The Simple Path to F-You Money | JL Collins

JL Collins (0:00)

Market crashes are inevitable. The trigger is always something different. They're pretty rare. If you're going to invest in equities, you have to understand that every now and again, it's going to get very ugly. If you live in Florida, you have to understand that every now and again, a hurricane is going to come through. And it's very scary, and it's potentially dangerous, especially if you run outside to panic. But if you hunker down and wait, the storm blows over and the sunshine comes out, and the birds sing again.

Tyler Gardner (0:31)

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 whose work has quietly and profoundly shaped the way an entire generation thinks about money and investing. JL Collins is the author of The Simple Path to Wealth, one of the most enduring personal finance books of the last decade. What JL offers isn't just a strategy, it's a philosophy. It's a way of seeing money not as the goal, but as a tool, a means to time, freedom, and agency. Long before the FIRE movement had a name, JL was already practicing its core principle, that financial independence is not about retiring early, but about reclaiming your ability to say no. In today's conversation, we go back to the moments that shaped that conviction. From asking for a four-month leave just two years into his first job, to making what he calls the best purchase of his life, convincing his wife to leave her job while he had no paycheck, JL has consistently chosen freedom over convention. We talk about what it was like to live through Black Monday in 1987 as a young investor. We talk about index funds, volatility, parenting, and why when faced with complexity, his answer has always been the same. Simplify. And his advice, total stock market fund and chill, may sound simple, but the thinking behind it is anything but casual. We'll explore how he arrived at that clarity, why his core beliefs haven't changed in nearly a decade, and what he hopes still holds true 30 years from now. In a world chasing the complicated, JL Collins remains a voice of radical simplicity and clarity. Because sometimes the most powerful truths are the simplest ones. It is my great privilege to offer you an extended conversation with JL Collins. Building off of the introduction in The Simple Path to Wealth, you mentioned something that resonated with me when I was only 23 years old. And you mentioned that to you, the pursuit of financial independence has never been about retirement. Instead, you say that it's been about having options and the ability to say no. Can you take me through when that concept first clicked for you?

JL Collins (3:16)

I had never heard of the concept of financial independence, let alone FIRE, which is Financial Independence Retire Early, until after I started writing my blog in 2011 I think listeners need to appreciate that when I was doing this, there was no internet in my youth. There were no computers for that matter. So I was kind of wandering in the wilderness. I had no idea that there were other people who thought the way I did. I wanted to have what I thought of as FU. Money in the day, because I'd come across that term in a James Clavell novel that I'd read in the early 70s. I had watched my dad, who was a heavy cigarette smoker, develop emphysema, and he had been a successful guy. He was self-employed, but as the disease progressed and it debilitated him, it also debilitated his earning ability. Our family went from very comfortable circumstances to very uncomfortable circumstances. My dad was not a saver and investor, and we paid the price for that. That's what put in my mind, that I never wanted to be dependent on my ability to earn in order to pay my bills. So that's what I set out to accomplish. When I came out of college in the 70s, it was a really nasty economic time. So it took me two years to get my first professional job, but once I did, I just arbitrarily decided I wanted to save and invest half of my income, which was $10,000 a year in those days. And I knew I could live on $5,000 because I knew people who were doing it. But moreover, it was a whole lot more than the money I'd been making doing landscaping between graduation and getting that job. And that was a whole lot more than I've been living out in college. Living on half my income was a step up in my lifestyle.