Justin Taylor: Early Retirement, Sobriety & Child-Free By Choice | FRLP 115
Justin Taylor is back for his third appearance on the Fit Rich Life Podcast — this time for the three conversations we ran out of time for in Episode 112.
He retired from his W-2 career at 33 and is now two and a half years into early retirement. Justin is a little over four years sober. He and his wife Leslie are child-free by choice. This September marks my twelfth year sober, I'm a little over two years into early retirement myself, and I'm also child-free by choice — so this one is less interview and more two friends comparing notes from slightly different points on the same road.
In this episode, Justin shares what the first years of early retirement actually feel like once the novelty wears off — why there's no magic switch that flips the day you stop working, why his first year was "machine gunning" with no storyline arc, and how the stress he swore he wasn't carrying showed up in his dreams and in a shoulder injury he assumed was permanent.
We also get into the part nobody warns you about: early retirement can be lonely. I spent my first nine months chasing more income I didn't need, and it took pickleball, a new gym, and finally showing up at FinCon and EconoMe to rebuild the community I'd lost. Justin explains why he's happy to carry the bulk of the weight in his friendships, why keeping score guarantees nobody wins, and how he integrates himself into the lives of friends who still work nine to five.
Then we go deep on sober living. Justin breaks down the math that got him to quit — if you roll the dice a few times a year for fifty more years, that's two hundred chances for something you can't take back — and why quitting was easy for him when moderating never was. We talk about the mental chatter that disappears, why you end up with fewer acquaintances but not fewer friends, and why almost everyone we admire is sober.
Finally, we talk about being child-free by choice: why kids should be a hell yes or a hell no, the "you're selfish" argument and why it doesn't hold up, the assumption that every woman will eventually want children, and how you define legacy for yourself when you're not leaving one behind in the form of a child.
Fit Rich Life Podcast Episode 115 with Justin Taylor is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and wherever you enjoy your podcast entertainment.
Connect With Justin Taylor:
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In This Episode:
What two and a half years of early retirement actually feel like
Why there's no magic switch that flips the day you stop working
Retiring to something versus retiring from something
Why early retirement is lonelier than anyone tells you
Justin's first nine months chasing income he didn't need
Carrying the bulk of the weight in a friendship without keeping score
How to visit friends who still work a nine-to-five
Taking one hundred percent responsibility for your relationships
How to answer "what do you do for a living" when you're retired at 33
Why telling people inspires them far more often than it offends them
The three things that turned Justin's first year around
Sleeping nine to eleven hours a night for a full year after leaving work
The stress you don't know you're carrying until you put it down
Why being a great friend, spouse, and athlete is already a full-time job
Too much open space, and why physical quests fix it
Finding the right amount of work you actually love
Why so many fitness obsessives come from a prior addiction
Sobriety as a superpower, and why you stop hanging out with people you never wanted to hang out with
The two hundred rolls of the dice that ended Justin Taylor's drinking
Why abstinence is easier than moderation
The mental chatter that disappears when you stop drinking
Fewer acquaintances, not fewer friends
Why nobody who quits drinking seems to regret it
The six-month sober experiment worth running
Child-free by choice, and why kids should be a hell yes or hell no
The "you're selfish for not having kids" argument, inverted
Why "wait until she wants kids" isn't a fair assumption
Defining legacy when you don't have children
The funeral test for a life well lived
Building a body of work instead
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Full Transcript
Justin Taylor: Early Retirement, Sobriety & Child-Free By Choice | FRLP 115
Justin Taylor Returns: Early Retirement, Sobriety, and Being Child Free
Justin David Carl: We got Justin Taylor back on the Fit Rich Life podcast. And last time he was on, we talked about his new endeavor, Life Well Worth It, and his FI journey, and a whole lot more. And I had to bring him back because I wanted to dig deeper into the first few years of early retirement. I’m a little over two years in, and I struggled my first nine months. I’m not sure if Justin Taylor struggled or not, but he’s about a half a year ahead of me in early retirement. I also want to talk about sober living because he’s a little over four years sober. And this September I will be celebrating 12 years sober. And lastly, we’re going to talk about being child free by choice, which is a choice both Justin and I have made. So good to have you back on the show, brother. I hear you’re recording from Santa Barbara, yes?
Justin Taylor: Yep, kicking off another one of our big trips. So this one we’re going from Santa Barbara to Australia to Singapore to Albania, then over to the islands of Madeira and Tenerife before coming back to the States via New York at the end of September. So we got a nice little three month chunk ahead of us.
Justin David Carl: I appreciate you coming back on the show even while you’re traveling because it was really important to me to have this conversation with you about these three topics before you went and disappeared forever. So I appreciate you making time despite already on your travels.
Justin Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, for us to record for almost two hours and then to still like, you know, have these subjects that we didn’t even get to touch, like, it just shows like how much every person’s journey is different, how many things there are to unpack. And I think the topics that we talk about today will kind of highlight some of the big themes in my life, which are you know, both living in a way that’s different than other people and not worrying about that, just kind of doing what works for me. And also a life of flexibility. Those are like the two main like tenants, I feel like. So it’s cool to get to dig into these.
What Two and a Half Years of Early Retirement Actually Feel Like
Justin David Carl: I love it. Well, let’s dig into early retirement. So give me what was really good over the last two and a half plus years for you, and then give me some of the more challenging or harder things, if any.
Justin Taylor: Yeah, I mean, just like the amount of experiences that have happened the last two and a half years versus, you know, the twenty five years before that. Although we always did a really good job of like traveling and doing things. I think just naturally when you are still in that, you know, full time employment kind of circuit, like you do a lot of dabbling. You do like okay, I’m gonna go here for like a weekend or a week and you don’t get to like fully get to experience a location. And then since then, like we just have so much more time. Then instead of going and checking out a city for a weekend, we’re going for like five weeks and we’re getting to like really immerse ourselves in it and really see it. And I mean, we’ve just done so much and seen so many places. And it really does feel like we’ve lived an entire lifetime in the last two and a half years. I thankfully haven’t had like too many, I wouldn’t say like big, you know, like struggles in our retirement. And I think partially because we have kept ourselves so busy. But also like realizing that some really normal days are super nice. Like you don’t have to have this like pressure on yourself that like just because you have the ability to do anything you want, that every day has to be this like big anything, like crazy moment, like finding that routine and finding what works for you. I mean, I wake up earlier than I did even when I worked. And like fitness has become such a part of my life that a lot of the things I’m doing, you know aren’t like these kind of like vacation whatever things. It is cooking at home. It is doing the workouts. It is doing the things that I enjoy on a day to day basis. But I mean definitely there’s been a lot of experimentation. And also like I think it just I think what we’ll get into will continue to highlight that like there’s no magic switch that just gets flipped the day that you stop working. And if you’re not happy before probably turning off the work switch isn’t just instantly going to fix everything. You know, there’s still gonna be those little challenges. If you’re still not fulfilled, if you’re still not happy with yourself and your life, like the job probably disappearing isn’t gonna just magically fix everything. And you know, you’ll hear some people say, make sure you got something to retire to, not just retire from. So
Why Early Retirement Gets Lonely
Justin David Carl: Yeah, I think there’s valid argument to both sides of having something to retire to and choosing to not have something to retire to so that you can use that newfound freedom and space to explore what you want to do in the next phase of your life. And I think it is a very unique experience, especially in America, to retire early. Because most people don’t. And I just saw a post from someone else I interviewed on the podcast. She’s an anonymous content creator that goes by the name the Spicy Investor. And she just posted about how it’s been lonely in retiring at twenty nine. And I went through something similar where I think a lot of people underestimate how much community and socialization they get from their work, even if they’re remote. So for the last two years, two and a half years of my corporate career, I was fully remote. Never went to any meetings in person, but there were those built-in one-on-one meetings, you know, with my manager, one-on-one meetings with clients. Team meetings and there was just you know the communal sense of working on a common goal you know growing the business and whatnot and this is despite the fact that you know throughout most of my life I’ve had a really good built-in community but a couple of things happened that set me up to not have the community pre built when I early retired. So I used to live in Menlo Park, which is about an hour away from where I live now. I live in Santa Cruz now. And in Menlo Park, I had a local financial independence meetup group that I ran. I had a rollerblading group. I had all my friends that went to Stanford and were still in the area that were working in tech. And I just had tons of friends everywhere in that area. And then I moved about an hour away, which an hour is not far, but it’s enough of a distance to make meeting up with those friends a heavy lift. Because that means a two-hour commute round trip. And when I moved to Santa Cruz, instead of focusing on building my community here in Santa Cruz, I focused on growing my online business, my coaching, and really just doing everything online and I did a shit job of building in person community here. And I knew my company was going to either get acquired or get sold or go under. So I knew early retirement was coming and I had been preparing for it for a long time. It actually took a lot longer than I thought. But it was a great job. I made great money and I didn’t work a lot. So I kind of just waited till we got acquired and then they laid me and the rest of the salespeople off. And instead of going out and building community in Santa Cruz, I decided, well, now I have more time and freedom to figure out how to make as much money as I made in my corporate job with my online business, even though I’m already financially independent and I don’t actually need any more money. But I was so used to the game that I was playing, which the game that I played for 10 years was maximizing my net worth, maximizing how much money I earned, and having a ridiculously high savings rate so that I could grow that net worth. And it’s almost like I was this automaton that didn’t know how to do any other program than grow the net worth. And so I spent the first eight, nine months chasing more income, even though I didn’t need it. And ultimately it resulted in me being lonely. Because building an online business, especially if you’re a solopreneur like I am. I have a couple contractors, but I don’t have a team. I don’t have employees. And so I created my own shitty life experience in the first eight, nine months of early retirement. But I eventually figured it out. But I do want to share that it is so critical, I think, to build that local in-person community. As well as a network of financially independent friends that don’t have to be in the same area, but maybe they’re early retired. So you have friends you can go travel and hang out with because they’re also early retired. And I think that’s something you’re doing a good job of is you’re going around and visiting friends who either have the flexibility to have you visit or you know, I know your good friend and co-host, Cody Berman. He’s, you know, essentially work optional. And you guys do a lot of stuff together. Plus, you know, yeah, anyways, I’ll stop talking and let you chime in.
Carrying the Weight in a Friendship Without Keeping Score
Justin Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I do think like kind of what you’re calling out as far as when when the work goes away, there’s that built in social network. And there’s also the part of even just like with your friends and family and whoever it might be, that just kind of expectation management, just because your schedule just completely opened up, if you know, if you decide not to go into and do like you did and replace your schedule with another schedule. But like for me, like I didn’t, you know, my schedule was wide open. I wasn’t doing like an entrepreneurial venture and at first it can be like, man, I’m gonna have all this time to do all this stuff. And you’re thinking doing stuff with people as well. But guess what? Like not everybody in your friend group just retired early. Only you. So like their schedule is still just as busy. And I think the other thing that I had to learn is getting used to being like kind of carrying the bulk of the weight in a friendship and knowing that like I’m in a very unique position to do that and to not be resentful about it, to not like kinda you know, be sitting there and being keeping score. So like maybe I reach out to a friend eight times before they reach out to me because they’re so busy and like I have plenty of time and realizing like that’s okay. Like they’re in a different position. They don’t have as much time. At the end of the day, like nobody wins if I start being resentful. We’re still not going to hang out. So like I just continue to push out there, you know, and push out there. And like you said, having the friends that do have different schedules and you can kind of overlap those. Like I’ve got fitness friends who, you know, maybe I could do A B and C with. And then I’ve got my long term friends who have the normal, you know, eight to five job that I can do stuff at, you know, in the afternoon with. Like you kind of have this Venn diagram of stuff to cover your day. But I think that was one of the biggest lessons learned was you’re going to get in this position where you have a lot more ability to be open and to meet people. They’re not necessarily going to be able to return that. And it can get really dangerous if you let that become resentful and you start kinda keeping score.
Taking One Hundred Percent Responsibility for Your Relationships
Justin David Carl: That’s such an awesome insight. And I was just thinking about one of my good friends who I started playing pickleball with. Shout out to Alec. He still has a nine to five job and he has a new kid. And I’m a salesperson, so I don’t care about endlessly following up, but I’ll message him and he won’t text me back for a day and a half. Whereas I got all the free time in the world. And I love that you just said that because you have the freedom, that is actually a privilege to take on the bulk of the work of kind of maintaining and building the relationship. Like you have the energy and the time and the space to ensure that the connection is there and that it’s growing. And I think that’s a really awesome mindset. There’s a related idea that I really try to live my life by, which is taking a hundred percent responsibility for everything in your life. And that definitely includes your friendships. And I think a lot of people get into this way of thinking where it’s that person takes fifty percent and I take fifty percent. But if you want to live a fully expressed, powerful life, you take a hundred percent responsibility for everything. And I think that’s exactly what you’re doing in the case of friendships, is you’re taking a hundred percent responsibility for the friendship. You’re not waiting for him or her to be the one always responding to you, setting up the time to hang out, but you’re actually going in out of your way to be proactive and create the time to hang out, schedule the time, follow up when you don’t hear back from them and not take it personal if they’re slow to get back to or if they forget to get back to you.
Justin Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s such a unique place to be in. Like it’s not normal. And so you also like have to like give your friends some grace and help them see how like your lives can interact in ways that maybe they’re not used to with other friends. Like for instance, my best friend who lives in Dallas, like I’ve told him before, and we’ve done this where it’s like, I want to come visit. Like I know you got to work. I’m not trying to like get you to take a week off work, you know, like all the time. But like I would love to come stay with you. And just like integrate myself a little more into your life from time to time. Like we hang out in the morning before you go to work. We grab a workout in the evenings or like I cook dinner for you when you get home. Like you don’t need to stay up late. You don’t need to host me. Like I’m just gonna like be there in the mornings and the evenings and get to see you and get to spend time with you. And like, you know, he’s at work one day and I surprised him, but I’d mowed his yard for him. Like, you know, you could do little stuff like that and they don’t have other friends who’ve ever even considered that maybe this person would love to come visit me for a week, even though I’m going to work Monday through Friday, nine to five, because like I still want to be a part of his life as much as possible. And I’ve got this unique ability, and taking advantage of it is going to require, you know, some like odd situations maybe. But like at the end of the day, like I’m all about that. I’ve got plenty of things to do to keep myself busy during the day. And then I can still get to, like I said, integrate myself into his life. But like that’s not something he probably would have ever thought about asking me to do because it’s not something that most people ever even think about. And so getting creative with also how you integrate yourself in other people’s lives. And then, like you mentioned, everybody’s getting to the age where they’re having kids, and that’s a whole other thing. Like my friends who have full time jobs and kids, like when they don’t respond to me for three or four days, I just throw something else out there. I know they’re swamped. I can’t even imagine how busy their lives are. And you know, like I said earlier, if you start keeping score, nobody wins. At least that way when I keep throwing stuff out there, like you know, it opens up more opportunities. And I don’t I don’t know, maybe some people think that that’s like unfair or whatever, but like again, it doesn’t it doesn’t cost you anything. As long as you don’t set these like huge expectations where you get yourself let down, then it’s not emotionally taxing. It’s no big deal.
The Four Agreements and Not Taking Things Personally
Justin David Carl: Yeah. One of the books that I really love is the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. And one of the agreements is Don’t take Anything personal. And when my friend Alec doesn’t text me back for two or three days or longer, I’m just like, he’s probably busy with his kid or at a work conference or something and you know, if I don’t hear back from him and I wanna see if he’s available for something, I’ll just text him again. And of course he’s like, I’m so sorry, you know, I was at a work conference, I just got back and whatever. But I think we have this incredible opportunity as you know, people who are financially independent and work optional and have a lot of freedom, a lot of flexibility where we can put in that extra work into relationships that are important to us. And I just wanna, you know, give you a massive like salute for just bringing up that whole mindset because everyone who retires early is gonna have to be the creator of their own early retirement. And you can keep score with friends who have a very different life situation than you, meaning they are not early retired and not financially independent. Or you can just say, hey, I’m willing to do the work and you’re important to me. I care about you. I love you. And I’ll take a hundred percent responsibility for growing our relationship. So I really appreciate you. I was not expecting you to even bring this up, but it’s so fucking awesome. So thank you, brother.
Why Nobody Asks About Your Early Retirement
Justin Taylor: And when you’re talking about like not taking something personal, I’d be curious what your experience has been like. I think another thing is as the person who is retiring early, you can feel awkward bringing it up or talking about it ’cause you may think people are gonna have all these thoughts. They’re gonna think you’re crazy. And I think like almost all things in life, you’re not as top of mind to people as maybe you think you are. Like when we get embarrassed about things or stress or get anxiety about things. I mean, I know my parents have literally never asked me anything about it. Like and I’m like, what? I just did something that’s pretty crazy. And it didn’t even raise a pulse. You know, it’s never a part of conversation with my friends. It’s not like this big thing. It just is something that happened and everybody’s life kind of continues to move on. So I’m curious like how you felt socially like bringing up the conversation and then also like in your life, like was it as big of a shock or do people bring it up or like is it is it even really a part of discussion with, you know, most of your friends that you’ve had for a long time?
How to Answer “What Do You Do for a Living”
Justin David Carl: Yeah, it comes up sometimes. And most of my friends that I’ve had for a long time, they know that I was maniacal about pursuing financial independence. So they knew it was only a matter of time before I got there. And some of them don’t pay any attention to it. Some of them are like, hey, that’s really cool. And some of them are curious. But I do my best not to promote FI or early retirement unless they’re the one asking about it. But with some of my friends, I will jokingly tell them we gotta get you to early retirement or get you to work optional status, because you know, they see the freedom that I have and they appreciate it. And it’s kind of, you know, like a lovingly joke, like you can have this too if you want it. But the other thing with people I don’t know, when they ask me what I do for work, I usually say I’m semi-retired and that I podcast and I coach. So and if it goes deeper, you know, I’ll tell them I’m work optional. Like technically I don’t need to work. And that’s kind of that’s essentially layer two. So layer one is I’m semi retired. I still podcast, coach, and create content, about ten to fifteen hours a week, and then I’ll leave it at that. And then if they want to know more, then I’ll tell them more about financial independence and kind of being work optional. And then layer three is okay, how’d you do it? And then it’s like, listen to my podcast, read my newsletter, I share everything I did for free there. It is interesting though because I do notice a lot of people kind of just steer away from it, even though I know they know. Almost like they’re not sure how to talk about it. But, you know, I’m still in my first two years of it. And fortunately now, because I play pickleball and I have so many FI friends across the nation and across the world. And I’ve made a lot of friends with people that either are financially independent or have the flexibility that I have in terms of work. One of my best friends runs a tennis school, but he really most weeks only works two to three days a week and the rest of the time he’s off. So he’s not technically financially independent, but his business makes more than enough money for him to live quite well and he doesn’t work a lot. So that’s the other thing I think could be useful for people in early retirement is finding those entrepreneurs. Or the people who have built a lifestyle business that gives them the freedom, the flexibility to not have to work an eight to five, five days a week.
The Fear of Bragging, and Why It’s Usually Misplaced
Justin Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I, you know, when I think back to the first year for early retirement, one of the biggest hurdles to get over is this. How do you have that conversation when you meet somebody and they ask you what you do for a living? And the reason I think my biggest hang up was it felt weird to me to just kind of come out and say, like, I’m retired because you don’t want it to feel like you’re rubbing it in somebody’s face. But you also don’t want to feel like you’re just gonna say, Well, I’m unemployed, because that feels like not giving myself enough credit like I’m a like I’m just some dirtbag who just decided not to work. And so, but what I started to realize is that while I thought telling people that I was retired would feel like you’re bragging or rub it in somebody’s face. In reality, most people, it opens up this opportunity to have a conversation around like personal finance and how you got there. And they get excited about it and they get interested in it and they want to learn how to do things that change their life. And more often than not you end up inspiring somebody instead of making them feel bad. I was scared about say coming out and saying it because I was worried about making someone feel in a negative way. But I found through experience that more often than not you end up getting somebody excited and it’s more of an inspirational thing than you know, kind of putting them down kind of thing. So I think you would rob people of that opportunity to maybe like spark that interest. The same way, like in fitness, you know, sometimes having that conversation with somebody about something you’ve been up to, even if you’re in a different place than them, might inspire them to try this new kind of sport or class or whatever. Like exposing them to this different world might get them excited to whether it might just be like starting a budget, might just be tracking what they’re spending, whatever it is, like. Having that conversation just opens up the door to nothing but positive things more often than not. So my PSA is, don’t hide it away. Don’t feel embarrassed, don’t feel like you’re bragging. It actually opens up the door to have some really cool conversations.
Justin David Carl: Yeah, I agree. I think I’ve been pretty open just about saying semi retired. And usually I see something in their eyes or their face where they’re like, wait a minute, you’re not that old. Like, how is this possible? And so I totally agree with Justin. I think it is not something you should be hiding or ashamed of or feel like you’re bragging, it’s just about saying it in a way that doesn’t make them feel like they’re doing life wrong. Right. And instead it creates an opportunity for a conversation to happen if they want to go there. And I think many FI people learn this the hard way. But like you don’t push FI onto other people, you let them come to FI. And if they want to know more about it, you tell them, but you don’t preach that they should be doing this and you should be retiring early and all that ’cause that’s just a recipe for the end of a friendship.
Justin Taylor: Yeah, normally like my response when somebody just comes out and says, ’Cause it is the first question most people ask when you meet them is like, what do you do for a living? And I just kind of start with, Well, you know, I was in the Air Force for six years and I did corporate for three years. And I try to do that to help layer on the like, I didn’t do something crazy. This is not some kind of like get rich quick scheme. This isn’t, you know, crypto. This is I didn’t get some crazy inheritance. So I say that, and then I say I got really interested in this concept of financial independence. And early retirement, and I just saved really aggressively. And about three years ago, you know, I retired. I tee it up like that instead of just saying like, I don’t work. I give a little bit of context before I say it.
How Long It Takes From Discovering FI to Reaching It
Justin David Carl: Yeah, that’s actually exactly what I do. I tell people I worked for ten years in tech, I made a lot of money, and I lived well below my means and I saved and invested a huge portion of my income and that’s why I’m work optional. So it wasn’t like a get rich quick. It took ten years to get to the status that I’m at now. And even though I could have retired a lot longer ago, I chose to continue to work. So I think letting them know that I did work for a solid ten years, plus I had a prior career for eight years in Hollywood nightclubs before that. So realistically, since college I’ve worked about eighteen years before retiring early. You know, and I’m retiring early at forty two and you’re doing it in your thirties. So I think it’s cool to have a conversation with you, you know, someone who’s significantly younger than me, but also me being here as a contrast, because I discovered FI in my mid thirties. I didn’t even know what financial independence was until I think thirty-four or thirty-five. So you know, if you’re listening to this and you’re 34, 35, and just discovering financial independence, or you’re my current age, 44, and just discovering it, my experience has been it takes about five to ten years from discovery of financial independence to reach financial independence. Some people do it faster and some people take 12 to 15 years longer, but I think as soon as you discover it and start, then the clock to financial independence starts to tick. And, you know, there’s examples of people who did it in three or four years. There are people who did it in seven years, other people who did in ten to fifteen. And one of the things I think about is there’s always somebody who had it worse or had more odds stacked against them than you that figured out how to achieve financial independence. And so I really think it’s available to anyone if they choose to make that their one of their top two goals. But if it’s not a top two goal, it’s not gonna happen.
The Turning Point in Justin’s First Year of Early Retirement
Justin Taylor: All right. So on this journey, like we’re talking about our journey to financial independence, and after financial independence. And I know you mentioned you had some struggles early on. What was like the turning point? Where did it start going from being a little bit negative to not? I mean, you just said like the first year wasn’t great, but it seems like things are better now. So like what was the turning point? How’d you help kind of fix things?
Pickleball, a New Gym, FinCon, and EconoMe
Justin David Carl: Yeah, it’s so simple and in retrospect, but it’s three things. So one, I started playing pickleball and there is a huge pickleball community in Santa Cruz. And most of the people are in their fifties, sixties and beyond because our Santa Cruz Pickleball Club plays six days a week from nine to twelve in the morning. So most of these people are retired, like really retired people. But there’s always people my age or younger who either have achieved financial independence or have a very flexible work life. They work a remote job and they can come play pickleball for two hours in the morning before they go jump on Zoom calls in the afternoon. And suddenly, within a few months, I had fifty-plus new friends. And we had this shared love of the sport of pickleball. So that was part one. Part two was a new gym opened, which has an incredible community. And that’s shout out to Santa Cruz Athletic Club. Justin, I know you love fitness. If you come here, you’re gonna be like, holy shit, this is one of the nicest fucking gyms I’ve been to. It’s amazing. And I started making gym friends there, and that opened about a year after I retired. And then the third thing is I went to FinCon and EconoMe. So now in retrospect, I could have made the first year amazing if I had just gone to a Camp FI — and I’ve been to Camp FI — but I moved to this new area and I was very slow about reconnecting with the broader FI community, finding more people who are already early retired. Because in my local area in Santa Cruz, I don’t know anyone who’s early retired. But I know plenty of people across America who are early retired. And doing a better job of connecting with those people. So those three things together rebuilt the community and the connection that was missing in my life. And now I’m ridiculously happy. The last fourteen months, really since I started playing pickleball in April of twenty twenty five, I’ve been ridiculously happy. And it’s all because of community. And it’s so simple, but you look at all the longevity and happiness studies and it’s all about community, friendship and connection.
Why So Many Fitness People Come From a Prior Addiction
Justin Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing what community could do. I know we talked about this in the last episode. Although we loved our first year and year two in early retirement and like all the travel that we were doing, the one dark spot we kept seeing was, okay, we’re doing all these crazy things and making all these great experiences, but we’re missing that community part, which is the whole reason we’re now working on this project where we’re taking people places with us so we can kind of do both like check out all these new places and take people with us. But you and I are also talking in this episode about another subject which can deteriorate a lot of people’s community, which is not drinking. Not only do you not have the workplace, but also a lot of people’s interactions from a community perspective, where they’re just interacting with another human, is out at a happy hour, out at the bar, or whatever. But you’re highlighting again this pickleball community, the fitness community. I think you’ve found such a deep community in fitness. I don’t know what your experience is, but I know with me, a lot of the friends I’ve made in the fitness community and a lot of people who are like really into it, you know, maybe even borderline addicted, come from a different addiction, right? A lot of people who get really into endurance running or whatever it is do have a background where they had a problem with some kind of substance like alcohol. And you just find a replacement. You find a different addiction that’s a lot healthier than your old addiction. A lot of times that’s kind of the way it goes. But I’m curious how that has interacted. You stopped drinking much longer ago, twelve years ago. But maybe you could talk a little about whether it is or is not hard to build community if you’re also not gonna drink for those who are maybe considering it.
Sobriety as a Superpower
Justin David Carl: I think being sober is a superpower in so many ways, not only never having a hangover, but one of the things that I think is incredible about not drinking or doing drugs is when you’re sober you will not hang out with people you don’t actually really want to hang out with. But when you are drunk or on drugs, you will hang out with people that you would normally never hang out with. And that’s one of the biggest transformations in my life. I have tons of friends who drink, and they’re great people. But and this is more so from my eight years in the nightclub business in Hollywood, is I would just find myself spending time you know, late at night, hanging out with people, drinking, doing drugs, and many of those people I would never spend time with sober, because that’s just not the type of person I want to spend my time and energy with. So I know I’m kind of dancing around your question of, you know, has being sober made it more challenging to have friendship and community, but I actually think it has forced me to get really clear on the type of friends and the type of community that I want to have. Like I have no interest in spending my time at a happy hour or a nightclub because I want to get up early and go work out, go play pickleball, go hiking, go running, go to the beach, go swimming in the ocean, and do things that add life to my life. And I have no problem with people drinking or doing drugs socially. But like you mentioned. A lot of people who you find that are obsessed with fitness come from a prior addiction. And I was very addicted to drinking and marijuana and Adderall. And what I’ve realized with perspective is that the addictive, obsessive energy I have is actually a superpower, but it can also be my kryptonite depending on how I channel it. So if I channel it towards pickleball, getting and being jacked, it’s great. If I channel it towards building an online business in my first nine months of early retirement, even though I don’t need the money, it’s kryptonite. And you know, in the past life, channeling that obsessive, addictive behavior toward drugs and alcohol, though it was fun and I don’t regret it, it definitely did not create the life that I want. And so I think being sober has just made me really clear on what I value. And the type of people I want to spend my time with, and the type of things I want to spend my energy doing. So for all the people whose social time with friends is getting drinks, I encourage them to go for a hike or get a workout in or play some pickleball or do a physical activity or do something that isn’t built around drinking. And ultimately I think it will expand the quality of your life in a positive direction. And it may be challenging at first. And trust me, I know, because everything I used to do revolved around drinking and doing drugs. Even going to the fucking movies. It was pre-drinking before the movies and bringing a flask into the movies. Everything I did socially revolved around alcohol. And so I had to relearn how to have fun without it. And now I can easily say with conviction that I have infinitely more fun than when I was drinking and doing drugs. So you’re four years into your experience. And I’m sure the first year or so was recalibrating. Wait a minute, how do I have friends? How am I social? So I wanna hear your side of being sober and learning how to live a good life or Life Well Worth It.
Fewer Acquaintances, Not Fewer Friends
Justin Taylor: I love these big subjects. For the first one, like early retirement, the biggest fear is, but what am I gonna do with myself? I’m gonna be so bored. When in reality, you’re not gonna be bored. If you’ve got an ounce of curiosity and you build a life that is like right for you, you’re not gonna be bored. And then with the drinking, like you said, it’s so much a part of everything I do, especially socially. Like how am I going to hang out with people? How am I? You might have less acquaintances, but you’re not gonna have fewer friends. Real friends are not gonna say, well, you can’t come drink with me at happy hour, so we’re not gonna be friends. You might have different people in your life, and fewer random acquaintances. And like you said, you might be spending less time hanging out with people that you wouldn’t hang out with sober anyway. But you’re not going to not have friends. And on the other side of that, the same as with retirement, it’s about meeting people where they are. Like I still have plenty of friends that drink. I will still go to a bar or whatever and I’ll crush some Diet Coke. I’m not gonna force it. Now, once things start to go a little sloppy and people start getting annoying, like sure, you know, maybe I’ll leave a little earlier than I did before. But I don’t want people to think I can’t hang out with them just because it’s an event that involves some drinking. Which also like makes me think about how I think a bigger kind of backdrop to all this is societally I think that we put people into a bucket of you’re either like an alcoholic or you’re not. Like you’re someone who people cannot drink around or else you might relapse. Like that is persona A and everybody else is just quote normal. When that is just not the reality. I’ve got a bunch of liquor in the cabinet at the house. And when I have friends who are really into bourbon — because I have a nice bourbon collection — if they’re coming through town, I might walk them through a tasting. Like it does not bother me. It’s there. I don’t want it. But it’s not good for me. Like when I drink, I would get excited. I would drink too much. I’d do something stupid. And I realized — not quickly enough, but I did finally realize — it was not good for me. Taking a step back, it’s unfortunate that we almost treat it like either you are this, like you have what people think of as an addiction, where you’re gonna lose your mind if you get near it and you can’t have it, or else you’re just quote normal. When really there’s so much more of a spectrum than that. And also like when you talked about it being such a part of everything in your life, until you stop, I don’t think you realize just how freeing it is to reduce so much of that chatter. When you layer on the amount of concerts and social things I was doing with drinking and you sprinkle in my frugality, then it’s like, okay, every time you go to a concert, it’s like, well, I don’t want to have to buy too many drinks at the show. So like how am I going to sneak some in? How many drinks should I have before the show? Like I want to be a little tipsy but not too drunk. When should I like, okay, I got this flask in. When should I start drinking it? Like the main act comes on in two hours. Again, I want to be tipsy but not too drunk. And it’s like, okay, but now I do need to drink. I gotta go get in line. Like, when should I go? You know, like it’s all these little tiny decisions in your brain that are just when you stop drinking are just gone. And another little fun bonus — whereas we used to go out and have a few craft beers, whatever. I love food. And now I’m like, what was I doing all these years? For the same money and calories, I could destroy some nachos or a cheesecake. And to me that’s so much more fun than yet another beer that I’ve had a thousand times. But those are some of the things I didn’t realize until I stopped drinking would be such nice benefits. And like you said, calling it a superpower. It does not take me any willpower. I have no FOMO. It is the complete opposite. Like I am so thankful that I don’t drink. I’m not like wishing that I could.
Sleep as the Wonder Drug
Justin David Carl: In retrospect, with nearly twelve years under my belt, I’m just so much happier, healthier, and infinitely more successful because I took that obsessive energy and I just applied it to other areas of my life, which then compounded over the years and gave me the life that I have. And I’m the same as you. I can be around people drinking. I can be around alcohol and I have zero desire for it. So it’s not that I’m gonna break down and have a relapse if I’m around a bunch of people drinking. I just choose to for the most part be in physical settings where the main activity is not focused on drinking. So occasionally I’ll be at a music festival where there’s plenty of alcohol and drugs. But there’s enough energy there that I have a great time. For me, that’s where I might be a little different. At something like FinCon, of course I’ll go to the bar and hang out with everyone. But in my week to week normal at home life, if people are asking me to go to the bar, I say, have fun. I’ll see you on the pickleball courts tomorrow. But that’s just me, because I go to bed really early most nights and I get up really early. Similar to you, I’m awake four to five AM pretty much every single day. Maybe you’re not as early as that. But for me, I think sleep is the wonder drug. When I get a full eight hours most nights, especially since early retirement, I just feel so good. And you know, this links me back to there were a couple of early retirement things I wanted to ask you about. So my first year of early retirement, I slept nine to eleven hours every single night for an entire year. And what I realized in retrospect is that I was in Silicon Valley B2B technology and there was just so much pressure to grow. Even though I never worked crazy hours, there was always this underlying pressure to grow and perform. And I was quota carrying so I had numbers to hit every quarter and I could rarely be in bed for more than seven hours before my mind told me, hey, we gotta get up and do shit. And so I’m curious on the early retirement side of things, if you had any lingering burnout or during your last three years of work you did a good job of getting plenty of sleep and not feeling pressure from work. Was there any of that in your life?
The Stress You Don’t Know You’re Carrying
Justin Taylor: Thankfully my job wasn’t too terribly stressful. I will say that even though if you had asked me, am I stressed at work, I would have said absolutely not, you know, but I was having like a lot more dreams back then that were very stressful. And I noticed those went away when I stopped working. And then the other thing is like I from like a physical standpoint, just the like working, you know, sitting at the desk, being on the keyboard, et cetera. I had this spot in my back and upper left shoulder that I had completely accepted was just gonna be messed up for life. I’d done physical therapy, I tried everything. It would come in these waves, it would hurt so bad, and then it would go away. Like I just thought, that’s life. You got this thing, you know, you know how to kind of work around it. And when I stopped working and stopped sitting so much and stopped being on the keyboard, it went away pretty fast and has stayed away and it’s been like amazing. So that was probably my biggest change. I still don’t sleep a ton. I haven’t cracked that code quite yet. And I really wasn’t feeling burnout. I was lucky in that I had a job that was it was pretty well balanced and pretty flexible. But I did notice a general happiness, and a lot of that happiness wasn’t just a switch getting flipped. It was because I had so much more time to spend to be like introspective and when something would start sending me down a bad path or I was in a bad headspace, I had time to sit and reflect on it and work through it and think about how I could handle that situation differently the next time, and work on myself. Whereas when I was working, I just didn’t have all those additional hours to actually work on the craft of being the best version of yourself. The number one pushback people have when you tell them, okay, you could stop working, is again, what are they going to do with themselves all day? And, you know, I was coaching a guy once and I said, I tell you what, if you can come back to me and you can tell me that you’re the absolute best person, the best husband. That you’re the best father, that you’re the best friend, that you’re in the best physical shape that you could possibly be. Like you could just rate yourself ten out of ten in all those categories. Then come back and talk to me, because then maybe you’ll have time to get bored. But like that’s a full time job. Like that is a full time job to be a good friend, to be a good parent, to be a good spouse, to be in good physical condition. Like that’s a full time job. So I would just say you’re definitely not gonna get bored. And for me that was a big change — mentally, the stoic principles I got so much better at, and patience and anxiety and all that sort of stuff got so much better. I don’t think it was because my job was stressful. It’s that I now had so much more time to work on myself.
Too Much Freedom, and the Case for Quests
Justin David Carl: Yeah, a couple of comments reflecting on some of the things you said. If you had asked me during my ten year working career if I was stressed by work, I would tell you no. And I don’t think I was stressed, but there was a level of pressure that I don’t think I was fully conscious of. Because I’ve always been a performer, someone who wants to be the best at everything that they do, that made it so I could rarely rest. And for most of my working career, and I can say this now, I worked three to four hours a day, four days a week. So I did not work a ton of hours. But there was this pressure to hit these numbers that put enough energetic weight on me that it was challenging for me to truly rest on a regular basis. Sometimes I would sleep much more than six and a half hours, but I was a fish in water. And I didn’t realize how much pressure there was until I left that fishbowl and got out of it. And suddenly my body and psyche decided, great, now we’re gonna sleep for nine or ten hours every single night, which means I was physically in bed for 10 to 12 hours every night for an entire year. And now I’m back to being in bed for eight or nine hours. I’ll get an actual seven to eight hours of sleep because the whole time you’re in bed doesn’t mean you’re actually asleep. Because I wear a WHOOP which tracks my sleep efficiency. So how long am I actually asleep when I’m in bed? And I think that’s a good health metric for people to pay attention to. I thought that because I was in bed for seven hours during those ten years, that I was getting seven hours of sleep. Realistically, I was getting five and a half, maybe six, which is much less than the seven to eight. And now that I get that all the time, I just feel so much better, so much happier. And you know, one thing I wanted to ask you that’s sort of related to switching from this super productive work career to all the free time in the world is that I struggled with having too much freedom the first several months. And I filled that by creating more work for myself. And now in retrospect, I know I just need to have quests in place. So right now I’m on this pickleball quest. So that gives me direction every day. Every day, can I play pickleball? Do I have energy? Can I go drill? Can I go play for a few hours? And that has given me a lot of structure. I also podcast, coach, and write a newsletter. So I feel like now I have the right amount of productive things in the amount of time that makes me feel like I’m doing things that are meaningful for myself, for my community, and for the world. And I’m curious, because you mentioned several times a lot of people say to you, what would I do with all this free time? And I think it is scary to have a ton of open space. And I’ll speak as a man, because I think many men feel the need to always be productive. And I’m curious how you’ve dealt with that in your own early retirement.
A First Year of Machine Gunning With No Storyline Arc
Justin Taylor: Yeah, and you know, you just mentioned like as a like as a man, a lot of times it feels like there’s an additional pressure on ourselves, like just to feel productive. And not just that, I would say with all the traveling that we’ve been doing as an American, there’s also it’s so different too. Other countries do a much better job of not being so tied, from an identity perspective, to work and feeling like every day had to be about productivity. I mean, you know, that is the great thing. About this country and about like our economy and all that, but it comes with warts. It turns you into a machine, a productive machine, but a machine. And so I totally get that. I totally get that pressure. I think for me the first like year, I was machine gunning. I wasn’t slowing down. I didn’t do what you did with work, but I did that like I kept myself so busy with travel and seeing friends and just doing all these things I’d been wanting to do, but I had no storyline arc. Like it was just what was right in front of me, what’s next week, what’s next week, and just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I wasn’t being very thoughtful about it. Like I wasn’t really like building anything long term. And that’s what we’re starting to settle into. And that’s the other thing for people, like when you get ready to retire, we can talk about it forever. You can read every book you want to. You’re just gonna have to live through it. Like there’s gonna be some growing pains. Stuff’s gonna sift into place. But also, like, don’t think that you’re gonna have it all figured out in six months. Like you just spent the last 10, 20 years doing life one way. Why do you think you’re gonna like figure it out in three months? So the first six months was very sporadic, very just like again, it was a lot of domestic trips and staying with friends and music festivals and whatever, just a lot of little trips. And then we decided, okay, like we’ve always wanted to do this big trip. So we did the big six month trip, across the world for six months and learned, is this what we want to do? Well, there’s parts of it that we really loved and we wanted to repeat, but there’s parts of it we didn’t love. And then, of course, like we’ve talked about before, we’re missing the community part. So we start thinking, like, okay, how can we combine these two things? So we start taking people on these retreats. And we’re like, okay, we like that. And we like these big trips, but we love our community in Austin. So why don’t we just like travel during the time that we don’t like Austin, which is when it’s too hot in the summer, reduce it down a little bit to like three months, and then we sprinkle in some of these trips. So this year is better than last year, which was better than the year before. And that’s the goal is just like learn from what you’re doing, experiment with it and keep refining it. And it’s gonna be different for everybody. That’s another thing — I’ve had conversations with people who were struggling, you know, when they were retiring. And it’s just like don’t be complacent. Like, yes, like try different things, figure out what works for you, like be creative, but at the same time you can’t let the pressure build up to you feel like you’ve got to figure this out and solve this and make everything perfect as quickly as possible. Same thing like when somebody’s on, you know, like a fitness journey. Like you didn’t get out of shape in six weeks. You’re not gonna get in the shape you want to get in six weeks. Like it took you a long time to get there. It’s gonna it might take you a bit of time to get to where you want to go. Be patient and just continually be improving. That’s my long-winded answer to that.
Finding the Right Amount of Work You Love
Justin David Carl: Yeah, I think you mentioned several really important things. One is experimenting in those first few years of early retirement to figure out what the lifestyle that you want to live is in this phase or this season of your life. And that can take time. I would say for me over the last two plus years, it’s all been an experiment to figure out what makes a great life to me in early retirement. And of course my version of that is gonna be very different than yours. I have no desire to go on a six month or even a three-month trip. So at this stage in my life I like to travel maybe four to six times a year. And they could range from one to four weeks each. But I’m not really interested in that for now. And this could change in a year or two. I may decide, hey, I want to go for a three month or six month trip. But right now I have zero desire. I really love the life that I’ve built here in Santa Cruz. And when I have gone on two or three week trips, though they’ve been awesome trips that I completely enjoyed. I’m so excited to get back to my life here in Santa Cruz because I’ve built this life that I really love. But it took me at least 12 months of early retirement to build this life that I now have. And it’s been me finding the right amount of work that I love. I love to podcast. I love to write a newsletter. I love to create content. I don’t love releasing a podcast every single week. So I realized, wait a minute, I love podcasting, but I’m doing it too much, to where it feels like a job. So I moved to every other week. So basically two episodes a month. Fucking love it. It’s the perfect amount of podcasting for me. And same thing with content creation. I love creating content. I’ve pretty much abandoned Instagram. I just create on Threads right now and I write my newsletter and that’s what makes me happy. And that could change. And I work with five to ten clients, so I get a little bit of one on one work there. But really, it’s rare that I have more than three hours of client meetings per week. And that amount of podcasting, writing, content creation, and coaching, it makes me feel productive, but I don’t feel stressed by the amount of any of it. I feel that there’s still plenty of open space in my schedule every single week, every single day, to do all the other things that I love to do, like pickleball, exercise, spending time with my wife, go to the beach, spend time in nature and read and all the other random things I do. But I wanna double click on something I said before and I think this is something that you’ve done an incredible job in. And we talked a lot about in our previous conversation is having these quests. So right now you’re on this HYROX quest. How many HYROX races can Justin do? Well, he’s gonna find out because he’s going to one after the next. He’s building trips around them. He’s taking other people. He’s spreading his love of HYROX with other people. And I’m doing the same exact thing with pickleball. I’m literally, how much pickleball can I play in a week? How much better can I get week over week, month over month? And I’m already thinking through pickleball trips where the whole point of the trip is to go play in a tournament somewhere I’ve never been, or go to a pickleball camp so I can get better at pickleball, but go to a new place. And it’s this physical quest that just brings so much energy to my life. And now that I’m obsessed with pickleball, it has reinvigorated my passion for my exercise because — well, not everything — a large subset of my strength training is exercises to make me a better pickleball player. So in a sense it made me fall back in love with my own fitness training because I now have a quest to apply it to. And I know this is probably very similar for you. You love to do every workout that you do because you have this goal of getting an even better HYROX time the next time you compete.
HYROX as a Feedback Loop, and “Were You Happy Today?”
Justin Taylor: Yeah, for sure. That’s one thing I love about the sport is that it gives you an actual no-kidding litmus test of whether what I’m doing is improving my fitness or not. The numbers will tell you. You know, if I go now, you know, obviously you can have slight variability on race day, like something can happen. But if over time, like if my times are getting worse and I’m sitting there telling myself that my training has gotten better. You know, kind of cue the Maury. According to this, that is a lie. So I’ve got a nice little feedback loop, which is one part of it that I love. And it’s so much more a competition with yourself. I do have that competitive spirit, but I’m really just competing with myself. I’m never gonna be the fastest in the world. There’s gonna be people who are faster than me. All I care about is, is my time, or mine and Leslie’s as a pair, Like, is our time getting better? And it’s fun. It’s got such a good community. There’s so much variety in it. It’s eight different physical exercises plus the running. So there’s always something to work on to get better at. And I would never be one to say this is the form of workout that’s superior. I’m not that dogmatic. It’s all about finding what you like and finding what you love. And sticking with it. The HYROX thing has been an awesome addition. Who knows, in three or four years, there’ll probably be something completely different that I’m not even thinking about right now. But I think it’s important — you’ve talked about it a few times and I think I brought it up a few times of like what makes us happy and just riding that wave and not — to get to where we are, you need to be resourceful and frugal. And at times you can start to feel guilty. Like, am I not fully utilizing this gift that I have been given, which is that I have complete control over my time if I don’t do everything like to the nth level. When in reality, at the end of the day, are you happy? If that means you got up, you went on a run, you read a little bit, you cooked yourself a nice meal. You went on a walk with your spouse. Maybe you could have been out there skydiving or jumping off a waterfall or doing something crazy off somebody’s bucket list. That doesn’t matter. Were you happy today? Like do you feel good? Were you happy today? That’s a good day. And not feeling like it’s gotta be more than that, or that you should feel guilty because you’re not doing more than that. I don’t know at what point in life being super happy is not enough. That should be enough.
Why Physical Quests Make Sober Life Easy
Justin David Carl: I agree. And I think one of the other things these sport physical quests give us is it makes sober life so easy. Because the last thing I want to do is fuck up my ability to get more physically fit and become a better pickleball player by going out and drinking. So I don’t even think about it because I have this much bigger physical quest that is so fun for me to be on the journey. Whether I’m drilling or I’m playing or I’m doing an exercise at the gym that’s supporting me, I don’t even think about drinking or doing drugs, because I don’t want to do anything that detracts from becoming better at it. And it’s similar to you. I’m not gonna be the top professional pickleball player. I probably will never even be a professional pickleball player. I’m gonna see if I can get there in the next couple of years, but it’s highly unlikely, and I totally don’t care because it’s the journey of pursuing this goal of getting better at the physical pursuit of pickleball that is the gold for me. It’s the actual process that is the prize. It’s not about achieving XYZ in professional pickleball. It’s like I started here and this is how far I came and the whole way along I’m actually enjoying every step of that journey.
Auditing Your Drinking the Way You Audit Your Spending
Justin Taylor: Yeah, you know, that to me there are a lot of similarities with early retirement and being honest with yourself on your spending. Because a lot of times you’ll have that review with somebody and they’ll be telling you the things that are really important to them. And then you look at their spending and they’re not in alignment. And that same kind of conversation can happen with drinking. For me, if I was honest with myself — bad things are always going to happen to you, that is life. But I looked at everything bad that ever happened to me that was actually within my control. Drinking was at the center of it. And so if I’m being honest with myself and saying, this is when I’m at my best, and drinking is keeping me from that, then I need to remove drinking. That’s just the logical choice. And this is the same thing that happens with those financial discussions. It’s like you say you want to own your own home, you say you want to retire earlier, you say you want to go on vacation, but the actions you’re doing are not getting you there and you can see that and you know that that’s in opposition to your goals, but you’re doing it anyway. For me, I definitely didn’t make the decision to stop drinking for physical reasons. I wasn’t even really into fitness at the time. It has definitely helped, but it was more this realization that even though maybe it was only once a month where it was like, that was a little too much, and you did something a little stupid. Okay, I’m playing with fire, let’s even call it once a quarter. If I play with fire once a quarter — I was 32. Let’s say I’m gonna live at least another 50 years. Okay, that’s 200 more times that I’m gonna be really playing with fire. What are the chances that out of those two hundred times, something doesn’t happen that either gets me put in jail, makes me lose a spouse, injures myself, whatever — something really bad. Okay, that’s what could happen. And on the positive side, what is it adding to my life? And that’s a real short list. So when I got down to the nuts and bolts of it and looked at it logically — even if you’re only rolling those dice a few times a year, that’s a heavy set of dice and that’s got a lot of consequences. It just wasn’t worth it. And that, more than the physical side, is what pushed me away from drinking.
How Justin Taylor Got Sober
Justin David Carl: Yeah. So I’m actually curious how did you become sober? Walk me through how you decided to become sober.
Justin Taylor: Yeah, I mean, it’s just like I said, it was one of those final straw moments where I just drank too much, and reflecting on it the next day it was like, man, that could have been really bad. And I had that thought — this could have been really bad, and luckily everything landed okay. But what’s to say the next time things go my way? And like I said, thinking through the math, I’m setting myself up for risking this 200 more times if I continue down this path. And the timing just worked out. Me and Leslie both had a similar moment, and we both decided we wanted to stop. And so that’s so helpful to have your spouse on board with you. And I just so happened to be about to start a trip to Saudi Arabia where drinking isn’t legal anyway. So that was a nice little foray into it for the first couple of weeks. And honestly, engineering is my background. I’m such a problem solver that deciding to just not drink was so much easier than trying to figure out how to drink properly. Because I tried everything. Okay, I can set a timer between drinks. I gotta make sure I eat. What if it’s only beer? I tried everything. I just knew I could solve this problem. Quitting was actually easy for me. And I’m thankful for that because I know it’s not for everyone. Being like, nope, I’m done — that was easy. The one foot in, one foot out was really hard.
Justin David Carl: Yeah, abstinence is easier than moderation for me when it comes to drugs and alcohol. So I love the way you broke it down. Even if I have one high risk incident from drinking per quarter, that’s two hundred more times in a lifetime. And what are the chances that one of those really fucks my life up? And that’s a pretty high probability. I never really thought about it like that. In my own journey to becoming sober, it was Labor Day — I always forget which holiday is which. I drank way too much whiskey.
Justin Taylor: Labor Day.
The Labor Day That Started Twelve Years Sober
Justin David Carl: We were in Half Moon Bay, which is a beach town that was about forty-five minutes from where we lived in Menlo Park. And I was on the way back throwing up out the side of the car. And the next day, my wife, then girlfriend, came to me and said, hey, I’m thinking about doing one month sober. And I was hungover as fuck. And she asked me if I would like to join her. And I said, sure. And the first month I just felt so much better from an overall well-being standpoint. Even though I had left the nightclub business and was no longer drinking seven days a week, I was still drinking two or three days a week, usually once during the week and then for sure on the weekend. And in my experience, even just a little bit of alcohol, the next day, my emotional volatility was so much bigger. Just much bigger swings from high to low. And the only way to make that better was to not drink for a few days, or to drink again. I was always a happy drunk. It sounds like you were a crazy drunk. I was a crazy drunk. I did ridiculously stupid shit, and it’s incredible I did not end up in jail or severely injured or dead. I was a wild fucking animal when I was drinking. I was fun as hell, but it was high risk fun. After one month I said to my wife, then my girlfriend, let’s do another month. So we did another month, and at the end of the second month I had continued to enjoy more emotional stability.
Justin David Carl: Similar to you, not having to think about how I’m gonna drink and do all the things I want to do and how that fits in and all the planning around drinking, and just hey, I’m not drinking, so I have all this mental space back, all this mind share back. We were at dinner — I still remember the restaurant — and I said, let’s do another month, so it’d be our third month. And she paused and said, let’s do a year. And I was like, whoa, I don’t know about that. I’m not gonna drink, but I need to think about it. And then I thought about it for about two weeks, did not drink. And what I had realized is I had spent, I think, at that time, 12 years drinking. So to not drink for one year, it’s not the rest of my life, it’s one year. And I can try it out. And I did that year, learned how to have a ton of fun, living a sober life, and I was so much happier, healthier, and more successful after just one year that it was a no-brainer to continue to be sober. And the other thing that has helped me is that almost all the people I really admire in this world — authors, public figures, super fit people — are sober. Completely sober. No drugs, no alcohol. The ones who are big in this world who do drink and do drugs, I don’t admire in the same way. It’s not that I think they’re not good people, or that they’re bad for drinking or doing drugs. I just don’t want their life. But I could see myself in these super successful sober people, and that’s the life I wanted. So when I thought about all the people I admire and want to be like being sober, well, if I want to give myself the best chance of achieving success in my own life and following their path, then sober was the obvious answer.
Every Rich Person Invests, and Nobody Regrets Quitting
Justin Taylor: Yeah, you know, it’s making me think about like when you’re trying to encourage someone to like start investing. To me, one of the most powerful things you can do is remind them to pick out any rich person, any one of them. They invest. Like 100% of them invest. So you don’t need to believe a single word I say. You don’t need to know anything, you don’t need to know how it works. At a minimum, know that every single rich person invests. If they didn’t inherit it. Any self-made person invests. Okay. And I think about that like when I’m trying to encourage somebody to think about doing these HYROX races. I don’t know a single person who’s done one who didn’t want to do another. So as much as you think you’re going to hate it, there’s a higher likelihood than not that you won’t, because everyone I know who’s done one wants to do another. And with the drinking thing, I don’t personally know anyone who has stopped drinking who thinks, man, that was a terrible decision, I regret that. So you don’t need to fully understand it. You don’t need to be able to envision it at first. But if it helps you take that chance and at least consider it — nobody who has done it regrets it. So you probably won’t either.
The Six-Month Sober Experiment
Justin David Carl: Hundred percent. And it’s so much easier to be richer and fitter when you’re not drinking or doing drugs because you’re not spending the money on those activities. And when you drink, it is so much more likely you’re gonna overeat. When you do drugs, same thing usually. Well certain types of drugs make you not eat, but other types of drugs make you eat a lot more. It’s the same thing. Every super fit person I know doesn’t drink. They might do some occasional party drugs at a concert, but they don’t drink. And I think you and I share this — fitness is part of our lifestyle. And if that is one of the keystones of our lifestyle, why would we have an opposing habit that detracts from that? Why not grow the fitness lifestyle so big that the desire to drink or do drugs is non existent. And I think that’s something both you and I have done. We’ve completely given ourselves to a fitness lifestyle that gives us so much purpose, so much meaning, so much fun, so much excitement that we don’t even think about drugs or alcohol. For the record, I don’t care if people drink or do drugs. I don’t think you’re a bad person if you do that. I have plenty of friends who drink and do drugs, and they’re doing great. And I love them and I hang out with them. But I wanted to have this conversation with Justin. Because he’s four years into sobriety. I’m almost 12 years in. And I just wanted people to know that there is another way of living that may be even better for you. But you won’t know until you give it an honest shot. And in my mind, one month is not long enough. Three months isn’t long enough. I would say you’re gonna have to live at least six to twelve months completely sober to transition from a life where drinking or drugs is the main social activity to one where something else is now the main social activity and you rebuild your lifestyle. And then after you live that for a while, you can reflect and say, hey, is my life better or worse since I made this shift? And that’s why I wanted to have this conversation with Justin is to encourage people to run a sober experiment. Say, hey, I’m gonna take six months off and I’m gonna focus my energy on something else and just see if my life gets better.
When Drinking Is Part of Your Identity
Justin Taylor: Yeah. And I mean, I don’t want to undermine how crazy it might feel to somebody who’s thinking about that, thinking there’s no way. Because I get it. It was a part of my identity. In our hometown, if you are a Taylor, you drink. And I was the friend all the crazy stories came from. I get it. It’s in every song, it’s in every movie, it’s everywhere. And it seems like the craziest thing to be like, wait, you’re saying I’m never going to drink again? I get how crazy it is. But I’m hoping some of this can give people the encouragement to try it, and to think back to that analogy I was making with investing. You’re never gonna find someone who is self made, who’s rich that didn’t invest. And I find it hard to believe you’d find many, if any, people who stopped drinking who regret it. So let the historical outcomes give you that confidence to take the chance.
Child Free By Choice
Justin David Carl: Hundred percent. So I’m gonna do a hard left turn and make sure we cover the last subject. Because I gotta jump off in about eighteen minutes for another meeting. But let’s talk about being child free by choice. So I am forty four, my wife is thirty-eight, turning thirty-nine next month, and we are still child free by choice, not because we can’t have children. But because we’ve decided the life that we want to live for now is one that is child free. And I’m curious, talking to someone about eight years younger than me. You’re thirty-six? So talk to me about your decision to be child free.
Hell Yes or Hell No, and the “You’re Selfish” Argument
Justin Taylor: Thirty-six, yeah. It’s an interesting one for me, because ever since I was eighteen or so, I knew I didn’t want to have kids. At the same time, I love mentoring. I’ve got nine nieces and nephews. I love being a good uncle. I’ve done these really in-depth sponsorship programs with an orphanage in Mexico, where I sponsored a girl named Norma for years. She’s doing awesome now. She’s graduated college and living a good life in Mérida I’ve done Big Brother Big Sister. I love that kind of stuff. I love teaching. But I’ve just never wanted my own kids. And for me, I think children should definitely be in that category of the hell yes or hell no. I don’t think you should be in the middle of the road. You should either really want them or not. Because I know that if I had a kid, I’d be all about it. I would be a good dad. I would be very invested in it. But I don’t want to. One of my biggest pet peeves is the notion some people try to lay on me that I am selfish because I don’t want to have kids, which logically makes zero sense. Because first, the kid doesn’t exist, so how can I be selfish toward something that doesn’t exist? And second — not that I think people who have kids are selfish, but I could at least make the logical argument, the philosophical argument that you’re being much more selfish by having your own kid when there are so many children out there who already exist who need a parent or a mentor or whatever. And instead you’re like, no, screw that, I gotta make one that looks like me and that is forced to live with me. You could argue that’s more selfish than what I’m doing. Not that I actually think people are selfish for having kids. But I’ve always felt that way. And the other thing that’s kind of interesting and a little sad is the sexist angle that you’ll see in these conversations, where people unfairly say about Leslie, yeah, but wait till she wants to have kids — as if someone who’s female will one thousand percent want to have kids. That’s just not fair. Sometimes it is the female in the relationship who doesn’t want kids and the male wants to have kids. Maybe neither one of them wants to have kids. That can happen. I always hate that — sure, you don’t want kids, but wait till she does. That’s not fair. But I’ve built my entire life around flexibility. So that wouldn’t play a part in my life.
Justin David Carl: It’s so fascinating that you just said that part about women wanting to have kids because I literally just had breakfast with a friend who has three kids. And I don’t know if he listens to my podcast or not. And I love you if you are listening. But he told me he thinks women feel a lack of purpose if they don’t have children. And I didn’t say anything back to him because I didn’t want to get into an argument. But I thought that was ridiculous. In my mind I was thinking, there are millions of other ways to have deep fulfilling purpose for a woman than just having kids. The basic assumption that a woman will not truly be fulfilled or happy if she doesn’t have kids to me is crazy. And that may be true for some women, but I think there are also plenty of women who find deep fulfillment and satisfaction being child free by choice. And, you know, I’m not gonna spend a ton of time speaking on what I think women do or do not feel. But I do agree with you, there is this overemphasis on the basic assumption that every woman wants kids and will want kids one day. And I’m sure many women do want to have kids, and for them that is the right decision. But the reason I bring this up is not because I think people should or should not have kids. I think, similar to what Justin said, it should be a fuck yeah if you’re gonna do it. And the reason my wife and I don’t have children is because it’s not a fuck yeah for us. We look at our friends and family who have kids, and we don’t want their life. They are constantly working on their second job of being a parent and raising children. And we talk about this almost every single month. We could not have a low-key morning in bed together, just chilling, if we had kids or even a kid. We would not have the ability to spend as much time alone, independently and together, if we had a child. So I spend many hours every day by myself. And my wife does the same thing, because we’re very weird people. I go to bed really early and wake up really early. She goes to bed late and wakes up late. So we always have at least three or four hours, me in the morning, her in the evening, where the other person’s asleep. And so we just have time to ourselves. And we love that. We’re not very codependent. We don’t need to constantly be on the same schedule doing the same thing. And we love to just spend time alone without each other. But we also love to spend a ton of time together as well. And neither of us knows how we could have that much time alone, and that much time as just the two of us, if we also had a child. Now, some people may say, you could have a nanny or a live-in au pair, but then we have someone else in our house and even if we have a massive house, there’s still someone else there. So I’m gonna pause and let you talk.
There Is No Right Answer, Only Your Answer
Justin Taylor: Well, at the end of the day, I’m not right, they’re not right. There is no one right way to do it. Like having kids is not the right way, and not having kids is not the right way. And none of us should be so dogmatic toward the other group. It’s the same way I feel about workouts. It drives me crazy when people are like, no, this is the modality. Everybody’s got different things they’re into. You’re really into pickleball, I’m into HYROX and running. Everybody can have their thing. The important thing is that you’re doing it because you want to. That you’re not having kids because you feel pressure from your grandma, or societal pressure. As long as you’re doing it because you want to, I don’t think there’s a wrong answer. But I do think you should be certain about your choice — and it should be your choice. And I don’t think anybody should be preaching to the other side that you should or shouldn’t have kids, but you also shouldn’t be tearing down either side because of their choice.
Defining Legacy When You Don’t Have Children
Justin David Carl: Agreed. I think if you want to have kids, awesome. Go for it. Enjoy your life. And if you don’t want to have kids, awesome. Go for it. Enjoy your life. One thing I do want to talk with you about is legacy. So I think a lot of people unconsciously make children their legacy. And when you’re child free by choice, you have to define legacy for yourself or decide you don’t care about legacy at all. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on legacy.
Justin Taylor: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I probably think about dying and death more than most people. I think it gives me a lot of focus on today. There are actually studies where you tell people that a thing they’re a part of is ending and will never be there anymore versus you leave it kind of open ended. And the people who have this ending actually end up way more present during the time that they’ve got with that thing. Because it becomes a precious resource that’s top of mind. It doesn’t have to be dark anxiety. It can just be a way of keeping you focused. So I definitely think about it. And sure, it’s scary. Even when we were gone for six months — not that I died, but you start to realize life goes on back in your hometown while you’re gone. And that can be a little scary. But whether it’s trying to be a really good friend, trying to have deep conversations with as many people as you can, inspire as many people as you can, be a good uncle, et cetera. I think you can leave your mark on the world and on other people’s lives, outside of the fact that they’re your children. There are plenty of people whose lives you can leave a positive impact on. And when you’re thinking about life in general — I had a guy tell me one time, and it always stuck with me. He said the best litmus test for whether you’ve lived a good life is how well attended your funeral is. When you’re thinking through the positive impact you leave on people’s lives, to me that’s a good metric. How crowded is that room? How many people did you impact in a positive way who want to come and remember you? And I don’t think those have to be your children. That can be all sorts of people.
Leaving a Body of Work Instead
Justin David Carl: Yeah. And I think for me when it comes to legacy, it’s one of the big reasons I’m so passionate about podcasting and writing a weekly newsletter and eventually writing a book is because for me, creating educational, inspiring content that anyone can utilize as a catalyst to create a life they love, that has deep meaning. To me, a great way to leave a legacy is to leave a body of creative work. And it gives me great purpose to think that every week and every month I’m adding to that body of work. And it’s there for anyone who wants it. And it’s free, a hundred percent free. And that’s a way where I don’t even worry about legacy. I understand there’s a high probability I’m not gonna be Marcus Aurelius and people are gonna remember me hundreds or thousands of years from now. But I can affect the current circle of influence I have now and reach many more people than I can physically in my own life. I know just because of the number of downloads I get and the number of subscribers on my newsletter, that tons of people are reading my work, listening to my work, and using it to create a better life for themselves. And that makes me feel like I’m leaving a legacy that is meaningful to me in the ways that I’m passionate about life. And if you choose not to have children, I think it’s necessary to figure out how you’re going to create legacy in a way that is meaningful to you. And it doesn’t have to look like the way I do it or the way that Justin does it. It just has to make you feel like you have the contribution that you want to make in this lifetime. And that can come in almost infinite forms. And all that matters is that it’s authentic to you.
Be Honest With Yourself and Make the Choice
Justin Taylor: I think the whole conversation we had today, all three subjects. If you’re trying to think about whether you’re doing the things that move you closer to retiring early, or whether you’re doing the things that move you closer to continuing to drink or to not drinking, if you’re, you know, making decisions toward having kids or not having kids, it’s that you’re honest with yourself, that you really think through, logically, is this making my life better? Is it making me happier? And move in that direction — not what you’re supposed to do, not what everybody else is doing, not your knee-jerk first reaction, but really sitting with it and thinking through the second and third order effects, and then make the decision and stick with it and go from there. I think that’s the overarching thing — don’t just make the assumption that you’ve been on autopilot toward what you see everybody else around you doing. Stop, don’t worry about what’s normal, think about what’s possible, see what works best for you, really play the scenario out and just make a choice and be confident in it.
Justin David Carl: And build a Life Well Worth It and a Fit Rich Life.
Justin Taylor: There you go.
Where to Find Justin Taylor
Justin David Carl: And we’re gonna shut this down. I got another engagement to jump to. But Justin, thank you so much for coming on the show. Once again, I really appreciate your friendship, you being a guest for the third time on the show, and diving into some pretty deep topics with me today.
Justin Taylor: No, I appreciate it. And if people want to come see what a little bit of this lifestyle is like, you know, hop on one of our retreats. Come check out LifeWellWorthIt.com and we’ll show you how it’s done.
Justin David Carl: Awesome, brother. I’ll see you soon. Take care.
Justin Taylor: See you.