Clipping Chains Podcast

Today on episode 60 I’m pleased to welcome back Chris Mamula, who you may recall from episode 3. Chris is a writer, author, and partner at CanIRetireYet.com, who achieved financial independence at age 41 to pursue a life centered around family and the outdoors.

Beginning in early 2022, in search of a new challenge, Chris completed the education and exam necessary to become a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). Two questions emerge from this development:

1. Why would someone who theoretically doesn’t need to work begin a new career?
2. How can someone who harbors admittedly dogmatic views against the financial advice industry find a comfortable home working in this field?

Today we discuss the different kinds of financial advisors, the nature of complex incentives in professional financial advice, Chris’s recommended approach to choosing a financial advisor, and so much more about behavior, psychology, and the tangled emotions of money management.

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Today on episode 59 I’m pleased to host Brent Barghahn, a 29-year-old elite climber who used real estate investment as a way to effectively “retire” from his career as an engineer in the outdoor industry in his late twenties.

Brent and I discussed a fascinating reality on the idea of dream jobs, the growing trend of short-duration careers (and what that means for society), and of course many details on Brent’s path to financial strength and community building through his preferred method of real estate investment. Of course, though, I wanted to discuss the stark differences in today’s high interest rate and sky-high price environment, which has changed markedly in the last year. It begs the question: can someone still be successful as a real estate investor today? I have my concerns, so we aired out some of them in today’s episode.

Finally, we take an interesting look at the realities of full-time climbing and why Brent has found he needs more. Also, Brent and I admittedly harbor negative sentiments on the world of social media, especially in climbing. What narratives and stories are being missed by the modern form of shallow media consumption?

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

We’re back to the digital mailbag to answer your questions!

For this week:

• Are new investors part of an “unlucky cohort” that won’t achieve financial independence in the often-cited timelines?
• Is it worth it to hire a tax professional? And if so, how should I find one?
• Can you help me understand all these confusing public sector retirement accounts?
• Should I do a Roth conversion now or just make a contribution to a Roth IRA?
• Thoughts on the recent bank runs and instability in financial markets
• So much more!

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Today on episode 57 I’m pleased to welcome Dawn Baker, a board-certified anesthesiologist, wife, mother, climber, coach, and now the author of a new book about the perils of, as she puts it, an intense need to achieve. And Dawn has walked the walk. After years of hard-driving pursuit of linear improvement in both career and climbing, she suffered crushing fatigue and malaise, and ultimately faced a major health crisis during her residency. If that wasn’t enough, she was then plagued with infertility problems. The result was expensive and demoralizing rounds of in-vitro fertilization, an approach that ultimately proved successful and led to the birth of her daughter.

The need for achievement and success is so pervasive in our culture. And this interview is not just for downtown or medical center careerists. This is as much a discussion of climbing and our hobbies, which can so often derail into something quite different from our original healthy and recreational pursuits.

Today, Dawn’s life with her husband and daughter is so different. Through evaluation of her core values, married with a strong financial position, she now works “very part time,” and has moved with her family to a homestead in the high plateaus of southern Utah. But in choosing to step away, or lean out, as Dawn says, we risk our position and standing in the social hierarchy. This is much a discussion of status as it is of lifestyle.

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

One evening, circa 2011, I sat over dinner with my future wife in our small and sweaty Houston, TX rented bungalow. I was and still am an occasional cheap bastard, so the air conditioning was almost certainly set to engage on an “as-needed” basis, far from anything resembling comfort. The concept of financial independence wasn’t on the radar.

During downtime at work—I told you I was distracted—I was scouring numerous free WordPress blogs documenting the travels of zealous climbing dirtbags. They were camping and climbing and making whatever money they needed along the way. People were even starting to live and travel in vans, something I associated with sixties and seventies surfer culture. I wanted that life.

At this point in my late twenties, I was maybe barely a year into my career as a geologist in the oil and gas industry. But I could see the writing on the wall—this would not and could not be my career for the next 35-40 years. In fact, at that moment, I couldn’t see myself lasting my target three to five years until I expected to return to school for a career in academia. And there was a new problem: I’d kind of grown obsessed with this new hobby of rock climbing.

Twelve years later, I finally found a very different path to a life of freedom, if such a thing even exists. After three years of financial independence, what follows are some key lessons I’ve learned along the way.

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Today on episode 55 I’m honored to welcome Darrow Kirkpatrick, former engineer, climber, investor, author, and the creator of the popular blog CanIRetireYet.com. Darrow began serious saving and investing in his mid-30s and retired at age 50 in 2011 from a career in software engineering.

In this wide-ranging interview, we explore why Darrow stepped away from personal finance writing after creating a popular blog, his adventures on the Colorado Trail and the inspiration for a memoir, and the journey and struggle to finding meaning and purpose at any stage in life.

Darrow was eager to share the methods and values of frugality and simple personal finance in the early days of his retirement, leading to the creation of his blog. Over time, though, his interest in the subject slowly waned, replaced by the need for more adventure. He partnered with Chris Mamula, eventually releasing the reigns of the blog to Chris.

In the intervening years, Darrow has spent considerable time in contemplation of purpose and meaning in retirement, an often under-discussed and potentially difficult reality. This spiritual journey ultimately led him to pursue a boyhood dream of hiking the Colorado Trail. To achieve this lofty goal, he faced mental and physical hurdles, including walking the length of the trail with forearm crutches. Darrow has been busy writing a memoir of that experience, titled Rain and Fire in the Sky: Beyond Doubt on the Colorado Trail. Additionally, he has created a new website dedicated to cataloguing and reviewing other trail memoirs, at trailmemoir.com, where you can keep up with the latest on his upcoming book.

This interview offers a unique perspective on the softer side of financial optimization. We can be masters of technical methods of saving and investing, but ultimately none of that matters without clear direction, purpose, and meaning in our lives. As a retiree of twelve years and counting, Darrow has plenty of lessons for us all.

• Darrow’s climbing life: early free climbing and first ascents
• Darrow’s career: becoming a software engineer and working remotely, long before either of these career options were commonplace
• Finding a path to financial independence in a time before widespread blogging
• Darrow’s key philosophy and methods to achieving financial independence
• Why Darrow sold CanIRetireYet.com to Chris Mamula
• Finding meaning and purpose in retirement and deciding to hike the Colorado Trail
• Darrow’s physical and mental hurdles in life and on the trail, and specific methods to address these struggles.
• How Darrow leveraged financial strength to take a mid-career break for struggles with anxiety
• Reflections on trail life, solitude in the wilderness, and writing a memoir of that experience
• Balancing life on the road and a home life
• Social connections for retirees and for those relocating to new towns
• Messaging early retirement in social situations
• So much more!

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

CanIRetireYet.com

Trailmemoir.com

EP 17: Michael Langer: Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (Clipping Chains)

EP 18: Kenzie King: Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (Clipping Chains)

Fear and Limping (Alone) in Las Vegas (Clipping Chains)

Eudaimonia: Key Pillars of the Meaningful Life (Clipping Chains)

EP 53: Lee Cujes: No Free Lunch on the Life We Really Want (Clipping Chains)

Peruse all Clipping Chains posts and interviews here.

Darrow’s 2023 Investment Portfolio (CanIRetireYet)

Finding Your Purpose in a Long Retirement (CanIRetireYet)

Over the Hill (Darrowkirkpatrick.com)

Critique Circle (online writing critique)

SideStix Forearm Crutches

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Bill Bryson)

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Cheryl Strayed)

The Wanting Was a Wilderness: Cheryl Strayed’s WILD and the Art of Memoir (Alden Jones)

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: a Handbook for Personal Liberty (Harry Browne)

Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes (Harry Browne)

The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Richard Rhodes)

Thousand-Mile Summer (Colin Fletcher)

John McPhee Books

We live in a distracted world where depth of investigation is discouraged. Despite increases in scientific spending, the number of publications, or the amount of PhDs being rewarded, major discoveries in science and engineering have declined significantly in recent decades. The new-music market is shrinking, and old hits are dominating. We are working more days and longer hours, but US productivity growth is way down. A society that produces meaningful output is a healthy society, but meaningful output is arguably on the decline in many fields.

I argue that distraction and “noise” are key inhibitors to a healthy and progressing society. In the nearly three years since I quit my job, I’ve been forced to examine my strong tendency toward distraction. What follows is a discussion of methods that I’ve found incredibly useful in retraining my brain for deep and focused work and why that matters so much today. Our peak potential resides in no more than four hours per day.

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Written Article and Links at Clippingchains.com

Today on episode 53 I’m pleased to welcome back Lee Cujes, this time as a podcast guest. Some of you may recall the written interview with Lee back in late 2020. Lee is an elite Australian climber and route developer, with multiple 5.13+ and 5.14 first ascents to his name. But most importantly as it relates to this platform, Lee has managed to climb and develop routes continuously while carving a unique career niche and embracing a long-term investing strategy, an approach that provides the ultimate work and life balance.

Lee insists that he climbed his best at the peak of his career. To enable a better work and life balance, Lee and his wife Sam reconfigured their life to move away from the hustle and bustle of a major metro area.  They resettled in a small mountain community and climbing mecca in the Blue Mountains.

Furthermore, Lee has been investing since 1998. As such, he has the experience of investing through the back-to-back severe recessions of the dot-com bubble burst and the 2008 financial crisis, a prolonged, decade+ period where stocks fell over 60% in value. Lee was able to stay the course through year after year of poor equity performance, putting him on a path to financial independence today. Many of you investing through your first bear market, which began in early 2022, will find the beginning of our conversation today useful and inspiring.

This interview is a wide-ranging and fun exploration of career, investing, climbing, long-term travel, relationships, wealth accumulation and preservation, and the realization that early retirement is still a fundamentally weird concept to most of society.

• Weathering two back-to-back severe recessions as a new investor
• Lee’s discovery of financial independence and the framework it provided
• Improving life now instead of rushing to financial independence
• Plenty of career advice: finding the right job, loyalty and longevity versus job-hopping, college as prep for the job market, and what really makes work meaningful, and why Lee climbed his best at the peak of his career
• Why having more time to climb won’t make us better climbers
• What Lee’s life would look like with financial independence
• Thoughts on a mid-career year of international travel and climbing
• Saving strategies and investing options for Australians and Americans alike
• Planning your “FIRE number” and deliberation on proper withdrawal rates in a high-inflation and low-return environment
• Discussing early retirement to a dubious public. Lack of synchronization with society.
• Lee’s advice on improving your financial life
• So much more!

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Lee’s 2020 Clipping Chains Interview

Lee Cujes on Instagram

Eudaimonia: Key Pillars of the Meaningful Life

Shocking Headlines of the 2008 Financial Crisis (And Why They Are So Important Now)

The Long Approach to Being Scared of Investing

Can The 4% Rule Actually Work For Early Retirement?

Joy and Tyler Black on Career, Money Mindsets, and Parenting

The Bold and Beautiful Roth Conversion Ladder

Back in the Weeds with the Frugal Professor

Peruse all Clipping Chains posts and interviews here.

Seinfeld: The Marine Biologist

A recommended FIRE Calculator (***simplified, review key assumptions!***)

Australian Superannuation

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Tim Ferriss)

The Magician Series (Raymond E. Feist)

Leonidio & Kyparissi Guidebook – 2021 Revised

Today I’m going to take a deeper look at a topic I know is near and dear to so many of you: the housing market. And we’re going to take a particular look at home ownership. Without a doubt, the housing market has been a wild and arguably unpredictable roller coaster ride since the pandemic began. At the core, the issue is fundamental: a mismatch of supply and demand. In large part, the seed for this supply and demand mis-match was planted approximately twenty years ago, during the run-up to the Great Recession of the mid to late 2000s. Of course, it should be noted that the beginning of a historical narrative is always arbitrary. The mechanisms of the US housing market extend well beyond the early 2000s. 

Today we take a journey back to the run-up to the housing crisis of the mid 2000s, the supply-constrained market of the 2010s, and how the pandemic poured gasoline on what was already becoming a smoldering fire. Finally, we investigate the great power of federal monetary intervention to fuel or snub out demand.

Is now a good time to buy? I hope you’ll join me in this discussion.

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Joy and Tyler shared a common early interest: debt. With a focus on paying down this debt, Joy was able to leave an unfulfilling desk job and begin her work as a coach, relying on Tyler’s steady income as a biologist to cover their life’s expenses. As Joy’s business grew, they were able to shift focus from debt paydown to pursuing financial independence.

But along the way, Joy has managed the inevitable bumps in the road of solo entrepreneurship, including crushing hours, demanding tasks outside of her primary skillset, the psychologically draining world of social media, and the emotional toll of coaching women in a particularly important phase in their lives. Looking back though, she wouldn’t trade the experience and personal growth that this path has provided.

This is a really fun yet insightful story of two people with very different world views who really make it work. This is a discussion of money, personality, parenting, and the life-long pursuit of meaning, recreation, and career.

• Joy’s career journey: leaving an unfulfilling job and becoming a coach for pregnant and postpartum rock climbers
• The power of niching down in business
• Managing debt and beginning a life in pursuit of financial independence
• An in-depth discussion on partner support: financial, child-raising, etc.
• Musings on early retirement
• Gender roles and mindsets on career and money
• The gamification of the FIRE movement: Who can save the most or retire the earliest?
• Should we feel guilty for building wealth?
• Personality and money mindset: logic and reason versus feeling and emotion
• The behind-the-scenes reality of the solo entrepreneurial life
• Pursuing financial independence with three children
• The mental toll of social media for an entrepreneur
• The psychology of market volatility
• The often-unspoken support systems behind the “quit your job” or “chase your dream” internet advice.
• Knowing your self-worth in a career and the downsides of the job-hopping culture
• So much more!

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Callie Joy Black on Instagram

Callie Joy Black on TikTok

Callie Joy Black on YouTube

Joy’s Email List Subscription

Tyler Black on Instagram

Paige Claassen: “This Was a Big One For Me” (Clipping Chains)

Steve Bechtel: The Glass is Already Broken (Clipping Chains)

Mettle, By Steve Bechtel: A Book Review (Clipping Chains)

EP 128: Callie Joy Black (The Nugget Climbing Podcast)

Peruse all Clipping Chains posts and interviews here.

Tyler’s Recommendations:

Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl)

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (John C. Bogle)

Joy’s Recommendations:

Mettle: Lessons From the Gym and the Crag in Pursuit of Better Climbing (Steve Bechtel)

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (James Nestor)

Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life (Emily Nagoski)

Why Did No One Tell Me?: What Every Woman Needs to Know to Protect, Heal and Nurture Her Body Through Motherhood (Emma Brockwell)