Ali & Josh’s Story: From broke and in debt to real estate investors

One couple that truly found financial success is Ali and Josh from the FI Couple. Ali and Josh are a power couple! They are real estate investors, financial educators, and all-around great people to grab a beer with and talk finances. Today, Ali and Josh share their inspiring story of how they went from broke and in debt to real estate investors. Are there any couples out there? You're going to want to tune into this one. Episode Link: https://www.theficouple.com/ https://www.instagram.com/theficouple/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by Josh and Ali of the FI Couple and they're going to be talking to us about their journey to financial independence, and all of the wins and losses that they've occurred along that path. So let's get into it.   Ali, and Josh, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I appreciate you coming on.   Ali: Thanks so much for having us. We're really excited to finally quote unquote, meet.   Michael: I know, I know and so for anyone who doesn't know ally, Josh and I are friends from the innerwebs that we get together face to face and you all kind of have an alter ego online. Tell us a little bit about that, what's it called and what is it you guys we're doing real estate?   Ali: Yeah, so our Alter Ego is the DI couple which is short for financial independence and although we are not financially independent, yet, it's a really big thing that we're working towards. That is a huge part of our life and a big piece of the FI Couple is not necessarily being up on the mountain top and making it but showing the everyday journey of the everyday person getting there the ups downs, and all the way in between.   Josh: About 16 months ago or so we were kind of running the numbers and by we, I mean, I was like, you know, we're, we're kind of like 50% or so fie and we had a lot of time on our hands because we were in lockdown, like so much of the world and Ali had the idea to start a social media platform, which I thought was a terrible idea because if you knew us in real life, neither one of us are overly active in social media. But yeah, it was the idea of we're not there yet. But we've learned a lot in the two or three years that we've been doing this and maybe we could bring some value to people who are just starting out like we were just a few years ago.   Michael: I love that I saw this. I think it was a tick tock or real online and it was talking about van life and I lived in a van full time with my wife and dog for about eight months and everyone's like, it's so glorious. You wake up to these beautiful landscapes and so someone made a joke, like they woke up, poured their coffee and then open their van door and was a Home Depot parking lot. I was like, yeah, like I've done that tons of times, like, it's not always as glamorous as the social media makes it out to be. So I love that fact. I love you guys are doing that. So walk us back to when you started this journey into fire when you started really paying attention to your finances, what was going on your lives and what made you want to make a change?   Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so it's like the quote is like necessity is the mother of invention kind of thing. We, Ali had just graduated from her master's program in 2017 and we were like one year away from getting married and we hadn't ever talked about money or anything like that prior to that. So we started having those conversations.   Ali: And that year, we were like, this is going to be our year for the first time in our relationship. We were both dual income, like solid incomes for what we were making at the time. We were planning our wedding and this was going to be it.   Josh: So it was at that point that it was like well, it was the act of planning for a wedding and figuring out how much that cost that led us to wonder like, How much money do we have in savings? What's our savings rate? What are our bills, it just kind of went down that rabbit hole and that was also like the first time we really started tallying up like all the student loan and car loan and credit card debt that we had, that we had always kind of known about, but never really looked at it, as you know, just kind of put it under the rug, if you will and that was when we realized, like we have over $100,000 in debt. We're not really making a whole lot of money. We have no idea how we're going to afford a wedding and we were both burnt out already in the jobs that we were working.   Ali: So we had done that basic research, we're starting to talk about finance more, but not really to be honest and then the year of 2018, the year of our wedding, Josh gets laid off from what he thought was his forever employer and we now went from like a pretty modest two income household to a one income household and we realized just how shaky things got in a moment and it was completely out of our control our lives were in someone else's control. So that was really terrifying. But having that crisis is Josh alluded to earlier is really what kind of put us in the corner and was like you're either going to figure this out sink or swim,   Michael: So, what did you do? You clearly are swimming…   Josh: Yeah. Luckily, and I had no idea like I was getting fired. In hindsight, I was like, yeah, I kind of make sense. But like we had started, I had started, it was like you have debt. So I went to the internet, I was like, Well, how not to have debt and so I first discovered the Dave Ramsey methodology, if you will and I was like, nice, we're just going to sell everything and we're going to eat rice and beans and that's what we're going to do and that lasted probably about like two months, and we were even more burned out. So I was like, so I went back to the internet and I said, okay, what's a better way to not have debt and just through just through the act of that, I started to kind of learning a little bit more personal finance. But that was actually when I stumbled upon biggerpockets.com. I had never envisioned us being like real estate investors or anything and that's when I discovered that and then the concept of house hacking, which was, you know, I didn't know a lot about real estate, but I was like, well, that seems like pretty interesting. Like, we could buy a house that has another house, and that person's will pay for most of ours and we'll save a lot of money, like it seemed really simple and so that kind of led us get down that path of beginning to plan for real estate.   Michael: Love it and so at the time, did you own your house? Were you renting walk us through kind of what that looked like?   Ali: So we were renting we were renting, I'm putting it in air quotes, a luxury one bedroom apartment, there was probably more than we realistically could afford at the time. But like, that's what you do, you get a nice place to live. So that's where we were living we were paying about, I would say like 13 a month before utilities or any of that type of stuff and Josh proposes let's house hack, let's buy a duplex and be landlords and I thought he had lost his mind. I, you know, like, I thought it was a really horrible idea, a really crazy idea and neither of us are handy. Neither of us have backgrounds in real estate or anything like that. So it felt like this really, really scary and radical idea.   Michael: Awesome and so what did you do next? Did you end up buying the duplex or did you get Josh's?   Josh: Oh, yes, a lot. Well, so yeah, so I got fired in January of 18 and then I was like, well, we still have a wedding to plan for. So I started driving for Uber and when I wasn't transporting people, but even like, sometimes when I was transporting people, I was just listening to BiggerPockets Podcast and I was just like, I don't know how we're going to buy real estate. But like, what we're doing right now definitely doesn't work. So we're going to find out a way so I was just like studying as much as I could from podcasts.   Ali: So, the Cliff's Notes version is we were relentlessly looking at real estate. We went to showings all the time, we drove for dollars, every spare moment, to really better understand opportunities in our area in terms of houses. We settled on like a city and we started putting in offers, and this was probably like, two months before our wedding and we were getting out there left and right. We were tiny fish in a big ocean and we weren't like sexy buyers. We were like, we have a 5% conventional loan and we need Max seller concessions because we're broke and we're scraping together every dollar we have. So we really worked hard to try to get that first deal. I think a month before the wedding, we press pause, because I'm like there's not going to be a wedding if we keep looking for properties right now. But then we skip the honeymoon and we ended up finding a duplex a few weeks after our wedding that we put an offer on it got accepted and the rest is history.   Michael: Oh my gosh. So did you skip the honeymoon because of finances or because you didn't want to leave to go then not be able to search properties in person?   Ali: I think a little bit of both but I think the real reality was we didn't have a lot of money. We were like neither of us ever made more than 50,000 in our career and at that time, we were making far less. So we were very intentional with the amount of money that we had and how we could best use it. So we could spend a few 1000 on a honeymoon or we could scrape together a few 1000 and buy a duplex that would allow us to reduce our cost of living, thus pay off our debt more expeditiously.   Michael: I love it, so walk us through the numbers on that first duplex. What did you buy it for? What was your housing payment and then what is it rent for?   Josh: Yeah, so and this was nice, too. This was our first off market deal. So we didn't have any other competition besides us and we were super flexible with the sellers. They needed a really long closing period and so we were happy to accommodate but the duplex was 158,000 It was 5% down. So with closing costs all in it was $14,200. We had $3,000 concessions at closing to help offset some of that and the total monthly payment on that was 13-180 and the unit we were moving into was really nice. There's a big three bedroom, one bath and there was a guy living upstairs in the second unit paying 725 a month and we moved in like the week of Christmas, I think it was 2018.   Michael: And so that you still have that tenant up there paying 725?   Ali: So he actually left in that unit was far below market, he was a great tenant, but he got married and decided to move in with his partner, which is understandable. But when he left, we did some like modest upgrades on the apartment and ended up raising the rent to like 925. So then our cost of living went down even more, which was really cool. So we've had a really great experience with that we lived in that unit for about a year and a half and then Josh got the idea what why don't we house hack again Ali, which I again, thought he was crazy but somehow, you know, we decided to do this and we ended up finding another off market duplex only six houses down from the first one, which was really convenient.   Josh: Because it was like really inspiring to see we went from like $1,300 a month, I think down to like little over 400 and neither one of us, were making much money. So that was like a huge win for us and it was really inspiring to see while we were saving money every single month, we have gotten rid of car payments. Now we're paying off a lot big chunks of student loans all throughout 2019 plus also like learning real estate, learning how to be a landlord, etc. So, but we were still paying like $400 a month. And I was like, Well, if we do it again, we'll be paying $0 a month. So we went into 2020 light guns ablaze, and we're gonna buy another deal and then obviously, like the world shut down and so it wasn't really until maybe like, may or may be the end of April that I was like, you know, I think I think it's going to be all right, we should still try to push forward with that and I'm always networking, whether it's in person or social media, we found another investor on our street who explained to us that he had a problem and he needed to sell a property and we were like, We'll buy your property, just don't tell anybody else about it and we closed on that, I think September of 2020 and moved in a week later.   Michael: Oh my gosh. Okay and so give us the numbers on that one and then let us know to what you rented out your unit for that you had moved out of?   Josh: Yeah, so that one was even better. So that was 150,000 but it appraised for 168. So we had some really nice equity walking in, we use three and a half percent down FHA all in was $13,200 and so we moved into the downstairs unit, the upstairs was already rented for I think 975 and then we rented our former unit out for 1350, which was pretty cool, because the mortgage was like 1380.   Ali: So that one unit essentially like covered the mortgage. So the numbers on that were really awesome and by moving into the second one, you know, the cash flow from property one covered our cost of living for property to so we were essentially living for free, which was our goal when we first started this so that was a big milestone for us.   Michael: Oh, that is amazing. Well, I love it. I love in the first one that you're caught your tenants rent didn't cover your entire mortgage payment because as you can probably attest to end the house hacking community. Everyone says, oh, you gotta cover you live for free, cover all your expenses and if you like, that doesn't always work out. That's not always possible in some markets. So what was that like for you guys? Knowing that, hey, we still have a housing expense, and we're house hacking. Did you ever feel like you were doing it wrong?   Ali: I love that you're saying this because this was such a sticking point for us because I think in the community that is such a thing, like live for free or bust and that was definitely something that Josh often said, like, we're living for free. Like that's what the people do on bigger pockets and we're gonna do it too.   Michael: That's what the internet says…   Ali: That's what the internet told me like success means. So the problem was when we went to the house isn't toward them, those houses, we live for free, and there were murders on that street. We, you know, we met prospective tenants and they were slamming doors in our face and I remember our real estate agent at the time was like, do you want to collect rent from that person? I was like, No, I really do not want to collect rent from that person. So I think it is, especially with house hack important to think what is my quality of life going to be because real estate investing inherently makes your life more complicated. There's more moving pieces, there's more challenges. So do you want to live in a place where you don't feel safe and you're miserable and your life is more complicated? I think that is how new investors be Come no longer investors very quickly. So, you know, in our relationship, Josh is 100% the numbers guy and make sure it works but for me, it was more of that qualitative of like quality of life and making sure it was realistic for us and I think we found a nice compromise.   Michael: Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense and that's so often what I've seen with couples who are doing similar things is there's one person that does one half of the stuff and then the other couple, the other person does the other half of the stuff and then together, you kind of make it work. So that brings up a really interesting point, you too is, you said that before your wedding or as you're gearing up to get married, you really hadn't talked a whole lot about finances. So talk to us talk to me a little bit about what that conversation looks like what you've seen go, well, let's have a little therapy session here for a minute for all of our listeners, like, what did you know what worked for you too and what would you absolutely avoid going if you had to do it all over again.   Josh: So I'll start off with what didn't work. I became obsessed with financial independence and real estate nd I had all of the Excel sheets and analytics and cash on cash, YouTube videos, Baba, I put them all into it was like a board, like a board meeting, like I had it all set up, Ali is going to come home and wait till she sees these analytics, right? It could have blown away because bar graph literally instantly dead in the water and I was like, but wait a minute, like I like look at that, look, we're gonna get paid to live for free, and we're gonna cash out cash, excellent and she was like, I don't care. I made the mistake of trying to speak my language and not her language and when I went back to the internet, like how to get my partner on board. So often the message was like, stop trying to project what excites you onto your partner learn what excites them and then kind of back your way into that and so instead of going at Ali with, you know, Excel sheets and stuff like that, I remember, we sat there and we wrote down, like, what are the things that make us happiest? Like, what's your perfect day look like and so we wrote all that kind of stuff down and it was like, you know, it's traveling and spending time with family and stuff like that and when I stopped looking at the numbers and started showing, well, if we do this, this is just a bridge, like real estate isn't the end destination, it's the bridge to more freedom to do the things that we both have documented, we really enjoy more and when she realized that, like if we do this, yeah, it'd be hard sometimes. But you know, when we want to have a family will have more flexibility, she was in a really stressful job, it would give her greater optionality very close with family, we could spend more time with family and when I started speaking more like Ali's language, if you will, that's when I saw a lot of progress.   Ali: Um, I would say for me to like being the partner on the other side, where it wasn't my idea, it wasn't necessarily something I would have wanted to do. I felt really resentful of Josh, I felt like he was like doing something to me. Like, I felt like I had someone wanting to take our life in a direction that we never talked about. I didn't want I had no desire for and it felt like really like a lack of control and I didn't like that feeling and I think that that could very easily cause like a schism in a relationship where it's either like, we do this together, or we go in opposite directions and I, I like remember the words of Josh. So clearly, like, I'm not doing this, like our debt is doing this, our financial situation is doing this and I think when we made it less about us and more about like our situation, it really helped bring us together, because the debt was the problem. The low incomes was the problem, the working 30 years at a job we hated was the problem. So when we kind of approached it, it's like we're a team. So it's not like Josh holding you back from the nice single family home that I want. It's like the reality of our situation and I think we live in a society of such like, I want I want I want and I'm gonna get it right away, that the idea of delaying that sucks. People don't know how to do that, like Josh wanted to know how to get on the same page as a spouse and he could just Google it in two seconds, right because like, that's the world we live in and there's benefit to that but the reality was like it was hard to kind of have our cereal before we had our marshmallows, but we figured out a way to do it together.   Michael: That is so, so good and so bring us up to speed on what's going on today. Are you still in that second house hack? Are you investing in pure investment properties, what's going on?   Josh: Yeah, a little bit of both. So property one is now rented for just under 2450. So it's 1000 up top and then 1425 and both are still below market quite a bit but we just we hedge because we realize like stuff shifts and we don't want our rent to be a huge burden on people.   Ali: So, we didn't raise at all during COVID, we actually just raised both units by 75…   Josh: Marginally, so but it's still but it's a nice comfortable cash flow and it's like super low maintenance, which is really nice. We're still living in, we're actually in house hack number two, we've done a bunch of renovations while we're here and then we actually in April, we just bought our first non-house hack off market property using private money, which was really cool. This is our first endeavor into more creative financing. But we just bought that and that we bought for 190,000, we believe it's worth about 230. So we're about to go through the appraisal for the refinance process. But that rents right now on that are kind of low, it's like 2780 but the market rent was a little bit of a buffer is probably about 3000, maybe 3100. So once we get through a refinance, and then kind of depending on where people situations are, will steadily work to get that to market rent or a little bit below.   Michael: Amazing and is that in your local market or is that remote?   Ali: Yeah, I mean, everything that we've purchased so far has been within like a walking distance, or like a less than 10 minute radius and we do that really intentionally just because we self-manage our properties and we really, we live in the city that we invest in, and we love this city. So for us, it's really like taking these 100 plus year old homes, giving them some TLC and providing like safe and affordable housing to members of our community. That's not to say that we would not want a vacation home in another area that we could go to sometimes and rent out the rest of the year but we're taking it one step at a time…   Josh: Like buying super local has actually become quite the calling card for us and I mean, we've bought deals now from sellers who had other offers, even though they were off market, but sometimes they were out of town and just being locals and kind of spotlighting the work we do in the community was like a nice selling point for us and so they chose to work with us, even though maybe someone from somewhere else could offer them way more. They wanted to work with someone local.   Michael: That's great, that's great. and you mentioned at the beginning of the show that you're about 50% of the way to financial independence. So what does the rest of the roadmap look like for you too?   Josh: Yeah, so right now it's we don't want like this big portfolio per se, just for based on our goals and kind of our lifestyle. It's kind of like you can either have like a lifestyle, business or business can become your life and so for us, we want to be this small but mighty portfolio owner, so that looks like probably about 14 units total, maybe 16 and then if we shaved off two of those mortgages. For us, that's like more than enough cash flow to cover our needs and then when we're not investing in real estate, we also invest in like Roth IRAs, taxable brokerages. So basically, it'll be like a taxable brokerage. Probably like three more rental properties multifamily pay off two of those loans, you know, and then at that point, it's kind of like if we want to continue to, to work on projects that really excited us we can but it won't be out of obligation.   Ali: And like I see us really resonating with the first half of the fire movement like the financial independence but like the retire early piece kind of has like a little asterisk on it for us. I mean, when we first started all of this, we were both 40 hour week employees a W two jobs and this past November, I was able to leave a really toxic work situation. I was a school social worker schools as many industries were, were very tough during COVID and it just wasn't really serving my physical or my mental health and we were able to make the plunge but like me leaving so now I work two days a week in a school in order to maintain health benefits and Josh was working 40 hours a week and now you're coasting in the 20 hour range. So I think for us like that number hopefully goes lower. We build up our business through the FI couple we're looking to launch a podcast and some other fun stuff. So I think that will be really cool but really just more control over the work that we do and our time…   Michael: So I think you might agree that in the financial independence community the fire community big a lot of podcasts, Bigger Pockets, folks talk about the wins the highlights the successes, look at my Lamborghini, I just gotta look at this rent check. I just cash, no one talks about like the things that suck the things that are hard and they kind of dark times the underbelly, if you will. So can you give us an insight, maybe share a story about when were things crummy when did things suck for you too?   Josh: So I'll give you two I'll give you like a really specific one and then kind of like a broad overarching one. So a very specific one was the property the second property that we bought We thought it was in a lot better condition than it was and when we moved in quickly, we realized we had grossly underestimated the amount of work that needed to get done and we it was during like a really cold part of the season up here and so we ended up having like, no floors for a while, we had to have a lot of windows replaced, we basically took all of our belongings, and we lived in like a small bedroom for, I don't know, it was like two weeks, maybe three weeks, and like, we had to like tiptoe on the floor, because there was like nails and glass and stuff like that and that was just, it was a lot harder than I think we anticipated and I think a lot of shows, you might see like, quick boom before and after. Well, that couple of weeks in between was actually pretty brutal and it was very challenging for us and then I would say, on the broad spectrum, like, it can be really isolating, because the lifestyle that we're living, like, we talk about it a lot like, in real life, nobody we actually know for the most part is like living or thinking the way we are or do and we can kind of become like the weirdos and sometimes that can strain, like friendships or relationships and people kind of look at you a little bit different and people that you like love or grew up with or like you're different now and all you care about is money and, and we could try to tell them like our philosophy and the mindset behind FI until we're blue in the face to all you're gonna think about was like you just care about money. So I think it can also like really strain some relationships.   Ali: I think like, this stuff like comes in waves, like there are times when we feel like we're doing amazing, and everything's kind of running smoothly, like a well-oiled machine and then like chaos ensues and it's like one thing after another and again, like life is not an easy experience like as humans, we have a lot of complex things that go on in the day to day and I think that sometimes it's hard, like I think that we really glamorize financial independence and real estate investing, like it's this very sexy thing and once you achieve that, like your time freedom, your location independent, like all these cool things, but we often have the conversation of like, I feel like I'm complicating the hell out of my life right now. Like, we're like, wow, like if we had just a regular W two job like that seems kind of sexy now like with like, with life be easier, then yeah, rental property, that rental property but it's like reminding ourselves that like we are adding more spinning plates to our life, to ultimately have the freedom to have more choice and for me, like, our life gets crazy now in ways that I couldn't have imagined. But it's a good crazy that we picked versus a crazy, we don't have a choice over and someone else is dictating what we do on a day to day. So it's kind of just like, you know, you're gonna hit different challenges throughout and what feels the best for you?   Michael: Yeah, yeah, no, I think that makes a ton of sense and I just kind of want to highlight and tip my hat to you both because I posted it's funny we were chatting about before he record about different tweets, we were thinking about posting or Twitter, you know, tweets we've made in the past and my tweet this morning was about financial independence, thinking that I was going to be interviewing YouTube later in the day and I said, people who are serious about financial independence will do whatever it takes to get it done. Those who don't or those who aren't serious complaint and like you were working a W two job, Josh that you went and got a degree for and then you went and drove Uber, because that's what you had to do to make it work. So and it gets do you want to share anything with folks out there that are saying, oh, well, I can't do it because or this isn't gonna work for me. insert blank here. What do you have to share with those folks?   Ali: I just want to say to though, I think you can do both, I'm really good at complaining often and still doing it and I think you need to give yourself space for those feelings because I think sometimes it's like, just get over it and do it, whatever it takes and I think that mentality can be toxic to because you are human and you are allowed to have feelings and sometimes like the whatever it takes, maybe that isn't worth your mental health and your energy and there's another way you could kind of find a solution or maybe it's going to take a little longer but you're going to enjoy the journey a lot more. But yeah, I think so often we meet with people and they're like, I wish we could do what you're doing but and it's a laundry list of excuses and it's like we bought like Junker cars and cash. We're living in an apartment that in my opinion is way too small for the life that we want but we're doing it because it's like these are the things that we know we need to do to get where we want to go. So we have been in constant experiences of making ourselves uncomfortable for the greater good. So to speak and having perspective that, like, our life is really good and these are first world inconveniences, you know,   Josh: It's kind of like, it's like, if you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done and I think anyone a little bit today, like if people step into our lives, if you will, through social media, they'll be like, oh, my God, like, it'd be so nice if I could do this or I could have a social media platform, blah, blah and I'm like, yeah, but two years ago, no, this didn't exist. Like we didn't have a social media platform and we were, I was, at one point, I think we kind of had like seven jobs between the two of us and we were just scrapping and scrap and scrap, scrap it and stick exactly right. So it's not, you know, it's definitely doable but I think also, sometimes people they like, it's like zero to 60, right. They're like, I either can do nothing, or I need to do everything and say, well, there's like a lot of wins in between, like now and then but instead of like focusing just on the mountaintop, which I'm like 100% guilty of, and that's where it helps having either like, whether it's like a romantic partner, or a business partner, whomever, like someone who can keep you balanced and grounded because like, sometimes I will have my own little personal pity party and I'm like, oh, my God, we're not here. We haven't done X, Y, and Z and luckily Ali, be like, yeah, but like, here's all the things that we've been done and I'm like, yeah, don't show me that. I just want to look at all the things like we haven't done. So, yeah, perspective is huge.   Michael: Absolutely and I'm right there with you, Josh. I love throwing my pity party for a party of one and I think it's interesting two people are, like envious of the result or not envious of the work you have to do to get there. So I love that you both shared about having that perspective.   Ali: I heard this on a podcast once and I'm super obsessed with it and I feel like it really transformed my perspective because so much of all of this is mindset and she the person on the podcast was talking about like life is 50/ 50 but we often only focus on one half. So people like focus on like, the wins and all of the amazing things, but they're not focusing on the challenge that it took to get there and often I'm focused on like, the uncomfortable and the sacrifice, but I'm not focused on like, where it's going to bring me. So both pieces of that equation are like, so important to really be aware of.   Josh: Last thing I'll share on that. Actually, I posted this earlier, but it is it's like the iceberg analogy, right? Like, people will see the 20%, but they'll never see the 80% but you don't get the 20 without the 80. But a lot of times people that that 80 can be 80 can be really hard. It can be really stressful, but you don't get the results without it.   Michael: Yep, you two this has been so much fun. I really, really appreciate you coming on sharing with our audience and our listeners. If people want to learn more about you reach out, where's the best place for them to do that?   Ali: Absolutely. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that we've locked down the FI couple on every major social media platform that our main platform is Instagram and then Twitter, and we have a website to https://www.theficouple.com/ , so those would be the best ways to connect.   Michael: Amazing. Well, thank you again, and I'm sure we'll be in touch soon. We'll have to have you back on as you progress along your journey.   Okay, everyone, that was our episode a big thank you to Ali and Josh for coming on, and really being vulnerable and kind of opening the vest a little bit and showing us what it's been like for them along the journey to financial independence, wishing them best of luck and can't wait to see where they go from here. As always, if you like the episode, we'd love to hear from you all with ratings and reviews, comments in the feedback section and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…