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Note: This post was a joint effort between me and Mrs. Groovy. So don’t get thrown by the use of “we” and “our” rather than “I” and “my.”
Fritzy.
Fritzer.
Fritz.
Whatever you want to call Fritz Gilbert from The Retirement Manifesto is perfectly fine. Just call him. But wait until tomorrow. He’s celebrating his escape from the tyranny of mandatory toil today.
That’s right. Our good friend Fritz has joined the hollowed ranks of the early retirement club. He retired at the close of business on 6/7/2018. And we couldn’t be happier for him and his wife, Jackie.
The Friendship Begins
Our friendship with Fritz began a little over two years ago. One of us (Mrs. Groovy) managed to wrangle a guest appearance for the inventor of the Junior IRA (Mr. Groovy) on Joshua Sheets’s podcast, Radical Personal Finance. The only problem was that the inventor of the Junior IRA is deathly afraid of public speaking. And as the interview with Joshua neared, the anxiety of the Junior IRA inventor grew.
Since the inventor of the Junior IRA was in trouble, we reached out to a guest we heard on Radical Personal Finance who “crushed it.” That guest was Fritz Gilbert.
We’ll spare you the gory details of our first encounter with Fritz. Let’s just say he was more than gracious. He didn’t even know us, but he immediately gave us his phone number and told us when he would be available. He then spent a good hour and a half prepping the inventor of the Junior IRA for the show.
Did the inventor of the Junior IRA “crush” the interview with Joshua Sheets? Well, not exactly. But it turned out to be much better than we ever could have imagined. And for that we will always be eternally grateful to Fritz.
Four Highlights
We have had a blast being friends with Fritz over the past two years. Here are just four highlights of that friendship.
1. Fritz Saves an Uber Driver’s Life
At FinCon 2017, Fritz, Chris from Keep Thrifty, Pete from Do You Even Blog, and Jim from Route to Retire stepped up to help a financially confused Uber driver. Sadly, we weren’t there to witness this intervention in person, but thanks to Jim’s (Route to Retire) remarkable citizen journalism, we were there in spirit. Here’s how Jim described this amazing event for posterity.
The Uber driver spoke a bit of broken English but asked us what we were doing in Dallas…
Jim: We’re all here for FinCon… it’s a conference for financial bloggers.
Driver: Financial what?
Jim: Bloggers. We write about personal finance and reaching early retirement.
Driver: Now that’s something I’m definitely interested in.
Silence suddenly encompassed the whole car. Then after about two seconds, everyone in the car jumped all over this as an opportunity.
We were money nerds that found someone open to some guidance.
We all started talking at once to him. As we handed over our business cards to him, Fritz then took over…
Fritz: Listen, I will only give you my card if you make me a promise.
Driver: What’s that?
Fritz: Tomorrow you need to increase what you save by another 1 percent.
Driver: OK.
Fritz: Promise me!
Driver: I will… but where should I be saving it?
Eventually, though, we had a good five-minute or so conversation with him before arriving at our destination. We all got out and started walking. That’s when we all started talking again and vomited out words like “Vanguard” and “VTSAX.”
But when we glanced around, we realized we had lost Fritz. We looked back and saw that he had gotten out of the car, but then was talking to the driver at his window.
A few minutes later, Fritz finally joined us and said, “Gentlemen, we may have just saved a man’s life this evening.”
OK, he might have said “saved” or he may have said “changed,” but we had a great time boasting all night that we “saved” a man’s life.
2. Fritz Organizes a Group Call to the Groovies
Also at FinCon 2017, Fritz gave us a call while he was out to dinner with a bevy of blogger luminaries. Unfortunately, the inventor of the Junior IRA was sick at the time of the call and couldn’t talk. But the better half of the Groovies was able to talk and it was one of the better half’s fondest memories of 2017. Here are the bloggers the better half got to talk to for the first time.
Chris from Keep Thrifty.
Jay from Slowly Sipping Coffee.
Mr. and Mrs. WoW from Waffles on Wednesday.
Mrs. BITA from Bayalis.
Vicki and Jeff from Make Smarter Decisions.
Jim from Route to Retire.
Drew from Guy on FIRE.
Pete from Do You Even Blog.
Note: Sorry if we missed any names. We didn’t catch all of them. And neither did Fritz.
3. Our Visit to the World Headquarters of the Retirement Manifesto
Here’s a photo from our visit to the World Headquarters of The Retirement Manifesto. Fritz and his lovely wife Jackie are avid animal rescuers. They foster dozens of dogs for the Tri-State Pet Rescue and volunteer their time at the Barking Lot in downtown Blue Ridge, GA. Aren’t those puppies adorable? We were this close (picture a thumb and an index finger being a quarter of an inch apart) from taking the brown puppy, Hershey, home.
4. Watching Fritz Walk on His Hands
Few people know that Fritz can walk on his hands. We witnessed this marvelous feat while at The World Headquarters but were too awestruck to record it for posterity. If you ever happen to be in the company of Fritz, please ask him to walk on his hands. I’m sure he’ll oblige you and you will be amazed.
Okay, those are four stories that immediately jumped into our heads whenever we think of the Fritzer. What we’d like to do now, however, is to give you a few examples of why we are so proud to call Fritz a friend: his incredible passion for personal finance. Here we go.
Fritz’s Good To Great Series
Move over JL Collins. Your stock series is awesome. But Fritz’s good-to-great retirement series is even more awesome. Here are all the posts in Fritz’s good-to-great retirement series. They’re a must read for anyone in retirement or on the cusp of retirement.
- How To Move From Good To Great: A rollicking overview of Fritz’s decision to downsize twice in 13 months!
- How To Move Your Retirement From Good To Great In 7 Days: The story of Fritz’s relocation to the Great cabin.
- When A Home Sale Explodes: The day the sale of Fritz’s Good Cabin imploded.
- Why Settle For A Good Retirement, When You Can Go For A Great One? Fritz’s guest post on Financial Samurai
- Why We’re Taking On Debt To Move From Good To Great: Why Fritz decided to take on debt for his “Great” cabin.
- The Final Step In Moving From Good To Great: Fritz’s move to Great is finally complete. Here’s the story behind The Final Step.
My Favorite Fritz-O-Graphics
Fritz is an infographic machine. In fact, we’ve always been kind of jealous of his ability to create such wonderful visual tools. Here are three of our favorites.
1. Fritz’s Retirement Bucket Strategy
2. Fritz’s Ultimate Pre-Retirement Checklist
3. Fritz’s Biblical Take on Early Retirement
Our Favorite Fritz Guest Appearances
Fritz is a prolific interviewee. Heck, he just had an interview with the Washington Post! And his popularity on the interview circuit is perfectly understandable. His encyclopedic knowledge of retirement and his infectious enthusiasm for personal finance make him a great guest/subject. Here are some of our favorite examples of his communication prowess.
- Radical Personal Finance Episode 280: Making the Transition to Retirement
- Choose FI Episode 043: Drawdown Strategy
- Choose FI Episode 054R: And the Guest Host Is….(FRITZ!)
- Mo Money Podcast Episode 093: How to Plan Your Retirement the Smart Way
- Richer Soul Episode 0059: Creating a Successful Early Retirement Plan
- Planet Boomerville Episode 29: The Baby Boomer Retirement Manifesto
- Retirement Wisdom: Preparing Well for the Soft Side of Retirement
- Rock Your Retirement Episode 117: Finding Meaning and Purpose in Retirement
Final Thoughts
What retirement is complete without providing your official way of saying FU to the tyranny of mandatory toil and proclaiming your official retirement song? Well, we’ve decided to take a little license and do these things for the Fritzer ourselves. Here is Fritz’s official retirement photo. We call it RM Gothic, short for Retirement Manifesto Gothic. (Mr. Groovy here: Sorry about the short hair, Jackie. I got to work on my graphic artist skills. You’re still beautiful, though.)
And because Fritz and Jackie will be RVing a lot more now that Fritz is retired, their official retirement song has to be Born To Be Wild.
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all we got. We hope you enjoyed our ode to FI Fritz. We certainly enjoyed putting it together for such a stellar member of the FI community. Have a great weekend. Cheers.
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