Chasing Financial “Stability” After $100K+ in Debt

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. Today’s episode is from the fire series, which originally aired on our YouTube channel. Leo has such a great story that we wanted to share it with our audio listeners as well. This episode is brought to you by Connect Invest Real Estate Investing simplified and within your reach. So without further ado, let’s chat with Leo. Leo, thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to talk to you.

Leo:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m a big fan of the show.

Mindy:
Oh, well, that’s awesome. Take us back to the beginning. Who were you before you started focus on your finances?

Leo:
Oh my God. I definitely made every mistake in the book. I had so many student loans. I was a fashion designer in New York. I was spending money on coffee every day and going out to fancy dinners I couldn’t afford, and I feel like I did everything wrong up until I started working as a reporter at Business Insider covering personal finance, and that’s kind of where I learned all the things that you’re supposed to learn.

Mindy:
I love that. Okay, so you said you did everything wrong, and I don’t like to say this, however, you’re not special. Everybody that I’ve ever talked to has done everything wrong. They’ve made all the mistakes. So welcome to the Club. We have snacks and we meet on Tuesdays. So you worked for Business Insider and you were writing about personal finance, which is so awesome because I’ve actually been featured in Business Insider a couple of different times and having those conversations with the writers is they really dive deep, and I am imagining that you learned a ton about money and finance and is that where you found out about fire?

Leo:
Yeah. Yeah. So let me sort of take it back in my writing journey. Obviously it was natural for me to begin writing about fashion and beauty, and then it turned into sex and relationships and stuff. And then it just so happened Business Insider was hiring for this position and I turned in an essay. They published that essay. It went super viral. So sometimes I try to tell people, I used to interview folks about sex toys and lube and stuff, and it’s so much easier to get people to talk about that than to get people to talk about their money because money is so intimate. And you’re right, the reporters at Business Insider, we really go in and also there’s a whole verification process, like fact checking process where if you say you paid off this much in student loans, we would like to see that document. And I know sometimes it can bring up a lot of emotions for the people we were interviewing. Like, Hey, we need to see the paper for it. Even just the document would bring up a lot for them. So yeah, that’s kind of where I learned about Fire as well, hearing a lot. Of course, in my mind when I first heard about it, I was like, everyone in this space is so intimidating and intense, and they’re all super disciplined and very nuts and bolts numbers kind of folks. But I think what made it more relatable to me is people have a lot of the same mission of if I only have one life to live in a limited number of hours, I don’t want to spend it working on X, Y, and Z.

Mindy:
Yeah, similar again, twinsies. So what was your financial position when you left fashion and started being a writer?

Leo:
Oh my God, that was one of the hardest things I have had to go through financially. I remember I knew I was going to be late on my credit card payments, so I called the companies right away and I was like, Hey, I’m trying to be responsible and set something up with you, and they just would not help me out. And so the most stressful thing was being behind on my credit card payments and getting constantly bombarded and then picking up all these different side gigs and checking my bank account every hour to see if my tax return or my tax refund had come back. So that was really challenging in 2023, business Insider had a pretty big round of layoffs, and I’m really grateful for my experience there and worked with really great people. But also by the time the layoffs came, I was like, yeah, I’m feeling feeling ready to go do my own thing and this feels cool. I’m happy to take one for the team and just take my severance and do the next thing. So I felt like last year when it happened, I was a lot better prepared. I was like, oh, okay. I know how bad it can be, and I know what I can differently now I’m more set up with the personal finance skills to do it differently.

Mindy:
Okay. Well, and that’s great. So you were writing about personal finance, you’re learning about financial independence. What was your first step towards changing your financial situation?

Leo:
I would say really talking about how I feel about my finances. First and foremost, A lot of pressure trying to learn about it all on my own, but the nature of my job is that you just talk about all the dust bunnies under the bed, so to speak. And I just felt really inspired by my sources too. People would really share like, oh, there was a time somebody was unhoused and this is how they were feeling. And being able to be that brave and share their story with the world was really inspiring to me. And I don’t need to tell everyone my business, but I could certainly tell three or four of my closest friends, and even that takes the pressure off of it. So it’s like, okay, I’m not sort of drowning in the shame of it and I can now make some decisions even though it’s not the best one. I have to do something right now.

Mindy:
So you just said the S word shame, and a lot of people feel a lot of shame because they’re not doing money. Tell me all of the money classes that you took in grade school and high school and college.

Leo:
Oh, none. Really.

Mindy:
None. So how are you supposed to be good with money when nobody has ever taught you how to be good with money?

Leo:
Exactly.

Mindy:
Exactly. Exactly. I know I’m right.

Leo:
If let’s say nine out of 10 people in the room say, oh, I’m terrible with money, then wouldn’t you think that I’m probably not the problem? It’s probably money. It’s the problem. In general,

Mindy:
I think this system is the problem. We are not taught. We’re taught that you don’t talk about money. It’s not polite to talk about money. Only rude people talk about money. We don’t discuss this. Don’t ask me these questions. Why would you ever ask me these questions? And that’s kind of what I do here at BiggerPockets. I talk about money. I ask the questions I want to know because not only do I want you to listen to the show, I want you to listen to the show in the car with your kids. They’re not getting it at school. So then they’re going to be absorbing it randomly and oh, you would not be amazed at how much they absorb almost through osmosis. They’ll just be sitting there talking in the back. I want people to know about money, and we’re not teaching our kids in high school.

Mindy:
We’re not teaching them in grade school. We’re not even teaching them how to make a budget. I’m not even talking about high level fire topics. Teach them how to make a budget, teach them the concept of, no, you don’t have more money, you still have more checks. You don’t have money if there’s nothing in the bank account. So when you make $10,000, you can only spend up to $10,000. If you’re spending more than that, how are you going to pay for it? You’re just going to throw it on a credit card, and I’m not saying this to try and make you feel bad. I’m saying this to be mad at the system for not teaching us in the first place. So you are now absolved of all the shame. It’s just that easy. Right? Just snap and you’re done. Okay. So you said you’ve done everything wrong and we mentioned debt. How much debt did you have and how did your debt pay down journey begin?

Leo:
So in student loans, I had about 110,000 split between private and federal loans and credit cards. I had about 19,000 and eventually that went into collections and I’m paying a monthly installment instead of your normal payment with the interest, et cetera. And how it began. For me, debt payoff in savings really became sort of life or death for me was when I was saving and raising money for my gender affirming surgery, I had to get really serious about, okay, how am I going to strategize, keeping the companies that I owe money to happy at a minimum, while being able to save all this stuff, two of my gender affirming surgery. It was one of the first financial goals that I set for myself that I was like, okay, I’m going to live a long and happy life after this. I’m going to live a long time and this is major. And so something in the work that I do with queer and trans wealth, when we talk about setting financial goals, it has to really align with what you want and how you see your life in the future, or else you’re not going to go do the thing you’re supposed to do. We could plan forever, but if you’re not serious about the why behind what you’re doing, it’s not going to work.

Mindy:
It has to be meaningful, what you’re saving for, any goal that you have has to be meaningful. Otherwise, it’s super easy to just like, oh, nevermind. I’m going to spend it on something else. How is wealth planning different for the queer and trans community?

Leo:
Oh, yeah. So many different ways. For one, when it comes to family planning, it is much more expensive for us to have children. Actually, a lot of queer couples go into as much as six figures of debt just trying to afford in vitro or even hire a surrogate, things like that. That’s one of the things. The second thing, especially for trans people, a lot of folks don’t have access to healthcare, so they have to pay for it out of pocket. Or maybe the state that they live in doesn’t cover healthcare. So they either are paying out of pocket or they have to pick up and move to different states without notice when these policies go into effect.

Mindy:
Where are you on your debt payoff journey? You were able to save the 8,000 for the gender affirming surgery, and then had you paid off the student loans and the credit cards, or were those still around?

Leo:
I haven’t paid off my student loans. I’m about, I would say like 45% of the way through with the credit cards, which is exciting for me. I know some folks who be listening might be like, that’s not that much. But to me it’s exciting.

Mindy:
It’s very exciting. And I mean, I could tell you stories of people who had way more debt than you, but I could also tell you stories of people who had less debt than you. Ultimately, their stories don’t affect the fact that you have X number of debt and you need to pay it off. That’s your journey. Somebody else who only had $10,000 worth of debt, well great for them, but that doesn’t help you on your journey. Also, it doesn’t help you when you hear about the guy that had $400,000 in student loan debt, it’s like, yeah, nice for him. Hope he got a good paying job. He did. He was a dentist. So these stories aren’t that helpful.

Leo:
Yeah. I would say too, the number one thing that really helped me that I built during my W2 days is just consistency. I tell folks this all the time, it doesn’t actually matter. Let, let’s say your credit card minimum is $150, and you’re like, okay, but I want to make an extra payment to me. If I make an extra payment every two weeks and it’s $5, to me, it’s just as meaningful as if I make a payment every two weeks that’s $500. Because it’s kind of like, whereas before I felt so afraid of confronting, oh, this is how much debt it is, and I was afraid to take action towards it. Now I feel a little more like, okay, if I can show up on a consistent basis, cool. This thing isn’t bigger than me. I know I can handle it, and I can still live life and not have to deprive myself until I reach the goals. Yeah.

Mindy:
So were you budgeting when you had your W2 and were you saving when you had your W2 or were you just spending

Leo:
Well, when I was a business insider, again, kind of anchored by having financial conversations on a daily basis, it was a lot easier to, yeah, 10% of every paycheck would go. I would use the virtual envelope system, so 10% of every paycheck would go directly to savings, and then I would have a separate checking account that’s specifically for fixed expenses, including paying off my debts. And then I would have, at the time, I was like, this is my sad little checking account with my spending allowance for the two weeks until the next payday. And that was really helpful in understanding, okay, I can’t overspend. And yeah, I would say once now, and in the self-employment journey, even after the layoff, I was able to consistently put 35% of my income towards debt and savings.

Mindy:
That’s awesome. Yeah, 35%. That’s fantastic. Are you still putting 35% towards saving and debt?

Leo:
I will say I had a recent car repair, so the car repair took a lot of a huge percent of what I’ve been putting away, and that’s fine. That’s what it’s there for. But yeah, it’s still like 35 to 40%, I would say.

Mindy:
Well, that’s awesome. On a freelancer salary, I mean, that’s really impressive because there’s a lot of people who work at W2, which is more stable in air quotes, and they’re not putting away anything, so you’re still better than them.

Leo:
It’s about a year and some change. Now, since I’ve been laid off and pursuing my own business, and it’s taken me this long to understand that a W2 paycheck does not define stability, you can make it on your own, actually. You can make a definition for stability on your own.

Mindy:
Yes. Well, okay. So what is financial stability to you?

Leo:
All my bills are paid. I have a savings account. And also, I think the most important part is if a friend or a loved one really needs help, I have a little bit of money to give to help them out if they need it. This might be spicy, and I don’t do things that I hate every day to make money. That’s also a part of financial stability for me.

Mindy:
That’s awesome. There’s a lot of people who do things that they hate every single day because their option is do it even though you hate it or starve.

Leo:
Exactly.

Mindy:
That’s awesome. Being able to say no to things you don’t want to do is a huge superpower.

Leo:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Mindy.

Mindy:
You’re welcome. Leo. Leo, do you resonate with the financial independence, retire early movement in any way?

Leo:
Yes. Yes. Like I said earlier, what I really resonate with is the desire not to give your labor away to causes that you don’t necessarily care about or agree with. And also the retiring early part. I don’t know. I really do think it’s a scam that we have to wait so long before we could just rest and chill out and relax and do what we want with our time. I resonate with fire in that way for sure. What feels really hard to me sometimes is I’ve seen as a journalist, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who are super intense about it and can be very like, okay, I’m going to work my high paying W2 job and I’ll invest in real estate right away. And then it’s a struggle to manage that stuff, and then they become super burnt out and overworked at the front end of it, and I’m like, it becomes very like, wait, do you remember what you’re doing this for? Because it was never about having this kind of lifestyle. We were always super busy. So yes, I definitely resonate with it, and I hope to see folks being less intense with it.

Mindy:
Okay, so thanks for spearing me right in the heart. My fire journey included a death march to financial independence, and it’s pretty well documented that we didn’t do everything wrong the way that you did everything wrong, but we did everything wrong in different ways. So we both, again, twinsies, we both did everything wrong just in different ways. I didn’t enjoy the journey almost at all. I had two kids. I moved a ton. We live in flips, so we move into a house that isn’t nice, we make it nice, and then we sell it and we move into another dump and make that nice. And that’s generated a lot of income, but it has been a full-time job on top of a full-time job on top of two young kids. So if I would’ve just pulled back a little bit, maybe I don’t have enough money or as much money right now, but I have a much more enjoyable life.

Mindy:
And you can’t look at somebody’s snapshot of today and just, I mean, you could judge ’em all you want, but looking at my snapshot today, you don’t see the decade of 12 hour, 14 hour, 18 hour days. And I really wish that I would’ve done it different. And do you remember what you’re doing this for? You just said that? No, I didn’t remember what I was doing it for at all. And there’s a lot of factors that come into play. My husband grew up pretty financially insecure, and that led into a lot of this. There’s that phrase, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. We didn’t love what we did, and we worked hard every day for 10 years, and I really want people to remember what they’re doing this for as well, because if you’re not enjoying your life, why are you doing this? Do you think pursuing financial independence changes the fundamental way people perceive work and life?

Leo:
Oh, absolutely. Because again, in America, especially the culture is like you work until you’re 65 and you give away all 40 of these hours, even more, especially for people who have paying corporate jobs, it can be between 40 to 80 hours a week. So it’s like that’s kind of the norm in the culture. And I think that once people start looking at fire, especially the numbers of it all, and I see this all the time, some of my clients are not necessarily pursuing fire, but if it’s their first time tracking their spending, and then we kind of do the math of like, okay, you spent hundreds of dollars on Postmates and it equals this many hours of your time, it kind of begins this, the wheels are turning for them of like, oh, actually, if I changed my spending habits, if I changed my lifestyle, I wouldn’t have to work that many hours a week. And then what could I do with my time if I didn’t have to work these many hours a week? Right. So yeah, I do think it fundamentally changes the way they think about work. Especially my biggest wish for folks, anyone out there who’s listening is free you to realize you don’t actually have to work that hard. I, I hope that working hard becomes less of a romanticized thing.

Mindy:
Yeah, I agree with you. Who are you working hard for? You’re working hard for your company. Who’s making the money when you do that? I mean, definitely put in the work that you’re being paid to do, but don’t just crush yourself for an unthankful boss. Okay. It’s getting a little heavy in here. What is your biggest piece of financial advice for someone just getting started today?

Leo:
Definitely get an accountability buddy. Find a buddy that is going to do it with you. Honestly, people, I think this is also why couples, and whether you’re just dating or you’ve been married for 10 years or whatever, once the two of you set your mind to a goal and you get to hold yourself accountable to it, I think that’s why couples get a leg up, to be honest. Two of you. So especially for people who are single, I would say find a friend or two or three who want to be on this journey with you and don’t do it alone and be brave enough to be vulnerable with them of what you’re going through along the journey. Even if it’s like, Hey, I know I said I would save $200 this month, but I can’t make that extra 20. It’s really 180 for me. I know that seems like such an innocuous, small conversation to have, but it’s actually everything when you’re going through the journey,

Mindy:
Right? Because your friends, your accountability buddies can say, okay, you know what? That’s okay. You still got 180.

Leo:
Exactly,

Mindy:
So you didn’t quite make your goal. Maybe next month you’ll be able to get two 20 or maybe take this time to look back and see what happened. Oh, you had an unexpected car repair. You still were able to get to 180. That’s awesome. Or, Hey, you went to Starbucks every single day. Maybe cut that out until you get your 200 for next month. There’s a lot of things that having friends in this space and having people on the same path, not even in the same position, but on the same path, can help you with that. Your regular friends and family may not be able to do. I mean, I’ve heard from a lot of people who are like, Ugh, why would you want to do that? I enjoy my life. I don’t want to save for retirement. I’m like, well, okay then, but look at me. I’m doing okay now. And when people are trying to tell you not to do something, if you want to do it, don’t listen to ’em.

Leo:
Yeah. I think especially when you’re super early in your journey, again, I really credit the personal finance team at Business Insider for all the support they gave me. I’m also a part of a few support groups that have been started by my friends around debt. So it’s like those communities have been really helpful because I almost was in a little bubble of here’s all the people that I can talk to about this that really believe in me. And then it took me like, okay, maybe I’m six to eight months in the bubble. Okay, I’ve gotten my habits down. Now I can go back out into the real world and a naysayer can say something and I would be fine because I was already incubated in my little bubble. So yeah,

Mindy:
Having somebody discourage you right at the beginning can have such a

Mindy:
Detrimental effect on your journey. So surround yourself with people who are doing what you want to be doing. Choose Fi has a fantastic set of Facebook groups. They’ve got local ones, they’ve got the main one. There’s a spinoff called Women’s Personal Finance. BiggerPockets Money has our own Facebook group, but there’s Facebook groups for every niche of financial independence that’s out there. There’s Fat Fire and Lean Fire and Barista Fi and Coast Fi. There’s my friends David and John started Queer Money. It’s a podcast. It’s a Facebook group. There are people in every community also pursuing financial independence. So find where the financial independence intersects with your community. That Venn diagram, there’s a group on Facebook where they can talk your specific language and it is so beneficial.

Leo:
Definitely.

Mindy:
Alright, Leo, thank you so much for your time today. This was so much fun and it was really great to talk to you. Where can my audience find you?

Leo:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad to be on here. I’m not going to lie to you. I was a little nervous. This is a new audience, but Mindy, you’re really cool to talk to and easy to talk to. So thank you so much. Yeah. On Instagram, you can find me at Queer and Trans Wealth. You can also find me at queer and trans wealth.substack.com. You can subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll find out what we’re up to. I have office hours every now and then that are free, and we talk about stuff like credit repair or debt payoff strategies. And then we have a little coworking time, so you actually get to do the thing that we talked about. So yeah, definitely.

Mindy:
That is awesome. So is it Queer and Trans Wealth or is it Queer Trans Wealth?

Leo:
Queer and Trans Wealth.

Mindy:
Awesome. And I will include these in the show notes down below, so you can click and go join Leo and have a nice chat. This is Mindy Jensen signing off.