Johnny FD: FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) for digital nomads [Nomad Summit 2020]
This past weekend in Chiang Mai, Thailand, was the 8th Nomad Summit.
I attended the full conference day on Saturday & then taught a writing workshop on Monday.
Below are my notes from Johnny FD’s talk at the conference (and he’s also the organizer).
For an overall review of the Nomad Summit event, venue, high-level takeaways, book recommendations, and links to all the other speaker notes I took, check out my main review:
- FIRE = Financial Independence (and option to) Retire Early
- If you had to stop working tomorrow, how many months would you be able to live your current lifestyle?
- Lifestyle creep = the more you make, the more you spend
- Rich vs wealthy = big difference
- Expand network to get to know people with more assets & wealth
- What do we actually want? We think we want things that money can buy us (clothes, car, status, etc), but freedom really makes us happy (time, resources, etc)
- Have enough income to pay your expenses with the rest of your life without having to be employed or depend on others
- Financial Freedom = Income > Expenses
- Working = trading time for money, so if you stop working, you stop having money
- Johnny previously focused on passive income streams = has a YouTube talk on his 18 passive income streams
- Most thing people think of as passive income is not truly passive because they slowly dry up over time because it stops getting traction if you don’t keep updating it
- Truly passive income usually comes from money (money makes money)
- Active = freelancing, consulting, marketing, teaching, hourly, etc
- Semi-passive = books, royalties, youtube, courses, ecomm, FBA, apps, affiliates, merch
- Truly passive = stocks, bonds, index funds, dividends, interest, real estate, REITs, money
- Must evaluate short term wants & comforts vs longterm needs
- Financial Independence goal = monthly spending x 12 x 25 (ex: $5000 x 12 x 25 = $1.5M goal savings)
- Once you hit your goal (ex: $1.5M) then you can retire & live off a 4% draw ($60K / year, or $5000 / month)
Johnny is both practical & inspirational, which I really respect & appreciate. One of his main messages is for people to use their skills to get started, build what they can, then pass it on to the next person or business or collaborate with someone to take it to the next level.
He even took the concept of “passive income” up, which I thought was great because people believe that they can make money without doing anything and that’s not accurate. Even if something sells without you selling it in that moment, it still requires upfront & ongoing work.
I also liked that he straight up called people out for not being smart about math & getting into dumb, bad circumstances (like celebrities spending all their money & going broke). Math and budgeting are so important! Don’t be afraid of spreadsheets, yall.
Katherine Conaway is a digital nomad, working remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014.
