Escapee Economics: Planning Your Financial Exit From the 9-to-5 w/Laura Lynch CFP

Brett Trainor (00:02.151)
Hi Laura, welcome to the podcast.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (00:05.014)
Hey Brett, so happy to be here with you today. Thanks for inviting me.

Brett Trainor (00:09.671)
Oh no, my pleasure. We always have great conversations and we always joke that we should be recording more of these conversations. So we're gonna do this today. Yeah, so I'm super excited to talk about this because as the audience will hear in a minute, we haven't gone too deep on the financial side, which is really important if you're escaping corporate and looking at it. And I think you got an interesting time with tiny homes and there's a bunch of really fun stuff we can talk about.

So, but maybe before that, I would also like to talk about your escapee journey. People are super fascinated and we'll get into that. But to maybe kick us off, maybe just share a little bit with the audience, you know, what you're working on today, and then we'll work backwards to get to the future conversation, if that makes sense.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (00:57.358)
Yeah, absolutely. So Laura Lynch, certified financial planner. I have founded the tiny house advisor, which is a financial, uh, advice firm dedicated to the tiny living community. So everybody doing things from van life to schoolies, to tiny homes, to shed conversions, to maybe digital nomad, all of those folks that are thinking about their housing in a different way.

That's who I'm working with and it's really about aligning your life with your values. And I think we'll probably talk about that a lot today. Also host of the podcast Less House, more Moola about those topics.

Brett Trainor (01:37.987)
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, super fascinating. And yeah, and again, I think we joked, you know, it was on your podcast a little bit ago, and I'm all in on the tiny home. I'm just not sure I can convince my wife. So we're going to work on minimizing some stuff first and then look at the bigger picture. But you know, I see you see it all the time. HGTV, you know, it's across the board. It just makes sense with the freedom and the flexibility and all that good stuff. But I

kind of take the audience back through your escapee journey, because if I'm not mistaken, you know, it's like Air Force, benefits, financial advisor, your own business. That super nutshell, but does that sound about right?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (02:23.586)
Yep, that's definitely the path. I am in my fourth career chapter. I guess it's really kind of like 4.2.0 where I did my escape.

Brett Trainor (02:36.495)
That's awesome. What led you, obviously financial is the core of what your business is today, so what led you to transition from, was it benefits that you were in to the financial advisor? Is it something that you wanted to do or what led you down into that world?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (02:53.39)
So my escape took place in the middle of my financial services career. So I spent five years in a big corporate environment in financial advising and then started my own firm. Is that what you're asking about? Is my escapee moment or how did I get into financial advising? Yeah.

Brett Trainor (03:11.983)
Not quite there or how you get into financial. Yeah, because I mean, if it was HR and benefits, moving to financial, I guess there's a tie in but it's not one you would necessarily larger. So I'm just kind of more curious of what how you pivoted at that point into financial advisory.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (03:18.898)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (03:30.442)
Yeah, so in 2017 is when I made my move into financial services. And I didn't know what a stock or a bond was in 2017. I grew up in a family where, you know, we didn't really have any assets other than our home value. And I didn't grow up, you know, with any wealth being passed down through my family. But I had a friend who had left the corporation that we were.

Brett Trainor (03:39.707)
Alright.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (03:56.394)
working for both of us and became a financial advisor. And I was following her path and like, what is it you're doing every day? And so just got really inspired by the idea of helping people make their financial plan to accomplish what's most important to them in their life. And so becoming a financial advisor involves a bunch of, you know, regulatory education and certifications and tests and things like that. And so I went on that training journey and then spent.

five years building a business within a big corporation. But it's all about the helping professions, the professions of helping people. And I think since my military service, I've always been in that looking for that mission and looking for that opportunity to be of service.

Brett Trainor (04:43.811)
That's awesome. And then come full circle, you're working in a big corporation. What was kind of the tipping point there that says, hey, things are probably pretty good, you're probably doing pretty well, but I'm going to go out on my own. What was motivating you to make that change?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (05:02.282)
Yeah, as I have recently written, and it's kind of like a little bit shocking when I read it, I gave up my six figure salary to do this corporate escape thing. And so, yeah, I was on a good trajectory and things were working out for me and my corporate environment. I would say the culture was really good and I had, you know, good paths there.

But what it really came down to is the fact that I wanted to live in a place where I wanted to live and I wanted to have no debt. And so that means I've got to get out of the house that I'm in and I have to go and I know we're not supposed to cover tiny houses till later on, but it's also intertwined. I wanted to move to my tiny house and live on the land where I didn't have to.

Brett Trainor (05:42.591)
No, that's okay.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (05:48.91)
to pay anybody anything to be there, this all came out of the pandemic, right? Where we kind of reassessed what was most important to us. And so there wasn't a path for me to take my corporate job and move. Working virtually wasn't an option, transferring wasn't an option. And so therefore I had to find my escapee path that maybe I never would have otherwise have been brave enough to do, had it not been for kind of all the stars aligning.

Brett Trainor (06:18.047)
Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think we have talked about this definitely aligning with what you want, right? I when I left corporate, I didn't define what I wanted. Right? I kind of figured it out in a couple of years into it. I'm like, all right, now's a really good time to think what am I even working towards now? What do I want? What's important to me? Curious when you were going through that exercise, was it was tiny homes on the road map? Or is that something that you always wanted to do? Or was it just, hey, I'm tired of

Now I'm educated in financial services and debt. What was the, again, back to the tipping point of pushing you down that path?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (06:58.222)
Well, the tiny home already existed. So we had built the tiny home years prior. And so the tiny home had been sitting on the land out there completely free and clear this whole entire time, but never had it become an option really to, you know, quit the corporate and quit the regular life because...

Brett Trainor (07:01.393)
Okay.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (07:19.722)
You do what you think you're supposed to do, right? And everybody tells you, hey, you know, just stick along in this business and you're going to make lots of money and you're going to be successful and blah, blah. And you just keep doing what everybody's telling you to do until something really shifts your perspective. And so, you know, that moment when we were driving down the interstate and they were talking about, you know, borders closing in the States and, um, you know,

Brett Trainor (07:23.611)
Yes.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (07:45.894)
and my income was plummeting because most of the financial services world is tied to the market as far as your compensation goes. And so my compensation in those early days of 2020 was falling and all of a sudden I was scared that I wouldn't be able to make my mortgage payment. And so just that fear seemed like an unnecessary stressor in a world where I had a house that was paid for free and clear where I could be, you know, to hunker down during an uncertain time.

Brett Trainor (08:14.587)
Yes.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (08:16.21)
And so all of a sudden I was like, well, it doesn't make sense for us to keep doing this thing that we're supposed to do. The world is not showing up the way it's supposed to show up. So why should I show up for it? I can create my own path now.

Brett Trainor (08:30.903)
Yeah, no, it's so true. And did you really have a detailed plan that said, all right, I'm going to make this, let's figure out how to start my own thing, live in the tiny home and everything. So was it super detailed or was this just throw caution into the wind, I'm working towards this and we'll find the path that gets it. I'm just, it's always curious because I'm more, I need to do more planning like that. But the people that do and can see that vision.

right from the borders closing to, hey, here's what the path looks like. So curious if you're one that can actually see the steps of it, or was it one you were just kind of, you know the direction you're going, we're gonna figure out as we go.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (09:11.214)
So I'm a planner. So I don't generally do things very quickly. Everything has to be thoroughly thought out and all risks identified and scrubbed, right? So I'm still on that transition journey right now. So we are two years into our 20-month plan. And so it started with a two-year calendar on the kitchen wall with sticky notes on every month to have bullet points of,

you know, goals that had to be accomplished during that month in order to make this transition because I had to change my career. My husband had to figure out his business transition too. We had to get

our high schooler through high school, which is the final milestone that we're waiting for now, we had to sell three different properties. So a lot of things to disentangle in the normal life in order to make this sort of financial independence move and this move into a place where we can feel like we don't have to be so subject to the ebbs and flows of the world around us.

Brett Trainor (10:17.735)
Yeah, now it makes sense. And that's why you're a perfect guest for this show because I talk all the time. I'm more definitely more of the We'll figure it out. And I know there's a lot of people in the audience that just probably cringe and go, what do you mean? You don't have a step a six step plan to figure this out. So I think you can help us bridge the gap with the planners and the non planners. Just a couple questions. And when you were transitioning to your own business, how did is what you have today what you launched?

as your own business, the tiny home or the tiny, sorry, butchering the name, but did you make some pivots along the way after you launched and two of that, same part is did you, how'd you find your first customers? Cause that's always the first question to get, where do I get my first customers? So two part question for you.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (11:05.002)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, so what I have today is the same thing I launched because I just launched it in July. So it's not even quite six months yet. So what I'm offering today is the same, though I am in 2024 launching a new product that's more of a scaled down.

coaching course about getting financially organized. So that is in the works for 2024. But I did come out of the gate with what I would call sort of traditional planning focused for the tiny living community, as well as pivot planning. So helping people make that transition in their life and make a plan for that transition. And...

How I got my first customers was, frankly, as with many businesses, right? It's close friends and family that follow you. That's generally what happens, especially in financial services. And my first customers that came from outside of that circle came in through a podcast that I was on. So I hear, yeah, from my guesting on someone else's podcast that had a larger following than mine.

Brett Trainor (12:16.723)
interesting.

Brett Trainor (12:25.551)
Yeah, my guess is you're going to hear from some folks after this one because like I said, I told you off air, we haven't had many detailed discussions around the finance and how to think about it. And so, heck, I'm going to learn from this as we go through, there's probably some stuff I need to backtrack on. So if we're thinking there's corporate escapees and we hear from every day that they're in there and...

The biggest thing is walking away from those golden hand costs, right? I've got revenue coming in. You know, part of what I was thinking is, yes, you do, but what happens to a stop? I don't know about you, but I didn't have a pension or any of the companies I worked, there is no such thing as a pension. You can put money in the 401k, but is that going to be enough? You know, if you live another 40 years, right? Healthy and active, that's a long time. You must've done really good with your 401k or, you know, so I know that's on.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (12:56.002)
Yes.

Brett Trainor (13:19.763)
And that's what I'm working through now is to build a business that can pay and fund that. But if I'm still in corporate, maybe share with the audience some of your recommendations that, hey, I know I'm done with corporate. I want to get out. What are some of the things that I should be thinking about from a personal standpoint and a financial standpoint to get myself ready?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (13:41.462)
Well, one is a mind shift. Often we think about going out on our own as being very risky. And the reality is when you have an employer, you have only one client. And so if that client decides that your services are no longer needed tomorrow, that's one person controlling your entire income. Whereas if you cultivate a variety of clients, whether they're coaching clients or other businesses that you serve or...

you know, however that works out for you, you have multiple people that find your services important. And so if you lose one client, it's not like you have lost your entire income. And so I think that mind shift can be really helpful. It certainly helped me overcome some of my thoughts around the risk of having my own business. And secondly, I think figuring out your runway,

So understanding what your ramp up time truly looks like, understanding from benchmarks within your particular industry. And certainly I know Brett, you have a lot of guidance on this. How long is it going to take you to be profitable? And then how long is it going to take you to bring in enough income to start, you know, paying for your cost of living and planning out a runway for that?

is really important not only from a financial perspective, but from a psychological perspective, because as you're building your business, you have your ideal client that you wanna work with, and you, you know, sometimes we'll take clients that aren't perfectly ideal to pay the bills, and maybe that's okay, but you don't wanna get your entire business built around the wrong client or the wrong niche or what have you, because when you take that leap, it's a grand opportunity to...

Brett Trainor (15:20.548)
Yeah.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (15:27.514)
a lifestyle practice around what it is that you really want to be doing and you want to try to stay true to that and become really good at that one thing instead of trying to serve, you know, all kinds of different people who maybe don't fit perfectly.

Brett Trainor (15:42.963)
Yeah, no, and that fits exactly what I tell folks is look, we've spent 20 to 30 years, you know, in a certain area, why don't we figure out how to monetize what we're good at because there are folks in businesses that are willing to pay you to do it. So yeah, stay focused. And you can toy around with some different sort of two point. You mentioned coaching, it could be fractional, it could be a start of service, combination of all of the above, but stay focused on what I always like to tell people is the one problem that you solve.

Initially what you were doing in corporate you were obviously a problem solver in some area I don't care what leadership role was specialist or whatever it was that can translate then over time once you get some more runway Then you can start to experiment with some other things, but focus Yeah, I never thought about it from the financial and the psychological with the runway that but that makes perfect sense and I bet if there's others that are thinking because you know one of the conversation my wife and I have all the time is

She's like, are we putting enough away for retirement? I'm like, well, what is retirement? Right, because I'm no longer in corporate and we're doing the things, the kids are older and just about out of the house, right, empty nesters. So our big expenses for the most part are gone other than weddings for a couple of daughters that are coming around the corner. But, you know, it just, when you mentioned we're in corporate, you just do those things, right? You put the money away, you maximize the 401k, you do all this.

You really don't think about things other than with the budget. So I'm guessing when you work with your clients, it's probably eye opening as you take them through this process. Is that fair?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (17:21.59)
Yeah, and I think that we have so many financial frameworks that we get really stuck on and don't think critically about. And the term retirement is one of them. And I even wrote a LinkedIn article quite a while ago that said, I have stopped planning for retirement full stop. And the reason for that is, is that what we're really all searching for is autonomy.

and choice about how we spend our time. And the reality is a lot of people that just, you know, follow the path and do the work, and then at 65 or whenever they quit working, they go home and they're bored and they're unfulfilled and they're depressed. And the reason for this is because work provides a lot of important psychological benefits, both connectivity to others, as well as a sense of mastery and fulfillment. And so wouldn't it be

better to earlier on in life craft your work around having some more autonomy and having some more freedom and having a good balance of doing the things that you love. Therefore, you can do it longer, which is what you're trying to do, Brett, is create a business that will last you longer because you're not overextending yourself into places where you really don't get any fulfillment. So therefore,

especially for Gen X as we are, you know, the first generation who's living out largely without pensions. Nobody has been looking out for our retirement except ourselves. And I hear people pretty negative about Gen X and our savings rates and how prepared we are for retirement. And there's a lot of sort of mongering around about our generation.

And the reality is we've had a harder battle than previous generations, but we also have an opportunity that previous generations didn't have. And that is to create, craft the work around the work that we love to do and therefore do it longer and continue that fulfillment and that contribution and that impact that we have enjoyed making for a longer period of time. And therefore we don't have to have 40 years worth of savings ahead of us. We can figure out a way.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (19:41.006)
to allow ourselves to work a little bit longer. And each year that we work a little bit longer reduces the total nest egg that we need to have. Another key point is that we really have some mystical ideas around what is enough to retire.

And so I think getting a realistic understanding of what median savings is in this country can be really impactful because we all think that we need to have, you know, $2.5 million or whatever, but really very, very few people have that. And that, yet that is what we see on TV and that is like the benchmark that we read about and everybody feels a lot of pressure. And so...

Brett Trainor (20:00.532)
Yeah.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (20:23.85)
Sitting down and having an actual financial plan that realistically shows you what you need, what gap you need to fill between social security and your reasonable living expenses. It can be a healthy exercise to understand what you actually need to have instead of just sort of defaulting to, oh, I'll never have enough. So I think a good, you know, financial calculation can really be helpful there.

Brett Trainor (20:50.891)
Yeah, no, I think it's so true. And again, the older I've gotten, the more detailed we've been becoming across these plans. One of the things that my wife and I do now, quarterly is a full on business slash life review, right? Because the one thing that I didn't do for the first two years of going solo was include her in the business. I wasn't excluding her, but she wasn't working in it. So the unknown for her of what's actually going on. When corporate,

The paycheck was coming every two weeks. We could estimate what the bonus was. You knew what you're putting away. Benefits were kept for the two years she was living in. You know, I knew it was going on, but she didn't. And so it was just last year. We made the decision to basically do a quarterly planning meeting. And we go through, I go through the full financials of the business, say, this is where we're at. This is what we're doing. This is by anticipating the next quarter. What do we want out of life? Right. What are we at?

coming up, like we had a wedding a year ago, or we're going to take a trip, whatever it is, can we estimate some of these expenses and just all of a sudden she's a whole lot more relaxed about it because she's got visibility and I think the fear of the unknown is more paralyzing than the actual truth of what's out there. So yeah, to your point, we probably could even still do a better job, but that's...

fundamentally changed our relationship because we're not always Questioning right what's going on. We're both full in the loop good bad or indifferent. We're both on the same page

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (22:29.066)
Yeah, and that's so smart because one partner in every couple is going to be left with that. And very often it's the person who did not get themselves involved, statistically speaking, women live longer. And so they end up having to pick up the pieces there. And so having both members of a couple part of that conversation is really important from a who's going to manage it in the long term.

from a psychological point, right? So you're both feeling empowered about the decisions that you're making, and you're both on the same page when it comes to what is important to us. And it's also a great conversation to understand values because most couples, I don't think ever sit down and say, hey, what is really important to you in this life? And conversations around money can really open up the possibility of that conversation, and you can get to know each other on a deeper level. And that can be helpful.

all aspects.

Brett Trainor (23:28.987)
And it goes back to what do we want right so you know she's always wants to spend much more time in Florida in the off The offseason I'm completely comfortable up here, and we just always knew that was there But we had life going on so we never got now We're actually having real conversations of what would we want in Florida if we do that? What are we gonna do here? We live in Illinois right do we need the full big house that we've had with the family house? Maybe maybe not so

We don't have answers to these questions yet because it's a bigger puzzle than just, oh, we do this and this. It would be super easy. That it's just not the way it's working. So it's not a bad thing. We just know we're not quite ready to have to make those decisions, but we both know we're gonna have to when that time comes. And again, it just is so much better to be proactive than reactive. And again, she's more of the planner than I am. So I'm aligning more with her.

her process with this, but like I said, it's been super beneficial.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (24:31.158)
Yeah, you can never think about, like having time to think about things and get to know yourself can be really helpful. And understanding what is most important to you is definitely a process. And it's not something that you can just wake up one day and kind of, because life is full of trade-offs. You could do a million different things, right? And so, you know, it takes time to get to know yourself and really understand what is deeply most important to you. I really like the values exercise of, you know, really.

Brett Trainor (24:50.845)
All right.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (24:59.714)
pinpointing your key values and aligning your life with those key values, because I think it's just a good guardrail to help you sort of figure out, hey, does this idea align with those things that I know are really true to me? In my case, I have always been, you know, like I could have independence tattooed on my head, right? That's just always been my thing. And I always felt trapped in the corporate environment and always felt like my creativity or my ideas just never had room there.

And so everything I do, I think, does this move me towards independence? And does this make me feel independent? Cause that's truly a deep core value of mine.

Brett Trainor (25:39.655)
Yeah, no, really well said. And I think that that's true. And it actually posted something today talking about, right. I mean, corporate loyalty is gone, right? There is no job security anymore. It's definitely much more transactional within the organizations, even more so than, you know, five years ago. And as we get older as Gen X, the other thing is that people are not hiring us as quick, we're viewed as expensive.

and old. I mean, there's ages and there's just no doubt that those things are happening. And so, right, that wouldn't drive me nuts knowing that I'm in corporate. And what does the next job look like earlier in the career if there's transitions or we lived through 08, 09, when those things have been more jobs popped up and it was still the corporate life that was expected. But now I'm thinking if I hadn't done what I did four years ago, I would be super nervous about

you know, what's next, right? So the world's changed. Again, the good thing is I think we've got a lot of the skills, the power, we just have to build up that confidence and get over the fear that, you know, nobody, can't find customers, nobody's gonna want us to do the work. And that's just, it's just not true, right? We got to get out of our own way. Easier said than done, but you know, I think fundamentally that's where we're at.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (27:00.906)
Yeah, I think it's much better to be on the giving end of the end of your employment than on the receiving end. You don't have to go through that whole morning process. So you can just pick up with whatever is, you know, sparking your soul and, you know, start working on that instead of having to go through the rejection.

Brett Trainor (27:20.987)
Yeah, interesting. So any other suggestions as folks are, because I mean, in the perfect world, if you're in corporate, you build kind of a side hustle, which some of the things we're talking about you could do with advisory, you would have had a hard time doing it, because you would have had conflict of interest, or maybe there are certain things that you could have done. But so I'm always careful to people are going to do this when they're ready. And that's one thing that I found with conversation after conversation with folks that have left is

It wasn't going to happen until they were ready. And even if they're close to being ready until they were ready, it didn't, um, it didn't go. So any suggestions to help, uh, or anything that you've seen with your clients and gave them a little more peace of mind that even if I go down this path, like I said, with the runway, you can always go back. So any other suggestions or recommendations, probably more on the psychological side than the true fiscal side of it. I'm curious.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (28:19.222)
Yeah, I mean, I think that there are so many ways to make money these days. And depending on where you are from a savings perspective, if you've been a pretty frugal person and you've put away some money over the course of your life, it is definitely an option for many people to take a sabbatical, take a year off, see what feels good to you. You and I have talked about health insurance in the past. Don't let health insurance be the prisoner that keeps you.

There are health insurance, the Affordable Care Act has more subscribers, I recently heard than like ever. So there's definitely options. It may take a little bit more research to figure out how you're going to put all the pieces of your life together. It's not the path of least resistance. But you know,

sit down with your advisor or your spreadsheet or whatever, figure out if you can afford to just take a year off and come back to it when you feel refreshed and passionate about something again, or take a trip and explore what's going on and immerse yourself in what other people are doing. And I think there's just so many different avenues out there today, and we don't have to feel so stuck in a life that is not fulfilling when our life is not.

And we're not immortal, right? So we have to kind of figure out how to live our lives now and how to do it with as much fulfillment as possible.

Brett Trainor (29:42.542)
Right.

Brett Trainor (29:50.335)
Yeah, that's well said. Jesse Itzler, I don't know if you know him, the author, he's like NetJet's CEO, Sarah Blakely's husband, right? But he has a really good line when people ask him about the past, he's like, I really don't care about the past. He was just statistically speaking, I'm 54, I've got 23 summers left. How much can I get jammed into these next 23 summers to make sure that I'm living? I'm like, it's so simple, but so well said, so.

Yes, I've definitely subscribed to that mentality of how do we get more and just do it and if we're stuck in this hamster wheel of other things. So yes, more of the merrier. And like I said, I think we're seeing the numbers starting to grow. And I definitely don't wanna let you go without talking about the tiny home community because I'm sure there's folks out there. Again, I've watched the HD. It's just amazing what you can do in a small space. So maybe for those folks out there that aren't familiar with it.

Just maybe a quick tutorial on what it is and when, and if you're thinking about the next chapter of life, why maybe this makes sense.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (30:56.854)
Yes. So historically speaking, homes have been getting larger while families have been getting smaller and more dispersed. And so a lot of folks are sitting on a lot of rooms that they're having to keep cool and heated. And, you know, they're just filling them up with stuff because, you know, we're in a consumer based society. So tiny living is the idea that maybe you don't need quite so much stuff.

And it for a trade off for all the stuff is that you can align your life with what's more important to you, whether that's travel or exploring or a lifestyle business. So you don't have to work for 20 hours a week, lots of different ideas wrapped up in just having less, less cost of living associated with your home.

And I often write about home equity, which is a resistance point that people face a lot. The reality of home equity is that it is not accessible except by paying interest again on that money any way you shake it, except for to sell the house and downsize for cash. So selling the house and downsizing for cash is a great way to pull out your equity, no longer have

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (32:11.83)
provide you with a runway to start your own business or launch your life or launch your retirement or whatever it is. So I think that it is just an idea for Gen X in this moment where we're sending our kids off and they're growing up and we're figuring out, hey, what are we doing with the last 30, 40 years of our life? What we could be doing is focusing more on our passions and fulfillment.

and focusing less on going to work every day to pay to keep up a really expensive roof over our head. And so that is kind of my little soapbox on tiny living.

Brett Trainor (32:50.559)
I know. I love it. Again, it just makes so much sense. This generation and even us when my parents didn't have a ton of stuff and my wife's parents had a little more stuff, we didn't really need or want all their stuff that they had. We can't get rid of it. It's still down in our basement. I already know my three girls really don't want any of this stuff that we have now, but yet we continue to hold on to it, store it.

I'm slowly starting to work through it, but yeah, this space is another issue. I'm curious, and maybe it's more contextual, but rent versus everybody's like, you got to buy a house, you got to buy a house. We've got some folks that we know are a little bit older than us a little further down the journey. They said they're never buying a home again, they're renting. It's a smaller place, right? They don't need all this space to store all this stuff. But conventional wisdom says buy a home, it's more cost effective. And I'm like, I just don't know if that's...

is accurate anymore as he used to be with property tax and mortgage, everything else. Didn't mean to put you on a spot, but just curious your take on this.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (33:53.986)
Yes.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (33:57.442)
Yes, the conventional wisdom is funded by the $11 trillion mortgage industry. Okay, so we have all been convinced that letting somebody loan us money, that we have to pay them significant interest for the rest of our lives because we continue to upgrade our homes and upgrade our homes and upgrade our homes throughout our life or have multiple homes or whatever.

Brett Trainor (34:08.617)
Hahaha

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (34:25.982)
Somebody's making a lot of money on that. And that's why it seems the conventional wisdom because it's just a system that is in the air and we're all part of it. So, you know, if you think about renting, you know, for those folks, if your rent is less than the overall cost of owning a home, which of course homes have carrying costs, there's, you know, interest, there's insurance, and then there's the maintenance of the home and they're able to pick up.

you know, in six months and say, hey, we're done living in, you know, Ohio and we want to go spend, you know, six months in Florida or wherever they want to go. That flexibility is a legitimate value and there's legitimate reasons to do that. And so I think that there's all kinds of ways to house yourself and we have more options than ever before about how we house ourselves. And so we don't

always have to make decisions based on the ultimate net worth that we will have at age 100 or whatever, especially when that net worth is tied up in a home and to access that capital involves paying somebody interest again. So I think that we can maybe have a little more critical thinking around some of these concepts that we just assume are the best practices.

Brett Trainor (35:47.923)
And you know, it makes perfect sense, especially when you say it so clearly. So we'll have to add that to our list of discussion points of, you know, ownership versus renting. And it makes perfect sense. So I know we're getting short on time, Laura. Is there anything else that we didn't cover today that we should have? Did I miss anything?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (36:08.726)
Now, I think these are all great topics. I'm super excited for the work that you're doing and the way that you are helping people in our generation reimagine their work life and reimagine it in a way that is more in alignment with what they're passionate about and less in alignment with doing what we think we're supposed to do.

Brett Trainor (36:28.947)
so true and you're along for the, not even the ride, you're driving this too to help us figure out how we can do this. It's one thing to see the possibilities and the work, but then how do we actually execute and live our lives? And so if folks want to connect with you, learn more about you and your services, what's the best way for people to find you?

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (36:50.178)
Yeah, my website is thet and advisor is spelled S-E-R because I got tired of Microsoft Word auto correcting me every time I put S-O-R. So thet I'm also very active on LinkedIn.

Brett Trainor (37:09.899)
And check out the podcast. It's really good too. So we may have to figure out how to get you. I love that. Figure out how to get you out as a reoccurring guest because something tells me we're going to get a lot of really positive feedback because it just, this is the nuts and the bolts of actually doing it. It's one thing to say, Hey, I'm going to do it now we're doing it. How do we actually execute on that? So I really appreciate you taking some time to educate us. And like I said, we'll figure out how to get you back here on a more regular basis to.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (37:11.902)
Oh yes, less house, more moolah.

Brett Trainor (37:39.891)
to share with the audience.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (37:41.878)
Sounds good. And I'm not the only financial planner out there helping people create these sabbaticals, these exits from tech. And there's a lot of planners that are focused on this, values-based planning. So if you're looking for someone to help you and I'm not a perfect fit, there's just a lot of advisors out there that are doing this work. So have a Google.

Brett Trainor (38:03.967)
That's perfect. Don't do it alone, right? That's the way. There's definitely help across the board. All right. Well, thank you, Laura. It was always a great pleasure to have you on. We'll catch up with you soon.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (38:06.562)
That's right.

Laura Lynch, CFP® ABFP™ AAMS® CDFA® (38:15.778)
Sounds good, Brett, thank you so much.