With a click, our interviewee’s face fills the screen before I can finish.
“Hello, Ms. Isabella!” Jenny’s voice is overanimated, laced with forced cheerfulness while avoiding my gaze and keeping her jaw tight.
“Hello, Jenny and Asher!” Isabella chirps. “Thank you for having me on your show!”
Isabella is the picture of unassuming FIRE success: gray hoodie, an enthusiastic smile, medium-length straight hair with natural highlights. Subtle wrinkles are the only sign she’s over fifty-five.
Jenny barrels forward, pointedly ignoring me as she addresses Isabella. “I know you’ve seen how this works. We’re pre-recording to give you a chance to review the interview before it goes live. Any questions, or shall we jump in?”
“All set!” Isabella brings her hands together, oblivious to the tension radiating between her hosts.
Jenny turns our microphones red. “Today onSkinny Fat FIRE, we’re joined by Isabella Fernando. Welcome Isabella!”
“Hello, Jenny! Hello, Ash! Thank you for having me.”
“Thanks for joining,” Jenny says. “I think our guests may have heard of you before, as you make the podcast circuit, but can you tell us a little about yourself and your journey to FIRE?”
“Sure thing.” Isabella says. I try to catch Jenny’s eye, but she’s focused intently on Isabella, her lips still pressed in a thin line. “I’m fifty-six years old, married with two teenage sons, and we retired at fifty with five million and thirty-six dollars.”
“Wow,” I say, genuinely impressed. Five million is my number. “Congratulations. You know people aren’t always so open with their actual numbers, but we think it keeps it real. Would you mind sharing how much money you have now, six years out of the accumulation phase?”
“We thought we were leaving accumulation,” Isabella says with a chuckle, “but with the markets the way they’ve been, we actually have more than when we started. About two hundred thousand more.”
Jenny beams. “Incredible.”
I stare at the waveform dancing on the screen and try to remember when that word applied to anything in my life that wasn’t a spreadsheet.
I shake myself out of it to ask, “So you’ve lived for six years on your nest egg and have more than you started?”
Isabella’s shoulders rise to her ears, her hands fluttering briefly into the camera frame as she laughs. “It happens more than people think. All us FIRE people are wired to be so conservative, but I guess José and I are proof it’s not always the worst-case scenario.”
“Inspiring,” I say, hearing how it lands like a dead fish in the middle of the garage. “And what are you doing with your time now? How has the transition to early retirement been? I know it isn’t always easy.”
“I don’t think it will surprise anyone to hear that not much has changed,” Isabella says. “Which I guess is good, right? We built the life we wanted, and then we saved for it. Not the other way around.”
That comment makes Jenny finally look at me, her gaze piercing, as if she’s driving Isabella’s point directly into my skull.
“How did you get here?” I ask, forcing my attention back to Isabella. “We all want to be where you are someday. Can you walk us through your steps?”
“I’m cheap!” she says, her full-face smile returning. “My husband and I were just talking about this the other night. I never understood dropping sixty bucks on a restaurant’s bottle of wine when I can drink the same thing on my couch for fifteen.”
“What about now?” I ask.
“Old habits die hard,” she says. “I don’t enjoy wasting money. I don’t get it, and for us that works well.”
“What does working well mean?” Jenny asks.
Isabella laughs. “Did you hear the part about our net worth increasing?”
“No money fights in your household?” I ask, and it’s Kael’s face in my mind, not a hypothetical couple. “It’s the number one source of tension for couples, but for someone like you… I’m wondering if, now that you ‘made it,’ you buck that trend.”
Isabella rolls her eyes, as if we’ve caught her in some transgression. “My husband would kill me if I didn’t admit that he wants me to loosen up a little.”
“Loosen up how?” Jenny asks.
“Spend more,” Isabella says. “Vacations, meals out—nothing major.”
“You can’t take it with you,” I say, and then force a laugh to cover any chance for Jenny to drill my own advice into my head.
