On board today is Michael Quan, author of the book The Fire Planner, and the man behind the popular Financially Alert blog and the Breakthrough Millionaire Podcast. Michael reached FIRE in his early thirties and It was actually only after he sold his IT company to a larger provider and inadvertently found himself back in a nine-to-five corporate job that he decided he was going to pull the pin and FIRE at age 36, which is pretty impressive.

Post FIRE, these days, Michael is a stay-at-home dad in sunny San Diego. He loves raising his kids, spending time with his wife, and in his downtime, writing, podcasting, and financially coaching his students and readers.

Michael's latest project has been setting up and running a real estate investor mastermind group, which he does a couple of times a month.

I really enjoyed my chat with Michael and he had heaps of awesome suggestions for learning resources and inspiration too!

Today, I have the absolute pleasure to be chatting to Liz from her awesome blog and amazing book that she wrote, Meet the Frugal Woods! Anyone who's been on the Captain FI blog knows that I'm a big fan of Liz and Nate, the Frugal Woods and they are literally living my dream!

They have an acreage in rural Vermont, which they call the Frugalwoods. There, they're raising their two beautiful daughters and they participate in a whole bunch of wholesome things. They're always gardening, the kids are always in the garden, and it really just looks like an awesome lifestyle.

Liz and her husband started working towards FI in 2014, both 29 at the time. They had white collar office positions and thought they were dream jobs but they realised they didn't actually feel fulfilled. They were forced to re evaluate and started to talk about other ways that they could live their lives.

Something that they really wanted to do was live in nature. They were in Boston and did not feel energised, they wanted to be in the woods.

So they bought a property in rural Vermont in 2016 and have never looked back.

Liz has since enjoyed freelance writing, working one on one with clients doing financial consultations, writing for the Frugalwoods blog and she published the book, Meet the Frugalwoods which has been extremely popular!

This was a bit of a selfish interview as I wanted as much info as possible on Liz's homestead life so I can make this a reality for myself!

On board today is Phil Muscatello, the host and producer of the awesome podcasts, Shares for Beginners, Stocks for Beginners, ETFs for Beginners and Talking Companies.

Phil is not from a finance background, but he wants to learn more about becoming a better investor. So he hopes that his listeners come along for the ride and don't make the same mistakes that he has.

Phil actually has degrees in Media Production and Literary Studies. He played in some awesome, psychedelic, heavy rock cabaret bands in Sydney during the 80s, before moving into a more stable career in radio, working at the ABC, and Triple J.

Phil describes himself as a seventies punk boomer, he loves playing guitar, ocean swimming, cycling, going to the gym, and anything to do with technology.

He grew up in Sydney, has always been interested in music, playing guitar, loves literature, arts and is an avid reader.

He went to UTS in Sydney and became a little bit of a political radical. After leaving university with a media degree, there was a recession and a lot of depair, as well as very limited jobs in media, so he ended up driving taxis for a few years before starting a career in radio, moving into commercial radio and then started his own recording studio.

He recorded one of the first podcasts in Australia, setting up his own server and fast forward to today, is still loving the podcasting!

Phil was incredibly interesting and had a thing or two to teach me too!