Don't fall for the misconception that financial independence is just for 20 and 30-year-olds. It is for everyone at any age and it's not too late to get started. Amy had a wake-up call in her early 40s. Starting with no net worth, through flexibility and adaptability, she got started and reclaimed decades of her life. Amy describes herself as a trier of many things. She used to wonder how other people do it. How do other people drive new SUVs, live in a large home, dine out, and save for their kids' education and their own retirement? She says most people don't do it all. You have to select for yourself what's important and save wisely to spend on it. Previously, Amy was trying to keep up with everybody else, thinking that she needed it all to be happy. She was buying all the stuff but wasn't saving for the future. She heard something on the radio one day about needing to save a million dollars for retirement and thought it didn't seem possible to get there. She and her husband were in their 40s and she knew something had to change. Amy began looking at what other people were doing but what she didn't know if that everybody was just like her, trying to keep up and not saving for the future. She had grown up with a single mom who had a lower-middle-class income. She always wanted more because she felt like she was always lacking. When she got a job and was earning money, she worked hard and thought she deserved all those things everyone else had. She had fallen into the trap of thinking money equals happiness and once in, it was hard to get out of that trap. While she had a mortgage and car loans, she didn't have much other debt. However, she was spending almost everything coming in and her net worth wasn't moving forward much. After a divorce a the age of 43, Amy's net worth was approximately $150,000. The desire to get out of a job she hated and start her own business lead her to examine her spending. She began researching methods and ideas for saving money where she found Mr. Money Mustache and many other personal finance blogs and websites. Though Amy realized she and her new husband were older, she thought that they could make significant changes and create the financial space they needed to retire early for them. Trying to keep up with everybody else wasn't getting them anywhere, but she might be able to learn and try to keep up with the people saving money and retiring early even if they were far younger. Originally, they had been thinking they would don't retire until 67, so retiring in 10 years in their 50s sounded much better. Trying to convince her husband to get on board with the changes that needed to be made meant that his habits had to change. They had to reframe their thinking. Amy says the Dave Ramsey quote sums it up, “Live like no one else now, so you can live like no one else later.“ They realized that despite chasing happiness by going out to dinner and buying things wasn't actually making them happy. Cutting back didn't feel like deprivation because they weren't things that weren't meaningful or lighting them up. Amy and her husband reevaluated where their money was being spent. She thinks making communication a foundation of their marriage was essential. It was hard to talk about what they wanted their lives to look like 10 and 20 years down the road and how they were living five years ago wasn't going to get them there. Using the 25 times expenses rule, Amy guessed they would need a million dollars to retire and targeted 2024 for retirement. To do it, they cut expenses, got rid of their newer vehicles, and refinanced to a 15-year mortgage. To increase their incomes, they both changed jobs twice. With all of the changes they made and a phenomenal stock market, they have been able to cut their timeline to financial independence down. They considered themselves FI in 2019, just six years from when they started. Amy was able to increase her income during those six years by finally completing her degree after