Building Generational Wealth While Retiring Early Abroad - Episode 46 (Classic Episode)
We're bringing another hard-hitting and inspiring episode with Amon and Christina Browning of Our Rich Journey. We dive deep into their path to financial independence, discovering their unique investment strategies that helped them secure their financial future. From smart investments to setting up brokerage accounts for their kids, they share their secrets to success. We then explore the incredible benefits of living and working abroad, from free housing to top-notch international schools. Amon and Christina discuss the impact of their financial journey on their children's future and their commitment to building generational wealth.
About our Guest:
Amon and Christina were from the San Francisco Bay Area. They were both federal government employees until one day they both just up-and-quit their jobs and worked toward the path for FIRE, and retired at the age of 39. For parents with two young kids to be able to retire at 39 took a lot of planning and intentional decision-making. And it all began in 2011, when they embraced the FIRE movement. In pursuing FIRE, they constantly thought of creative ways to make and save extra money to invest. After eight years of smart and consistent investments - they grew their stock market portfolio to an amount that allowed them to quit their jobs without ever having to work again.
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Naseema McElroy: Welcome to the Financially Intentional Podcast, the podcast all things personal finance, and hopefully some things you didn't even know you needed to know. I'm your host, Nesima McElroy, and my goal is to bring you topics and experts that will encourage you to take at least one actionable step that will aid you on your path to financial peace.
[00:00:37]Welcome to episode 46 of the Financially Intentional Podcast.
[00:00:44] Naseema McElroy: All right, you guys, I am super juiced to be having on Amon and Christina of Orange Journey. Hey guys. Hey, what's up? Hi. And this is another segment in our series about living abroad, living the dream that I want to live. And so I'm a mega fan of Amon and Christina. I am thrilled to be able to include them in the nurses on fire podcast and be able to expose you guys to them.
So thank you guys so much for coming on and we're just going to dive right in. Is that okay? Oh, that is perfect. Yes. Thank you so
[00:01:24] Amon Browning: much for having us on when you reached out to us and said. Do you want to be on? I said, heck yeah, let's do it. To come talk to you.
[00:01:32] Naseema McElroy: Oh, you guys are so sweet. You have to do that.
You make me feel all warm and fuzzy. Thank you. All right. So let's talk about your journey to financial independence. Like how and where did this start? Were you guys already married? Were you guys kind of like doing this before you got married? Take me all the way back to the beginning of your journey to financial freedom.
[00:01:54] Amon Browning: Oh, wow. You know what? It starts at a barbecue. It really does. So Christina and I met in college. At a barbecue that the black alumni was putting on for new students and Christina was an upperclassman. I was a lower classman, but the barbecue was free. So we were both at this barbecue. And of course, we were in line getting a plate.
She was standing right next to me. She was loading up on her plate. And, she was taking full advantage of this free food, and that's the basis of our story, taking advantage of free food. I heard that. But I knew that, we had a really good conversation, and we joke about that particular moment, but it actually signified a really important aspect about one another.
We took full advantage of the opportunities that were available to us. In this case, it was free food, we were both on the same page, we weren't too proud to go to a barbecue for free, but we were also networking and getting to know people. And that's kind of how our journey started. And then from there, we dated for a number of years.
We were working hard towards our goals in college. When we got out of college, we just continued to kind of feed off of each other. And when we first graduated from college, we continued that momentum of just trying to get better every opportunity. And so we started looking into investments, we started looking into real estate, and we started to formulate this investment strategy or this investment plan.
And at the time we graduated from college, we weren't thinking about financial independence. We were just kind of thinking about bringing wealth into our lives. So we started investing in real estate and we started investing in stocks. We didn't really know where we were going with all this, but we knew that we were making progress, Towards this wealth building
[00:03:33] Naseema McElroy: goal, but did you guys learn about this like from your parents?
Did you guys go through college? I mean, did you like take out loans in college or did your parents pay for college like? Can you just talk about those two things really quickly? Yeah. So we
[00:03:46] Christina Browning: did not come from wealthy families, but we went to a state school. So we had two different backgrounds. So my mom paid for my undergrad.
We went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. So luckily we made the choice and went to an affordable school. So my mother was able to pay for my undergrad. So I didn't have school loans with that respect. was so awesome. He didn't have his parents paid for his schooling. He got all of his school paid for through scholarships.
Tiny scholarships. Tiny
[00:04:17] Naseema McElroy: scholarships. Like a whole bunch of them. Yeah, it
[00:04:20] Amon Browning: was like over 25 scholarships from just local organizations. I'm from Vallejo, so it's a relatively small town. And I reached out to everyone that had a scholarship and I got almost
[00:04:31] Naseema McElroy: all of them. I mean,
[00:04:33] Christina Browning: it really goes to that sort of hustle mentality that Iman has always had.
It's like everyone always goes for the big scholarships, right? You want to get the big single scholarship that's going to pay for your whole entire four years or four years plus in college. And Iman had this idea you know what? Everyone's going for those. I'm going to go for the ones that are only, 250, 500, the ones that no one even bothers to put in here.
Effort towards because it's not worth enough and he just did a bunch of these and it ended up paying for his whole entire Undergrad, which is just amazing
[00:05:05] Amon Browning: to me. We left college with
[00:05:06] Naseema McElroy: relatively. No dead. That's a good start You guys graduated ahead of most people so that's awesome. Yeah So, and I like the fact that you guys kind of had different kind of funding sources, but ultimately you ended up at the same place.
And then you guys had that hustle and drive, like just from the beginning to just set off on this journey to build wealth. And so we're right there. So you guys are newly married and you're looking at real estate and you're looking at investing and all those kinds of things. So if it didn't come from your parents, where did you learn these things?
[00:05:40] Christina Browning: Yeah, I think, even though my mom was able to pay for my college, I was actually the first person in my family to go to college, and my mom raised us as a single mother. And her whole mentality in terms of the money was really focused on saving money. Just save money, make sure that you're not spending excessively.
And so I really got that drive in terms of not wanting to spend a lot of money, not throwing money away on certain things that were meaningless, just objects, and so I really got that from my mother, but in terms of learning how to invest. We really had to learn that ourselves.
[00:06:20] Amon Browning: Yeah, we learned everything we do now by experience.
I mean, it was really trial by fire, but we would read a lot of books. We would listen to a lot of podcasts and we would take action. The first real estate that we bought was a lease option. And it was something that we read in a book and we said, okay, let's try this. And it worked. And we've just continued to do that.
[00:06:39] Naseema McElroy: That is so cool. So you guys got a lease option on your first house and you guys ended up buying that house?
[00:06:45] Amon Browning: No, we ended up selling the lease option to another investor for a profit. And so basically we were just moving paper, our first deal was just kind of being a broker, but we were able to make enough money from that one deal to be able to buy our own primary residence.
And that's what really got us so excited about real estate.
[00:07:05] Christina Browning: We were so young, right after we graduated college and we were able to do this. And I think that just inspired us to think Hey, we can do these things that may not be typical for people our age. We can think creatively. And we can find ways
[00:07:22] Naseema McElroy: to build wealth.
That's why you guys are goals because you guys have done so many awesome things. But I think that what people think is that this pad, like you guys have done all these things that are so perfect and that you guys have it all figured out. But the difference between you and everybody else is that you guys just.
Went for it. You guys just tried it and not everything always works out. I know, but it was because you guys actually took that initiative to just go for it. Who would have ever thought that you can sell a lease option? I would never would have thought of that.
[00:07:56] Christina Browning: Yeah, and I mean, the idea that we were thinking of it right out of college too, is just I think that because we were successful doing that really paved the way for how we thought moving forward too. When we came up against something, we're like, we can make this happen. And we also thought if something doesn't work out, like what's the worst case scenario. That's even us when we decided we were going to move abroad for the first time.
The first time we moved abroad to live abroad was in Spain. And the idea was, should we do this? Are we really going to pick up and move to a foreign country? And then we sat down and we thought about it. What's the worst that could happen if we go there? I mean, we could always come back. There's not a Incredibly terrible story if it doesn't work out right and moving abroad was for us One of the best things we could have ever done.
So when
[00:08:43] Naseema McElroy: you guys moved to Spain, did you guys already have the kids? No,
[00:08:46] Amon Browning: so this actually follows the timeline of our story. So when we First started investing, it was in San Diego. We were in our early twenties in the middle of that, we have this idea of moving abroad and this was before we had kids. And so we moved abroad.
I think we were 24 or 25. And that's when this whole other journey
[00:09:04] Naseema McElroy: started for us. Can you talk about just like what inspired you to move abroad in the first
[00:09:08] Christina Browning: place? Yeah. Yeah. It was actually, I had been working at the job. We moved to San Diego and I'd been working actually on two part time jobs. For almost three years.
And I sort of thought there's got to be more than this. I feel like I have juggling two jobs and I feel like I'm at the shelf life of these jobs, like I've learned what I can learn from these jobs and I have to move on and I talked to him on it. I was just I feel like I've got to do something different.
I can't just stay in these jobs. We should probably look for something else. And Amman was already working for the federal government at the time. And I was like, why don't we just look anywhere? We could go to Washington DC if we wanted to. And he said, okay, yeah, let's think about that. And really seriously, probably less than three weeks later.
He said, I have an interview for a job in Spain. And I was
[00:09:58] Naseema McElroy: like, what, how
[00:10:00] Christina Browning: did that happen? And I had actually gone abroad when I was in grad school to Spain and I just loved Spain. And so the idea that he had an interview for a job in Spain was like thrilling. And then also just. We had so many questions about, can we make this work or not?
Yeah,
[00:10:19] Naseema McElroy: it was pretty serendipitous too. Oh my goodness.
[00:10:23] Christina Browning: Yeah. It's just I just threw out this idea and Iman just started taking steps to make
[00:10:28] Naseema McElroy: it happen. That is so cool. So you guys lived in Spain for how long?
[00:10:33] Amon Browning: We lived in Spain for one year and then we had gotten pregnant with our first daughter.
And another job had opened up in Japan and the job paid more. It had a little bit more stability. So we went to Japan and in Japan, we had our first daughter and our second daughter, and we stayed in Japan for seven years or
[00:10:53] Naseema McElroy: six years. So were you working during this time, Christina? I wasn't
[00:10:56] Christina Browning: working originally and my mom was working for the federal government.
And then I started working as a contractor. I was working. At the same base, the same facility, but Amman was a federal government employee at the time, and I was a contractor for the
[00:11:10] Naseema McElroy: federal government. Gotcha. Cause I know you guys say like a lot of the time during this journey, you guys were living off of one income.
So that's why I was asking. Yeah.
[00:11:19] Christina Browning: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So after I had said no, it was about a year. Where I wasn't working with Sanoa, and then that's our oldest one. And then the youngest one, once he had her, then I was working as a contractor.
[00:11:33] Naseema McElroy: All right. So you guys are in Japan now for how many years? I want to say seven years.
Okay. Oh, so the majority of the time you guys were in Japan. I thought you guys, didn't you come back to the States and you go to grad school at UCLA? Yeah, we are.
[00:11:50] Christina Browning: We're like, what did we do next? Yeah. So we were in Japan and then we went back to Spain for a year. And during that year I didn't work in Spain. So Amman was just working and it was me and the girls. And I was studying for the LSAT. Yep. And I started studying for the LSAT because I wanted to go to law school.
And so I actually applied for law school. I took the LSAT in Spain, in Madrid, and then I applied for law school. While we're in Spain, and I applied early admissions to give us enough time to try and figure out, where we'd be going and so we only stayed a year in Spain and then went back to the States to go to law school.
And so that was another 3 years where it was just a month. Working and supporting us while I went through law
[00:12:37] Naseema McElroy: school with the girls. So why did you decide to go to law school in the States versus abroad? I
[00:12:42] Christina Browning: think that for me, the top law schools are, we're located in the States, the schools that I wanted to go to were top law schools.
And so I wanted to go there and I also felt like the opportunities at the time after I graduated There were things while I was in school in terms of externships I got to extern for a federal court judge there and I just felt like there were a lot more Opportunities especially since I hadn't worked as a federal government employee overseas at that time.
Okay makes sense yeah, so we went back to law school for the three years and then After that, we moved up to the Bay Area, which was our home for the next couple of years in Oakland. And yeah, we lived in Oakland for a while and then we just felt like we were missing that life abroad again. It's like it was out of our system for a little bit.
Then we went back to the States, missed it, and then realized we got to find a way to get back overseas again. You know
[00:13:45] Amon Browning: what was interesting about this whole timeline is that while Christina was in law school, Is when we got this idea of financial independence. Where did it come from? It came from one day at work when I had received an award for 10 years of federal service.
And I got this award. And at the same ceremony, someone else had gotten an award for 40 years of service. And when I got my award right next to the same guy that got his award for 40 years of service, they kind of just really made my award seem so minuscule. And for me, it was a very eye opening experience because in the end, after 40 years, all you get is the same piece of paper that you got for work in 10 years.
You get the same piece for 40 years. And I just said to myself, I can't see myself working all this time, missing out on what the rest of the world has to offer, I need to do something different. And so after that ceremony, I came home and me and Christina started talking about all of this stuff. It was happening right in the middle of Christina in law school.
We had really small children. And so we had to devise a plan that supported all of that, something we could get through law school, we could raise these kids and at the same time, start to make these investments that could eventually support
[00:14:59] Naseema McElroy: financial. What resources were available during that time for you for financial independence?
[00:15:04] Amon Browning: Now it's called FIRE or financial independence. You know back then I read this book called it was like getting rich one house at a time But the idea was that through real estate you can develop a passive stream of income that can support You know indefinitely and so it was All of these different resources were really all about having your investments work for you.
So you don't have to work. So, now it's called fire, but before it was just having passive income, doing all the work for you. So, those were the resources we just wanted to develop these assets. That could basically replace our steady
[00:15:40] Naseema McElroy: income from our job. Yeah, I love it. That's why I asked you because now fire is such commonplace kind of word, at least amongst us.
Right. But I was like wondering like back in the day, like what was it? But yeah, that the catchphrase then was. Passive income generate passive income. So yeah, that's awesome. So you just we're looking at real estate as a tool to do that. But in the meantime, though, you still had already for years set up your other investments, right?
Not with as much
[00:16:06] Amon Browning: intent after that ceremony. So yes, we were still investing, we were still taking full advantage of our tax advantage accounts. And we were saving a lot of money. We were hustling our butts off, but once we kind of had that switch go off, we turned
[00:16:22] Naseema McElroy: it into an overtime. So that's when the fire really started.
Yes, gotcha.
[00:16:28] Amon Browning: It's so interesting because for us, when we made this switch, it was like, everything was a money making opportunity. We would see something and just think, Oh, we can do that. That can bring more income into our life. That's what happens when you start this journey. It's almost like the laws of attraction, like you are bringing all of this wealth into your life.
And we always talk about this on our YouTube channel, how we can create money out of thin air. Yeah.
[00:16:51] Naseema McElroy: I think people don't understand that they always are waiting. More money to think that things are going to change, like if only I can make more money, but really it's the mindset okay, I can do this and I can start on this path.
And then those opportunities present themselves. Okay. So you now have this fire lit under you and you're like, I am going to do this. So what year was that?
[00:17:14] Amon Browning: This was
[00:17:16] Naseema McElroy: 2011. Oh, right. 2011. You guys were in LA. Christina was in law school and you had two little babies. And then, so after that, you guys moved back to the Bay and then what happens?
[00:17:28] Amon Browning: Oh, we go hard. So in 2013, we buy a house in Oakland and that is really the seed. That set up a whole chain of events. So we use an FHA loan to buy this house. And we say that, we put relatively a low amount of money down on this house. We only put 17, 000 down. And I think after closing costs, maybe it's 20, 000, but this was money that we had saved up.
But this 20, 000 to buy this fixer upper home, after we had fixed it up, we had gotten all this equity. And then we used that equity to buy another property.
[00:18:05] Naseema McElroy: But I want to pause just because you're saying like you guys fixed up this house and so you must have spent a whole lot of money to fix up this house.
Talk about that.
[00:18:14] Christina Browning: Oh my gosh. I love this. Yes, because, okay, now we have a video on this because I wish I could just tell you what the house looks like and you could envision what it looks like when we bought it, but we bought this house and we had this vision of what we wanted to do with it. And we decided that we were going to fix the house up ourselves.
We weren't going to pay contractors. We actually got bids for contractors and it was really just outrageous. It was like, what? I mean, that's like the cost of the house. Like it just didn't make any sense. And so we started thinking about, it's we want to do this. We want to redo the kitchen. We want to take out all the cabinets.
We want to cabinets, new flooring, add a bathroom. We added a bathroom. We did, new baseboards. Pulled out all the shelving in the living room. It was terrible built in shelving. Yes, and we did it
[00:19:04] Naseema McElroy: all ourselves And how much did it cost?
[00:19:06] Amon Browning: Okay, so, we're always about figuring out ways Overcome our financial challenges and when we saw those estimates for 60, 000 or 80, 000 to renovate the kitchen I got a copy of all those estimates and I started really looking at the cost and a lot of the cost We're in labor, right?
And then, so I looked at the material and I said, okay, the material costs, we can take care of the labor, but the material costs, how much are they paying for the material? And we figured out ways to get material for a lot cheaper. And then. We figured out something. At ikea, they have complete kitchens that they sell, and in Ikea they have a section called the ASIS section where people can return, furniture that they don't like.
And then IKEA marks it down where they also allow people to return kitchens, right? And so we went into IKEA one day and someone had returned a whole kitchen. This kitchen was marked down to 80%. So we were like, This is it. This is how we do it. And so we were able to renovate our kitchen, our whole house.
I mean, how much did we do that whole thing for? I think it was like, we spent less than 10, 000 renovating the whole house.
[00:20:15] Naseema McElroy: Less than 10, 000. That's crazy. I mean,
[00:20:18] Christina Browning: I'm talking about brand new kitchen. So all the bedrooms, we've refurnished the bedrooms. We added in a complete new bathroom. I mean. The place just looked like we bought this property at the time where all of the properties in the Bay Area were being overbid.
They were not on the market more than seven days. People, agents were telling people that were interested to put your bids in by a certain day and were not accepting.
[00:20:45] Naseema McElroy: I know that's what I was looking to buy. I know that's why I went to Brentwood. That's why I went to Brentwood. I was like, I cannot. And then what I was going to get, it was totally ridiculous.
Yes. And when we
[00:20:56] Christina Browning: got our house, so the house that we bought, it had been sitting on the market forever. And it's so interesting because there was nothing structurally wrong with the house. It just looked sort of dumpy, you walk in and you're like, this is not a staged house. No one put any effort into trying to sell this.
So at the time in the Bay Area, when if a house sat on the market for more than seven days, people thought there was something wrong with it. So our house was. Over 30 days for sure. I've been on the market. No one wanted to even go look at it because they thought there's something wrong with it. No one's overbidding on it.
No one even wants this house. And so we got the house, we completely flipped it, sold it later down the road. And then our house became that house that everyone was trying to bid on. Everyone overbid on the house, but it became that house that everyone wanted, but no one could envision what it could look like.
At the time that
[00:21:47] Naseema McElroy: we bought it. I think that speaks a lot to you guys. It's foresight to like back to that. Like you guys can see opportunity and everything just like the lease option. Now you guys saw this dumpy house. Like I don't have that foresight because like I said, I was looking at the same time and I was just like, these houses look like crap.
I'm going to go to Brentwood where I can get a new construction. For, lower the amount of price as like a rundown house here. So I didn't have that foresight. And so I'm just like, dang, I wish I would could look at something and see that. But it wasn't like you guys saw like this total, like shack of a house.
You guys just understood the market. You understood that if houses weren't staged well, even though, there was nothing wrong with it, you could see the potential. And then you guys were able to actually go in, take contracts that you got from bids and look at those contracts and do the work yourself.
And you guys are not contractors.
I'm just saying like the foresight is amazing, but it's not anything that anybody else couldn't do. And that's why I think your platform is genius because these are things that are totally replicable.
[00:22:57] Christina Browning: It totally is. Right. I mean, even working with the city to get permits. To do these things that we were doing in the house.
I mean, I feel like the process is actually very simple. And then when you're doing it, not as a contractor, it's almost like the city feels like pity for you. Yeah, they were so nice. Then when they'd come and look at things it would just be
[00:23:19] Amon Browning: like they would help us fix things and say okay You need to kind of do it like this.
I said, oh, so it was really great You know when they see that you're an individual and you're working hard They can
[00:23:30] Naseema McElroy: I tell you something though? Like I could have totally done this because not only is my best friend Like someone who worked in the contract department during that time, but my daughter's godfather was actually the inspector, the ones that come out to the house.
It's
[00:23:44] Christina Browning: so . Oh my gosh.
[00:23:46] Naseema McElroy: That I . That is so funny. So for the simple fact that I couldn't even think like that tells you a lot, but at the same time, now I know. And also I do want to show pictures of this house. I want people to actually visualize that. So I'm going to be putting in the show notes, like the links to my favorite YouTube videos that you guys have.
I mean, super hard to pick. So there'll probably be a whole lot of them, but this one in particular, I'm going to have like how you guys lift this house and your other houses in Oakland. But continue, please. That's great. Okay. So you were saying like, so you took this house, the profits from this house and that 17, 000 you put down on it, has helped you.
Oh, yes.
[00:24:31] Amon Browning: That's 17, 000. It allowed us to get all this equity in this first house and use that equity to buy another house and another house. And so in all, we only bought three houses. In Oakland, but they were good buys and that's the thing. You don't have to buy 50, 10 or 15 houses to achieve really high returns.
If you buy right the first time, you can get amazing returns. So the three houses that we bought all of them over the holidays. So we didn't have any bidding wars. No one was out looking at the houses. We were able to get great deals on them. They were all fixer uppers and every fix that we did have so much equity to the table.
So, just by taking a chance on that 17, 20, 000 down payment, we were able to really get a jump on our financial independence that was, half of our journey is real estate and the other half is stocks. And we were very fortunate to be able to have that kind of momentum with
[00:25:29] Naseema McElroy: real estate.
That is so awesome. I think what you said was golden. It's really not about the amount of deals. It's really the quality of the deals that you do. And like I said, like a lot of people will say it's impossible, especially during that time, like to buy real estate in the Bay Area. And you guys looked at it a different way.
You were like, okay, what kind of deals can we do to maximize our profitability? And so, like I said, this, you guys, this foresight is for real goals. And then, so you guys bought this house in the Bay area and then what happened next? So
[00:26:08] Amon Browning: while we're buying all these houses, we are at the same time investing into the stock market, right?
But we are investing, of course, in our tax advantage accounts. And then we're also side hustling. At the same time, so when we identified that Ikea hack where they were basically, they had all these kitchens on sale at Ikea, we were reselling those kitchens as a side hustle. And we would just have various side hustles and every time we got money from a side hustle, we would plow that into low cost index funds.
So we have both things going for us at the same time. And we were saving a whole lot of money. We changed our lifestyle, we were driving a BMW X5, it was brand new, we thought we were flying it, everything like that, we're trying to keep up with the Joneses, but it was like, when you have a car like that, it is sucking you with maintenance, every time we got an oil change on that thing, it was like a hundred dollars just to get the oil change, the gas, you have to keep a car like that clean and dent free.
And so there were all of these maintenance costs. So we got rid of that car and we got an 800 used car. So we made lifestyle changes to bring our cost of living down and then use that savings to invest into the stock market.
[00:27:20] Naseema McElroy: And these were through brokerage accounts. So accounts outside of your company's retirement account.
[00:27:25] Amon Browning: Yes. Yes. One of the things. That when people are on this journey, you really want to take advantage of the tax advantage accounts, those retirement accounts, but you can't get to those as easy in early retirement. So we also built a very large brokerage non retirement account so that when we achieved financial independence, we could access those funds
[00:27:45] Naseema McElroy: easily.
I'm a link to the video of how you guys invest too. And I like the fact that we'll get to this. Later in the journey too, but I like the fact that you guys set up brokerage accounts for your kids to like, that's really dope. How did you guys end up in Japan again? This
[00:28:04] Amon Browning: second go round, the timing couldn't have been perfect.
Couldn't have been any, any better because we're kind of in the middle of this journey, and then we have this opportunity to go overseas. Where we can save even more money because our housing is paid for. Our utilities are paid for, we get extra allowances just for being overseas. And so at about year five of our eight year journey, we go overseas and we're able to save even more money.
And while we're in Japan, we're actually starting to sell our properties that were in the Bay area. We felt okay, these properties had peaked. We had two condos and we didn't really like owning condos. And we wanted to kind of. Slowly move out of real estate as we moved into early retirement.
So we sold all the properties and while we were overseas, we just continued to use all of the savings from living rent free to invest into the stock market. And we really just piled all in and we were very, I don't want to say we were fortunate, but the market was also going up during this entire time.
I mean, there were ups and downs. But the thing about us is most people during this past 10 years, right? They would experience a drop and they would pull their money out. But we would just keep adding to it like we never were phased by any of the blips that happened. There was one day along this journey where the stock market dropped a thousand points and people were like, Oh, it's over, but they're running for the hills.
We just kept doing the same thing.
[00:29:30] Naseema McElroy: It didn't hurt that you guys were investing as we have had like record highs, but there was no way that you could have known that you just knew that you needed to invest consistently, keep on being in the market. Cause it's about the time in the market, not the timing of the market.
Right. That's exactly right.
[00:29:48] Christina Browning: Yeah. It's all about making sure, like you said, that you're consistent, that you're. Putting your money in when the market's high and you're putting your money in when the market's low, it doesn't matter. It's just consistently putting in money each month, investing that money and allowing it to grow long
[00:30:04] Naseema McElroy: term.
You guys don't have any real estate now though, right? No, right. You sold off everything. Okay. And then that money went into your investment accounts. to grow. And so can you guys talk to, and we're going to bring it back to the nurses for this little segment. Can you guys talk about the benefits of living and working abroad?
[00:30:25] Christina Browning: Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. It's amazing. I mean, the first and biggest thing I think is in terms of money is that you have an opportunity if you get the right employer to live. Rent and mortgage free. So a lot of employers, including who we work for, which was the United States federal government, they have to incentivize people to come all the way to a foreign location and live there.
And so one of the ways that they incentivize people to do this is by paying their rent. And all of their utilities also. So it's a huge benefit in terms of people that are looking to hit financial independence or financial independence and retire early. Either one that you get to save your housing costs and throw that into.
Whatever mechanism that you have for investment in order to grow your money. So that's a huge thing in terms of
[00:31:21] Amon Browning: savings. The other benefit for us when we went over there, we had children. And if we were working in the States, our kids would have to be in daycare. They were in daycare when we were in Japan and daycare was.
It's probably a quarter of the price it would have been in the Bay Area because just the cost of daycare is less expensive there. So there was that expense that was lower. And then when they got a school age, they were able to go to great international schools. They actually went to a school on a Navy base, but it was an amazing school with a ton of resources.
So there's
[00:31:57] Naseema McElroy: also that benefit. Your kids are going to like the top schools in the world, just because that's what the employer provides. Do they give you a stipend or do they just pay for the school directly?
[00:32:07] Amon Browning: It depends on the country that you're in. So we have friends that worked in Singapore and they would pay for the school, but the school was a 50, 000.
Yeah, they would pay for the schools directly. I mean, these are like most amazing international schools in the, in the world. So yes, in that case, they were paying the school directly. The school that we went to, we didn't really see any exchange of money because the school was built for the military
[00:32:30] Christina Browning: families.
And when Aman says they were paying for the school, he means the employer pays for the employee's kids to go to school at that 50, 000
[00:32:38] Naseema McElroy: range. Wow. Woo. That's a lot of money.
[00:32:42] Christina Browning: And one of the things also that Aman briefly mentioned too, was the medical facilities. Both of our girls were born in Japan at the Navy base there.
And I know we're talking to nurses here. They hire civilian nurses. It's at these Navy bases throughout the world also. So they hire them to work at these hospitals also. So it's like working with contractors and civilians and military members all at the hospital. So those are great opportunities for nurses looking to get a job with the federal government abroad.
Looking in those areas and finding jobs and working at the hospitals there and getting all these incredible
[00:33:22] Naseema McElroy: benefits. Yeah. I think that's great, Christina, that you brought that up. Cause I'm a labor and delivery nurse. I'm always like, where would I work?
Yeah, but I've gotten offers for places like in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and places like that, where they want to have American personnel there. For like their expats. And so, yeah, there's plenty of opportunities for a nurse. So to some of the opportunities are free housing. Sometimes your transportation is covered too, right?
Yes. Your
[00:33:54] Amon Browning: transportation to and from whatever country, they also include sometimes vacation, we call them morale days where they will send you to a different country and take care of your vacation
[00:34:03] Christina Browning: costs. Yeah. You're not paying at all for to move from the States, for example, to the foreign country that you go to, they come to your home, they pack up every single thing.
You don't even have anything. It's incredible. Yes. Yes. So it's almost like when you have to pack yourself up once you're like, this is awful. They pack everything up for you. And then when you get there, they unpack everything for you and put it wherever you want. It's you don't have to touch
[00:34:28] Naseema McElroy: anything.
If I wasn't convinced. I mean, I have moved so much in the last couple of years. Like the packing alone makes me nauseous. So when you said that, I was like, Oh my God, like mind blown. That's amazing. That's a super incentive. Okay. I'm like leaving next month. But not only that, you have your housing, you have your transportation back and forth from the States, like a couple of times you have your kids education paid for.
I mean, so what do you spend your money on? I know,
[00:35:00] Christina Browning: right? That's what I get to say so much. I mean, that's the thing. So we're talking about the monetary benefits, right? But then there's also just the cultural, social benefits of. Being in a foreign country, seeing a different culture, the diversity of people, and just experiencing something that you wouldn't necessarily get to experience if you stay in the States.
So, I mean, there are just, there's so many opportunities. To save money by moving abroad. And there's also so many opportunities to just get this incredible experience of having something different that you'd never have the opportunity to have if you
[00:35:43] Naseema McElroy: stay in the state. It's totally a life enhancement. I feel like, but for your kids, like it's always been my dream to kind of do world schooling, to make sure that my kids understand.
Different cultures. I'm talking about languages, foods, and this just seems like the perfect opportunity to do that. Plus it helps with your, it helps when you're on this journey of financial independence, because what was your savings rate at this time? It was at least 70%. And then it's not like you didn't have to live in deprivation because all of your needs were being met.
And you guys are living really like nicely out there.
[00:36:19] Amon Browning: Oh my goodness. Don't even get us started on our housing. Because when we were in Spain, we had a villa. The villa was a block from the beach, and our villa had a saltwater pool. So it was like, we'd go to the beach and be in the saltwater, and we could be in our backyard and be in the saltwater.
And our house in Japan, it was also by the beach, huge. And I mean, this is the incentive that they give people, to come overseas. I would have came overseas for a lot less when we showed up and saw all of this, it was like, wow, this is an amazing opportunity. What's really sad is we tell people about this all the time.
We say you guys should take full advantage of this. There are plenty of opportunities. And even if there isn't an opportunity, if there is not a job there, you can create one. If I was a nurse and I have a skill, a specialized skill, you can create an opportunity for yourself anywhere in the world. You don't have to wait for a job to open up.
I'm sure that there is something that you can go and train people with. You can develop an online business. There is a way to get to any country. If you put your mind,
[00:37:23] Naseema McElroy: thank you a mom for saying that, because I think a lot of times we are just so closed minded, but there is limitless opportunities.
Everybody is always looking for a way to get ahead financially, but. They're always thinking about ways that they can cut back. And that's why I like that you guys are focused on ways to generate income, as opposed to looking at reduction methods. There's only a finite amount of ways that you can cut your budget and all those kinds of things, but there are so many different ways that you can increase your income and create opportunity for yourself.
So, thank you, Amon, because, especially see it here, like with nurses, we have these golden handcuffs, right? Especially in the Bay Area, because we do make so much money. We have great benefits and where, we have really good insurance. So people are just like, why would I leave?
It's because quality of life is because of, like opportunities to expose yourself and your kids to all these other opportunities, like just cultures and all that stuff. And I was just like, even though we make a lot of money in the Bay area, we're still living in poverty. Like we're still like right above the poverty line because the cost of living here is.
Like super ridiculous. So it's not impossible, but like you guys did it in the Bay Area where you guys maximize your living situation. You did Airbnb and all that kind of stuff, which we. Didn't really talk about that much, but that was what you guys may work here to reduce housing costs. But like most people who are in the Bay Area are living check to check, which is really
[00:38:55] Christina Browning: sad.
Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting because it's like, yeah, you make a lot of money when you live in the Bay Area, but the Bay Area is also so incredibly expensive, right? To live there. And I think the idea is like. People can get stuck in a rut where it's just people sometimes it's so interesting.
Someone wrote a comment on our channel and it said it was sort of funny. The way he said it was sort of funny. It was like it was on a recent video of how to make more money and he said something to the effect of. Do you have any tips for someone who's lazy but doesn't like their job? You know what you do for someone who's lazy but doesn't like their job and wants to reach financial independence and retire early And I commented back and I said basically I recommend that you have to make a choice You have to make a choice if you want to remain lazy and I said those are your words But you can either remain lazy And then also stay in a job that you don't like, or you have to change your lifestyle.
You can't be lazy and that will get you to the job that you like, or that will get you to financial independence. So by being lazy, you're making the choice that you want to be lazy and you want to stay in the position that you're at and you're making that choice. And if you want to get out of a job that you don't like, then you have to change.
[00:40:13] Naseema McElroy: You can't be lazy. I think that's the same as like people who comment on stuff that I make. They're just like, oh, you can only say that because you make so much money. How can you be relatable to somebody who only makes 20, 000 a year? And I'm just like, the real question is why are you committed to making?
20, 000 a year. Why are you still there? Let's start there. Right. But I think that our platforms need to be here for people to see what's possible. And that's what I always say. This is about just showing you what's possible. And not only do you guys show people what's possible, you guys do such an excellent job of breaking it down.
In two terms that we can understand because let's face it, like the personal finance face is pretty vanilla and they make it unnecessarily sophisticated sometimes and I feel like that's a barrier for people to improve on their finances. But I think you guys do a stellar job of making it digestible in something that, like I said, anybody can do.
So thank you for what you guys are doing. . Oh, yes.
[00:41:16] Amon Browning: I couldn't have said it better. I feel like we get so frustrated with what is out there as far as personal finance and financial literacy information, they just, sometimes it can be overcomplicated. This is not a complicated thing. If we were able to do it, if we were able to take our incomes, because when we started, we were in like making 26, 30, 000.
A year, combined and we were able to increase our income significantly. That's because we didn't sit still. We read books and then we took action. How you learn how to do this stuff, how you learn to change and create wealth is just by educating yourself. And then once you have that education, taking action, because that's, what's the most powerful.
You can do all the reading in the world, but when you actually put it into action. It is amazing what happens after
[00:42:07] Naseema McElroy: that. Yes, I think people get, even if people want to do better, get stuck in this rut of analysis paralysis, but just take that first step. Even if you mess up, guess what? You've gone forward and now it's not like a real mistake.
It's just something that you can learn from and you just keep on building from there. But you guys actually took those actions and let's get to the fantastic thing it has allowed you to do now, you guys taking the action as you've gone on this journey and you have now reached the pinnacle. You guys are now financially independent.
Congratulations on that. Okay. But now, like you guys got there, so what does that mean? And what does your life look like now? It looks amazing.
[00:42:55] Amon Browning: Honestly, we talked about this all the time. We can't imagine going back to where we were. Like, I know a lot of people that are listening to this are still in in that mode, they're in the rat race and you don't have to be there.
You can get to this point by just implementing a lot of the stuff that we talk about that you share with people, that we share people on our platforms. But as we were going through this, we visualize what financial independence and what this freedom would look like. And it is amazing to have all the time in the world, to be able to focus on what we want to do and not be kind of slaves to.
Someone else. We have the freedom to be able to make our day. We get to spend it with our children the way we want to, we can go on all of their filters. We don't have to get permission from our job or take leave or anything like that. We're not rushed in the morning. We're not feeding our kids breakfast in the car on the way to work.
We sit down, we have breakfast, we spend time with our children, then me and Christina go off and spend the rest of our day the way we want to. It's an amazing
[00:43:57] Naseema McElroy: feeling. That's awesome. And so for those who don't know, who wouldn't know, but just, we emphasize, so that means that now you guys have enough in your investments that you can live off your investments without having to ever work again, if you don't want to, right.
[00:44:15] Christina Browning: Exactly. Yeah, so the idea is you look at your future expenses and what your annual expenses would be in retirement. If you're working with a stock portfolio, then you multiply that, those annual expenses by 25, and that's the number that you would need in order to retire. And then once you get that number in your portfolio, the idea is that you can retire and you can withdraw 4 percent from that portfolio and live off of that
[00:44:40] Naseema McElroy: and never run out of money.
Right. And I like that you guys based your number off of kind of like the Bay Area living in the Bay Area. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:48] Christina Browning: Which I mean, we did a recent video on the cost of living in Portugal, and if you see that video, we summarized the last month's living expenses was only 4, 500, which to some people is quite a bit of money, and it still is a lot of money.
If you are living in the Bay Area off of 4, 500, you're doing something amazing because the Bay Area is, like we said, right, it's so, so expensive. And so. The idea is if you project your expenses off of the place that is the most expensive to live, and you use that as your fire number, then that will not limit you in anywhere you go.
So you could go from your higher cost of living to a lower cost of living. But if you base it off of a lower cost of living, you're basically stuck in that area. You can't move around after
[00:45:36] Naseema McElroy: that. Yeah, I love that. And it's just because you guys did this, you guys have cushion and I feel like you'll never run out of money.
So then you use that as your legacy building tool for your kids, right? Exactly.
[00:45:48] Christina Browning: And we talk about, it's just like this generational wealth, right? It's like we've created. Our girls own personal accounts, custodial accounts for the girls so that money is already growing now for them so that when they're older, it's going to be a significant amount of money for each of them when they get older.
And it's just automatically being put into their accounts. But not only that, it's like the accounts that we have now, we're not even close to a 4 percent withdrawal because again, living in Portugal is nothing in terms of the cost of living compared to. The Bay Area. So what we leave behind in our own accounts for that also goes to them.
It's not just about handing them money either. It's about this idea that we have these custodial accounts for them. We're showing them how we invest these accounts for them. We're showing them how their money grows and they understand this idea, this concept of. Automatically investing into these accounts and basically watching it grow and how much it could potentially grow
[00:46:45] Naseema McElroy: to as they get older.
And I like that you guys include them on their platform too, because I think that a lot of generational wealth and legacy building is about financial literacy and making sure that they understand that you're not just. Handing them a check, when they turn 18 and then they're just like what do I do with this?
No, like their understanding, not only are they seeing you going through it, but you guys are actually educating them on how to make sure that they continue to be on the path of financial independence. And I think that's amazing. But can you guys talk to what you guys? Have what do you feel like the benefits of you guys being abroad?
And also the benefits of your financial journey for your kids I
[00:47:28] Christina Browning: think the benefits of being abroad and retiring in general. I think is that we get to spend so much time With our girls. We get to spend so much more time with our girls and then especially being abroad. I have to tell you this story.
We woke up extra early this morning at around 5 30, 5 45 this morning because we dropped off our oldest girl to school so she could go on a two day field trip and she's going to Spain for her field trip. I mean, the idea of that is our daughter is in eighth grade and she is going on a field trip to Spain.
I mean, those are the opportunities when you're living abroad that you get to do these things. And we were just talking about our oldest daughter is so interested in the history of World War II. And she wants to visit Germany so badly and just... Understand and be able to travel throughout Germany and look at that culture.
She's so interested in it and we could just get tickets and fly over to Germany. We could go for a weekend if we wanted to. I mean, the opportunities here are so endless in terms of spending time with them and teaching them about different
[00:48:37] Amon Browning: cultures. Yeah. And something else that's really special about being abroad for me and Christina is every day we wake up and we challenge ourselves.
So we are learning something new with everything that we do here on a daily basis. We're both studying the language. We have a tutor. I'm in a class. So we're going through that process. We're also meeting people that we've never had the opportunity to meet and people that are from all over the world. I think being in a big city like Lisbon, we have those opportunities.
If we would have done this. in San Francisco. Yes, there's still an international feel, but it's not to this degree. And when you're abroad, it's every day is an adventure. We just love that, especially being so young, we can enjoy things. I mean, we see tour groups all the time, and these tour groups are made of folks that are in their sixties and seventies, and they're moving very slow through these monuments and different things like that.
But for us, we're like, we're young, we're climbing mountains. We're doing all these different things. It's a very exciting life for us being early
[00:49:37] Christina Browning: retired. Yeah. And I think in terms of the impact for the kids, it's like they get to study. They're not only studying a second language, you're studying a third language.
So in their school, they're studying Portuguese, of course, but then they're also studying Spanish. So it's like. They can become trilingual just from living here. It's just so amazing to me. And I just feel the oldest one plays basketball. Our youngest one swims. Our oldest one is, they've been scouting her to play for, to represent Lisbon in the national basketball team, which is like huge for her 14 and under.
And she's only. She just turned 13 years old. Our youngest daughter is also training, and hopefully, has been asking me, how do I, what do I do to make nationals? So it's just all these incredible opportunities that we get to focus our energy on the girls, and they get to live this worldly experience that, you know, at some point, if they decide they want to go back to the states to go to college.
Say they want, my oldest one says she wants to go to Stanford and the youngest one wants to go to MIT. And I'm just thinking, do you know what their personal statements will look like when they apply for these schools? Like just the life that they've lived is just
[00:50:51] Naseema McElroy: so incredible. It's amazing.
Like I'm telling you, that's what I want to do. Like for my kids, it's one thing to be able to teach your kids something. Maybe at a museum exhibit, maybe just out of a textbook, but for your daughter to be in love with World War II and then be able to go to Germany and it's just like a hop and a jump is phenomenal.
And then one thing that we'll just touch on like super briefly, cause I know we've gone long, but all this information is really good. But like, how do you guys handle your traveling expenses when you travel to places internationally or just locally? We
[00:51:26] Amon Browning: had been travel hacking for the past three years.
religiously. So we haven't paid for many expenses other than maybe taxes and certain fees. So we've always been able to cover the cost of travel here in Europe. Travel is really inexpensive. So, we can get on a Ryanair flight for 20 and go anywhere, but we're still able. In retirement to keep our expenses low by travel hacking.
We don't travel hack to the same extent because we don't spend as much money, but just in general, we're still able to do most of the same type of travel.
[00:52:00] Naseema McElroy: That's so cool. Yes. I love travel hacking. And I think you guys have been on some incredible trips that you haven't had to spend much money at all on.
And so that's why I just wanted to briefly touch on that. But like overall, I feel like this is like your platform is called such a rich journey, not only for you, but for your kids and now for everybody that gets to follow along. So I'm just so grateful for you guys for creating this platform and being so open and not being afraid to share your numbers, not being afraid to share your experiences, actually just being like a resource for people who don't bring it to fit into this traditional mode of what.
Financial services, personal finances is supposed to look like, because yeah it doesn't resonate with a lot of people who really need it. And I feel like your voices resonate so much and you guys have helped me so much and continue to help me. So please never stop doing what you're doing.
And then just to sum things up, what are you guys working on next? What's new for you guys? How's life, after retirement, like what's going on.
[00:53:11] Amon Browning: We are enjoying retirement. We continue to produce videos and help people on YouTube and on Instagram. And we have a couple of things in the works. We're looking at real estate again here in Portugal.
But for the time being, we are just enjoying our early retirement.
[00:53:29] Naseema McElroy: And that's what it's all about is living your best life. And I'm glad that you guys are living your best life now while you're young, while your kids are young and that is goals you guys. So thanks again to Amani Christina for coming on.
I appreciate everything. I appreciate your platform, but most importantly, I appreciate you spending time with me today to share with the nurses on fire. You guys are amazing. Thank
Hey there I’m Naseema
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