Episode Transcript
Speaker1: Hey, what's going on? Welcome to the Mile Hi-Fi Podcast. I'm Doug Cunnington. And today, Rusty is joining me. He's back after the summer break. Of course, Rusty, you're the intern here. Welcome back.
Speaker0: Yeah, it's nice to be back at my unpaid internship as the failed attorney intern for Mile Hi-Fi.
Speaker1: An on-air talent. Yeah. And you are one of the most popular guests. And co-host. I mean, you're a co-host here.
Speaker0: Did I just get an upgrade? I was really happy with the internship title, but yeah.
Speaker1: Congratulations. You can go ahead and get new cards made for yourself. I'm sure you had a few. And letterhead, of course, for all the faxing that we're going to be doing.
Speaker0: So anyway. We'll discuss my pay increase later then.
Speaker1: Yeah, well.
Speaker0: I need to make sure it's commensurate with the other co-hosts.
Speaker1: I'm glad you asked about that. Carl is in charge of HR, so you could just touch base with him. Okay. So today we actually have a very interesting topic that we're going to cover. And the email, I think it was sent to both you and I. So what are we going to talk about today?
Speaker0: We had a listener send us an email, and he's at 6.25% withdrawal rate, which would give him about a 50% success rate for early retirement. And he wants to know if that would be a reasonable move. So the topic we're going to explore today is whether or not it's reasonable to retire with a higher withdrawal rate than the 4% rule would prescribe.
Speaker1: Perfect. And we do have the email here. And if you want to have your, you know, question answered, you can shoot us an email. It'll be in the description. I don't know if you're going to mention it here, but you know how to get a hold of us. One cool thing we're able to do is go back and forth a little bit with the person. So he already got some advice and some of our thoughts on it. And actually not real advice. And this isn't advice. It was just our thoughts on it. And these are just stories we're telling right now as the disclaimer. Or this is not advice legal or financial. Anything else to add?
Speaker0: No, it was actually kind of funny to see how much you and I both put in the emails that it was not advice and did all of our disclaimers there as well. I think you with your podcast experience and me with my legal training, I'm very careful, especially putting things in writing to someone. But yeah.
Speaker1: If I ever use the word advice, it's incorrect. I meant something else. So we'll read the email here. Gentlemen, love the show. Thank you so much for offering your perspectives and helping to point out what's truly important in life. I have been a listener for the last few years, and with the incredible market returns, my FI date is approaching faster than anticipated. About a year ago, I took a new job, and it's been a shit show. I was feeling very stressed and hating the situation I was in. I had a discussion with my wife about taking a break from working, and she was very supportive. Funny thing, I quit caring about my performance at work, knowing that I could
Speaker1: just quit at any time and take six months to a year off without any real financial impact and the stress is pretty much gone. It is just amazing how much that change of perspective has impacted me. So now on to my conundrum. With the 4% rule, you are saving to the point that it is almost guaranteed not to run out of money. I've been thinking a lot lately that one should be more aggressive in retiring early. My children are 10 and 12. Every year that I continue to work, I will miss out on their childhood. Maybe I should just try to save until a 50% chance of not running out of money and then go back to work if needed. after they're out of the house.
Speaker1: For some context, my wife and I will be 41 this year. I'm making more money than I ever have and my kids are heavily involved in sports. We've saved 16X our yearly expenses. If my wife continued to work, we would be at about 20X our yearly expenses. However, we have not made any significant moves to have accessible money before retirement age. As you have gone through fire, Have you ever thought you should have ended your employment earlier? It seems that both of you have done very well in retirement. Anton, P.S. If I had more free time, I could finally plant that asparagus row in our garden.
Speaker0: So that makes it pretty clear. I mean, if he can plant the asparagus, he knows what we're going to say on Mile High Fi. I don't even know why he needed to write in the email at that point.
Speaker1: Exactly. Yeah. And I think the asparagus, I've never grown asparagus, have you?
Speaker0: I haven't, no.
Speaker1: Yeah, I'm not much of a gardener these days. I had some interest a few years ago, but it's a little tougher around here. Anyway, yeah, great email. And I think he laid out, you know, a beautiful scenario for us to talk about.
Speaker0: So, yeah, the Central Dilemma is, pretty great. At least his set of circumstances kind of perfectly set us up to talk about some of these more advanced fire topics. And the way I see it is he's at this key stage in his kid's life. They're going to be in the house for six to eight more years. His youngest is 10. And uh you know probably to get to the point of mathematical certainty for retirement he need to grind for another three to five years um but that's missing out on these key years where he could be he could be with his kids and, he wanted us to kind of weigh in on whether or not it's reasonable for him to,
Speaker0: pull the early retirement trigger, earlier than you know what the traditional FIRE advice would be. And based on our, the emails that we've exchanged, I think you and I are, we're generally kind of receptive and open to that idea. So.
Speaker1: And I think there's a couple of things to highlight here. And I think, you know, with the email, we covered a lot of the main scenarios, but I think a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people in the FIRE community were pretty good students and they, I mean, fucking love spreadsheets they like to see certainty a lot of engineers also so you're looking at risk management guarding against failure We like getting good grades. A lot of us do, not everybody, but if you can get a 95 to 100%, you're like, oh, this is good. Like I'd rather get higher. And I've interviewed people, talked to them on the
Speaker1: side and they're like, oh, you know, I used whatever planning software and my projections are pretty good. It looks like we have a 90% success rate, but if we change up our portfolio and get a bunch of, I don't know, fucking gold or Bitcoin, I don't know, something else, they're like, it goes up to like 98%. And as you talk to more advisors and other people, it's like, well, if you're in that range, you're pretty much guaranteed to have over-saved because we're not going to just blindly stop, do our plan and never adjust. We're going to adjust. So I think part of this is just like the obsession with getting as high of a
Speaker1: success rate as possible. And i don't know why that's exactly a goal
Speaker0: I think i think it's hard because this is a metric it's actually measurable whereas what the other thing that he's talking about is optimizing for time with his kids i mean i guess you could turn that into a metric and be like i'm going to count the number of days that i spend with my kids or the number of hours that i spend with my kids or he mentions coaching, soccer and football so you could count how many practices you did but those those aren't as available of a metrics as the bank account statement because you log on to the apps and there's your scorecard for the day and you know based on market fluctuations it goes up and down every day,
Speaker0: and you can go to the fire calculators online and you can figure out your success rate for early retirement and so those are super available metrics but just because a metric is available doesn't mean that it's a better metric to live your life by and you'd be much better off to be. Constantly asking the question of how do I best optimize my happiness versus how do I best optimize my bank account or my success rate for early retirement. I think it feels safer to talk about too, because the success rate is a lot less personal. It's a much more impersonal thing. You can talk, you're talking about percentages
Speaker0: instead of talking about your emotions and feelings. And I think what we did in our email responses and what we'll probably do here is talk more about, you know, the psychology, the emotional aspects of the decision as opposed to just going off the math. And before anyone goes to like the comment section of YouTube and starts talking about how crazy we are because 6.25% is never safe and there's no research to back that up. I mean, we did do math, we're aware of the math, but, and this is me speaking as a former mathematician and math teacher and math major, there are limits to what math can provide to life And you need to also have,
Speaker0: some introspection and think about the role that the math plays in your life. So I think that's a little bit what we'll get into doing this.
Speaker1: So we can think about like what phi is actually for. Is it to reach an arbitrary net worth number or to maximize happiness, the presence, spending time with family or whatever thing you want to do? And I think you summarized it really well, so I'm not going to repeat it. We're going to hit a couple topics like redefining the failure in the FHIR community, the power of FU money, and the mindset that you get when you realize you could quit and it's not really going to, I mean, it doesn't matter. You can quit and be happy with that decision. The nuances that the standard calculators miss and destigmatizing early access to retirement account.
Speaker1: We'll talk a little bit about sunk costs, some of the housing implications and social friction as well. One thing I want to highlight, you know, you were, you were off on summer break and you, you spent some time up in the mountains. And I think it's a perfect example of like maximizing your enjoyment. So what were you up to this summer?
Speaker0: Oh man. Well, it was a different summer in the mountains. There was a lot of wildfire smoke early on and then the water levels are super low. So somewhat drought conditions, although it's still very, very green up there. So did some paddle boarding, did a good amount of biking. My son is riding his own bike now and pretty much wants to do that every single day. So that's been, that's been super fun and then yeah we were a little bit more tied down having the baby as well but baby loves trees that was like one of her first obsessions and so, being up in the mountains and our houses in the forest she just like,
Speaker0: loves just if you take her for a walk while she's awake and she gets to look at the trees um that was super interesting yeah she's, that's like i guess that's one of a few things that babies can become really interested in like ceiling fans is another one as well so she had a ceiling fan fan phase early on and then she switched over to trees but my wife uh even said she's like i think she's like a little nature baby like she's like a little hippie like maybe we should give her you know some hippie name like moonbeam or something like that so i was like we're not changing her name right now but uh,
Speaker0: not some not a project i want to take on but uh but yeah so she she really loved being up in the mountains because she's so nature oriented that's great yeah how about you did you have a good summer doug.
Speaker1: Yeah pretty good it was um we did less travel than expected we had a couple road trips planned but georgie had a little illness she's doing much better now i think we may do some of those trips we've talked about like doing those now in the fall in winter which could be nice it's uh some desert like arizona national parks so a couple day drive but it'll be cooler than this springtime when we were going to go. So anyway, yeah, summer was pretty good. It was extremely hot around here, which, I mean, it does get hot, but it was... It's unusually warm, especially at night. Usually it cools off and the mornings
Speaker1: are crisp, but it was actually just warmer. So you would go out in the morning and it would feel less pleasant than it should. So kind of wore me down. I tried to wake up really early a few times just to get those walks in before it got too hot. But the sun's so intense. Like if you're in the shade, it's not too bad, but there's a lot of just open area where we walk and the sun just beats the hell out of me.
Speaker0: So yeah, we even had, we had a few days where it got above 80 in Breckenridge, which, you know, for many summers, we hadn't had any days like that. So it was just a hot summer generally.
Speaker1: Are you, obviously you can't predict the future, but do you think you'll have like a snowy winter up there?
Speaker0: I hope so. I mean, like really neat. Fingers crossed. Yeah, the reservoir is down like more than 15 feet. So, and the snow really replenishes the reservoir. So, yeah. And then, you know, friends have small businesses up there. And when the snow is bad, like it was last year, they really struggle.
Speaker1: So, let's get into some of the main ideas here. So I mentioned the, you know, in air quotes, failure in the fire community and the obsession with the 100% sort of safe withdrawal rates and having like your projections totally dialed in. I don't know, a few months ago, I did a show, I think with Mark Troutman, and we talked about the 4% rule and just, I mean, overall, it's a great rule of thumb for accumulation. But I think once you get a little further in, there's a lot more like nuance involved. And I think, In this particular situation where Anton's looking at, you know, just taking a little, potentially just taking a break and then maybe if he doesn't
Speaker1: have to go back to work, great. And I think in this case, like taking a break totally makes sense. And then you could just evaluate your situation in the future when you have more information. I mean, like you don't have to have everything figured out for like 18 years in the future. So anyway, that's my broad overview of it. But, you know, one great thing that you did, Rusty, is you replied back with a very thorough response early on. Let's unpack this a little bit. What are your thoughts?
Speaker0: Yeah. So I guess one of the things I've been doing here on Mile Hi-Fi is like destigmatizing some of these scary concepts. I guess failure is the one we'll talk about next. But, you know, we had one a few episodes back where we both talked about being fired and how that might actually be a good thing. Fired as in like from a job, not fired as in retiring early. And then also there's the 10% early withdrawal, quote unquote, penalty, which also, you know, penalty sounds like a scary word, something that you must avoid at all costs. And we can see how that sort of attitude would result in some absurd consequences.
Speaker0: So, yeah, the idea of failure in the early retirement context, I think, is not as scary as it sounds. And that would be why you maybe wouldn't need to have a 95, 100% certainty of avoiding it. I think, you know, most FIRE commentators kind of without ever really examining it, just act like a retirement plan failing is the end of the world when it's not. And that seems to be like the root cause of those debates about this, like true safe withdrawal rate and, you know, the lowest risk portfolio design, things that I think are maybe a little bit overkill. So, what failure in this context, I think, actually means is simply that you
Speaker0: will need to find a way to earn more or spend less money for a few years after your retirement date. This could be as easy and amazing as renting out your house for a year while you go live in a lower cost of living country or countries. If you think about things like that, too, I mean... That sounds way more amazing than just continuing to grind away at, you know, an office job for a few more years where, and I think, you know, I think even the most, whatever, traditional. Views of retirement would have a hard time classifying that as failure of being like, oh, you had to go live in Portugal for a year. Like that's,
Speaker0: you failed at retirement because you're, you know, because you're living in Portugal for a year. I think you'd have a hard time really pejoratively calling that, calling that failure. And then, you know, the other thing that's helpful about Anton's situation is he's like, he's 40, turning 41 this year. When his kids leave the house, he'll just be in his 50s. That's way different than retiring at 65. Because if you retire at 65, you're likely to face health issues or age discrimination that would prevent you from being able to reenter the workforce. Whereas like, if you go back to work in your 50s, it might even be easier to
Speaker0: earn more money because your network has aged. They're still going to be in the workforce you'll probably have a lot of connections that will be able to get you back into the workforce or help you find a good paying job, and if you go the entrepreneurship route in your 50s you know older entrepreneurs tend to be much more successful than younger ones because they have that higher value, value network so the idea that you would need to have to grind away right now in your 40s while your kids are at home and you'd be missing out on time on that with them. And you'd have, you know, if you kept grinding away, you'd have a 100% chance
Speaker0: of missing out on your child, your kid's childhood. If you're doing that just to avoid a 50% chance that you would need to earn some more money or spend less money after your kids leave the house, I think you'd be making a highly irrational decision because you're guaranteed on missing out on something you want to do to avoid something, just the possibility of doing something that maybe you wouldn't ideally have to do later on.
Speaker1: Perfect. And I'll emphasize... The 50% chance that you might have to adjust in the future.
Speaker0: Yeah.
Speaker1: In 10 to 20 years, basically, you may have to adjust a little bit, which newsflash for everyone, you're probably going to have to adjust anyway. Because if you over save, then you're thinking, oh shit, I need to spend more money or figure out like what to do with the extra returns, which I get is a wonderful problem to have. But it's like the reality, as I look at the people that are whatever, five, 10, 15 years ahead, they're like, oh, over saved a little bit. Market returns, we never know the future, right? So things just worked out better. Maybe they spent a little less, their circumstances changed,
Speaker1: but you're going to have to adjust regardless so the 50 chance that you might have to adjust is totally acceptable and the upside is huge
Speaker0: Yeah yeah upside is gigantic yeah.
Speaker1: Because you'll never and anton mentioned you know he could already tell that he's missing out on you know his kids growing up in a few years they're not going to want to hang out with him as much right right i I mean, eventually, you know, they become teenagers and they're like, you know, it's not as cool to hang out with their parents. Yeah.
Speaker0: So I think that's even like a statistic, like when your kids turn 18, you've spent over 90% of the time that you'll ever spend with them. Cause you know, once they move out of the house, you just aren't seeing them on a, on a daily basis. So, and 18 being the age that most of them would, most kids would tend to move out of the house. So, yeah, I mean, we're living, we're living that upside that you're talking about. Cause you know, you and I retiring when we did and then having the market returns we've had the first few years, it's kind of. And that's, I mean, that's the situation that anyone who's retired probably
Speaker0: in the last 15 years is facing. Like the markets have gone up, you know, exponentially. They've been much better than historical. And it'd be hard to imagine a sequence of returns at this point, you know, for me, like six years in, that would take us off course after our net worth, like almost doubled those first six years. I mean, that's a little bit of our bias and why we might be saying like, oh, 6.25% is safer than it seems. But it's also, I mean, it's a 50% chance. Things that have a 50% chance happen with a good amount of regularity. It's not like this was totally unforeseeable. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker0: I haven't gone back and done the math to figure out what I could have actually retired with and been fine. But I mean, it's probably I could have retired at an 8% withdrawal rate, which would have been years earlier than getting to the 4% and beyond that, you know, that I did. Right.
Speaker1: And I'm glad you pointed out the bias because, I mean, we're generally conservative. And I think, I mean, you probably were too. I mean, you're like, okay, I want to make sure like when I get out of here, I don't have to, you know, get another job in the short term or anything like that. But that said, I mean, I think Anton's probably in a position where it's like, even if you take a break for a little while, like, it's fine. And I mean, you see people take a sabbatical or they're taking a break from... Their job from burnout or whatever, they save up money, they take a couple of years off. Like it's not super unusual.
Speaker1: It's like, oh, kids are a certain age, there's a ton of activities. Like I just need to be home or something. Like that's completely normal and I don't think, you know, a gap in your resume for something like that is really weird, which I guess we could shift over to the power of FU money and the workplace mindset shift. Um, but I think that people maybe overemphasize the impact that stepping away from the workforce will have caveats. I got laid off and then was self-employed. So I have little to no experience with any gap in my resume.
Speaker0: Yeah. Trying to actually get back, but yeah. Yeah.
Speaker1: So yeah. What do you think, uh, just from the word on the street or people that, you know, that have taken a
Speaker0: Break well that's yeah that's what i was gonna say i mean my wife hasn't been working for six years and she just got a call from someone in her network that offered her an amazing job that would have been a promotion based off of what she had and it's for, a non-public company where she would have gotten private stock options and the founder i mean it's a it's a company that people listening to show have probably heard of even though i won't say the name and, the guy who called her up was basically like the job's yours if you want it and my wife didn't want it and she's like this was a good test she didn't she didn't take it but,
Speaker0: i think a lot of people would think oh having that six-year resume gap was gonna be such a detriment and you know my wife who has been out of the workforce for six years still has people calling her up and offering her jobs and then. She the guy who offered her the job it was actually like well do you know anyone else who might be a good fit for this and she's like actually i do and she recommended one of her friends and her friend got the job like pretty much, instantly so it was uh it was like a great it was a, great scenario worked out well for everyone but i think it also underscored like this was my wife's job to turn down you know if she could recommend someone
Speaker0: else who ended up getting the job like within you know within a few weeks so, Yeah, I think the fear of a resume gap is a little bit overblown. And we have a good number of friends who just, you know, there's that book, Lean In. We have a good number of friends who leaned out during the childhood years. And then they came back and they weren't, some of them are sheepish and they're like, oh, I'll have to take a step back. I'm only going to apply for jobs that are like a lower level below where I was working. And we've also had friends though that are like no i was a good i was a good worker i bring value to the table i'm going to apply for jobs that would be
Speaker0: a promotion from where i was at previously and most of the people who've pursued that route have taken on jobs that were, that were higher up than when they left so um i don't think a resume gap especially like in your prime working years i don't think a resume gap is actually as, detrimental as people think it's going to be And then I think you also, I think you also, as you get older too, you can understand how to make money on your own or more entrepreneurial activities, which I think is probably your mindset now. Like if you needed to make money right now, you wouldn't be like, okay, I have to apply for a job. I'm sure you can think of, you know,
Speaker0: probably a few dozen ways off the top of your head that you could make money by working for yourself, especially having your experience.
Speaker1: You know, from that standpoint, a lot of people have some idea. They're like, oh, I would want to have that dog poop pickup service or whatever need you're trying to fill.
Speaker0: Maybe I overselled the quality of the ideas that you have at mind if dog poop pickup is where your mind goes. Yeah.
Speaker1: It's like I'm scratching my own itch, you know? I'm like, ah, I'm doing it already at home. Why don't I get paid for it? But anyway, so... It does give you a chance to like test some things out and maybe you realize like, Hey, running a business, not my thing. I don't like the uncertainty or the sales portion or whatever thing, right. It might not be for you. But the other part obviously is like, if you've done a good job saving, it doesn't mean you have to go back to the same industry that you were in, especially if you were like, I had my fill. I did X number of years and I'm done with the dog poop pick up business which
Speaker1: there's several services around here i see trucks around that i think i saw one today which is why it's on my mind and
Speaker0: And you're like i want to go compete with those guys i can pick up dog poop amazingly yeah yeah i.
Speaker1: I have the tech background i can make scheduling easy corner the market i'll send out like um like a little robot to uh pick it up okay i don't know if that works but you can get a job in a different industry paying less and it's totally fine because you don't have to replace your old income that you were making. You just need to cover the delta in between the gap of what you can cover and people know how to do the math out there. And I think it's pretty straightforward. So instead of having to whatever, make $100,000, you can make like 20. And like that covers any issue that you might have. And then you could be like,
Speaker1: okay, I'll, I'll work, um, at the store, just a retail shop. Maybe it's something you're into, maybe like yarn and knitting or something, and you're working at a place like that and then work there for like the retail season and then just not work there anymore. I don't know. I, do people buy a lot of yarn in the winter?
Speaker0: I don't know either. Probably. Right. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker1: Gifts. I don't know.
Speaker0: But uh yeah i mean that's in it when you start thinking of in that terms too it becomes like the irrationality of just grinding away at the office job becomes so clear because you're like, you know you talk about two to three years of just staying in the office staying in front of you know your computer working versus maybe taking on a 10 hour a week role for four or five years later on. And that can totally, you know, change the trajectory of the retirement. I have a bunch of calculations to share later on in the discussion. But yeah, it's you're not talking about having to go back and find the exact
Speaker0: same level of job replacing, you know, getting into the exact same industry, earning the highest possible potential salary, you're just talking about to, to course correct if things aren't going well for you financially in early retirement, You're just talking about adding a few tens of thousands of dollars for a few years, and you can get back up to the curve, the success rate curve, be on top of it instead of below it. Yeah.
Speaker1: Have you gotten any job offers since you quit?
Speaker0: I don't, I haven't had any like official, but I have a couple of friends who, have, one runs his own law firm and one, you know, he is like the right hand man for a person who runs their own law firm. And I think if I needed a job and, or if I wanted to go back to the legal industry, I think I could call either of those guys and I'd have a job by the end of the week. So, but they're not so actively out there hiring that they're, you know, they're calling me. So, I get solicited a lot for investments in like companies, like young people starting a company and they want like an angel investor. Gotcha. And that's, I mean, it's interesting to be in that position,
Speaker0: but I mean, I just hear, you know, I hear them talk for a little bit and I'm like, I would never trust you with my monies. Yeah.
Speaker1: What about... Any like non-law like maybe even like non-professional any kind of fun job where you're like oh you know what i would work
Speaker0: At oh the one that i consider is the um being a ski instructor at the ski resorts and you can sign up because a lot of people in breckenridge do it and you can sign up just even work like 10 days um a year you get a free ski pass for the whole season And then, um, and you just, you know, your job is going out and skiing with people. So, and you don't always have to teach the beginners as well. You could be like, I'll do it for more advanced people and I'll Sherpa them around the mountain. So that's the one that I might actually, you know, do at some point because I think the benefits of it would be pretty fun.
Speaker1: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I mean, if people think about it, you could probably arrive at like one of your hobbies. there's a place that you could probably work for a short time
Speaker0: Like picking up dog poop yeah.
Speaker1: I like dogs i like everything about dogs but yeah i would potentially i could work at a brewery i mean i know a lot about beer and potentially you know some of them are quieter i you know i don't want to be like in a super busy like bar setting where it's just like people drinking constantly but some of the breweries around here are chill and you could just, you know, there's regulars in there and there's quieter times and that would be pretty fun overall, so... All right, ready to move on to the next?
Speaker0: Go to your strings. Drinking beer. Yeah, if I could get paid to drink beer, that'd be a pretty good one.
Speaker0: But yeah, just to like underscore this idea of failure, like there are definitely contexts in life where 50% chance of failure is unacceptable. I think, you know, like elective surgery where 50% chance of failure means like you could die. And for something that, you know, to cure something that isn't life-threatening, that'd be unacceptable. If you're like manufacturing airbags, you wouldn't want them to have a 50% failure rate. If you're skydiving, you wouldn't really trust someone as an instructor who is like, oh, 50% of my people survived the skydiving experience. But yeah, we're not talking about life and death here.
Speaker0: We're talking about a 50% chance that you're going to need to make a little bit of money or spend a little bit less. So, I think that with that in mind. This idea is a little bit more reasonable. I actually did, I didn't share this with you before, but I did actually do a little legal research or pulled a case. People seem to enjoy it when I bring in a little bit of the law to the discussion. But this is a case you read, like, I think pretty much everyone reads their first year of law school. It's from the Supreme Court of the United States. And it's Pecora versus Wabash Railway Company. It's a 1934 case. Briefly, the facts of this case were this
Speaker0: truck driver came up to a series of railroad lines. Some of them were obstructed by parked railway cars. And the truck driver stopped. He turned off his engine. He listened. He didn't hear any trains coming. he proceeded to cross the tracks. And he got hit by a train. So he sued the railway company. The railway company claimed that he was negligent for not doing more due diligence checking the railroad tracks before he proceeded. And what they said is it was unreasonable for him to not get out of his car and go look down the railroad tracks to make sure to visually confirm that there were no trains coming.
Speaker0: And the Supreme Court said, no, that's not what a reasonable person needs to do. A reasonable person, And being reasonable does not mean that you take every perceivable precaution. That's their exact language. And they also said that it's not for the courts to come up with these like rigid judicially created formulas and that what's reasonable depends on the facts of life rather than kind of an abstract standard. So I think applying that here, you know, taking every perceivable or every conceivable precaution for making sure that your retirement plan doesn't fail. It does not necessarily, is not necessarily the most reasonable path or the only rational path.
Speaker0: Leaving in a little bit of a risk of failure is okay. And it comes down again to the facts of your life. You know, for Anton here, it's like, what do you value? Do you value having that absolute certainty or that mathematical certainty of 100% chance of success? Or do you also value spending time with your kids And I think making that determination is what a reasonable person would do in Anton's situation. So, yeah, so there's some support from the Supreme Court saying that you don't have to take every possible precaution in order to be a reasonable person.
Speaker1: So let's move to the nuances that standard calculators miss, which is kind of like, you know, some of the subtext of a lot of the stuff we've been talking about, where it's just like, what are we trying to spend time on? So of course, you pointed out really well earlier. Where it's easy to look at those metrics of whatever net worth or your success rate based on these simulations and projections out for decades. But we're not necessarily evaluating the day-to-day, the emotional impact of continuing to go to a job or knowing that you're missing out on your child growing up. So you had a point here that Anton's real success rate might be closer to 80%.
Speaker1: That was your point, right?
Speaker0: Yeah, okay. ChatGPT did the outline too. I was like, is my internship now hosting role like in threat from ChatGPT? I thought I had an AI safe job, but I guess what you did is just you fed the emails into ChatGPT and had it create an outline from that. So I was like, okay, so it didn't do the thinking work it just reformatted it so correct I was able to sleep at night not worried that I was losing losing my job gotta stay.
Speaker1: Sharp though it's very
Speaker0: Good but yes this was my point but I just I proposed a few things to Anton in the emails and then, He was like, yeah, actually, a few of these do apply. So the first was like Social Security and pension. And he mentioned in the follow up that his wife is actually has a pension and she's eligible for it. What is now this month. So if she were to retire now, she would start receiving she could start receiving a pension even immediately. So that greatly, you know, that can take the 50 percent number up significantly. And then I just also threw out there that inheritance could be a factor. 30% of Americans receive inheritance.
Speaker0: We're also currently, the boomers are nearing the end of their life expectancy, and they're the wealthiest generation that's ever existed in any country in the history of the world. So, we're in the middle or at the very beginning of this huge wealth transfer that's going to be happening. So, I think talking about inheritance is a reality that a lot of people are facing and, you know anton said that his dad you know was a big saver they live off basically their social security and their pension from their jobs and, he's into he thinks it's a likely scenario that they would receive um some inheritance,
Speaker0: and then the other thing i just talked about was like flexibility and spending like we've been alluding to but i think you know, die I would call these Anton's like go-go years. These are his max spending years, especially Anton mentioned he has the kids at home and they're involved in the travel sports. And that's not an expense that they would need to have once the kids leave the house. So I think it's actually if he's at 16x their annual spending now and their annual spending is going to drop maybe fairly significantly after the kids leave the house. Those are all factors that would, that would shift up the success rate.
Speaker0: And I did just like a little bit of math with the online calculators to try to just drive this point home a little bit, um. So if you add in, so he's at a 6.25% withdrawal rate, so I just made his net worth a million dollars and his initial withdrawal is $62,500. And that is what FireCalc says is a 50.8% chance of success. If you factor in Social Security payments, I'm super conservative with this, but I said $2,000 per month starting at age 62. Him and his wife will both be receiving Social Security. So that's pretty low. So that takes you from 50% to 59%. So that alone is a pretty significant bump. I said if he gets a one-time inheritance
Speaker0: at age 59 of $100,000, what would that do to his overall trajectory? That takes it from 59.5% to 66.7%. That's a pretty, you know, I just looked up the average ages that people receive inheritance and the average amount people receive. If he, you know, if he was more than that, his success rate would go up even higher, obviously. I did a really fiery one, which is I just changed the expense ratio from 0.18% to 0.03%, the Vanguard expense ratio rate and that shifts it up another couple points or almost a couple points it goes from 66.7 to 68.3. Percent. I did one that I think drives home a lot. It's a bigger conversation,
Speaker0: but I moved the percentage of stocks from 75% to 90%. And everyone, you know, has been told by numerous financial experts that more stocks is riskier. But if you, that what they actually mean by that is that stocks are more volatile than bonds, it's going to be a bumpier ride. But what that actually does to the overall success rate, which is actually the amount of risk that you're facing, is it bumps it up again, not a ton, but from 68.3% to 69.8%. So I did that. And then going back to our earlier conversation, I wanted to factor in the effect of just earning a little bit of money later on in life after the kids leave the house.
Speaker0: So I had him earn $50,000 per year for two years, starting in 10 years after the kids left the house. And that bumped it up from the 69.8% up to 74.6%. So with making just a few little adjustments to the standard calculations that, I tried to be super conservative with, I was able to get his success rate up, from around 50% to around 75%. So.
Speaker0: I think that was potentially not too controversial what I did, but I think that drives home what we're talking about here and that the 50% standard calculation, You know, you got to keep in mind what your actual, the actual facts of your life are. And under the facts he gave us, I think the 50% is actually a really conservative, would be a really conservative number. And even using a bunch of additionally conservative, you know, assumptions, I was able to get him up to 75%. Of course, we caveated that all over the place in the email that like, this is his life and he has to make, you know, make his own determinations.
Speaker0: And we'll make that caveat again. But yeah.
Speaker1: Yeah. Yeah. Great points. And there's so many levers that you can, you know, move around. One question is the inheritance averages that you looked up. So what is the average age? And then what is.
Speaker0: It's like around 59. and then i mean the averages are so skewed because you know you have a few big inheritances so i went a little conservative but yeah around a hundred thousand and it's only 30 of americans who, receive an inheritance based on what i was just seeing online but, before you're like oh that's just like that doesn't apply to anyone those are just like the privileged 30 that's over 100 million americans so it's worth discussing um it's like we discuss college you know people discuss college openly and paying for college, but that's, you know, only about, I think it's only like 35,
Speaker0: somewhere between like 35 and 40% of Americans go to college or have a college degree. So, you still talk about factoring college when it affects a similar amount of people, similar rate of people. Talking about inheritance, I think, makes sense too. And pretending that inheritance doesn't exist, which is what a lot of the financial discussion does because, you know, know you can't count on it or whatever it is i think that's, i think that's very overly conservative you're going to end up working a lot more years, um than you have to if you just like think that you will definitely fall in the class of not receiving an inheritance and interesting we've even had some
Speaker0: not very wealthy family members die and it's interesting to see that they're even, when not wealthy family members die there's still a little bit like home equity or something like that that gets dispersed at the end.
Speaker1: Right. Yeah. And I was going to say, that would be a tough one, you know, but like anything, meaning it would be tough to plan for because obviously- hopefully you do not know when the person is going to die and people could live a long time. So it's like, oh, am I going to count on some amount of money when I'm 73? And then it's, I mean, it's so, yeah, again, we just have to make assumptions and be like, okay, like we'll make that person live to a hundred and then run the simulation from there. And then, you know, kind of figure it out. Do you have any suggestions on how one might plan it?
Speaker0: There's a big difference between being like i'm just gonna spend everything that i make and i'm gonna go buy the maserati and a lamborghini because i know when my parents die i'm gonna get a big paycheck so i don't need to be saving anything for retirement that's not what anton's doing here he's been saving aggressively, for retirement and we're just saying hey factor in the real you know the real possibility that you might be getting a, big chunk of money at some point in the future. And if you just pretend like that is definitely not going to happen, you're going to end up working a lot more years than you should.
Speaker0: And to Anton's concern, you might end up missing years with your kids at home, because you were being so conservative with your assumptions when you didn't have to be.
Speaker1: Let's move on to destigmatizing early access to retirement accounts. So... For us, I mean, through ignorance, we, I never tried to look up like, oh, can you access accounts sooner or whatever? And I was like, all right, we're not investing in those other accounts. We just did post-tax brokerage, which maybe not the best as far as like tax savings and optimization and maximum returns and all that. But it made it very flexible and it's very clear, like it has given us more options early on instead of having to do a little rejiggering. But let's talk about this.
Speaker0: Yeah. So, you know, there's this myth that like the 401k is forbidden before age 59 and a half. And I think this is probably comes down to my like legal training too. But I'm like, the law doesn't say you cannot access that money. But before 59 and a half, it says that there are consequences for doing it. Just like the law said, the law doesn't say you cannot commit murder. The law says that if you commit murder, it's a felony and you can potentially go to prison.
Speaker1: We're against murder, though, here on the Spotify podcast,
Speaker0: Just to be clear. Not condoning murder, but yeah. And as an attorney, I can't proactively advise anyone to go break the law, especially with murder. But no, but that's just not how the way laws are constructed. There's consequences for certain actions. The law can't stop you from actually doing anything. So like with the 401k, you know, the analogy extends to the 401k. And it's not that you can't access those funds early. Millions of people, probably millions of people every year access their 401k funds early. I had a friend at one of the law firms who took out his, drained his whole 401k to pay for his wedding.
Speaker0: So you can definitely access that money. That was probably not a wise one, but you can do it. The penalty for accessing funds early is a 10% income tax on top of the income tax that you pay for, you know, for just on withdrawing the funds generally, even the one that you would pay, the income taxes that you would pay if you access them after 59 and a half. But a 10% penalty is not the end of the world and it doesn't totally withdraw or it doesn't totally derail your early retirement plans. So I just offered a few ideas to Anton to help him kind of wrap his head around potentially paying a 10% penalty for early 401k access.
Speaker0: The first thing I said is that it's most likely you, it's almost certain that you made the right decision putting those funds in pre-tax, letting them grow and then paying the penalty to take them out. Almost certainly mathematically, it depends on what tax bracket you're in and whatnot. And we didn't get into all that with him. But that is your money ahead to put that money in and let it grow instead of putting that money in after you pay taxes on it, which would be the option if you didn't do the 401k. And then the other thing that I said is that, again, this does not totally derail your retirement plans.
Speaker0: So even if everything you took out was from a 401k and you paid the 10% penalty on everything, the effect of changing your withdrawal rate from like 4% to 4.4%, which is what the 10% penalty would effectively do, that would take you from a 95% chance of success to an 88% chance of success. So that's with the traditional 4% math. For his situation being at 6.25%, he goes to 6.875%. So that takes his initial standard calculation from 50.8% down to 44.4%. So it takes a big chunk out, a 6%. Chance of likelihood of success. But as we said, for some of the other factors we discussed earlier, his chances
Speaker0: of success were probably much higher than that 50.8% to be in with. And the other thing to keep in mind is this is the worst case if you're paying the penalty on absolutely everything. And with his wife being like pension eligible, that's cashflow that they could have coming in that would not be tied to 401k withdrawal. So wouldn't be incurring the penalty. So this is this big hit that you would have in your chances of success is not, you know, is not, would not be as big. And even if it, if it's the whole thing, it doesn't totally derail the plans. We're not saying it takes them down to a 25% chance of success in it.
Speaker0: Early retirement. And then the other thing that I told him, or the last thing I told him was just like, my relationship to federal taxes is just so much better now in retirement than it was when I was working. We had a pretty high federal tax rate. Now we pay nothing in federal taxes, and we get the ACA subsidy on top of that. So it actually feels like the federal government is giving us money at the end of the year even if we were to pay a 10 penalty on, in our current situation like our overall tax burden would be so low compared to what it was that i would not be, i would not be upset overall i'd still feel like i'm in a much better situation
Speaker0: than than i was while i was working so, hopefully that helps like de-stigmatize another one of those scary terms penalty, um i feel like people are going to just think i'm insane for saying like failure penalties and being terminated from employment are not are not scary things um i i know and i acknowledge that there's some, there's some legitimate concerns tied to all this but uh, but yeah it's not it's not the end of the world.
Speaker1: And then i'll mention uh 72t is an option as well i know that's a popular way to get money out. It's not overly complex, but there's some things that you can make mistakes on. Are kind of an issue. You still have to pay taxes, but you miss that 10% penalty. Yeah. So people consult your own professionals. Let's wrap her up. There's a couple other things that came out, I think with the email back and forth. So we have some sunk costs, we have housing, social friction. Do you want to drive this as well?
Speaker0: Well, the housing one is because he says he bought his current house before he knew about fire and it maybe locked him in a little bit. But I had a few thoughts on that. I mean, one of them would be while he's still working, he could try to refinance that if it's favorable to do so or take out a second mortgage. And that frees up liquidity then that would make his retirement situation better. And even that liquidity could avoid having to pull from the retirement accounts and could save him potentially from paying that penalty that we were just talking about. And then he does mention like his parents having, he anticipates his parents
Speaker0: having some pushback on this. You know, he says they lived more traditional life, worked, you know, worked until their 60s and things like that. And I think that's a hard one. But, you know, there's that book by Bronnie Ware, like the top five regrets of the dying. And the number one that they talk about is living, you know, people wish that they had lived a life that was consistent with their own values instead of the life that other people expected of them. And I think in my situation, I faced some similar concerns to what Anton expressed. And.
Speaker0: To do such a big thing that I knew I was doing because it was consistent with my own values, it's been a really game changer for life. And now I feel like when I go into every decision-making process, I feel like I'm more trying to make the decision that's consistent with my own values and not just doing what other people are expecting me to do. So, I think that's a tough one, the one that he, the one that he raised, but it's one I've wrestled with and I've actually found it to be, very helpful to wrestle with it and push back against it and i hopefully will avoid having that regret at the at the end of life that a lot of other people face.
Speaker1: Do you have any tips for people that are facing that again either with family friends um you know just
Speaker0: Overall it's better to face i would just say i read tolst leo tolstoy book this summer um he puts it pretty well so i'll I'll pull from this a little bit, but, I would say the general idea is it's better to ask these questions now than to ask them on your deathbed where you're going to be filled with regret. And so, the Tolstoy book I read was the death of Ivan Ilyich. And Ivan Ilyich is an attorney, so it's like felt more apt to me too. But he's basically lived his life going through, through making every decision based on what people are supposed to do with their lives in his society. And then he gets to the end of his life and he actually starts questioning things
Speaker0: for the first time. And he's like, did I just fuck up my whole life? And the conclusion he comes to is like, yeah, I kind of did. So, you're going to be faced with this question at some point in your life. I think it's better to be asking it proactively as you go along. And that's just not my input that's you know leo tolstoy's input as well so you know.
Speaker1: Yeah. Ain't no shortcuts on that. I mean, it's going to be an abstrust to relationships, potentially, and that sort of thing.
Speaker0: No, it's not an easy thing to do, for sure. Do you feel like actually making a decision to retire early has opened up things for you?
Speaker1: I think for whatever reason, I had maybe like a good, whatever attitude that you're saying is going to work in this situation where I'm like, I'm kind of doing my own thing, even though it's against the grain. I kind of had that attitude since I was a kid. So I think it was just kind of natural where I'm like, I don't really give a fuck what other people think. Luckily, my parents were very supportive. So like when I did some of my adventures where I'm like, I need a break from college. I'm going to come out here to the Rocky Mount National Park and work out here instead of getting like an internship.
Speaker1: They were like great mountains are awesome can we come to visit um so they were super supportive and i didn't have any like friction when i got laid off and i was like oh yeah i'm gonna work on some stuff uh online they were like great sounds good like that's fantastic so very lucky in that respect and then from you know my mental state in general like once i stopped you know living someone else's life the corporate world i was like this is much better like i'm so much happier like making my own decisions and the autonomy is really good for me and i think i mean Like we mentioned in the quiet quitting but even working for myself i was like
Speaker1: oh i don't even like the structure that i've put around myself and i want to stop doing that which is like i'm rebelling against myself, which is silly. Yeah. Yeah. So overall it suits me fine. And it is interesting. Maybe the topic we can cover in the future, just like people that are driven enough to retire early often like are motivated and they want to do more. And I'm pretty content not doing all that much. I think you and I are similar in that way. Like we have a lot of leisure activity and interest in and our own passions that we spend time on. But from the work perspective where people are like, I want to be a productive
Speaker1: member of society, I don't get that that much.
Speaker0: No, I don't feel that, yeah, that urge at all, yeah.
Speaker1: I mean, I used to, I think I used to say that kind of thing. And then now I've seen the light. I shouldn't be wasting my time on that stuff.
Speaker0: Do you feel like that independent spirit has served you well in life?
Speaker1: Yeah. I mean, I'm super happy, so I can't think of any other way.
Speaker0: Yeah. I've lived both where I didn't have the trust in myself or whatever, or my own internal compass that guided me. I was more trying to check boxes and achieve the traditional success a lot early on. And now the weights have fallen from my eyes and I've been able to see the different path. And God, I mean, day to day, and then also just like looking back at how the years pass, I'm just so much happier with how life is going with that outlook, as opposed to trying to figure out how to win by external scorecards.
Speaker1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's another, again, we got a couple topics left to talk about it later, but just, yeah, the external validation kind of stuff, I like very, I distance myself. I'm like, so much of this stuff is outside of my control. And I don't want to, you know, count on that for me feeling happy or good. Of course, there's some stuff you can't get away from, which I can't think of. But obviously, like, you have to interact with people and that is important. But at the same time, I'm like, oh, yeah, the corporate structure around it was no good. No good for me. Anyway. All right. What else do we need to cover here before we wrap it up?
Speaker0: I feel like this is like, these are all minor points now based off of like our, our deep thoughts. So maybe we'll just leave it with our, with our deep thoughts banter. Yeah.
Speaker1: Very good. And I think, again, we'll refresh the idea. Like what is FI actually for? Like we're deep in the numbers, we're deep in the spreadsheets. We love to see the higher percentage success rate, but really it's like more of the, you know, the softer metrics that are much harder to measure. And I think we need to think about that, especially when it's like, okay, you have a family, you have X number of years where you're going to be able to spend time and, and then they're out of the house.
Speaker0: So, yeah. And I think asking these uncomfortable questions and maybe living with a little bit of that uncomfort of the uncertainty of not having the full mathematical, certainty of success, you know, maybe that doesn't feel great. But I think the alternative of just like burying your head in the sand and never asking these questions is not going to make you happier. I think that's going to lead to a life of regret. So regardless of what Anton decides to do in this exact situation, I think just even the fact that he's going through this process of at least asking this question and being willing to think about things a little bit differently and independently,
Speaker0: I think that will serve him well and be less likely to lead to some of those regrets later on in life.
Speaker1: If you want your question on, just shoot us an email. There'll be a link in the description. And if you want to have a priority, you could support us over at Buy Me a Coffee. It helps keep the lights on and pay for posting and all that stuff. So thanks, Rusty.
Speaker0: Appreciate it. Thanks, Zach.
Speaker1: Thanks a lot for listening to the show. Remember, it's not advice. We hope it was entertaining. If you did enjoy the show, leave a review over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or subscribe wherever you can and if you didn't like the show sorry to hear that but maybe you could tell an enemy someone you don't like too much get them to check out the show and at least you know you're paying it for thanks a lot we'll catch you on the next episode
Speaker1: yesterday i bought a blu-ray player so we haven't had a dvd or like disc device in a very long time like 10 years or more and um where'd
Speaker0: You have to go to get that.
Speaker1: 2006 i know right well elizabeth i i mentioned it earlier in the day and i like we've talked about it for a long time because we have a handful maybe like i don't know 10 or 20 dvds left that we didn't get rid of when we moved and i've talked about it. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure I can go to like Goodwill and get one and won't be too much. And then I occasionally would like look on Amazon and they're like a hundred bucks or so. And she was like, you know, you've mentioned this so many times, like, go ahead and just get order one today. And, um, I mean, Amazon's a fucking mess, right? So you go on and I'm like,
Speaker1: I don't know which ones are quality. There's so many different ones. So I just did a light amount of research. And then I think, um, I didn't want to burn too much time so basically i ended up getting one it's a blu-ray with like the ultra hd so it can play 4k because i was like it seemed like there was a distinction between the 1080 and the 4k and i thought it would maybe like 20 or 30 dollars more but it's like another it's like another tier uh above so it was like 300 bucks and it was and i ended up ordering it from walmart which also had free shipping instead of amazon because i think it was like shipping faster i can't remember
Speaker1: i like looked a little bit and i'm like i'm already burning too much time on this fucking thing so anyway it was an odd enough purchase that um the credit card denied the purchase because i like had to add a new card to walmart um and we had a card compromise like not too long ago so i had to add a new card and they flagged it and elizabeth like called me i was out for a walk and she was like hey did you did you did you order from walmart which she didn't know and she was like was it 300 and whatever dollars and i was like yep and she was like that that's georgie uh licking herself and hacking up uh behind the scenes here there's she's chasing
Speaker1: her hey don't knock over a guitar girl i wish we had like a we need a georgie cam hey she's chasing her tail which she hey actually georgie georgie you're gonna georgie come here what are you doing come on everything's fine you're okay come here let's Just right there.
Speaker0: We saw some tension there. You know, you had to choose between your priorities of Georgie and the guitars. And you're like, Georgie, love you and everything. But yeah, if you're going to bump into a guitar.
Speaker1: Yeah. At least do the metal one, not the hundred-year-old wood one that'll fall apart. Anyway. Got the dvd player um everything seems fine um hooked it up and uh you know it worked so anyway that's a big step and i know um like the library has dvds and i think you do that other friend tyler does that um and i i mean elizabeth volunteers at the library so i'm like oh yeah like we could watch a bunch so anyway What kind of
Speaker0: Device do you have when you watch? The library is fantastic. And yeah, I mean, it probably, even the $300 player can pay for itself. It is funny though, because you notice that there's like definitely a fall off in terms of like the years of coverage that they have, where it's like, even, you know, my joke earlier about, getting the DVD player from 2006, it's like you go to look for at the movies and it's like things that were really popular 20 years ago. It's like anchorman and wedding crashers and things like that and then you look for like the you know the movies that were nominated for oscars the past year
Speaker0: and you see like there's like one or two of them so yeah.
Speaker1: But so interesting yeah um
Speaker0: The credit card getting denied kind of remind me i love it when the credit card company is like this isn't doug like, this what is this he's buying something from walmart and it's a dvd player like this is this is clearly fraud um I had one when I was living in Chicago, a friend and I went to like Southern Indiana to go look at like fall foliage, just like a romantic trip. And I went into the gas station there and got like two donuts and a coffee or something like that. And my credit card company shut down my card immediately. So it's like in Chicago, I'd go do spendy meals occasionally. It'd be like, go to a Michelin star restaurant.
Speaker0: The credit card company is like, that's fine. That's rusty. And then it's like, I go to buy a donut and coffee at a gas station in Southern Indiana. And they're like, that's not rusty. This is fraud. Someone's clearly stolen his card. He would never do this based on his spending history.
Speaker1: Doesn't add up. And they shut it down.
Speaker0: They shut it down.
Speaker1: When luckily for ours yesterday, I was just like, this seems suspicious. Is this uh you so she was able to like authorize it must have been in some pending state or something like that but um anyway yeah it was a it was a big step and i think probably or do you have any opinions on the 4k versus the 1080 was i right to go up to the 4k
Speaker0: I think as long as you're doing it i think i think going for it makes yeah yeah it's worthwhile have you watched anything yet or do you have plans to watch anything.
Speaker1: We um we started watching what did i put on dumb and
Speaker1: One of the ones that I kept around, like I said, I got rid of a bunch of them back in the day. And I was like, oh, this will be a good one. Let's watch a few minutes. And I remember you told me that when they go to Aspen in the movie, it's actually Breckenridge. Yep yeah so i was i was like i fast forwarded to that part since we were just up there and i was like oh yeah is that i i couldn't quite place it there's a couple corners um where i'm like oh i think i kind of remember that building but of course it's like 30 years ago
Speaker0: Right yeah no the barber shop i go to in um breckenridge they have a photo up of like because they're in the background of one of the shots in demo and i was like is this photoshopped and they're like no they and they got super excited i think they have the picture up yeah and they're so specifically for people to ask about it and they're like no it was actually filmed here so that's awesome and then yeah i uh, got it fast forwarded to the aspen scenes yeah part of them are filmed in uh estes park uh, the hotel stanley where the shining was also filmed as the hotel that they stay at in dumb and dumber yeah.
Speaker1: Yeah yep yep okay
Speaker0: Very cool was it was it amazing watching it in 4k Dumber Dumber.
Speaker1: It, yeah, the answer has to be yes. But of course, you know, whatever, that was old DVD. So I don't think, like it upscales properly. I may have to change the setting on the TV, blah, I don't know. It should be fine. But I'm sure the only, probably the only way I'll really be able to tell the difference is if I get like the more expensive Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray, whatever. Otherwise, I'm sure it's just like normal. yeah which i don't know do you just have a normal player
Speaker0: Yeah okay so.
Speaker1: Okay cool
