Coffee with Amon and Christina of Our Rich Journey

When I was planning our mini-retirement in Portugal I thought I’d chance my arm and try to schedule a meetup with FIRE YouTube stars Amon and Christina from the “Our Rich Journey” channel. Luckily our schedules lined up and they graciously agreed to meet my sister and I for coffee. This post covers most of what we talked about.

At least all that I can remember almost a week later.

Who are they

For those of you who don’t know, Amon and Christina successfully retired early at 39 and 41 from the San Fransisco Bay Area to Lisbon, Portugal. They are the poster family for the FIRE nay-sayers who say they can’t retire early because they don’t earn high incomes or because they have kids.

Amon and Christina worked civil service jobs and have two kids. It took them just 8 years to build up their retirement portfolio. Even with Christina taking time off to get a law degree from UCLA when their girls were 3 and 5.

They avoided debt at all costs and side hustled like crazy.

They house hacked by taking overseas government postings in Spain and Japan where their housing and childcare costs were covered or subsidized. This allowed them to save 70% of their income.

They flipped houses in the San Fransisco Bay Area where they made a profit of 400,000$ from 3 properties. Check out this video for all the financing details and before and after pics.

They did all the renovations themselves and bought and sold things on Etsy and so on.

When they were about 1 year away from reaching FIRE they started a YouTube channel. They did this so they could share their journey and help share the knowledge they had acquired. In under 2 years they have now reached 184,000 subscribers and amassed almost 8.2 million views on their videos!

What we talked about

Retirement location

We started off talking of my experience so far in Portugal and how our mini-retirement was going.

How the mini-retirement reconfirmed that I love where I live and am willing to work a few more years in order to afford a retirement there.

Amon and Christina said that they built their retirement portfolio to the point that they could retire at the San Fransisco Bay Area’s cost of living. This afforded them the option of picking a much wider variety of locations that suited them.

At this point they really can’t see themselves returning to the US.

Working during retirement

I noticed they had started providing paid consultations and asked how that was going.

They said that they currently get hundreds of questions a day and thousands of questions per week. The consultations were kind of a way for them to politely decline answering so many individual questions.

I said I am considering starting to provide consultations myself but trying to work out the legalities. Revenue confirmed that providing generic financial advice is not regulated. My solicitor confirmed the same. Though my solicitor recommended getting professional indemnity insurance, which I am in the process of looking into.

Amon joked that Christina is a lawyer so obviously they have this in place to cover themselves too.

I mentioned that a lot of FIRE blogger/vloggers continue to work once they “retire”. They even go on to make more than they made when they were working full time jobs. I asked if they knew what they would make now in retirement, would they have pulled the trigger and retired sooner.

Christina said possibly but it’s hard to say as they are looking back from a position of full comfort knowing that they don’t NEED to work if they don’t want to. This really stuck with me.

I was trying to figure out a way to stay home with my son as much and as soon as possible. We looked at living off my husband’s income while I stayed home and tried to cover my own expenses through consultations via the blog. I thought, if this is what I plan to do once I “retire”, why not start now and retire from my 9-5 now. I can work evenings and weekends and mind my son during the day.

Amon said that they weren’t looking to run their channel as a business. They are in a position where they could really take off but it is not their priority right now. They like being able to pick and choose which topics they cover and make videos as and when they please.

Obviously if you quit and spend all your time building a business then you have much higher chances of success. However, both my husband and myself like the idea of being in Amon and Christina’s position of full financial freedom so that we’re never under stress from a financial perspective. Especially as we get older and our families are getting older and we could start to experience health issues ourselves. It’s nice to think that we could be there to support family or take better care of ourselves if we had the time and space to do it.

I still plan on starting the consultations but will go back to work and do it on evenings and weekends instead as a way to get started and see how it goes.

If it gets to a point where it can become my full time job and I can continue working towards full FIRE then I can re-evaluate at that time.

In terms of Amon and Christina’s consultation experience they said that it’s really interesting. They get really highly educated people asking for guidance. There is usually a black and white answer to their questions. A lot of people actually already have the answers within themselves but just need a push to act.

Living off one income

Some videos mentioned that they lived off one income at times and I wanted to know more about their experience. Personally I’ve been trying to figure out how to continue working towards FIRE while having one of us stay home with our son. They said they went down to one income when they were in Seville the first time as well as when Christina went back to school to become a lawyer.

They refused to go into debt and so they side hustled like crazy to afford their lifestyle.

Amon and Christina even lived in two places while Christina was back at school. With Amon flying over and back almost every weekend by hacking a Jet Blue point system which allowed unlimited flights. They laughed saying they were not offered the same scheme a second year in a row.

Partner’s with different spend styles

I asked if they were both as interested in FIRE as the other or if one was more the driver. They said that luckily there were both as interested as the other but that they often get questions about having a partner that’s not on the same page.

I put my hand up saying that I am that person. My husband and I have very different spending habits but have slowly merged on our path towards FIRE. I have a lot to say on this topic and will write a whole post about it at some point.

Vlogging

Amon said that when he was young he used to get embarrassed when his parents would talk about work. He then joked that this feeling seems to be universal no matter what you do. Even his kids now role their eyes when Amon and Christina talk about their channel. So not even being YouTube stars is cool enough for your kids.

They mentioned that it was weird that people in Portugal are starting to recognise them. They get approached at least once a week by people who watch their channel. Their kids’ school now knows about their channel. Even the staff in their local coffee shop discovered that they were on YouTube.

My sister and I mentioned that we were nervous/excited coming to meet them and they laughed saying that was so weird.

As mentioned earlier they said that they don’t want to HAVE to record videos. That they enjoy making the videos they want to make. They scroll through various comments and questions and pick out topics that would benefit the largest audience but also that are interesting for them to talk about.

I asked if they used scripts as they are so well spoken on their channel. They said to my amazement that no they just talk about the topics they are familiar with and they have each other to add things in that the other may miss.

Having talked with them in person though I can see that they really are just very well spoken. The way they are on the vlog is the same as they are in person.

Helping others

We also talked about our main reason for vlogging and blogging. For both of us it is to help others.

I started this blog as I spent hours upon hours researching about FIRE and investments in Ireland and found very little Irish specific content. There are plenty of blogs and other resources that show you how to retire early with various tax free withdrawal strategies in Canada and the US but I could find nothing on the Irish front. Hopefully sharing the knowledge I am acquiring will benefit others too. It’s also a great way to look back on my findings as sometimes I forget what I had researched.

I talked about how the book Your Money or Your Life was transformative for me. Specifically around aligning spending with your values and life’s purpose but also about redefining our definition of work.

I asked if they had heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They laughed as Christina was a psychology major so of course she had. We talked about how financial freedom allows you to focus on the self actualisation element of the hierarchy. Where you no longer focus inwards on base needs and comforts but start to look outwards in how you can contribute to society and help others. This is the beauty of being financially independent.

We talked about future goals or dreams on helping others with financial literacy. Christina had considered trying to teach courses at a college level. Amon and I agreed that courses would be good but we weren’t sure that college is the right time. Looking back at college ourselves, we thought that even if someone had come in and told us about FIRE or investing, we probably wouldn’t have been in the right headspace or point in our lives for it really to sink in.

For me I felt like if I had heard about FIRE in my mid-20s when I was working full time and for the first time my income exceeded my needs, I would have gladly welcomed some knowledge around where to put the excess money.

Though I was always one to live below my means. I can’t say the same for most others I see around me. Perhaps that is where the financial literacy piece needs to start. To help people get to the point where they do have excess cash rather than living paycheque to paycheque.

My sister joked about how governments and corporations don’t want us to be financially literate. Instead they want us to spend and be mindless consumers, churning out endless taxes and buying endless products.

I also joked that Mr. MH has often said that FIRE wouldn’t work if everyone did it. The stock market would fall apart if everyone just bought enough to fulfill their base needs and a few luxuries. Amon reassured us that this would never happen as we looked around the full coffee shop and said that people will always spend money.

I mentioned that I feel a bit hypocritical as I am into sustainability but am banking on others continuing to spend money and consume the earth’s resources so that my investments in the stock market continue to do well. Amon consoled me saying that with the extra time I would do good with the money. I hope the impact I make will outweigh the bad over time!

Families abroad

We also talked about living away from family.

Amon said that he was lucky as both his Dad and brother moved to Japan when they were living there. He’s working on convincing them to come to Portugal now.

Christina’s family is back in the San Fransisco Bay Area and my family is in Canada. It can be hard being away but we joked that since having kids we see a lot more of family than we did before.

Christina said that her family didn’t even have passports before they had kids. Now they have been bitten by the travel bug and are travelling a lot more.

I had been in Ireland for 4.5 years before I had our son and no sign of my parents. In a little over a year since we had our son, they have flown over 3 times! We were also in Canada this summer and so in the last 12 months we actually spent 3 months together. If I lived just 1.5 hours away as I did before, we never would have seen each other as much.

So in some ways I think that living abroad lets you spend more time with family than if you took proximity for granted and only went home the odd weekend.

Siblings following the FIRE path

Amon asked my sister if she was also on the FIRE journey. She said yes but not as aggressively as me. Amon then went on to say that his younger brother is also following in his footsteps. He is on target to achieve financial independence at a young age too.

My sister mentioned that herself and her husband are looking to flip houses at the moment. Her husband is in construction and so will likely do most of the work himself.

Amon mentioned that they had been involved with real estate but as they neared FIRE wanted a more passive investment and slowly edged their real estate holdings into ETFs.

Wrapping up

Amon and Christina had to get going to meet their girls for lunch as at this point almost an hour and a half had passed. The beauty of being retired now allows them to go home and make lunch for their girls who are within walking distance of their school.

It sounds like a dream. Being financially secure, working on things that make you feel productive, making a contribution to society, meeting up with like minded people, travelling, visiting with friends and family, being present and not stressed around your kids.

We also mentioned the study called Ask the Children, where over 1000 children aged 8-18yrs with working parents were given a “one wish question.”

“If you were granted one wish and you only have one wish that could change the way your mother’s or your father’s work affects your life, what would that wish be?”

The majority of adults guessed that their children would wish for more time together. But for the majority of children, their one wish was that their parents would be less stressed and less tired.

Children tend to see the world more simply than we do. If we were less stressed and less tired, surely the time we actually spent with them would be more focused and of higher quality.

This is what financial freedom affords!

Things to see and do

Last but not least we asked for a few things to see and do in our last days in Lisbon. Here were some of their suggestions:

• go to the theatre. They went to a show for 4 box seats at 80€ with excellent stage production albeit in Portuguese
• go to a spa
• check out non-touristy areas like
  • Alameda on the green line
  • Rato at the end of the yellow line and
  • Belem where you should rent bikes to explore

And there you have a 1.5 hour conversation “condensed” into almost 3,000 words (face palm).

It is so rewarding and energizing meeting up with like minded people. Check your area for local meetups if you haven’t already or set one up if there isn’t one. It is something I greatly look forward to and always get so much out of.