What's up? What's up? What's up teammates Michael from winning to wealth here and this is money talk Monday where I talk money on Mondays in 20 minutes or less. This is money talk number 30. In this week, I'm going to get a little personal and share an update on our money journey. So let's talk about it. Obviously, you guys know that I love stories. And so there's a story that I heard a while back that I'm going to share with you guys right now in the hopes that it'll paint a picture of kind of where we are in our lives, and how we came to the decision that I'm going to share with you later. So an American investment banker was at the pier of this village in South America when a small boat with just one fishermen pulled up. Other fishermen had caught several of these huge yellowfin tuna. The American who love fishing themselves complimented the fisherman on the fish and asked them hey, how long did it take you to catch all that? The fishermen they replied, one long, only a little bit, couple hours. So the American ask them, you know, why don't you stay out longer? Why don't you try to catch more fish? And the fisherman replies, you know what, man, I've got enough to support my family here. Like I don't really need to get more fish. It's kind of pointless. And the American then asked the fishermen, but you know, what do you do with the rest of your time? If you're only out there for a couple hours? It's how you support your family. What do you do with the rest of the day? And the fisherman responds with, you know, I sleep late. I fish a little bit. I play with my kids. I take naps with my wife. I wake up from the nap. I go into the village, sip wine and play guitar with my friends until the night ends. It is it's a fantasy Life, I love it. Everyday is amazing. So the American gets this idea. And he tells the fishermen, he says, you know, I've got this MBA from Harvard. And I definitely think I can help you, what you need to do is spend more time fishing, catching more fish. And then you can use the money that you earned from the fish to buy a bigger boat. And with a bigger boat, you'll catch more fish. And then you can use those proceeds to buy several more boats. And eventually, you're going to have these huge fleet of fishing boats. And because you're going to have so many fish, you won't have to sell to a middleman, you could sell it direct. And you could open up your own cannery, you could do whatever you want, because you're going to control the product, you're going to control the processing the distribution, the whole thing. But in order for this to work, you're going to need to leave this little village and you're going to have to move to New York, and it's there where you're going to be hands on running the business. And so the fishermen looks at it as you know, how long will all this take this grand plan you have, like, how long do I need to commit to in order to make this work? And the American replies, you know, 15, maybe 20 years tops, nothing longer than that at all 15 to 20 years. That is it, you're out. So then the fishermen asked, okay, well, what happens after that? The American laughs at him and says, Oh, that's the best part. See when the time is right. You announced an IPO and you sell your company stock to the public, and you get filthy rich, like you're gonna make millions of dollars with this. And the fisherman naturally curious goes, Okay, so I've got the millions then what, what do I do from that point? And so the American looks at him and goes, Well, from that point, you can just retire. You can come back to the small fishing village where you can sleep late. You can fish as much or as little as you are. You can play with your kids. You can take naps with your wife. You can wake up head to the village sip wine and play guitar with your friends, whatever you want to do. I share that story to say that, for the last 10 years of my career, I have been what we now see as the silly American in that story. I've worked like crazy, like I've advanced my career, I've moved across the country. I've done all these things, all in the name of getting to the point where I could play with my kids, take naps with my wife and hang with my friends even more. But then Rona came along, and it forced me to really slow down. It allowed me to really sit and be alone with my thoughts and kind of really think through this strategy. And then when I was laid off from my job that ultimately showed me that hey, I don't need to earn a six figure income to spend time with my wife, my kids, my friends. I don't we're in a position right now. For To be able to take a chance and build my dream life. And so with that being said, as a result of that realization, we've decided that I'm taking a mini retirement for now. So the last few months, like I said, they've really shown me that we're fine living on my wife's income, and I don't have to travel 60% of the time for the next 10 years just to maybe, hopefully, one day get control of my time back. Because I'm, I'm ready to be like the fishermen, I want to do work I love I want to make memories with my family. I want to have time for my friends. I want to do all those things that are very important to me. And I'm realizing that it's not something that should be put off or even just not as high of a priority for the next 10 years until we reach fire. So we're just we're redesigning our life. We're redesigning our goals. We're revamping everything. And so one of the keys to that is obviously keeping our expenses super low. But I'm also spending a few hours a day building some additional income streams so that we can have some fun money. But as of now, we're not really chasing fire anymore. I'm not looking for another six figure salary with a huge responsibilities or anything like that. So you may be wondering now like, what is life gonna look like in this new season? Well, so the more we talked about this idea, the more we realized that Taylor absolutely loves her career, and she really has no deep desire to stop working anytime soon. So the plan is for her to continue working. Unless of course, like they try to make her go back into the classroom before it's safe. Then she's gonna join me and we have a plan for that scenario that I'll discuss on another episode should happen, but for now, we're going to continue using her income to cover all of our essential expenses. As for me, I absolutely love building willing to weld and I'm excited to keep doing that while also building another online business in general. I'm starting soon. And so most of the income that I earned from these ventures is going to get reinvested back into the businesses so that we can push growth and all those things. But I will take a small salary, which is going to be used for like fun money for our family and things like that. And as for Alison, she's going to get a front row seat to it all she's gonna be hanging at home with me for a while. But I want to say that while I'm not actively looking for a job right now, like I'm not completely against the idea of ever returning to work like this, that's not what this is about. However, I want to make it clear, like any potential job opportunity that I'm offered, and that I accept, it's gonna have to align with this new direction of spending more time with my family, which means no more travel jobs. And it has to be something that I absolutely love to do with people I enjoy being around. And so we're at the point financially, where like, any salary I earn is a nice perk like I don't need a six figure salary, I don't even need 60 k which more important to me than salary is, again, spending time with my family and making memories, hanging with friends being more in control of my time and actually enjoying the work and the people that I'm around more. And so that's where we are right now. And one of the key things I want you to take away from this episode is not like a congratulatory thing for me. But I want you to take away that the the journey, this wealth building journey doesn't have to be linear. So when we started back in 2014, we didn't have plans to be fire. We were just trying to pay off debt as quickly as possible. Like we didn't even know what fire was to be honest. And then we came across it and we've spent the last like, three ish years working towards fire, and now we're backing off of it again. And all of that is okay, like your journey does not have to be linear to one thing. We're all growing. We're all learning and that means arguing goals and even the methods to reach those goals can change. And also, I want to say like to those of you at the beginning stages of this journey, I want you to know that in this very moment, like this moment, right now, while I'm recording this, every single sacrifice that we ever made to get to this point, has been 100%. Working. Like I couldn't take this chance with my career, if we still had consumer debt. I'd be probably stressed to the max right now. And also couldn't take this chance have we not said no to some things once we were debt free, and instead use that money to save and invest over half our income during the last few years, like those choices made this choice possible. So if you're in the middle of the journey, and it feels a little rough, I want to encourage you like just keep going. Once you get to that other side. I promise you every single hard choice is going to be worth it. But yeah, that's the big news. I am taking a mini retirement I'm not putting a date on it. Like I'm not saying it's six months, it's a year or whatever. It's until I feel like it or until something changes in our life that forces me to look at that as an option again, but for right now, it doesn't have to be an option. And so it's not. And again, I want to point out that like, that's the beauty of this journey, the options that being financially smart over the years gives you But as always, I'd love to talk with you guys about this episode. Like if you have questions or comments or anything like that, feel free head over to the private Facebook group and let's talk about it. You can find the group over at winning to wealth comm slash teammates that is willing to work.com slash teammates. Also, if you're just getting started on your own money journey, and maybe you need a little guidance, you can head over to winning to wealth, comm slash playbook and download my free guide. And that guide I lay out the very steps that we took to get to this point today. So be sure to check that out. Over at winning to wealth comm slash playbook. But that's all the time I have this week. So until we talk again keep racking up those wins one at a time. Take care