JL Collins: The Simple Path to Wealth Evolves — International Stocks, Market Crashes, Trading Traps & Work You Love | FRLP 109

In this episode of the Fit Rich Life Podcast, I’m joined for a third time by my friend, mentor, and bestselling author JL Collins, author of The Simple Path to Wealth.

When I first discovered JL’s work in 2017, it fundamentally changed my financial life. In our previous conversations, we covered FU money, index investing, financial independence, bonds, market downturns, and staying the course. But this conversation explores new territory — including JL’s recent shift toward adding international stocks to his portfolio.

We talk about why JL, after decades of primarily investing in U.S. index funds, has added VT, Vanguard’s Total World Stock ETF, and what that means for investors who currently hold VTI, VTSAX, or the S&P 500. JL explains why this is not a dramatic change, why he still believes the most important decision is to invest in low-cost, broad-based index funds, and why investors should avoid creating unnecessary tax consequences just to make minor portfolio adjustments.

We also discuss market crashes, all-time highs, trading traps, stock picking, the danger of trying to predict the market, and why the stock market will always do whatever it needs to do to embarrass the maximum number of people. JL shares one of his own painful investing mistakes from the 1987 crash and why staying the course requires courage, humility, and a long-term perspective.

From there, we dive into financial independence, “one more year syndrome,” and the difference between retiring from work you dislike and creating a life filled with autonomy, creativity, and meaningful contribution. JL shares why he prefers the term financial independence over FIRE, why retirement is often misunderstood, and why a flexible, low-cost lifestyle can create far more freedom than chasing a bigger portfolio number.

Finally, JL offers personal reflections on health, fitness, aging, and why it’s never too late — or too early — to begin building a stronger, freer, and more intentional life.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that wealth is not about prediction, perfection, or complexity. It’s about owning your freedom, staying the course, and building a life you actually want to live.

Fit Rich Life Podcast Episode 109 with JL Collins is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and wherever you enjoy your podcast entertainment.


Topics covered include:

  • JL Collins adding international stocks to his portfolio

  • VT vs. VTI vs. VTSAX vs. the S&P 500

  • How to think about portfolio changes without triggering taxes

  • Why market crashes are a normal part of long-term investing

  • The danger of trading, stock picking, and chasing hot sectors

  • What to do if you sold during a downturn

  • One more year syndrome and financial independence

  • Why retirement is really about autonomy

  • How FU money gives you options before full FI

  • Lessons on health, fitness, aging, and living boldly


Resources Mentioned:


Connect with JL Collins:



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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

JL Collins: The Simple Path to Wealth Evolves — International Stocks, Market Crashes, Trading Traps & Work You Love | FRLP 109

Read the full transcript

Welcome Back: JL Collins Goes International

Justin David Carl: I've had the privilege of welcoming you to the Fit Rich Life Podcast before. When I first discovered your work in 2017, it fundamentally changed my financial life — and since then you've become more than a great mentor, you've become a great friend. In our earlier conversations we covered FU money, index investing, the simple path to wealth, market downturns, bonds, financial independence, and staying the course. But today I want to cover some newer territory — including you going international. Welcome back. Let's talk about you shifting into some international stocks.

JL Collins: Thanks for having me back, Justin. It's a real pleasure, and I'm glad it's developed into the friendship it has. The international thing — for a long time I had no international exposure, and that went against almost everybody else who writes about this. My reasoning was that if you're investing in the Total Stock Market Index Fund, as I am, or an S&P 500 index fund, which makes up about 80% of the total stock market fund, you're already in America's largest companies — and they are by definition international. The entire world's economy has been growing dramatically ever since the end of World War II, and I expect that to continue. I always felt I had it covered just by being in those American companies, and to a large extent I still do. To a large extent I'm still simply in US-based total stock market index funds.

JL Collins: But I've added VT, Vanguard's total world market index ETF. I'm a little concerned about some of the economic policies that have come out of our country lately, so I'm feeling more comfortable taking a slightly broader perspective. I've always told international audiences that the United States is the only country whose economy is large enough and dominant enough that Americans can get away with investing only at home. Anywhere else in the world, for decades, I'd have said go into a world fund — you're just not in an economy large enough to do otherwise, and I wouldn't be comfortable putting all my money into the stock market of a country I didn't live in. So I've never been opposed to world funds. I just hadn't seen the need for one in the US, and now I'm beginning to see a little more of it.

JL Collins: My basic thesis — and this is something I've shared with my daughter over the years — is that as the world market keeps growing the way it has since World War II, the pie gets bigger and bigger, and the US share of that pie naturally gets smaller. That's not a bad thing. The US economy is far, far larger than it was at the end of World War II, but back then we had a more dominant slice of a much smaller pie. I always said that at some point the US would no longer be large enough for me to be comfortable in that one market alone. I saw that as fairly far out — more for my daughter, who's in her thirties, than for me in my seventies. But that day may be coming a little faster given some of the economic policies being put in place. Nothing dramatic — even in VT you're still about 64–65% US. So this is a slight shift, not a dramatic one.

VT vs. VTI vs. the S&P 500 — Does It Even Matter?

Justin David Carl: Follow-up. For someone just beginning to invest today, with no embedded capital gains and a 40-year time horizon — would you now lean them toward VT rather than VTI, or does it matter?

JL Collins: Great question. My instinct says it probably doesn't matter, but I do have an inclination. One question I get a lot is, "I don't have a total stock market index fund in my 401(k), only an S&P 500. Is that okay?" The S&P 500 is 80% of the total stock market, so yes, it's okay. Jack Bogle — the man who created index funds and started Vanguard — only invested in the S&P 500. I used to say, if it's good enough for Jack, it's good enough for any of us. I slightly prefer the total stock market index for the same reason I like to put Tabasco on my food once in a while: it adds a little spice. You get some small-cap and mid-cap exposure.

JL Collins: Now I feel the same way about going international with VT. I don't think it's essential. You'll do very well if you stay in VTI, which is exclusively US. But if you add VT, you add a little spice and you play into that long-term future I described. So my slight recommendation, if you're just beginning, would be VT. But if someone said, "I've always heard don't bet against the US, and I just want to be 100% US in VTI," you won't get a lot of pushback from me. These are pretty minor decisions. The key thing is you're going into a broad-based, low-cost index fund and holding it forever. Whether that's the S&P 500, VTI, or VT, they'll all serve you well. We can all get together in 40 years over a cup of coffee and see who won the race.

The 401(k) Nuance: When You Only Have an S&P 500 Option

Justin David Carl: I want to double-click on a point you made, because there's a nuance people should catch. In 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and 457(b)s — and the military version, the TSP, the Thrift Savings Plan — those retirement accounts often don't offer a total US stock market fund or a VT option. But they almost always offer an S&P 500 index fund. And for many people, that workplace retirement account is the easiest first foray into investing.

JL Collins: Exactly right.

Justin David Carl: Back when I was in the corporate world, my 401(k) didn't have a total US stock market fund, so I went with the S&P 500. Fortunately I'd read The Simple Path to Wealth and knew that was almost as good. So I used the S&P 500 in my 401(k), and for my taxable brokerage I went with VTSAX / VTI.

JL Collins: I agree with everything you said — though I'd even push back gently on "almost as good." We'd have to go out 10, 20, 30, 40 years to know which one outperforms, and I don't know which that'll be. You can throw VT in the mix too. What I do know is it'll be very close, and they'll all serve you well. Jack Bogle was perfectly comfortable holding the S&P 500 his entire life. Warren Buffett tells his heirs to put 90% in the S&P 500 and 10% in treasuries. It's hard to argue with that. People love to obsess over this, but it's not where you should obsess. Pick whichever one you're comfortable with. The key thing is to invest in one of them. We're talking about low-cost, broad-based stock index funds to grow your wealth — that's where the action is, and you're splitting hairs between the three.

How to Add International Without Triggering a Tax Bill

Justin David Carl: Another follow-up. For someone sitting on a large VTSAX or VTI portfolio — should they feel any pressure to change anything? Maybe shift some into international inside a tax-sheltered account where there are no tax consequences? Or, if they're adding new money and they're 100% VTI/VTSAX, what's your recommendation?

JL Collins: Great question. Point one: if we're talking about a taxable account, I would not sell and pay capital gains on my VTSAX or VTI in order to move to VT. I just don't feel strongly enough about that move. If you like the idea of going to VT and you hold VTI or VTSAX in your taxable account, my recommendation — which is exactly what I did personally — is to keep holding it, and make any changes in your tax-advantaged accounts, where switching isn't a taxable event. That's how I made my own switch when I added VT. The other option you mentioned, which I agree with: if you're investing new money, you can start channeling that new money into VT. All good approaches — just don't pay a bunch of capital gains to make the change.

Justin David Carl: That's exactly what I did after one of our private conversations. I went into my rollover IRA — originally my 401(k) — and shifted into international. Because about 90% of my portfolio is in a taxable brokerage, I had to be more aggressive in the rollover IRA, shifting a majority of it into VXUS, which still leaves me at less than 10% international across all my investments. If more of my money had been in tax-sheltered accounts, I'd have just shifted into VT to keep it simpler. But I was trying to get to 5–10% international after being 100% US for many years.

JL Collins: That's a great point, and I'm glad you made it, because I wasn't aiming for a specific percentage of international. But it matters. I only made the change in my IRAs. Even if I switched everything into VT, I'd still be about 65% US — still very US-dominant. Since I'm not switching all my VTI into VT (I don't want the capital gains, and I probably wouldn't want to go that heavy anyway), the portion that's actually international is probably around 10%. This is a very small move. I was honestly shocked, when I wrote the blog post announcing it — because I want to be transparent when I make changes — how rattled some people got. I tried to make the point that this is a minor change. The earth isn't moving. It's just a little adjustment.

Changing Your Mind vs. Harmful Tinkering

Justin David Carl: One thing I admire about you is that you've built your reputation on a simple philosophy, yet you're still willing to change your mind. When you and I connected and I saw your article about shifting into VT, that struck me as the mark of someone updating their thinking based on continued research and a clear-eyed look at what's happening across the world's markets. And you didn't do it quietly — you wrote an entire article sharing not just what you did but why. People who are never willing to update their philosophy — that's not how I want to live.

JL Collins: I appreciate the compliment, but you may be giving me more credit than I deserve, and here's why. If you go back to the stock series, or to the chapter on international in The Simple Path to Wealth, you're not reading something that says international is terrible and you should never do it. You're reading something that says, "I don't feel the need to do this, but I have no problem if you do — and by all means, here are some suggestions," namely going into a world fund, as I've now done. When I talked to international audiences, I always said look at a world fund, because the whole world is growing and prospering and that pie keeps getting bigger. So this isn't a dramatic change in the way I think. It's just me moving in that direction a little sooner than I expected, because things are happening faster on the world stage than I'd have guessed. I could be wrong about that. But either way, if you follow the strategy with any of these funds, you'll do just fine. Which of the three crosses the finish line first is anybody's guess — but I'm pretty confident it'll be a photo finish.

Justin David Carl: So how do you distinguish between thoughtful evolution and the kind of tinkering that hurts long-term investors?

JL Collins: Great question. Morgan Housel — who wrote The Psychology of Money — has a book called Same as Ever. I think it's brilliant, and it hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves. It's about the things that don't change. We tend to think the world is always changing, and it is — a lot is in flux — but some basic things never change. My favorite example comes from Jeff Bezos. He said, "I'm not sure what the future holds, but I know my customers will never say, 'I want to pay more for that,' and they'll never say, 'I want you to take longer to deliver it.'" People always want more value for their money, delivered faster. Those are bedrocks Amazon was built on.

Why the Simple Path Keeps Working

JL Collins: One of my bedrocks for investing is that humans are endlessly creative and wonderful at solving problems. People make money in a capitalist system by identifying a problem, finding a better solution than anything out there, and delivering it to a public that values it. That human drive is never going to go away. So when people ask, "How do you know the simple path will keep working for decades?" I'm very confident, because it plays into basic human nature. As long as we live in a system that lets people create businesses and prosper from them, there will always be new companies coming up that go public and rise to the top.

JL Collins: The stock market and those index funds are always doing what I call self-cleansing. As new companies grow and prosper, they replace the old ones that fade away. I was just reading about the economy of the late '50s and early '60s — heavily dominated by steel, oil, and auto companies. General Motors was the single biggest company in the world, and people feared the government would break it up because no one thought anyone could compete with it. That's the same dynamic as the tech world today. Nobody could conceive of those companies ever not being dominant. And they were all centered on the upper Midwest, around the Great Lakes — the Silicon Valley of its time. Nobody ever thought that region would come to be called the Rust Belt.

JL Collins: That's how things change. That's the beauty of a capitalist system and of an index fund — it lets new companies with new technologies replace the old ones as they fade. As long as that's available, the simple path will work. If we ever end up in a system that doesn't allow private ownership or building wealth, all bets are off. But even nominally communist countries like China have embraced capitalist practices. When Mao died, the new leadership stayed communist in name but said, in effect, "We're going to let people own and prosper" — own a plot of land, grow and sell their own food, make products for their neighbors. China exploded into a powerhouse. One of its leaders was challenged that this wasn't really communism, and he said, "I don't care what color the cat is, I just care whether it catches mice." That's a very pragmatic way to look at it. And as long as we're governed by pragmatic people, we should do okay.

Steel, Oil, and the Rust Belt — Tech Won't Reign Forever

Justin David Carl: I find it fascinating that you compared General Motors and the steel industry to today's tech world. For as much research as I've done, I can't imagine a world where tech isn't the leader of business. But from talking with you and reading history, I know that potentially in my lifetime it won't be. That's one of the values of reading history — seeing how things were similar but different, and understanding that in the future tech may or may not be the leader.

JL Collins: Great point. One of the few advantages of being an old guy is that I've been investing for literally half a century — I started in 1975. If in 1965 you'd said General Motors would have to be bailed out by the government within fifty years, people would have laughed you out of the room. If you'd said the Japanese were on their way to dominating auto manufacturing, especially on quality — at a time when "made in Japan" meant cheap and flimsy — nobody would have believed it. But things changed. That's one reason I'm not terribly worried about antitrust. As companies get large and dominant, they tend to get complacent, and the market is full of people trying to do things faster, smarter, better.

JL Collins: A great example is SpaceX. When I was a kid, going to space was the realm of governments only. After we beat the Russians to the moon and the competition was gone, we stopped caring, stopped investing — and it drifted away, to the point where we depended on the Russians to put our astronauts and satellites in orbit. Then out of nowhere comes Elon Musk saying, "I think I'll build a rocket company." Who does that? There had never been a private rocket company. Now space is largely the realm of the private sector, done far more cost-effectively. That's how things change. And tech has already changed. In the 1999–2000 tech crash, the companies that crashed — like Cisco — were very different from the Seven Sisters of big tech today. Twenty years from now we may still be talking about tech dominating the top of the index, but it could be a very different suite of companies and a very different kind of technology.

Justin David Carl: That's why I love these conversations — they help me see a greater perspective and stick to my index investing guns instead of chasing the amazing gains we're seeing in tech right now.

The 2026 Downturn, New Highs, and the Market That Embarrasses Everyone

Justin David Carl: Let's talk about what the market's been doing in 2026. Earlier this year it was going down, headlines were dramatic, people were anxious, and some investors were surely wondering whether this time was different. Now it's hitting all-time highs again. What lesson do you hope investors take from that?

JL Collins: One of my favorite lines is that the stock market will do whatever it has to do to embarrass the maximum number of people. Whenever the pundits are loudly claiming it's going to go down — or up — it'll probably do the opposite. The lesson is: you just don't know. It took me a while to learn this, because early on I'd sometimes act on those impulses. I'd look at the world economy or politics and think, "Given this, the market has to do that." But the market doesn't have to do anything just because I think so. I still get those impulses — I follow this stuff and I'll think, "Boy, that's just got to make this happen over here." But I've learned the humility to know I'm frequently wrong. Fortunately I'm not paid to be a pundit, predicting things over and over so people forget all the misses and remember the one hit.

JL Collins: If you'd told me 18 months ago — at the start of this administration — everything that was going to happen, I'd have said the market was going to get slaughtered. And I'd have been wrong. I wrote a post back in 2015 called "Time Machine and the Future Returns of the Stock Market." Imagine sitting around a campfire in 1975, the year I started investing — the same year Jack Bogle created the index fund and started Vanguard. Someone wonders how that'll work out, and I pipe up: "I'm just back from 2015 in my time machine, and I can tell you exactly what happens in the next 40 years." Then I list all the disasters — the hyperinflation of the late '70s and early '80s, the famous BusinessWeek "Death of Equities" cover, the wars, the 1987 crash (the largest one-day drop in history), the 1999–2000 tech crash, the 2008–09 debacle. And of course the people around the campfire say, "Wow, glad you told us — there's no way we're investing in stocks." The punchline: the market delivered about 12% a year on average for 40 years through all that turmoil. As someone once said, the market climbs a wall of worry.

The 1987 Mistake — When JL Lost His Nerve

Justin David Carl: What would you say to someone who reduced their stock exposure during the downturn and is now watching the market reach new highs without them?

JL Collins: I lived through that exact scenario — and I hope most people can hear the story and learn the lesson without the pain of going through it themselves. In 1987, before the internet, before people commonly had computers on their desks, on Black Monday the market crashed. I'd been working all day and didn't know anything had happened. I called my stockbroker, Wayne — back then you had a stockbroker — just to chat. There was silence, and he said, "You're kidding, right? This has been the worst day of my life. People have been yelling at me all day. The market dropped 25%." I was stunned. I knew the right thing was to stay the course, and for several months I did. But as the market ground lower and every headline said this was the beginning of another depression, I finally lost my nerve around December and sold out — if not at the absolute bottom, close enough that it doesn't matter. Then I watched the market turn around and climb. By the time I reinvested about a year later, it was higher than before the crash.

JL Collins: So to your hypothetical investor: you just have to bite the bullet, admit you screwed up, recognize you should have stayed the course, and get back in. That's the price you pay. I paid it, and I've never looked back.

Cash Reserves and Sleeping Through a Crash

Justin David Carl: For myself, keeping a strong cash reserve — while not the most financially optimized thing — has served me well in staying the course. This became clearest when COVID hit and the market dropped close to 40% in a few months. At the time I'd built up about two to three years of living expenses in cash, which I'm sure sounds crazy to many people. It was either a giant emergency fund or a house fund. When COVID hit and the market nosedived, I slept like a baby. I'd read your book and listened to many of your interviews and inoculated myself against the fear of the market going down. What I didn't want was my company going under — which it almost did — and me having to burn through a small emergency fund while the market was down and I was out of a job, forced to sell while prices were low.

Justin David Carl: My company lost 90% of its revenue in three months, and the market fell 40%, but I was still sleeping fine because I had two to three years of living expenses. I know that mathematically, if more of that cash had been in the market, I'd be significantly wealthier now. But good sleep is priceless. I kept most of it in a high-yield savings account — maybe you'd push back and say I should at least put it in bonds. I'm curious what you think. That same cushion is how I navigated early 2025 when the market was dropping, and again at the start of 2026. By then it was the third time I'd hit a downturn on the path to FI, and I felt like I knew this rodeo.

JL Collins: A couple of interesting things. One is that you live in an environment — as does everyone listening — where there's a lot of information and support for doing what you did. My book is an example. In 1987 there was none of that, and there wasn't even an appreciation of how important good sleep is. You mentioned good sleep — it's only in recent years that research on just how important sleep is has become widely available. This idea that market crashes are a normal part of the process — that it's not if the market crashes but when, and that it always recovers — nobody was telling me that in 1987. You certainly won't get it from the news media, even today. If the market crashes next week, the media won't say "this is normal" — they'll panic, sell-sell-sell, the end is here, because that's what the media does. But there's a whole body of work now — and I like to think I've contributed to it — explaining that crashes are normal, something you have to accept to get the outsized returns stocks deliver over time.

Crashes Are Normal — and a Gift to New Investors

JL Collins: People ask, "I have a chunk of money — should I invest it now, with the market high? What if it falls 50% tomorrow?" Well, that's a risk you take, and it can happen. But it doesn't matter whether you have cash on the sidelines, because you and I are already sitting on millions in the market that could be cut in half tomorrow. The moment you invest, you have to come to terms with the fact that you could wake up to the start of a 50% drop for some period. That's normal. It won't happen often — maybe three times in a lifetime for a crash of that magnitude — but it will happen. Earlier this year it dropped 10–12%; that's a rounding error, it happens all the time. Twenty percent is a bear market — less frequent but pretty common. COVID took it down about 33–34%, a little more extreme. 2008–09 took it down roughly 50%. These are natural parts of the process, and we get past them. But you have to understand that, and in 1987 there wasn't a whole body of literature supporting me in staying the course. That's a huge advantage everyone listening has today.

Justin David Carl: A hundred percent. If I hadn't read your book and listened to your interviews and read all the other FI blogs and podcasts, I don't think I'd have had the courage to stay the course.

JL Collins: And it takes courage. It absolutely takes courage.

Justin David Carl: Now, when an everyday person tells me, "The market's going down, I'm thinking about cashing out," I calmly tell them I'm not doing anything but continuing to buy and hold and keeping a strong emergency fund so I can sleep at night — and that they should read The Simple Path to Wealth.

JL Collins: In fairness to those people — every time the market drops 5%, my social media lights up with panic. Part of me thinks, "If you can't wake up to it down 50% and let it roll off your back, you shouldn't be in stocks." Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's partner, said much the same. But if you're new and all you know is financial TV — the traders, the buy-buy-buy, sell-sell-sell nonsense — no wonder you feel that way. You've been misled about the soundest way to make money. There's trading and there's investing. The financial media is all about trading — short-term moves — and very few people do well at it. A lot of people do well selling advice to people who trade, but few do well trading. If you want to make money in the market, you invest for the long term, and whether it goes up or down — even dramatically — it doesn't matter. If anything, a drop is a buying opportunity. But you have to learn that.

JL Collins: The best thing that can happen to a new investor is a major market crash. If you're a few months or a couple of years into investing, a crash means you're buying shares at deeply discounted prices — and if you're investing for the long term, that pays off extraordinarily well over the decades. Notice I'm saying decades, not years.

Trading vs. Investing — The One Trader He Knows

Justin David Carl: Every day I see people on social media saying they want to learn to trade. I've been trying to figure out how to tell them they're signing up for some financially painful lessons. If you could say anything to those people — and they'd listen — what would you tell them?

JL Collins: The last part is the key part: they probably wouldn't listen. I'm not an evangelist. I've only ever tried to persuade one person of this — my daughter — and mission accomplished. If people are interested in what I have to say, I'm happy to share. But if someone says, "I'm a trader, convince me why I shouldn't be," that's not my job. I don't care if you're a trader. This is what I recommend and how I do it — the simple path I've created. If you're interested, I've got lots of interviews, a couple of books, and a blog. But if you want to be a trader, go be a trader. You'll probably have to learn the hard way, and you'll make whoever teaches you a lot of money — buying their course, paying their commissions. Maybe you'll be one of the rare few who prosper. But they're very rare. I'm not in the business of persuading people away from what they believe. If you want to hear about this approach, listen to Justin's podcast. But don't expect either of us to come knocking on your door begging you to listen.

Justin David Carl: Reflecting on the people I know who've become millionaires — at this point a few dozen, maybe 50 or more I've met in person or talked with for hours — there's only one I know who got wealthy as a trader. And I want to be specific about his path: he studied economics at Stanford, was a classmate of mine, and then traded oil and power for Morgan Stanley for over 17 years. He's the only one. Every other millionaire I know did it one of three ways, or a combination: index investing while working and investing a portion of their income; real estate investing the same way; or building their own business. So when people ask me about stock picking, trading, sports betting, NFTs — my go-to is that I don't know anyone who's a millionaire in real life who didn't make it through index investing, real estate, or building a business. Except that one guy — who studied economics at Stanford and traded oil and power at Morgan Stanley for 17 years.

JL Collins: What's interesting is not just his education and experience, but that he focused on one market. The trading we were talking about — the CNBC kind, "this stock is hot, that sector is hot, sell this, move into that" across all kinds of markets — I don't know anyone successful at that short-term trading. But there are people who become expert in trading certain commodities in certain markets, because that's their job and their specialization. That's a very different kind of trading. It's a real specialization, and there are many activities where becoming a top-notch specialist is a path to wealth. Trading a specialized market like that can be one of them. So I'm not suggesting otherwise on that score.

One More Year Syndrome and Why It Was Never About Retirement

Justin David Carl: Let's shift to "one more year syndrome." I went to my first EconoMe Conference — as far as I know the largest financial independence gathering in the world, around 500 people. I met so many people there who were financially independent yet still working a job they didn't hate but didn't love. Some had one-more-year syndrome; some took time off and went back because they didn't know what to do with themselves in early retirement. I'd love your thoughts.

JL Collins: First of all, I never retired early. When I left my last corporate job in 2011, I was 60. So I'm not someone who retired early. Back in 2012, Mr. Money Mustache asked me to write a guest post, and the title was "It's Never Been About Retirement." For me, none of this is about retirement. I don't even use the FIRE acronym — it's clever, but you never see me use it. I use FI: financial independence. It's always been about achieving financial independence so you have flexibility. For me, that flexibility meant taking sabbaticals during my corporate career — the shortest was about three months, the longest about five years. I got caught up in the tech collapse of 1999; the division I worked for, publishing tech magazines, went under, and we all lost our jobs. I was about 50, financially independent, and figured my career was over. For about three years it was. Then a friend kept pestering me to come work for him, and I did that for about another six years.

JL Collins: When I was running Chautauquas — annual events where we took small groups to cool places around the world to hang out for a week or so — attendees could have a personal session with me, and many wanted to talk about whether they were FI and should quit their jobs. Some said, "I'm in a soul-crushing job. I need" — I'll make up a number — "$50,000 a year. I've got a million invested. The 4% rule says I can pull $40,000, but I need $50,000, so I'm stuck." My answer was always: you quit. The moment you get home, you quit. Two reasons. One: per the Trinity study on withdrawal rates, a 5% withdrawal — which $50,000 on a million represents — works about 87% of the time. If I'm in a soul-crushing job, I'll take those odds. Two: if you've banked a million dollars, do you think you could find some way to make an extra $10,000 over the course of a year? Nobody has ever told me no. It's just not that high a bar.

JL Collins: At the same time, I remember a woman — a very successful banker — who, when she left a Chautauqua, was going to a new job paying a million a year. She had $5 million invested and lived on $100,000, so by the 4% guideline she only needed $2.5 million. She was twice where she needed to be. My conversation with her was: if you're taking that job because you think it'll be fun, you relish the challenge, it's something you've always wanted — by all means go. But if you're going because you think you need the money, that's a mistake. So it depends on your situation. There's nothing wrong with continuing your corporate job. My daughter hung up her corporate career a couple of years ago at 32, when she hit FI, but she's still working — she's a trainer, gives classes at gyms, just wrote a book. She still does active things; she just hung up the corporate part.

"Would You Pay to Do Your Job?"

Justin David Carl: For myself, like you, I've always focused on FI, not RE. I think it's a clever acronym, but I knew I'd always work in some form — maybe not 40 hours a week, but I like being productive. One question I challenge financially independent people with: would you pay to do your job? Would you pay your own money to do that? If the answer is no, then what are you doing there?

Justin David Carl: I believe everyone can find work they love so much they'd pay to do it. For me that's become podcasting, writing, and playing pickleball. I'd literally pay my own money to do those three things — and I do. Some of them generate some money, though I'm not making a million a year at any of them yet. When people are stuck in a corporate job that demands 40 hours a week — on top of being a parent or spouse — they're too tired to explore and figure out what that other work could be. So my advice to people with the financial means is: take a year or two and try a bunch of things until you find the work you'd happily spend some of your 4% on.

JL Collins: That's a great point. Look at what my daughter has done the last couple of years and the opportunities that came her way. Last year she played a major role in putting together the new edition of The Simple Path to Wealth. If she'd been working her corporate job, she wouldn't have had the time or energy — and doing it opened up entirely new vistas she wasn't even looking for. There's a lot to be said for the serendipity you get when your time opens up. Mr. Money Mustache coined the term "the internet retirement police" — when he quit his corporate job and "retired," then went out to build houses and start a wildly successful blog, people said, "You're not retired, you're working." That's part of why I don't like the word "retirement" — it's so triggering. I've yet to meet anyone financially independent and "retired" who's sitting on a beach drinking piña coladas. The kind of people with the energy and drive to reach FI are not the kind who'll be content doing nothing. We're hardwired to work. What we don't like is the lack of autonomy most regular jobs provide. When people say "I want to quit working," that's mostly what they mean — that kind of working, in those kinds of environments. The same person who says "I hate my job" spends the weekend restoring an antique car, building an addition, or creating a podcast — that's work too. It's being productive, doing something creative.

Lifestyle Inflation as Golden Chains

JL Collins: If you're in a job you don't like and you have the financial wherewithal — even if you can't never work again — I highly recommend stepping away. I stepped away from a lot of jobs long before I was financially independent. That's what I call having FU money: not enough that you never have to work again, but enough to buy you time to go do something else for a while. Decompress, see what's out there, find other ways to make money. Another reason to be cautious about inflating your lifestyle: the bigger and more expensive it gets, the harder it is to step away when you feel the need, and the harder it is to be open to more gratifying opportunities. The smaller your lifestyle and the lower your expenses, the more flexibility you have. And interestingly, a lot of people who leave highly paid jobs they don't love end up doing something more creative and entrepreneurial that actually makes them more money. We get one life and go through it one time. Be bold. There's a lot of fear in the FI community — "Do I have enough? Is the right withdrawal rate 4% or 3.29875%?" It's nonsense. Those are guidelines — good ones, to give you a barometer of how close you are to never having to work for money again. But there's no fixed percentage that's a guarantee, because there are no guarantees in life. Which is why, if you're in a soul-crushing job and you need 5% or even 6%, go for it.

Justin David Carl: You introduced me to Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, the bloggers behind Millennial Revolution, and I got to interview them because of that introduction. I remember asking Bryce how much they'd made over their first ten years of being early retired, and he said about $500,000 — doing things they love, like writing children's books and other creative projects. Do the math and that's an extra $50,000 a year over ten years, doing work they love, in the amount of time that's good for them, while financially independent. They're a perfect example of intelligent, driven people who retired very early — around 30 or 31 — and went on to make more money in "retirement."

JL Collins: They're friends of mine, too. They wrote a great book, Quit Like a Millionaire — I wrote the foreword. When they quit their jobs, they became nomadic, traveling the world full-time, and discovered it was less expensive than living in Toronto while working. That freed up creative time to write. They've since come out with Parent Like a Millionaire — I wrote that foreword too — plus a couple of fiction books, like Little Miss Evil. They now have a son, around two years old. A rich, fulfilling life, and their portfolio keeps growing, and some of what brings them satisfaction also brings in money. Not a bad way to live. And they didn't bog themselves down with a big expensive house and a couple of luxury leased cars — the golden chains that tie you to your job.

Health, Fitness, and the Pet Dumbbell

Justin David Carl: Let's start to wind down. I recently turned 44. Are there things you wish you'd done in your forties that would have set you up for better health, fitness, or other areas of life? Consider this me asking for some live mentorship.

JL Collins: First, I think you're crushing it. One thing I love about your work is the package you've put together — the idea of a fit, rich life. I focused on just one of those dynamics, the getting-rich part — mission accomplished. To answer your question: if I could go back, I'd focus much earlier on my health. I'm trying to focus now, in my seventies, on my diet and activity. Throughout my adult life I did a lot of physically active things — martial arts for years, avid cycling for years, gym rat for years — but just because it was fun, with large gaps in between when my career was all-consuming and I was entertaining clients and drinking. That's not a great recipe for long-term health. I'd do that differently.

JL Collins: What strikes me — same as we discussed about the 1987 market — is how much information and support is available today that wasn't there then. That's true of health and fitness too. Both my parents were heavy cigarette smokers, because in their generation that's what you did. Nobody exercised; it wasn't part of the culture. When I was a kid, zero adults in our neighborhood exercised. Implicitly, when you got to high school, you stopped riding your bicycle, because you just didn't anymore. I didn't return to cycling until my thirties, in the '80s, when a guy I worked with took it up. So whether you're coming of age in your twenties, thirties, or forties today, there's never been a better time or place to be alive than this country right now, with so much valuable information about becoming wealthy, living a free life, and living a healthy, fit life. You're a great contributor to that. Your newsletter — which I subscribe to — is one of my all-time favorites. A little unsolicited plug to anyone listening: if you're not subscribing to Justin's newsletter, I highly recommend it. Every issue talks about ways to get rich, get fit, and have a great life. I read it and think, "Why the hell wasn't this around when I was 25?" And even at 75 I get great value from it. You called me a mentor earlier — you've been a mentor to me on the physical side, and I appreciate it.

Justin David Carl: Reflecting on our conversations about health, I find it admirable that you chose to give up sweets because you recognized an unhealthy addiction — and that you did it later in life. That's your ability to keep evolving. And I have to share with the audience that you walk around with a pet dumbbell, because you're committed to combining walking and strength training. I have this vivid picture of you walking outside with your pet dumbbell — I call it Sparky — and your neighbors thinking, "There goes the guy again with his little pet dumbbell."

JL Collins: I was terribly addicted to sweets — and I don't use that word lightly. I'm embarrassed at the sheer quantity of candy and ice cream I used to eat, from the time I was a small child until I was 70, when I finally gave it up. I wish I'd given it up at 20. I just didn't have the knowledge base or frame of reference to fully appreciate how important it was and what a difference it could make, even at my age. To be clear, I'm not a pinnacle of physical fitness — I'm still woefully overweight, not as much as I once was, but still. But every little bit helps. So I carry my pet dumbbell. I was carrying it around today, actually.

Never Too Early, Never Too Late

Justin David Carl: In preparation for this, I listened to your interview on The Personal Finance Podcast with my friend Andrew Giancola. Near the end, you talked about how some people start the FI journey late — and even if you start at 70, that 10-to-15-year journey gets you a lot farther than never starting. You contrasted that with deciding, at 70, to commit to a new level of health. You may never get to 10% body fat, but you'll be far more fit than if you'd never started. That's such a powerful point — whether it's your fitness or your money, it's never too late and never too early to start a better path.

JL Collins: I could not agree more. There's a quote that opens The Simple Path to Wealth, from Leo Burnett, who ran an advertising agency in Chicago: "If you reach for a star, you might not get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either." I've tried to live by that since I came across it decades ago. I've been reaching for a star as long as I can remember. I've never really gotten one, but it's turned out pretty well. I'm probably never going to get down to 10% body fat, but I'm a lot better off than I was five years ago when I was still eating all the sweets. Every step helps. Even if you start from zero at 70, are you going to become financially independent? Probably not. Are you going to be better off next year, in five years, in ten? Absolutely.

The New Simple Path to Wealth Workbook

Justin David Carl: For my birthday I asked you for a signed copy of the new edition of The Simple Path to Wealth. If you haven't read it and you're listening, go read it — I've read it a few times, and whenever I'm tempted to buy individual stocks or chase IPOs, I make myself reread it. Recently you introduced me to your daughter, Jessica Collins, who helped update the new edition — a New York Times bestseller that's sold over a million copies. Now there's a companion workbook coming. Want to say a few words before I get Jess on the show to talk about writing it?

JL Collins: I'm very excited and very proud of her. She was the inspiration behind all of this. I managed to turn her off to all things financial when she was young, and I tease her that she was "a little girl who wouldn't listen." She teases back: "Dad, if I'd listened, there'd be no blog, no Chautauquas, no books, and Justin wouldn't want to interview you." Because I wrote all of this trying to convince her — and mission accomplished, since she hit her own FI number a couple of years ago at 32. (I'm a little disappointed it took her that long, but she did spend several years in the Peace Corps.) When she quit her corporate job, she expressed interest in being part of the updated edition, which came to life in 2024, and she did a lot of the heavy lifting. In the process she got to work with my publisher and the team at Authors Equity.

JL Collins: Last December I was in New York recording The Diary of a CEO podcast, which let me attend the Authors Equity holiday party. The head of sales said, "There ought to be a workbook companion to The Simple Path to Wealth." I'd never thought of it. About a week later I reached out to ask if it was just holiday cheer talking, and they said no, it's a serious idea. Quickly they said, "But you're not the one to write it — Jessica is," because Jessica has actually walked the simple path. The irony is that even though I wrote the book, I never walked the path the way it's described — I spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness figuring it out, and that's where the book came from. Jessica took the lessons and applied them from the beginning. Who better to write the workbook?

JL Collins: The manuscript is finished. She wouldn't let me see it until it was done, and I'm impressed — I didn't know she was that good a writer. But I'm her father, so my opinion doesn't count. What matters is my publisher Madeline's response. She's been in publishing a long time, and she emailed Jessica: "I'm going to give this the highest praise I'm capable of giving — I have no suggestions to make it better." I've since read it, and I agree. I did get to write the foreword. It comes out this December. I'm very proud of her, and I think it's a wonderful companion to the simple path.

Justin David Carl: It's already available for pre-order on Amazon, which is amazing — I'll link to it in the show notes. You also kindly sent me a galley version to read in preparation for interviewing Jessica. I'm grateful you shared the backstory of how it happened, because you and I had been talking offline about your Diary of a CEO interview, but you'd left out the genesis of the workbook. So, JL, thank you for joining me again for a live recording. Any last words of wisdom before we shut it down?

Closing

JL Collins: Man, we covered a lot of ground. To the extent I have any wisdom, you've already pried it out of me. Thanks for having me back. It's always fun talking to you, whether we're recording or just hanging out. And you always ask very insightful, probing questions.

Justin David Carl: Thanks for being here, JL — and thank you for your friendship.

JL Collins: Likewise.

Fit Rich Life PodcastJustin David CarlInvesting, Financial Independence, International Stocks, F-You Money