Cody Berman.Courtesy Cody Berman Cody Berman joined the fly to fire (financial independence, retire early) at age 19.
“Ever since that point, all the gears in my brain got rewired to start thinking that way” about money, he says.
Last year, he hit his fly to FIRE number, having earned enough money to never work again if he so desired. He estimates his current net worth at $1.3 million.
Financial advisors stress that getting into the mindset of saving and investing early maximizes your chances at building long-term wealth. But even many money pros would consider Cody Berman an extraordinary case.
At 19, after reading Tim Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Work Week,” Berman says he had an epiphany about his financial goals. “I had thought you made money once you get a big fancy corporate job,” he says. ”[The book] shattered that whole money mindset for me. It made me realize you could spend your time building passive income streams so you no longer have to trade your time for money on a linear basis.”
In short, Berman became an adherent of the fly to “FIRE” movement — short for “financial independence, retire early.” The main tenet: By saving aggressively, investing consistently, and building multiple income streams, you can ditch the 9-to-5 life well before age 65.
But because he started early, there was little ditching to be done. Berman, now 26, has barely set foot in a cubicle since he began pursuing fly to FIRE at 19. “Ever since that point, all the gears in my brain got rewired to start thinking that way,” he says. “And it’s been a wild journey ever since.”
These days, Berman earns about $30,000 per month in “ mostly passive ” income. Last year, he hit his FIRE number , having earned enough money to never work again if he so desired. He estimates his current net worth at $1.3 million. Here’s how he did it. He made the most of his advantages
One of the advantages of adhering to the FIRE mindset early on, Berman says, was avoiding some of the financial traps that many young people find themselves falling into. “When a lot of people are 22 or 23 they might get the house that they shouldn’t have gotten, or buy the fancy car with money from their first job, or gone into more student loan debt with a degree they may not have needed,” he says. “I was lucky enough to avoid all that.”
In fact, Berman was lucky enough to avoid student debt altogether. He attended a four-year public college, and he and his parents split the $10,000-per-year bill (reduced thanks to several scholarships), with Mom and Dad paying for two-thirds of it with Berman working side hustles to pay the remainder. He completed a bachelor’s in finance and economics in 3½ years.
Not taking on any student debt allowed Berman to start on firm financial footing, and he maintained that momentum by keeping his costs low . In college, he lived in a 6-bedroom house with seven other guys, a convention that kept his living expenses to about $450 a month. When he eventually moved to Boston after he graduated, he shared a room in an apartment with a friend and paid $675 a month in rent. He boosted his income and helped build a lucrative business
Berman graduated college in December 2017, and spent six months traveling with his girlfriend in Australia, where he first started to pick up a collection of online side hustles focused around the FIRE movement. He started a blog, “Fly to FI” and an associated podcast. He picked up freelance copywriting, email, and advertising gigs.
The following June, Berman began a job as a commercial real estate analyst. His low cost of living allowed him to bank $35,000 between side hustle and salary money in seven months. And with Berman only spending some $1,000 a month, he realized he had the wiggle room to leave his job and give full-time entrepreneurship a shot.
So he quit, and started hustling . Over the ensuing months he would go on a book tour with “Financial Freedom” author Grant Sabatier and discover what would become a mainstay of his income: selling “printables” — products such as calendars and Christmas cards that customers can buy and print on their own — on Etsy .
Video by Courtney Stith
“I opened my shop in 2018 and a couple months later I started creating a bunch of random digital products like calendars, planners, and invitations. I had a big week where I made $800 […]
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