This week I’m thrilled to bring you an interview with a pinch of international spice and flavor. Please welcome to the site, the legendary Australian climber Lee Cujes.
In this interview we take a hard look at the long-term aspects of finding a balance on career, lifestyle, relationships, nails-hard climbing, and future prosperity. Lee graciously shares with us how he was able to carve a career niche while climbing at an elite level, how he and his wife Sam made the big move out of the city to a small climbing mecca in the Blue Mountains, and how Lee has used the same, boring and lazy-ass methods of passive investing to build an enduring path to financial freedom. And during some of his darkest days, Lee and Sam embarked on an incredible global climbing trip. Yeah, let’s discuss that too.
Shall we?
Lee Cujes: An Introduction
This one is particularly meaningful to me. I truly mean it when I say that I was terrified to launch this project out to the climbing world two years ago. Certainly, I never suspected that so many climbers were closet personal finance enthusiasts. So you can imagine when I get an email from Lee Cujes that I’m going to beg him for an interview. I’m so glad he had the courage to help me get the good word out on general financial literacy. Where else are we going to get it?!
Lee Cujes, now 43, has been climbing since the mid-90s, many of those years at an elite level, including multiple 5.13+ and 5.14 first ascents. Known for his prolific development streak in his former home base of Queensland, Lee eventually found himself a bigger and bigger fish in an increasingly smaller pond.
In tandem with his early obsession with rock climbing, Lee also began tinkering with a fledgling internet world, creating Australia’s first online climbing forum. These early skills eventually led to a career during the burgeoning dot-com era, not at all related to his biology degree from James Cook University.
But while this career was promising, Lee and his eventual wife Sam began to grow increasingly frustrated with the draining load-up-the-car, weekend warrior lifestyle based in the large metropolitan area of Brisbane. In 2015, Lee and Sam were able to permanently relocate to the mountain climbing mecca of Blackheath. We’ll certainly explore how this change came to be.
Meanwhile, back in the “Uni days”⏤college, for us Yanks⏤a friend introduced Lee to the concept of stock market investing. Against the grain of the commonly held doctrine of Australian real estate investing, Lee began purchasing stock shares well before two major global financial meltdowns. We’ll certainly explore the psychology of investing through those notable downturns.
Without further ado, let’s have Lee take it from here.
Lee Cujes on the Early Days of Climbing, Internet, and a Budding Career
CC: Your story as a climber has been featured on a number of podcasts (linked below), but can you give a bit of background on your early days as a climber? What is an achievement that makes you particularly proud (not necessarily hardest grade)?
Power Company Climbing: Is It Really a Plateau? with Lee Cujes
Enormocast: Lee Cujes: Welcome to Australia, Mate
Baffle Days: Lee Cujes – Endless Psyche
Lee: I’m probably most proud of “building” aspects of my climbing career. Both in area and route development, and in the community-building area.
Early Days of the Internet
At first, I was publishing trip reports and online guidebooks on the (very new) internet in the late 90s. Soon thereafter I launched the qurank e-zine in 1999, which soon morphed into a climbing web forum of the same name in 2001. This pre-dated most of the other web forums out there (like Mountain Project or rockclimbing.com), and formed a great platform for healthy bitching and backstabbing for a good decade or so. A stripped-down backup of the content still remains, like a preserved head in a jar, for those motivated enough to seek it out.
Upskill Climbing
I started Upskill Climbing a little later, the main focus of which was personal training for climbing. I personally coached a whole host of one-on-one clients for intense one hour weekly sessions on my home wall. Keeping up with the demand was challenging, so it eventually led to running a series of domestic and international climbing coaching camps, two weeks on location. It was hard work, but very rewarding.
I’m a big believer in the concept of process over content.
Lee Cujes
Lee Cujes on a College Education
CC: You graduated from university with a degree in Marine Biology. Why did you ultimately not pursue this line of work? How did you instead build your career? Do you have any sense of regret for pursuing a line of work unrelated to your field of study?
Reason #1: Supply and Demand
Lee: I didn’t pursue Marine Biology work for a few reasons. The first reason was supply and demand. Thanks to George Costanza, Marine Biology was an “in vogue” thing to study. Heaps of students were moving through the program, but the number of real jobs with real salaries were minimal.
I don’t regret doing that degree even though I’m not using the content in my working career. I’m a big believer in the concept of process over content. The Uni degree taught me the process of how to learn, and how to articulate. Those are the skills you carry with you. I believe few degrees teach you content that remains 100% relevant when you’re actually working.
Reason #2: Murphy’s Law
The second reason was that my final year of Honours study was traumatic. I had a year-long thesis planned that focussed on the growth mechanics of a certain species of fish in land-locked water bodies of various sizes. The theory I was exploring was that growth was linked to the size of the waterway.
It was all going well until Townsville experienced a monumental flood event early in that year. Suddenly, many of the waterways flooded and became interconnected. We adjusted all our sites, but months of work was lost. My supervisor said that with the re-jig and some luck, I just might still have a valid experiment. A couple of months later an even bigger flood event ripped through Townsville. This washed away my fish, and my honours project with it. Consolation prize? I bought myself a drill and switched focus for the rest of the year.
Deciding How To Proceed After a College Degree
I had no idea what I wanted to do when Uni was over. I loved climbing, putting up new routes and building stuff related to climbing on the web. Then I saw a job ad for a graduate-level position called “Internet Technologist.” This was at a time when most people didn’t really understand what the Internet was. You could Ask Jeeves but the concept of Googling it and getting a sensible result was still a crazy man’s fantasy.
I went to the interview and acted extremely enthusiastic (and I was). I showed them my self-taught, homemade-in-Notepad websites and got the job on the spot. It led to a string of various jobs, promotions, and sideways shifts within the company over a decade. I always took the maximum amount of annual leave and leave without pay.
(Related Post: The Astonishing Cost of Unused Vacation)
I was deeply hurt by the whole ordeal and was struggling to see a path forward.
Lee Cujes
Lee Cujes on a Year Abroad
CC: By 2009, you and your wife Sam decided that the stress of corporate life was becoming unbearable and decided to embark on a year-long international climbing trip. Can you take me through the process of planning and budgeting for this trip?
Lee: Eventually I was fired. The company was in the midst of downsizing, but due to their governance structure they couldn’t just get rid of people for no reason.
I came home after a couple of weeks climbing in the Grampians to find someone from HR waiting for me in the foyer. It was an ugly scenario. They were alleging misconduct. It wasn’t true, and when pressed, they couldn’t prove it. What became clear though was that the legal fees to take action against the company were going to be prohibitive. And the result of a win would have simply been reinstatement into a job that was by this time unfulfilling, for a company that clearly didn’t want me there. I was deeply hurt by the whole ordeal and was struggling to see a path forward. Sam suggested she take a year leave without pay. We hit the reset button with a year trip away.
Believing It Can Be Done
My first thought was “we can’t do that!” But then we sat down and started planning. We planned where we would like to go, and then figured out what months were the good times to be in which climbing areas. The next step involved planning flights, and grouping areas together in a sensible way.
We spent heaps of time researching the Schengen visa system, which essentially limits time spent in the Schengen-member countries of Europe to three month blocks at a time. This meant we would spend three months in Europe, go to the States for three months, and then back to Europe for another three months before returning home via a three-month stint in Asia.
Trip Planning Variables
To plan this, we developed a plan in a spreadsheet with the following variables:
- a daily budget while traveling
- fixed expenses back home (home loan payments, storage fees, insurances, etc.)
- income (e.g., rent we’d receive from renting our house for a year)
- our savings lump sum allocated to the trip (that we contributed to by selling our car and some other assets).
In the four-month lead-up to the trip, we also saved like crazy. No takeaway coffees, no eating out, no unnecessary purchases, etc. It was hard, but it’s incredible how much you can save when you put your mind to it.
By playing with these figures, we were able to assure ourselves (provided none of the variables changed markedly) we could afford to do the trip. And we did. And it was both amazing, and under budget.
(Related Post: Traveling Abroad: You’re Paying Too Much)
Finding the Silver Lining
Getting fired was one of my life’s defining traumatic experiences. But it paved the way for the most amazing adventure of my life, and opened the door to a new and very much more rewarding career (more on that later).
…It’s incredible how much you can save when you put your mind to it.
Lee Cujes
Something we learnt from doing this trip is how little you need to create wonderful memories. We lived out of one suitcase for an entire year. We didn’t have a lot of the comforts we were accustomed to at home, and I wouldn’t change a thing. For example, we lived in a 2-person tent for three months in the US, went without showers for days on end, and ate only bread and honey for multiple days straight in Turkey (but that’s a whole other story!)
International Trip Highlights
CC: Everyone loves a good trip report. Can you briefly spray us down on some highlights of your trip and what this meant for your life at the time?
Lee: Three months living in Kalymnos in 2010 was a highlight. We both did our hardest climbing of the trip in those first three months. I managed some 8a onsights (a personal best), and enjoyed the limestone, the sea, each other’s company and a life away from work. We got about 250 pitches done during that time. We had also architected things to run some climbing coaching camps, which helped defray some of our expenses while in Kalymnos.
The rest of the trip took us through Turkey, Rifle, Maple, Ten Sleep and then into Spain (various crags but the lion’s share in Rodellar) and home via Vietnam and Thailand.
Lee Cujes on Integrating Back into the Workplace
CC: Once you returned from this trip, how did you and Sam choose to re-enter the workforce? Did you or your wife have any sense of trepidation about finding work after a year away?
Sam Cujes’ Return to the Workplace
Lee: Good question. Sam walked back into her old job, sat down with her boss for their first meeting. She left that meeting and walked into a recruitment firm and introduced herself. They said they’d have her placed within a month. She said “Okay, well, I’m going back to work to quit.” The recruiter was stunned.
She walked back to work, went into her boss’ office and quit. It was a pretty ballsy move given I didn’t have a job at the time (I was building Upskill Climbing) but it was 100% the right move. She was placed in a better role within three weeks. I think the trip taught us we didn’t need all that much to survive and this contributed to this decision.
(Aside: In later years, after rising into a very senior and very high-stress position, it would eventually fall to me to tell her “you need to quit and start your own business.” Again, a shock to the system and one most people instinctively flinch from. But ultimately, in the pursuit of a suitable balance and happiness in your life, sometimes you need to make hard decisions.)
Lee Cujes on Building a New Career
As for myself, I was building Upskill, coaching and developing and selling climbing gear (the Upskill range of climbing kneebar pads were ahead of their time). However, I always knew this was more of a passion project. I reached out to a few contacts in my network, from geologists to corporate adventure types, to my contacts in climbing stores and so on. Just to touch base and see if there were any opportunities.
As it turned out, a guy who used to own one of the local climbing shops was starting a new business in height safety training. We had a meeting and it seemed like a good fit. He had the business savvy and people skills, and I had the skills with IT, systems and processes to allow his idea to scale.
I said I’d never work in a small company (“you’re too needed, I can’t take lots of leave to go climbing”). I said I’d never pour my passion into work (“you only have so much energy, it all needs to go into climbing”). It was time to to flip these notions on their head.
I worked harder than I’d ever worked before. It was made easier by the fact that I was incredibly valued, had free rein on decision-making, and was building something in a small team of very psyched people. It didn’t affect my climbing negatively, for the most part, and I knew investing in this monster effort would pay dividends later.
Fast forward. I just had my nine year anniversary with this company this week. We’ve grown the business from a staff of four to 165. We are the national leader in the type of training we do. Being so valued, I was easily able to negotiate plenty of time away for overseas climbing, and a salary that matched my contribution.
Lee Cujes on the Desire to Get Away From City Life
CC: A big element of life satisfaction that we share is the desire to distance ourselves from too much time in the big city and corporate grind. What key elements did you and your wife put into place to make a successful relocation to Blackheath? What does Blackheath provide that was missing in the city?
Lee: The key driver was climbing. Over 20 years, I had virtually climbed out Queensland. I was making 2.5 hour trips into New South Wales to develop new areas and put up routes. Mondays were always very bleary-eyed affairs!
We considered where we could move that would provide the sheer volume of climbing that would keep us entertained for years to come. We’d been visiting the Blue Mountains for many years (a regular Christmas trip since 2000) and always loved it. There are other great areas in Australia for climbers, but for me, it was an easy choice.
Making the Case for Remote Work
By this time Sam was working for herself so she could work anywhere. I floated the idea of moving and working remotely to my boss who (as a climber himself) understood the appeal, but also understood the impact the “loss” of a senior manager (I was the General Manager of the company at the time) would have. In certain roles like the one I was in, face time with staff and actually being there is a key component. There’s no getting around that. Not every job can be done remotely.
So, we sat down and put together a two year plan to allow it to happen. It involved a role change, the development of additional staff, handover of various responsibilities, implementing video conference rooms in all our facilities, and so forth. All of which seem very commonplace now (especially since COVID) but were a bit of a quantum leap at the time.
(Related Post: Keeping Remote Work in a Post-Pandemic World)
If I’d chosen a US index fund in 2000, I would not have seen any growth for those 14 years. I just think that is a huge thing for people to be aware of.
Lee Cujes
Lee Cujes on Investing for the Long-Haul
CC: As someone who has been investing since the late 1990s, what is your advice to a new or relatively inexperienced investor (perhaps myself) who hasn’t been fully tested by a prolonged economic downturn? Tell me your thoughts about the aftermath of the dot-com bust and the continued downfall after the 2008 financial crisis. What was it like to be an investor and not see gains for nearly 15 years?!
Lee: Firstly, I will be the first to admit that just because I’ve been doing it for a long time doesn’t make me experienced. I would consider my knowledge of investing to be low-to-moderate. However, given that I have had “skin in the game” for 26 years, I can at least tell you about my actual experience thus far.
Misleading Short-Term Indications of Performance
When looking at your asset class of choice (stocks, bonds, managed funds, ETFs, etc.), I think it’s very easy to get caught up in short-term indications of performance (I still fall victim to this).
For example, managed funds will typically list their per annum returns in one year, three year, five year, and 10 year returns. And in many cases, the 10 year return figure is missing because the fund hasn’t existed that long. So, you filter your list of funds and invariably make your decision based on how the fund has performed in the last one to three years. This is often what I have done. And I’ve found that in most cases, having a short-term performance bias does not produce a particularly good result in the long-term.
Many funds fail to achieve high returns over the long-term. In fact, many funds fail to even keep up with their related benchmark (think of this as the commonly accepted average return for whatever the fund represents). It’s really crazy, really.
I continued to doggedly invest a moderate amount of my pay cheque into my funds every month.
Lee Cujes
Are Today’s Returns the Key to the Future?
In the mid-late 90s, based on the returns I was seeing, I fully anticipated being in a position to stop working in my 30s. The reality was somewhat different. The market languished. However, I continued to doggedly invest a moderate amount of my pay cheque (via an automated scheduled deposit) into my funds every month.
Over the period of 2000 – 2014, when the US stock market failed to make any ground whatsoever, I did manage to triple my modest nest egg. My performance in the market even included withdrawing a sizable chunk out of the portfolio to fund life’s desires such as a car, wedding, house deposit and so forth (note the Australian stock market achieved 8% per annum during this time).
If I’d chosen a US index fund in 2000, I would not have seen any growth for those 14 years. I just think that is a huge thing for people to be aware of. Would you have had the chutzpah to stay the course? Would you have been able to argue the merits of your decision to friends who’d picked International Property Funds instead and had tripled their money?
Is the Past the Key to the Future?
Right now, the US stock market is kicking arse. It has been since 2015*. If you’re only considering “history” as the last five or so years it looks like a total no brainer. Why the hell would people have money sitting in bank accounts when it could be in an US index fund? If you’d put your money in in 2015, you’d have doubled it by now.
All I’m saying is don’t expect that to continue at the same rate. Will managed funds and ETFs be better than letting your money rot in a bank account? Absolutely! But be very wary about forecasting your future retirement date based on perceived earnings**.
*CC Interjection: Actually since March of 2009, barring that little “dip” back in the spring.
**CC Interjection: Excellent points. That’s why I prefer to use a forecasting of 5-8% annualized returns, which are adjusted for inflation. The previous 11 years (and counting) have produced truly exceptional returns. In fact, my favorite index fund, VTSAX, returned nearly 31% in 2019 (here are other yearly returns of VTSAX)! Do I expect that kind of sustained performance? Of course not! Historically though, 7% is a reasonable expectation over a multi-decade investing timeframe. Don’t expect those kind of returns for any given year, or even any given decade! Certainly, we’ve ridden a lucky little rollercoaster on our financial pursuits in the last decade.
Lee Cujes On a Set-It-And-Forget-It Investing Strategy
CC While you appreciate a set-it-and-forget-it stance to investing, what have been your personal pitfalls to “forgetting it?”
Lee: I definitely subscribe to the set-and-forget approach. I’d rather be climbing than checking on investments. The main drawback is that when you set-and-forget, you do actually forget! So I would pick some funds, invest, set an automated reinvesting schedule and then virtually forget about it for years. Particularly when the market is doing poorly, it’s not fun to look at a balance that may be lower than it was the last time you checked.
Another downside of set and forget is missing opportunities to cull the weak, and capitalise on new opportunities. For example, some of the funds I’ve picked have been duds. If I was checking more regularly, I’d have realised and sold them off earlier.
ETF Investing and the Hidden Danger of Fees
Lee: If you’re not thinking about investing for years at a time, you might miss new concepts and schools of thought. For example, I’ve only recently cottoned onto the concept of ETFs.
An ETF can offer the same idea as a managed fund (i.e., easy diversification) but with much lower fees. I also didn’t think fees made much of a difference. I mean, what’s the difference between a 0.99% and 0.10% yearly fee really? It was only when I started researching that I realised the difference in a $100,000 investment could be about $13,000 over a 10 year period. That’s massive! Even if the former fund performed better, it would have to perform much better over that period to make up for the hefty fee. Fees matter. I wish I’d learned that sooner, I would have changed things sooner.
Lee Cujes on Australia’s Boom-and-Bust Economic Cycles
CC: Australia, similar to America, has seen its share of boom-and-bust industries and economic cycles. What trends have you witnessed by Australian workers who seek high-paying jobs that dry up sooner than expected?
Lee: The 2005-2015 decade was host to a massive mining boom in Australia. Demand for mine workers of all types was at an all time high. This led to people with no qualifications whatsoever (possibly straight out of school) to get high-paying jobs driving trucks on mine sites (a well-known example). A typical driver job might pay AUD $150,000 (~$110,000 USD). Other skilled jobs paid even more.
Rags to Riches?
Much like my example earlier, if in 2005 you chose to do a university degree to be a structural engineer, you might have been working a part-time job at $20/hr to make ends meet. Would you have the chutzpah to back your choice against your childhood friend who left school in Year 10 and is now driving a truck and making $150,000 a year and now has a motorbike, a lowered turbo ute, two jet skis, a boat, and lives in an expensive Gold Coast apartment (when he’s not slugging beers and taking selfies in the business class airport lounge)? When this guy is telling you he can “get you a job easy,” what would you do?
This was the reality of that time not so long ago. It was a major disruptor to the “conventional wisdom” about careers and earning a living. Like always, people thought it would last forever. People got into huge amounts of debt. When boom turned to bust, there was a stack of people aged in their late 20s with debt up to their eyeballs and no way to replicate the income levels they were accustomed to. (Hint: unless you timed it perfectly and were diligent with every dollar earned, the structural engineer was the correct choice).
Lee Cujes on Patriotic Bias in Investing
CC: Americans have a pronounced bias for investing in U.S.-centric index funds. We, in essence, believe that the U.S. economy drives the global economy, which could arguably be classified as a glaring recency bias (If it’s even true!). As an Australian, what makes you feel like you have a diversified portfolio and aren’t too heavily invested in any sort of national pride?
Lee: I have no particular patriotism when it comes to investing. I’ll put my money where I think it will work best. Certainly I think there are more options out there for investors to access the sharemarket in their home country. But with the increasing proliferation of various ETFs mimicking the various indices, it’s making it dead easy for investors to say “I think I’d like 20% of my portfolio to track the Japanese economy,” for example.
My current portfolio allocation definitely has more of an “all world” focus rather than just Australia.
The more I read (and it’s certainly true in my experience in the market), unless you’re planning to quit your day job and be Gordon Gekko, a very solid strategy for the everyman is simply to try to achieve the same return the world markets are delivering. Anyone can do this easily by investing in low-fee index funds that track the various indices.
Lee Cujes’ Parting Thoughts on a Long-Term Approach
Save and Invest!
Lee: It may seem obvious, but don’t spend all your money! Take some of it out of every pay cheque (automatically) and invest it (read the guides on this site). Reinvest the earnings. Make it easy and automatic, so it just happens without you having to do anything.
Retirement savings. 401(k) in the US. In Australia it’s called superannuation. However, those funds aren’t accessible until you are already experiencing joint pain and patchy memory loss*. If you want work to become scaled back, optional or totally obsolete sooner, it would be nice to build a nest egg that is accessible in your 30s or 40s. You do that by starting in your 20s or 30s and being consistent. Building wealth is like building strong fingers. Consistency trumps all. Weekly hangboard sessions for years beats inconsistent flurries of activity.
*CC Interjection: Americans can bypass early withdrawal fees and penalties on retirement accounts with the Roth Conversion Ladder.)
(Related Post: The Simple Systems to Kicking Monetary Ass)
Leave a Toxic Job
Don’t stay in a job you hate. If it’s affecting your health or you can see it affecting the health of your partner, that’s a very good indication that enough is enough.
Clear Expectations with a Significant Other
Don’t get tripped up by a major mismatch of life expectations with your partner. Decisions like “should we have kids” shouldn’t be dismissed, left to chance, or answered with “well not now but maybe later?”. Sit down and discuss the pros and cons, and do it early in the relationship. Get on the same page.
(Related Post: Help! My Significant Other Is Terrible with Money!)
Make a Move
Move to where you want to live. Now is the time! COVID has presented some huge opportunities to climbers, and you really need to pounce right now while the iron is hot. Chances are you can architect your job to be able to work from home (or are being “forced” to work from home due to lockdown). And if you can work from home, theoretically, that may mean you can work from anywhere. And if you could be anywhere – where would you be?
I can get to the base of my latest project within 10 minutes of leaving home. I can do burns after work. Sport climbing and bouldering particularly lend themselves to half days. Consider moving somewhere that facilitates you doing what you love. If you can climb more, chances are you’ll be happier and a better person in all facets of your life.
Summary
I want to once again thank Lee and his wife Sam for offering a voice to the growing chorus of climbers who are set on building a life of financial freedom. I know it’s not easy talking about money on the internet. And for anyone that’s wondering, the Cujes’ are a power couple on Google Docs. Their editing game is very strong 😉 .
For more of the endless Down Under psyche, you can find Lee Cujes on Instagram.
Remember, the best laid plans mean nothing if you can’t take action today. Have questions? Need some feedback? Hit us up on the Contact page.
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Thanks guys, see you next week.
this was a good post, multiple phrases and points of impact. thx
Thank you sir, glad it’s helpful.