Rachel Richards: Money Honey, Early Retirement, Self-Worth, Defining Enough, Better Body & More | FRLP 116
Rachel Richards retired from her corporate career at 27 after building a real estate portfolio that generated enough income to cover her living expenses. Then she built Money Honey Rachel — a successful online business with books, courses, a mastermind, and hundreds of thousands of followers.
But when that business was on track to generate approximately $600,000-$700,000 in annual profit, she decided to shut it down.
In this episode, Rachel shares why she walked away, how her dream of becoming an author turned into an influencer job she resented, and the identity crisis she wasn’t prepared for when the income, engagement, and external validation stopped.
We explore the difference between net worth and self-worth, why financially independent people keep chasing money they don’t need, and how to recognize when you already have enough. I also open up about my own struggles with achievement, childhood financial insecurity, and the temptation to return to a high-paying career despite loving the life I have now.
Rachel also shares how she’s finding fulfillment through fitness and friendship, why she co-created the Better Body challenge with James Lowery, and the $10,000 accountability bet that helped her finish 75 Hard. We talk about building a stronger body through consistency, putting yourself around people who support your growth, and shifting from maximizing your net worth to maximizing your net life.
Finally, Rachel opens up about the financial lessons from her divorce, why she wishes she’d had a prenup, and how journaling helped her process what happened and rebuild her confidence. She also explains why stepping away from social media has been so freeing — and why you don’t have to make a big impact to make a positive impact.
Episode 116 of the Fit Rich Life Podcast with Rachel Richards is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and everywhere you enjoy your podcast entertainment.
Connect With Rachel Richards:
Website: moneyhoneyrachel.com
Instagram & Free Resources: @moneyhoneyrachel
Better Body Challenge: moneyhoneyrachel.com/program/better-body
Books: Money Honey and Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement
Get a FREE copy of my Fit Rich Life Money Guide: mwob.fitrichlife.com
In This Episode:
Paying her way through college by selling Cutco knives
Buying her first Kentucky duplex at 24 and scaling to 38 rental units
The cash flow and challenges of boarding-house-style properties
Retiring from her corporate career at 27
How becoming an author turned into running an influencer business
Walking away from a business on track for 600,000–700,000 in annual profit
Losing the external validation that shaped her identity
Separating your self-worth from your income, achievements, and followers
Why having enough money doesn’t always feel like enough
The “financial whiplash” of earning less after becoming financially independent
Justin’s struggle with status, achievement, and feeling like he has to earn love
Maximizing your net life instead of endlessly maximizing your net worth
Building self-acceptance through journaling and affirmations
Creating Better Body with James Lowery
Why accountability and community help make fitness habits stick
The $10,000 bet that helped Rachel complete 75 Hard
Divorce, financial independence, and the prenup conversation she wishes she’d had
Tracking your lifts, protein, and net worth
Leaving social media and writing letters to your future self
Making a positive impact without needing a massive audience
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Full Transcript:
Rachel Richards: Money Honey, Early Retirement, Self-Worth, Defining Enough, Better Body & More | FRLP 116
Welcome: Rachel Richards Joins the Fit Rich Life Podcast
Justin: Today I'm joined by Rachel Richards, author of Money Honey and Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement. Rachel became financially independent and left her job at just 27 years old. Since then, her definition of a fit rich life has continued to evolve. Rachel and I met earlier this year at EconoMe through our mutual friends James and Emily Lowery. And today I want to explore the decisions that come after you've built financial freedom, including stepping away from a successful business, deciding what enough looks like, and making room for health, friendship, and experiences you actually want to have. Rachel, welcome to the show.
Rachel: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Justin: So we met through James and Emily. Shout out to both of them. What are you most excited about in life right now?
Rachel: What I'm most excited about? Wow, what a great question to start off with. I think just like achieving the highest level that I can for myself. And I don't mean when I say achievement, I don't mean like a career or finance or business goal. It's sort of like the self-actualization on Maslow's hierarchy or Maslow's pyramid of how do I become the best possible version of myself I can be. And right now my focus happens to be health and fitness, but I'm always trying to find other ways that I can just grow in my personal life. So I think that's what gets me excited.
You Don't Have to Make a Big Impact to Make a Positive Impact
Justin: I love that. In a interview I listened to in preparation for this, you said this line that hit so hard. You said I've realized that I don't have to make a big impact to make a positive impact on society. And I think for someone like myself who really does appreciate external validation that comes with a successful career or a brand, learning that is an ongoing process for me and I think it's something that you've definitely gone through yourself.
Losing Self-Worth and Identity After Shutting Down Money Honey Rachel
Rachel: This is like one of the biggest learning lessons. I feel like I had such a revelation or just growth journey after I retired and closed down my business. And I lost a lot when I closed down my business. And I mean emotionally. One of the biggest lessons that I learned is that I was getting all of my sense of self-worth and identity through my business and through my income and through my level of achievement. And partially that's a little bit how I was brought up. That's very societal as well, and probably also just self-imposed. But whatever it is, the lesson that I was taught was that my value comes from how much I'm achieving, basically.
So when I shut down my business, what I wasn't prepared for was that I would feel at first a little bit worthless, which really sucked because with running my business Money Honey Rachel, I mean it blew up. I had hundreds of thousands of followers, I've sold tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand books, I don't know anymore. Made a ton of more money than I've ever made. And I helped so many people. I mean, I had thousands of people in my DMs, in my emails, students that I worked with. So I was making truly an enormous impact if you're trying to quantify it. And so when I shut the business down, I didn't have these external markers of validation anymore.
I didn't have, I wasn't posting something and then feeling good because I got 2,000 likes on it. I wasn't growing my platform by X amount every month or making more money this month or hitting some new revenue goal out of the bucket. All those things brought me a lot of self-worth and confidence. And it's not like that's bad. It's just that if that's where all of your self-worth and confidence comes from, then you're really not setting yourself up for success. And I remember at one point during my divorce, which was a couple of years before I closed my business down, my therapist told me, I think you're very confident in what you set out to do, but you're not very confident in who you are.
And she was so right. And I didn't realize how right she was until years later. Because when I lost all these things that made up my self-worth and my identity, I was just like, well, who am I? Am I just a non-valuable member of society now? Like, what am I doing? How can I continue to feel valuable? And I just realized I had to really change my mindset on how I viewed my value to society. And it was because I was insecure. I couldn't rely on the fact that I was so proud of who I was as a person or my character that I didn't need all that other stuff.
And I remember too, like back when my worth came from my number of likes and follows. When I was at a meetup or at a conference or like meeting all these other real estate investors or introducing myself to a group, I would lead with a list of my achievements. I would say, I'm Rachel, I owned 38 units by the age of 26. I make 20,000 a month in passive income. I blah, blah, blah. Like that's how I would describe who I am as a person. And it came from a place of insecurity though. And it was because I felt like I had to prove myself to the other people. Like prove that I belonged.
Leading With Character Instead of Achievements
Rachel: And now when I introduce myself, I don't want to be associated with any of that because I want people to like me and love me for who I am as a person, not for how much money I make or what I've achieved or how many followers I have. So now I've almost gone in the other direction. And I like hide that when I introduce myself to people. And I'm like, I'm Rachel. I have two sisters that I love. They're my best friends. I love to hike. I love Goldens. You know, it's more about who I am as a person. So yeah, I've done a lot of work.
Work on changing the mindset, just reminding myself, like I am a very kind, thoughtful, loyal person. Any friend or sister or anyone would be lucky to have me in their life just because of my character. And when I meet other people, I am not impressed by anything except for their character. Like character is the only thing these days that impresses me and in terms of the getting used to the impact, that was hard because I felt I was making such a quantifiably enormous impact in society. And when I lost that, it was just difficult. But I had to, again, therapy, go through a little bit of a learning journey and just remind myself.
The size of the impact is not the point. And you really can't quantify it. Okay, so what if maybe I put out a helpful real estate investing post and it does positively impact two thousand people who saw it. That's cool. What if also I smile at my neighbor when I'm walking outside in my neighborhood and my neighbors had a really bad day and just the contact of being acknowledged by another human like helps them make it through their day. Like, which one's bigger? Both are really, really good impacts. The quantity or the size just doesn't matter at all. And I'll never forget, I know I'm rambling a little bit at this point, but you've asked me a really good question.
There's this quote by Elizabeth Gilbert. She's one of my favorite authors and creators. And she talked about this a lot in her book Big Magic, I think. And she said she was walking down the street one day. She felt like she didn't have anything to do. She was kind of questioning her worth for some of the same reasons. And she saw this person who was standing on a ladder fixing the facade of something, the building or whatever. She noticed that the ladder seemed a little bit wobbly, a little bit rickety. So she went over there and held the ladder for 45 minutes just to make sure this guy wasn't gonna fall off.
The guy never knew she was there. And once he was done, she just walked away and that was it. The guy never knew. But Elizabeth talks about how in that moment, maybe that was the biggest impact she ever could have made in her entire life. And maybe that's the reason she was put here on Earth, because maybe if not for her, that guy would have fallen off that ladder and died. And so you just think about all the little things you do throughout the day. You have no idea how big of an impact you're making just by being like a beautiful person and just by putting kindness out into the world. So that's Elizabeth Gilbert.
How to Untether Self-Worth From Net Worth and External Validation
Justin: I'm also a huge fan of her and I just wanna thank you for going so deep and being so vulnerable right off the bat. Like this is an amazing start. And I think I have more of a question, because I would say I'm in the middle of this. In American society, and I'll speak for America because I was raised here. I don't know how it is in other cultures. We are taught that it is the number of followers you have or the number of real estate doors you have or the your net worth or what college you went to base our self-worth on. And I totally got wrapped up in that myself.
You know, I went to a prestigious college and I'm still very proud of the net worth I've achieved after being at, you know, $80,000 in debt. What would you say to somebody who's looking to reevaluate how they measure their self-worth. Somebody like me who maybe is still very focused on external achievement as a validation method, but who is interested in having a deeper sense of self-worth that is untethered from external validation.
Rachel: There's a lot that somebody can do. And I'll give like a one thing that's more abstract and one thing that's more concrete. But starting with the abstract one, you kind of need to understand where that's coming from. And so that involves some self-work for anyone who's going through this or who ha who has had trouble. So it's where do these beliefs come from? But if I get most of my validation from my net worth, why where is that coming from? And if my belief is that my net worth is my self-worth, is that true? You know, really is that true? Just kind of ask yourself, like, figure out where these values come from.
It's fine to have those values and beliefs because a lot of this is just we get these from society. There's nothing wrong with you if that's what you think. But really question yourself: is this really true? And where does this come from? And how can I work towards something else? The one thing that I did, in terms of the more concrete tip that I'll give, is I just started writing lists every day. Like I would write one list every day. And it was either a gratitude list or it was things that I loved about myself. And that sounds, I don't know, narcissistic or something, but with someone who struggles with self-worth and who's the opposite of a narcissist.
It's actually really helpful to write down all the things you love about yourself or you're proud about yourself. And you can write your achievements. Also try to focus on who you are as a person. Do you love yourself for the time that you remembered your best friend's mom's who had died, her birthday, and sent him a card? You know, is that what you love yourself for doing, for being able to lift somebody up in your life in a small way like that? Or is it for like saving the little bunny off of the side of the road that got hurt? You know, it can be anything that you do or who you are.
But I really I did that every day for probably six months and I finally started to believe that I was a relatively okay and decent human being. I was like, okay, I'm not bad. And now I really feel proud of who I am as a person all these years later.
Growing Up Poor and Finding a Healthier Measure of Self-Worth
Justin: That's super good. I really love the question that you posed about why do you base your self-worth on those things? So, as you said that, I immediately knew for me, I grew up really poor. So the financial insecurity of my childhood. And the shame of being poor and being on the free lunch program at school and being less well off than my friends, that is what drove me to achieve the financial success. So I'm grateful for that drive, but now that I'm here, it doesn't make sense to base my self-worth off that anymore because it served this function. So that was a great function. But it doesn't make sense anymore.
And I love the gratitude that you did for six months. You know, I think one of the things that's really important to me is I really want to bring happiness and joy and a lot of high energy to anyone I interact with. So when they meet with me or hang out with me or spend even just a little bit of time, they feel energized and excited about life because I'm bursting with life. And so I think for me that is a much better measure of self-worth at 44 is how over the last month, how much energy did I add to other people's life just because of my own positive energy?
And maybe that's not the best self-worth measurement, but I think it's a lot healthier than my net worth is X amount of dollars. And that's why I consider myself worthy.
Rachel: Yeah, no, I think that's a great way to reframe the val like the innate value you're bringing to others just by existing. I love that question.
Justin: Yeah. And this is all brought about you. I mean, you just went super deep right off the bat. I'm like, yes, this is like therapy for me. Thank you, Rachel. You're helping me get better about my own self-worth in a much healthier perspective and way of measuring it for myself. So before we go too deep into the self-worth journey, because I do want to go deeper into that because I think one of the things I love about building a business or the financial independence journey is a big part of it is the self-worth journey. It's just disguised in other things.
From a $36K Salary to Financial Independence at 27
Justin: But for those who don't know your backstory, give us the short version of how you went from a regular paycheck to having enough income to leave your job at 27.
Rachel: Okay, so I started in my early twenties and also like you, I came from a financially insecure family background. There's a lot of shame, living paycheck to paycheck being compared to my classmates in a really wealthy bubble that I happened to live in and just never feeling like I had as much as them. So I was very motivated from a young age. And I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in high school, which turned me onto real estate investing. So I always knew I didn't want to work for somebody else for the rest of my life. I just had this sort of independent, rebellious streak. And when I learned about real estate investing, I was like, this is my way out.
Perfect. I'm gonna do this. So when I was 24, I bought my first duplex in Louisville, Kentucky, where I lived at the time. And when I started out, I did all this with my ex-husband. So it wasn't just me. I just want to give that disclaimer. A lot of people still, though, think that it was all his money, or that I'm a trust fund baby, or that I was making I must have been making a ton of money. And that wasn't the case. You know, we did split everything 50-50, not a trust fund baby, and I never made six figures from a career until I started my own business, and then I did.
I started off making $36,000 the first few years after college and just being so frugal. I was living off of a budget of, I think, $1,400 or $1,500 a month. And yes, this was like 10 years ago in Louisville, Kentucky. But I managed to save half of my income, even on a $36,000 income, because I was so frugal. And then finally started making $75,000 and then $80 grand, and that's about where I capped out. So that first duplex was in 2017. It cost $100,000. And by then my ex-husband and I had each saved $10,000 each. So that got us to our $20,000 down payment. And that's how we got the first duplex.
From there we continue to just grow and build momentum. I also had my real estate license, not because I had clients, but just for my own purposes as an investor. So anytime we bought a property, I would make a commission, and a $2,000 commission on a hundred grand duplex doesn't sound like much, but for me that was like, okay, I'm starting to save for the next down payment with that money. And then later when I was buying $400,000 properties, I was making a $10,000 commission. So that made a huge difference. But just the combination of both of us being really frugal, having a combined income that was over six figures, and then being very diligent, and we just continued to invest and invest.
And then within two and a half or three years, we had 38 units across six buildings. So we were making $10,000 a month in cash flow profit by then, which was enough for both of us to quit and retire. He didn't want to, but I did. So in 2019, at the age of how old was I? 27. I was 27. That's when I quit my corporate job and retired. So that's the story.
Justin: Thank you. And there's tons of podcasts for the audience where you go much deeper into that and the real estate. So maybe I'll find a few and put them in the show notes if you want that deeper back end real estate entrepreneurial journey, which is valuable, but you've shared that story so many times. I want to spend time on the things that are more relevant to me because I'm selfish and self-interested. And I just think I wanna speak to all the people who've achieved a certain level of financial success and don't know how to stop pursuing more money.
Rachel: Yeah, I appreciate that because I've said everything I could say on real estate investing. We could definitely talk about something else.
Selling Cutco Knives to Graduate College Debt-Free
Justin: Yeah. Yeah. I do have two things that I want to mention in my research because I just found them super fascinating. Number one is the fact that you did commission sales work to pay yourself through college. So share just a little bit about that 'cause I think that is so cool.
Rachel: Thank you. Well, I just feel like I wanted to do the opposite of what everyone else did when I was growing up and I was so sick of being quote unquote poor. We weren't living in poverty, but it was more of a comparison thing compared to all these really, really wealthy people in the county that I grew up in. So when I came across, you know, I was making like $7.25 minimum wage at American Eagle, as soon as I was old enough to work. So just I could get new clothes for myself. And then I came across this, I got a letter in the mail from Cutco Cutlery. Do you know the Cutco knives?
Justin: A hundred percent. And there's so many different fascinating people that have worked for that company. So keep going.
Rachel: Yeah, Cutco alumni are so legit, such cool people who have done so much. But yeah, I saw this sales job basically where the harder I worked, the more I could make. And I was like, I could make a ton of money doing this. And my parents were a little skeptical, I think, but I started doing it. I started making so much money. I set a record my first summer in Louisville and I sold $30,000 worth of knives. It was crazy. Made 10 grand. And I paid my way through school because I didn't have any help for paying for tuition. I had scholarships and then I had to make like 10 or 12 grand a year. And so I was able to do that selling Cutco and I graduated debt-free, which was at the time my proudest accomplishment.
Justin: That's amazing. I'm curious if that sales experience translated into both your real estate success and your online business building success.
Rachel: One hundred percent it did. I mean both it was partially an innate personality trait, I think, of being very tenacious and just thinking I'm going to do whatever I set my mind to do and having this unstoppable and energy and drive. And also the skills that I learned in sales gave me a lot of confidence, you know, how to overcome objections. And yeah, you're gonna get rejected and people are gonna tell you no. And how do you handle that and how do you move forward? And how can you maybe make a smaller sale or pivot or do something else to make money? So it translated very well, and I'm very grateful for that experience.
Justin: Yeah, so I have a background in sales as well, so my audience knows that you may or may not be aware of it, but I do think the point that you mentioned, the beautiful thing about sales is it teaches you how to deal with rejection. Because especially something like Cutco, you're probably getting rejected a majority of the time. So you just get used to people saying no.
Rachel: Exactly. It doesn't discourage you. It's just part of the process. So then as an entrepreneur, I'm not getting discouraged if someone doesn't sign up for my course or blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, okay, I'll move on to the next person. Like that's no big deal. There's gonna be a percent of people who say no.
Justin: Hundred percent. It's just exactly what you said, part of the process. And in my own sales career, I just said no just means not yet. And I had multiple deals that took four years to close. They would say no, no, no, no, and then finally yes. And that tenacity is the same thing that you said earlier. It's just that there's something really powerful about being tenacious. And it is a skill I think you can develop, even if you're not normally tenacious, I think you can build up tenacity like a muscle if you just keep going after it. Even after you fail or are told no or rejected, you just keep going and eventually your tenacity muscle is huge.
Rachel: Yeah, just be stubborn. Really.
The Rent-by-the-Room Boarding House Strategy
Justin: Yeah. So the second piece that I wanted to touch on before we kind of move on from your formative real estate journey is the I don't know the term for it, co-housing.
Rachel: Yeah, I called it a boarding house, but most people use rent by the room, co-living terms these days, I think.
Justin: So explain how that was critical kind of in your early real estate success and income generation, and then maybe speak briefly about why you got out of that type of business, and then we'll move on to why you retired your internet business.
Rachel: Okay, so I came across a listing on the MLS in 2017, I think. And this was maybe eight months after I bought the duplex. And it was a listing for $430,000 or $450,000 or something. It was a building, a multifamily residential building. And they were bringing in revenue of something like $7,200 or $7,600 a month. So for real estate investors, doing the math, doing the 1% rule on that, that's insane. Like that's a ton of revenue for that price of rental property. So when I saw that, literally my first instinct was there must be a typo. And so I called them up. I was like, what is this about?
And they're like, yeah, those numbers are real. You know, if you want to come to a showing, we can show you how it all works. So I was like, okay. So they had taken this triplex or fourplex and split it up into rent by the room, basically. So every person lived in a room and had their own lease and then shared common areas like bathrooms and kitchens. Now, this is a really popular model today, I think, because there's a lot of really expensive cities where people are just now more apt to go rent a private room from them. But in Louisville, Kentucky, 10 years ago, I had never heard of anything like this.
No one was doing this. And the really great thing about this model is that it was such a win-win for both the landlord and the tenants, because here I was sitting on a cash cow, making more money than a property of that price should be making. And then I had 12 or 13 very low-income tenants who were paying a flat fee of $400 to $500 a month total, including Wi-Fi, including utilities, including having a cleaner come and clean the bathrooms and kitchens. And it was furnished. So for somebody who was just in a dire situation and needed a safe, comfortable place to live, it was so easy for them to do that.
So I felt like I was doing a good thing and providing affordable housing to the community as well. Now, did that come with an incredible amount of pain and horror stories? Yes, it did, which is why ultimately my ex-husband and I sold those properties maybe two or three years after we bought them. But for the time that we had them, it served the purpose for us, which was to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible, because we both wanted to retire early. And there was nothing beating the returns on those properties. Later, once we got to a more financially secure position and we had more wealth, we were like, this isn't worth it anymore. We don't, we don't want to do this anymore. So that's when we started thinking about selling them.
Tenant Fires, 38 Adult Children, and Selling the Boarding Houses
Justin: Yeah, in my preparation I heard you talk about how there was multiple fires started by tenants in these properties and just total stressful nightmare.
Rachel: Yeah, there was fires. It also just felt like having 38 adult children. Okay, because every day it's like someone ate my something out of the fridge or someone's doing laundry at midnight and it's loud. I mean, you would not believe. And so it was very tiresome. But yeah, after the two or three fires we had, I was like, this feels like a liability. I mean, I had all the liability insurance, I had everything I needed, but I started getting freaked out for some reason. And I was like, I'm not willing to take on the risk even for the reward at this point any longer. And then we sold. Yeah.
Building the Money Honey Rachel Brand on Social Media
Justin: Yeah. Well thank you for sharing. Let's talk about your online business. So when in your real estate career did you start creating content around real estate and money and all that?
Rachel: I wrote my first book in 2017. And so 2017 was a big year for me. And then I wrote my second book by 2019, and that's the year I quit my job. And I think by then I'd started posting on Instagram pretty regularly and I'd been sending out like email newsletters. But I don't think any of my social media took off until 2020, because everything went viral in COVID. And that's when TikTok came out, and so everyone who was early to TikTok went viral on TikTok. So by I don't know, 2021, I had 100,000 IG followers, 200,000 TikTok followers. I had a Facebook group with like 350,000 members. So it grew very rapidly in those years.
Justin: Awesome. So then after that success of building an online following, you developed an online business around the Money Honey brand, correct?
Rachel: Right, which I have mixed feelings about because I started the business to become an author and to write books specifically. That had always been my calling even from a young age. It's actually so ironic because I would write short stories as a kid. And then at some point I received the messaging like, you need to do something more practical. You know, you're not gonna make money from writing. And so then I pivoted into financial economics, which was my degree in college and did all the finance stuff. And then the irony is that I made more money from my books and my writing than anything else that I ever did.
So it all worked out. But yeah, that's really what I wanted to do. I wanted to follow my dream of becoming an author. And then as I was building the business, and I didn't have a very thought-out process of where this business was gonna go or how I was gonna build it. I mean, I took every day one at a time. There was not a lot of intentional or smart planning in that. There was a lot of luck, I think. And of course, what's the quote? Luck is where hard work meets opportunity, something like that. I mean, I was working hard and people who work hard are luckier.
But I, you know, I wanted to be an author. When I started posting on social media, I happened to be really good at it and my posts would really resonate. And this was before reels and videos. So it was all written content and it was all posts. And so I still felt like, this is what I want to be doing. I'm writing content, putting it out in the world, and I'm sort of shielded behind a... No one knew who I was. And then with the advent of videos and reels and short form videos and all that stuff, I started posting more and more with my face and my personal life and all these things.
And again, I just kept being rewarded by the massive amount of new followers I was getting every month and the likes and the engagement. And I was like, well, this is helping my business a lot, so I can't stop. And it became this sort of necessary evil. And I ended up creating another job for myself. So ironically, I was trying to retire from my corporate finance job and never work again. And there's a difference between working on a business you love because you love it and it affords you the freedom that you want, versus now feeling trapped into a job you created yourself and having the golden handcuffs and feeling like you can't walk away from your own business.
And unfortunately for me, mine was the latter. So yeah, I became basically an influencer, which I hate. It's such a cringe word. I hate it. And that's the direction my business took because I didn't really know what was happening and I wasn't very intentional about it. And then before I knew it, that's all I was spending my time on was creating content. And didn't enjoy it. And I didn't like feeling like people knew who I was and I didn't know who they were. Or people feeling like they had access to me 24-7. And so I grew resentful of it. And once I felt resentful of it, I was like, well, this is messed up because this is a business that has brought me so much money, so much joy, is helping so many people.
At the same time, I felt incredibly grateful for it and still do. But ultimately, the resentment burned me out. And I was like, I just don't want to do this anymore. And so I finally made the decision to shut it down.
Golden Handcuffs No More: The Decision to Shut Down the Business
Justin: Take me to the day that you realized you didn't want to keep doing the business. Now, maybe it wasn't a day, maybe it was a culmination of weeks or months, but just go a little bit deeper because obviously, you know, several hundred thousand followers across social. Plus, I know you had courses, I know you had a mastermind, those were making lots of money. How did you, especially with the fact that you grew up less fortunate than your peers. How did you actually get to the decision to say, hey, I'm gonna turn this money faucet off?
Rachel: Yeah, so it happened in phases. And the first one I remember was in 2022 or 2023. So 2022 is the year of my divorce. And very painful year, obviously. I've never felt loss like that in my life. And I was still in my business. Like I was, but I was struggling with it. And obviously I was super depressed. So I mean, of course I felt unmotivated. But I remember at one point my business coach was like, Do you even want to be running this business anymore? And I was like, my stomach sank. Cause I think I knew he was on to something, but I couldn't face the reality then.
It was too much. I was like, I can't handle losing another thing right now. So that question scared me. I just ignored it. I was like, no, I want to keep doing this, you know, and I kept on with it. And then I think maybe a year and a half later, when I was mentally in a different spot, I reflected on that conversation. And I was like, my business coach was right then. He was picking up on something then that I wasn't willing to admit to myself. And I'm ready to admit to myself now. And the thing with the finances is in 2019 when I quit my corporate finance job, I was already financially independent and retired.
So all the money that my business made was kind of extra on top of that. It's been a great cushion to have. At the time, I didn't feel I necessarily needed that extra money to retire. So I felt very financially secure. It was never a question of do I have enough money? It was do I want to keep running this business? And I was fortunate to make the decision based off of that. But yeah, I did ultimately decide to shut it down.
Defining Enough: What FI Case Studies at CampFI and EconoMe Reveal
Justin: Let's talk about enough money because I feel that everyone achieving or pursuing financial independence, they just keep moving the enough number to a bigger number. I just wanna understand how did you, especially again, like with the childhood that you had, how did you convince yourself that you did have enough?
Rachel: There's a lot of things that I did that I could bring up. The first one being I went to a lot of FI events like CampFI, EconoMe, all those types of conferences and retreats and get togethers. And at a lot of those, you go over people's numbers and you see like you analyze them. And I've been on a lot of panels on those where people are case studies and they're like, well, here's my income, here's how much I have invested, here's my retirement accounts. And then the panel can kind of take a look and give our verdict on whether they can retire or not. More often, like 90% of the time when that happens, and there's a case study person sitting there and they're like trembling and they're nervous because they're like, my gosh, I don't, I don't think I can retire.
90% of the time we're like, you could have retired five years ago, dude. Like, what are you doing with all this money? You know, just the math, the math of it. Now it's funny because to an outsider it looks obvious. You do the math, it's black and white, but when you're the one making the decision, it feels very emotional. And there's trauma that goes with it and there's scarcity mindset and there's fear. So it's not nearly as black and white when you're the one making the decision. But I think I saw enough of those cases that I was like, okay, in general, people who are pursuing FI, people who are pursuing early retirement, are ambitious, driven, successful people.
If anything, we're gonna err on the wrong side here, right? Like we're gonna be the people who could just have way too much money. And then what's the point of that? Like we're not the type of people that are gonna try to retire off of a hundred grand and try to convince ourselves that's gonna work. That's just not how FI-minded people I think are generally wired. So after seeing enough of those case studies, I was like, okay, generally I think more people in this community can retire than they think. And I looked at my own. Circumstances and I was fortunate because I had a pretty good nest egg, but I also had an enormous amount of passive income.
And I think that's what set me apart from a lot of other people because a lot of people in the FI community, they have a number in mind. It's a million, two million, five million, ten million, whatever that is. And they have done all the math so they know that if they retire at blank age with blank amount of money, they can spend this amount of money per year and it'll last them until they die.
How Passive Income Shrinks the Nest Egg You Need to Retire
Rachel: But if you have something like passive income, you don't need nearly as much of a nest egg to retire. So, and we can talk about what passive income truly is, because I think it's defined very incorrectly. But if you have enough passive income, which is money that you make without actively trading your time, so it's not an active income job where you're going nine to five to make a salary, but it's more of money that you can literally and truly make in your sleep, which also sounds very cliche. But it's things like my book royalties. I haven't promoted my books in three years now. I haven't said a word about I do nothing anymore because I closed my whole business, and I'm still making $3,000 a month, sometimes four, sometimes five, in profits from those books.
That is true and pure passive income. Rental property income, it's another form, but it's not nearly as passive. Like it's passive in quotes. It's more passive than a nine to five job, but it's still a lot of hands-on work. So it's semi-passive. But if you can make enough from passive income sources to offset your living expenses, you don't need nearly as much in a nest egg to retire. Now I'm not saying like make passive income and have nothing saved and retire yourself because I don't think that's wise either. But I think when I looked at my situation and I do have over a million in my net worth, which I've shared publicly, I would see people in these case studies at these retreats who were wondering if they could retire with $5 million.
And I'd be like, little do they know. I have way less money than them, and I've retired myself. So I think it's both a mindset thing, a passive income thing, because passive income greatly offsets the amount of money you actually need. And then just a lot of fear as well.
Justin's Dilemma: Renting vs. Buying a Home in Northern California
Justin: Thank you for sharing. So a follow up question. And I'll just be transparent, this is kind of how I'm thinking through things for myself is I'm at a very healthy net worth. Most of my net worth is in the stock market. But one of the things that I'm struggling with right now, living in Northern California where homes are really expensive, is my wife and I, we still rent by choice and I would probably be okay renting the rest of my life because we rent a very nice place close to the beach and it's modern and looks it's our style, but my wife wants to own a home and I want my wife to be happy, and so one of the conversations I have in my head is well, if we had a few more million, we could get a really fucking nice house.
And we could still get a house now. And it would be pretty nice. But if we had a few more million, we could have a much nicer house. And obviously, or maybe not so obviously, I know having a nicer house isn't gonna make me happier because my happiness comes from playing pickleball 10 to 20 hours a week, working out, spending time with my wife, spending time in nature, spending time with my friends. And I'm happy renting. But there's still that status-seeking luxury-wanting part of myself that wants to make my wife super happy with a super nice house that's millions of dollars. And I am saying no to just chasing more money for more money's sake because I could just go get a sales job in tech, which is where I used to work and make half a million to a million a year and get us that house in a few years.
But I'm choosing not to because I'm 44 and this is some of the best years of my life, and I don't want to trade it to a corporation. So I'm just curious your thoughts. Again, I'm trying to make this my personal therapy session with the Money Honey Rachel therapist. What would you say back to me in some of that?
Rachel: Well, I think you've answered your own question because you said you're choosing to not do that because you value your life right now more than that. So it sounds to me like you value your lifestyle right now over the possibility of having some McMansion a few years from now. Which I agree with just in my own personal values. And that doesn't make one answer right and another answer wrong. But I think you've already come to that conclusion and maybe you're just grappling with or like you're second guessing yourself is what it sounds like. And California is hard because it's so expensive to own a home. And if you're set on renting, you can afford a nicer house renting than owning, probably.
Justin: Hundred percent. The math in where I live is strongly in favor of renting.
Rachel: Yeah, and this is coming from a real estate fanatic. So yeah.
Money Stories in Marriage and the Fear of Not Providing Enough
Justin: Yeah, I think where I struggle is I know I'm okay with it, but I think, and I could be totally making this up, that my wife would prefer me to make us a bunch more money so she could have a house. But she loves me so much she's okay with me being early retired and playing pickleball all day every day.
Rachel: Have you asked her?
Justin: I have, and she supports me living my life, but I feel like I don't know. I feel like she just loves me so much that she's gonna tell me what I wanna hear. And again, I'm probably making all this up. And so I think, you know, part of this is the ongoing development of communication in my own marriage and understanding we've been married for five years now, together for 12 and I think it's very common for people in a relationship to make up stories about what they think the other person is thinking. And I'm sure a big part of that is again tied back to that childhood scarcity.
So my parents divorced, and in my opinion, they divorced because of money. And so there's this part of me, this insecure part of me, that wants to give my wife everything she wants, materially, financially, so that she doesn't end the marriage. And I know that's not true, but it's that's the subconscious story that I'm noticing that needs to be addressed and maybe let go of or updated or evolved.
Rachel: Well, I love this line of conversation. I think men in particular struggle with feelings of inadequacy that maybe women don't struggle with as much, or in different ways. I'm not gonna presume to say something for all men and all women, but I think men maybe struggle with more of am I enough within the context of a relationship as well. Am I enough? Am I doing enough? Am I providing enough? And that can create a lot of insecurity. And I think what would be really interesting is if you played this part of the podcast back for her. And open it up to a conversation with her and really understand how she feels because you probably are making that up or assuming things.
And if not, and if she's like, well, yeah, to be happy, I really want a bigger house, then you can decide what you want to do with that information. Cause the answer might not be go work a $750,000 tech job. It could be pay more in rent for a nicer house. So those two things don't necessarily have to be related to each other, but and I doubt that's what she's gonna say in the first place, but that's what I would say.
Justin: Yeah, I think that's really good.
How Parents' Bankruptcy and Divorce Shape Financial Fears
Justin: One more nuance to the story. One of the things that I realized as Rachel was speaking is the fact that my father and mother went bankrupt as farmers. And that I think was the beginning of the end of their relationship. It lasted much longer. But my dad, I think, struggled with his own self-worth after going bankrupt. And I think that manifested in all sorts of problems. And I'm sure my mom had her own set of issues and problems that she brought to the marriage as well. I'm not placing the blame at either one of their feet. It's more it didn't work. And they both are responsible for that.
And that's okay. Not you know, as you know, Rachel, and I heard you say, 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. But I think that... My parents separated in third grade and I think even though it was really good they separated because they were fighting all the time, it was still hard again as a child when most of my friends' parents were still married. And I was the weird one who had parents who were separated and eventually divorced. And so I think there's that subconscious inner child fear of if I don't financially provide everything for my wife above and beyond, then I'm gonna end up like my parents, divorced.
Rachel: Yeah, I mean that's the messaging you received as a kid. So it's not surprising you have this fear. It just goes back to well, is that true? Is it true that if I can't provide a bigger house, she'll leave me? No, it's not true. So those are just things that to work on in yourself and probably with her.
Justin: Yeah, and I think another good thing for me to hear myself say is my wife may want a bigger, nicer house. But that doesn't mean if she doesn't get it, she'll leave me. And it's okay for her to want a bigger, nicer house. There's nothing wrong with that desire. And I need to be okay with her having that desire. And if and when it makes sense for us to have that, and we both get to live the life that we want to live and have that, then cool, we can do it. And if having that forces one of us to live a life that we're unhappy with, then that decision to have the nicer, bigger house has to wait.
Walking Away From $600K to $700K a Year in Profit
Justin: So again, therapist Rachel, thank you so much. This has been great. So let's talk a little bit more about retiring the business, and then we'll move on to self-worth and then some of your newer endeavors. Are you able or willing to share an approximate number from your online business that, when you shut it down,, you were saying no thank you to this amount of money?
Rachel: Yeah, I think that I was on track to make like $600,000 or $700,000 in profit. In profit. The year that I shut it down. Yeah.
Justin: Okay, so this was no small amount of money to walk away from
Rachel: No. I mean, it's more money than I've ever seen or made in my life. And I don't know if I'll ever make that much again.
Justin: Does that scare you?
Rachel: My instinct was to say no, but I'm questioning it. But I don't think it does. I don't need that.
Justin: I'll tell you why I asked that because I made $500,000 to almost a million a year in my sales job and I'm scared I'll never make that again unless I go get another tech sales job.
Rachel: Why do you need to make it again though?
Justin: Exactly. I don't know.
Rachel: Yeah. It's a mindfuck.
Justin: So it is. And again, it's all this whole overachiever, performative self-worth tied to moneymaking, societal programming that I received, right?
Rachel: Is it because you think about what other people think of you, or does it have to do with that at all? Or feeling you want like a status within like a network of people or certain groups of people?
Justin: So one of the biggest challenges of my first year of early retirement was who am I if I'm not making $500,000 to a million dollars a year? Because I base so much of my self-worth and my identity as a high earner. And so it's been really interesting for me over the last two and a half years that I've been early retired to not make very much money. I still have a high net worth, because it's in index funds mostly. And those thankfully have continued to grow. So one of the things I ask myself is what if I wasn't making a ton of money and the stock market was going down year over year?
Then am I gonna self implode? Because right now I'm totally okay because every year my net worth grows just because the market's doing so good. And you know, and maybe or maybe not the universe will present that scenario for me to further excavate my self-worth.
Rachel: So Justin, we're like the same person. You're cracking me up because like you're describing things that I think about all the time. One is the weird feeling of it's like whiplash. It's financial whiplash. You go from being broke as a kid and then making a ton of money, which that's hard to get used to, and then quitting the high-paying job and not making as much money. And then it's like, well, now I feel broke again, even though we're not. And I feel this way sometimes too. And I have to kick myself because I'm not making nearly as much money as I used to make. And it sometimes still feels weird.
And I'm like, am I okay? And but even if I have a month where I spend more than I make, it's like it's okay. I have all my net worth that's there and that's growing. And sometimes I have to remind myself like you're a millionaire now. It is okay. You're gonna be okay. You know, I have to actually consciously remind myself of that. And it's not easy.
Maximizing Net Life Instead of Net Worth
Justin: Yeah, one thing that's been really helpful for me is I've consciously decided over the last year and a half that my number one priority is no longer maximizing my net worth. And now my number one priority is maximizing my net life.
Rachel: Ooh, I love that.
Justin: It doesn't mean my net worth can't grow or that I can't do things that add to my net worth. It just means that if I'm going to make money, it has to increase my net life, not detract from it. Right? And it's hard won because the first nine to twelve months of early retirement, I was totally lost.
Rachel: Me too.
A Tech Sales Job Offer Tests Justin's Early Retirement
Justin: And yeah, seriously, it was a total struggle. But it's been really interesting because recently I got offered a tech sales job. from the person who was the CEO and founder of the company I was with for ten years. And I've made the most money per year in my life working with him. And he's like, hey, I got another opportunity for you. And I haven't said yes, but I haven't said no. But I'm totally dragging my feet on making a decision because I'm so fucking happy with my life right now. But then there's this other part of me that misses the old version of me because I worked in SF Bay Area tech, so I was in the mix with all these incredible tech companies.
I went to OpenAI when there were 30 people and it was just a research company that hadn't even created ChatGPT. And there's a part of me that loves being in that. And then another part of me is asking myself, have I outgrown that? Will I go try it and be like, I don't give a fuck about any of this shit. I just want to go play pickleball. And I don't know. And so part of me thinks that I'm gonna have to go try it just to find out that it's not what I want anymore. But I don't know. So I'm in the middle of it so I don't have an answer. I just wanted to share it with you because it's funny how the universe has been like, here's another test.
Rachel: Yes, they're testing you. You literally just said, I'm so happy with my life right now. So I think maybe something you ask yourself is what did that former life give you that you're not getting now?
Justin: Money, more money, and more prestige.
Rachel: Prestige and money. You don't need money. And prestige is like a self-worth thing.
Justin: Yeah, and I think again it's growing up poor. So I would dress like we had money. All the fancy brands, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren, all that bullshit. Just to look like we weren't poor. And now I don't care about that. I don't even like wearing brand names, anything with a brand name on it. But there's still that part of me that wants to look like I made it or I'm doing something that is prestigious.
Performing for Approval and Trying to Earn Love Through Achievement
Rachel: It sounds like you're performing for someone that you feel like you care about what they think of you instead of what you think of yourself.
Justin: Yeah, that's such a good... This is therapy. Because as soon as you said that, what I thought is, I'm trying to prove to my dad. Even though he doesn't care, he loves me. He doesn't give a fuck what I do. But I think there's a part of me because my dad disappeared for a few years after the separation. I think as a child I said to myself, if I get the best grades, if I'm the best athlete, if I'm the president of every fucking extracurricular club, if I go to a fucking super nice college, my dad will love me and be in my life. And I think there's a part of me that still... Because I chose performance to feel safe and loved in a chaotic childhood, that was my defense mechanism.
Rachel: Well, yeah, so you feel like you have to earn love through achievement.
Justin: Correct, a hundred percent. And I think that's the same even in my marriage.
Rachel: And that's not something that can happen.
Justin: And I'm not as bad, but I think that's the whole thing. I wanna get this nice new house, big house for my wife because I wanna earn her love so she never ends the marriage.
Rachel: So it is a self-worth thing. I've had so much therapy, it's all coming out right now. I love this. So this is my therapist speaking to you, not even me: you can't earn someone's love, first of all. And if you feel like you have to earn someone's love, then that's because you don't feel like you're enough to just be loved for who you are and as you show up. So you're trying to like compensate with something else to get that person's love, which, A, is not true in a healthy, loving marriage. And, B, probably just means you have to do a little bit more self-worth work, which we all do.
So like if you're 90% of the way there, then maybe you do 10% more work to really feel like you are enough and you don't need to be doing something to earn somebody's love or affection or approval.
Justin: Yeah, and I think consciously I can totally hear what you're saying and agree. And I think to some extent I do love and approve of myself just as I am, but I think it's not a hundred percent.
Rachel: Yeah, right. And that's how I was for a long time. I just gradually changed over time. A lot of it was because those journal writing prompts that I would do. And now I have such a full sense. Like there's no doubt for me. But I feel like getting from the last 90% to the hundred percent like just takes longer. Cause you're already there, basically.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah, now if I had to say a number, I would say I'm maybe 60 percent self-love, self-approval, and 40 percent no I need to earn it. Maybe 55/45. I know I'm past half, but I know I'm not 80, 90 percent yet. I believe I can get there, but I have to continue to do that work, either journaling, working with therapists and coaches, and one of the things I love is that you've been not afraid to share is your therapy and work that you've done, not only just through journaling, but also with professionals. Cause I'm such a big believer in getting professional help, whether it's for your marriage, whether it's for your self-worth or any other thing. It's crazy to think that you're supposed to figure all this stuff out on your own.
Rachel: I know. Yeah, no, I needed professional help. But it's interesting to think about how many high achievers struggle with the exact same issue. Cause there's a lot of high achievers in the financial community, in the fitness community, who I'm sure have very similar traps and who are working on the same things. Like I just feel like people don't talk about it a lot.
Naked Affirmations: Loving Yourself Into Shape
Justin: I totally agree. So one of the things that happened, I discovered my fitness before I discovered financial independence. And one of the things that happened in my early 30s, and I think you'll appreciate this because it's touching on what you just said, is most of my life I tried to beat my body into shape. And then it was finally in my early 30s after working with a fitness coach, and I think I can share this. People probably think I'm fucking crazy, but I'm gonna share it. I started a practice of, and you'll probably laugh, naked affirmations. So I'd stand in front of the mirror and I would say, I love my body.
Rachel: That's awesome.
Justin: I approve of my body. I accept my body just as it is. And some days I would laugh at myself, thinking I'm fucking ridiculous. Some days I would fucking cry because it made me so emotional. Other days I was just doing it to put the routine in. And this was at a suggestion of my wife because she knew how much I was struggling with my relationship to my body and my relationship to food. And it was maybe a surprise or no surprise, it was working with a professional fitness coach and doing that practice that I finally got the body I dreamed of. And it was this incredible, beautiful, holy shit, I loved myself into shape.
And I evolved on from trying to beat myself into shape. And when I finally got in shape, it was through the act of loving myself into shape.
Rachel: That's amazing. And that's exactly why the written affirmations worked for me for building my self-worth up. Like if you say it enough times, eventually you'll believe it. And I love the parallels here. I mean, that's such a cool story.
Justin: Yeah, and by the way, for the people, you can just stand in front of a mirror with a tank top on or whatever. You don't have to. I'm an extremist, so my wife was like, You should try naked affirmations. I was like, fuck it, I'll try it. And it fucking worked like magic for me. No, it didn't happen over a month. It happened over six months. Over a year. I did naked affirmations for like, I don't know, two fucking years straight. And still sometimes to this day, if I'm struggling kind of with my own relationship to my body again, 'cause that childhood wound, I grew up with a mom who struggled with her weight and has her whole life, or my whole memory.
And I'll bring it back, you know, for a couple sessions a week just to kind of get back into that self-acceptance and self-love when it comes to my body.
The Better Body Challenge: Creating the Accountability You Need
Justin: So let's talk about Better Body since we're talking about fitness. So we just talked a little bit about my fitness journey, and I know you've really been focused on not only your own fitness journey, but providing an avenue for other people to embark upon an empowering journey with their bodies. So tell us what you've been up to.
Rachel: Yeah, it's been so fun. I found the most fulfilling fun thing to do in retirement. And it all started because I had gotten really out of shape a few years ago. And so I was looking for something that could hold me accountable and found something, it didn't work out. And then I was like, you know what? I could do my own. I could create my own thing. And I happened to be with James and Emily in Florida talking about this and my frustrations with finding this sort of group I was envisioning. And James was like, let's do it. And I was like, really? Like, would you run this challenge with me?
And I was like, Emily, like, what do you think? And Emily was like, go for it. Like, yeah, that sounds awesome. And so on that day, James and I were just mapping out how we were gonna make this and how we were gonna make it great for people and all the rules and everything. And we had a blast. And James has been such a good business partner. I'm so grateful for his friendship. So it's a six-month challenge, and it's nothing crazy. It is just sticking to the basics but being consistent. And it's a paid challenge because people don't take things seriously that are free. Like we could have had a free challenge, and then people just signed up and then quit after three weeks, you know.
So we were like, we want people to have skin in the game. And I mean, I created this because I needed the accountability. I was like, it's not working for me to try to go do it by myself, I just don't have the self-discipline. And I was like, but I know that with external commitments and accountability, I perform really well. So selfishly, it was all for my own benefit. So we have to do three things each week, which is walk 10,000 steps, do five workouts, and at least three have to be weightlifting, and then hit your protein goal six days of the week, which is something we determine ahead of time.
So it's nothing crazy. It's just steps, protein, and weight lifting. The problem for me in the past though is that I could never stay consistent. I traveled so much. So I would travel for two months and just blow it off and then come back having gained weight or I'd lose momentum and take like three months off. And I just could never be consistent. And this forces me to, because if you miss one of the things any week, you have to pay a hundred-dollar fine.
Justin: Yes, I love this.
Rachel: I know, I know, $100 is a huge deal to some people, not a big deal at all to others, but it's a pride thing. I'm like, I am not gonna pay a fine in my own challenge. Are you kidding me? So I'm now on round four or round five. I've lost track now of this challenge. I mean, I've been doing it two and a half, two years now, I don't know. I am in such good shape now. I feel so strong. I can do amazing things. I can hike. I can, I can do so much. I don't have to be worried about lifting my luggage overhead on a plane anymore and like putting it into the bins up there, which always used to terrify me because I never felt like I was strong enough.
And I think I've lost 5% body fat. I've lost like 15 or 20 pounds. And it's not like this all happened in the first six-month round, but the consistency of doing round after round and just knowing I'm gonna get incrementally better every six months. And so I'll be in the best shape of my life when I turn 35 and then when I turn 36 and then when I turn 40. So it's very exciting. And the community is so fun. We go on a retreat at the end and we all celebrate. It's just been like the coolest, most fun thing ever.
Justin: That's incredible. I love the fact that you said people need skin in the game because it's so fucking true. Not for everything, but if you are trying to achieve a goal and you keep putting it off or not getting around to it or whatever, it's just because you don't have enough skin in the game. And I don't think you need a coach or a Better Body program for every aspect of your life. But if it's your fitness or some area of your life where you're not getting traction, getting enough skin in the game to keep you consistent, and you're totally right, Rachel, it's the consistency over time.
Right? It's not gonna happen in three weeks, but a lot can change in your fitness over six months, over a year, over multiple years. And I love that you have this belief that each year you're in the best shape of your life. And that is so empowering. It's a long-term mindset, right? It's not like I'm gonna do a 30-day challenge and get fit and then the rest of the year I'm gonna fuck off and lose my fitness.
Rachel: Yeah, it's been so rewarding. And to be able to say, like, I know that in three or four years, when I turn 38, I'll be in the best shape of my life. It's true. Because if I keep doing what I'm doing, I will get healthier and healthier, which is awesome. And the transformations people can make in five or six months are incredible. My gosh. People blow me away.
The $10,000 75 Hard Bet With Craig Curelop
Rachel: But here's another tip for accountability. This is so funny. 'Cause I always do better when there's an external consequence. That's just how I operate. And the fitness stuff has always been hard for me to do on my own. So I was doing... Do you know Craig Curelop, who wrote The House Hacking Strategy, the BiggerPockets book?
Justin: Only because you mentioned him in the podcast that I listened to while preparing for this interview. I'm not in the real estate world, so I don't know all the real estate people except for Scott Trench from BiggerPockets. And you.
Rachel: Craig, shout out. Okay, so I had decided to do 75 Hard. And I was like, I need something to hold me. I need a consequence that if I don't finish, and it'll have to be by the honor system, of course. So anyways, I made a bet with Craig and I bet him $10,000. But the money was not gonna go to Craig. So here's the thing. I don't know where I got this idea, but I was like, okay, think of the person you like the least. No, your enemy. Think of your enemy. And so I told Craig, if I don't finish, here's my 10K in escrow.
If I don't complete 75 Hard, you have to... This is gonna sound so bad, don't judge me. You have to send this to my ex-sister-in-law.
Justin: This is amazing.
Rachel: And so, you bet I finished 75 Hard because there was no way in hell I was gonna give money to my ex-sister-in-law who treated me like crap for so long. Yeah.
Justin: Talk about skin in the game. That is amazing. Just in case people don't know what 75 Hard is, I do, but if a listener doesn't, what is 75 Hard?
Rachel: It's a 75-day fitness and health challenge where it has a bunch of requirements. You have to drink a gallon of water a day and you have to do two 45-minute workouts a day and a bunch of other things.
Create What You Need: FI Meetups, FinCon, and Finding Your People
Justin: That's amazing. Real quick, one comment. So the fact that you created what you needed, I think is one of the most powerful things any human can do. So I did the same thing for myself when I first discovered financial independence. I created an FI meetup in my area. Not because I was financially independent, because I wasn't. I was at the beginning of my journey, but because I wanted to be around people who were on that journey, many, most of which in the beginning, who were well ahead of me. And it gave me so much inspiration, accountability, ideas, and just a community. So the fact that you created Better Body in large part for yourself is amazing. And then I'm just curious. I think I know the answer. Where did you meet James and Emily?
Rachel: I met James at FinCon in 2021 in Austin. And Craig was there. Yeah, we became friends. And then I met Emily shortly after. And now they are some of my closest friends on this planet. I love them to death.
Justin: Yeah, and I just literally got back from FinCon. And the point I'm making in getting that answer from you is whether you go to a CampFI, which is a three-day money nerd camp, which is awesome. I went to my first one in 2018, the first full year that I'd known about financial independence. Or EconoMe, which is the largest conference for people on the path to FI or already financially independent. Or you go to a FinCon because you're a creator in the money space or you just want to be around other creators. Or some other thing. A local FI meetup or a fitness meetup or something.
Go to fucking events where there are people doing the things that you're interested in and make friends with those people and who knows what will come from it.
Rachel: One hundred percent could not agree more. I met Diania Merriam, who runs EconoMe. Do you know Diania?
Justin: Yep, she's been on the show.
Rachel: Okay, so I met her at a CampFI, and then her and I have become really, really close friends, and so she runs EconoMe. She joined the most recent round of Better Body and won the grand prize.
Justin: So she talked about that on my podcast. I don't know if she had won it, but she talked about being in this Better Body challenge. At the time I had no idea it was yours and James's. She was just telling me I joined this Better Body Challenge and I was like, that's really cool. And, you know, small world, now I know.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. I'm so proud of her. She crushed it. So yeah, small world for sure.
Justin: Yeah. And I just think it's so powerful to go to places, events, meetups, where people are there to share ideas, inspire one another, support one another. And it's the same thing I was iterating on about therapy and coaching, is humans are designed to learn, heal, grow, and transform together. Almost no one goes and meditates in a cave for five years and becomes enlightened. Most people, we do this with other humans. And so if you want to level up in any area of your life, get around other humans who are also trying to level up in that area of your life. And it's almost like a life hack to hypergrowth in that area.
Rachel: Yeah, that's a great, great piece of advice.
How to Join the Better Body Challenge: Cost, Escrow, and the Next Cohort
Justin: Yeah. I mean, I literally was chasing a six-pack for fucking my whole life. Got my first six-pack at fucking 31 or 32 after working with a fitness coach. It's like Jesus Christ, if I just started when I was 22, I could have had the six-pack ten years earlier, but I tried to figure it out on my own. So anyways, I'm curious about Better Body. How much is it for someone to join? I know that it's a hundred dollars if you mess up or something, but what is it to join? Give us a little more details and where can people go if they're interested in joining the next one?
Rachel: Yeah, thank you. It's a thousand dollars to join. I think the next one is gonna be January 2027, which is awesome because we've grown so much that we've added another cohort. So we have two groups going now. So it's a thousand dollars. And I'm like so bad at promoting myself these days. I guess email us at betterbody000@gmail.com, our very professional email address. It's so funny. It's a thousand to sign up and then we collect an additional thousand dollars to hold in escrow because if someone gets a fine, then we deduct it out of their escrow account rather than chasing people for fines every week. But if you don't pay a fine, then you get the thousand dollars back at the end. So it's a thousand to sign up and then a thousand in escrow.
Justin: So smart. What if you rack up more than a thousand dollars of fines?
Rachel: It's happened. It's happened actually. But at that point you just have to Venmo them in or sort of re-up the escrow. And we thank those people because we use all the fines to offset the cost of the retreat and make the retreat really fun. So we thank those people for being the sugar daddy or sugar mama of the Better Body Challenge retreat.
Justin: Yes, which is a good act and will make you feel like a worthy human.
DEXA Scans, Grand Prizes, and Diania Merriam's Win
Justin: That's so great. So another follow-up question. You said Diania won. How do you win? What is the competition?
Rachel: We have a few grand prizes. So we have everyone get a DEXA scan before and after the six months, which for those who aren't familiar, DEXA scan is the most accurate way to get your body fat percentage measured. And it takes like 10 minutes, it costs a hundred or a hundred and fifty bucks. But it's a really, really useful tool. So we have people do it before and after. And the person with the highest proportional change in body fat percentage wins the grand prize. So Diania did that. And we have a male and a female winner. And so Diania lost something like 11 pounds of fat and gained like two or three pounds of muscle, which is crazy to do both.
Cause normally you gain fat and gain muscle, or you lose muscle while losing fat. And she did both. So she did so good. And then I think on the guy's side, we had one of the guys lost like 17 pounds total, and his body fat percentage went from something like 35 to 26, which is also insane in six months. So that's incredible. And then we have like most steps, whoever gets the most steps in six months, because we're all counting all of our steps. And then we'll have monthly contests, like who can do the most pull-ups in a minute or who can do the most push-ups in a minute. So we make it as fun as we can.
Justin: That sounds great. Well, that is so cool. So I will try to remember to put that email in the show notes. Or people can just send me an email and I'll freaking forward them to you.
Rachel: It's betterbody000. Thank you. Yeah, we do have a website, but I don't know the link. But if you Google Money Honey Rachel Better Body, it'll probably come up. So that's the other thing.
The Financial Consequences of Divorce and Why Everyone Needs a Prenup
Justin: Okay, I'll put the link to the website in the show notes for sure. Okay. So let's start to land this plane. One of the things that I did want to talk with you about because you have been open about it before, is two-part, but they're interrelated, and that's the financial consequences of a divorce, what you wish you would have known. And then the related part is the importance of a prenup.
Rachel: Yeah, which I wish I would have known to get a prenup. So no, there's a lot I can say. I'll start with the prenup conversation and thank you so much, Justin, for asking about this because it is something I want every person to hear, whether they're single or married, whether they're a guy or a girl or non-binary or whatever. Everyone needs to hear this. And the mistake I made going into my marriage is I just didn't think that the whole issue of prenups applied to me. Okay, I was like, that's for rich people. And I was broke. And I mean my ex-husband had about the same amount of assets, which was hardly anything, going into the marriage.
So I'm like, it's not like either of us needs to protect anything. So in my head, I was like, we don't need a prenup. It was case closed for me. But I learned a lot. And so everyone needs a prenup. And here's why, because what you go into the marriage with is a separate asset that's protected. So what you go into the marriage with, you will exit the marriage with. So if I have, if I own outright a $100,000 house going into the marriage, that can never be touched. That's my own separate property as long as it stays in my name. If I have $20,000 in a savings account that stays in my name before I get married, that $20,000 is mine.
It can't be touched. Okay, but anything that you invest, earn, create during the marriage is in most states marital property. And that means it belongs to both of you legally. And what you cannot account for before you get married is the businesses you will start, the books you will write, the IP that you will create, the investments that you will grow, the real estate empire that you will create. Like you can't account for any of what you're gonna do for the rest of your life. And the thing is, you could start a business entirely on your own with your own money within a marriage, with no help from your partner.
And if you get a divorce, your partner is legally entitled to 50% of that business. And that's exactly what happened to me. And because when we got divorced, I was at that time a full-time entrepreneur working on Money Honey Rachel. My ex-husband, who had, remember, chosen to stay in his career, he didn't want to retire, which is fine. He was making, I think, over 200K in cybersecurity as his salary and income. I'm over here making several hundred thousands of dollars from Money Honey Rachel. I, in the divorce, I cannot touch his income, but he is legally entitled to half of my business because my business is an asset.
His income is not an asset. So he was more protected financially than I was. And I had to buy him out of my business at 50%, which at one point I was overcome with fear. I mean, paralyzed with fear that it would make me broke again. And there was a split second in my divorce that I thought about the possibility of if I had to buy him out of my business, if that would make me broke, like totally have zero dollars. And I remember thinking, I don't have to do this, I guess. I mean, I could just stay. I could just stay and then I don't have to deal with this.
And then I was like, my God, this is why women stay. This is why women stay in toxic marriages or in abusive marriages. A lot of the reason for that is because of finances and they can't get out, they can't leave. They don't have their own money. They're financially dependent. They don't know how they're gonna start over. And I'm not saying that these things are insurmountable. A lot of it is the fear around this. And if it was that hard for me to leave a marriage, feeling insecure about my financial situation, when in reality I was pretty wealthy by that time, then how hard is it for a woman to leave who is 100% dependent on their spouse, who has no income of her own, no accounts of her own?
But what does she do? Because I imagine that's gotta be a hundred times harder to leave. And I'm speaking because of my experience as a woman. This can happen in the opposite direction as well. The important thing is you need to have your own financial security first and foremost, not depend on your partner for financial security if possible, and always have a prenup to protect yourself because you never know what's gonna happen if you have to divide all that stuff up.
Postnups for Couples Building Brands and Businesses
Justin: Yes, and I wanna mention to anyone who's already married, you can get what is called a postnup. So even if you never did the prenup and as the marriage goes on, right, if one of you, similar to Rachel, creates an online business around your face, your name, your brand. That's a great time to get a postnup and say, Hey, this is mine a hundred percent if we get a divorce. And because neither person should stay in the marriage because they're afraid of losing something they created There's so many reasons to do it. And, you know, I really want to thank you, Rachel, because I never thought about this because I've been building the Fit Rich Life brand.
And I'm planning to be married to my wife to the end. But I probably should get an updated postnup that says if we do ever separate and get divorced, Fit Rich Life and everything related to it, intellectual property, money it's generated, the podcast, my newsletter, all that is 100% mine, and I don't have to buy her out of any of it. Because I did create it while I was with her. And she also has a brand and she has a coaching business and courses and other things. And she should be entitled to keep all of that and I should get none of it because I didn't do any work for her online business and she didn't do any work for mine.
And so we should just be crystal clear about, hey, you know, again, we're planning to be married, but like let's plan for the worst and hope for the best because the matter of the fact is 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce.
Rachel: Yeah, I mean that's how it is. And you never think it's gonna be you. You're like, well, that's the other 50 percent of people, but then you start seeing people around you getting divorced, and then you're like, my God, it can happen to anybody. And of course you never go into a marriage planning for that. Some people think a prenup is so cold and calculated. Why are you gonna pre-plan to get divorced and have a prenup? That's not what you're doing, but it's a contract, it's a legal contract, just as you would have with a business partner in a business partnership. And are you gonna tell me you're not gonna get a legal contract for a business partnership because you don't plan on it not working out.
That's just not how adults in real life work. And we just need to operate with this decision and taking into account risk management, because that's all it is. This is purely risk management. It's a very, very smart thing to do. And you already have a prenup, it's the one the government gives you. And I guarantee you're not gonna like it. So you might as well make one that works for what you want and for what your partner wants. I mean, it's the same risk management as why we have car insurance. Okay, we don't think we're gonna do something stupid or drive drunk or like accidentally mess up somebody's car.
We have car insurance to protect from other drivers that we cannot control. We can't control what other people do on the road, so we have to be protected. Like this is exactly the risk management that you need to do in your marriage because you cannot control your partner's actions. You cannot control if they cheat on you, if they get a gambling addiction or an alcohol addiction, or maybe realize they're gay, you know, realize something about themselves that changes the whole dynamic. Like there's no control over that. So all this is risk management and deciding in a very loving, mutual way beforehand. Look, if for some reason this doesn't work out, which obviously we're hoping it does work out, then here's how we're gonna divide things up and peace and that's it. And so everyone should get one. And I'm off my rant now. Thank you.
Justin: Yeah. No, I love that you're so open about this, and someone very close to me, his wife, out of nowhere just asked for a divorce. And this was something he was not expecting. There wasn't a "we've been fighting a lot and this is coming down the pike." He was completely caught by surprise. And they're going through dividing up the assets right now. And I'm not gonna go into more detail. I'm gonna, you know, leave the person nameless. But it's like if they had a prenup that was in place, then it would have been okay, this still sucks, but now the stressful part of dividing up the assets would have already been predetermined.
Fitness and Health Tip: Track Your Lifts and Your Protein
Justin: Okay. So I think on another show, I want to bring you back to talk about writing books because I too at some point want to write at least one book, but I don't want to pull that into this conversation because I think it would be better to give that its own time because I'm sure you have lots of thoughts on that. Having written two successful books and from what I've heard you're currently writing two more. But let's start to land the plane. I'm gonna ask you the final questions, your tips, tools, and strategies for fitness and health, money and wealth and life and happiness. So what do you got for us, Rachel?
Rachel: Okay, great. I love this. This all has to do with tracking, basically. I've realized there's a theme with my answers. So with fitness and health, track your lifts and track your protein. And I've always tracked my lifts, but I've just used my notes app on my phone, which is fine. You can track it in any way. But my sister was like, you really should use like an app and really refine your tracking. So that you can see your progress each week and you can see how many reps you did last week and how many reps you need to do this week. And it'll really help you with the progressive overload.
So I'm gonna get more serious about tracking my lifts going forward. And then tracking your protein because most women, and maybe most Americans in general, I don't know, but most women do not eat nearly enough protein. And when I started tracking my protein, figuring, surely I eat enough, I was eating like 40 or 50 grams a day of protein, just without really trying or knowing anything. That was just my natural sort of diet. And you're really supposed to be getting more like 75 to 100% of your weight in pounds in grams of protein. Especially if you're trying to build or maintain muscle, especially in your later years, if you're trying to maintain muscle, it is so important to get enough protein.
So I think the mistake maybe women make in particular, we're trying to lose weight, right? A lot of women are trying to lose weight and they want to lose some fat and whatever. And so they want to eat less. And yes, like you have to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight, but if you want to change, like really the goal is to change your body composition. It's to lose fat and gain muscle. And if you're trying to do that, you need to eat enough protein so that you can maintain and gain that muscle and potentially lose fat at the same time. So it maybe sounds counterintuitive to a lot of women, but like eat enough food, eat enough protein. So track protein.
Money and Wealth Tip: Track Your Net Worth Once a Month
Rachel: And then my tool for money and wealth is like if there's one thing I'm gonna track once a month, it's my net worth. And I used to track everything. So if you're starting off in the financial journey, yeah, track everything. Track your budget. Track every... I mean, I was a freak about it. Every transaction that came through any account I would track. Okay. But once you have a handle on your finances and you're financially secure and maybe you've retired early, really the best thing you can do is just keep a handle on your net worth. Did it go up? Did it go down in the last month?
Over the last six months, is it trending up? Is it trending down? Because that gives you enough information. If it's going down the last three months, then it's like, well, why is it going down? Is it because the stock market is down? Or is it because I'm massively spending more than I'm making? Because one you have a lot more control over than the other and you can turn things around. Or if your net worth's going up every month, then great, you don't really have to worry as much. But I feel like that's a good thing to keep yourself aware of once a month.
Life and Happiness Tips: Delete Social Media and Journal
Rachel: My tip for life and happiness, I have two tips, and I know that's breaking the rules. Life and happiness tip number one, delete social media. I am not on social media. Well, my Money Honey Rachel Instagram is still there. It still exists because it has so much information on it. So I didn't want to just delete that for people, but I don't log into it and I don't look at it and I'm not checking it and I've basically deleted all of my personal social media accounts. And it's the best thing. I thought I was gonna miss it. I thought it was gonna be hard. I started with just 24 hours.
Then I was like, okay, let me do three days, let me do a week. And then I was doing like three months, and then I was like, I don't think I'm ever gonna get back on. And it is the best thing for a recovering influencer. And then my other tip for life and happiness is to journal. And I view journaling as another form of tracking in a way. For me, it helps me process my thoughts. It helps me get things out of my brain and outside of my brain and outside of my body so that they're stored somewhere else. Like I view it almost as a storage space for thoughts.
But most importantly, I can track who I am becoming over time, how I'm growing, how I'm changing. And it keeps me honest. So I journaled throughout my marriage and throughout my divorce, and one of the hardest parts of my divorce was reconciling who I thought I married with who I actually married, slash who I was divorcing. Who is this person? How have I never seen this side of this person before? How did I not see this before? And that was very hard for me to get closure on. And then once I went back and read journal entries from during my marriage, I mean, it blew my mind.
The things that I wrote down that I chose to ignore, that I justified, that I explained away, and it gave me the closure and the honesty of realizing this person has shown these characteristics the whole time. I'm not having to reconcile anything. It's my own self that I was ignoring these things early on. And now the whole picture sort of makes sense. And journaling is so important for more than just that, but it's really a great tool to see how you've grown from the last year, set goals. There's a website called futureme.org. You can write letters to your future self. It is so much fun.
So once or twice a year, I get on there and I write a letter that's gonna be delivered via email a year from now or five years from now or 10 years from now. And when I receive the futureme.org letters in my inbox from me from two years ago or from five years ago, it's deeply touching. It's like I can see my inner thought process from that time and I can see how I've grown and who I've become today. And there's just nothing more rewarding to me than that. So that's my last tip is to journal.
The Strong App and Why Body Composition Beats the Scale
Justin: Couple follow-ups on all three. So for those who are looking for an app to track, I've been using this really inexpensive app called Strong. I'm not affiliated with it. And it allows me to track my progressive overload to make sure that I'm increasing the total volume of weight moved workout to workout. It's not affiliated with anything I do. I just am a big fan. It's super cheap. I think an independent person created this app and they maintain it. So I'm happy to pay. I think I pay $4.99 a month or something. I've been paying for it for years. I love that you brought up body composition because I am an online fitness coach.
And I meet with so many both men and women who say, I want to lose 20 pounds. And one of the things I always bring up is let's say you only lost three pounds, but you had the body in the mirror that you wanted. Would you care what your weight was? And they're like, no. But people get so attached to I don't know what they weighed in high school or college that they're chasing the specific body weight when really what's important is body composition, meaning the ratio of body fat to muscle mass and the shape, the physical composition of your body. And I think that's a much better thing to go after is the body composition one that you're happy with where you feel strong and feel like you look good in your own body. And it doesn't freaking matter how much you do or don't weigh.
Rachel: Exactly. Throw that scale out.
Justin: Yeah. I mean, use the scale, but don't worry about like I use a scale that tracks body fat percentage and muscle mass. So I'm just trying to make sure over time I'm maintaining or building muscle and my body fat's just where I want it to be. For the net worth, my question for you is there any app or resource that you recommend for people tracking their money?
Rachel: Man, I would have been able to answer this question years ago, but I'm so out of the space now. I use my own Excel sheets. I have free budgeting worksheets and I don't even remember the link to them anymore. I'm so sorry.
Justin: They're probably in your link in bio on your Instagram that you never go log into. Yeah.
Rachel: You're probably right. Yeah. But I'll use my own Excel spreadsheet because I just like it to be exactly how I want it to be.
Justin: Okay. Well, I'll give a free resource. I'll plug myself. So if you go to fitrichlifecoaching.com/tracker, there is a free app link to that and you can get it there.
Rachel's Journaling Process
Justin: And then last question, what is your journaling process? It's been such a big part of your life, but like how do you actually journal?
Rachel: I do it in all formats. I journal on paper. I journal in the notes app on my phone. I journal on my laptop. It's just like whatever's available and convenient to me. I'll sometimes journal quote unquote out loud by dictating out loud if I can't write it down somewhere. But I mean I write all the time, mostly in journal form. It might be that I have a communication problem with my sister or I went on a date and that guy didn't make me feel that great. So let me figure these things out. What's going on? Why do I feel this way? And it's just really, it's my way to process my thoughts and reflect and grow.
Justin: Is there any process, like a structure, you follow? You always ask yourself these questions, or is it I went on a date last night and here's all my thoughts related to that date.
Rachel: No structure. It's just whatever is coming to my mind and I feel like I need to get out.
Justin: Awesome. Well thank you for sharing that. You've been journaling since what age?
Rachel: At least ten years, maybe my whole life, I don't know.
Justin: That's great.
Final Words: Every Positive Impact Counts
Justin: All right. Well, any last words of wisdom, anything you'd like to share or anything else you want to talk about before we say goodbye for now?
Rachel: I'll just reiterate the quote that you shared from me earlier, which was you don't have to make a big impact to make an impact, to make a positive impact. And I think that's very true.
Justin: Rachel Richards, thank you for coming on the show. Formerly Money Honey Rachel. Her books are out there. She has two great books. Her Instagram, Money Honey Rachel, is still live. Tons of free resources there. I will put a link to Better Body sign-up website in the show notes. Rachel, thank you so much for coming on the show and being so open, so honest, so vulnerable, and so fucking powerful.
Rachel: Thanks, Justin. I appreciate you.