10 Questions with FI Big Sky

Today is the 18th edition of our new periodic guest post series called 10 Questions. We have a list of 17 NEW questions we pose to fellow financial bloggers, and they are free to pick and choose 10 or answer all of them. Let us know if you would like to be featured in a future edition of 10 Questions. (If you have already answered the first set of 10 questions, please feel free to answer these new ones.)

Today’s 10 questions features Mr. and Mrs. FI Under the Big Sky. They hail from Montana, and discovered the concept of Financial Independence through Brave New Life. They fell in love with the idea of ditching their 9-5 in pursuit of more travel. You can follow them and their dog Russell over at FIbigsky.com

Tell me about your blog and why it’s great.
Bragging isn’t our strong point, so we’ll do our best here. We think our blog is pretty neat because we are one of the few (that we know of) in the financial independence community located in Montana. Plus we have an adorable dog named Russell, who has pictures in many of our posts. So if you want some personal finance with a side of cute, this is the blog for you!

Tell me how you’re going to change the world with your blog (dream big or don’t dream at all!).
We’re hoping to reach out to and inspire those who maybe don’t have the highest income, but want to live without debt and become financially independent. We’re not perfect, and we’re still figuring out how to improve our savings vs earnings process, but we hope to find success at the end of our journey and have a story that others can use as an example to find their own freedom.

What goals do you have for your blog, short and long term?
Short term, we hope to build and strengthen relationships within the financial community while growing our little blog. Long term we hope to have written about a successful journey to financial independence, where we pursued our interests, professionally or otherwise, while traveling the globe whenever we want!

Do you enjoy writing?
We both do, to different degrees. Mr. FI has to be really inspired or motivated to put ink to paper, so to speak. Mrs. FI, on the other hand, tries to be consistent in producing content for our blog and enjoys sharing about our journey on a more day to day basis. Mr. FI is a big ideas guy and so he sits on a lot of ideas. You should see our blog queue.

1500Days is about early retirement. Do you have early retirement dreams? At what age do you think you will retire?
You bet we do! Our goal is to retire by age 36. Our hopes for ER include more time spent doing the things we love: traveling, spending time in the outdoors and with our loved ones.

If blogging isn’t your full time gig, what is?
We both work in the financial industry. Neither of us intended to be in these jobs, but coming out of college in 2011, the economy still wasn’t great. So these were the jobs available to us. One perk is Mrs. FI is able to work from home a couple of days a week to keep Russell company and work in her pajamas, if she so pleases.

When you are 90 and look back on your life, what do you hope you have accomplished?
We hope to be able to say that we did our best to live our life like we wanted to and worked for things that mattered. To be present for our future kids, not stuck at work while they grow up. We hope to impact people financially and help make the best financial decisions they can.

What is the best money management or investment tool you have come across?
We love using Mint.com for budgeting, checking our spending and having all our financial data in one convenient place.

How do you handle people with different views on money, e.g. spendy people?
Most of the people we hang out with aren’t “spendy” per se, but we do have spendy people in our lives. We don’t really press talking to them about their spending. They know we’re savers and hopefully they see we live a pretty fulfilling life. We hope to lead by example. We’re always willing to talk money, but we know that money is not something everyone is comfortable discussing. But it is hard to bite the tongue when you hear a co-worker complaining about financial hardship then go brag about their newest pair of $400 shoes.

What is your favorite style of beer – and what is your favorite beer in that style?
We have a ton of breweries in Montana, so it’s hard to narrow down which style, let alone a favorite beer. Mr. FI enjoys a local beer created by Uberbew called White Noise. It’s a hefeweizen and he has those German roots. Mrs. FI will drink pretty much any beer except wheat beers (apparently they taste like dirty pool water) but is partial to dark cider beer.

We notice a lot of frugal people are into board games – what is your favorite?
Don’t know if this counts as a board game, but Cards Against Humanity is hilariously awful.

What is the best thing you’ve read lately?
The 5^th Young adult genre, but it’s a pretty compelling read.

What do you do for exercise?
Mr. FI rides his bike to work, is on a co-ed softball team and plays pick-up basketball. We both go on walks with Russell, play at the park with him, and Mrs. FI will do yoga workouts at home.

You both love to travel, where to next?
Slovenia, Croatia, Germany and Italy. Mrs. FI has been to Europe, but Mr. FI has never been, and we need to fix that.

For some other fun facts about us check out this post or come visit our blog!

I see big things in your future, Mr. and Mrs. FI! Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. Catch up with them online on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or over at FIBigSky.com.