The 3-Day Workweek Blueprint: How to Buy Back 104 Days a Year | Andy Hill

Andy Hill (0:00)

I remember speaking with a hospice doctor about regrets that people had at the end of their lives, and a lot of the regrets that kept coming back were, I wish I wouldn't have spent so much time working at my job, or working in general. What else is out there besides worker? Like, let's find it and have some fun while doing it.

Tyler Gardner (0:22)

Hello, friends. This is Tyler Gardner welcoming you to another episode of Your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing. So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be. Today's guest is someone I owe a serious debt of gratitude to. And I don't mean the 22% APR kind. Andy Hill hosts the podcast Marriage, Kids and Money, and thankfully for me, for people who just are obsessed with reading and love everything about personal finance, he's got a book coming out January 21st with Wiley called Own Your Time, which I have read and I think is a must read for everyone. But here's why this conversation matters to me. Andy was one of the very first people to take me seriously when I was just starting out in this space. Back when I was creating content in my basement, zero followers wondering if anyone would ever care about index funds and compound interest. Andy was willing to completely nerd out with me about personal finance for hours and invited me on his show to share as much as I could about the finance industry. He didn't have to do that, but he did. And honestly, I wouldn't be here without conversations like those. So in this conversation, we talk about finding the middle path between retiring at 30 after saving 90% of your income and grinding it out in the corporate world until you're 70 We explore why it's so important to spend a few minutes each day dreaming about what you actually want to do with your life, and why it's equally important to identify as early and as often as possible, what you don't want to do with your time and your money. For a highly practical, engaging, and action-oriented money playbook from one of my single favorite voices in this space, I give you my conversation with Andy Hill.

I'm going to start with just the punchline because you currently are basically living what at least I would dub a dream life of working 20 to 25 hours a week. Your wife's working part-time as an esthetician, and you're both financially secure enough that you're not losing sleep over money. I'm even going to pause there and just let that one sink in with the audience for a minute. But tell me this, how old are you, and how the heck did you pull this off without winning the lottery or selling a tech company?

Andy Hill (2:56)

I love that. Both of us are 43 Yes, it took about 10, 15 years for us to figure it out. But really, at the end of the day, we went from working two full corporate jobs, as well as being married and having two kids, and just kind of looking at each other and being like, is this how life is supposed to be? This feels like a trap and it feels like we can't breathe. So how do we move to something that just feels a little bit more natural and allowing us to breathe? So we wanted to create a life that felt like that. And to us, working part time, working a few days a week, still allow us to make money and do work that we enjoy, and also be able to breathe, take care of our health, take care of our marriage. It's a wild concept, but we wanted to put that out there as our North Star. And so in between year and year 15, we had to do a lot of steps that helped us to continue to move in that direction. It wasn't overnight, but as you know, taking 1% improvements over time can move mountains.

Tyler Gardner (4:06)

What were some of those improvements? So yeah, tell me a little bit about from the moment that you decided, I'm kind of done with this, or at least I want to challenge this corporate world to when you have lived into the description that I just read before. What were some of the steps you took annually to get to this place where you feel, again, you're able to sleep, you're financially secure, and you work less than all of us and have four day weekends?