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In 1991 Billy and Akaisha Kaderli retired at the age of 38. Now, into their 4th decade of this financially independent lifestyle, they invite you to take advantage of their wisdom and experience.

Interview with Amanda and Toma Dinova

Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

We at Retire Early Lifestyle love bringing you different stories of the paths people take to become Financially Independent. No two adventures are the same. What inspires someone? What challenges did they face? How and when did they decide to live a life outside the ordinary?

Today we bring you the story of Amanda and Toma Dinova.

Toma and Amanda in Bulgaria at the Samovodskata Charshia Market

Retire Early Lifestyle: Could you tell us a little about yourself? What type of work you did, what your life consisted of before FIRE?

Amanda Dinova: Hi, My name is Amanda and My husband Toma and I are high school sweethearts. I run a jewelry business and he’s in tech. We chose to have children early so that we may truly retire early if we were able to financially. So the past 20 years have been very typical, steady, and predictable, full of parenting and regular jobbing. 

REL: When did you start your journey to Financial Independence? What was your motivation? Were you both always on the same page with this goal? 

AD: We are about to head into our financial independence and can see it clearly on the horizon, timed with our kids going off to college and our loans we took out for real estate maturing. At that point we will have enough passive income to live comfortably and do whatever we wish. We were financially intertwined at a very young age and started our lives without a penny to our names. All our wealth we carefully accumulated and invested together, with the idea of always having our money work for us. At first it was to just be wise with money. But as we saw opportunities to invest we took them rather than “upgrading our lifestyle” as many of our friends did. After about 10 years of marriage, it became clear we could be on the path to early retirement if we wanted to. We read a lot of finance books together and were always wary of lifestyle creep.   

REL: How did you know you were ready to interact with the world differently? 

AD: I was an aimless kid but curious, headstrong, and a hustler. When I was 18 and starting my own business I was surprised more people weren’t taking things into their own hands. I was just sure I could do it. Toma is a thinker and a philosopher. We’ve both always been considered peculiar by our friends. Between us both, he does the calculating and planning and I get stuff done. Because he grew up during the fall of communism in his country, he saw how money was just a tool. He saw at a young age how debt could work for you and by investing wisely with other people’s money, or even with debt, you can accumulate wealth and passive income. I think this is where we differ a lot from other FIRE minded people. Debt can be an amazing tool. 

At their favorite restaurant in Bulgaria by the Black Sea

REL: When did you know you were ready to retire and what motivated you?

AD: We both grew up without much, and certainly without wealth or proper education about money. 

However, we had a strong desire to own property, especially as our town was in high demand. My fledgling business I opened during college had one particularly outstanding year and I used the money to purchase land on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t until 10 years later that we got the courage to further invest in property partly after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. I also happened to find information about FIRE online while learning about the minimalist lifestyle. (Spoiler we do not live a minimalist lifestyle, but do our best not to over-accumulate)

 

 

 

 

REL: Do you consider yourself retired?

AD: Since I was 20 I worked for myself. I never really had a real job. The first 15 years of my business I worked as you’d expect a self-employed person to - all the time and never truly relaxing, even while on vacation. 

Now I can take 4 or 5 days off without anything happening really…but I have dependents and do not think I will truly feel retired until they are set in their colleges (in about two years) I do plan to keep my business and work very little when I feel like it on projects that I enjoy. Luckily I have amazing employees that are happy in their positions and their work is relatively low stress and flexible.  

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The Great Texas Freeze in Austin, 2021

REL: What do you average in spending annually? Does this include health insurance? Do you have health insurance?

AD: We do have health insurance currently through my husband. As a family of four we spend about $70,000/year. After my husband retires we will likely purchase the minimum health insurance possible as we are both healthy and we can go to his home country which provides social health care. I’m guessing we will spend about 40,000/year max when it is just the two of us.  

REL: What do your family and friends think of your choice to leave your jobs and previous life behind?

AD: I don’t like talking about it with people that I don’t think will understand so I don’t, but I do lay out the concept and observe how they simply don’t think it’s possible.

Our friends and family actually don’t know and we don’t exactly plan to explain.

I hope to find some new friends and encourage my family, especially my parents (in their 70s and not retired!) to restructure their lives and live a little. 

REL: Was ER a goal your whole family shared? If not, how did you get your family on board?

AD: ER is a goal of my husband and I since we got started in real estate nearly 16 years ago. We talk openly about money and the future, luckily our plans aligned right away.

South Padre Island, Texas

REL: Can you share with us anything about how your portfolio is structured?

AD: We have about 20% in stocks, Roth IRAs, and the rest in real estate. 75% commercial real estate and 25% residential real estate.

REL: What will you budget annually for your retirement?

AD: About 50-70,000 for the both of us.

REL: Do you track your spending?

AD: I do track spending, using RocketMoney and years and years of mental calculations. Because I also run a business with thousands of transactions, I’ve got a pretty good intuition when it comes to budgets.  

REL: Do you own a vehicle?

AD: We own two electric cars. One is fully paid off and the other has a loan but will be paid off in two years. In Texas, personal transportation is a must.

Toma and Amanda in the Dominican Republic 

REL: Share with us your best money-saving secret.

AD: Don’t save! Invest. It’s really hard to grow wealth just by saving. Learn all you can about money. It’s a tool. Debt is a tool, too.   

REL: What has been the greatest surprise you have encountered so far in this pursuit? 

AD: It’s not mentally easy and takes much discipline and willpower. It is hard sometimes to keep your eye on the prize and invest money instead of blowing it on XYZ. Investing is like farming your own food. You get to eat some, but you must save some for seeds for next year! Do not eat all your crops! And wow, sometimes do I just want to eat all my crops. 

REL: What are your greatest passions in life?

AD: Right now I’ve become completely absorbed by music. All I want to do is study music theory and hone my guitar and singing skills.

A small portion of Toma's garden

REL: Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?

AD: We want to move to Bulgaria and for me to get citizenship there. That requires living there at least 6 months a year for 3 years. I do enjoy traveling but mostly enjoy long, involved projects like landscaping, building, or elaborate art projects. I’m looking forward to taking on these projects and traveling to interesting places to go on adventures in between.

REL: Will you keep a home base or own a home?

AD: We will always keep our properties, our main home and studio in Texas, and our main home and studio in Bulgaria. (Property is quite inexpensive there compared to USA!)

REL: Since housing is a big expense, how will you manage lodging on the road? Will you house sit? Rent apartments? Stay in hotels? AirBnB?

AD: Recently we went on a road trip where we slept in the Tesla at a camping site right on the beach. It was so much fun now we want to go on trips where we do that all around the country. We will try to stay with family whenever possible and hotels if we aren’t able to book a camp site. Abroad we will stay in hotels or airBnBs, wherever looks good. 

REL: What has been your greatest challenge on your road to Early Retirement? Your biggest lesson? What were your fears and obstacles before making the leap?

 

 

 

 

AD: It has been a challenge sometimes to be content with what I have AND content with what I’ve accomplished. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t done enough, haven’t built my business up enough, and am not successful a fraction of what I would like. Maybe I DO need to work harder?! I am also inclined to want the latest, greatest, biggest, and more of it. I talk myself out of buying things a lot and sometimes fail.

My biggest fear is how to have a social life with friends, but I have such little social life right now (everyone is always “busy”) I think that I will be OK. I would love to find more friends that have FIRE'd so to speak.

I’m also always a little bit worried about losing everything so I have preemptively made peace with that being a possibility however small. Even if it happens, we will be OK because we’re scrappy, gritty, resourceful people. 

Adventure to Star Base, South Padre Island

REL: What will you do about healthcare? Are you open to medical tourism?  

AD: We will be able to afford healthcare if needed and we are open to medical tourism if needed. We’ll take out inexpensive disaster insurance to protect us from losing everything so to speak.

REL: Tell us about your greatest personal success, not necessarily finance related.

AD: Of course our children are the best personal success. Parenting is incredibly difficult, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s a ravage on the mind and body. I think of it as being another human’s guide from birth through adulthood and I’ve tried to be the best dang version of myself I can be (I mess up more than I’d like to admit) Guiding my kids through life and seeing them be better than I ever was at any given age is definitely satisfying. Can’t wait to see what kind of adults they become. 

REL: How do you contribute to the world?

AD: Some things I would love to do to help others are: helping street animals in Europe while I live there - something near and dear to me because there are so many strays and not many resources to help. (not so many free spay/neuter programs for example, or non-profit animal shelters)

It sounds silly but I enjoy making art and playing music which is enjoyable to others. People need joy in life. I would love to have free concerts, lessons, craft and art parties, etc. with the people around me to help spread that joy.  

Lastly, I enjoy building things and using my hands. I would love to spend time working with people who need an extra hand to do things around their properties and houses. From real estate investing I’ve learned a ton about houses, how to fix and maintain things, and personally renovated several houses. 

REL: What would you say to someone who is considering tossing the conventional lifestyle and living one of travel? What advice would you give?

AD: I personally enjoy having a very steady home base. I like being in a place so long I can see the trees grow. I get immense satisfaction from working land and growing things. I like to leave for a few weeks at a time but need a base to return to and family nearby. 

The best advice is: Wherever you go, there you are. You can’t escape your own mind and contentment will always come from being at peace with yourself wherever you are.

REL: Briefly describe the most likely scenario you feel could drive you back

to your w2 job?

AD: If I lost everything somehow. But we have a diverse portfolio so hopefully that won’t happen. HOWEVER - it really did happen to Toma’s family members when communism took over in the 40s, all their assets were confiscated by the government, and they lost everything again when communism fell in the 80s and inflation went up over 2000% percent, wiping out a generation of savings. Yes that’s TWO THOUSAND percent.

REL: What are your greatest passions in life?

AD: Art, Music, Animals

REL: What do you consider your greatest achievement?

AD: Maintaining a 20 year marriage and growing two awesome kids. If anyone asks me how we did it, we just so happen to have complementary personalities, complementary skill sets, and similar hobbies and life goals. Sometimes people fall in love, aren’t truly compatible, but don’t find out until later. We fell in love and luckily found out we actually were.

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About the Authors

 
Billy and Akaisha Kaderli are recognized retirement experts and internationally published authors on topics of finance, medical tourism and world travel. With the wealth of information they share on their award winning website RetireEarlyLifestyle.com, they have been helping people achieve their own retirement dreams since 1991. They wrote the popular books, The Adventurer’s Guide to Early Retirement and Your Retirement Dream IS Possible available on their website bookstore or on Amazon.com.

 

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