Hi Purple. Please tell us about yourself and how your money story began.

I’m “Purple” and I’m a black woman who works in marketing. I write about my journey to retire this year at the age of 30 over at APurpleLife.com. My money story began when I was a child. I was originally raised by a single mom and didn’t feel deprived, but also didn’t get the sense that we could make it rain.

When I was 8 my Mom remarried and I gained two step-siblings. In my youth I was actually a bank for them because I saved the money that we received for chores and they…didn’t. I was actually a horrible bank and one of my step-siblings still owes me $50 – maybe I could retire off of that interest alone 🙂 .

As for that chore money, I was paid $1 per chore, but when I originally went to my Mom to collect I received $0.70 and asked her what happened. She said “taxes and social security” and so as a child I learned that the world is full of trickery! Kidding – as a result of my Mom’s openness about financial topics I learned about them and how the monetary world worked from a young age.

What or who influenced the way you see money?

My Mom definitely influenced me for the reasons I mentioned above and because I learned examples of what is important in life by watching her. She has always been frugal, at first by necessity and later by choice. She is very intentional with what she spends money on. Early in my life that was only my education and later, once she had more cash flow after the kids were out of the house, that expanded to include luxury vacations.

In contrast, she has never and still doesn’t spend money on things that others might value, such as fancy clothes, shoes, purses or make up, but she does splurge on the things she’s determined makes her happy. I carry a similar outlook with me – I’m completely happy spending money if it’s worth it to me, but it has to pass that test first

What type of investing strategy did you follow to reach your goal of retiring early? (stocks, IRA, index funds, real estate)

I have a very simple investing strategy: 100% in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSAX). I’m a huge proponent of index funds because of their ability to beat individual stock picking and managed mutual funds after you account for their exorbitant fees. And to be honest, I also like this strategy because it’s simple and I’m lazy 🙂 . I hold my stock index funds in a 401(k), Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs and a taxable account.

What are your views on side hustles and passive income? Did they play a part in your financial journey?

I’m all about truly passive income like stock dividends, but I don’t find basically anything else to actually be passive. Even rental properties involve work to maintain or even to manage the management company who is dealing with them.

Overall though I’m too lazy to have a side hustle 🙂 . I work 40-70 hours a week at my full-time job and maintaining that, my relationship, my friendships and my blog is challenging enough for me. And no I don’t count my blog as a side hustle because I define a side hustle as something you do with the goal of making money from it. My blog has never turned a profit and that was never my goal for writing it anyway.

What was/were your biggest money mistake(s)?

I think my biggest money mistake was believing my company when they said I could only pick from a few specific funds for my 401(k). These funds were given to us by the company’s financial advisor so of course they were the funds with high fees and loads grrr!

It turns out that I could have picked any fund the investment company offered (which included thousands of them instead of the handful we were told) and saved a shitton of money over the 4 years I’ve been with this company. I’m still very pissed about the situation :), but I am glad I learned about this so I can warn others to not believe their company when they present only a few funds and are invested in one of the major investment companies that offer thousands.

How do people respond when you tell them you will be retiring at 30 years old?

They say “cool” and move on. I’ve never had a negative or weird reaction to it and I tell everyone about it if they ask. I’ve heard that getting weird reactions is normal for other people, but have never had that myself. I don’t really know why, but I speculate that it’s because I’m always doing something wild in my life, such as moving across the country to a place my partner had never visited or flying international first class for free with travel reward points, so maybe my friends and family are used to it.

What was the biggest challenge you faced on your financial journey?

I think moving across the country without a place to live, a job, family or really friends was the hardest part of this journey. I did all my research before we picked where we would move from NYC based on math and just gut feeling and that stuff made sense, but it was still a huge and scary change.

I was leaving the best job I’d ever found and the best boss I’d ever had, to venture into the unknown without knowing if I would even like it on the west coast. Luckily, it all worked out and I have absolutely loved living in Seattle. I’m going to miss it when we leave in September.

What do you plan on doing once you’re retired? What do you enjoy doing for fun?

Originally I was going to spend more time with the people I love and explore the world, but ‘Rona has cancelled the second part, which I’m definitely not complaining about in the grand scheme of things.

Only 1 of my 2 retirement goals have a short and unknown time limit so I’m happy I’ll get to start my retirement more slowly with unlimited time with the people I love and save exploring the world for a later date.

How has the Coronavirus epidemic affected your retirement plans if at all?

Besides cancelling the travel plans I had booked to Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Thailand, it surprisingly hasn’t. I assessed in March when the market was crashing and the US was starting to take this pandemic seriously if I still wanted to quit in September or if I wanted to hang on longer because of the uncertainty of what was happening.

I decided to stay the course for a lot of reasons that I outline in this post. Basically the math still works and things are looking better than projected even when the market was crashing.

Overall though this pandemic has surprisingly solidified my decision to quit my job because now more than ever there is no guarantee that the people I love – the reason I want to retire – will actually be alive or able-bodied when this dust settles so I refuse to spend more time than necessary on conference calls when I could be spending it being fully present with them.

What advice would you give to people starting off on their FIRE journey?

I’d give pretty standard advice: Analyze your spending and test out what you can cut without decreasing your standard of living. I was surprised to find that there was a lot I could cut when I originally rejected the idea.

For example, I changed my phone service to save $75/month without a change to my life. I also taught myself to cook and started having people over for dinner parties instead of rushed Manhattan dinners that also happen to be 5x the price and enjoyed myself exponentially more. There are usually things you can experiment with and cut without negatively impacting your life and if you do so you could cut years off of your working career.

What are some simple things anyone can do to get out of debt?

To be honest, I have no idea. I’ve been very lucky that I’ve never had debt so I don’t feel qualified to answer that.

Is there anything else you would like to share with my readers? How can they get in touch with you?

Figure out what you want in life and go after it. Don’t be afraid of what other people will think because they will judge you regardless so you might as well do what you want. That’s it 🙂 .

If you’re interested in following my journey to and through early retirement you can find me at: