Mindset Upgrade is all about how to live to be 100. Learn what inspired us and why living to be 100 is more possible today than ever before.

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My Mom died on February 18, 2023. She was 71. I was turning 43 in a few weeks. Of course, I was in shock, as the rest of my family was. But given my Mom’s hereditary connective tissue disorder—the same thing my oldest brother died from in 1995—we knew this time would come sooner than later. I was grateful that Toni (my husband), the kids, and I had decided to move back to the United States, then back home to Southern California from Germany about 7 years before that. I just wanted to spend the time with my Mom and be physically closer to her before it was too late. Turns out that that was a good decision, even though it was so hard to uproot my husband and leave Germany.

But then after she passed away and while I was fully in the grieving stage, I started to ask myself, now what? I moved back here to be close to my family and now our matriarch was gone. My Dad, brother, and Step-Dad all still live in California and my sister is nearby in Phoenix, which is so awesome. And I love California and am so happy we moved back. As beautiful as it is, it’s so expensive to live here and you feel like you live to work sometimes. Then I realized, at age almost 43, I would have another at least 12 years, if not more, to work until I could retire. And my husband is 14 years older than me, so I’m thinking of his age and health, etc. All those thoughts sent me into an even deeper depression than I was already in, processing the loss of my Mom.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. I’ve had the pleasure of working in tech for 24 years so far and I’ve loved every byte of it (did you see what I did there?), including the ups and the downs. But when I lost my Mom, it really hit me like a ton of bricks that our only finite resource is time. Time with our kids. Time with our families. Time doing the things we absolutely love.

At the time, around May or June of 2023, I didn’t give it much further thought. I just knew I didn’t want to ‘wait to retire.’ But I didn’t know how to realize what I was feeling or thinking. Seemingly out of nowhere, my Flipboard alerted me to this article: Forget the usual retirement age – I quit work at 35 with £1m in savings. Mind you, I have most of my alerts on my phone turned off. I can’t stand it when my phone is beeping and vibrating all day. I had put my FB and Instagram accounts officially on pause, meaning people couldn’t find or see me, I had deleted my Twitter account, I had had my notifications for emails, Teams messages, calendar reminders, and anything else that wanted to alert me of something turned off for ages already. I did allow Flipboard notifications though because I wanted to stay current with the news.

So, I read the above article and it truly changed. my. life! My initial reaction was, sheesh, £1m to retire is really not that much, but I’ll keep an open mind. That article led me to Katie and Alan’s Rebel Finance School, which is a 10-week program—all free, with a money back guarantee, har, har!—that teaches you the basics of personal finance and how to get on your own way to financial independence.

The amazing thing about their program is that it’s not rocket science. It’s math. And math is math; it just works. But no one is taught personal finance in school so no wonder nobody knows about all of these simple concepts like: live well below your means; invest as much and as simply and cheaply as you can; and avoid debt.

At week seven, Katie and Alan had a guest speaker join for that session, named Brad Barrett from ChooseFI. I had no idea who Brad was or what ChooseFI was. I was blown away. I had already had weekly head explosions through the Rebel Finance School, but then Brad took it to another level for me because he is from the US and opened the door for me to the US FI (financial independence) community. It was like I had entered a FI speakeasy and everyone knew what was going on and I had to catch up—so exciting! I became obsessed with the ChooseFI podcast and it led me to many other gurus in the US FI community such as JL Collins, Mr. Money Mustache, GoCurryCracker, The Mad Fientist, and so many more.

[SIDE NOTE: Buckle up buttercup, it’s gonna get dense for a hot minute, but just stay with me and you’ll see how all this comes together at the end…]

Completely unrelated to FI, my brother and I decided to do Andy Frisella’s 75HARD challenge together, starting July 31, 2023. If anyone has ever done this challenge, then you know it’s hard. It’s all about building mental toughness and becoming a better version of yourself. Anyone who knows me (and I hope you’ll stay and get to know me), knows I am very disciplined and am always up for a challenge—bring it!! So, I told my brother I was game. He had already completed phase 0 of 75HARD, which is the 75-day challenge itself. He was going to start phase 1 and I was going to start phase 0, both on July 31, 2023.

I started 75HARD on July 31, 2023 and just the week before that I had attended the Rebel Finance School session with Brad Barrett.

The combination of completing the Rebel Finance School, getting neck-deep into the ChooseFI podcast, and crushing 75HARD all at the same time resulted in an a-ha moment for me. I could do it! I could achieve FI much sooner than expected and maintain my healthy body to realize my dream of spending more time with my husband, my kids, and my entire family for as long as possible. I became laser-focused on wanting to be much more intentional with how I spend my time from that day forward.

I asked my 10 and 12-year-old sons at the time if they would want Mom to quit working as soon as possible to be able to spend more time with them. Both kids screamed YES!!! I was hoping that’d be the answer, but it was nice to hear it. I said, ok, let’s make this our family goal then. And right then, our family FI goal was established: we’d reach it in Feb 2031—latest! There was so much I wanted to share with my husband and kids about all the FI stuff I had learned and all the changes I was making for us. And I did, during our monthly family finance meetings. Then I thought, I really want my kids to experience working toward FI like I am right now.

But reaching FI is just one component. If ultimately, I want to live as long as possible, there are other elements in play: physical, mental, and emotional health. If mind, body, and wallet are not in harmony, living to be 100 will be tough, if not miserable.

After this epiphany, I felt like I needed to take action—start a blog or some platform to bring these three elements together in a way that could help others. Before doing anything though, gratefully, I listened to Alan Donegan’s Rebel Entrepreneur podcast, which blew my mind on how to start a business with little to zero startup capital. That podcast was game-changing for me and very inspiring since I had failed twice already as a startup entrepreneur in 2007-2009. Great time to start a company, I know…zip it. When thinking about this business idea to realize, I did what many said, which is, to do what you love. And this idea of combining mental toughness, healthy living, and financial independence to be able to live to be 100 kept gnawing at me. And so, Mindset Upgrade was born.

So, here’s what you can expect from this blog:

The Stanford Center on Longevity suggests that over 50% of today’s newborns will live until they are 100. Isn’t that a wonderful idea? I just think of my Mom. I would give anything to have another 29 years with her. And for her to see her grandkids grow up and be there when they achieve their moments of greatness. To think that the traditional map of life of going to school for the first 20 years of life, then finding a job, maybe marrying someone or having kids, then working until 65, then retiring and dying no longer holds true. Flip this arbitrary “cultural prescription” on its head and imagine having ONE HUNDRED YEARS on this Earth. We have so much time to do great things, become great humans, and enjoy life with the ones we love most.

But achieving greatness requires work and discipline. And only if we’re happy do we really want to live that long in the first place, right? With this idea and the combination of mental toughness, healthy living, and financial independence, we have the power to change the map of our lives. So many people want to change but don’t know how or think it’s too late! Mindset Upgrade won’t magically make you live to be 100. But hopefully it will inspire you and light a fire in you to intentionally work toward that and all that’s involved on that journey. I’ll share my stories and stories of others on living hard to become a centenarian—warts and all—in the hopes of helping you become a better you. I want to learn from you too, so I can become a better me.

But to have a chance at long, happy living, you have to be ready for some change. Are you ready for a mindset upgrade? That just sounded a little brainwashy, ha! I promise it’s not.

Let’s just think about life a little bit differently in the pursuit of longevity and happiness. Sound good? Let’s rage…