Motley Fool Staff, The Motley Fool

Tue, Jun 17, 2025, 2:16 PM40 min read

J.L. Collins is the best-selling author of The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life.

In this podcast, Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp caught up with Collins for a conversation about:

• The challenges and appeal of being a super-saver.

• How to use the 4% rule.

• The value of "self-cleansing" index funds for investors.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

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This podcast was recorded on June 07, 2025.

J.L. Collins: He said, when you achieve a certain level of wealth, and that wealth is throwing off a certain amount of more money, and that money exceeds what you need to live on and then some, everything essentially becomes free. That's a wonderful place to be. It was an epiphany for me. I'd never thought about that.

Ricky Mulvey: I'm Ricky Mulvey, and that's JL Collins, best-selling author of the Simple Path to Wealth, which was updated and re released this year. He joined my colleague Robert Brokamp to discuss why financial independence needs more than early retirement, lessons from past market crashes, and why Collins believes that most investors need just one fund.

Robert Brokamp: This is a family show. We'll start with a sentence from your book. Personally, there is nothing I'd rather buy or own than FU money. What is FU money, and what was your path to having enough of it?

J.L. Collins: It's a because it's a family book, that's why I call it FU money as opposed to spelling out the word. Robert, a little funny aside, I have had people object to that. I've even had people say, I stopped reading the book when I got to that, but I've also had people say, why don't you just use the word? Anyway, for what that's worth. But in my mind, I think of it a little differently than I think most people do. I think most people equate having FU money to being financially independent. That's fine. I've always thought of it as the intern on your journey to full financial independence. Full financial independence is when you have enough that your investments are throwing off enough to live on to cover all of your expenses. FU money is the money you start having the moment you set foot on this path. At every step of the journey, you acquire a little more. It's like going to the gym, you get a little stronger, a little stronger financially. During the course of that journey, having that FU money makes you more able and more comfortable to take bolder decisions than you might otherwise, maybe to step away from a job that's not really working for you, maybe to pursue something else and take a little bit of a risk. I had started accumulating FU money long before I heard the term. But I first came across a term in Jame Clavell's novel, Noble House, a great novel, and it's part of a trilogy. In Noble House, there is a character, and her stated goal is to have FU money spelled out. [laughs] I thought that put a label on exactly what I was after.