Late Starters: Catching Up to FI - Episode 37

We are joined by our guest Bill Yount of Catching Up to FI, for a compelling conversation about the diverse and impactful stories of individuals who have achieved financial independence. We discuss the power of storytelling and vulnerability in creating a strong community that supports and inspires each other on their financial journeys and the significance of changing one's circle of influence to surround oneself with like-minded individuals who share similar goals and aspirations. From overcoming emotional overwhelm to taking actionable steps towards financial freedom, we hope you'll gain valuable lessons on building interpersonal wealth, finding strength in vulnerability, and the transformative impact of a generous and supportive financial community. Join this dynamic podcast to catch up to FI together and be financially intentional on your path to success.

About our guest:
Bill Yount is a practicing Emergency Physician, happily married with fraternal twin boys. He is a late-starter who woke up to Financial Independence at 50. Bill lived largely in a paycheck-to-paycheck existence in the rat race, on the hedonic treadmill, spending first and saved last. He knew largely nothing about investing and personal finance and it seemed like he made most mistakes in the financial book. Waking up was painful, full of what-if regrets and shame. Recovery has been hard but very rewarding. Bill's mission is to help other late starters start now and get others to start as early as possible on their individual journeys to financial independence. Money is a powerful tool and about mindset, mechanics, and life. We all deserve to live a balanced life of financial freedom and time abundance.

You can also find Bill at Catching up to FI and Financial Literacy Project.

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Naseema McElroy: Listen, my financially intentional people. I have the biggest treat for you because we are joined with my homie, like my, my homie for real Bill Yount. Yeah. Okay. And this man is amazing and I'm so honored to have him in my life. And I'm happy to share him with you guys because he is a true gem.

Not only is he an ER physician, but he has managed to do some incredible things with his finances on the late freight. At the end of the road when people think it's too late and not only has he done that for himself, but he has a, he has created a community of people that he is helping with his Facebook group catching up to five.

What is a bill? Like I could not be happier to have you here as you can tell.

[00:00:52] Bill Yount: Nesima, girlfriend, it is my pleasure to be here today. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. We first met years ago at FinCon, and your smiling face is a joy in my life. I always look forward to talking to you and let's rock this thing.

[00:01:07] Naseema McElroy: We are gonna rock it for sure for sure But I just want like people to understand your background and people will think well, you're a doctor You probably had it all figured out your wife's a psychologist you guys are like a power couple You know from the outside looking in but I want you to share your story And how you guys approach your finances and you guys have two incredible Twin boys now in their twenties, but the people want to know, like, how did you start on the path to well, your financial path, because it seems like you would have it all figured out.

But we know that's not the case. But

[00:01:48] Bill Yount: we may be a power couple, but we made powerful mistakes.

[00:01:51] Naseema McElroy: see, there it is.

[00:01:53] Bill Yount: the way. It started way back at the beginning. So if I can help you out there, my, I grew up in a family with no financial literacy. My father was a doctor. My mother was a nurse, very traditional boomer family. We had a scarcity mindset, fear around money.

I remember my dad doing the taxes and being lost for a month. And just became afraid of taxes and then just that carried over into a fear of money. I went a traditional path of, I'm going to work 40 years till I retire at 65. And I exited college, went to med school, got all the loans. But at that time, it's amazing.

And it was one of the best financial decisions I made was go to my state school. And when I started med school, it was 500 a semester. People can people cannot imagine that. So they come out of med school with six figures, 250, 000 of debt, and they have to know about their finances. Otherwise, they're behind the eight ball back then.

I didn't really. But in spite of that, I went to residency or in 25, 000 a year, finished up with earning about 30, 000 a year. People can't imagine that. And I was in Chicago. It's amazing. How do you make ends meet? But I did, except for the fact that I created during residency, about 30, 000 of credit card debt.

I deserve those vacations. I deserve time off. I was deprived. I was working 80 to 120 hours a week. There was. Nothing I wouldn't do to treat myself and, life started out as a series of treats. I exited residency with absolutely no idea how to partition my first paycheck. It was just money.

[00:03:36] Naseema McElroy: when you graduated did you have student loans or did you pay for all your schooling with cash,

[00:03:41] Bill Yount: I paid with all my schooling, essentially. And the student loan portion was less than 10, It was relatively trivial. And, that was taken care of relatively quickly. It wasn't that big of a deal because you go from essentially low five figures of income to, a real decent six figure income salary.

It's a big jump. And if you don't know what to do with it, it just sifts through your hands. And that's what happened. We bought the big house. We bought the new cars and We renovated the house. We just did, we were house poor. We were single digit savers. We saved last and spent first. I didn't know what net worth was.

I really didn't know what retirement accounts were. I knew that I was supposed to do it, but it just felt like the world will take care of me. I can kick this can down the road and eventually, this will all be okay. I didn't, I was afraid of the stock market. I didn't know anything about index funds or how to invest.

We bought whole life insurance, made that mistake. We got into a private bank and our advisor was an investment salesman. We were in actively managed funds, high costs, investment management fee, and had no idea that the cost compounded so heavily against us. So we didn't pay attention to costs or spending.

And then we got lost in the funnel of raising a family. We had challenges with kids that had developmental needs and financially that was a challenge. And that just rolled forward. We were focused on survival. We didn't really thrive. I would say we were on the hedonic treadmill. We were in the rat race.

[00:05:30] Naseema McElroy: When when did you like have that come to jesus moment like listen This is all got to stop like we have to figure this out

[00:05:39] Bill Yount: Well, most would consider it late. It's around 49 or 50. We woke up as our kids exited the nest and we realized that, and I hadn't even calculated net worth. And our net worth at that point was, remember these are physician numbers. Everybody's numbers are different. But more money, more problems, dude.

It, it doesn't make it any easier.

The lifestyle inflation with higher income can be more catastrophic than for folks with lower, more average incomes. But at any rate we exited and we realized, oh, my God, our net worth is, let's say under a million. I didn't know what it was. It may have been around 500, 750, 000, but our spending.

Was, a significant number. It was, one 50 to 200,000 a year.

[00:06:25] Naseema McElroy: Mm hmm.

[00:06:25] Bill Yount: to try and make the leap from a portfolio that was at that level, at 50 to one, where if we were to match our spending, you need four or $5 million

[00:06:35] Naseema McElroy: Exactly.

[00:06:36] Bill Yount: that's no small nut and you can frugal down. And, and we, we did somewhat, not completely, we became more aware.

We geo arbitraged. Accidentally, we moved from Chicago to Tennessee. We didn't know what we were doing. We knew incomes would go up and expenses would go down. We love no state tax, right?

That was a big bump beginning out of Cook County in Chicago.

[00:07:01] Naseema McElroy: hmm.

[00:07:02] Bill Yount: And so we got here and What did we do? Built a house.

[00:07:07] Naseema McElroy: Of course.

[00:07:08] Bill Yount: So we may have geo arbitraged, but we still had, so we had renovated a whole house at the, this is our biggest mistake.

And this is important.

At the Great Recession, we, just before we renovated a house and, put more than it was worth into it because money was free and easy. And then we became house poor. Our mortgage payment, far outweighed what we could save. It was more than we were saving.

We were upside down in the house at the Great Recession. It was awful. We couldn't get out of it for about six or seven years because of the market. And we eventually did, but we hadn't really built any significant home equity. We weren't focused on paying down the mortgage. We were focused on staying levered in order to afford our, afford our lifestyle.

So we got a lot of things wrong there as single digit savers and house poor. We kind of missed the bull market a little bit or about two thirds of it. And we committed the cardinal sin. We sold at the bottom. We, we were scared, fearful. We didn't understand that things were on sale.

We didn't, so we didn't escalate our savings rate,

[00:08:20] Naseema McElroy: Mm

[00:08:20] Bill Yount: sold equities and went more conservative at the wrong time.

That compounded against the seriously, if we had gotten that we'd be retired.

Uh, no question. If we've gotten the big rocks, being more prudent with our housing or prudent with the cars. My wife leased them. I bought new. The only thing I did right with cars is I drive them to the ground.

I've had three cars in my life and even though they were new and I drive the fat Audi sedan, it's 12 years old and has 170, 000 miles on it. You get a few things, you can get a lot wrong, but the point is you can recover.

[00:08:54] Naseema McElroy: Yeah. Yeah, but like you're saying big numbers to some people as far as like age wise, like late forties, early fifties, like just figuring it out. And that's like the common denominator in my audience is like, people think it's too late in their thirties or forties or fifties. They're coming to me like, I had no idea and now I want to get started, but I'm scared it's too late.

And I love that, you share your story and now that's documented, but now you share the stories of so many others who have started, later in life with your podcast, catching up to five. So I want to talk about, like, how you went from this place of figuring it out to now being on your own path to then being at a place where you're helping others.

[00:09:48] Bill Yount: Well,

the first thing we did was take control of our finances. We pulled everything out of the private bank. We put it into Vanguard and I took care of, and we changed all our investments. We increased our savings rate from single digits to 40% of gross. You look at the path to retirement is absolutely doable with a higher savings rate, which is a superpower of late starters because we're in our highest income years, right?

We also have catch up contributions that you can't forget about. So we escalate our savings rate to about 40% where we hit our balanced lifestyle and the spend on our lifestyle didn't change. It's amazing. We still did the things we wanted to do. So where the heck did all that money go? We weren't paying attention to it.

We were not...

[00:10:37] Naseema McElroy: It's all about intentionality, right?

[00:10:39] Bill Yount: I was just about to say we were not financially intentional. You've got it completely right.

And then so we took control. We got into all those low cost index funds. We increased our savings rate. We worked on our income. We geo arbitraged and frugal down.

Somewhat, we're still got a spending problem. I have to admit, we're still physicians. We still like to travel and we'll hack things here and there, but, we're not super hackers by any means, and we're not on rice and beans. We like to eat out. We do do things that, have a significant opportunity cost to them.

And people need to understand opportunity costs. You can go on that big vacation, but imagine compounding that 10, 000 vacation over 10 years. So the cost of something isn't just what you pay on the front end with post tax dollars. It's what you could have done with it in the market. But then again, guess what?

You've created memories. And

there's this great book called Die With Zero, where You know, the message of that book is create your memory dividends, live a balanced life. Don't just push things away waiting for that future day. As an emergency physician, I see folks that have worked 30 years. They look forward to their golden years.

They've pushed it off. They may be financially set, but then they come into the ER and they get diagnosed with cancer. And they don't get to enjoy their golden years. So as you go along with your balanced lifestyle, and ideally it's a 50 50, save one income and spend the other income in our two income family day, it's absolutely doable as long as you don't, balloon your lifestyle into both incomes, for example the With a 40% savings rate.

If you read that Sentinel article by Mr. Money Mustache, the shockingly simple math of early retirement. But those numbers apply to us. They apply to late starters. The path isn't that different. You just got to do it a little faster.

You can be 13 years to retire. My cohost on Catching Up Defy started with a net worth of zero at 50.

And she was a single income family. They focused intentionally on their money and within 13 years, they'd saved a portfolio that was over a million dollars and they're living comfortably. They're living their best life in retirement. I can't keep up with them. They're traveling everywhere.

And I kind of wonder, how do they do it? And you may not need as much as you think, the numbers are kinder to you than you think. You just got to focus on what am I spending and how do I meet those expenses and people use real estate to escalate their path. We just did an episode with somebody who woke up at 40 and used real estate, rental real estate to balance their portfolio to a 50 50 paper asset and real estate portfolio.

And they're financially free. They work part time for fun because they enjoy it.

I look forward to that too. Started this, passion project side hustle with Catching Up Defy. And what's amazing about the audience is, we are the silent majority. Our demographic is 40s, And 50 year olds but we have 29 year olds, we have 30 year olds, and we have 60 year olds.

You can feel late at any time in life. And that's actually the common demographic. Everybody's late at some level. Our audience is very broad and they come to us finding that they're not alone. You're not alone when you're late. Everybody's late.

[00:14:21] Naseema McElroy: Yeah, I love it. And, and I love that you just talked about it was really about the intentionality and the power in knowing your numbers, because typically it does not take as much as you think to actually get to where you need to be. You just have to understand the numbers behind it. And I think people are so afraid to look at their numbers that they put it off in those years.

They could have been spending, saving and there that's the opportunity cost in itself, right? Because it's not just the dollars and cents. It's really just the experiences that they could have had. Had they, really focused on those numbers. I love that you share that because to income to physician income you're just like.

My lifestyle did not change because I started saving. It was just that you now knew where your money was going, because if you don't have a plan for your money, baby, it's going to be gone. And the same thing with me I can tell you where I was spending my money before. I just knew I didn't have any savings.

I didn't have any investments in place. But as soon as I sat down and got those numbers and wrote them out and created a plan to pay down debt to start investing, I quote unquote found the money, but it was there to begin with. I just had to be intentional about it. And I think, like you said, at any stage, that's possible.

And so I love that you're, you have a platform now where you can share those stories because yes, it's great to hear from me. Yes, it's great to hear from Bill. But once you start hearing stories of other people, you start to normalize that just like consumerism is normalized to you. You start to normalize those messages that it's possible for you to live life comfortably and not have to scrape by when you get older.

[00:16:14] Bill Yount: Yeah, as soon as you say that first dollar, your life has changed. You have more security you become intentional, you create, with the plan, you create your emergency fund, then you can sleep at night, and then you work from there. There's a cash flow waterfall. We've had guests on our show that talk about that.

And we've had guests on our show that tell you how to invest. The reason we created our platform was because you can't lecture to people. They, they're not ready. The stages of being late are very similar. You wake up, whatever it is, you have that financial shock, your head's in the sand, then you feel shame, then you feel regret, then you feel remorse.

Why didn't I? Why shouldn't I? Why couldn't I? How did this happen? Well, eventually you work through that. It's like the stages of grief. You work through that, and then you get caught up in the rabbit hole. Oh my God, I'm going down, and all these resources, podcasts, blogs, books. I consumed for a year or more, I was in analysis paralysis because it's not just the knowledge you got to take action

and you don't have to be perfect as a physician.

I'm a perfectionist. I want to know how to do it before I do it. Well, that's not the right way. You got to fall forward. You got to make your mistakes. You got to just start. We talk about late starters and one of our guests said, that's actually wrong because the emphasis. There's a little too much on late and not starter.

[00:17:46] Naseema McElroy: I love it. I love it.

[00:17:49] Bill Yount: Yeah. And so we created this platform where it's just in time education. It's out there. It's never going away. It's really enlivened my life with a creative process. You feel, and you can't just consume knowledge and change your life. You can get a message out there to help other people change their lives.

And, you go through that, the stages again, I'm in the mucky middle stage. You got to do the work, you get through the honeymoon and you're like, I can't really speed this up without taking more risks than I might be comfortable with. And you got to assess your risk need for it and capacity for it.

And you got to try and match those 2 things to where you're comfortable because the path is going to be. 10 to 15 years. It just is. That's just the way it is. And you got to accept that. You may have to work longer, but that's okay. That's your superpower. Problem for me, and I think for a lot of people is burnout.

[00:18:45] Naseema McElroy: Yeah.

[00:18:45] Bill Yount: You can get to the point where the crossover between financial independence and burnout doesn't necessarily match up. And you got to find ways to manage that. Maybe you need to exit that job, escalate your income, get into something else that Makes you happier because you can't afford to not live your best life.

Now. You can't afford go ahead

[00:19:08] Naseema McElroy: I think Doc G is a perfect example of that. And Doc G has, what's his name of his podcast?

[00:19:14] Bill Yount: Let's earn an invest and he's also written a book called taking stock and

It's a perfect thing because you got to reverse Engineer your path.

[00:19:22] Naseema McElroy: Right.

[00:19:23] Bill Yount: just start and not know where you're gonna end up You got to set your goals both, personal and financial And you got to know what you, what you want your life to look like at the end.

You don't want to have those regrets that I could have, should have, would have once you wake up, and you get to that point after the mucky middle where you're in that, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's coming and you got to plan for your retirement, whatever that means. I hate the word.

Because we're all going to do something. We're driven as humans to do something. And the people that fail retirement are the ones that just come to the end, drop the mic, and go, I'm going to sit on the beach. That doesn't work. It works for about three months. So you've got to transition not only your finances, but your you know, your personal creative life.

And Fritz Gilbert Talks about this and he's, he's on our podcast. He's the retirement manifesto and it's unusual to talk about retirement when you're just getting started, but you got to think about it that way you get through that light at the end of the tunnel, and then you exit into this time freedom.

That's what we all want. We want the time freedom to do what we want when we want. We have autonomy of our time. We have purpose and identity and connection, just like Doc G our friend Jordan Gromit talks about. You can't lose that. For a physician, maybe a nurse, any professional, your identity can get wrapped up genetically.

Where your genes are actually altered by the fact that you're a doctor, you're a nurse, I care for others. Well, I care, I've cared for others for 31 years and I couldn't care for myself. I was on the hedonic treadmill, not taking care of my health, my other forms of capital, social capital, financial capital is only one of them, spiritual, emotional capital.

You've got to take care of all aspects of your life and, live a more balanced life in the now. People focus so much on the math at times, they forget about the emotion.

[00:21:29] Naseema McElroy: Yes, and then like you're talking about the messy middle and burnout and all that kind of stuff. And the reason why I brought up Don G was because I think he was like on this path, like he was burning out really fast. He didn't even know if he wanted to be a physician because of, the pace that he was working at.

And then he discovered that, maybe if I find something that I really, really like to do. Then I can do that forever. So it ended up being that He created a life for himself that he didn't need to retire from but it was because he had done this exploration of Financial independence and what that can look like and then kind of ended up somewhere in the middle But in his because he's a hospice doctor in his explorations He's seen that just like you, the people showing up at the emergency room that have lived these lives where they've just been working, working, working, waiting for retirement, that that's not what he wanted to do.

He wanted to focus more on living now, as opposed to, grinding it out for a couple of years. And I think that's an answer to burnout. It's like. Having the financial stability to maybe not retire early, but to be able to explore other options as to where you can make work work for you. So that might mean, working less hours and something that you really just love doing and making that work for you.

Fit into your lifestyle,

or it could just be still working full time, but finding something that you're truly passionate about that doesn't drain you. And I think that that's the beauty of this community is it's just not it's just not like the strict, okay, find the 25 extra income you hit there.

And then that's it. It's really about the journey that people take and. The community affords us the opportunity to be surrounded by people who are on that journey and exploring the, the, the marathon, right? Not just the end of the race they're exploring those things that every piece of lifestyle every debt.

Paid off every investment made a mocks, a piece of lifestyle our financial freedom that helps in your lifestyle. So it's about living life by design versus trying to get to this goal and then you're done. But. I think like communities like yours gives people like the exposure to know what's possible for them.

Because like I said, we don't like to be less lectured to, but we will listen to a story and those people all have stories to tell that somebody can take a piece of and resonate with and move forward. So let's talk about like your, your podcast and the people, the amazing people that I've been on there.

I know I've been on there, but I'm not,

[00:24:23] Bill Yount: You, you were one of our first guests, girlfriend.

[00:24:28] Naseema McElroy: But you have had some incredible people and incredible stories on there.

[00:24:33] Bill Yount: Well, we, we talk about ourselves as a mindset first money and life podcast. We have stories of real people that are going on this journey, as well as experts. And influencers, so we're trying to give actual information, but mostly we're trying to give support because folks that are late starters need a lot of support our community.

We have a very robust Facebook community. There's about 4200 people in it growing every day. We have a podcast that's pushing 100, 000 downloads. It's amazing. I've gotten we've been in this 5

[00:25:10] Naseema McElroy: Less than a year.

[00:25:12] Bill Yount: Yeah, my co host Becky haptic is retired. I am not. But we've been, and we've been in this passion for five months and I've gotten more gratitude and people reaching out saying thank you than I've gotten probably in an entire career of emergency medicine.

[00:25:28] Naseema McElroy: Being a doctor. Isn't that incredible?

[00:25:31] Bill Yount: At some point being a doctor, especially in the emergency room, or you're a bit of a lone wolf, you're a bit of a ghost in the machine. You're easy to forget, you're supposed to do what you do and it is your job. But. And they're at their most vulnerable like we are with our finances when we wake up and you help them in largely find the path to achieve a diagnosis and a resolution and what we're doing with our community is not that different.

Medical medicine and financial medicine. We are just in time. I think we're trying to help people acknowledge and take care of their financial health and it's an emergency, I'm an emergency physician and when you're waking up at 50, it is an emergency. And we just hope that we're there with nuggets of information, but predominantly support the saying, you're not alone, you can do this.

You got this. Here's some resources and take it and run with it. Everybody has their own personal direction and we acknowledge that, but we want to be there for as many people as we can. And we would invite anyone listening to this podcast to join us, whatever age you are. Cause

like I said before, we're all late and we all want to catch up and then Take control of our lives to get to that point of time freedom where we get to choose how we spend our time with family with friends with loved ones traveling Experiencing life, but we're not gonna stop doing things This podcast has been a creative outlet for me that has helped me manage my burnout it really has and I've like you said before I've cut back my hours at work, which extends our path to five But that was another way of let's say Work arbitraging burnout.

It doesn't, doesn't mean that you have to go faster. We're at a time as late starters, sometimes where the energy fails us, I don't necessarily have the energy now to jump into a new business and real estate or the bit of a risk aversion, but there are, different paths for different people, different strokes for different folks.

And we try and meet everybody there. We'll talk about real estate. We'll talk about small business. We'll share stories of people that are like, just like me. That, that sounds just like me. If they can do it, I can do it. That's why we're there.

[00:27:52] Naseema McElroy: So of the few months that you've been podcasting, obviously, it's resonated with a ton of people because the traffic and the engagement that you guys are getting is phenomenal. Like I said, I told you earlier it's top 1% of podcasts because most podcasts don't make it past the first couple of episodes.

But to see the numbers that you guys are getting, it's unprecedented really. But I want to talk to you about what do you think? The most like impactful guests you've had on so far has been and why

[00:28:26] Bill Yount: Well. We had J. L. Collins on and he, he's the godfather of Phi, he's Mr. Simple Path to Wealth, and, and that's an important resource. I recommend it actually, and he joked, because I recommend it as the second or third book to read, because there's a couple that I'll put ahead of it just to work on your cashflow planning, work on your life goals.

And, if you go to our website, I put down the top 25 books I think are important. That's www. catchinguptofive. com. And we want you to avail yourselves of that and pick and choose what you need. But as far as other guests, we've had Rob Berger on, we've had Paul Merriman on, a lot of different perspectives we have coming up, Alan Roth, Mr, how does the second grader beat Wall Street, which is actually a book that predates the second path to wealth.

And you'll find that it echoes those messages, but he wrote it in 2009, not 2016. So who else do we have coming on? The names fail me a little bit right now. We had Fritz Gilbert. We have Roger Whitney, the retirement answer, man. And then we have people like Amy Corozo that is a single mom. She went through divorce.

She went through financial ruin. And she has two kids as a single mom in a relatively modest paying. position, but she's starting her own business. She's doing so many things to move her path to five forward. She's inspirational and just as important as jail Collins in my mind.

[00:30:01] Naseema McElroy: I love it. Yeah. And I love the diversity of the people that you have it on, not just like diverse, like we look at diversity, but like the backgrounds and what they have contributed and just what their lives have looked like in the path that they started on. It just gives somebody. someone to resonate with.

And like I said, like you said, we don't like being lectured to, but we will listen to a story. And the stories have been really, really impactful. So if you are not already listening to Catching Up to Fi, it's a podcast that I highly recommend. And also I highly recommend you joining their Facebook community where you can ask questions, but that's another beautiful thing about just.

The fire community at large is like these little subset communities that we build that we find people that we can learn and grow with. And that's really what it's all about, because there's a lot of concepts to learn. And One of the best ways that we can learn is to either repeat it to somebody else, regurgit to it, regurgitate it to someone else in a way that's am I understanding this correctly and this is this how I can apply it?

Or in teaching it? These are the things that I have done that has helped me. And that's the things that you could only get within a community. And I really feel like you've built a very strong community that does that. So I behooves. Anybody who's interested or feel like they are, in that phase of is it too late to join this community to get the people around you that you need that can inspire you to action because it's all about taking action.

We can listen to the podcast. We can read the books, but the work is in doing the work. There's nothing that is going to change our finances until you actually do the work. But in order to do the work, you also need support. And so this is what the community is about and I love your community.

So I recommend people join that community.

[00:32:02] Bill Yount: Yeah, it's really, it's a vulnerable thing to be, to feel, to feel like you're late and invulnerability is strength. And in our community, people can ask questions of experts. We have experts in the community, and we have people that are financially devastated that don't know where to start. Come on in, ask your questions.

You'll either get a great answer or redirected to refine your question. And the people are just generous. They're so helpful. You'll find that this financially intentional, financial literacy community are some of the most generous people in the world. One of the best benefits of being in this community, for me, was meeting all the people, like yourself, Naseema.

You meet them virtually, you see them at conferences, and then, then they become real. And they're going to help you. Your net, your only, not only, but your net worth is synonymous with your network, as we've heard before. So don't, don't just increase your monetary wealth. Increase your interpersonal wealth.

And after you get through the financial part, that's what it's about. Go to Camp Fi, go to Economy, go to these conferences where you meet people that you interact with in our community. They're real, they're there, and they're gonna help you. There's no question.

[00:33:27] Naseema McElroy: yes, yes, yes. And thank you for bringing, events and things and other spaces that people can be in because yes, there's economy, there's can't find outside of the things that you can do online. But just like bill said, like your network. Is your net worth and I'm honored to be able to have incredible friends like bill that I can bounce ideas off of that.

We can talk about things that most people don't talk about because it's like you said, a very vulnerable subject and these people, 1 of the things like I, that I heard over and over again, when I started to improve my finances was like, well, you have to kind of change your circle of influence.

And I remember just thinking, like, how do I do that? How do I, how do I change my circle of influence? And for me, it started online, right? I started changing who I followed on social media and then the people that. I really connected with, I started engaging with on social media or in groups like in Facebook groups.

And then before, it, I was. Meeting those people in person and then those people now became my network. They became my friends they became people that I could talk to in real life and They've been inspirations for me because they have normalized for me What people think are extraordinary things like retiring girly you know paying off a million dollars in debt these things are normal in our community because of The circle of influence.

And so if people are like, where do I start? I cannot overemphasize the power of changing your circle, but it doesn't mean you get rid of all of your friends. It means you start really being intentional about. The messages that you get and who you're getting it from and making sure that the people that you start to follow are engaged with our people that you aspire to.

And that makes a big difference in your journey because there's nothing because, we're sold all these other things. You have to understand that throughout life, like consumerism and debt are concepts that are. Repeatedly marketed and sold to us. And the only way to counter those things is to change, your circle of influence.

So

[00:35:49] Bill Yount: Yeah,

[00:35:49] Naseema McElroy: it. Love it. I love it.

[00:35:51] Bill Yount: I absolutely agree. And I actually, at least at this point, I'm not overwhelmed by it, but I'll offer to chat with members of my community and connect with them in person for, half hour at a time, just to hear their story, let them know they're okay, give them a few tips to get started.

I was on a call yesterday. And you can leave us a voicemail. On our website, you can reach out to us by email. I'm at bill at catching up to five dot com. Becky's also on there. You can send out a general email to info at catching up to five. com. We have forums on our website for people who are interested in being guests.

We actually, because we can't tell every story in 52 episodes a year, we have an opportunity for folks that feel the need to tell their story because I find it's very cathartic. I told my story earlier this year. I was on Jonathan Clements, humble dollar with an episode called. Or a blog called saving our retirement.

The very first episode of our podcast is me telling the story. I think you heard parts of today helps you deal with. That burnout of I'm too late. Then you realize, okay, I've processed these emotions. Let's put it all behind us so that we can take that action and move forward. You've got to get past the emotional overwhelm and telling your story can help you do that.

So write us a blog, post it to our website so that other people can gain from your story and realize that they too have similar challenges and then you can reach out to each other. It's the community's on autopilot. I don't have to do anything. The people are running it's a crowdsourced community.

And they're just out there. I don't have to spin the wheel. , the engine is running. We're growing and we're catching up to five together.

[00:37:42] Naseema McElroy: so if you want to catch up to fi, make sure you check out the podcast, join the Facebook group, check out all the resources on catching up to fi. com. I'm going to have everything listed in the show notes. But you won't regret joining this community because it is dynamic and I love it. I'm in there to another way with you.

You can connect with me, but Bill and Becky have built an incredible, incredible community and have some incredible resources that I know you benefit from. Bill, I just. I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast and sharing your story and your journey and sharing your world with me because you're my fave.

[00:38:29] Bill Yount: Well, it's my pleasure. If we change one person's trajectory, it's. Incredible. The feeling of doing so is incredible. And then it compounds, you

[00:38:39] Naseema McElroy: Yeah.

[00:38:39] Bill Yount: know, you'll change the person's trajectory. We change will change somebody else's trajectory. It compounds just like money, even better than money, quite honestly.

Help somebody else.

[00:38:51] Naseema McElroy: Yeah, definitely. And Bill is like one of my biggest cheerleaders, if you don't know already. And I didn't even

[00:38:58] Bill Yount: Nesima! Go

[00:38:58] Naseema McElroy: him, I appreciate your support as always, but for what you're doing for so many other people, it's just, I can't, it's not something that I'm able to quantify, but it, the. It's tremendous. And I love it and I'm here for it and I'll support it as much as I can, but you guys make sure that you support it and you benefit from it too, because this is something that it can really impact your life in a positive way.

So I hope you got a lot out of this show. Cause I definitely did. It was my pleasure as always hanging out with Bill. Anytime I can hang out, force Bill to hang out with me. I will.

[00:39:34] Bill Yount: All you gotta do is call.

[00:39:36] Naseema McElroy: That's right. All

[00:39:38] Bill Yount: for having me, Nesima. It's a true pleasure. Your audience is our audience. I love the synergy. Like I said before, let's catch up to fight together. Let's be financially intentional.

[00:39:51] Naseema McElroy: let's do it

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