Carl Jensen: Retired At 43, 1500 Days To Freedom, The Death March To FI, Learning To Spend & Finding Happiness | FRLP 117
Carl Jensen retired at 43. Learning to enjoy the freedom he’d built took years longer.
In this episode of the Fit Rich Life Podcast, I sit down with my friend Carl, creator of 1500 Days to Freedom, for an honest conversation about achieving financial independence — and figuring out what to do with your life once you get there.
Carl shares how a stressful software career led him to Google “how to retire early,” discover Mr. Money Mustache, and build a plan to leave his job. He also opens up about what he calls his “death march” to financial independence: working 80–100 hours a week between his job, house renovations, and blog while sacrificing sleep, fitness, and time he can never get back.
We explore why the first several years of early retirement felt surprisingly unsettling, how the drive that helps you build wealth can make it difficult to slow down, and why Carl is finally learning to do things simply because he enjoys them. I also share how friendship, community, and pickleball helped me work through my own identity crisis after leaving my career.
Then we get into learning to spend. Carl explains why buying a $10,000 private concert pushed him outside his comfort zone, how he’s becoming more comfortable paying for meaningful experiences, and why extreme frugality can eventually get in the way of the life you saved for. We talk about shifting from maximizing your net worth to maximizing your net life — and using money to make the things you already love even better.
Carl also breaks down his 25,000-step-a-day walking habit, how he combines strength training with hours of movement, and the workout mistake that held back his progress for years. Finally, we explore the connection between childhood experiences and constant achievement, separating self-worth from productivity, and using Stoicism to find more gratitude in everyday life.
Episode 117 of the Fit Rich Life Podcast with Carl Jensen is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and wherever you enjoy your podcast entertainment.
Connect With Carl Jensen:
1500 Days to Freedom: 1500days.com
Get a FREE copy of my Fit Rich Life Money Guide: mwob.fitrichlife.com
In This Episode:
The stressful work experience that sparked Carl’s early retirement journey
Discovering Mr. Money Mustache and getting his wife Mindy on board
Building wealth through saving, investing, and live-in house flips
Why being financially ready to retire doesn’t mean feeling emotionally ready
The “death march” to FI and what Carl would do differently
Building a life you enjoy before reaching your FI number
Feeling lost after leaving work and finding purpose in retirement
Why friendship and community deserve deliberate effort
Learning to enjoy life without constantly accomplishing something
Moving beyond extreme frugality and getting comfortable spending
The $10,000 private concert that challenged Carl’s money mindset
Maximizing your net life and spending on meaningful experiences
Walking 25,000 steps a day, weighted vests, and strength training
Childhood experiences, overachievement, and self-worth
Saving for the freedom to handle whatever life brings
Using Stoicism to practice gratitude and reframe everyday frustrations
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Full Transcript:
Carl Jensen: Retired At 43, 1500 Days To Freedom, The Death March To FI, Learning To Spend & Finding Happiness | FRLP 117
Introducing Carl Jensen of 1500 Days to Freedom
Justin David Carl: My guest today retired at 43, but figuring out how to enjoy the freedom he'd built turned out to be a whole different challenge. Carl Jensen is the creator of 1500 Days to Freedom, a longtime investor, a relentless walker, and a guy who somehow retired from his job without retiring from a never-ending list of projects. He's also a good friend, and after hanging out at FinCon, I knew we needed to have this conversation.
Today we're getting into what he'd do differently on the road to financial independence, what retirement is actually like, and why spending the money you've worked so hard to accumulate can be surprisingly difficult. We'll also talk Tesla, individual tech stocks, and the bigger question underneath all of it. Once you can afford to live life on your own terms, what does that life look like? Carl, welcome to the show, brother.
Carl Jensen: Justin, man, thank you so much for having me. I had such a good time hanging out with you at FinCon. It actually made me a little sad to leave FinCon because I know if we lived close together, we'd be playing pickleball and hanging out, having barbecues and eating a lot of protein, probably on a weekly basis, if not more frequent. So yeah, it was awesome hanging out with you and I'm happy to hang out with you today.
Justin David Carl: And I'd be making you give me rides in your self-driving Tesla because that is one of the things we did together at FinCon. I made you give me a self-driving ride in the Tesla.
Carl Jensen: It was all my pleasure. I love doing that 'cause most people aren't aware that the car can drive itself. So real quick, one of my favorite things to do is someone's in the car in the passenger seat who does not know the car can drive itself. I'll activate full self-driving and then kinda hang back and eventually they'll realize that I'm not driving, that the car is driving and they usually freak out, which is pretty amusing.
What Freedom Feels Like in Early Retirement
Justin David Carl: Yeah. Well, Carl, you've had years to live the life people listening are working toward. What does freedom feel like to you today?
Carl Jensen: Wow, start with the big questions, JDC. What does freedom feel like to me today? Freedom at this very day doesn't feel so great because I'm cleaning out my garage. But if I take a step back, I would much rather be cleaning out my garage than doing my job that I did when I worked full-time, because I'm doing this on my own terms. I'm doing it in a beautiful house that I just built, and some of it I actually built myself with my own two hands, and having the autonomy to choose to clean your garage or to go on a bike ride or take a break and talk to you is pretty awesome. And that's really what the whole thing is about. It's autonomy to do whatever you want, even if you're not sure what that is going to be. Every day's different. It's like, I'm not as smart as this guy, JDC, but Forrest Gump: life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get, or whatever that quote is.
Redwoods and Unplanned Road Trip Adventures
Justin David Carl: So one of the things that I really appreciate about you in general is your interest in exploring. So on your way to FinCon, you chose to take your self-driving Tesla while your wife Mindy flew, and then you did a road trip after FinCon to explore more. And I'm just curious what was the best unplanned part of that post-FinCon road trip?
Carl Jensen: Unplanned part. Very, very interesting. I would say it was seeing some of the trees in Redwood National Park. I had seen photos of those trees as a kid. I'm old, man. I'm in my fifties. So I had seen pictures of those things like four decades ago, but I haven't seen them in person. And even to see these things in person, JDC, you've seen them before, right?
Justin David Carl: Yeah, actually, one of the reasons we live in Santa Cruz is because we want to own a home that has redwoods on it.
Carl Jensen: That'd be so awesome. I hope you invite me over if you do that. But you see these trees in person and your brain can't even process them because they're so big. And one of these trails I spontaneously did, you asked me what the best unexpected thing was, and it was this, this trail that I just went on because it was there and other people are doing it. It was not only among the trees, but it was like next to a little creek. So there's ferns everywhere, the trails going up and down, just spectacular. You see that coastal fog come in. Really neat. I hate this word 'cause I sound like a Disney commercial, but it was a magical day.
Justin David Carl: Magic and magical is actually one of my favorite words. So I'm gonna have to disagree with your hate of that word.
Carl Jensen: I'll let that one slip.
The Medical Device Scare That Broke Him
Justin David Carl: So let's dive a little bit into your origin story. I know you've given it a ton. You've chronicled the whole thing on your blog, which we'll link to in the show notes. But for those of you who are new to you and your story, take us back to the workday that made you think you could not keep doing this for another couple decades. What actually happened?
Carl Jensen: Wow, I was working as a programmer on a medical device and I thought I had caused an error in the thing that could potentially harm or even kill someone and I freaked out. I took my job very seriously and it was already stressful. So I compare my job or I like to contrast it with that of an airplane pilot. If you fly a plane, you land, your stress is done, you've completed your thing, and there's nothing to worry about when you get home. But with this, there was always this black cloud in the back of my mind saying, what happens if I programmed something shitty like five years ago and this thing pops up 'cause sometimes these bugs are buried deep in there. So I thought I'd actually caused one. And I don't think I ate. It was a great plan to lose weight. The job was always stressful. So I gained weight and I think I lost like ten pounds a week. I remember being huddled over the toilet thinking I was going to throw up and it was just miserable. And that was kind of the breaking point for me in this job.
Discovering Mr. Money Mustache
Carl Jensen: Like, I can't do this anymore. So I Googled how do I retire early? And it was a Hail Mary in my life. I didn't expect anything to actually come out of that Google query, but up came Mr. Money Mustache. At first I thought I had stumbled on a scam. This 30-year-old guy was saying he was retired. I'm like, people do not do this. I don't know anyone in my entire life who has ever retired before, like 65 or 70. I think I had a relative who died on the job.
But then I started reading it. I'm like, you know what? I'm desperate. I have to give this thing a chance. And I kept reading it. So like an hour later, I'm like, no, this mysterious mustache guy on the internet. I don't know who this guy is. It might even be a bot, like not a real person. But he speaks the truth. It's just a math problem. And it's a pretty simple math problem at that. So I made a plan to retire early, and I did just that, like three or four years after I discovered all of that.
Bringing the Early Retirement Idea to Mindy
Justin David Carl: I'm curious what your wife Mindy thought or said when you first brought the idea to her.
Carl Jensen: My God, that's so good. That's a great question because I've got a great answer. I was reading this, and like I said, for the first minute, I'm like, this is false. I discovered a multi-level marketing scam. An hour later, I'm like, this is the real deal. So the next thing I did was I ran out from my office to the kitchen. She was in there preparing lunch or dinner. I'm like, hey, I found this Mr. Money Mustache guy on the internet. And you know how stressed I've been at my job? And she's like, Yeah, kind of looking at me with suspicion. I'm like, Well, he says that if we just save a little bit more money, we're already savers, so we've got a good bunch saved up. If we just save a little bit more, I can quit my job and be done with all this stress. And she's like, Okay, that sounds great. I know how stressed you are if you've done the research and the math. That's fine with me. So I'm like, holy cow, I just ran out of my office with this harebrained thing I read on the internet. Not harebrained. It turned out to be legit, but this thing I read off the internet, and she completely accepted it and trusted me from the get-go. So I really appreciate that 'cause not only did she trust that I was speaking the truth and that I hadn't gone insane and lost my mind, but she also was on board with the early retirement thing. And that could be a big divisive thing. People ask me all the time, JDC, like, I'm on board with this, but my husband or wife is not, what do I do? And I'm like, well, you might want to find a new partner.
Justin David Carl: Yeah, and I totally agree with you. What you experienced with your wife is fairly uncommon, I would say, talking to people. Usually when a person in a relationship brings this idea to their significant other, their significant other is pretty suspicious and unbelieving in the beginning and maybe even resistant to the idea because like you said, you and most people don't know anyone who's early retired. Or it's very strange and weird if we do know somebody. They're somebody who, you know, maybe randomly hit it big doing something or inherited something from a wealthy family member or whatever. But it's not something that somebody who works a traditional 9-to-5 job normally does.
How Justin Got His Wife on Board With FI
Carl Jensen: Yeah, I'm kinda curious, JDC, if it's okay for me to ask you a question. Were you and your partner both on board after you discovered this?
Justin David Carl: Great question. Happy to answer. So I totally did it wrong in the beginning. She was totally open to the idea, but the way I handled it was by trying to get her to read Mr. Money Mustache articles. And I'm sure as soon as she saw face punching, she was like completely turned off. But Mr. Money Mustache, Pete, who I know is a good friend of yours now, was to me like Anchorman's Ron Burgundy that I needed at that time in my life. Because up until discovering him, my money was a total fucking dumpster fire. And I needed somebody to come in and punch me in the face.
And, you know, with that bravado and the confidence that, say, someone like Ron Burgundy from Anchorman had, and it was just funny as fuck to me. So it worked great for me, but it did not work well for my wife. And, you know, so we struggled a little bit in the beginning kind of getting on the same page. But what changed everything for me, and I tell this to any person who's in a relationship who's struggling to get their spouse on board, is I decided to purchase a ticket to Camp FI for my wife and myself out of my money and say, "Hey, would you just go to this with me?" And then there she met all these other people that were on the journey to financial independence or already financially independent. And specifically, she heard Paula Pant from Afford Anything give a talk at Joshua Tree Camp FI 2018.
And when she heard Paula Pant talk, it like clicked for her. And then ever since then we've really been on the same page. Now she's not as crazy or obsessive as I am. And that's the other thing I share with people is usually there's one person in the relationship who's kind of driving the FI journey, and the other person is more of a passenger.
And as long as that passenger isn't trying to crash the FI car, then it's great. You just need them to support you pursuing that journey. You don't need them to be as crazy about it as you. So my wife, she never was obsessive like me, but she totally supported the vision of us achieving financial independence through a lot of effort from me.
Paula Pant, Camp FI, and Earning More
Carl Jensen: Okay. You had a really great tip buried in there that I want to underline because I think this is super important. You said she resonated with Paula Plant with Paula Pant. I said Paula Plant. Paula is a spectacular person. We just talked to her at FinCon as well. And I think that's part of the key to bringing people on board. You need to introduce them to a voice that they're going to be comfortable with and they might identify with and resonate with. So that was very smart of you to invite her to Camp FI as well. Although I could see people being like, What, we're gonna go to an adult summer camp and hang out with a bunch of people? Are you bringing me to a cult? Like what's gonna happen here? But I'm glad that worked out.
Justin David Carl: Yeah. Yeah. It's just a weekend camp for money nerds. Come on, it'll be so fun.
Carl Jensen: Fully clothed.
Justin David Carl: No. Well, the thing that was interesting for me, just to double click on Paula Pant, because I do really admire her and her work, is her talk was about stop focusing on being like a frugal weirdo and frugaling yourself into a corner and instead focus on earning more money. And that really resonated with my wife because she was not into the ultra frugality like I was. I was happy to not eat out at restaurants for three years while my wife continued to eat out at restaurants with her friends. I just never went unless someone else was paying. But she supported me doing that 'cause she knows I'm an extremist and when I discover something I go zero to a hundred in two seconds. But that didn't work for her. And so when she heard Paula just talk about earning more money and focusing on growing your income, she was like, I can get behind that. And the cool thing is, right after that, my wife went on to make the most money she'd ever made in her own business. And I thought that was really cool to watch her do that and be inspired by someone like Paula Pant.
How Carl Built $586,000 Before His Countdown
Justin David Carl: Okay, let's go quickly back to your story. Great question, and I think a really important one, because a lot of people who are into financial independence, a big part of that is getting your current partner or future partner on board. So when you first discovered it, you had about $586,000 when you started your public countdown. And I'm just curious, how had you built that foundation?
Carl Jensen: I had a good job. I was in software and I had money insecurity issues from growing up in a place where my parents weren't knowledgeable about money. They just did not have the information and didn't know what to do with it when it came. My dad was in construction, so sometimes the money was coming in, other times, over winter, it was not. So I could see at a young age that they struggled with it.
So I vowed to myself I'm going to get this stuff right and I'm also going to try to find a job that pays me a lot of money. I'm not sure if I got the financial, the investing part right. I actually probably got it wrong, but I got very lucky. I think we're gonna talk about that a little bit later with stocks. But one thing I did do is prioritize investing and saving. I always, if I could, I would max out my 401(k). I couldn't do that initially, but I always did that.
And as we'll talk about later, I think I did get very lucky with some stocks. I think I've got a couple hundred-baggers in my portfolio. So that led up to that $586,000. The other thing we did is fix and flip houses. The IRS has a great rule where if you live in a house for two years and own it for two years, you could sell it paying zero capital gains on up to $500,000 for a married couple.
So we would find a crusty old house, fix it up over the next two years or so, and then sell it and move on. And we had done like I think five of those by the time, no, probably three or four by the time I had accumulated that much money.
How Childhood Money Scarcity Shapes Us
Justin David Carl: That's pretty amazing. I find it fascinating, 'cause this is true in my own story as well, or journey to financial independence, that the lack of money in childhood is a massive driving force. That's what drove me. You know, my parents were stressed about money my entire childhood. And in my view, they got a divorce and separated because of money. And so I, similar to you, was like, there's no fucking way I'm not gonna fucking figure this money thing out. And I went on to make a lot of mistakes, but eventually I did figure it out. But it really did drive me to figure out how to earn a lot of money because I did think that was the problem. And I later discovered that there's two sides to that equation, earning as much as possible, but also keeping your expenses low. And because I grew up poor, I got caught up looking rich in my twenties, driving the fancy Range Rover, living in an expensive condo, and spending all my fucking money. So even though I was earning great money, I was still fucking broke. So I had to learn that one the hard way. But I'm curious, because I know you through your own podcast, interviewing with Doug on Mile High FI, also on Mindy on Money, how big of a factor do you think money scarcity in childhood plays in people's financial independence journey?
Carl Jensen: Boy, you just hit on a very interesting point 'cause I love paying attention to people, especially people who had money scarcity. And I see people reacted to it in one of two ways. One is the way I reacted to it where I was super cheap. You know, we still have our 2003 car. How old is that now? It's 23 years old. We still have that thing. That's one of the few extravagances we did purchase, but it was only $20,000.
So I see people either react like me and be super cheap, trying to eat oatmeal every morning and fix everything themselves and try not to let go of a dime. But then I see people do the opposite too. They said, Well, as a kid, I never had money. Now that I have money, I'm going to live it up. I even had a friend who said, My motto in life is to buy it now and figure out how to pay for it later. And he grew up under similar circumstances.
And I heard that and I'm like, that gives me anxiety. I heard that in my super cheap frugal stage. I'm like, that's not good. So what happens in childhood completely informs what we do as an adult in many other ways as well. But just because we have the same scarcity upbringing doesn't mean we'll react to it the same way.
Financially Ready vs. Emotionally Ready to Quit
Justin David Carl: Yeah. So when did you know you could leave financially and when did you feel ready emotionally to leave that job?
Carl Jensen: Man, well, my original goal was to have $1 million and a paid-off house and we had a pretty low interest rate, so I changed that to not have a paid-off house, but have enough money to pay it off. And I still stayed at work another year after that, despite meeting those goals. And even then it was not comfortable at all, very uncomfortable. And one of the things that really enabled me and allowed me to quit is Mindy kinda fell into her dream job, which is a completely other story. So she started making money. And at that point I'm like, okay, it's fine. I could probably let this thing go. And that's when I did it. But it's terrifying. I tell people this all the time and I think this might be one of the things Mr. Money Mustache gets wrong. He's like, just leave your work and do something else. I'm like, no, a lot of us have built our lives, our identity and so much around our job, our friends, our social network. So I think leaving a job is probably one of the biggest life changes we'll ever experience, similar to having kids, getting married, getting a divorce. And I don't know if you saw the one presentation from Wes Moss at FinCon, JDC, did you happen to see that one? Yeah. So to drive this point home, he mentioned that older males, like retired males in their 70s, are the number one age group to commit suicide. And it's because they retired and they're lost because they built their life around their job and all of a sudden they don't know what to do with themselves. They might not have built up friends except those at work and when they quit, all that goes away, as we know. And so yeah, do not diminish the change it is to leave work.
Men, Work, and Identity in Retirement
Justin David Carl: Yeah, and I totally fucked this up when I ended my 9-to-5 career. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But I think you're a hundred percent right, especially men. I think to some extent women as well, but I won't speak for women 'cause I'm a man and I don't wanna assume that they face the same challenge. But such a huge part of our identity is our work, because I think at least in America, men are subconsciously programmed by society to be providers and to have a job that provides for themselves and their family. And when that role or identity is gone or taken away, we can easily flounder.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that mentality is an artifact from probably our parents or grandparents generation where the male typically worked and oftentimes the female in the relationship stayed at home and was the homemaker. I think we're getting past that. I think we're in a much better place now. Maybe not perfect, but I think we're slowly getting better as a society, I hope. What do you think, JDC?
Justin David Carl: Yeah, I think it's definitely evolving. You know, one of the things that I think is so fucking awesome is how much more normal it is for a man to be a stay-at-home dad. Like I think that's fucking rad. If the dad wants to stay home with the kids and the wife wants to be the main breadwinner, like who the hell cares if the woman or the man does it, you know, or if it's a same-sex relationship, which one of them does it. It's just like whatever works for that specific family unit. So I think a hundred percent, you know, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, that a stay-at-home dad was definitely not normal and probably not well accepted or appreciated and probably I would say, you know, again, I wasn't alive or old enough to know, but thirty, forty years ago I'm sure very few men felt like that was even an option for them.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, it's getting better. I still had an awkward conversation with a friend kind of recently. He's like, Don't you feel awkward going to pick your kids up from school? Isn't it mostly moms? I'm like, I don't know, maybe I don't really pay attention, but I don't feel awkward at all. I get to see my kids like, what are you even talking about? I don't know what his issue was, but whatever. A little bit younger than me. Yeah, I don't know. Yep.
Justin David Carl: Yeah. How old was he, just out of curiosity? So in his forties. Interesting. Yeah. I mean again, I think it also depends on what part of the US you were raised, right? You know, if you're in a much more progressive liberal state or area, I think that's more normal and if you're in a less evolved part of the country, that may be still very taboo or weird to somebody who grew up in that type of environment.
The Death March to Financial Independence
Justin David Carl: So, all right. So the numbers worked. Now I want to understand what it cost you to get to that early retirement. So you wrote about your death march to financial independence. So which part of that journey would you most want another family to avoid?
Carl Jensen: Man, thank you for doing so much research, by the way. I've never had an interviewer who's quite so much in tune with my background, but okay, there was one part where we had two young kids, they were two and four, and I decided to do yet another fix and flip. And then we decided to expand the scope of this and actually add on to the square footage of the house. Our kids woke up early, so they'd be up at like five, five thirty. So I'd try to wake up like at four to get some work done on the house before they woke up because I wanted to spend time with them. I knew they're all going to be young once. So I'd wake up at four, try to find quiet home projects to do, which is difficult. I'd spend time with them from like five to seven, go to my job, work eight hours, then stop working, spend time with them, work on the house some more, and then work on the blog. So I probably worked, between my real job, which was forty to fifty hours a week, working on this stupid house project and working on the blog, probably eighty to a hundred hours a week, and that probably went on for four or five years. What I sacrificed was maybe the most important thing not to sacrifice: my sleep. So it was very bad. I mean, I'm financially better for it, but life-wise not so much.
Yeah, that was a bad decision. We're a little bit wealthier now, but how many memories did I miss? It was so funny, JDC, because these friends would come over and I remember zombie TV shows were big at the time and they're like, have you seen, like, The Walking Dead or Zombieland, or I don't even know what they're called? And this was a couple of years after we started this project, I'm like, No, man, my TV is still in the box from when we moved into this thing. I haven't watched the TV show or even hooked up the TV since we moved in here.
That should have been a trigger or an alarm that I was doing something wrong, but, well.
Justin David Carl: What were you telling yourself at that time that made the pace seem reasonable to you?
Carl Jensen: I was telling myself that if I get through this, I can reach my magic number. I hadn't reached it yet. And by the way, I'll back up a second. We had moved into a perfectly fine, completely done house that needed nothing else to it. And then that's when I discovered the Mr. Money Mustache blog. I'm like, we need to get rid of this nice house and buy a real piece of crap, put it in a good neighborhood. So we moved from our four-bed, four-bath little McMansion thing to a two-bed, one-bath house that was foreclosed on. Mice, ants. Yeah. But I said it was okay 'cause once I got through this I could retire and it would be worthwhile. It was a delay of gratification thing and the gratification would be epic once it was done.
Well, one more real funny story about this. We finished the house and sold it during COVID. So after putting all this life energy into it, we did get a lot of money from it. But the house that was right next to us was kind of in the same condition as my house was when I bought it. So they hadn't done anything to it. And they had someone come in there, this was in the COVID house frenzy, and give them more money for this piece of crap than we had got for our super nice fixed up house. Like, well. Sorry, JDC, I interrupted you. You were about to ask me something.
Justin David Carl: Well, I was just gonna say now in retrospect, if a slower path had cost you another year or two, would you choose the slower path now, knowing what you know now?
Carl Jensen: Absolutely. It's easy to say that now though too, because we've had an epic, epic stock market run, like fifteen years where I think the average return has been 14 or 15%. So I did not account for those numbers and neither did many people. But regardless of that, I should have gone slower. And if my job was so stressful, I should have just gotten a different one. But it paid well. I'm like, I don't want to leave this. It pays well. I can work from home. I like my coworkers. Yeah, that was another poor choice.
Don't Sacrifice Your Health on the Way to FI
Justin David Carl: So for the listeners that are on the path to FI and maybe they're behaving similar to how you behaved on your path, what is one thing they should improve now instead of postponing until they reach their FI number?
Carl Jensen: Ooh, I love this question and I love my answer because I've thought so much about it. Your retirement life, if you've done it right, I don't think should look that different from your work life. And I realize that's difficult, especially if you've got kids and lots of commitments, but it should be a gentle transition and not an abrupt change. Like one thing, what I always sacrificed, JDC, was my workouts. I'm like, okay, I've got all this going on. I probably went months without going to the gym.
One day I saw myself. When you look in a mirror, you just see the front image of yourself. So you don't notice your stomach is bulging out and you look like you're a pregnant man until someone takes a picture of you from the side and you see this. You're like, Holy cow, that's what I look like. And this is the thing I've neglected. My health, the most important thing of all, if you don't have health, you have nothing. And now I've forgotten your original question. Please repeat it and then I'll get to my big point.
Justin David Carl: Yeah, for someone who is maybe on the death march to FI similar to you, what is one thing you would encourage them to improve now versus waiting till they hit their FI number?
Carl Jensen: Yeah. Okay. So the whole point of financial independence is happiness. So if you're sacrificing happiness and wellness to reach this thing, you've completely missed the point 'cause that's the purpose of the whole thing. And you can have that now, even if you're not financially independent. You can be happy, healthy, maybe not quite wealthy yet, but you can have most of what you want post-FI, pre-FI. 'Cause let me tell you, I've researched this. Happiness does not come from external circumstances. It comes from the inside. So as I found out, you're not gonna retire and it's gonna rain unicorns and beer. It's gonna be pretty much the same. There's just gonna be forty hours less of things to do every week.
Justin's Party March to FI
Justin David Carl: Yeah. I totally agree. I think this is one area I did a great job in. So I totally fucked up in my twenties and got caught up looking rich and going broke. But when I finally did discover financial independence, you know, my FI awakening happened through Mr. Money Mustache as well, and longtime listeners will know that. But I originally heard him on The Tim Ferriss Show.
And then a few months later, when I was working on cleaning up my taxes, because I was fucking six years behind on my taxes, I Googled Mr. Money Mustache because I was looking for inspiration to clean up my money situation. And I stumbled upon the Shockingly Simple Math to early retirement, which is one of his most infamous blog articles, and my mind just exploded and I had my FI awakening and I was having the thoughts of if I'd fucking known this in my twenties, I'd already be a millionaire. Because earning money was never a problem. It was saving and investing that was my problem. But nonetheless, when I discovered FI and then decided to embark upon the journey, I told myself that while I'm pursuing FI, I'm going to feel as free as possible and have as much fun as possible on my journey to FI. And because I chose that mindset, that was my experience. So for some people, not eating out for three years would be miserable. But I had spent my 20s eating out almost every fucking day.
And it was enjoyable, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything by not eating out because I'd done so much of it. And so instead it became this incredible fun adventure for me to be ultra frugal for about three maybe four years, and now I'm not very frugal at all. Now I eat out probably three or four times a week, if not more. But because I chose the right mindset, I did have a really, really fun time on my journey to financial independence. So I would say I had the opposite of the death march. I had like the party march to FI.
Building an FI Community and Keeping Non-FI Friends
Carl Jensen: So that's awesome. You did it much better than me, but I'm curious, one quick follow up, did anything change after you pivoted to this more frugal life? Like you said you had a Range Rover before and you went out to eat all the time. Did your friend group change or anything like that?
Justin David Carl: You know, it was really, again, I think I did such a good job. You know, I was a late bloomer. Like I didn't discover FI until I think I was 34. But I immediately started a local FI meetup group within months of discovering FI. And in a couple months of starting that FI group, we had 30 to 50-plus people showing up every single month in person. So I had all these people that lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. We met up at Stanford University because I live close to it. It wasn't affiliated with Stanford University. So I did get a bunch of friends who were actually FI that were around me. And then all my non-FI friends, you know, from college and work and stuff.
I just explained to them that I was on this journey to financial independence and saving and investing as much money as possible every single month was my number one priority. So when they asked me to go get lunch or drinks or whatever, I said, How about we go for a walk and talk, a hike, or a workout? Because I don't spend money on eating out right now because I'm trying to save and invest as much. And I've always been kind of like an extreme kind of weirdo.
And so they're just like, this is just how he fucking is, and apparently this is what he's into. So they kind of just accepted it. 'Cause it wasn't like I was being super different because I've always been this kind of I don't know, slightly different person that's good at blending in with really any type of group of people, but also isn't afraid to cut against the grain, if that makes sense.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I think a lot of us on the FI path are probably cut from that same cloth and that we're not the same, but we tend to be a little bit out there in different ways. I do watch NFL games, it's one of the only things I watch, but I'm not gonna see the F-150 commercial and wanna buy one. So I think we're all a little bit different, and that's why we could do this. But let me take a quick bathroom break. Old man prostate. You could put that on the blooper reel or maybe the pooper reel.
Justin David Carl: Well, don't worry, I'll use the restroom too because I'm forty-four and a half, so I gotta use the restroom as well. I'll be right back.
Carl Jensen: Okay, cool.
Justin David Carl: It's so much easier to have a good conversation where you don't have to take a piss, right, Carl?
Carl Jensen: That is absolutely true. You don't have that weighing on ya.
Being Willing to Be Different
Justin David Carl: So I totally agree with you. I think you have to be a little bit extreme or different, or at least have the willingness to go against what is considered normal to achieve financial independence. 'Cause if you don't, you will get caught up in doing what most people do, which is barely saving any of their money and building little to no savings and investments. Which means you essentially have to work till 65 or maybe even indefinitely.
Carl Jensen: Yeah. The other thing you have to do is stop caring what you think other people think of you, which I found is actually pretty easy because you start paying attention and most people aren't really thinking about you. They're thinking about what they think you're thinking of them. Therefore, it doesn't matter what I do. Plus, I don't want to act in a way that attracts people who have values different than me. I should just be my stupid silly self and have people who like that be my friend. Everything's more authentic and genuine.
Justin David Carl: Yeah. And I would say that gets a lot easier to do as you get older. In my twenties I very much cared about what other people thought of me. In my mid-thirties I stopped caring as much and now in my mid-forties, I really don't give a fuck. You know, I'm happy to really just be who I am. And I think that does come with age. Some people discover that superpower earlier in life than others, but I do agree with you it is really important if you want to achieve financial independence because you have to be totally okay not upgrading your car and getting the biggest house possible and, you know, buying shit to impress other people.
The First Monday of Early Retirement
Justin David Carl: So let's talk about retirement and learning to spend. So walk me through the first Monday when you no longer had to work. What did you actually do?
Carl Jensen: Ooh, I remember this day like it was yesterday. I felt kind of like lost and cut adrift. I remember there's a park in the center of our town called Roosevelt Park, which I like to walk around. There's beautiful flowers there. It's kind of like the heart of our town. So I went for a walk around there and looked around, and what I saw were a bunch of senior citizens, like people in their 70s or 80s, walking around, and then young mothers pushing carts around, pushing their babies around. I'm like, hey, there's me. I'm kind of in between these two different stages in life. What happens next? And I admit it felt a little disconcerting because while I was happy and content with my situation to have relieved myself of the stressful job, I didn't quite know what to do with myself.
Searching for Purpose After Leaving Work
Justin David Carl: So how was that first year or two of early retirement?
Carl Jensen: I would say it was a little bit disconcerting. I'd love to say it was happy and joyful, but I was constantly looking for things to do and I don't think that was even the first year or two. I think it was probably the first five or six years and, well, what I mean by that is I was searching for purpose and meaning because a job gives you that. You get tremendous accomplishment if you have a job that resonates with your values. I loved writing code. It was a lot of fun, actually. I just didn't like all the other stuff that went along with it. But I think all humans like that. One thing I think a lot about, JDC, is the quality that makes us able to retire early, a lot of us are hardworking, we're high achievers, we get good jobs. That quality does not serve us in retirement because we're not ones to sit around. We're achievement oriented, we like to be busy, and we like to do things, and it can be difficult to reconcile those two things.
Pickleball, FinCon, and the Power of Community
Justin David Carl: Yeah. And as I mentioned to you off air before we hit record, my first year of early retirement was a total fucking identity crisis. And it was not good. It didn't really get good, and I've said this on the podcast many times, until I discovered pickleball, which is so fucking ridiculous, but it is true. And you know, Wes Moss, in his talk at FinCon, one of the big parts of that presentation was the importance of hobbies. And hobbies that give meaning to our life, that create social connection, create community, create physical activity. And yes, most of the people I play with during the week are retired people in their late fifties, sixties, and beyond. Now there's always people my age who either have a work-from-home job or have a flexible job where they're able to play on a weekday morning. But I think it really is important. And this is one of the things I would tell anyone who's pursuing early retirement is you need some hobbies that connect you with other people.
Because one of the things that I was missing in those first few years or that first year was the community. So once I started playing pickleball, then I went to FinCon and connected with all the FI people that had been on my show. And suddenly I didn't feel so alone. Then I went to EconoMe in March of this year and was like connecting with even more FI people. And between those three things, going to FI events and pickleball and then a new gym opening up in Santa Cruz that has a really awesome community, I suddenly felt super happy and it was all connection and community that was missing for me.
Planning Travel Around People, Not Destinations
Carl Jensen: Man, that is so important. I think we as humans underestimate that because I think we've moved to a point where I look at my neighborhoods and some of the places I've lived where, like, I just moved, but the neighbors who I lived next to for the past six years, I've never been inside their house once and they haven't been in mine. Like, how sad is that? And humans are social animals. That's how we grew up. We had to have connections to survive.
And that is just our evolution. So what I found in life is the experiences with people are the most satisfying. And I've got one really good point on this. You kind of alluded to it a moment ago there, but I plan my travel mostly not around destinations, but around people. And if I know people who are going to be there or people I can go with. And I'll give you a couple quick examples. I went on a river cruise with five friends. A friend, Kristen, does travel with the FI community, and I'm going to Japan with her same group. And I'm going to New York in a, well, you know what? New York isn't a good example. I'm going to see Metallica at the Sphere in Las Vegas with a group of friends. So I think these experiences would have been cool with just my partner Mindy, but I think they'll be elevated because we get to share these experiences with people in our community and good friends, which is awesome. I think it's probably the most important long-term indicator for happiness. Like food is great, all these experiences are great in life, but they're better when you can have fun people to share them with.
Friendship Is an Asset Worth Investing In
Justin David Carl: Hundred percent. And it's so simple and so obvious, but I think you know, you mentioned earlier in the conversation how common it is for men, especially to have no friends outside of their workplace or outside of their wife's friends' husbands. And this is very true. I've researched this: the older men get, the smaller their friend group tends to get, on average. Not all men. I think you and I are doing a great job. I think I know I have a ton of friends who aren't my wife's girlfriends' husbands, if that makes sense. I have a lot of friends that have nothing to do with my wife and that have nothing to do with work. And that brings me so much fucking happiness. And I think that is really critical for anyone who's pursuing financial independence and early retirement: making sure that, especially if you're a man, you are putting in an investment into building the asset of community and friendship and that is probably the asset that is most important for your happiness in life.
Would you agree, Carl?
Carl Jensen: Absolutely. And the other thing you mentioned, which is critically important, is you have to put effort into it. And there's a lot of different ways to do this. One of the things I do is I go through my texts, and I actually have a list of friends because I'm pathetic and I need all the friends I can get. And I make sure I send like five or six friends who I might not have seen in a year, like a text every week. Just, Hey, how's it going? Here's what I've been up to. What is your life like? When might we see each other again? Just to maintain these loose relationships with people I know I'll see again, but I don't know when. A lot of them aren't geographically close. But yeah, it takes work and unless you put in the work, the natural inertia of things is these people are going to go away unless you put the work into it, especially if they're not close to you. You're not gonna bump into each other naturally, like on a weekly basis.
Be the Friend Who Puts in the Effort
Justin David Carl: Yeah, a friend and former guest of the show, Justin Taylor, he was recently on and he made this comment that I thought was so brilliant. And he said, if you are early retired, be the friend that puts in all the effort to maintain the connection because the friends that are still working, they don't have the freedom of time and energy that you have as an early retired person to maintain the relationship. And so why not let go of keeping score of did he or she respond to me? Did they text me or call me as much as I've texted them? He said, fuck all that.
Just go out of your way to reach out, connect, and set up time to hang out with them because you have this beautiful gift of financial freedom, time and resources that they don't have yet. And you should not count that against them. And you should actually use that to your advantage to over-optimize being proactive about maintaining and building friendships.
And I thought that was so true.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, that's a great tip. I guess I've done that subconsciously. Like I have some friends who are still working and I'm like, hey, I'll come out to you. Like you don't have to come out to see me. I know your time is limited. Plus they happen to live in cool places. So I admit it's a little bit for myself too. But yeah, that's a really awesome tip.
Learning It's Okay Not to Be Productive
Justin David Carl: Yeah. So I'm curious, you mentioned the first few years, maybe even several years of early retirement were a little rough for you. So when did it start to get good for you? Or maybe it's not good yet. You tell me.
Carl Jensen: I think it's only been in the past maybe two years. And I'm coming up on ten years. It'll be ten years in April. Maybe the past two years where I've learned I don't have to be accomplishing things constantly. It's okay to go for a walk. You know I like to walk. I've got a 25,000 step-a-day walking habit. And I've even dialed this back a little bit in a certain way because I would say to myself, it's okay to walk, but as long as we're listening to a podcast, like I'm gonna listen to Tim Ferriss or Huberman or Paula Pant or find some way to improve myself and now and same thing with driving. I'm never gonna drive when it's quiet or even listen to music. I'm gonna try to listen to a podcast. And now I'm at peace with just walking and like looking at the trees or driving and like looking out the window and not having anything on at all. It took a long time to calm down.
I'm a high-energy person. I can't sit still. If you were to see my legs, which you don't want to see, you would see they're fidgeting constantly.
Justin David Carl: Yeah, or when you're driving your Tesla pumping up Metallica as loud as you can get it.
So, well, I'm really happy to hear that, and I think a lot of, again, you know, people pursuing financial independence, we tend to be overachievers, and it is often a default mode for us. And I was very much the same as you that I always felt that I had to be listening to a podcast or an audiobook or always had to be self-improving, right? And one of the things that I've kind of challenged myself to do this year is reading less self-improvement books and instead creating more and just meditating more, thinking more, writing more, so less consumption of self-improvement and more stepping into my own experience of life.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, it's okay to do something just for joy. I knew I had turned a little bit of a corner when I allowed myself to read like a fictional short story thing. Like I'm not gonna gain anything from this, but I am gonna gain something because it makes me happy and I enjoy doing this. We actually did break out the TV and I watched Ted Lasso, so I don't know if you saw that, but that was great. That was the first show I probably watched in five or six years since I retired. Yeah, it's okay. Stoicism kind of makes this easier too because you ponder your life and you realize you're pretty much irrelevant. We're happy, we've accomplished our goals, so there's nothing more we really have to do except try to live a joyous life and maybe help others when we can. And yeah, that's it. We're gonna be worm food in a hundred years and nothing else will matter. Another Metallica reference: "Nothing Else Matters."
Learning to Spend After a Lifetime of Frugality
Justin David Carl: So let's talk a little bit about spending money because I know being ultra frugal was a part of your identity and as it was mine for a time. You and your wife Mindy even went on Ramit's show and talked about your frugality and lack of spending. I'm curious where you're at now with using and spending your wealth?
Carl Jensen: Yeah, well the first thing I'll say, I'll back up a second before I answer your question is if you're frugal your whole life, it's deeply uncomfortable to pivot. It's a big behavioral change, so it doesn't feel natural. But I think that's good because you think about comfort zones, JDC, and you hear people say like nothing good comes until you get out of your comfort zone. And that is the same thing with spending. So at least I had to push myself. I had to buy some crazy things. The most notable, the first one I can think of: one of my favorite bands happened to be a band that hit it big, but not so big that they couldn't have a Kickstarter where I could buy a private concert with them. And it was $10,000. And I previously had an expensive car, but I knew I could sell it for what I bought it for, which is exactly what I did. But this experience was different because I knew once I spent this $10,000, it was gone. I would have this experience and these memories. But the money's out the window. And I remember this, I was sitting in the basement of my old house just like now. And I think I was sweating when I kickstarted it and hit the submit button. But the curious thing was, JDC, is right after I did it, I felt good. I'm like, wow, I'm happy I did this. I think this is gonna work out. So you have to get out of your comfort zone.
Another example of this, which will happen in a couple of weeks: we bought these fancy Metallica tickets for their Sphere residency. And have you been to the Sphere yet? Did we have this conversation? It's incredible. I really like Metallica, but this experience, brace yourself. It's two nights for Mindy and I. And that they kind of get you because they make you buy these packages. And I'm a modest hotel person. Like I don't need a fancy place, but they made you buy like three nights of the Venetian, which is fancy. So with this package, you get a Metallica water bottle. Like, great, I need another water bottle in my life. But this whole experience was $5,000. And again, that's like once this money's gone, it's gone. Like we'll be able to enjoy Metallica for three hours, hang out with friends in Vegas. But it was outside of my comfort zone. But now it feels good. After you do it the first time and you've had a positive experience it's a little bit easier to do it the second time.
And I guess one of the things I always had in the back of my head is, is there a slippery slope to this where I'll start doing these crazy things and then five years later I'll be living in a box 'cause I couldn't control myself. And I don't think that's the case. I think most of us in this community are pretty thoughtful about money and we're only going to let it go if it's going to be something meaningful to us. But still, JDC, I think I see much more of people being far too conservative and too cheap, like even doing bad things or maybe hurting others or compromising friendships than what they should be doing, doing the opposite, spending a little bit more. I just reread Die With Zero, so I'm kinda amped on this. I did listen to that audiobook on my way back from my trip. But yeah, get out of your comfort zone. And one other real quick tip that helped me: we saved more, our investments worked out, we ended up with a lot more money than we needed. So I'm like, okay, we only need like $2 million for the rest of our life. Therefore, anything on top of that, we should be able to do whatever we want. And if you've saved an extra million, you've got one thousand $1,000 experiences. I mean, that's a lot of good experiences. So yeah, I don't know. What do you think about all this, JDC?
The Crossover Point From Frugality to Abundance
Justin David Carl: Yeah, I think you know, I've undergone my own unraveling of the frugality stage. So I think and I want to be crystal clear. I think in the beginning of your financial independence journey, being frugal is highly, highly advantageous to achieving financial independence early in life. But, and I haven't come up with the right term for it. So maybe Carl, you're a genius, you'll think of something. But it's this transition from frugality to abundance. There's this like crossover point that eventually you have so much money that it actually starts to hurt you in non-monetary ways, but really important life ways to continue to be as frugal as you were.
And you mentioned a few of these, you know, where it can even damage friendships or relationships because you're such a frugal bastard that you won't even go out to lunch with your friend or whatever it is. Or you yourself won't go do something because it costs some money and you'd rather save the money, even though you have millions of dollars and you don't fucking need the money, so you should just go to the thing and spend the money.
You know, and it shouldn't be money that's holding you back from doing it. It should be, I don't want to go to this thing because it doesn't sound fun. But if it sounds fun and you're not going because you don't want to spend the money and you're a fucking millionaire or multimillionaire and it's not a ridiculous cost, then you're just being a jackass and you're hurting your own life.
So I think for me, I've had to learn, after not eating out for three years, that it's okay to spend money on food and experiences with food and other people. And I think I'm pretty good about it now. I'm still fairly frugal. Most listeners know I still drive my 2012 Prius, but I have actually been thinking about maybe getting a Tesla so I can get to self-driving because I do really love road trips, but I don't actually want to be driving. I'd rather the car be driving itself and I can, you know, not pay attention, but be less involved in the driving. So I think there is a crossover point. You know, and that's gonna be different for everybody depending on kind of what your life costs.
But you know, if you're a millionaire and you're freaking out about spending a few hundred dollars on an experience that would enrich your life, then you're just being foolish.
Let Money Amplify What You Already Enjoy
Carl Jensen: Yeah. One other point, JDC, which hits back on something I mentioned earlier, your pursuit of financial independence shouldn't be a sacrifice. You should be enjoying the things you enjoy all along. So if you like travel and you're on the path, maybe you want to camp or stay in a cheaper hotel, or if you like concerts, like I saw Metallica back when I was broke, but I paid for the $25 seats way up high.
So I think once you have money, it should amplify the things that you've already enjoyed. Now I can stay in nicer places and maybe have nicer experiences on these trips. I can buy the nicer seats at these shows. I can be a little bit more generous with my friends that I've hung out with all the time. So it's gonna amplify my life and make these things a little bit better. But the key thing is it's not gonna change things. I'm not going to I don't know what an example would be.
I'm not gonna go buy an F-150 pickup truck 'cause I saw it flying through the snow on an NFL commercial or whatever. I'm not going to seek additional things out. I'm just going to try to use it to make the things I've already enjoyed that much better.
Maximizing Net Life Over Net Worth
Justin David Carl: Yeah. And I think that's really where I'm at right now. I've talked about this on my podcast and in my writing, but I've moved on from trying to maximize my net worth as the number one priority. And now my number one priority is maximizing my net life. So my experience of my life is the main priority. That doesn't mean my net worth can't grow or I can't do things to grow my net worth, but it does mean that I should never sacrifice my life to grow my net worth because that is no longer the priority. And that mental framework has really helped me over the last year and a half focus on using my money as a tool to expand the positive experience of my life.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, that's beautiful. I could not say that any better.
Carl's 25,000-Step-a-Day Walking Habit
Justin David Carl: Boom, let's talk about your insane walking habit. So in 2025 you were targeting roughly 22,000 steps a day. Now you're doing 25,000 a day in 2026. What's going on here, Carl?
Carl Jensen: Yeah, I think I actually did a little bit more than 25,000 a day last year, maybe somewhat unintended, but it's not something I push myself to do. It's just like a natural effect of how I like to live my life. We have Rocky Mountain National Park right behind me. So I love to go for these epic hikes once a week. Sometimes those will be 40,000 or 50,000 steps just in that day, 'cause I'm up there like at four or five in the morning and I'm done like four or five at night.
I think I love walking around when I'm in a new place. So when I travel, my favorite thing to do is, again, spend a little bit more on a room that's centrally located in a nice walkable part of town. Like if I'm out your way by the beach, I will always stay on the beach. Like in Mission Beach, I would walk up and down the beach. I think it's like two miles each way from Ocean Beach all the way to the southern tip where it ends. And I think it's such a great way to experience a place. You'll stumble on these things. One of our favorite things that happened is we were in Ocean Beach and we were walking around with the family. And the kids don't have the same enthusiasm for walking, but we stumble upon a cat cafe. They're like, let's go to this. And we've since been to this cat cafe like two more times and it was something we would not have experienced if we hadn't stumbled upon it.
But the other health benefit is often I'll walk with a weighted vest to get my Zone 2 exercise, which is what I read. You could probably comment more about this, but what I read is good for fat loss. So you elevate your heart rate a little bit, but not so much that you're in cardio. So I think it's a great way to keep myself in better health. I also try to walk after meals 'cause I've read that's good to keep your insulin levels down. So, stave off type 2 diabetes.
Weighted Vest Walks and Strength Training
Justin David Carl: How heavy is the weight vest?
Carl Jensen: I think now I'm just doing thirty pounds, so it's not that bad. I think I can go up to sixty pounds on it.
Justin David Carl: Yeah, thirty pounds is no joke though. It doesn't sound like much, but if you put on a thirty-pound weight vest and go for a walk, you're definitely gonna notice it if you've never done it before. Your body acclimates to it fairly quickly. Within a few weeks you can walk around with a thirty-pound weight vest pretty easily, but the first week your body's gonna be sore as fuck if you haven't ever done it before, if you're walking any reasonable amount. I'm curious what's your current mix of walking, strength training, and other types of exercise?
Carl Jensen: Ooh, I just did my strength training this morning in my gym. I kinda hate it, but it's got a walking track which feeds into what I'm gonna tell you. I try to train almost to failure, involuntary slowness, I've heard some people call, especially with my big exercises like my pull-ups, and then I'll do four laps around the gym track, which is almost a third of a mile. So my strength exercises as a result of all this walking in between my sets usually take at least two and a half to three hours. But I enjoy it. I love being there. I love getting the workout in. So I do my big workout every third day, and then, like every day, after we're done recording, I'll go for a walk.
It's usually the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before I go to sleep. It's also really nice. If you've got a partner, you just talk about your day, plan your day beforehand. It's a lot better than sitting there at the table. You're walking around watching the sunrise. We've got a lot of natural beauty here. At night you can walk around and reflect on your day. Basically, I just don't like to sit still.
Achievement, Self-Worth, and Childhood Trauma
Justin David Carl: Yeah. So I'm gonna save our tech stocks talk for another recording because I know you have to jump soon. So the last kind of thing I wanna ask you about before I ask you the finishing questions is really about something we've been talking about, which is achievement and self-worth. So if you're comfortable going there, what have you learned about why you keep yourself so busy?
Carl Jensen: Yeah, I just read this Peter Attia book Outlive. Have you read that one, JDC?
Justin David Carl: I'm very familiar with it. I haven't read it but I've listened to interviews about it, where Peter Attia was being interviewed. But go ahead.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, he's a very highly accomplished individual. So he went to McKinsey and then he went to medical school like a super high accomplished individual. But he said all of this high achievement was a pattern. He was sexually abused as a child, and he said, Unless I was really, really achieving, I felt worthless.
And I had some trauma, not the same level of trauma that he had, and high achievement was how I felt good about myself and how I felt like a valid individual, which is kind of sad. I went through some therapy sessions, including the Hoffman Process, which is out in California, not far away from you. But it's hard. That kind of becomes your identity and you think you have to be moving stuff, moving around all the time and accomplishing, building your wealth, whatever it is, getting promotions and doing all this stuff just to feel like a worthwhile individual. And I still have a little bit of that, but I'm 90% better, I think. There'll probably always be a little bit in the back of my head. But yeah, thanks for asking. I'm very open about this. You can ask me anything about it. The thing I'll say real quick is I thought this was a good thing. So hey, I had these bad things happen to me as a kid, but now look at me, I'm wealthy, I've got my time back, I'm healthy. So therefore these bad things that happened to me were fine because they informed, they created the person I am today. But that serves you to a point, but you're not your true, authentic self. You're someone who you think you need to be, and you should strive to be who you really should be, not this persona you've built to try to justify your existence, which is exactly what I was doing, and it was not healthy.
Justin David Carl: I really appreciate you sharing that, Carl. I went through physical and sexual abuse in childhood too. I haven't talked a ton about it on the podcast and I think it might be valuable for us to save this conversation for the next time you come on. We'll talk about tech stocks and childhood trauma and overachieving. It'll be the most random fucking mix of shit, but it'll be great.
But I just wanna say thank you for being open about that 'cause I think the world needs more men, you know, sharing their own kind of vulnerability and trauma so that it gives other men permission to kind of go and do the necessary excavating and healing of that part of themselves. So we'll table that 'cause I gotta wrap this in five minutes.
So, hard fucking left turn: give us your tips, tools and strategies for fitness and health, money and wealth and life slash happiness.
Carl Jensen: Oof. Well, real quick, thank you for being open too. And it's nothing that anyone should be embarrassed about because we couldn't control the adults who were around us and the things that happened to us physically or mentally. We were immature. We should have a conversation about that. I think that would help a lot of people.
Fitness Tip: Train Closer to Failure
Carl Jensen: But okay, let's get back to fitness. I was thinking about this, JDC, and one thing I realized is I pretty much wasted 20 years of my life on strength training. The strength training wasn't a waste. It was how I was doing it. I would lift weights and I would never see any results. But it was because I was always stopping like one or two reps too soon. I was never getting close to that point of failure. And this hit home where I said I'd read like, you should go to failure. So okay, I'm gonna do as many push-ups as I can. And I'd been doing like 30 or 40 at a time. And then in the back of my mind I'm like, when I go to failure, I'll probably hit like 42 or 45, and I went up to like 60. I'm like, I have not been going anywhere close to the edge. Therefore, all those gym workouts and memberships weren't pointless, but it almost was pointless. And then once I embraced that and really learned how to work out, I lost like twenty pounds. I would have these hydrostatic body measurements where they dip you underwater. I lost twenty pounds of fat and put on ten pounds of muscle in like a year. I think it's pretty hard for me to gain. I probably didn't have my diet locked down, but strength training is very important, especially as we grow older. It's harder to do.
If you break your hip after age 65, I think there's like a 50% chance you'll be dead within a year and a half because it just leads to a cascade of other things. Strength training will help prevent you from breaking your hip in the first place because you'll have better balance and you'll have better strength should you fall. And for a variety of other reasons, too, not just the hip, but strength training is very important, but make sure you do it right as well. So that is my fitness tip.
Justin David Carl: Love it. Yeah, I think learning to train to failure or to maybe one to three reps in reserve, so you're really forcing muscle stimulus, is critical. And I definitely think muscle is the longevity organ and so you want to focus on building and maintaining muscle if health span and longevity is important to you.
What do you got for money and wealth?
Money Tip: Save Even If You Don't Know Why
Carl Jensen: Okay, money and wealth. Whenever I tell people about my journey, I've learned not to because most people react negatively to the financial independence message. But if they ask, I will let them know. But anyway, most people will make excuses for why they shouldn't save. I love my job. I love all this stuff that this job allows me to buy. But you don't see people making excuses to save, like, I want to be financially independent or whatever. But then the thing I thought is you don't need an excuse to save and perhaps you shouldn't even have one and it's because of this.
When you save a twenty, you're probably saving, especially if you're on the financial independence track, you're saving that money to be spent decades from now. And you have no idea what your life is going to be like in twenty years or even ten years from then, maybe even five, like AI changes happening very quick. So I encourage everyone to save, even if you have no idea what you're saving for, 'cause money can enable just about anything in life.
People always emphasize the great things like I call it Instagram FI, like, here's me on the Mexican Riviera or standing on top of a pyramid. Don't do that. That's illegal, or they don't like you to do that. But it also saves your ass. If you've got a sick parent or a dying parent, which happened to me, you can jump in your car and go be the support for that. Or if you or your partner have health issues, or you need a new roof, hailstorms are frequent in Colorado, it bails you out from all the shitballs that life can throw at you. So my number one financial investment advice would be save even though you might not know what you're saving for. And a secondary thing to that, index funds are the way to go. Our mutual friend JL Collins: read his blog, buy his book, The Simple Path to Wealth. That is what you should be doing.
Justin David Carl: Yeah. I love it. I totally agree. I think, you know, very recently my wife's mother passed away and she went through multiple months of kind of being at the end and I can't even imagine what that would have been like if my wife and I had to go to a 9-to-5 job every day. Like I don't even understand how people do that and go through something that challenging and have to show up to a corporate job. So I totally agree with you.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, how do people maintain lives with a job? Like even despite all those bad things? I don't know how people do it 'cause I've got a lot going on, mostly good things, but yeah, I don't know how I even worked.
Life Tip: Reframe Life's Events With Stoicism
Justin David Carl: All right, last question. Tip, tool, or strategy for life slash happiness, and then we'll get you out of here.
Carl Jensen: I'm good. Just to be clear, I've got another couple minutes until 2:10. I think Stoicism has a ton to offer. I did one other audiobook besides Die With Zero, and it was a book on Stoicism, and I pretty much know it all, but I like to reinforce it by having different voices. But one of the things that I liked, what the Stoics said is that there could be an event that happens in your life, and whether that event brought you joy or sadness, it's how you interpret it. The event is one thing, it's how you choose to perceive it. So I'll give you a good example. A friend asked me just yesterday, he's like, can you help me do concrete work at my house? My first instinct was, I've helped friends do that before. And you're lifting eighty-pound bags of concrete and there's dust everywhere, it's hot, you're sticking it in there. So you could look at helping your friend with his concrete and not be enthusiastic about it: I'm going to be doing all this hard work, but you can also reframe that. Hey, I've got this wonderful friend who has helped me out in the past. Now I get to return a favor. I get to help him out. And look at this. I don't have to do all my steps because I'm going to get them done while I'm actually doing something useful instead of just walking mindlessly around the neighborhood. And how good is it that I can help my friend with this on a weekday in the middle of the afternoon because I don't have to work. Like, I'm so thankful that I get to help my friend with concrete.
And you can apply this to anything that happens in life. It takes work. You have to intercept the bad events and shut them down and tell your brain, you're not going to. Someone cuts you off in traffic. I could get mad at that person and curse them out. Or I could say, you know what? He's on his way to work, or maybe there's a health emergency. There's a reason he did that. I don't have to work. I'm driving to the gym right now. I get to have a three-hour workout on a weekday morning. I don't have to work.
There's so much value if you can actually retrain your mind. And believe me, this doesn't come easy, especially for me. I'm pretty old and stubborn by this point. But if you can do that and catch yourself before you go into these downward spirals, there's so much value to that and a lot of the other Stoicism teachings in general, so good.
Where to Find Carl Jensen
Justin David Carl: I love it. I think mindset really is everything. Carl Jensen, 1500Days.com. Thank you so much for coming on the show, brother.
Carl Jensen: Man, thank you so much. You're a good friend. And what I said at the beginning is definitely true. I wish you were closer so we could hang out more. But I hope you come over here and visit me sometime and I need to come out and visit you. I've never played pickleball. It'd be epic to do it for the first time with a pickleball master, although it would be like a million to one or however you score pickleball.
Justin David Carl: Yeah. It's been a long-time goal to come spend some time in Longmont. So I will definitely take you up on hanging out at your new house in Longmont and we can play pickleball. You're always welcome to visit in Santa Cruz and thank you so much for being so open and awesome and coming on the show, brother.
Carl Jensen: Yeah, thank you so much, JDC. It was super fun to do this.