2022-01-12_Who_Do_You_Want_to_Live_With_Spend_Your_Money_to_Make_That_Happen
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00:00:30.000 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:32.000 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:34.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need
00:00:36.000 | to live a rich and meaningful life now
00:00:38.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:40.000 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:41.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:42.000 | I'm your host.
00:00:43.000 | Today on the show, I want to share with you
00:00:45.000 | some of the building blocks
00:00:46.000 | of a good, rock-solid financial plan,
00:00:49.000 | but I would bet that they're not what you think they are.
00:00:53.000 | See, for many years, I worked as a financial planner,
00:00:57.000 | which means that I talked to people about their money,
00:01:00.000 | and we talked about their financial goals.
00:01:02.000 | And what I learned in that process
00:01:04.000 | of sitting face-to-face with hundreds and hundreds
00:01:08.000 | of people talking about their money
00:01:11.000 | is that frequently, the goals that we have with money
00:01:17.000 | are disconnected from the actual goals that we have.
00:01:22.000 | See, we sit down and we say,
00:01:23.000 | "I want to have a certain amount of money.
00:01:25.000 | "I want to have an amount of savings in the bank.
00:01:27.000 | "I want to have an income of a certain amount."
00:01:30.000 | But we don't stop and think about
00:01:31.000 | why we want to actually have that money.
00:01:36.000 | I want you to imagine something.
00:01:38.000 | Imagine that you set a financial goal.
00:01:42.000 | I want to have a million dollars.
00:01:45.000 | I want you to picture what a million dollars
00:01:48.000 | of physical cash looks like, physical bank notes.
00:01:54.000 | If you're having trouble picturing exactly how big that is,
00:01:58.000 | let me give you a couple of mental images to help you.
00:02:01.000 | Let's assume that you're going to do this with $1 bills.
00:02:04.000 | A million dollars of $1 bills would create a cube
00:02:09.000 | of about 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet.
00:02:12.000 | So picture a pallet, an ordinary pallet,
00:02:15.000 | which is 48 inches by 48 inches,
00:02:17.000 | stacked up about 48 inches tall with $1 bills.
00:02:21.000 | Or if you prefer your currency in $100 bills,
00:02:24.000 | you could fit a million dollars
00:02:26.000 | in a relatively modest-sized briefcase.
00:02:30.000 | I think it's like 43 inches tall.
00:02:32.000 | If you were going to stack it all up,
00:02:33.000 | take them out and set them beside each other,
00:02:35.000 | then you can fit it into a briefcase.
00:02:37.000 | But I like the idea of a pallet of $1 bills.
00:02:39.000 | So picture in your storeroom, your pantry,
00:02:42.000 | your garage, somewhere like that,
00:02:44.000 | you sit down and you put a pallet on the floor
00:02:48.000 | and you start stacking $1 bills.
00:02:50.000 | And you stack and you stack and you stack and you stack
00:02:52.000 | until you reach a pile that's a 4-foot cube.
00:02:55.000 | Now you have a million dollars.
00:02:57.000 | You've achieved your financial goal.
00:02:59.000 | So here's my question.
00:03:01.000 | Now what?
00:03:03.000 | Now what?
00:03:05.000 | What are you going to do?
00:03:07.000 | Maybe your goal is $10 million.
00:03:14.000 | Okay, put 10 of those in your garage
00:03:16.000 | and assume that you've achieved that.
00:03:18.000 | Now what? Now what are you going to do?
00:03:20.000 | When you start to think about this,
00:03:24.000 | you realize that the only point
00:03:26.000 | of establishing a monetary goal
00:03:29.000 | that can be measured with numbers
00:03:32.000 | is to actually use that money
00:03:36.000 | to accomplish something,
00:03:38.000 | to achieve something that's important to you.
00:03:41.000 | So what are you likely to want to accomplish
00:03:46.000 | when you have achieved your monetary goal?
00:03:49.000 | Now some people's vision
00:03:52.000 | of what they want to accomplish is to
00:03:54.000 | sit on the beach and do nothing all day.
00:03:56.000 | That's fair.
00:03:58.000 | Lots of people enjoy sitting on the beach
00:04:01.000 | and doing nothing all day.
00:04:03.000 | In my experience, the kind of people
00:04:05.000 | who want to do that for the long term
00:04:07.000 | aren't usually the same kind of people
00:04:09.000 | who actually accumulate any significant amounts of money.
00:04:12.000 | If you want to sit on the beach and do nothing all day,
00:04:14.000 | you can find millions of people
00:04:16.000 | all around the world doing that on a daily basis,
00:04:19.000 | living day to day, hand to mouth,
00:04:21.000 | making just enough to fill their bellies
00:04:23.000 | with some food and sit on the beach
00:04:25.000 | and do nothing all day.
00:04:26.000 | So you don't actually need a million dollars to do that.
00:04:28.000 | Sometimes people say, "I want to travel the world,"
00:04:31.000 | or, "I want to take that stack of a million dollars
00:04:34.000 | and turn it into a beautiful house."
00:04:36.000 | And these are all fair goals,
00:04:38.000 | but I want you to really think about it.
00:04:40.000 | Put it into a physical sense.
00:04:42.000 | Imagine those pallets of bills sitting in your pantry.
00:04:46.000 | What are you actually going to do with them?
00:04:49.000 | Over the years, I've gone through these exercises myself,
00:04:52.000 | as I've worked through them with individuals,
00:04:55.000 | I've found again and again
00:04:56.000 | that there are a few common themes.
00:04:59.000 | And I want to expand those themes
00:05:01.000 | because I believe that if you understand
00:05:03.000 | what those themes are,
00:05:05.000 | then you will be able to do a better job
00:05:08.000 | of spending your money in a satisfying way.
00:05:12.000 | Today I want to begin with one of what I call the big three.
00:05:17.000 | These are the big three questions,
00:05:20.000 | the big three decisions that you will want to make
00:05:24.000 | before you engage in any hardcore,
00:05:28.000 | numbers on the paper, financial planning.
00:05:31.000 | The first question for you to answer is this.
00:05:35.000 | Who do I want to live with?
00:05:39.000 | Who do I want to be present in my life?
00:05:43.000 | What are the people, who are the people
00:05:47.000 | that I want to be surrounded with in my day-to-day life?
00:05:51.000 | This is the first question for you to consider.
00:05:55.000 | If you're a particularly dedicated student,
00:05:57.000 | I'd encourage you to take a moment
00:05:59.000 | and write it down on a piece of paper.
00:06:02.000 | Put this into your journal.
00:06:04.000 | Open a note on your phone
00:06:06.000 | and start writing down the kinds of people
00:06:09.000 | or the specific people that you want to be involved in your life.
00:06:12.000 | Make a note of the people that you want in your life.
00:06:15.000 | Because I believe that one of the best uses of money,
00:06:19.000 | and in fact, one of the first sets of decisions
00:06:22.000 | that you should make before you even think about
00:06:24.000 | the rest of your money is,
00:06:26.000 | who do you want in your life?
00:06:29.000 | And in the rest of this show,
00:06:32.000 | I'm going to give you various expanding ideas,
00:06:36.000 | expanding questions, expanding examples
00:06:40.000 | to expand on this theme of things
00:06:42.000 | that you might want to consider.
00:06:44.000 | We begin with those people that are
00:06:46.000 | the most intimate in your life.
00:06:49.000 | For most of us, the most intimate people
00:06:52.000 | would involve some form of a romantic partner.
00:06:56.000 | And I would encourage you that
00:07:00.000 | this is one of the decisions
00:07:03.000 | that will make the biggest difference in your life.
00:07:07.000 | Meeting somebody that you want to spend your life with,
00:07:12.000 | maintaining a good relationship with the right person,
00:07:14.000 | the kind of person that builds you up,
00:07:16.000 | the kind of person that complements you
00:07:19.000 | in your uniqueness.
00:07:21.000 | This practice of meeting and maintaining
00:07:24.000 | a high-quality relationship with a romantic partner
00:07:28.000 | is bar none one of the most important
00:07:31.000 | and best decisions that you can possibly make.
00:07:34.000 | So let me begin first
00:07:37.000 | to those who do not yet have
00:07:41.000 | an appropriate romantic partner.
00:07:44.000 | I want to encourage you that it's perfectly fine,
00:07:48.000 | and in fact, I advise it, for you to put it down
00:07:51.000 | as an actual goal,
00:07:53.000 | an actual thing that you want to accomplish.
00:07:56.000 | And to pursue this with focus.
00:07:59.000 | There are a few ideas when it comes to
00:08:04.000 | finding and attracting a suitable spouse.
00:08:07.000 | There are a few ideas that people often take to extremes
00:08:11.000 | where they ought not to go.
00:08:13.000 | For example, there is an idea that
00:08:17.000 | you should be whole in and of yourself.
00:08:21.000 | You should be a whole person.
00:08:25.000 | And that you shouldn't come to a romantic relationship
00:08:29.000 | expecting your partner to
00:08:32.000 | make you more than you are,
00:08:34.000 | or to fill in your gaps, etc.
00:08:37.000 | Is this true? I think it is true.
00:08:39.000 | That you should be a whole and independent person.
00:08:42.000 | And you don't want to expect your partner
00:08:45.000 | to try to fill in some weakness that you have.
00:08:50.000 | But that doesn't mean that you're not going to be expanded,
00:08:54.000 | that your capabilities are not going to be expanded,
00:08:56.000 | that you're not going to have a more satisfying life and lifestyle
00:09:00.000 | if you can find and attract an appropriate partner.
00:09:04.000 | One of the marks of a good relationship is often that there's synergy.
00:09:10.000 | One plus one is something more than two.
00:09:13.000 | And if that's the case, then you're better off
00:09:16.000 | first quickly becoming a whole person,
00:09:19.000 | and then as quickly as possible
00:09:21.000 | attracting an appropriate spouse.
00:09:25.000 | So, could you or should you spend money on making that happen?
00:09:33.000 | Sometimes yes and sometimes no.
00:09:35.000 | But here I would encourage you that if you are unmarried
00:09:39.000 | and you desire to be married,
00:09:40.000 | or if you're looking for simply a romantic partner,
00:09:43.000 | ask yourself if you can't spend a little bit of money
00:09:47.000 | to improve that process.
00:09:49.000 | Ask yourself if you shouldn't spend a little bit of money
00:09:53.000 | to improve that process.
00:09:55.000 | It's funny, I think sometimes I find myself being the guy,
00:09:59.000 | kind of the anti-frugality guy,
00:10:00.000 | frequently telling people, "Listen,
00:10:02.000 | why are you saving so much money and neglecting something
00:10:05.000 | that is also important to you?"
00:10:08.000 | I frequently find myself talking to people and saying,
00:10:10.000 | "How nice of a car are you driving?"
00:10:12.000 | Like it or not, people judge you by the car that you drive.
00:10:15.000 | "Do you dress well?"
00:10:16.000 | Like it or not, people judge you by the way that you dress.
00:10:20.000 | "Are you involved in activities that are going to be appropriate
00:10:24.000 | to helping you establish and expand your social circles?"
00:10:28.000 | These things often cost money, but they are good uses of money.
00:10:33.000 | Spending money on dates,
00:10:35.000 | spending money on going to places where you can find dates,
00:10:38.000 | these are good uses of money.
00:10:40.000 | And then if you desire to marry,
00:10:41.000 | spending money on getting married,
00:10:43.000 | whatever that entails, is a good use of money.
00:10:49.000 | If you're thoughtful and careful,
00:10:52.000 | this can be some of the best money that you spend.
00:10:57.000 | What about people who are already married
00:11:00.000 | or already in some sort of romantic relationship?
00:11:04.000 | Well, in this case, I think some of the best money that you spend
00:11:07.000 | is making sure that your marriage has the things around it
00:11:14.000 | that will put the best probability of it thriving.
00:11:18.000 | You should be happy to spend money on strengthening your marriage.
00:11:24.000 | That could mean everything from living in a certain place,
00:11:28.000 | living in a certain style of life,
00:11:30.000 | living in a certain home.
00:11:32.000 | It could mean things like prioritizing the cost of a babysitter
00:11:35.000 | so you can go out on date night
00:11:37.000 | or arranging quarterly weekend getaways,
00:11:41.000 | whatever those things are that are appropriate for you.
00:11:43.000 | Spend money on your marriage.
00:11:47.000 | This should be a high priority.
00:11:49.000 | Spend money on your marriage.
00:11:51.000 | I always love the turn of phrase that Zig Ziglar had years ago.
00:11:54.000 | He called it courtship after marriage.
00:11:57.000 | Strangely, marriage is one of those things
00:11:59.000 | where I very rarely have to tell someone to,
00:12:02.000 | "Hey, go ahead, spend money on someone you're seeking to attract
00:12:05.000 | into a marriage relationship."
00:12:07.000 | But then all of a sudden, the date nights get cut out,
00:12:09.000 | the fun gets cut out,
00:12:11.000 | and we wonder why the relationships lose their spark.
00:12:15.000 | If you can spend money
00:12:18.000 | and improve the quality of your intimate relationships, do so.
00:12:23.000 | That's a good use of money.
00:12:25.000 | Now let's expand out.
00:12:27.000 | The next most intimate relationships that we have
00:12:29.000 | usually involve those relationships with our children.
00:12:35.000 | As people grow, especially as parents age,
00:12:39.000 | they often find themselves wanting very much
00:12:45.000 | deep, high-quality relationships with their children.
00:12:48.000 | I believe that some of the best money that you can spend
00:12:51.000 | is on cultivating the relationships that you have with your children.
00:12:57.000 | This begins in the very decision to have children.
00:13:00.000 | There is a strong, strong antenatal trend in our societies.
00:13:08.000 | This last year in the United States,
00:13:10.000 | the lowest birth rate in recorded history.
00:13:14.000 | The lowest birth rate in recorded history.
00:13:17.000 | And when you ask people why,
00:13:19.000 | frequently they list financial concerns
00:13:22.000 | as one reason why they don't want to have children.
00:13:27.000 | When you study what people say about not having children,
00:13:30.000 | they say, "I just don't feel like I'm prepared.
00:13:32.000 | I just don't feel like I'm ready."
00:13:33.000 | And often they cite finances as a component of that.
00:13:37.000 | There's no question that children place new pressures on your finances.
00:13:43.000 | They place pressures that are very, very strong,
00:13:47.000 | and those pressures come at you in many, many ways.
00:13:50.000 | And yet it's one of the strangest trends of our time,
00:13:53.000 | the fact that there's often more money available to you and to me in our lives
00:13:57.000 | than at any point in human history.
00:13:59.000 | And there's more money available to us for our children
00:14:02.000 | than at any point in human history.
00:14:04.000 | And yet as the richest generation in the history of the world,
00:14:07.000 | we find ourselves looking around and saying,
00:14:10.000 | "I can't afford to have children."
00:14:13.000 | I personally don't believe in the concept of waiting to be married
00:14:18.000 | until you can "afford" it,
00:14:20.000 | and I personally don't believe in the concept of waiting to have children
00:14:23.000 | until you can "afford" it.
00:14:25.000 | There is a balance.
00:14:27.000 | I, of course, would advise many people and say,
00:14:31.000 | "Why don't you establish yourself before getting married?"
00:14:34.000 | I would tell people often, "Why don't you work extra
00:14:37.000 | so you're not living hand-to-mouth before you add more mouths to the table?"
00:14:42.000 | But those changes should be very, very short,
00:14:45.000 | and at least 80% of the time,
00:14:48.000 | the people who are worried about it
00:14:50.000 | are the ones who don't have anything to worry about in the first place.
00:14:55.000 | The money that you spend on your children
00:14:59.000 | will often be some of the highest payoff money that you'll ever be able to spend.
00:15:04.000 | The money that you spend on the actual care of your children,
00:15:08.000 | the things that your children need,
00:15:11.000 | many people find that as they age, they're so grateful they've done it.
00:15:18.000 | Very frequently, when you talk to an older, wealthy person,
00:15:24.000 | you will find that most of their care, most of their attention,
00:15:28.000 | most of their time is oriented around
00:15:32.000 | things that they want to do with their children and their grandchildren.
00:15:37.000 | This is natural and normal,
00:15:39.000 | but if you know that you're going to end up there,
00:15:42.000 | then put in the time now, spend the money now to get the best results that you can.
00:15:49.000 | I can't tell you exactly how to spend that money.
00:15:53.000 | That's up to you,
00:15:55.000 | but I do know that it's some of the best money that you can spend.
00:15:58.000 | If your children are older, out of your house,
00:16:02.000 | make sure that you live appropriately close to them,
00:16:06.000 | or in an appropriate way,
00:16:09.000 | you've gotten the best relationship that's possible for you.
00:16:14.000 | Some of the best money that you can spend is
00:16:18.000 | in enhancing and developing the relationships that you can have with your children.
00:16:23.000 | That money might be spent in moving to another city or buying a place in another city
00:16:28.000 | so you can regularly visit your children.
00:16:31.000 | It might be spent in simply going closer to where they are.
00:16:34.000 | It might be spent in a vacation home where you can invite your children to be with you.
00:16:39.000 | But being together with your children is a great use of money,
00:16:45.000 | and very rarely will you ever make a mistake when you spend money
00:16:49.000 | on being appropriately close to those that you love.
00:16:54.000 | What about your parents?
00:16:56.000 | One of the best things that you can do to improve your general sense of happiness and satisfaction
00:17:02.000 | is live at an appropriate distance to your parents.
00:17:06.000 | Sometimes this means as close as possible, right next door.
00:17:10.000 | Sometimes this means farther away than where you are right now.
00:17:14.000 | Think carefully about where you'd like to live with regard to your parents,
00:17:19.000 | and prioritize living there as a really good use of your money.
00:17:24.000 | Make sure that if you want to be closer, you're closer.
00:17:27.000 | Whether that means you move mom and dad closer to you,
00:17:29.000 | or you move closer to mom and dad, or arrange some third option, do it.
00:17:34.000 | If you need to be farther away, do it.
00:17:37.000 | If you need to limit their influence, do it.
00:17:39.000 | If you need to encourage their influence, do it.
00:17:43.000 | Prioritize with your money the relationships that are most important to you.
00:17:50.000 | Let's move on. What about your circle of intimate friends?
00:17:55.000 | Your circle of intimate friends can be one of the most powerful influences on your life.
00:18:00.000 | This is something that's worthy of your attention, your time,
00:18:03.000 | and to the extent you're capable of it, money.
00:18:07.000 | Attention and time are usually the things that are the most necessary.
00:18:12.000 | Friendships require cultivation. They require time.
00:18:15.000 | They require effort for you to arrange those circumstances.
00:18:21.000 | When you ask many people what's the time in their life that they enjoy the most,
00:18:26.000 | frequently they will hearken back to some form of college experience.
00:18:32.000 | I don't think that in the main this is because they were drunk all the time.
00:18:36.000 | I think this has more to do with the social environment in which they lived.
00:18:41.000 | If you think about college, it's a time of intense socialization.
00:18:46.000 | Yes, there are certain demands on our time.
00:18:49.000 | We're required to work, we're required to study, etc.
00:18:52.000 | Those demands are modest in the main,
00:18:55.000 | but more importantly we're often together with other people
00:18:59.000 | and we can filter and sort ourselves to be with people that we like.
00:19:03.000 | Our schedules are unencumbered by other obligations.
00:19:07.000 | Therefore, we can engage in all kinds of planned and spontaneous social events.
00:19:12.000 | That intense socialization leads to some of the happiest memories of our life.
00:19:17.000 | Frequently we don't have a lot of money.
00:19:19.000 | Our car might be broken down.
00:19:21.000 | We might take trips on a shoestring crammed all in one tiny little junkie car
00:19:25.000 | to go away for spring break.
00:19:27.000 | We might do some wacky adventures, go hitchhiking across the country, etc.
00:19:31.000 | But that socialization, that focus on enjoying relationships with other people
00:19:38.000 | can be very pleasurable.
00:19:42.000 | Then we go and get involved in the more normal adult life
00:19:47.000 | and there tends to come this intense social isolation.
00:19:52.000 | Instead of being together with other people, we wind up more separate from them.
00:19:56.000 | The friends that we once had based upon affinity
00:19:59.000 | are often replaced by friendships that come from we work together, coworkers.
00:20:05.000 | "Hey, let's go out and grab a drink because we've been working late
00:20:08.000 | and because we're coworkers."
00:20:11.000 | Those people that we really like, we mean to get around to calling them.
00:20:14.000 | We mean to get around to seeing them.
00:20:16.000 | And yet, unhappily, it often doesn't happen quite so much as we would like.
00:20:24.000 | This can be changed though with attention.
00:20:28.000 | You can emphasize to yourself the importance of your friends
00:20:33.000 | and then you can start to focus on cultivating those relationships.
00:20:37.000 | If you don't have a base of any friends to start with,
00:20:40.000 | you can start by focusing on making some new friends.
00:20:45.000 | If you have some old friends,
00:20:47.000 | then focus on bringing yourself together with those friends.
00:20:52.000 | This may mean Thursday night poker.
00:20:54.000 | This may mean Saturday afternoon barbecues.
00:20:57.000 | This may mean barbecues at the park where the children can come along
00:21:00.000 | and where they can be entertained so you can actually hang out with your friends.
00:21:03.000 | This might mean an annual retreat,
00:21:06.000 | going ahead and renting the nice ski cabin
00:21:09.000 | so that everyone can get together and be together for an enjoyable experience.
00:21:13.000 | But these things are worth spending money on.
00:21:16.000 | These things make life worth living.
00:21:20.000 | It might mean flying across the country to surprise someone,
00:21:24.000 | spend a day with them.
00:21:25.000 | It might mean, I would say, the cost of contacting someone,
00:21:29.000 | but in our day and age it doesn't cost anything more other than time
00:21:32.000 | and attention to pick up the phone and call somebody.
00:21:38.000 | Prioritize time and togetherness with your friends
00:21:41.000 | and make sure that you're with the people that you like.
00:21:46.000 | Let's expand outward.
00:21:47.000 | What about neighbors?
00:21:50.000 | I think one of the best things you can do is spend your money
00:21:53.000 | to build around yourself neighbors that you like.
00:21:58.000 | Finding people who reflect your values,
00:22:01.000 | finding people who reflect your ideas, your ideology,
00:22:07.000 | that look at the world through a lens similar to yours.
00:22:11.000 | Perhaps there's a danger in surrounding yourself
00:22:14.000 | with too much of an insular experience
00:22:18.000 | where all your neighbors just think exactly like you do.
00:22:22.000 | It's good to have a little variety.
00:22:24.000 | But if you don't like your neighbors,
00:22:26.000 | you might want to consider changing them
00:22:29.000 | and moving somewhere where you have more in common with people around you.
00:22:34.000 | It might mean moving from the country to the city.
00:22:36.000 | It might mean moving from the city to the country,
00:22:38.000 | from the left coast to the right coast to the middle of the country.
00:22:42.000 | Wherever it is that you feel comfortable,
00:22:44.000 | do your best to surround yourself with the kind of people
00:22:47.000 | that make you feel comfortable,
00:22:52.000 | that will add significantly to the quality of your life.
00:22:56.000 | Next, coworkers.
00:22:58.000 | Think carefully about your coworkers and your work environment.
00:23:03.000 | You're going to spend a significant amount of time with your coworkers,
00:23:09.000 | perhaps more than anything else that you're doing in your life.
00:23:12.000 | Your coworkers will be an ever-present reality.
00:23:16.000 | Make sure that you like them.
00:23:19.000 | Make sure that they're the kind of people that you want to be around,
00:23:21.000 | that you want to emulate.
00:23:23.000 | Because if they are,
00:23:25.000 | that can be a tremendous, tremendous source of joy and happiness in your life.
00:23:32.000 | You might be able to spend some money on this.
00:23:34.000 | It might cost you a little bit to look for a new job.
00:23:37.000 | It might cost you a little bit to move for a new job
00:23:40.000 | or to replace a set of toxic coworkers with another set.
00:23:44.000 | But being surrounded by coworkers that you like
00:23:49.000 | will make a major, major quality of life improvement for you.
00:23:54.000 | So focus on it.
00:23:56.000 | Be in the kind of environment that's a good fit for you.
00:24:00.000 | If a wild, scrappy entrepreneurial startup is for you, get there.
00:24:05.000 | If a staid, laid-back, conservative company is for you, get there.
00:24:10.000 | If riding on the open range is for you, get there.
00:24:15.000 | If being in the middle of the city is right for you, get there.
00:24:19.000 | And you can expand outward from there,
00:24:21.000 | thinking of all of the other people that are in your life or that can be in your life.
00:24:25.000 | But focusing yourself on people and being willing to spend money on people,
00:24:35.000 | this is some of the best money that you'll spend.
00:24:38.000 | I want to use two extreme examples to clarify why I think this is a useful thing to do.
00:24:47.000 | I know that these are caricatures,
00:24:49.000 | but I believe that sometimes extremes or caricatures can be useful
00:24:53.000 | to help illustrate a concept.
00:24:57.000 | I want you to imagine, first of all, our wealthy miser.
00:25:02.000 | Our wealthy miser is somebody who works, works, works, spends nothing, lives in a shack,
00:25:07.000 | never has time for other people, never spends money on other people.
00:25:10.000 | It's someone who is not surrounded by love but is surrounded by money,
00:25:15.000 | sits at home stacking up his gold coins,
00:25:17.000 | filling up his mason jars and sticking them in the ground.
00:25:20.000 | This is our wealthy miser.
00:25:22.000 | He doesn't have a lot of room for people in his life
00:25:24.000 | because he's focused on working and saving and making money and making money.
00:25:29.000 | Yes, he's got some parents somewhere that he once knew.
00:25:31.000 | He's got an estranged sister somewhere.
00:25:34.000 | He has a divorced wife somewhere that he doesn't keep in contact with.
00:25:37.000 | He's got a couple of estranged children that he doesn't have any relationship with,
00:25:42.000 | but he's got plenty of money, and he sits and counts his money all day long.
00:25:49.000 | Now, imagine our other caricature, that of the joyful socialite.
00:25:56.000 | The joyful socialite is surrounded by family and friends that love him and that he loves.
00:26:02.000 | He's got a loving wife with a rich, close relationship,
00:26:06.000 | the kind of people that make you feel weird because they touch each other all the time,
00:26:11.000 | and they just seem so happy together.
00:26:13.000 | He's got a house full of children, and, well, of course, his children aren't perfect.
00:26:17.000 | But he enjoys being with them.
00:26:19.000 | He enjoys the hustle and bustle and enjoys seeing their success.
00:26:23.000 | He prioritizes his friends.
00:26:25.000 | At least once a night, there's another family in his home for dinner.
00:26:29.000 | Weekends, there's people in his backyard.
00:26:32.000 | Once a quarter, he schedules a trip with his buddies.
00:26:35.000 | Once a year, an annual reunion with his college friends.
00:26:38.000 | Regularly, he's with his parents.
00:26:41.000 | Regularly, he spends time to invest in other people.
00:26:44.000 | He spends time with his friends everywhere.
00:26:47.000 | His co-workers love him and respect him.
00:26:49.000 | His neighbors appreciate him.
00:26:51.000 | They even take advantage of him sometimes.
00:26:53.000 | They take his tools and don't return them.
00:26:55.000 | But he's not worried about it because he knows he's got relationships with them.
00:27:01.000 | I want you to imagine both of those men at 65 years old.
00:27:05.000 | The miser has plenty of money, but his relationships are suffered.
00:27:09.000 | The rich social life has spent all his money on his friends.
00:27:12.000 | He's got no money, but he's got lots of friends.
00:27:16.000 | Imagine that both of them are diagnosed with terminal cancer and they're given five years to live.
00:27:23.000 | Which of those men would you rather be?
00:27:27.000 | Which of those men do you think would be able to reflect with greater satisfaction on his life?
00:27:37.000 | If you had to choose between them, which of those would you choose?
00:27:45.000 | The good news is you don't have to choose between them.
00:27:49.000 | They're caricatures.
00:27:51.000 | They're unrealistic.
00:27:53.000 | You can have a strong social life and also accumulate money.
00:27:57.000 | You can have money and also accumulate friends.
00:28:04.000 | But to the extent that you can spend money on rich, fulfilling relationships,
00:28:11.000 | I believe that's some of the best money that you can spend.
00:28:16.000 | And if you had to choose between them, I think you'd be more satisfied
00:28:20.000 | by having a life full of the people that you love
00:28:23.000 | than by having a life full of gold coins or full crypto wallets.
00:28:33.000 | Whatever monetary token you wish to refer to.
00:28:39.000 | Life is but a vapor.
00:28:41.000 | Here today, gone tomorrow.
00:28:43.000 | And the stuff of life, the richest, most rewarding stuff of life,
00:28:49.000 | comes from our relationships one with another.
00:28:54.000 | As you consider what you wish to do with your money in the coming year,
00:28:59.000 | ask yourself, "How much of my money am I spending on others?
00:29:04.000 | How much of my money am I spending on the relationships that are important to me?
00:29:09.000 | How much of my money am I spending on people?"
00:29:17.000 | Reflect carefully on it and make sure that you're happy with the amount.
00:29:22.000 | And if the number is the wrong number for you,
00:29:25.000 | don't wait to be rich to change.
00:29:28.000 | Just change.
00:29:32.000 | Spending money to get yourself surrounded by the people that you want in your life
00:29:39.000 | is the best money that you can spend.
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