2024-01-18_Invisible_Dollar_is_Worth_Twice_Visible_Dollar
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:02.960 | skills, insights, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:06.900 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:08.920 | My name is Josh Ruchites.
00:00:09.920 | I'm your host.
00:00:10.920 | Today, I want to speak to you primarily about the topic of the value of private money as
00:00:18.560 | compared to public money.
00:00:20.400 | But I want to introduce said topic with a discussion of how the value of money can change.
00:00:26.920 | Have you ever considered how a dollar becomes something different than a dollar based upon
00:00:34.160 | the circumstances of its generation?
00:00:40.260 | Let me give you some practical day-to-day examples.
00:00:43.120 | Let's say that you had a choice between two jobs, job A, paying you $100,000 per year,
00:00:50.800 | doing work that you don't particularly enjoy and don't think that you're particularly well
00:00:55.720 | suited for, and job B, paying you $100,000 a year, doing work that you enjoy and for
00:01:02.680 | which you are personally quite well suited.
00:01:06.180 | Given the choice, I don't think there's anyone on the earth who would choose job A. Obviously,
00:01:12.280 | we want to choose a job that has work for which we are well suited and feel qualified
00:01:17.120 | and provides us with some level of enjoyment and appreciation if possible.
00:01:22.840 | Now, what's interesting though is that we can start to discount the value of the job
00:01:30.480 | and we find out quickly that people are willing to work more for less money based upon the
00:01:37.080 | attributes of the job.
00:01:39.000 | So, for example, if I offered you job A, $100,000 a year, doing work that you aren't particularly
00:01:45.600 | interested in doing and it's not really well suited for you, and job B, paying you say
00:01:50.200 | $95,000 per year, doing work that you enjoy and are well suited for, I think the vast
00:01:55.680 | majority of people would clearly still opt for job B.
00:01:59.500 | Now we could discount it further.
00:02:01.240 | $100,000 versus $90,000, I bet most people would still choose job B. But there's some
00:02:08.520 | number at which the choice changes.
00:02:13.240 | For example, if I offered you $100,000 a year, doing work that you don't really enjoy and
00:02:18.640 | aren't particularly well suited for versus say $30,000 a year, doing work that you enjoy
00:02:24.080 | and are well suited for, I think now the majority of people would opt for the $100,000.
00:02:29.720 | That's due to two basic factors.
00:02:31.800 | Number one, there is a minimum amount of income below which life is not really feasible.
00:02:41.280 | If you're living at the poverty line and your income is equaling your expenses, then because
00:02:46.760 | of the pain of that, you find yourself highly motivated to go and earn more money in order
00:02:52.960 | to relieve the pain of poverty.
00:02:56.060 | At the higher levels, if whatever options you're choosing among are all substantially
00:03:02.840 | above the level of your expenses, then it's much easier to appreciate those other lifestyle
00:03:11.200 | benefits, shall we call them, more than just the absolute dollar.
00:03:17.400 | The other thing that needs to be considered is that all work is not created equal.
00:03:21.360 | It's not just as simple as kind of money versus money.
00:03:24.160 | For example, if I said $30,000 a year at a job that you like, but there is potential
00:03:31.920 | for that to increase in the future, possibly as soon as say two years, then a lot of people
00:03:36.960 | then would pursue something like that because of the potential for increase in the future.
00:03:42.240 | Now, you can decide yourself how much you would discount based upon doing work for which
00:03:47.280 | you're well-suited versus work for which you're not well-suited.
00:03:50.040 | But let's give it another example.
00:03:51.760 | Let's say that I offer you two jobs.
00:03:53.920 | Job A pays you $100,000 a year, but requires you to sit in a particular chair, in a particular
00:04:01.480 | office, in a particular location each and every day, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m.
00:04:07.200 | to 5 p.m., and you must be in that chair at that desk in order to perform the work.
00:04:13.840 | Job B pays you $100,000 per year, and it requires you to be in that chair to perform the work,
00:04:20.740 | but it gives you the opportunity to choose which eight hours in a day you're going to
00:04:25.920 | work.
00:04:26.920 | Now, if you wish to come in at four in the morning and work until two in the afternoon,
00:04:30.960 | that's acceptable, as is starting at 12 noon and working till 8 p.m.
00:04:36.400 | Most people would value that flexibility, knowing that it would allow them to go to
00:04:41.080 | the dentist at a convenient time for their dental cleanings and coach their kids' sports
00:04:45.880 | teams and things like that, and would immediately opt for job B as long as there's enough money
00:04:52.160 | in job B to cover their lifestyle, et cetera.
00:04:56.000 | If it's $100,000, $100,000, obviously job B is going to be chosen.
00:04:59.960 | If it's $95,000 for job B and $100,000 for job A, okay, probably job B, with, again,
00:05:05.560 | the same caveats that if we're getting down low, it becomes much more challenging.
00:05:11.760 | There's a big difference between the numbers, or if we get towards poverty line, if it's
00:05:16.040 | $42,000 versus $48,000, well, now people are going to opt for the job A, the $48,000, because
00:05:25.980 | you need that extra $6,000 to live when you're at that level of income.
00:05:29.440 | Meanwhile, if the offer is, say, between $200,000 for job A and $180,000 for job B, well, since
00:05:37.520 | there's a little bit more margin in the budget, most people would happily give up $20,000
00:05:42.680 | in order to have that level of flexibility, as compared to somebody who couldn't give
00:05:47.920 | up $6,000 in order to have the level of flexibility, because you need the money for day-to-day
00:05:52.600 | expenses.
00:05:53.700 | Now, we could go on with these examples, and they are important, and I would encourage
00:05:56.900 | you to consider them.
00:05:58.700 | Consider the value of being able to work remotely, work from home, work from travel, two or three
00:06:04.480 | days a week, as compared to having to be in the office five days a week.
00:06:08.540 | For a lot of people, getting a work abroad job is one of the biggest things they can
00:06:13.500 | do to improve their lifestyle, and as I pointed out at the beginning of the pandemic, I think
00:06:17.380 | this is one of the best lifestyle improvements available to us, and I myself am grateful
00:06:21.120 | that today you don't have to go after some harebrained work from home medical billing
00:06:25.060 | or envelope stuffing business like was common at the turn of the century.
00:06:28.620 | Today you can work just about any real job in any career from home.
00:06:34.000 | On the flip side, however, there are benefits to seeing people.
00:06:37.300 | I miss seeing people and working with people, and so maybe your job requires you to be at
00:06:42.760 | a location.
00:06:43.800 | Perhaps you're a teacher, and you have to teach in a classroom, but you get the benefits
00:06:48.040 | of the social contact with the students, social contact with your coworkers, feeling part
00:06:51.780 | of a team, doing something that matters to you.
00:06:54.240 | Now it's worth it to you because of these other benefits.
00:06:57.560 | And we should consider as many of these benefits as we are able to identify as being important
00:07:03.300 | to us personally, because these things really matter.
00:07:07.360 | And once you get beyond the poverty level wages, they matter a lot.
00:07:12.220 | You want to do your very best to consider these in advance.
00:07:15.940 | I have consulted with a significant number of high income earning people who have found
00:07:23.260 | intense dissatisfaction in the demands of their jobs, the lack of flexibility that their
00:07:30.380 | jobs offer.
00:07:31.940 | And over time, as your wealth increases, as your assets increase, as your income increases,
00:07:37.380 | every marginal dollar becomes worth less and less because you don't need it anymore and
00:07:45.100 | you feel the weight of these other factors very significantly.
00:07:49.660 | Now I'm not going to dig deeply into taxes, marginal value of taxes, et cetera.
00:07:54.060 | Just know that there are other financial calculations that should be considered.
00:07:56.780 | What I want to turn to is one of the things that I think is the least discussed in this
00:08:02.820 | space, which is the visibility of your income and the visibility of your wealth.
00:08:10.140 | I have a personal theory that the going ratio between the value of an invisible anonymous
00:08:16.160 | dollar is worth twice of the value of a visible non-anonymous dollar.
00:08:22.780 | Let me explain.
00:08:23.780 | What I mean is simply that if you can earn a dollar in a way that's not immediately connected
00:08:29.140 | to your name, to your face, to your likeness, to you yourself personally, if you can earn
00:08:35.060 | a dollar in some kind of somewhat anonymous business where you aren't particularly visible,
00:08:41.620 | every dollar that you earn in that capacity is worth about two dollars of income earned
00:08:48.620 | in a visible capacity.
00:08:51.340 | Now let me try to justify that statement a little bit so that perhaps you will believe
00:08:55.860 | me.
00:08:56.860 | There are some obvious costs associated with visible earnings and some less obvious costs.
00:09:04.020 | The obvious cost is things like taxes and lifestyle to maintain, maintaining a reputation,
00:09:11.060 | living a certain way because of your lifestyle.
00:09:14.300 | The less obvious costs are being targeted for your money by investment professionals,
00:09:21.220 | having friends and family ask you for money constantly, just going to sleep worried at
00:09:25.980 | night because of all the crazies that know that you have money.
00:09:31.020 | If you can avoid some of these costs that I'll go into in more detail here, I think
00:09:35.060 | that you should.
00:09:36.060 | Let's start with the kind of obvious ones.
00:09:38.060 | The two big ones are taxes and lifestyle.
00:09:43.220 | Taxes first.
00:09:44.220 | Let's begin with an example of about a month ago.
00:09:47.220 | Here's Good Morning America.
00:09:48.220 | Dr. Shakira's tax fraud trial, the singer reaching a deal this morning, Aaron Koterski
00:09:52.380 | is back with the very latest on that.
00:09:54.100 | Good morning, Aaron.
00:09:55.100 | Good morning to you, Lindsey.
00:09:56.100 | Shakira was supposed to go on trial for tax evasion today in Barcelona and prosecutors
00:10:00.120 | were seeking to put the pop star in prison.
00:10:02.660 | Instead, Shakira accepted a plea deal, admitting she failed to pay $16 million in taxes.
00:10:08.280 | The Spanish government agreed to a three year suspended sentence and a $7 million fine.
00:10:14.180 | Shakira had long maintained her innocence, but said in a statement she decided to resolve
00:10:17.940 | the case with the best interests of my kids at heart.
00:10:21.940 | Shakira says she needs to move past the stress.
00:10:24.340 | The case turned on whenever, wherever Shakira lived between 2012 and 2014.
00:10:28.900 | At the time, she said her residence was in the Bahamas, but prosecutors said she spent
00:10:33.660 | most of her time in Spain while she was with Barcelona soccer player Gerard Pique, who's
00:10:38.220 | the father of her two children.
00:10:40.340 | Shakira now says she wants to focus on her upcoming world tour and new album, both of
00:10:44.820 | which Robin, she said she is extremely excited about.
00:10:47.900 | So let's use this as an example here, because tax evasion, tax fraud, et cetera, is certainly
00:10:54.900 | something we want to avoid.
00:10:56.460 | But there's an enormous gray area that most people are not familiar with.
00:11:01.820 | And this is especially hard in the United States, where our tax laws are much clearer.
00:11:05.940 | It's one of the benefits of citizenship taxation.
00:11:08.660 | We know that we have to report every dollar we earn, no matter where, no matter when,
00:11:13.340 | et cetera, to the US government if we are a US citizen.
00:11:16.340 | And the clarity of that makes it simple.
00:11:19.600 | So either you do or you don't, and the consequences come with it.
00:11:23.560 | By the way, don't commit tax evasion.
00:11:25.760 | It's a dumb thing to do.
00:11:26.980 | You will never save enough money to make it worth it.
00:11:29.380 | And you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, which dramatically diminishes
00:11:32.460 | the value of your dollars.
00:11:34.720 | So don't do that.
00:11:35.900 | However, let me explain to you the Shakira case, because it's actually quite interesting,
00:11:40.140 | and it illustrates the concept that I am driving at.
00:11:42.980 | Shakira, obviously enormously successful pop star, makes enormous amounts of money.
00:11:48.340 | Well, she engaged in some very intelligent tax planning many years ago, and she transferred
00:11:52.940 | all of her property rights, her royalty income, into a business entity, I believe, in Luxembourg.
00:11:59.220 | And Luxembourg has a favorable tax regime over things like intellectual property rights
00:12:03.860 | and royalties, et cetera.
00:12:05.740 | Their standard amount is to exempt about 80% of income from taxation, which drops you down
00:12:11.120 | to about a 5% tax rate.
00:12:12.780 | I believe that Shakira negotiated with the Luxembourg government and was able to get
00:12:16.820 | her tax rate down to 2%.
00:12:19.540 | And so the total taxation on her income was 2%.
00:12:23.300 | Now, obviously, all of the income that was going to be paid out of that corporate entity
00:12:28.500 | in Luxembourg has to go to her.
00:12:30.380 | And so she engaged in some additional sophisticated tax planning.
00:12:34.220 | She established residency in the Bahamas by purchasing property there.
00:12:38.100 | The Bahamas is a great place to establish tax residency, because you can do it by simply
00:12:41.580 | owning property there.
00:12:43.100 | And then she sent her money to the Bahamas via a series of tax-free banking jurisdictions
00:12:48.980 | in the Caribbean, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, et cetera.
00:12:51.980 | And so as a tax resident of the Bahamas, and with her money flowing from Luxembourg, she's
00:12:57.740 | going to be very, very lightly taxed on her income.
00:13:00.700 | This is good, sophisticated international planning, drops her tax rates from probably
00:13:04.940 | I would say 99%, but yeah, I don't know, 60%, 50%, whatever the Spanish tax rate would be,
00:13:12.140 | drops it down to call it 2% in Luxembourg, and follows all the laws.
00:13:18.860 | Now the problem is she has to make sure that she doesn't become a tax resident of another
00:13:24.660 | country.
00:13:25.660 | And so in her case, she started to spend significant amounts of time in Barcelona, and thus violated
00:13:32.260 | the Spanish 183-day rule, thus incurring Spanish taxation on her income.
00:13:38.140 | Now how did the Spanish government know that Shakira was in Barcelona?
00:13:42.820 | Well, obviously, because she's Shakira.
00:13:46.620 | Everybody knows she's in Barcelona.
00:13:47.980 | She's a star.
00:13:49.300 | She's very well known.
00:13:51.060 | And so if you know that someone who is visible and making enormous amounts of money is living
00:13:57.100 | in your country, and is staying there, and you can see from the tabloids every day that
00:14:01.740 | she's still here, then you know you've got an absolute ironclad case to tax her income.
00:14:08.980 | And that's ultimately what the Spanish government did, and they ultimately got her.
00:14:11.860 | And she settled it, paid the tax bill, et cetera.
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00:15:14.700 | Now why did that happen?
00:15:16.740 | Well, first, it happened because she ignored the advice of her team of professional financial
00:15:22.460 | planners.
00:15:23.460 | This is frequently what happens.
00:15:25.220 | A wealthy person or a celebrity, et cetera, will hire a team of professionals to design
00:15:30.740 | some useful plan for them.
00:15:32.780 | The professionals will design a beautiful, perfectly executed plan, and then the celebrity
00:15:38.060 | or wealthy person will go on and ignore the details of the plan because they just can't
00:15:43.580 | be bothered.
00:15:44.580 | In this case, undoubtedly, that's what Shakira did.
00:15:46.980 | Her tax advisors gave her good advice.
00:15:49.200 | She proceeded to ignore them and said, "Why can't I be in Barcelona?
00:15:52.700 | After all, the man I love is in Barcelona.
00:15:54.860 | That's where I want to be."
00:15:55.860 | Now, I have not read court documents and things like that, but all she had to do was not be
00:16:01.340 | in Spain that much.
00:16:03.700 | She could go be there some.
00:16:04.940 | She could come in as a tourist.
00:16:06.500 | All she had to do was not be there all the time, but that was too hard for her, and of
00:16:11.500 | course, she's paid the price.
00:16:13.100 | She could have spent significant amounts of time in Spain.
00:16:16.120 | She could have then spent significant amounts of time in Portugal.
00:16:19.020 | She could have spent significant amounts of time in England and any other place that she
00:16:22.580 | wanted to be.
00:16:23.580 | She could have flown her family in and out, but because she refused to do what the plan
00:16:27.180 | said, she became a Spanish tax resident and ultimately paid the price.
00:16:31.640 | But I guarantee you today that there are hundreds, probably thousands and thousands of people
00:16:35.520 | living in Spain who are violating the exact same Spanish law and who don't come to the
00:16:42.780 | attention of the Spanish government.
00:16:44.940 | And again, don't violate the law.
00:16:47.540 | Keep track of where you are and don't become a tax resident of Spain unless that's part
00:16:50.940 | of the actual plan.
00:16:52.180 | But the point is that lots of people get away with it because they're not so obvious.
00:16:57.100 | Their income is not obviously connected to their lifestyle.
00:17:02.700 | Their income is not obviously connected to them.
00:17:05.560 | And so be careful of taxes.
00:17:07.640 | It's much better for you, if at all possible, for you to make a lot of money and not have
00:17:12.480 | that money directly connected to you than it is for it to be directly connected to your
00:17:19.320 | face, your name, etc.
00:17:21.660 | Follow all the laws, but you can follow all the laws and put in place certain privacy
00:17:25.320 | measures that will help you significantly.
00:17:28.480 | Let's move on to lifestyle because I think this is, in many ways, probably a bigger one.
00:17:37.380 | When people know that you make a lot of money, they expect you to live a certain lifestyle.
00:17:44.740 | And those expectations upon you really are significant.
00:17:49.760 | After all, you're not a loser and you don't want to live like a loser.
00:17:52.840 | And so when you make a lot of money, you feel the need to clothe yourself in the external
00:18:01.620 | trappings of success.
00:18:03.760 | And it feels weird to you if you don't do that.
00:18:07.020 | After all, you know, I could do it and that starts to become a part of who you are.
00:18:13.600 | And there's no limit to the amount of lifestyle expenses that are available to someone.
00:18:18.860 | There is no fortune so large that it can't be very quickly wasted by a dedicated spender.
00:18:25.720 | We have evidence galore of this from the world of celebrity athletes, celebrity performers,
00:18:31.300 | etc.
00:18:32.300 | You can build a lifestyle to destroy any, any pot of money, no matter how large.
00:18:40.320 | It's always possible to do that.
00:18:44.260 | The problem is when you feel pressured into certain lifestyle decisions, it can often
00:18:50.600 | take away your peace.
00:18:52.680 | And it's much better for you to have the choice to engage in a certain kind of lifestyle because
00:18:57.880 | you want to do that than it is for you to feel pressured to maintain a lifestyle because
00:19:04.200 | of external pressure.
00:19:06.080 | Let me give you a practical example.
00:19:08.620 | Let's assume that there are two options between you.
00:19:11.020 | Option one is that you are a brilliant internet business guy, you're a brilliant coder, and
00:19:18.200 | you have succeeded in creating a very profitable business.
00:19:22.700 | You're earning $10 million a year.
00:19:25.220 | Let's say you're living in Miami, Florida, you're earning $10 million a year and, you
00:19:31.160 | know, things are great.
00:19:32.720 | But your business is entirely opaque to everyone around you.
00:19:39.960 | Everyone around you knows that you work online, that you have some kind of business, but they
00:19:47.700 | don't know what you're doing and you kind of purposely live rather modestly.
00:19:53.800 | Yeah, you have a reasonable condo and you're not broke, obviously, but you don't talk about
00:20:00.000 | how much money you make, you don't splash money around, etc.
00:20:03.680 | One of the things that your handsome income allows you to do is to take care of your family
00:20:08.680 | and your friends in various ways.
00:20:11.620 | So for example, let's say that your parents are living in Brazil because you're a Brazilian
00:20:15.880 | immigrant, and you're able to support them because they're your parents, you love them
00:20:19.600 | very much, and so you arrange and you say, "Mom, Dad, you know, I really want you guys
00:20:23.720 | to – I want to retire you, I want you to take it easy," and let's say that you send
00:20:27.600 | them something on the equivalent of $3,000 a month, and that plus their other assets
00:20:31.960 | and their paid-off home, etc., gives them a very comfortable lifestyle in Brazil.
00:20:37.040 | And let's say that your sister is living in New York and you want to send her some money
00:20:42.500 | from time to time to help her with school expenses for the children, and so once a year
00:20:47.600 | you write a check to some private schools for $20,000, and she's enormously grateful
00:20:52.720 | because it allows your nieces and nephews to be enrolled in a school.
00:20:58.160 | So imagine how happy everyone around is, and you yourself are happy because you're making
00:21:03.100 | plenty of money, you're saving plenty of money, everyone's doing well, and you're
00:21:06.680 | able to help those that you love and care about.
00:21:10.080 | Now flip that around.
00:21:11.080 | Let's assume that instead of being an Internet programmer and a web entrepreneur, etc., who
00:21:17.840 | no one has any idea what he's doing when he's sitting there staring at his laptop,
00:21:21.520 | instead of that you're a famous sports star, you're a football star for the Miami Dolphins,
00:21:27.880 | and you earn $10 million a year playing for the Miami Dolphins.
00:21:33.520 | Well now, everyone knows how much money you make.
00:21:37.520 | So imagine your parents sitting down in Brazil calculating, "Wait a second.
00:21:42.500 | My son earns $10 million per year, and he's sending me $3,000 per month annualized.
00:21:52.000 | That's $36,000 a year.
00:21:54.560 | My son thinks that his parents are worth only 0.36% of his income?"
00:22:06.720 | Now that incredible gift that they had before that made them feel wonderful about how our
00:22:12.800 | son is supporting us and what a blessing to be retired by our own son, now it feels ridiculous
00:22:20.720 | because it's 0.36% of his income.
00:22:24.600 | And the same thing happens with your sister.
00:22:26.720 | Your sister previously was happy with the $20,000 a year that you were paying for school,
00:22:34.840 | and now she's sitting there saying, "He earns $10 million a year, and all he can spare is
00:22:40.720 | $20,000?
00:22:42.080 | That's chump change."
00:22:43.080 | It changes everything.
00:22:45.840 | And this just ripples out through your life.
00:22:48.700 | Let's say that you were the internet entrepreneur before, and you went out to dinner with your
00:22:53.880 | friends, and you just casually pick up the check and pay for a nice dinner out with your
00:22:59.720 | friends.
00:23:00.720 | I don't know, $1,000, whatever it is.
00:23:02.800 | And ordinarily, your friends are very grateful.
00:23:05.840 | "Man, what a great blessing!"
00:23:06.840 | And you just say, "Yeah, you know, it was an okay month.
00:23:09.040 | We did fine this month.
00:23:10.040 | You know, my pleasure.
00:23:11.040 | Happy to do it."
00:23:12.040 | But now, if they know you make $10 million a year because you're a public sports star
00:23:16.560 | and your salary is in all of the newspapers, well, now people look at it and say, "$1,000?
00:23:22.720 | Oh, it's nothing.
00:23:23.720 | He can afford it.
00:23:24.720 | After all, he makes $10 million a year."
00:23:26.360 | And this just ripples on and on and on through your life, and it's a never-ending process.
00:23:34.360 | That's where the dollars before were received with gratitude by people you gave them to
00:23:39.240 | and people you helped out with, et cetera.
00:23:42.040 | Now, just for virtue of being your friend, people are prone to discount the value of
00:23:48.000 | the money that you're spending and supporting them with, even though the dollars are all
00:23:53.360 | the same.
00:23:55.120 | So lifestyle is always something that affects you, and I don't want to go too deep on it.
00:24:02.560 | I don't want to belabor the point, but I do want to just to say, like, this just goes
00:24:06.600 | everywhere.
00:24:07.960 | It goes everywhere in your life.
00:24:09.520 | If people think you have money and you come in and you start driving a hard bargain on
00:24:13.800 | a car or something that you're buying or something silly, then there's just so much conflict.
00:24:18.840 | It's much better to be perceived as not being particularly wealthy with regard to lifestyle
00:24:24.360 | stuff.
00:24:25.360 | Another huge one is requests for aid, requests for help, requests for charity.
00:24:30.560 | If people think that you have money, and especially if they know that you have money, then they
00:24:35.920 | feel very entitled to continually ask you for money, and that can be very, very difficult
00:24:42.080 | because while undoubtedly you want to help people, you want to actually help people.
00:24:49.760 | And sometimes giving money is a good way to help people, and sometimes giving money is
00:24:54.480 | the best way to hurt people, and yet they often don't understand that.
00:25:00.160 | They often don't have any clue.
00:25:01.540 | They often don't know that that's the case.
00:25:05.680 | And so even if you choose to help or choose to hurt, not only do you face the same thing
00:25:12.360 | about, "Well, I only asked him for $10,000, and after all, he makes $10 million a year
00:25:16.320 | and $10,000 is nothing."
00:25:18.720 | Even if that's the case, then it continues on, and when you say no, they see it as the
00:25:25.400 | money instead of being open to other things.
00:25:27.240 | So it's a very difficult, difficult scenario.
00:25:30.040 | Now there are many other areas in which things come along the way.
00:25:35.880 | Lack of privacy costs you money.
00:25:37.400 | There's security risks.
00:25:38.400 | I think Mark Zuckerberg pays something like $40 million – or Facebook pays something
00:25:42.360 | like $40 million a year for Mark Zuckerberg's private security.
00:25:46.200 | So you have security risks.
00:25:48.520 | There's kidnapping risks for your children.
00:25:51.560 | You have to live in a certain neighborhood.
00:25:53.800 | It used to be that maybe some neighborhoods were safe enough you could live.
00:25:58.880 | Now you got to be in a gated neighborhood.
00:26:00.400 | You have to have security, et cetera.
00:26:01.720 | So your whole lifestyle just goes up if people know that you have money because you are now
00:26:07.000 | a public target.
00:26:08.920 | And publicity just attracts crazies, just going to bed every night wondering who's
00:26:13.480 | going to show up at your front door tomorrow because some crazy thing happened is an ongoing
00:26:19.680 | risk.
00:26:20.960 | There are many, many costs associated with that lack of privacy, and so you should be
00:26:25.920 | very, very careful.
00:26:27.120 | Now let's flip it around.
00:26:29.560 | Are there benefits to publicity?
00:26:33.240 | I think without question for some people there are, but you should probably be careful to
00:26:38.320 | consider those benefits before you seek it.
00:26:41.800 | There are various levels of publicity.
00:26:46.160 | Many people are attracted to the idea of being famous.
00:26:50.480 | I think that's undeniable.
00:26:51.960 | We live in a world in which so many people want to be famous.
00:26:55.400 | They want to go viral.
00:26:56.440 | They want to be well-known.
00:26:59.120 | I don't understand this myself.
00:27:01.120 | I don't understand it intellectually, and I don't understand it emotionally.
00:27:04.440 | It's not something that I have.
00:27:06.120 | I hate it.
00:27:07.400 | I hate the tiny little bit of fame that I have because of the fact that you're listening
00:27:11.760 | to me right now.
00:27:13.200 | I despise it with a passion.
00:27:16.000 | I don't like being recognized.
00:27:17.520 | I don't want to be known.
00:27:19.480 | I don't want to be famous.
00:27:23.000 | So for whatever reason, if it's genetic or circumstantial, I have never aspired to being
00:27:28.480 | well-known.
00:27:29.480 | I've sabotaged many things that I've done because, "Uh-oh, I might all of a sudden become
00:27:34.360 | famous."
00:27:35.360 | It's very hard to run an internet business that makes a lot of money when you've sabotaged
00:27:38.640 | a lot of things because all of a sudden you're going to become famous.
00:27:41.200 | I don't recommend that.
00:27:44.160 | But I acknowledge that's something that many people want, and so your mileage may vary.
00:27:49.600 | I can see some of the benefits of fame for some people.
00:27:54.660 | So first of all, I can clearly see the benefits of fame if it's going to make you money, and
00:28:00.040 | there is no question that you can cash in on fame, on your personal brand, even on notoriety,
00:28:06.320 | and it can make you money.
00:28:08.600 | My rule on things like social media is this.
00:28:11.240 | If you're making money on social media, you should use social media.
00:28:14.780 | If you're not making money on social media, you shouldn't use it.
00:28:17.920 | There's just no benefit to social media, an enormous amount of harm unless you're making
00:28:22.480 | money.
00:28:23.720 | You can apply the same thing.
00:28:25.060 | There are a lot of people who make a lot of money because of their fame, and there are
00:28:29.000 | many, many careers that are only possible because of the fame.
00:28:35.120 | Would you switch places with Shakira or Ricky Martin or Enrique Iglesias or Juanes or whatever?
00:28:42.440 | I think most of us pretty quickly would because we say, "Well, if I can have the fame and
00:28:46.960 | I can have something that I like, clearly I like singing or I like dancing, and I can
00:28:51.640 | do the thing that I'm good at, then I'm willing to do that in exchange for the money."
00:28:57.600 | As I see it, public money is definitely better than no money, but of course private money
00:29:02.360 | is much better than public money.
00:29:04.600 | If public money is your only pathway to money, then it's probably worth pursuing.
00:29:11.000 | In many cases, many careers I'll talk about in a moment, there's really no way around
00:29:14.000 | it.
00:29:15.000 | There's no way to hide your income.
00:29:16.000 | If you're a Fortune 500 C-suite executive and your income amount and your stock options
00:29:20.920 | is published in every single annual report, there's no way to really hide your money.
00:29:25.760 | If you are a surgeon and everyone knows that you're a specialized surgeon or anesthesiologist
00:29:32.360 | or some other medical specialty, and obviously you make hundreds and hundreds of thousands
00:29:37.680 | or millions of dollars per year, there's no real way to hide it.
00:29:40.560 | I'm going to talk about some strategies for that in a moment.
00:29:44.800 | What you should do is you should be thoughtful about it and you should be clear about what
00:29:49.640 | you want.
00:29:50.640 | I think that if you don't have the instinct to want fame, you should be cautious about
00:29:57.120 | acquiring it.
00:29:58.120 | I was going to wait, but let me stick it in here.
00:30:00.320 | What's the flip side of fame?
00:30:01.320 | The flip side of fame is influence, influence.
00:30:06.800 | If you care about something and you care about making change in the world, then the flip
00:30:14.800 | side of fame is influence.
00:30:17.600 | Fame has a connotation of basically being a self-serving, egotistical thing.
00:30:24.240 | Influence has a different connotation for us in the English language where it's something
00:30:29.400 | that can be used for good or for evil.
00:30:33.760 | It's power.
00:30:35.800 | There's no question that fame equals influence equals power.
00:30:41.840 | While I don't love the tiny bit of fame and whatnot that I have, what I do love is I do
00:30:49.640 | love the influence.
00:30:51.120 | When I get emails from listeners, as I frequently do, when I hear that something I've said has
00:30:56.000 | been able to help someone positively, when I hear that someone has embraced an idea that
00:31:01.360 | I've thought long and hard about and I think is helpful to them, then it fills me with
00:31:05.920 | pride and joy because I believe that that influence allows me to make the world a better
00:31:10.920 | place.
00:31:11.920 | That influence allows me to accomplish some of my personal goals, to bend the arc of history
00:31:16.920 | a tiny amount in whatever area I can influence.
00:31:21.440 | If fame is the cost of influence, then in many cases, it's a cost worth paying.
00:31:28.200 | It's a cost worth bearing.
00:31:29.960 | It's a cost worth dealing with because of the opportunity to help someone, to serve
00:31:35.440 | someone effectively, etc.
00:31:37.600 | That's the flip side of fame, is influence.
00:31:41.460 | And it's well worth having, but it shouldn't be entered into naively, and fame is not the
00:31:48.760 | only way to acquire influence.
00:31:51.320 | Some of the most influential people wield their influence in an entirely invisible manner.
00:31:59.560 | And to me, that's the ultimate power.
00:32:02.400 | I don't know how to get there because of the life choices that I made.
00:32:07.420 | Maybe someday I will.
00:32:09.000 | And I think that if you could have it all, what would you have?
00:32:13.600 | You would have money, and the money would be created in a way that was not connected
00:32:18.300 | to you.
00:32:19.400 | Then you would develop influence based upon your character of those who know you, your
00:32:24.040 | ideas and the power of them, and the money that you have behind it, and you would wield
00:32:28.760 | that influence in very lightly seen, hopefully even invisible ways.
00:32:35.360 | And the only people that really understood the true nature of your influence would be
00:32:41.480 | those who were undeniably close to you and could see your character.
00:32:45.920 | And then that would be very rewarding.
00:32:48.280 | So in my mind, that's the ultimate thing to have.
00:32:51.300 | It's just very hard to know how to get there because fame and notoriety, etc., can be a
00:32:56.840 | pathway to money, money can be a pathway to influence, etc.
00:33:00.320 | So it can be a very confusing muddle to try to work your way through when you're dealing
00:33:05.860 | with this in a normal fashion, trying to figure out what business do I start.
00:33:10.360 | And the reason I'm making this show today is because this is something that very few
00:33:13.960 | people think about when they're starting a business.
00:33:16.840 | They don't think about it when they're creating their entities.
00:33:21.760 | They don't think about it when they're putting their face on things or their name on things.
00:33:26.240 | And in many cases, you can build things without your face and name on them, and you should
00:33:31.040 | consider if you would rather have that than something with your face and name on it.
00:33:35.640 | In summary, public money is better than no money, but private money is much better than
00:33:42.980 | public money.
00:33:45.280 | Private money preserves your options, it allows you to come and go as you like with minimal
00:33:49.160 | risk, it keeps your costs down.
00:33:51.640 | Unless it's making you money or developing influence for you, I don't think you ever
00:33:55.400 | win when flaunting your wealth.
00:33:57.880 | And so it's much better for you to keep yourself modest if at all possible.
00:34:05.280 | And by the way, this is one of the reasons that I am suspicious of anybody who leads
00:34:09.960 | with lifestyle.
00:34:11.760 | There's a balance here, but I've spent so many years reviewing financial statements
00:34:16.240 | to know that half the people that live a very flashy lifestyle can afford it, and their
00:34:24.880 | flashy lifestyle is evidence of the fact that they have plenty of money.
00:34:28.800 | And half the people that live a flashy lifestyle can't afford it, and their flashy lifestyle
00:34:33.760 | is based upon fakery and lies.
00:34:37.480 | It's an elaborate scheme, it's bait to try to lure you in, you're the sucker.
00:34:42.520 | So especially in the financial space, when I see people living a flashy lifestyle, and
00:34:48.400 | here it's especially bad when it's an extreme lifestyle, I don't know, Dan Bilzerian or
00:34:52.760 | something like that, living in an enormous house, I just assume that it's all a giant
00:34:58.560 | con game, and I'm the sucker that they're trying to get, and I just start with that
00:35:04.360 | assumption.
00:35:05.360 | And I guess thankfully I grew up near Palm Beach, and basically every Palm Beach bazillionaire
00:35:09.920 | that I ever interacted with, there was no question that they had money.
00:35:13.800 | After all, you're sitting in a $45 million mansion on the water, and there's no question
00:35:18.640 | that they have money, and there's no financing on it, etc.
00:35:21.880 | But every genuinely wealthy Palm Beacher that I interacted with always had some more modest
00:35:29.400 | expression of wealth.
00:35:31.840 | And it's not to say they didn't buy fancy stuff, of course they did, there's plenty
00:35:35.040 | of yachts and plenty of things, but there's just a modesty of expression that for me has
00:35:42.720 | always been, continues to be connected with those who are genuinely wealthy in a way that
00:35:49.800 | some wacko on the internet doesn't – the guy on the internet who's showing off the
00:35:55.520 | flashy stuff doesn't express himself in that confident way that all of the genuinely
00:36:01.400 | bazillionaire people that I've ever interacted with do.
00:36:05.440 | And so it's not as simple – millionaires don't drive Toyota Corollas, it's not
00:36:14.200 | the millionaire next door kind of vibe, it's that there's a general modesty about life
00:36:21.160 | that matters.
00:36:22.600 | And I meant to cover one more thing about attracting genuinely good people into your
00:36:26.320 | life with expressions of wealth, but I'll do that in this context.
00:36:29.440 | I want to pivot to this idea.
00:36:31.680 | What if you can't hide it?
00:36:34.200 | After all, it's all well and good that if somebody wants to make $10 million from his
00:36:38.840 | laptop as I've always aspired to, but it's another thing if it's possible.
00:36:46.600 | Again, you work your way up in a company and your salary is known or you work in a specialty
00:36:51.320 | where people know that you make money, it's just unavoidable.
00:36:56.960 | Well, here I think your basic strategy, if at all possible, is just always lie about
00:37:04.160 | your money, always lie down and make comments about, "Eh, things aren't as great as
00:37:13.840 | they seem."
00:37:15.520 | And again, there's a difference between somebody who is perceived to make money and
00:37:20.800 | somebody who we know exactly how much they make.
00:37:25.120 | Let's use an example.
00:37:26.120 | Let's say that you're a physician.
00:37:28.920 | There are a lot of physicians who make $2 million a year, $3 million a year just from
00:37:34.880 | their medical work, say nothing of other businesses.
00:37:38.160 | And there are a lot of physicians who make $200,000 a year, $300,000 a year, etc.
00:37:44.120 | And so I was working with a client recently and I gave this exact advice.
00:37:48.280 | She was a very successful physician.
00:37:50.700 | She was earning, I think, something like $3 million.
00:37:54.040 | And I pat myself on the back, some of it through some of the advice I'd given her where she'd
00:37:59.680 | gone from making a few hundred thousand dollars a year to a few million dollars a year.
00:38:03.760 | And it was her work, but I was happy to see her progress over the years when I most recently
00:38:07.700 | spoke to her.
00:38:09.240 | And the point was, I said to her, I said, "Just cause the impression to be that you
00:38:17.340 | make $300,000 a year instead of $3 million a year."
00:38:21.020 | Because people can't distinguish and differentiate between those things.
00:38:26.440 | It would be ridiculous for you as a physician to somehow try to represent that you make
00:38:32.540 | $30,000 a year.
00:38:33.640 | We all know that's not true.
00:38:35.360 | But it's not ridiculous for you to represent that you make $300,000 a year in basically
00:38:41.160 | the way that you talk, the things that you do, etc. as compared to $3 million a year.
00:38:46.980 | The day you say to your friends that aren't in your social class or your economic class,
00:38:52.680 | which is common, the day that you say to them that you make $3 million a year is the day
00:38:58.660 | that they stop appreciating every time you buy dinner, every time you fund a fancy event,
00:39:04.260 | every time you get the hotel and front row seats for a great concert, etc.
00:39:08.780 | Now they just start to expect it.
00:39:10.940 | Instead of looking at you and just being grateful that you were able to do that for them, now
00:39:15.000 | they look at it and say, "Oh, it was no big deal for her.
00:39:17.820 | Of course she could do that."
00:39:19.340 | On the flip side, if someone thinks that you make $300,000 a year, they understand you're
00:39:23.920 | not broke, obviously, but they still appreciate it when you pick up the tab for dinner.
00:39:28.980 | They still appreciate it when you organize a $5,000 weekend or things like that, because
00:39:34.820 | they don't understand what a small percentage of your net worth it is.
00:39:38.740 | It doesn't change their perception like it would if they did know how much money you
00:39:45.760 | make.
00:39:46.760 | People don't know what it's like to make $200,000 a month.
00:39:50.080 | They have no clue.
00:39:51.740 | Because they have no clue, it's better to keep that quiet and only share that with trusted
00:39:59.120 | advisors.
00:40:00.580 | Again, this is not always possible.
00:40:05.160 | There are two ways to go about it.
00:40:06.320 | Number one is just in your actions and in your behavior and in your comportment, whatever
00:40:13.900 | you do, the things that you buy, et cetera, you can live a great lifestyle that is appropriate
00:40:20.100 | to you, but don't be so splashy as to cause people to think that your earning capacity
00:40:27.540 | is genuinely what it is.
00:40:30.020 | That's the first thing.
00:40:31.020 | The second thing is if you're willing to, you can just make comments about your poor
00:40:35.280 | management of money.
00:40:37.900 | I think that's a reasonable strategy.
00:40:40.240 | If somebody thinks that you make tons of money and they know it, let's say again your very
00:40:46.940 | high income is reported on a financial statement, a publicly disclosed financial statement for
00:40:50.520 | anybody who wants to know and say it, then you can whine about your expenses just as
00:40:55.360 | much as anybody else does.
00:40:57.560 | There are good reasons to do that.
00:40:58.860 | I don't love the idea of dishonesty of that, but there are good reasons to not make it
00:41:04.100 | seem like you're worth tons of money.
00:41:06.520 | Remember that especially when I've talked about asset protection planning, et cetera,
00:41:09.960 | the first strategy with asset protection planning is just not to be a target.
00:41:19.380 | People with heavily laden pockets are generally going to be targeted in a way that people
00:41:26.120 | with very light pockets are not.
00:41:29.680 | Maybe your salary itself is quite ample, but you develop some side business and your side
00:41:41.580 | business sucks up all your money or you spend all your money on your horse racing business
00:41:45.700 | or you send all your money on your wife's charitable organization and it sucks all the
00:41:50.380 | money out, et cetera.
00:41:52.220 | If you want to use that as a form of impression, I get a little uncomfortable with this.
00:41:58.820 | That's why it's always better to avoid it just because I don't like any hint of dishonesty,
00:42:03.520 | but I think that that's an appropriate strategy to employ at times is some complaints about
00:42:09.740 | how much money this charity sucks up from us or how much money this business.
00:42:13.460 | We had a terrible year.
00:42:14.460 | We lost money, et cetera.
00:42:15.580 | You are in control of some of those things and it's worth your employing those strategies
00:42:19.860 | on occasion.
00:42:20.860 | Now, earlier, I neglected to talk about some of the other social benefits because – and
00:42:25.860 | I meant to.
00:42:26.860 | It was my mistake.
00:42:27.860 | When I think about fame, fame and notoriety, and I talked about influence, that influence
00:42:33.200 | can be on a broad scale, but it can also be on a personal scale.
00:42:36.940 | What I mean is if you're a heavyweight person, that is valuable.
00:42:44.420 | Being perceived as a heavyweight person, a serious man or woman is important and is valuable.
00:42:52.260 | The word I'm using, heavyweight or serious, is intentionally more than money.
00:43:00.100 | You're not a serious person just because you have money, but money is a component of
00:43:05.980 | it.
00:43:06.980 | And so if you desire to make a difference in the world, if you desire to have influence
00:43:11.980 | and impact, you want to cultivate an air, a reality that is also going to have an air
00:43:19.200 | of being a serious person, somebody who is intentional.
00:43:24.260 | Part of that has to do with the quality of the ideas that you consider, the quality of
00:43:28.820 | your personal philosophy, the intelligence of the way that you speak, the way that you
00:43:34.140 | act, the wisdom that you have to share, etc.
00:43:37.300 | But then it also wants to be backed up with money.
00:43:40.220 | And so I think the best path is if you genuinely are just simply concerned about something
00:43:47.340 | that is important and you're not just making small lies and misdirection about how your
00:43:54.220 | charitable endeavor and your family foundation is sucking up all your money.
00:43:58.200 | But in reality, it's genuinely true.
00:44:00.180 | Not that it's sucking up all your money, but that you are involved in something serious
00:44:03.820 | and something that's important.
00:44:05.340 | For the ones who get it done, the most important part is the one you need now.
00:44:09.460 | And the best partner is the one who can deliver.
00:44:12.180 | That's why millions of maintenance and repair pros trust Grainger, because we have professional
00:44:16.240 | grade supplies for every industry, even hard to find products.
00:44:19.820 | And we have same day pickup and next day delivery on most orders.
00:44:23.200 | But most importantly, we have an unwavering commitment to help keep you up and running.
00:44:28.380 | Call, clickgrainger.com or just stop by.
00:44:31.500 | Grainger for the ones who get it done.
00:44:35.480 | To me, that's the ethically superior way where you genuinely are concerned with things and
00:44:41.040 | you genuinely are investing in things that matter to you.
00:44:44.540 | And the exact numbers never need to be said, but you get all of the benefits of money,
00:44:52.460 | of being known that you have money because you're a serious player in the area that you're
00:44:56.700 | involved in.
00:44:57.700 | You get all the lifestyle benefits of money because it's not hidden, but you also get
00:45:01.440 | all the benefits of being a serious person and you're just not being frivolous.
00:45:06.200 | That you are making a change in something, you're focusing on something, you're trying
00:45:10.020 | to send a man to Mars or you're trying to solve homelessness in your area, et cetera.
00:45:14.800 | And to me, that's the best solution is to be in that space and in that space where you're
00:45:23.900 | a serious person and you're making a serious change.
00:45:27.580 | It's not the number of zeros on your income or the number of zeros on your wealth that
00:45:35.080 | truly matter.
00:45:36.940 | It's the seriousness of your ideas and the money is not optional, but there's a broad
00:45:42.900 | degree of acceptability in the money that matters.
00:45:49.020 | And this is a strategy that you can employ if you have public money and this is a strategy
00:45:53.300 | that you can employ if you have private money.
00:45:56.700 | It doesn't matter.
00:45:57.700 | What matters is the size of the impact that you're making.
00:46:00.180 | What matters is the size of the contribution you're giving to the area that you care about.
00:46:06.300 | And this will in many ways be your ticket out of the frivolous consumption club and
00:46:12.420 | into the exclusive club of heavy hitters who are doing something.
00:46:17.700 | And this is where I want to close.
00:46:21.420 | What people who have not built wealth I think often don't understand is that it's necessary
00:46:31.100 | for wealthy people to basically exclusively surround themselves with wealthy people in
00:46:41.140 | order for them to function.
00:46:43.220 | And so all of the accoutrements of wealth, the private exclusive neighborhoods, the high
00:46:48.940 | price tags to be in those exclusive neighborhoods, the private clubs with very high entrance
00:46:54.700 | fees, the exclusive schools, et cetera, these are all part of the screening mechanism that
00:47:00.020 | allows wealthy people to be comfortable, to be comfortable because they're surrounded
00:47:05.260 | by people who understand.
00:47:07.580 | And again, it goes back to that difference of buying a $1,000 dinner for your friends
00:47:12.020 | versus not.
00:47:14.100 | If you're at the Everglades Club on Palm Beach, nobody is worrying about the $1,000 dinner
00:47:21.780 | or the non-$1,000 dinner.
00:47:23.900 | And everybody understands that we're all here at this table because we've done the hard
00:47:32.980 | work and we know what it's like to be at this table.
00:47:36.140 | We've all been in that situation where we had the experience where we picked up the
00:47:40.860 | $1,000 tab for other people and they either really appreciated it or they didn't appreciate
00:47:46.820 | it and they thought, "How ridiculous.
00:47:48.180 | After all, my son makes $10 million a year.
00:47:50.060 | How can he only find it in his heart to send me $36,000 a year?"
00:47:53.860 | Those shared experiences are some part of what it means to become wealthy.
00:48:01.820 | And people who have had those experiences often want to be with people who understand.
00:48:07.580 | Now, I'm not a member of the Everglades Club and I wouldn't tell you if I were, but I just
00:48:14.420 | think of an example I would share.
00:48:17.300 | Back when I was an insurance agent, one of my friends said to me, "You know, I really
00:48:22.860 | only go on vacation with other insurance agents because we're about the only ones who can
00:48:31.580 | take a week off randomly here and there on the spur of the moment and go skiing because
00:48:36.460 | the snow is good and let's go and fly across the country and go skiing."
00:48:40.340 | And there's just a lifestyle comfort level that I have to be with people that understand
00:48:47.700 | that I have the ability and my schedule to do what I want to do when I want to do it
00:48:51.260 | and I have the money to pay for it.
00:48:53.540 | And it's a modest amount of money that you need to do that, but it's more of a lifestyle.
00:48:58.740 | And that's, I think, what many people are looking for is they're looking for a sense
00:49:01.900 | of comfort with lifestyle, to be with people who understand, to be with people who are
00:49:08.060 | not going to put awkward pressure on you, to be with people who understand the crazies
00:49:14.820 | that are attracted with publicity and fame, etc., to be with people who understand.
00:49:21.220 | And so I hope I've articulated that in some effective way, that there is a genuine difference
00:49:27.420 | of lifestyle that wealthy people have lived versus non-wealthy people.
00:49:32.420 | And it's those experiences that make it very important for wealthy people to largely just
00:49:38.340 | surround themselves with their peers.
00:49:40.740 | And that's not something that you're going to fake.
00:49:43.220 | That's not something that you are going to hide.
00:49:45.500 | There's no one faking his way into the Everglades Club.
00:49:49.580 | And those kind of elite institutions are designed in such a way to eliminate the fakery.
00:49:56.180 | The Internet is not going to eliminate the fakery.
00:49:58.060 | The Internet is going to promote the fakery.
00:49:59.540 | But the elite institutions do eliminate the fakery.
00:50:03.260 | And they are all oriented towards exclusivity, privacy, modesty, etc.
00:50:11.240 | That's why those institutions exist.
00:50:13.900 | So in summary, think carefully about the things that are important to you when earning your
00:50:18.500 | income.
00:50:20.580 | Think carefully about how you earn it, work that you enjoy, etc., and recognize that you
00:50:25.780 | have some influence and choice in these affairs.
00:50:28.780 | Ten years from now, you can be in a different space depending on where you are and how you're
00:50:32.780 | there.
00:50:34.140 | Think carefully about earning your income in a public manner and recognize that there
00:50:40.200 | are costs associated with that and there are costs associated with your decisions.
00:50:47.100 | I don't think that one is right and one is wrong.
00:50:50.700 | Years ago when I was young, I just was always attracted to the private money approach.
00:50:57.900 | And then here I am with a podcast violating my own principles.
00:51:01.620 | But it always seemed to me the superior option.
00:51:05.540 | And just the kind of the hassle that I was with a friend of mine a few weeks ago who
00:51:10.220 | is a very accomplished surgeon and he was lamenting about how he gets multiple calls
00:51:21.180 | every week of financial advisors going after him, etc.
00:51:24.740 | And it's like, that's a price that I don't pay, but he pays.
00:51:27.940 | And just being silly, but it's real.
00:51:31.500 | Those things are real.
00:51:33.700 | And so be careful and be thoughtful about how you generate your money.
00:51:36.220 | If you can generate your money that's not connected to you, I think that's the way
00:51:40.980 | to go.
00:51:41.980 | But it can be hard to do it.
00:51:43.340 | So public money is better than no money, but private money is infinitely better than public
00:51:48.140 | money.
00:51:49.140 | Keep that in mind as you earn your income.
00:51:51.180 | Keep that in mind as you spend your money.
00:51:53.140 | Keep that in mind as you talk about your money and recognize that two people can keep a secret
00:51:59.300 | when one of them is dead.
00:52:00.980 | So be very cautious.
00:52:02.780 | You're often the one who creates your own successes and failures based upon the words
00:52:09.180 | that come out of your mouth.
00:52:10.180 | Thank you for listening.
00:52:11.180 | I hope this has been useful to you.
00:52:12.820 | I'll be back with you very soon.