Edyn: Hi Ben, so nice to meet you! Can you start by introducing yourself—your name, age, where you live, and what you do?

I'm Ben Miller, I'm 32, I live in Fort Collins, Colorado, and what I do for a living right now is I run ChroniFI, which is a company that helps people to simplify their finances by looking at them in terms of time rather than money.

E: Where did you grow up and what kind of environment did you grow up in?

I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis, and so I could say the environment that I grew up in was, well, two things come to mind, I guess. One, my dad was a huge stickler on honesty. So like if there was anything that was in any way dishonest, you just shied away from it…even to the point that [we never told] white lies. But he found that to be tremendously valuable in the sense that [he thought] reality was hard enough. Well, you're only maintaining one reality. Anytime you inject dishonesty, then all of the sudden you've got to maintain more than one. And that's just complicated and perhaps more germane to our discussion. I mean, the other thing that comes to mind when I think about my upbringing has to do with something my dad did when I was very little. And it was kind of like a two for one because he instituted [this thing that was] instead of allowance. He did something called interest payments. And so as probably a first grader or something like that, he was traveling a ton for work. And so why I say it was two for one is because he made me give him five dollars and then he would put a quarter on my nightstand every morning as a reminder; that he's still there, even though he's left before I've woken up and secondly, to teach me about compound interest and things like that. And so it was only a matter of time before I started thinking and I was like, OK, then how about I give you another five dollars and another five dollars? So eventually we had to pull the plug on the program because he was giving me whatever it was every day. But that's something that really sticks out in terms of the [kind of person] he was. He was always big on frugality and just making sure that we understood the value of the dollar.

E: So going off of that, it sounds like you've always had a pretty good idea of money and a good understanding of it. Did you always know that you wanted to go into a route like finance and or did you like it when you decided that you wanted to do what you're doing? Was there something like in your early career and high school, middle school, any internships, classes that kind of led you down this path?

I would say, I've always been interested in money…like when I was really little, I had a coin collection. I remember when my aunt and uncle would go off to Europe or whatever— this was before the euro— they would have all kinds of different coins, and I was just kind of fascinated by that. And so I guess it's no accident that my first job out of college was trading foreign exchange derivatives at Goldman Sachs. And so that wound up being a great fit for that period in my life, in the sense that it was intellectually stimulating and [I was working with] super smart people. But it wasn't really until I entered the workforce that I realized that time was the more important element than money and that there was an exchange rate between those two things. And so I'd say [in terms of] courses and internships, [they weren’t] so much [what led me down this path]. But the biggest thing that I liked— in terms of a pivotal thing that I studied—was a book called Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. And so that's basically just all about exactly that…the exchange rate between time and money and figuring out what to actually solve for. I'd say that was one of the biggest influences and set me to where I am today.

E: You started your career at Goldman Sachs. Did you have a different kind of dream job going into your childhood or was there something else that you want?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I was kind of all over the place. I think a lot of kids are. But at some point during middle school, I wanted to go into the army. Shortly after that, I think I wanted to become a surgeon. My dad was an entrepreneur, so I always kind of had that in the back of my mind. But he's also more of a risk taker than I am by nature. I think it's again kind of no accident that I wound up going into some sort of a big corporation, at least for my first years out of out of school, because I'm a little bit more risk averse than, say, my dad was. I needed to build up what I felt like was enough comfort to be able to support a family before I was willing to really take that risk. And I mean, I'd say I really kind of got lucky in a lot of ways; I stumbled into a job that happened to be a great fit for my first eight years or so. And yeah, the rest is history… I guess that was the Genesis story.

E: Nice! So, at what point did you start ChroniFI… did you just go straight into it from that job or was there something in between?

It's an interesting question, because in some ways I feel like I'm using the term in the definition insofar… the concepts that ChroniFI is based on are the exact concepts that I used to try and develop the courage to convince myself to take a pay cut and go do something that I thought was more fulfilling. In a sense, I've been [using these concepts] since I started my career. I've been solving for eventually having enough money to be able to never do anything again… for money, that is. And the epiphany for me came when I realized that it wasn't about solving for financial independence as soon as possible, but rather it was about solving for happiness and fulfillment as soon as possible; conditional upon eventually reaching financial independence. And so that was a big difference for me because instead of stashing cash as fast as I could, it became more about, [asking myself] OK, what do I actually want to do with my life? And then kids came along and I started to have other priorities and things like that. And I'd say [my main focus was on thinking] how can pulling happiness forward became more important than pulling retirement forward?

E: So were you working just insane hours at your job before then? Like what was the big difference that pushed you to make that change?

It was a number of things for me. I was lucky in the sense that it was a rare moment in life when everything sort of pointed in the same direction. Oftentimes decisions that we make, you have three factors pointing one way and then four factors pointing the other. So you're kind of on the fence and you [go back and forth] for awhile. For me, my career as an options trader, I felt like I'd gotten to a plateau-ish sort of place— where either I was going to dig in and really go for 10 more years or I was going to go and do my own thing. And at the same time, around that same time, my wife and I started having kids. That is when my wife and I started having kids. That really puts things in perspective. My oldest daughter, at one point, said her favorite thing was to walk on grass…and that for me was just like, Oh, we gotta get out of the city and get her some grass to walk on. And so I'd say that puts things in perspective in an accelerated way.

E: I have been a user of ChroniFI, but as if I am asking from someone who knows nothing about it, can you just tell me about the company?

Basically it's web based software, most of which I've built. That being said I've contracted out the parts that I am not, or at that point was not, qualified to handle. But as of now, I'm the lead developer and also responsible for running the business. And what the business does is it basically takes the entire financial situation of any individual and boils it down into a much simpler situation expressed in terms of time. So, when you log in, the top left number is how many years you can afford to be financially independent right now. And then it also tells you things like how far you are away from financial independence, et cetera.

And so for me, [in order to make thing career shift] it was crucial to do the math and the analysis in order to feel confident about what I felt like..what I felt like might be crazy, frankly. Moving from a job that was paying well and where work life balance was worse than it is now, but it wasn't horrible, to one where I was just uncertain. [Also} moving thousands of miles across the country to a place we'd never lived in before... I needed to dot my i's and cross my t's in order to feel confident enough to do that. And so that's why I built ChroniFI—it was to sort of solve that problem first for myself and then I was like, Hey, maybe other people can use this too. And so that's the origin for it.

Day to day, what do I do now? It's sort of a jack of all trades at this point. The company is small and growing, and so I spend part of the day coding, improving the product, reaching out and marketing on social media, trying to get feedback, and acquire new customers. And then also just connecting…going from a job where I was really just shoulder to the plow and trying to make the revenue number go as high as I could to one where it really pays to develop relationships. And that's one of the things that I have found most impactful about moving into the startup scene. It's amazing how generous people are with their time. Just strangers that you haven't ever met before that live a thousand miles away. It's been amazing to see how easy it is to get meetings with these people because they've been through the same exact journey and they're itching to be generous with their time and help you get through your version of it. That's been a really cool experience. To go from an environment where it felt a lot more zero sum to an environment where people are really looking forward to the opportunity to help others because it's like they've just found out how this really cool thing works. And that thing is starting a business and they just can't wait to help you do it, too, because they're excited about seeing how exciting it is for you. And so that's been a surprise, and it's been a really welcome development.

E: That's awesome. And can you just tell me a little bit about the user base that you've seen so far? So you've had ChroniFI up for about two years now? Is that what it is?

I started the company in, I guess, January of 2020…but it had been mostly product development from that point. I started launching ads for it in August and so it’s relatively new now in terms of acquiring users. But so far, the way that things seem to be going suggests that the users a lot of the time fall into sort of the "HENRY'' category—that is like high earner, not rich yet, which is an acronym I learned not long ago—which it's surprisingly spot on for a lot of the people who wind up in the financial independence retire early (FIRE) community. Often times, it’s easier for them to actually start biting that off because when a lot of people look at these numbers and they go, Oh wow, I'm 40 years away from retirement, that's not exactly inspiring for of people unless they love their job. And then it's great. But, a lot of people who are somewhere already nearing the midpoint of that [career] journey where they've accelerated their pay, they've risen through the ranks a little bit and developed at least some savings. Then they can see meaningful progress. And the most meaningful interest, in a lot of cases, are the people who can see the finish line. At least it might be decades off in the future, but they can see it and they're hungry to see how their actions impact that finish line. In the ideal sense, [users] can log in three months after they started and go, Oh, wow, my retirement date has moved up by two years as a result of my actions. That's the 'aha' moment that I want users of ChroniFI to be able to see. And so, that being said, I think it's well-suited for people all the way up and down the income or wealth spectrum because the biggest thing, like the biggest upshot, is what am I? What am I selling or providing? Ultimately, it's confidence. It's simply boiling something which is inherently super complicated these days, which is personal finance, down to something that anybody can understand. And so that's the value. I think that with simplicity comes confidence, and with confidence comes the ability to hopefully move your life in a direction that better matches what your actual goals are.

E: Right. And so as a user, I feel like it is very user friendly for anyone, even if you don't know a bunch about personal finance, which I think is great because I know that there's a huge stigma surrounding personal finance that's kind of like where The Board has come in with things we're trying to make it like appealing and conversational to talk about finance. What's sort of like, I'm sure there's a bunch of people using quantify who are noticing, Oh, I've a bunch of student debt. I'm never going to get out of this hole of like... it's just going to be a game of catch up forever. Are there any sort of resources or next steps that you're going to provide beyond the service? I don't know if that's a question that you could answer necessarily, but I'm just dying to know because it's so user friendly. Like, what if people look at it and they're like, I'm not going to retire until I'm sixty five, I'm stuck. What do you do?

The more that I've dug into this space, the more that I've realized how many different little subgenres there are within this whole financial independence community. Like I'm historically a bit of a social media curmudgeon in the sense that I wasn't really involved in that all that much until I started trying to run this company. And it turns out, Oh, I do have to reach out and talk to people and get involved in the community. As I've done that, it's been surprising to me. There's this proliferation of multiple sub communities within the financial independence community. There are people who are the typical down-the-middle financial independence seekers. Then there's this lean FIRE, for those who are uninitiated financial independence, retire early. The lean FIRE crowd is focused. I forget what the exact parameters are, but it's focused on being able to be financially independent with very little spending. And then there's the fat FIRE folks who have a net worth of five million plus and want to live large and also be financially independent. And then there's somewhere in between; there's chubby FIRE… all kinds of little different sub gradations.

As to your question of what do you tell somebody who logs in and sees that, wow, there's a lot more time than they thought until retirement? Well, the first thing is, geez, aren't you glad you realized that now? Because that would be kind of a bummer if instead of figuring out that you were 40 years away right now, you logged in 10 years and then you were 40 years away…that's a tough spot to be in. And secondarily, then let's look at what you actually want to get done with your life. Let's look at what is actually achievable. Are you living beyond your means? Is there a way to cut your expenses, or is there a way to make the fact that you're working for 40 years something that gets you actually excited? For me it is running this company, I love it. I know every startup founder probably says that. But like, I really do enjoy going to work in the morning. On Sunday nights, I'm excited for the ability to go start working again on Monday. And that sort of feeling makes it turn into something where it's like, Man, I got to do this 9:00 to 5:00 till I'm sixty five into something where it's like, Yeah, if days look like this, then I'm OK with that. So again, it's not about making retirement happen as fast as humanly possible. It's about stepping into a balance in life that gives you actual pleasure or fulfillment sooner than you otherwise would have. And that's what I think that hopefully can resonate with everybody whether they're saddled with tons of student debt or whether they just inherited a windfall. Either way,building a sustainable lifestyle around whatever you do have at your disposal is ultimately the problem that we're trying to solve.

E: Have you noticed a key sort of demographic of people using ChroniFI right now, like people in their twenties who are like, ambitious and ready to retire when they're forty five or whatever? Or is it like people who are just kind of testing it out to see where they're at?

I think the sort of the sweet spot is probably the twenty five to forty five year olds out there who are maybe not right out of college, but have gotten into their career for anywhere from a couple of years to a couple of decades and are now moving in the direction of financial independence.   I didn't know what it was like to live in the world until I actually lived in the world. And so if you'd ask me when I was in college to start a company, I would have said, Hey, no thanks because I don't know what it's actually like to do personal finance... I gotta live it before I help other people do it. And so the target, rather the people that I think are most willing to jump on this idea and dream with are the people who are young enough that they're still feeling creative and open to new ways of looking at things and old enough so that they've got a little bit of savings socked away and they can they understand the levers that are involved in crafting their lifestyle.

E: And so you said that you started all of this development before COVID in January 2020. Did you notice any sort of impacts with COVID in either developing it or seeing anything...did anything change in your plans because of the pandemic?

I felt incredibly fortunate in the sense that I left my job in 2019, and for 2020 I was planning on essentially living off of savings and working from home. And it turns out that's what a lot of people had to do, whether they liked it or not. And so I was very, very fortunate in the sense that [the pandemic] didn't disrupt my plans or the generation of the product itself. I will say, though, as it relates to the business proposition, COVID has been an awful catastrophe for society. But there are these silver linings that crop up here and there if you're willing to look for them. And one of those that I think is front and center from the types of things that I look into and care about is the way that work-life is structured. I think as [the world] transitions to more remote work, more flexible hours, frankly more employees are speaking out over the conditions of their employment. That has no doubt been accelerated by COVID. And so now that employees have gotten a taste of that, Oh, this is what this is what it would be like if I didn't have to commute or this is what it would be like if I worked one less day a week or that type of thing, it's really hard for employers to hire talented people right now because people have gotten a taste of that. And with that, they're not always ready to go back to the nine to five, all week long-type of thing in an office. I think that's definitely moved the needle in the sense that if most people before or a lot of people before were kind of in a, live-to-work mode, now it's kind of moved the needle in the direction of a work-to- live mode, which is, I think, better for people's happiness. And I think once the dust is all settled, it'll probably be better for productivity, too. So, corporations will have reason to cheer as well according to how the research seems to point. But it's an experiment that's being run, whether we like it or not right now…So we'll see how it turns out.

E: So our demographic is mainly people who are post-grad up until about thirty five year olds. Is there one piece of advice that you could give young professionals who are looking to retire early?

I'd say I'd say the biggest thing is just that expenses are everything. If you're a young professional, then a lot of times what that means is that you're at a steeply increasing responsibility curve and also potentially a steeply increasing pay curve, or at least an increasing pay curve of some kind. And so one thing that psychologically I find super beneficial for people in that position is just to avoid lifestyle inflation. That is, if you can figure out a way to be happy with what you're making now and then just spend that even when it's five years from now and you're making more money, and just pocket the difference. That's a great way to accelerate your path towards financial independence. And if you can't do that, or if you're living uncomfortably right now, then you can adjust. If you go from making $70k to $100k, then splurge and spend an extra fifteen, and just pocket that extra. And the more that you do that, the higher your savings rate will go and the closer you'll get to financial independence.

And then, just from a more human oriented or psychological perspective, I think it's super important to make sure that whatever you're doing is sustainable. And I don't mean that in the strict environmental sense. I mean that in the way that you can sustain what you're doing indefinitely, type of sense. And so I'm a huge dork. When I think about a good weekend, it's me and my wife sitting down over the board game table with anybody that we've convinced into playing with us. When I confront this, [I know] these board games are not cheap, a lot of times they're like $80 plus to buy one. And so unsurprisingly, given that I'm into this financial independence stuff, $80 hurts. That's an outlay that I'm not always looking forward to passing over. But then when I think about it, OK, why would I not spend this money? Well, I want to not spend this money so I could save it for something else…save it for what? And eventually, I follow that or pull that yarn long enough, so I get to a point where I understand that my long term happiness is a world in which I'm able to splurge on a board game every once in a while. All that I'd be doing by depriving myself of that expenditure and the benefit would be convincing myself—essentially lying to myself—that happiness is cheaper than it actually is for me. I find that some things are a lot easier to embrace and stick with, kind of like a diet, if it's something that you can continue to do indefinitely and feel good about doing. I found if step one to thinking about financial independence is cutting expenses, step two is splurging on the things that actually enable you to keep going. That more measured approach that appreciates the fallibility inherent in being human I think is essential to keeping it going, because it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. You can't just work and never sleep for two years and then all of the sudden never have to work again. That's not the way it works. You got to keep at it for a while. And, it sounds trite, but the joy is in the journey. So if you can't structure it so that you're enjoying it along the way, then what's the point?

E: Right. And just moving into some general career questions about yourself, where do you see this going like five years down the line or 10 years out?

I would love to still be doing this in five, 10 years. I really enjoy the process of building a company, especially since it's something that's fulfilling to me. My mission with it is to essentially reorganize human capital to its highest and best use. Get people who are working in jobs that they don't find fulfilling and enable them to go out and do something that they find more fulfilling. And so that's what energizes me. That's what gets me going in the morning and excited about doing what I'm doing. That being said, I would love to broaden my team. I would love to basically get the day to day more delegated. I have the ability to do two things. One, focus on the vision for where this company is going in the future and to talk with customers. Frankly, that's a lot of where my joy comes from— is stepping into other people's shoes and understanding what is the puzzle look like from their perspective? I don't have to jump in any kind of a prescriptive way and go, Oh, here's what you should do. No, you take people's word for it. I want to figure out how I can help them go get [whatever it is they want], given the levers that are at their disposal. And so I really enjoy that process. This harkens back to an earlier question that you asked, also, I hope that down the road there's some kind of more comprehensive coaching element that can come out of this. Hopefully we wind up building out that side of the business model…hopefully, it can evolve into something where there's a ChroniFI plus or who knows, where people can have access to an actual human advisor and talk. That's not on the table right now, but that's something that I get a lot of joy out of. So if any of your users want that sort of thing, I'll do it for free. Basically, it's fun for me to think about that stuff.

So that's where I can be myself hopefully in five, 10 years. At the same time, you have to also inject a heavy dose of humility… startups don't always work. I believe in ChroniFI. I think it's going to help a lot of people and succeed. But by the numbers, startups are foolish. It's a risky business. And I have to be open to the idea that five years from now, I might be doing something completely different. And that's OK. The fun part of things is doing this sort of experiment for myself. I've learned what a difference it makes to go from working on something that you're not necessarily all in on to something where you really eat, sleep and breathe it and really feel passionate about it. And so whatever I'm doing in five years, I hope that it's something like what I'm doing right now where I feel like I am solving a real problem and moving the ball forward.

E: And what would you say your biggest challenge or failure in your career has been and what have you learned from it?

Failure is a funny word because I guess my perspective on failure is that if you're not failing basically all the time, you're not doing it right. It's that orientation towards life where you kind of have one foot in your comfort zone, where you feel competent and capable, and then you've got one foot over the abyss, where you're trying to figure out new things as you go along and sharpening your skills and expanding your comfort zone. And so I'd say for me, the biggest challenge was figuring out when it was the right time to do something different. Being the analyst type of personality that I am made it so that I really had to crunch a lot of numbers before I could convince myself I wasn't crazy. And that is kind of what I'm hoping to feel like. I'm using the term in the definition, but like, it's kind of what I'm hoping to do with ChroniFI…is just help people get through to the other side of that challenge in a quicker and more confident way.

E: What would you say your biggest accomplishment or contribution to either your past job or ChroniFI has been?

I'd say business-wise, the first dollar of revenue was one of the biggest things. Even more than getting a bonus at my old job or that type of thing. Obviously, I'm just starting out so the numbers are a lot smaller, but it's that zero-to-one sort of ability to see there's a stranger out there who is willing to pay some money to get what I'm bringing to the marketplace. For people who are thinking about doing something entrepreneurial, that's quite a rush. And I had no idea what that felt like until it happened. And then, I guess on a more personal note, a big part of why I made this shift in my own lifestyle was so that I could spend more time with my family. I've got three daughters under five. The ability to actually participate with them most weekdays— I take over the kids at 3:30—and it's just been amazing. My youngest is 13 months old and seeing that difference…the ability to really plunge into a relationship with her in a way that I just wasn't able to at my  old job… that’s kind of what it's all about for me. The ability to do what's right for myself in a work sense with doing what's right for my family is  something that I would have thought was too much to ask for when I was at my old job. Now I can see that it's actually achievable. However I'm not going to pretend that starting a startup is easy, but you do have control over when you work, at least, if not how much you work. You have the ability to at least dive in and be present with the people that you love in a way that I wasn't able to do before. And so the biggest accomplishment by far has just been the ability to spend more time with my family... that's success for me.

E: I feel like we can end it on that note, that's a great note to end on. Sounds like you have a whole full time job at home after work with three. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today.

Yeah, thank you, Edyn. I really appreciate you taking the time and getting the word out there.

E: Yes. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you!