like buying would be really nice, right? In 2019, home prices were pretty low. You could put a small amount down and your mortgage could be reasonable, right? You could pay 1200, 1500 for a mortgage in the Detroit area. Of course, not in all places of the country, but we’re pretty lucky to be in the Midwest. So then as prices got more and more expensive, we were like, okay, we can buy a home now, but if we buy a home, the mortgage is probably going to be closer to 2,500. So we decided to stick with our current situation. We’re renting a three bed, two bath for $1,800 a month in the Detroit area versus buying a home Now that’s equal or more house, and our housing costs would go up $700 a month or more. So right now it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for us to buy. We still don’t know where we want to be. Long-term for sure. So that’s the biggest thing. I think real estate is great if you’re going to live in it for a long time and you’re not planning to just hop around and sell it or if you’re planning to keep it as an investment property or use it as an income generation. But if you’re just going to talk about primary homes, I don’t think that buying is always the right move for every person.

Mindy:
And that’s because you’re right, buying is not always the right move for every person. Ramit Satis says it best. He says, when you own a home, your mortgage is the least, you’ll pay monthly. But when you rent, your rent payment is the most you’ll pay monthly. If something breaks, your landlord fixes it. And what you’re saying to me says that you’ve thought this through. I think there’s a lot of people who buy a house because it’s the American dream, and that’s what you do. You graduate from college and then you buy a house you don’t have to buy. And I say that as a lover of real estate. I’m a real estate investor, I’m a real estate agent. I work at BiggerPockets. I mean, estate is my jam, but it’s not for everybody. And also if everybody owned, then there would be no tenants. So it’s perfectly fine for you to be a renter. I just wanted to get that out there. I like the way that you’re thinking about it and the fact that you are thinking about it.

Anna:
Yeah. I like what you said about how people just think that they should be buying, and that’s my favorite thing now, is to ask people why they want to buy a home and if they have a good reason. Sure. There’s lots of reasons to buy a home, right? You want to grow roots, you want to start a family. All that stuff makes perfect sense. But when people say, I don’t know, isn’t that just what people do? And it’s like, no, you don’t have to buy a home if you’re not ready yet. You can still figure it out. You can rent your whole life. Ramit safety still rents to this day he doesn’t want to own. That’s amazing. If that’s what you want to do, do it.

Mindy:
Yeah, exactly. But again, with Ramit, he’s thinking about it and he has decided based on thought, not just, oh, everybody else is doing this. He’s decided I don’t want to be an owner, so I’m not going to be an owner, and he’s got a reason behind it. Do you ever see yourself buying a house or investing in real estate?

Anna:
Yeah, I definitely see myself buying a home. My husband wants to buy a house much more than I do at this point, but I think I’m going to let him have that one. And we will buy a home eventually, and we’re wanting to start a family soon, so we will own a home probably in the next five years. But as far as investing in real estate goes, I haven’t quite figured out what we’re going to do. He doesn’t like the idea of being a landlord, so I’m trying to push him on that a little bit. But I think the plan will be to focus on index funds and investing in the stock market in our twenties and maybe our thirties, and then in our forties or fifties when we’ve maybe got some more free time and more money, maybe jump into real estate investing.

Mindy:
And real estate investing isn’t for everyone. There are plenty of people who listen to this show, who have no interest in investing in real estate and are still reaching financial independence. I think real estate is a great way to get there, but it’s definitely not the only way to get there. And there’s all different levels of real estate investing. So when you’re ready, come to biggerpockets.com, review the forums, go in there and see what different kinds of investing people are doing. We have a new podcast in our podcast network called Passive Pockets, which focuses on syndication deals. And if you are investing in a syndication deal, you give them money and then that’s the end of your responsibility. So you don’t have to be a landlord. You’re not getting the phone calls from the tenant saying, Hey, there’s something wrong with the property. It’s a great way to invest in real estate without having to be on the phone with your tenants all the time.

Mindy:
It does have some risk, and that’s why we created this new podcast called Passive Pockets so that you can start to learn how to invest in syndications. Not all syndications are made the same. So when you’re ready, give me a call. We’ll chat. We’re going to take a quick break before we hear more from Anna Foley on how she was able to wipe out $80,000 of debt in under four years. Welcome back to the show. So let’s look back to your financial snapshot. When you graduated from college, you had $80,000 in student loan debt, or you had $80,000 in debt.

Anna:
$80,000 in student loans between my husband and I. So he graduated in December of 2019 and he had about 60,000 in debt. And then I graduated in May of 21, and I had about 20,000. So total we had about 80 in student loans. And then we also had a car that was about 14,000. So when we graduated, when he graduated in 2019, our net worth was like negative 95,000. And then when I graduated in 21, our net worth was negative 75,000. So we’d made some progress just paying the minimums on his student loans and the car. But yeah, just working through that.

Mindy:
And how did you pay down that $80,000? How long did it take and what steps did you take to make it happen?

Anna:
So it took us about three and a half years, and the biggest thing we did was at the beginning of every month, we made a plan for how much we wanted to put towards our student loans. And each time we got paid, we would send that money directly to the student loans before we could even use it. If we were going to wait until the end of the month, that money was going to go somewhere, we were going to find something to spend it on. So we made sure that we put that money towards the student loans right away. And over those three years, we did increase our income. So every time we got a raise, yes, we had some fun, but we also made sure that we were using that extra money to pay off our loans quicker. So just really staying disciplined and focusing on making those payments every month.

Mindy:
So when my husband was paying off, his student loans we’re old, so we were writing checks. You didn’t pay it online because the internet didn’t exist. And I wrote that last check and I was like, this is the best check I’ve ever written. Goodbye student loans. How great did it feel to be out of debt?

Anna:
It did feel really good. It was a long time coming. We originally planned, I think, to finish paying off our loans at the end of this year or next year, but because we were able to increase our income, we paid it off quicker than we expected. So it felt even better that we got it done quickly. And then what was really nice about it’s we were allocating all this money towards their student loans, and then as soon as that was paid off, we were like, oh, what do we do with that money? Now let’s just start investing it. Right? So it was really easy to make that transition to investing after we paid off our debt.

Mindy:
So paying off $80,000 in three and a half years, how much were you making at the time?

Anna:
So when Brett graduated in 2019, he started out making 60,000 a year. I was still in school, so I was probably making 20 to 30 just through my internship. But over that time, once I graduated, I started making low sixties as well. So we were up to one 20 gross income. And then over the last couple years, I’ve gotten a few raises and work overtime to make more, so I’m up to about $80,000, and Brett has jumped around to a couple of different jobs and he’s now up to 105. So last year our gross income was around $190,000. So it went from about a hundred, 120 up to one 90,

Mindy:
And that’s awesome. That is how you pay off $80,000 in student loans in three and a half years. As you steadily increase your income, you put the money to the loans first. This sounds a lot like when people say, oh, you pay yourself first. So you take your paycheck and you put X percentage into your savings, 20%, 40%, whatever you’re choosing. You put that into savings, you don’t even see it to spend it. When you put the money to the loans, you’ve already made your payment, and now you have the rest of the money to do with as you choose, as opposed to, like you said, if you leave it till the end of the month, you are absolutely going to find a way to spend that. What are the investing vehicles that you’re currently using to help you towards financial independence? Are you still solely in index funds?

Anna:
Yes. We still are a hundred percent in index funds. All of my stuff is with fidelity, so I’m in FX, A IX, just s and p 500 all the way. Brett has his 401k through principal, and they don’t have the best options for investing, so we picked the best one. They have, I think it’s an s and p 500 equivalent, just has a higher expense ratio on it. But yeah, all of our investing is in index funds currently.

Mindy:
I love that. Now you mentioned a Roth IRA and a 401k. Are you maxing those out?

Anna:
We are both maxing out our Roth IRAs. We’re not maxing out our 4 0 1 Ks. We’re contributing up to the employer match right now. And then Brett also has an HSA that he’s maxing out.

Mindy:
Okay. And what are you doing with, I don’t want to say the extra, because there’s no such thing as extra money. What are you doing with the remainder

Anna:
Right now? We’re saving actually potentially for a house in the next few years. So we’ve been trying to save two or $3,000 a month. We were saving up for a car. We just bought a car, and then now we’re going to start transitioning to saving for a house.

Mindy:
And do you have any sort of after tax brokerage investments?

Anna:
Not yet. I’ve been thinking about opening one of those up and just starting to get that ball rolling, but it’s hard to give up the tax advantage of all the retirement accounts. So kind of struggling with that decision on which one I should do.

Mindy:
Yes. Well, I totally understand that. We have an episode about the middle class trap where you are a millionaire on paper, you’ve got a million dollars or more in your retirement account, in your 401k in your home equity, but you don’t have any way to really access that without paying penalties and what have you. And that is episode 543. I encourage you to go and listen to that one just to prevent yourself from becoming, I mean, it’s not a terrible position to be in. You’re 40 years old and you’re a millionaire. You just can’t access any of it without paying penalties. So the cure to that, if you haven’t gotten to 40, if you’re younger, you should start an after tax brokerage account. So you do have access to funds. You can always access the money you put into your Roth, but not the gains before.

Mindy:
You’re 59 and a half I think, and I’m sure I’m saying that wrong, and somebody is going to email [email protected] to tell me about that, but you hedge your bets and do an after tax brokerage account so you can access those funds earlier. Another way to access those funds, if you are, I hate the way that I’m wording this, but I can’t think of a different way. If you have fallen victim to the middle class trap, we just did an episode with Eric Cooper about the 72 T where you can access your retirement funds early through separate but equal periodic payments, which means you have to take out the exact same amount every single year. So there are ways to access it, but not even having to do all that monkey business is even better.

Anna:
For sure. I did actually just listen to that episode. It was a good one.

Mindy:
Yeah. Oh, I love Eric. He’s so great. Anna, what would you guess your savings rate is

Anna:
So far this year? Our average monthly savings rate has been around 43%, so some months are a little bit above 30. Some were in the fifties, so it just depends month to month. But yeah, a pretty good average. It was actually higher than I expected. I hadn’t really tallied it up for what the average was this year yet, and it was higher than I expected. But yeah, I’m happy with it.

Mindy:
Okay. I’m going to challenge our listeners right now. If you have a savings rate, if you are able to be saving instead of spending everything that’s coming in, what is your savings rate? Email me, [email protected]. I’m so curious just to see, I’m not going to name names. I won’t read this on air, but I think it would be interesting to say, oh, the average BiggerPockets money listener saves 25% or 3% or 97% or whatever it is. So email [email protected] and tell me your savings rate. I would love to hear it. Let’s talk about your yearly expenses now. Do you have a good sense of how much you’re spending on average?

Anna:
Yeah, I’ve been tracking our finances for the past few years. I started with just a simple Google spreadsheet and was putting in our income and expenses, and then this past year, I just actually purchased a wealth dashboard from my wealth diary on Etsy. She makes these really incredible spreadsheets that are really detailed, and I could never create something that good, but it was like 40 bucks to buy it, and you can use it over and over, just create a copy and edit the information. So last year we spent around $98,000 total, and that’s not including extra student loan payments and saving and investing. So that was just all spending that we had to do, and that comes out to about $8,000 per month. And then last year we spent around the same. So we’ve been pretty consistent spending between 7,000, $8,000 a month, even though our income has been increasing.

Mindy:
So 7,000, 8,000 a month, that can be construed as maybe a lot. Do you feel comfortable with how much you’re spending or do you wish you were spending a little less?

Anna:
I do feel really comfortable with how much we’re spending. That’s a big thing that I’ve wanted to focus on is not restricting our spending a lot. We make a lot of money. We are saving and investing for our future. We paid off our debt. We don’t need to be nickel and dimming everything. So yes, we have some maybe expensive things that we buy or pay for things that we do, but everything that we do is important to us. So we’re trying to focus on spending our money on things that make us happy and cutting out things that don’t make us happy. So we go to a gym that’s probably considered expensive. It’s like $250 a month for both of us to go to this gym. And yes, we could just go to a really cheap $10 month Planet Fitness gym, but we like the gym. We’re going to, it keeps us healthy. So that’s a really worthwhile expense for us. We like to golf. Golf is pretty expensive sport, but we like to do it. We don’t mind spending the money on that. So we try and really focus on spending in alignment with our values and not focusing on the dollar amount.

Mindy:
I love that so much. I want to go back and underline every single thing you just said because I reached financial independence by not doing that. I reached financial independence by being as cheap as I possibly could and stuffing a lot of money into the 401k, the IRA, the after tax brokerage account, and not really enjoying the journey. And I wish I would’ve done it differently, but you can’t go back and change things. So I love that you are saving responsibly and also living your best life because you could absolutely get to fly earlier with the most miserable existence ever, which is what, it wasn’t the most miserable existence ever, but it certainly wasn’t anything fun. We didn’t go on vacation, we didn’t go out to eat all that much. We didn’t enjoy the journey. And it sounds like you are enjoying the journey, being mindful of where you’re spending. And again, it all goes back to the thought process. You’re thinking about things. You’re not just, oh, well, I should buy a house. Everybody else is, I should buy a new car because I think that one’s pretty, I should do all of these things. I should spend all of this money. No, I want to get to financial independence, so I’m going to pay myself first and then I’m going to enjoy what’s left.

Anna:
Yeah, a hundred percent agree. I have to give a lot of credit to my husband on that one. He is the one that’s like, we need to still enjoy ourselves and have fun and not focus all on the numbers and on retirement. And we’re still so young. We’ve got a lot of time. So

Mindy:
Yes, shout out to your husband. We have to take one final break, but more on Anna’s next financial milestone that you should be hitting to after this. I am excited to jump back in with Anna. Do you have a PHI number, like a specific 4% rule number that you’re working towards?

Anna:
We don’t have a specific PHI number. In my mind. I’ve always kind of been shooting for 3 million, but I haven’t really run the numbers. 3 million just seems reasonable because using the 4% rule, it’d be like 120,000 a year. So that’s 10,000 a month, which seems reasonable. I mean, we’re spending around eight now and we don’t have any kids or anything yet. So that potentially could go up, but seems like a pretty safe number to shoot for, and we’re kind of not focused on the end number. If you think about having $3 million invested and you’re only 27 years old, that just seems like impossible, right? That’s such a huge number. You’re so far off. So I like to focus on setting yearly goals. So each year we’ll set maybe a net worth goal or how much we want to invest and shoot for those so that it’s much more tangible and we can measure it easier because hard to know for sure if you’re on track or not. So much is going to change between now and when we’re 30, 40, 50 years old. So really focusing on the short term and setting goals for now.

Mindy:
Okay. I just love that so much. Do you think the fire movement changes the way people perceive work?

Anna:
Yeah, I think it does. I mean, I think before I knew about the fire movement, probably when I was in college, right before I graduated, I found out about the fire movement. And what was really cool to me was that you get all the freedom, right? You’re basically buying back your time by investing in real estate stocks, whatever it is. And it’s cool because growing up, you just watch everyone work for 40 years and retire when they’re 65 or older, and that’s just life. You just think that’s how the world works, right? You’re just a little kid, you don’t know. Once you actually get there, you realize that you don’t have to work until you’re 65, right? How long you work can really be up to you if you’re willing to invest some of that money. So that really changed my perspective on work now because I’m working right now to make money and I’m investing some of it, I’m having fun with some of it. But ultimately, if I’m able to retire at 40, 50, 60 years old, it’d be really great to not have to work until I’m 65, and I know we’re on track to not need to work until we’re 65. So it feels good knowing that we’re not going to be trapped in our job for that long.

Mindy:
Yeah, that’s really, really awesome to have that mentality. And I just sent a note to my producer. Can you imagine learning about PHI in college?

Anna:
That would be so awesome. I’m pretty lucky. I mean, now that technology’s out there, there’s so many podcasts and books and everyone is talking about it, so it’s just way easier to find out about it.

Mindy:
It is, and it doesn’t take a huge amount of change in your life, especially when you’re earlier in your financial independence journey when you’re younger, it doesn’t take a huge amount of change to completely change your trajectory. You could be going like this, but you make a little tiny change and now you’re going through the roof. Your 40% savings rate is awesome, and you will continue. You probably increase it as you increase your salaries, and I’m so excited for your future because your future is going to be so awesome.

Anna:
Yeah, I like what you said about how a tiny change when you’re young can make a big difference because that is so important. Time is the most important ingredient when it comes to investing, and I don’t think people realize that a little bit of money today can grow to be such a big amount of money later on that even just investing a hundred dollars a month, $200 a month in your twenties, and continuing that on all the way through until you’re 60 years old, can become millions of dollars. So it’s just really important to set it up when you’re young, the right way, so that you’re spending less than you’re making so that you’re not having to realize at 40, oh, shoot, I haven’t saved anything. I don’t have anything invested for retirement. Now you have to downgrade your lifestyle in order to invest money to try and catch up when you could already have created your lifestyle around your income, knowing that you were going to save and invest some.

Mindy:
I love that. Are you sure you’re only 27?

Anna:
Yes, I’m positive.

Mindy:
So for many, earning more income is the key to fire, whether that’s passive or through your W2, and you have said that you have increased your income, your husband has increased his income by changing jobs. You’ve mentioned some small milestones today, rather than working towards a FI number, what’s your next biggest financial goal or milestone?

Anna:
So this year, our goal was to get to $125,000 for our net worth. And right now we’re at one 13, so we should meet that by the end of the year with no problem. So now my focus is on having a hundred thousand dollars invested, and we’re at about 90,000 right now. So I’m hoping to get that up to a hundred thousand by the end of the year, and that’ll be a big one. They always say that’s the hardest one to get to, and after that compound interest starts taking over. So we’re excited about that.

Mindy:
It does, and it’s hockey stick growth. It’s pretty awesome. Do you ever plan on investing in individual stocks or anything outside of V-T-S-A-X besides the real estate that we already talked about?

Anna:
No. No plans to do that. If I were to do that, I’d keep it to a very small percentage of my portfolio, just for fun to see how it would go. But I’ve read enough of the books, I’ve listened to enough of the podcasts that index funds are the way to go. There’s really no point in trying to beat the market, so we’re just going to ride those out.

Mindy:
I love that answer, listeners. I did not prompt her for that answer. That is totally her answer. But I love it so much, so much. I love that you’re putting thought into your financial situation, and it doesn’t have to be a ton of thought if you don’t want to think about it at all. Read a Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins. By the way, Anna, you are making his heart sing with all the things that you’re saying. I know he’s just going to love you to death. What is your biggest piece of advice for someone just hearing about financial independence and just starting out on their financial journey?

Anna:
My biggest piece of advice would be to save and invest first. So we talked about it earlier. When you get paid and you leave that money in your account, you’re tempted to spend it and you’re likely going to, there’s so many things to find to spend money on. So it’s really important that when you get paid automatically send that money to your savings accounts, to your investment accounts so that you can’t spend it, and then you can spend whatever’s left over a hundred percent guilt-free, because it doesn’t need to be saved. It doesn’t need to be invested. It’s yours to do whatever you want with. So I think the biggest thing when you’re younger is to sit down and think about how much money am I going to make? Take that number. Take out all of your necessary expenses. You need to have a place to live. You need a car and you need food. Take out all the necessary stuff, see what’s left over and of that, make sure that you’re saving, investing some of that too. And then whatever is leftovers is your suspend on whatever you want.

Mindy:
Anna, I love that. It’s just like the anti budgett that Paula pant talks about. You save ahead of time, you save in the beginning, and then you can spend the rest and you’re paying yourself first. I think it’s brilliant. Anna, thank you so much for your time today. I love your story. I love your future. It looks so bright. I’m going to date myself. Your future’s so bright. You got to wear shades. Okay, cue the groaning. She’s like, I don’t even know that song. I don’t. Timac three from 1987.

Anna:
I’m so bad with songs. I’m not your audience.

Mindy:
Oh, you’re so bad. From with songs that were 30 years before you were born.

Anna:
Yeah, that too. Especially

Mindy:
Where can people find out more about you?

Anna:
So I’m on Instagram at five 20 Money. That’s FIVE two zero money, M-O-N-E-Y. I started a money coaching business last fall to help people out with their personal finances. So if you’re looking for help paying off debt or starting to invest, all that stuff, I’d love to help young people get started on the right foot so that they can retire early too.

Mindy:
Oh, I love that so much. Thank you so much, Anna. I really, really enjoyed talking to you.

Anna:
Yeah, thank you.

Mindy:
Alright, that was Anna Foley, and that was such a fun story. If you did not listen to this episode with your kids in the car, rewind and put it on play. The next time that you’re all together, this is absolutely the right way to set yourself up for life. Oh look, a Scott Trench reference, and he’s not even here, don’t worry, he’ll be back next week. But tracking your spending, increasing your income, investing wisely, these are the key tenets to reaching financial independence. If you can do this, you can reach financial independence. I’m not going to drop my mic because feedback, but if I could, I would. This is absolutely the roadmap to reaching financial independence in a healthy way. Alright, that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I am Mindy Jensen saying, see you soon, raccoon. I.