2024-04-02_How_to_Navigate_the_Social_Financial_Complexities_of_Dining

00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:02.880 | skills, insights, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:06.800 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets,

00:00:10.320 | and today on the podcast, I want to give you some dining etiquette, help you save a little

00:00:14.960 | bit of money when you go out to eat. But first, we begin with a story.

00:00:19.600 | So I get invited via my homegirl to go to this girl's dinner. I don't know her like that. I

00:00:24.880 | think I met her once through my homegirl a while ago, but I was like, "You know what? I'm going to

00:00:29.680 | go because you're inviting me." So I go, I get the girl a little gift or whatever. When I pull up,

00:00:35.680 | the first thing I realize is, first of all, everybody's on time. And second of all, a lot

00:00:41.520 | of people showed up for this girl's birthday dinner. It was over 12 people, probably over 15.

00:00:46.960 | I never seen this many people at a birthday dinner at a restaurant in my life. As the night's going,

00:00:52.720 | people are buying their drinks and things like that. But what I started noticing is

00:00:59.200 | people's orders. I'm a very observant person, so I started noticing people's orders. And people,

00:01:04.480 | they was ordering two and three appetizers, three and four drinks, the best, biggest T-bone steaks

00:01:13.440 | with the gold on it, and this, and truffle fries, and this, and this. Everybody was doing their

00:01:19.200 | thing. So something, I don't know what it was, at some point of the night after people was finishing

00:01:25.920 | up their plates and ordering their last drinks and stuff like that, I had to go to the bathroom.

00:01:30.560 | But something hit me on my way to the bathroom, like, "You know, just stop and pay for your meal.

00:01:34.720 | Just stop by the bar, pay for your meal, tip out, do that." That's what I did.

00:01:41.040 | So by the time I go to the bathroom, pay for my bill, tip out, stuff like that, the waiter is

00:01:47.040 | coming around to the table wanting to know how we're going to do the bill because the bill can

00:01:50.720 | only get split two ways. And he made that very clear. The bill can only get split two ways.

00:01:55.760 | So the girl looks down at the other end of the table where we're sitting and she says,

00:02:00.400 | "Oh, well, two of the guests, they can put it on their card and everybody can cash at them.

00:02:05.600 | And they can deal with the bill because I'm not worried about that. I'm the birthday girl."

00:02:10.560 | I heard it, but everybody around at the table act like they didn't. And I was completely not

00:02:17.360 | worried because again, my bill is paid for, tipped and everything. I'm just kind of waiting

00:02:21.200 | on my home girl. So after time has gone past, nobody's putting up the card. Nobody even touched

00:02:29.440 | the check. So finally, a dude that was there, he opened it being funny and it was over $3,500.

00:02:36.240 | That's how much the bill was. It was over $3,500. When he said that, I just busted out laughing.

00:02:41.040 | I don't know why I find it to be so funny. I think it's because I knew it was about to be

00:02:45.120 | a shit show. So the person comes back around and notice that nobody's touching the bill and it's

00:02:49.760 | like, "Hey, what are we doing about the bill?" So she looked down towards our end again, which I

00:02:54.880 | don't know why she kept looking down towards our end. So finally, she's like, "All right,

00:02:58.880 | well, who's going to put down on the bill?" So I don't say nothing. My home girl, she don't say

00:03:05.200 | nothing. And then so finally, another girl in the group was like, "Well, my home girl, well,

00:03:11.120 | can we put it on your card and everybody just pay you back?" My home girl, she say, "No."

00:03:17.200 | Like, "No, I'm not really comfortable with that." So things are starting to get heated now. There's

00:03:22.960 | a back and forth going between the restaurant, who's going to be paying, things like that.

00:03:27.600 | A lot of people are getting frustrated. Things are getting heated. So what do I do?

00:03:31.200 | I say, "I'm going to excuse myself." Because first of all, I'm not about to be sitting in a food,

00:03:38.720 | restaurant, public setting and embarrass myself because y'all don't have your shit together,

00:03:44.320 | right? I don't do that. I don't play that. My is already taken care of. My bill is taken care of,

00:03:50.560 | tipped out, tipped beautifully. My bill came up to a hundred, and I'll never forget,

00:03:54.800 | it was $115 without tip, right? So I was like, "I'm going to excuse myself."

00:04:00.880 | Get up, leave, call the Uber and all. My home girl, because this is her friend. So she's staying,

00:04:09.840 | trying to figure things out, stuff like that, arguing, things like that with people. I'm not

00:04:15.200 | doing that. So I excuse myself and I leave because y'all need to figure this out. As I'm getting up

00:04:22.480 | to leave, "Well, what are you doing? How are you leaving? You need to help pay for this bill,"

00:04:26.240 | things like that. The waiter, before I can even say that, the waiter's like,

00:04:29.440 | "His bill's already taken care of. He paid his bill and tipped out almost 45 minutes ago."

00:04:37.920 | Everybody's shocked, looking like, "I'm hitting the door by now. I'm gone. I'm out."

00:04:43.520 | By the time I get home, about an hour, I would say, later, I get a long text message from my

00:04:50.320 | home girl. "I think that it was real rude what you did at my home girl's birthday dinner.

00:04:55.760 | I don't know where that kind of etiquette came from." I texted her back a simple, "IDC."

00:05:07.200 | So how's that for a story? I don't know who to attribute that story to. I just heard it online

00:05:12.480 | and I couldn't find the original guy who was recording it. But it's one of those things that

00:05:17.840 | if it hasn't happened to you, I promise it will happen to you. I thought this is an important

00:05:22.720 | topic. Dining etiquette is an important topic for us to talk about. I want to talk about it because

00:05:30.160 | it applies differently at different stages of life. I want to give you some tools that I have

00:05:36.640 | developed over many years that have helped me to be able to navigate this a little bit more simply.

00:05:44.000 | First, this show will probably be most helpful to younger listeners. So if you've got teens or

00:05:50.320 | if you're a young man or young woman, I hope that this show will help you because it takes a little

00:05:54.160 | while to figure these things out. Once you go through the school of hard knocks and you have

00:05:58.480 | some weird checks that don't quite split the way they do and you navigate some awkward situations,

00:06:03.200 | then things get a little different. So I'll just share with you a little bit of what I have learned

00:06:08.000 | in terms of appropriate etiquette, because the etiquette does change depending on the stage of

00:06:12.880 | life you're in. I remember when I first started dining out was a teenager in high school, and

00:06:18.160 | I was in various after-school activities, evening activities, and you go out with your friends and

00:06:24.160 | go out to the local restaurant. And the dining etiquette in that circumstance is pretty

00:06:28.560 | straightforward. You pay for what you order. However, as you start to get older, then the

00:06:34.720 | dining etiquette changes and you get into splitting checks, you get into picking up the tab as your

00:06:40.400 | wealth increases. And then I've found even with having a large family, the dining etiquette

00:06:45.280 | changes quite a lot, that now there's a different expectation. So let's talk through these things

00:06:50.880 | and share with you some ideas. The first thing that you want to do in order to avoid difficult

00:06:56.960 | situations is you want to communicate clearly and you want to know upfront what you're getting into.

00:07:04.400 | One of the things that is often difficult for young people to do is to practice assertiveness

00:07:10.320 | with regard to money. And assertiveness means simply being open, honest, and forthright about

00:07:17.760 | what you are able to afford and what you are not able to afford. Every single time that I myself

00:07:25.200 | have gotten into a financial jam over a meal, and of course, here we're talking about a restaurant

00:07:31.360 | meal, it's because I didn't clarify it in advance. And there are a couple of levels

00:07:37.200 | of clarification to pay attention to. First, before you accept an invitation to dinner,

00:07:43.360 | it's a good idea to have a sense of what you're getting into. There's a big difference between

00:07:48.400 | you're going out to dinner at the local diner where your maximum check might be, I don't know,

00:07:53.360 | $20 with everything included, as compared to going out to a luxury restaurant where your

00:07:59.120 | maximum check can be hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of dollars. In general, you're going to

00:08:05.360 | have an idea of what kind of restaurant you're eating at just based upon what you're accustomed

00:08:13.040 | to. If you're in small town USA versus downtown Manhattan, you're going to have a different set

00:08:18.080 | of prices. So you're going to have a good idea based upon general knowledge, but it's always

00:08:22.160 | a good idea to check the menu. And in today's world, that has gotten a lot easier to do.

00:08:28.000 | So what I'll usually do is before accepting a restaurant invitation, if I'm uncertain about it,

00:08:33.760 | I'll check the menu either on the website of the restaurant or Google and Apple Maps,

00:08:41.280 | both of these and other platforms as well, Yelp as well, will have a quick estimate on prices.

00:08:47.360 | And so you can check a few Google reviews, a few Yelp reviews on a restaurant, get an idea of what

00:08:53.360 | your price is likely to be. And you should have in your mind a good general sense of what you're

00:08:59.040 | trying to spend on a meal. And then you'll multiply that by, of course, the number of people in your

00:09:04.960 | party. This is one of those things where I have found, as my family has grown, this has become

00:09:10.960 | more important to me because it makes a bigger difference in the size of my check.

00:09:17.440 | If you are a single individual going out to dinner, the difference between, say,

00:09:21.760 | a $20 check and a $40 check is only $20. It's not that big of a deal. If you're a family of seven

00:09:27.760 | going out to dinner, then the difference between a $20 check and a $40 check winds up being a

00:09:32.160 | difference of, say, about $150. And so it can be a much bigger impact on your budget if you are

00:09:38.640 | unprepared for it. So whenever possible, it's a good idea to get a good sense of what the menu

00:09:46.640 | price is going to be for your food. And if the menu price is out of your league, it's unaffordable

00:09:54.960 | for you, then simply say something. Generally speaking, when you're going out to dinner with

00:10:00.160 | people where there's a little negotiation about where we're going to go, if you just say something,

00:10:04.640 | it will fix the problem. And a lot of times we don't like to say something because we don't want

00:10:10.400 | to be the person who is somehow broke. We don't want to be the person who says, "I can't afford

00:10:15.520 | it. I don't have any money." That harms our self-image in some way. But what I want to

00:10:19.600 | encourage you is to simply recognize that even if you're with somebody who is very wealthy,

00:10:25.200 | most people who are wealthy have become wealthy themselves, at least in the U.S.-American context

00:10:32.000 | where intergenerational wealth is much less common. Many people who are mega millionaires

00:10:37.760 | and billionaires remember what it was like when they were working for minimum wage jobs. And so

00:10:43.760 | it's not a sign of weakness to say, "That's not in my budget," or "I don't have the money for

00:10:49.680 | that," or "Can we choose a place that is less expensive?" It's purely a sign of confidence

00:10:56.080 | that simply say where you're at. And the point of going out to dinner with somebody,

00:11:01.040 | generally speaking, is to find a solution to your meal where you're going to have a great

00:11:08.720 | experience. And if you're fretting about the bill the entire time that you're sitting there,

00:11:13.760 | you're not going to have a great experience. And so it's good to speak up. And if you speak up in

00:11:18.480 | advance and you communicate, then in many cases, somebody will say, "Hey, it's my treat. It's no

00:11:24.080 | problem." And I think that if you find yourself as the person with more money, I think one of the

00:11:30.400 | best things that you can do is make this accessible for people. More on that in a moment.

00:11:35.040 | So first of all, you want to take a look at the menu, but you also then need to recognize that

00:11:39.360 | the price on the menu is not your final price. If you're young and you haven't dined out a lot,

00:11:44.080 | or maybe you're newly moving to a place like the United States where service charges are not

00:11:48.880 | generally included in the bill, taxes are generally not included in the bill, you find yourself

00:11:53.120 | surprised by a meal that costs 30 to 40 percent more than the number that's written on the menu.

00:11:59.360 | So you should think about that and be aware of that. For my European listeners, or basically

00:12:05.280 | from everywhere except the United States and Canada, what you need to understand is that

00:12:09.520 | if you are dining out in North America, generally speaking, there's going to be a tax that is added

00:12:15.120 | to your bill. That tax will vary based upon the city and the state. It's going to include a sales

00:12:20.240 | tax. But in many cases, a 10 percent increase is kind of fairly normal. Again, it may be 6 percent,

00:12:28.240 | it may be 8 percent, but by the time you put it all together, 10 percent is a very normal amount

00:12:32.640 | of tax. So if your entree is $15, plan on it actually costing with tax $16.50. Then you need

00:12:40.400 | to plan on your service charge. And some restaurants will include a service charge,

00:12:45.040 | but they'll often include a service charge if there's a large group. But the expectation in

00:12:50.960 | the North American culture is that your service charge is that you pay your tip, and that that

00:12:56.800 | is something that you decide on the ultimate amount as long as it's 20 percent. You can tip

00:13:01.440 | less, but generally speaking, in today's world, tipping 20 percent is a normal tip. We could talk

00:13:08.560 | separately about how tipping culture in the United States has gotten out of hand, how crazy it is,

00:13:13.600 | but it is what it is. We're not going to change it. And it's my basic worldview that if something

00:13:21.840 | is culturally expected, I want to be a gracious member of the culture. I don't want to be

00:13:27.200 | a rude iconoclast. It's fine to be an iconoclast if I can do it without harming other people,

00:13:32.960 | but I want to be a gracious person in the culture, fit in well, encourage my fellow citizens. And so

00:13:39.440 | if I'm going to go out to dinner at a place that has a tipping charge included, then I'm going to

00:13:44.400 | make sure that I plan for that and prepare for that. Which leads me to the next piece of advice.

00:13:50.160 | If you, in thinking about the details prior to going out to dinner, find yourself looking at a

00:13:57.520 | charge or a menu that is beyond your reach, one of the first things that you can do is pull back

00:14:03.440 | on the location and choose a place that doesn't include a service charge. This is something that

00:14:08.320 | I myself will do some, not frequently, but I do get so annoyed with the tipping culture and the

00:14:13.200 | expectations because I feel like I'm caught between a rock and a hard place that either I

00:14:18.320 | tip a full amount and generously, and since I'm not willing to not be a generous tipper,

00:14:24.240 | I will often choose places that don't include a tipping culture. And so that's one thing that you

00:14:29.280 | can often do. If you find yourself looking at a menu and you recognize that the taxes and the tip

00:14:33.840 | are going to make this particular dining experience out of your reach, then go ahead and just choose

00:14:39.520 | a different venue. Choose a restaurant where you don't have table service. Choose a restaurant

00:14:45.680 | that doesn't impose those charges. And there are plenty of restaurants available today

00:14:51.280 | that don't impose table service charges, either, again, through just simple tips,

00:14:57.200 | that will give you a great experience. I love Chipotle. I find Chipotle, as an example,

00:15:02.880 | to be one of those restaurants that has broadly universal appeal, is widely available, and has

00:15:09.680 | something to please most people. There are a lot of other versions of these, places that are salad

00:15:14.400 | restaurants or salad bowl restaurants, people kind of riffing on this. And I think these work

00:15:19.040 | really well because they split the categories of dining. They're certainly not fine dining.

00:15:24.000 | And so if you are in the mood to go out for a fine dining experience, then don't choose one

00:15:28.800 | of these places. But they work really well for social events because each person can do what he

00:15:38.000 | or she wants at the restaurant, order his or her own food exactly as desired, take care of your

00:15:46.720 | own bill. All these things can be done separately, and you don't have to intermingle them all the

00:15:51.920 | way that you do when you're in a table service environment. So what I would suggest is be

00:15:56.800 | thoughtful about the places that you commit to going, and be assertive. If a place is suggested

00:16:02.560 | to you that is beyond your financial reach, just simply say so, and choose a different place. There

00:16:08.320 | are an abundance of options available for all people that will allow you to enjoy a dining

00:16:14.640 | experience with others that isn't going to bust your budget. Next, prior to going out to eat,

00:16:22.960 | do your best to determine how the bill itself is actually going to be paid.

00:16:29.280 | Now, there's a little bit of social grace here that is necessary, because in many dining

00:16:34.480 | situations, you will go out to eat with somebody, and you don't want to pre-negotiate who's going

00:16:43.200 | to pay the bill because your dining partner may wish to be generous and say, "Hey, I've got the

00:16:48.960 | bill," but he doesn't want to do it in advance. He wants to do it at the end of the meal.

00:16:52.640 | And so in many cases, that's what you should expect. However, if there is uncertainty in your

00:17:00.400 | ability to go out to eat, then I think it's wise for you to pre-negotiate how the bill is going

00:17:06.880 | to be settled. And I want to give you a couple of suggestions on how to do that. But first,

00:17:11.440 | let's talk about how to handle it if everything is normal, you're going out to dinner in a

00:17:18.240 | restaurant where everyone is together, as, say, a mature man. In general, I think there are two

00:17:25.200 | acceptable ways, socially acceptable ways, to split the check. The first is for one person

00:17:31.520 | to pay the entire check. The second is for it to be split evenly. As a man, those are basically

00:17:38.640 | the only two acceptable ways to split a bill. The negotiation and the careful calculations that you

00:17:46.240 | do in high school and college and when you're young and somewhat broke, those things need to

00:17:51.600 | pretty quickly disappear in most social cultures. There may be exceptions. I don't know what the

00:17:57.680 | dining culture is like in your homeland. Perhaps there are exceptions. So I'm just speaking broadly

00:18:01.920 | to middle-class U.S. American culture, which is the culture that I myself know. But in middle-class

00:18:09.840 | U.S. American culture, basically, either you pick up the bill for everyone at the table and you

00:18:14.880 | don't worry about any nickel and dime calculations, or each person tosses in evenly for the check.

00:18:21.840 | The check is 100 bucks and there's four people. Each person kicks in $25 and it's just split.

00:18:28.240 | There are exceptions to this in some other parts of the world, depending on how the restaurants

00:18:36.960 | actually do the point-of-service terminals. And forgive me for all the international discussion,

00:18:42.640 | but I think it's helpful because I have a large international audience that sometimes goes to

00:18:47.360 | the United States and then vice versa, because I think this is where things will go in the United

00:18:51.280 | States. In the United States, the way that bills are normally managed is that the server will bring

00:18:58.560 | the check to your table and you have two choices. Either you pay with a card or you pay with cash.

00:19:05.440 | And when you pay with cash, you can get change, but customarily, you often just

00:19:11.520 | leave enough cash to cover the tip. You stand up and you walk out. And then if you're going to pay

00:19:15.840 | with a card, frequently, the server will take the card back to the kitchen and charge it there or at

00:19:23.120 | the central pay station where all the cards are processed. This is different than in many other

00:19:29.120 | places in the world. In most places in the world, at least that I have been, that are outside of the

00:19:33.440 | United States and Canada, the server will bring now the card terminal to your table and you'll

00:19:40.320 | actually run your card at the table. This is a superior model because it protects against the

00:19:44.800 | theft of your card. One way that somebody can steal your financial information is if they're

00:19:51.840 | in possession of your physical credit card, they can just simply run the magnetic strip through a

00:19:56.720 | reader, save that information, clone the card, and then steal your credit card information.

00:20:02.000 | There are a lot of thefts that can happen this way. So if you're dealing with an unethical criminal

00:20:06.960 | who's working in a restaurant, that criminal can quickly get a hold of a lot of credit card

00:20:13.120 | information, which can then be used for fraudulent purchases. So it's better for you to maintain

00:20:18.480 | access to the physical credit card itself. And the way that's done is if the POS terminal,

00:20:26.080 | the point of service terminal, the pay machine is brought to your table. Now, one innovation that

00:20:31.600 | has happened, and by the way, I think within a decade, that'll be the common thing in the United

00:20:36.800 | States as well. And the reason is due to the broad spreading of Apple Pay and Google Pay.

00:20:42.880 | Now that Apple Pay and Google Pay and contactless credit cards are becoming ubiquitous in the United

00:20:48.080 | States, as they have been in many places in the world, now that that is the case, then increasingly

00:20:54.800 | the server is bringing the terminal to the table in the United States. And I'm already seeing that

00:20:58.720 | change happen in the country, and I think it's an inevitable change because logically it makes sense

00:21:03.600 | and it allows people to use their contactless payment systems. However, it's not yet universal.

00:21:09.200 | So there is still this culture of sending the card back. The reason this matters is that

00:21:15.280 | traditionally it's difficult and annoying for a server to split credit card transactions across

00:21:22.240 | many cards. And so because of the strong cash culture in the United States, then there were

00:21:28.480 | rules about, "Oh, we'll only accept a certain number of cards." That's what you heard in the

00:21:33.680 | story that I played for you. "We'll take two credit cards for this $3,500 bill. We'll split it two

00:21:38.640 | ways. You just tell us how much you want on the card." And that's hard when you have a table where

00:21:42.960 | you have a dozen people all ordering different amounts, you have bringing bottles of wine for

00:21:47.440 | the table, and all the transactions are starting to get mixed and mingled. That's difficult.

00:21:52.080 | But what I'm seeing more and more is that as restaurants around the world are using an

00:21:58.400 | electronic ordering system, that it's really nicely integrated with the payment system.

00:22:03.920 | And this works really beautifully. You'll go out to a restaurant, and frequently I was out

00:22:08.960 | to dinner with half a dozen guys, and each one wanted to pay for our bill. And so all the waiter

00:22:16.480 | did was take the long list of things, flip it from one side of the tablet to the other, and then hit

00:22:21.920 | process. And at the end of it, the whole list of orders for the whole table was handled individually

00:22:26.880 | with individual card transactions. And that, I think, is where a lot of these terminals will

00:22:32.400 | eventually go. But it's not ubiquitous yet. So you still have this kind of awkwardness that's

00:22:37.040 | associated with it. So you need to plan ahead and be prepared for this. So if you're going to be

00:22:41.920 | going to a restaurant where splitting the bill evenly is going to be difficult for you, in many

00:22:49.120 | cases, you should just clarify quickly how the bill is going to be settled. And if you can do

00:22:54.960 | that in advance, it will increase your confidence of going out. So you would say something, somebody

00:23:01.440 | invites you to dinner, and you would say, "Hey, that's great. Do you have any sense of how much

00:23:05.600 | it is?" If you don't know, and the person will say, "Oh, no, no, I got it. It's my treat." And

00:23:11.040 | then you'll know going in that you're going to be treated to dinner. What you don't want to do is

00:23:15.360 | get yourself in a situation where you don't enjoy the meal because you're worried about how the bill

00:23:19.840 | is going to be settled at the end of it because of this social awkwardness because you weren't

00:23:24.240 | willing to clarify things in advance. Now, if you are hosting, one of the things that you can do

00:23:29.600 | is try to make things simpler by clarifying in advance as the host. So if I'm going to

00:23:39.600 | invite someone to a meal, generally speaking, I will do my best to make it clear that either I'm

00:23:47.760 | going to treat or you're going to pay. And what I do, and there may be more elegant ways, but if I

00:23:54.800 | am going to treat someone to dinner, then I'm going to specifically say, "Hey, it's my treat.

00:23:59.120 | I would love for you guys to come. It'll be my treat. I'd love to treat you." That way,

00:24:04.800 | someone can come with a free heart, not have to go back and think about, "Can I afford this or

00:24:08.800 | can I not afford this?" If I'm not going to treat someone, then I'll try to give them an indication

00:24:14.080 | of how much the bill will cost. And of course, this is something that you'll do based upon some

00:24:19.520 | knowledge of a person's finances. If you are inviting someone that you know is wealthy,

00:24:26.000 | always eating out, has plenty of money to spend on discretionary expenses like that,

00:24:29.920 | then I don't think you need to do that. But if I'm inviting somebody out for a meal and I'm not

00:24:36.000 | willing to treat them for a meal, but I want to have a dining experience with them, then I'll

00:24:40.000 | just give them an indication of the budget and say, "Hey, does that work for you?" So it would

00:24:44.400 | go something like, "My family and I are going to go and have lunch after church. We're going to go

00:24:47.840 | to this restaurant. Would you guys like to join us? We'd love for you to join us. We really love

00:24:52.480 | this restaurant. It has this kind of food. I find that the cost is, say, it winds up coming out at

00:24:58.640 | 15 bucks a person," something like that. "Does that work for you or do you want to pick somewhere

00:25:01.680 | else?" And so something like that, where you try to express the social grace of allowing somebody

00:25:08.800 | to choose based upon food preferences or money, I think works really well. So you want to give

00:25:15.520 | someone a gracious way out. So they don't have to say, "No, I can't afford $15." You can say,

00:25:19.360 | "You know what? I would prefer a different kind of food." Great. Here are some options and kind

00:25:22.960 | of work those things out. But by being clear about the cost up front, you're making it evident that

00:25:28.400 | we're going to go out to the meal together and you're going to be expected to pay for your

00:25:34.000 | family. I'll pay for my family. We're going to split the checks. So that's an important thing

00:25:38.640 | to do in advance if possible, just to alleviate any pressure for somebody who may not be as wealthy

00:25:44.000 | as you are if you're not going to treat them. The other time to do this is simply when you

00:25:50.160 | get to the restaurant. And if you know that we're going to a restaurant and my budget is not going

00:25:56.320 | to allow me to pay for the table, then your assertiveness needs to come in by simply saying

00:26:04.000 | at the beginning to the waiter, "Hey, I'd like to have separate checks, please. I'm going to cover

00:26:09.120 | this person, this person, this person, this person. I'm going to order for everyone." And

00:26:12.800 | get your separate checks set up in advance. When you do it in advance, generally that's pretty

00:26:17.680 | simple for the server to have multiple checks set up and it solves problems with, "Oh, I can't take

00:26:23.120 | so many credit cards." So do that also. And if you do it, it makes it clear to everyone at the

00:26:28.640 | table that I'm not treating you, but I'm also not a burden on you. And then if somebody was planning

00:26:33.680 | on treating, then he can kick in and say, "No, I got it. I got it." And you can go ahead and have

00:26:37.600 | your negotiation right then and there. That's a helpful technique. And if you will exercise it,

00:26:44.720 | you'll find it useful. On the flip side, one of the things that you can do if it's socially

00:26:51.440 | uncomfortable to do any of those things, then you just simply need to come prepared for the meal.

00:26:57.760 | And I think that the best way to do that is to always travel with cash in your pocket,

00:27:01.920 | physical currency. The annoyances with settling the bill often come in related to cards. So we

00:27:11.760 | all love to spend on our cards. We love that it makes it easy and simple for us. And we're all

00:27:17.840 | grateful that, "Hey, you can Venmo me this. You can cash out me that much." But the problem is

00:27:22.960 | that it turns into an enormous math problem at the table for people to sit down and negotiate

00:27:29.120 | their amounts. And if you've got to have a card in the mix, then there's a good chance that you're

00:27:35.920 | going to come out in someplace different than you should be. So I remember this happened all the

00:27:41.120 | time. When I was in high school, I started to face this. And I was fairly frugal because I didn't

00:27:46.160 | have any money. And the simple things where I'd go out to dinner, and at that time, socially,

00:27:52.400 | in your lifespan, socially speaking, it's appropriate for you to split the check based

00:27:58.160 | upon actual consumption. And so I would go out, and I wouldn't order the dessert, and I wouldn't

00:28:03.440 | order the drink. I would just get a simple entree, an inexpensive entree that was what I could

00:28:09.200 | afford. And yet I would always wind up overpaying because it would just never work out. And so I

00:28:15.120 | developed the habit of always having cash in my pocket, because it solves the situation beautifully.

00:28:20.960 | And that is still something that I do today. If I'm going to go out to dinner with a large group

00:28:24.960 | of people, and I was invited, but it was not obvious that I was being treated, that someone

00:28:32.400 | else was paying the bill, then when I show up at dinner, I'm going to have cash in my pocket to pay

00:28:38.080 | for the dinner. And also importantly, I'm going to have cash in my pocket that's not going to require

00:28:42.880 | me to come with precise change, with an exact... I don't need to get change. And so I'll have a

00:28:49.680 | selection of 50s, 100s, 20s, 10s, whatever is necessary, and 5s, so that I can tabulate my own

00:28:56.960 | cost of the check, and plus tip, plus service charge, all of that, add in a little extra,

00:29:02.880 | so that there's no question. I can lay my cash on the table and sit back and let other people work

00:29:07.840 | it out. Where you don't want to be is in the situation that guy was in in the story, is you

00:29:12.400 | don't want to be in a situation where you're arguing and negotiating with people, and whose

00:29:17.280 | credit card is it going to go on. Because if you haven't learned that the hard way, there are people

00:29:22.480 | who you'll wind up in a mixed group with out to dinner with 8 or 10 or 12 people, you don't know

00:29:26.960 | three of the other people, and all of a sudden you'll have a bill on your credit card that you

00:29:31.200 | can't afford and wasn't in your budget. And so what is always appropriate and always protects you

00:29:38.480 | is simply to have physical currency, because that allows you to always pay for your bill,

00:29:43.520 | to pay for what you paid for, but you don't have to be involved in the bottles of wine that they

00:29:49.040 | ordered. You don't have to be involved in the extravagant purchases that they made,

00:29:52.480 | but so you've solved your ethical obligation to pay the bill as well as your just practical

00:30:01.680 | consideration. You don't have to say, "Well, put it on my card," and the server says, "We only take

00:30:05.760 | two cards." Well, no problem. Here's cash. You're good to go. So make that as a habit. If you don't

00:30:13.200 | customarily carry physical currency, then I would suggest to you this is reason number 1463 as to

00:30:22.080 | why physical currency is useful, and always have enough physical currency with you in the appropriate

00:30:28.000 | denominations that you can settle the bill. By the way, this is also something that I find very

00:30:34.080 | useful when traveling, is that whenever I'm traveling, I'm always worried that my bank is

00:30:40.400 | going to shut off my credit cards, and they're just not going to work, and yet I don't always

00:30:44.560 | want to get local currency, and so I always will travel with a variety of U.S. dollars,

00:30:50.400 | because I can pay a bill in any country in the world with U.S. dollars as long as I round up a

00:30:55.440 | little bit, and the rounding up that you do to pay with U.S. dollars is always going to be cheaper

00:30:59.680 | than dealing with the change fees and the leftover currency if you wind up in a situation. So develop

00:31:05.680 | the habit of carrying cash with you. Then as you progress in life, you'll need to move on to the

00:31:13.440 | next stage of finances. So far, I've been thinking about somebody who doesn't have much money,

00:31:18.960 | somebody who's building their assets, and you want to engage in financial considerations,

00:31:25.680 | but now how do you move on to being the one to basically having an adult financial life,

00:31:30.960 | where now you're the one, when you make an invitation, you can treat other people?

00:31:34.400 | And it's not so much about the specifics of settling the bill, but it's again where these

00:31:41.280 | same principles come into play. First of all, I think that those of us who are older,

00:31:46.640 | we should help younger people to understand these etiquette rules through practice,

00:31:53.760 | and one of the ways that we can help younger generations enormously is simply to do small

00:31:59.840 | things like paying for their food. I recently was out to a meal with a friend of mine who was a

00:32:06.400 | lifelong friend. I met him when I was a very young teenager, and this man must have treated me to a

00:32:14.000 | restaurant 100 or 200 times, been a good friend of mine for a very long time. And every time I see

00:32:19.520 | him, I try to affirm to him how much I appreciate his generosity towards me, because it made a big

00:32:28.000 | difference in my life as a young man, as a teenager, college student, all through, because

00:32:35.200 | he would take me to places that I wouldn't have been able to afford, and I would show up and drink

00:32:40.000 | water, but he would be happy to pay the bill. And it was incredibly generous of him, and he really

00:32:45.760 | invested into my life, and he was a valuable mentor for me because of that. And I want to be

00:32:52.080 | the man who pays it forward to other generations as well. And so, I think that these same principles

00:32:58.880 | apply, that when you're choosing a place to go out to eat, you should choose a place in which you

00:33:04.800 | can treat people, and look for an opportunity where it's comfortable for you to treat other

00:33:10.560 | people, if at all possible, and take away some of these social challenges for them. Paying for

00:33:16.160 | the pleasure of people's company is a very good use of money, in my opinion. It's the thing that

00:33:21.920 | I would rather spend money on more than almost anything. If I can spend money and get a time of

00:33:28.640 | socializing out of it, to me, that's a really worthy investment, and it's worth spending money.

00:33:34.880 | A couple of thoughts for you, if you're in the situation. Just a quick story as we transition

00:33:40.320 | here. When I was a financial advisor, I did quite a lot of eating out, did quite a lot of

00:33:47.600 | entertaining. I don't think that that's always a good business move, but I had to learn the hard

00:33:52.880 | way how to do it. And it can be quite financially difficult to do a lot of hosting, especially when

00:34:01.040 | the money is coming out of your pocket. If you've got a corporate expense account that's allocated

00:34:04.800 | for client meals and entertainment, and you know the budget amount, great. I didn't. I had Joshua's

00:34:10.240 | bank account that was allocated for meals and entertainment, and I had to figure out how do I

00:34:15.040 | make money with this in the long run. And I found it very uncomfortable, because meals are usually a

00:34:22.080 | social experience. They're not necessarily a money-making experience, and they're clearly

00:34:25.920 | important, but they're also not – there's not a direct response. It's not a "I'm going to get

00:34:33.520 | the deal because I take this guy out for lunch." And there was a time in my career in which I would

00:34:37.440 | often host people three meals a day. In some cases, I had two lunch appointments, an early one and a

00:34:42.880 | late one, and a breakfast appointment, and all of these things. I later dumped a lot of that stuff,

00:34:49.520 | and I realized that I was taking prospective clients to meals because I was uncomfortable

00:34:55.840 | getting straight to business. And I learned that as I grew in my maturity that it was actually

00:35:02.160 | better for me just to get straight to business. And then after a business relationship developed,

00:35:07.840 | then we would go ahead and add a social relationship in, because the flip side was a

00:35:11.760 | very expensive way of sometimes, only sometimes, getting to business. But all of that entertaining

00:35:17.600 | meant that in order for me to fit my budget, I had to find some options. And let me explain to you

00:35:24.160 | what I ultimately settled on that I think is a good solution. First, you are never going to have

00:35:30.480 | the world's biggest client expense account. And so, your goal in hosting people or treating people

00:35:39.760 | to a meal is not to spend the most money. In fact, just because you could spend the most money

00:35:46.400 | doesn't even make it a socially appropriate thing. It's kind of gauche. It's kind of

00:35:49.600 | icky just to show off that, "Look, I can spend more money than anyone else can." Of course,

00:35:55.040 | in many circumstances, people enjoy it when a deep-pocketed patron can host them for a lovely

00:36:01.840 | event that they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. But it's not necessary in many cases.

00:36:07.120 | And so, I found that when I was a financial advisor, first, my rule was I have to pay because

00:36:14.000 | I'm inviting people for lunch. I'm going to pay. So, how do I figure this out? If we've got

00:36:18.400 | a hundred-dollar lunch and I've got one of those in the morning and another one in the early

00:36:22.480 | afternoon, and all of a sudden, I've got huge amounts of money going out, that's not appropriate.

00:36:27.200 | So, what I've always looked for is I've always looked for a non-category-conforming experience

00:36:34.800 | that you can have with people. And if you'll look for this, I think this can, in many ways,

00:36:40.240 | be a good fit for you. So, my favorite place that I found was I found this amazing Mexican

00:36:48.880 | burrito joint in my city. And it was a client who introduced me to it. It was right behind the

00:36:56.640 | fancy plaza with all the nice places and all of the $40 meal places that would be kind of normal.

00:37:07.120 | But right behind there on the industrial alleyway was this little tiny hole-in-the-wall Mexican

00:37:13.920 | joint that basically exclusively had construction workers in it. And all the patrons were Mexican

00:37:23.600 | guys and construction workers in high-vis clothing. And yet, they made amazing burritos.

00:37:30.320 | It was a really, really great spot. And so, that became my go-to lunch spot because it was

00:37:35.760 | different. It was an experience that was different than a lot of people would ever have. And I would

00:37:41.280 | invite fancy people in fancy clothes. We would go in there and toss our jackets off and roll up our

00:37:46.800 | sleeves and loosen our ties and really enjoy amazing food that solved the problem of having

00:37:53.360 | a really great meal, but without breaking the bank. And what you should do is, if you're going

00:37:59.360 | to do a lot of entertaining, you should look for a variety of options. And if you're going to do a

00:38:04.000 | lot of entertaining and you're trying to manage your budget, is look for a variety of options

00:38:08.320 | that fit that. Look for something that's not the category shifter. I would pay at the burrito joint,

00:38:16.000 | I would pay the same amount of money as you would pay for a fast food meal at a big fast

00:38:23.200 | food franchise. But the experience was something that people loved because it was very different.

00:38:29.440 | And you can do this in any number of ways. And so, if you are taking girls out on dates,

00:38:35.360 | or if you're taking clients out to lunch, or you're treating people for dinner,

00:38:41.520 | look for circumstances and ways that allow you to get the essence of what you want,

00:38:47.520 | which is a meal together, but also allows you to provide those additional benefits, a fun time,

00:38:54.160 | an out of the ordinary experience, and doesn't do it in an expensive way that's going to cause you

00:39:00.800 | to be stressed about money. Spending a lot of money on somebody, whether it's a date, whether

00:39:05.600 | it's a business prospect, whether it's a friend, spending a lot of money is the most mundane and

00:39:10.800 | tiresome thing that someone can do. And yeah, it's appreciated, sure. But giving somebody an

00:39:16.800 | experience is something that really stands out. And this is a skill that you can develop. You

00:39:22.080 | don't need to spend lots of money on people to impress them. To the extent that you impress

00:39:26.560 | them, you often create freeloaders. And they'll be your professional dinner companion as long as you

00:39:32.320 | pay. But if you give people an experience that's different, that's out of the ordinary, but that's

00:39:36.480 | genuinely really nice, then you can have a much better situation. And this is useful at every

00:39:44.400 | stage. When my wife and I, before we were engaged, before we were married, we did this a lot.

00:39:49.600 | And I looked for chances for us to spend time together in memorable ways, create interesting

00:39:55.360 | memories. And when you put constraints on your money, you often create better memories.

00:40:00.320 | When you are going out with business clients, same thing as I'm describing to you,

00:40:07.520 | find something that you really like that's out of the ordinary and create an experience

00:40:12.720 | that you can treat people for that's not just a matter of spending lots of money.

00:40:16.560 | And then as you move into the family stage of meals and events, a similar thing happens.

00:40:22.800 | I've found it interesting how the etiquette of dining and the money involved has changed as I

00:40:30.560 | have had more children. There were various people who used to treat me when it was me and my wife,

00:40:36.160 | and we had one or two children. There were people in our lives who would treat us. But now,

00:40:40.480 | it's kind of funny, they'll take us out to dinner and it's like they have a dollar amount that

00:40:44.240 | they're not willing to go over. And so it creates this weird environment where somehow their idea of

00:40:52.320 | a good time is to invite Joshua and his family out to dinner. And yet the idea is that they're

00:40:59.440 | a family of three and they're going to pay for a family of three and pay for, say, one or two extra

00:41:05.280 | meals. "Hey, I'll treat you with X amount of dollars." And then Joshua needs to pay for all

00:41:10.400 | seven of his family members. And it creates this unique socially weird situation where there's an

00:41:17.760 | expectation that the person with a large family should say yes. But again, and I don't fault

00:41:25.600 | anybody for it, it just means it's another thing where you have to figure out how to navigate your

00:41:29.440 | way through it with grace and ease to make everyone comfortable, and yet for things to work.

00:41:35.280 | I take my family out to dinner, far more than almost anybody that I know, but I often don't

00:41:40.800 | enjoy it. It's not a great environment. And so once again, you can find a creative solution.

00:41:46.960 | And so I would imagine most people with many children, they do kind of what I do, where you

00:41:51.920 | say, "Hey, listen, let's do this. Instead of going out to the restaurant, I'll go pick up a bunch of

00:41:57.600 | subs for everyone and we'll meet in the local park where we can visit together there. Or let's go to

00:42:02.560 | the pond. Let's go to a place that we can play." And what you'll find is, once again, I can easily

00:42:07.840 | cover most people's expenses in a much easier way without going out to a restaurant and yet have a

00:42:15.920 | better experience for everyone involved, more freedom, more time of connection, more enjoyment

00:42:21.520 | together. The last comment on this simple experiences discussion is, remember that as

00:42:29.120 | the number of people in a dinner party grows, the economies of scale change significantly.

00:42:38.640 | So let's use number of people example. If you and I are going to go out to dinner or go out to lunch

00:42:45.680 | or go out to dinner, the two of us, it's almost certainly best for us to simply go to a restaurant,

00:42:50.560 | spend time at the restaurant, enjoy each other's company, pay for our restaurant meal and leave.

00:42:56.480 | Because the margins, especially if we're talking about food, restaurants don't have a lot of margin

00:43:02.000 | on food. And so the value per calorie or the value per minute or whatever you want to calculate it,

00:43:10.160 | of that experience is very, very high. One person to go out to a restaurant is a really great

00:43:15.680 | move. The numbers work really well and it just makes a lot of sense. However, if we are a party

00:43:23.520 | of eight people and we're going to go out to a restaurant, then all of a sudden now all of the

00:43:28.320 | financial calculations change. The cost of going out to the restaurant increases substantially

00:43:35.520 | and the value is the same as what it was in terms of the value per minute. But now with that higher

00:43:44.080 | dollar amount, we can adjust into different settings. Lest that be too ethereal, let's use

00:43:49.680 | some examples. If I'm going to go out with my family, we go out, we're seven people, for the

00:43:56.640 | price of us going out to a restaurant where we're going to order seven entrees plus extras, which

00:44:07.120 | in some cases means we're going to go to a mid-level mediocre restaurant that's not a great

00:44:12.640 | dining experience, we can feed a group three times as big as ours all out of our own pocket with

00:44:21.840 | steak and lobster for the same price because of the economies of scale of doing it ourselves.

00:44:27.840 | And so if you have a large group, as in your family or other large group mechanisms,

00:44:33.760 | then what I think makes the most sense is for you to start to bring the experience that you get

00:44:39.920 | in a restaurant into your home. And so instead of spending constantly huge amounts of money,

00:44:45.920 | taking lots of other people out to restaurants, which is mundane and kind of normal, not very

00:44:51.520 | memorable, a lot of times annoying, can't control it, rather use your home to control the environment

00:44:59.200 | so that you can have a more memorable experience for people. And you can do this at the very modest

00:45:04.400 | financial cost, or you can do this at a higher end cost and create a very memorable experience.

00:45:10.400 | So if you're a family with modest resources, just develop a few basic recipes, a few basic menus

00:45:16.400 | that you enjoy using when you're entertaining, and develop a simple but welcoming atmosphere,

00:45:22.640 | have people into your home, have a few meals that you really enjoy that are crowd pleasers,

00:45:27.280 | and treat everyone in that context. We've, in our current world, it seems as though very few of us

00:45:35.040 | open up our homes to other people. And it means we go out to these restaurants and have everything

00:45:38.960 | that's associated with that, but we don't get the genuine connection that can come when you're in

00:45:43.440 | the context of someone's home. And so you can develop this with your own, and do it really

00:45:48.960 | nicely with all of the money that you would spend on a restaurant and provide a much better

00:45:54.480 | experience. You can have a multiple course dinner. Some things that we've enjoyed doing is develop

00:46:00.160 | something like a simple crowd pleaser for a little snack. Maybe you do a little charcuterie board,

00:46:07.120 | some crackers and cheese, some kind of special thing that you do. You might develop a couple

00:46:12.640 | of cocktails that you create. If you have a home bar and you like to make cocktails, develop a

00:46:16.800 | couple of signature cocktails that you really enjoy making, offer those to your guests, or

00:46:21.600 | something that is unique to your area, a special local drink or a special local flavor, and offer

00:46:27.280 | those to your guests, have a nice dinner, develop, finish it off with a nice dessert. And a lot of

00:46:32.640 | people are really starved for that kind of in-home experience. And then train your children as you're

00:46:38.160 | able to, to provide a good experience. You'll have a lot better success teaching social skills in your

00:46:44.000 | own home, where your children learn to interact with your guests, they get to listen to the

00:46:47.840 | stories of your guests, and you don't have all the hustle and bustle of a restaurant.

00:46:52.400 | Now, at the higher end, if you're going to host a dinner party of eight or 10 people,

00:46:57.280 | consider just hosting and hiring a private chef to cook for you. Consider doing, I don't have any

00:47:05.600 | more examples, just have a private chef. Hire a chef to come in and cook for you in your home

00:47:10.560 | for the evening, maybe hire a bartender or whatever you need to do, so that you can have a really

00:47:15.200 | elevated experience. What has happened in our modern world, as we are all awash with cash,

00:47:21.520 | is we've lost the skill of spending our cash on things that are actually interesting,

00:47:28.960 | things that are actually memorable. So we spend it really foolishly. And I was listening this week to

00:47:36.640 | one of the online currents of things going around, and there was this lady who was talking about the

00:47:41.440 | fact that she and her husband have $3,000 a month of car payments. And evidently, she drives

00:47:48.160 | something like a Tahoe, a new Tahoe, and he drives something like a pickup truck.

00:47:53.200 | And they've got $150,000 of car debt, and she's got a $1,400 a month payment,

00:47:57.600 | and he's got a $1,600 a month payment on his truck. And I was laughing at them, because

00:48:03.360 | the woman is just describing a stupid expenditure of money. They drive mediocre vehicles that don't

00:48:10.240 | give any actual different experience, because they're unskilled with spending money. Swap out

00:48:15.680 | one of those vehicles for something that does... Drive something that does something really well.

00:48:21.920 | Instead of just driving a random $80,000 pickup truck, why don't you drive something that's

00:48:26.720 | actually cool? And you define cool. Drive something that's really fast, or really big,

00:48:30.720 | or really good, or really small. Instead of driving just another random SUV,

00:48:36.400 | go get a Porsche SUV. Go get something that's interesting. And this is what oftentimes,

00:48:41.440 | I think, is reflective of our culture. People spend huge amounts of money on boring,

00:48:46.240 | mundane stuff that's just the same as everything else. And they do this with their houses,

00:48:50.320 | they do this with their cars, they do this with their experiences. They go to the same place,

00:48:54.720 | and the same thing, and swipe their credit card and have another mediocre experience that they

00:48:59.760 | repeat year after year after year. And you ask them to tell you about their vacation, and they

00:49:04.000 | say, "Oh, yeah, we went to Myrtle Beach. It was just like it was last year." And hey, listen,

00:49:08.320 | you do you. Spend your money however you want. But as far as I'm concerned, I want to actually

00:49:12.720 | remember my life, which means that if I've got to drive a car, and I'm not just going to drive

00:49:17.280 | an Econobox, then let me drive something that I actually like, that gives me something unique and

00:49:22.480 | an experience that I can't get otherwise. If I'm going to go on vacation, why just go down to the

00:49:27.120 | same place, have the same experience year after year? I want to remember a vacation. So let's

00:49:32.320 | go somewhere really cold, or let's go somewhere really luxurious. Let's go somewhere really basic.

00:49:37.360 | Let's insert variety into life. And then the same thing with dining experiences. Going out to

00:49:43.200 | Olive Garden, or Fridays, or Morton's Steakhouse, just because that's what we always do,

00:49:50.160 | is super boring. And you can take the same amount of money that you spend and create, custom create,

00:49:56.880 | craft an experience that all your guests will remember. So have a dinner party in your home,

00:50:02.320 | and bring in a private chef to cook for you. Or have a, not a potluck, because, well, I guess in

00:50:07.760 | my culture we do a lot of potlucks, and potluck is fine, but have an experience where everybody

00:50:12.800 | brings an ingredient, or everybody brings a dish from your own country. And because you can control

00:50:17.920 | the environment, you can elevate the entire experience to a much higher level, so that

00:50:24.720 | coming to your house is actually memorable. And people want to come to your parties because

00:50:30.720 | they're different, they're memorable. That's what we're all looking for, is memories in our life to

00:50:36.160 | some degree. So I think that concludes most of what I have to share with you. The big points

00:50:42.000 | that I want to drive home to you are that if you want to avoid the difficulty of, or the weird

00:50:48.720 | social awkwardness of splitting a check, you avoid that by being assertive. Before you say yes

00:50:57.440 | to an invitation, just make sure you understand, clarify the details of the bill, clarify whatever

00:51:02.480 | you need to clarify. When you're out, recognize that what is socially appropriate is going to

00:51:08.160 | change throughout your life. If you're in your teens and early 20s, and you go out with your

00:51:11.600 | friends, go out with cash in your pocket and just pay for what you ordered. As you move into an

00:51:17.120 | adult phase of life, then either you pick up the entire check, someone else picks up the entire

00:51:23.600 | check, or you just split it straight up the middle. And you don't do this nickel and dime stuff

00:51:28.720 | anymore. That's excruciatingly annoying. And if you do that, you'll find that your dinner

00:51:35.040 | invitations will decline significantly. I stepped over that comment, so let me just clarify it

00:51:42.880 | as I wrap up. The reason you don't want to be the cheap guy who goes out and says, "Well,

00:51:50.960 | I just ordered a water and a $12 appetizer, so here's my $14 and y'all can figure it out,"

00:51:55.680 | is simply you are not respecting the social lubricant, the social dynamics of the group.

00:52:05.520 | And in a group, it is expected that the group does group things. So when you go out to dinner

00:52:12.400 | with five of your friends, and you're the guy who says, "Well, my entree was $12, so here's $14,"

00:52:18.400 | you're violating the expectation of camaraderie. You're violating the expectation of being in the

00:52:24.640 | group. That can happen for a little while, but very quickly, that kind of violation of social

00:52:30.480 | norms creates a significant level of discomfort for other people in the group. And this is not

00:52:37.280 | always a bad thing. It can be a positive thing. For example, let's say that you go out with

00:52:44.320 | your pothead drunkard friends, and all five of them are drunkards, and they order mountains of

00:52:51.920 | alcohol, and you abstain. Well, certainly, you don't have an obligation to split the bill

00:52:58.960 | with them. But what's going to happen is pretty quickly, you're not going to be getting the

00:53:03.600 | invitations because you cause them to be uncomfortable. Is that a bad thing? No. If

00:53:08.560 | they're a bunch of drunkards and you're not, then you're better off not hanging out with drunkards.

00:53:13.920 | Just go and find a group that reflects you. But when you find a group that reflects you,

00:53:18.640 | maybe you go and join the athletes, and the athletes all go for a 40-mile mountain bike

00:53:24.160 | ride after dinner, excuse me, on Friday evening or Saturday morning. You all go for a big, long

00:53:30.640 | bike ride together, and then you meet up at the local cafe. And none of them drink alcohol because

00:53:36.560 | they know it's bad for their performance. Well, now you found your group. So now split with your

00:53:41.280 | group. But if you are always the... And similarly, if you find... Let's say you care a lot about

00:53:48.560 | frugality. Well, you'll find your frugal group. And if in your frugal group, everyone goes out

00:53:53.040 | to dinner and they order the $12 entree and they pay a $2 tip and everyone's done, then you'll do

00:53:58.400 | what's expected. But when you get into a different group, then that kind of isolationist behavior

00:54:05.360 | breaks the concept of camaraderie. So that's why it's important that, especially as you pass forward

00:54:12.480 | to adulthood, why is it only appropriate either one person pays the check or everybody splits

00:54:17.280 | evenly? Because it's a minor, small expression of group camaraderie in the group. That you had a

00:54:25.280 | glass of wine, they had three. But just because they had three doesn't mean you're the guy who's

00:54:29.920 | not gonna pay for more than your share. We're all giving creatures. And that concept of giving to

00:54:36.240 | others, even if you're the least consumer, is something that builds social cohesion in the

00:54:42.000 | group. So as you get to an adult level, either participate, and when you participate, participate

00:54:47.760 | in the way that I've described, or don't participate. And then finally, if the money

00:54:53.360 | is uncomfortable to you, don't walk away and isolate yourself because you don't have the money.

00:55:00.480 | Rather, look for creative ways to connect with other people in a way that solves those

00:55:08.000 | desires, solves those needs and those desires that we have for connection. So if you can't afford to

00:55:14.000 | go out to dinner, then don't go out to dinner. But be diligent about inviting people into your

00:55:22.080 | home or meeting up with people at the local park and arranging a picnic in the local park.

00:55:26.400 | Be diligent about these things so that you can still build those relationships.

00:55:32.960 | A couple of final stories, just to indicate to you what I'm talking about. Because on the whole,

00:55:40.480 | I really want to encourage you to be more social. All of the psychological data that we have

00:55:48.080 | collected across most of our societies indicates that loneliness is at an all-time high.

00:55:54.080 | Many, many people are experiencing lots more loneliness. And this is one of those problems

00:56:02.400 | that is very solvable. And we can do it. And I think we should solve the problems that we can

00:56:09.840 | take, and loneliness is one of them. There are many reasons for loneliness. The fracturing of

00:56:16.800 | family relationships, splintering of societies, changes of lifestyle, social isolation due to

00:56:24.240 | fake connectedness. "Hey, I saw your Instagram photos. That's all the same as seeing you in

00:56:28.960 | person." But we can fix loneliness with a little bit of effort. And so that's what I want to inspire

00:56:34.480 | you to do. And I don't want money to stand in your way. So I just want to close with a couple of

00:56:38.880 | stories that come from my experience. First of all, just a brief story to people. In 2018, my

00:56:51.680 | family and I – to Christian people especially – in 2018, my family and I went RVing across

00:56:56.960 | the United States. And we – on that trip, we were visiting with some friends in some places,

00:57:07.920 | but much more the trip, we were just by ourselves. And I got very lonely in that experience just

00:57:14.720 | because I'm used and accustomed to more social interaction. And so one of the things that we

00:57:19.600 | would do while we travel is we would go each Sunday to a different church meeting. And I resolved not

00:57:26.480 | to follow my personal biases on doctrinal or distinctives or anything like that. What I did

00:57:36.000 | is I pulled out my phone, popped open a Maps app, and I just typed "church" and whatever was the

00:57:41.200 | closest church, we went there. And I didn't filter it based upon my own personal convictions and

00:57:46.560 | beliefs. And so we went to a different church meeting every week. And on that – in that

00:57:53.680 | experience, what I discovered was that most U.S. American Christians are socially incompetent

00:58:03.920 | for the actual needs and desires that people have. We would – not all. There were some places where

00:58:12.160 | we were extremely warmly received. But what would happen is we were a fairly obvious family. We'd

00:58:16.480 | walk in on a Sunday morning, and always there was a wonderful team of people to say, "Hi, welcome."

00:58:20.960 | And we would – "What are you doing?" And I would tell them our story, and I would make it clear

00:58:25.120 | that we're traveling, we've been on the road for a long time, we're at this campground just down the

00:58:29.040 | road, and here we are. And what I found is that so many people welcomed us to a church meeting,

00:58:35.120 | but nothing happened beyond that. And I discovered that I didn't really care about the church

00:58:43.520 | meeting, because it was all the same, but what I really wanted was somebody to talk to. I really

00:58:48.240 | wanted someone to spend time with. And you go to a church meeting, and great, we can sing some songs,

00:58:53.520 | and some preacher will preach a sermon, and hey, it's wonderful, it's fine, no problem.

00:58:58.240 | But then at the end of it, everyone waved to each other and walk out, and nobody would engage with

00:59:01.760 | us. And I understand. Nobody would invite us to lunch, nobody would do anything. And I understand

00:59:07.360 | why that's the case. After all, our houses are a mess, we don't have any food in the refrigerator,

00:59:14.480 | it's uncomfortable to have hosts, to have people over, we don't want to show where we live,

00:59:20.080 | and all this stuff. But friend, this has to end. And so after months of this, I was desperate for

00:59:27.360 | fellowship, just desperate for relationship. And it was the first time in my life where I

00:59:31.680 | had ever experienced that loneliness, because I grew up in a strong community of people with strong

00:59:36.720 | family and social bonds. I was in the town where I lived. I never wanted for people to hang out

00:59:40.960 | with. And yet so many people live their lives in an experience like I lived on that trip that it

00:59:47.040 | really opened my eyes to what it was like to be lonely. And what's crazy is that I was never

00:59:54.240 | looking or expecting any kind of anything. I'm not expecting to be served steak and lobster,

01:00:02.160 | I just wanted to hang out. And so if anybody had said, "Hey, you know what? Our house is a mess,

01:00:08.000 | and we have no food. But you guys are in town, you got three children, and tell you what,

01:00:13.040 | there's a park down the road. Why don't you guys go to the park, let the children get some wiggles

01:00:17.200 | out. We'll run down to the grocery store, grab a loaf of bread and a bottle of peanut butter and

01:00:22.800 | jelly, and we'll meet you there at the park in 20 minutes." I would have said, "Absolutely,

01:00:28.160 | let's do it. This is fantastic." And it would have been amazing to connect with people. But

01:00:33.680 | in the U.S. American context, that only happened in a few places. And so I want to describe to you

01:00:40.320 | that the reason I want us to be more conscious of these social graces is not only to save money,

01:00:44.880 | but we need to master these things and make it comfortable for people to spend time with us

01:00:49.520 | because people are lonely and we need to do that. So for any, you know, Christians in the audience,

01:00:56.320 | I beg you, it's much more important what you do after church than what you do in the church

01:01:01.680 | meeting itself. And we have to change this culture of weirdness around money and isolation in order

01:01:08.960 | to engage with people. And so I made a vow that I will never see a stranger in a church meeting

01:01:14.800 | again and not invite them to lunch just because of how meaningful it was to me. And for the most

01:01:19.440 | part, as far as I know, I have kept that vow. Now, there's been one or two times where I had

01:01:24.000 | to get the family home and I consciously didn't notice the stranger that I saw in the peripheral

01:01:28.960 | vision. It's not a perfect, I haven't done it perfectly, but it's something that we really

01:01:33.680 | need to do. We really need to engage with people and inviting people out is a really important

01:01:39.120 | thing that we can do. And it really engages with people. The second aspect of loneliness,

01:01:44.320 | and to be clear, I'm telling these stories because I can and I've experienced them. I'm not asking

01:01:48.800 | for pity in any way, shape, or form. I'm trying to explain just some stories that I've experienced

01:01:54.320 | in a way that will help you. The second thing that has happened is that when you have children,

01:01:59.600 | and especially when you have more than about two children, you wind up being extremely socially

01:02:07.360 | isolated as a family because most people don't know how to deal with children. And this has not

01:02:15.680 | always been that way, but it is something that now exists. And we need to work on it as a culture

01:02:23.360 | if we're going to properly replace ourselves, naive, and possibly expand our civilization,

01:02:29.440 | which is one thing that's really important. I never realized this when I was growing up. I was

01:02:35.840 | the youngest of seven children, and I never realized when I was growing up how few invitations

01:02:41.360 | we received. Today, I look at it and it's blindingly obvious that our home was open every

01:02:47.600 | single week. My parents would have an open night at least every week, and there was usually another,

01:02:52.240 | somebody else at our home for dinner every week. And that was because we had a lot of children,

01:02:58.320 | and so we could host. And we really very rarely got invitations to other people's houses.

01:03:05.600 | What's been interesting is that my own family has grown, the same thing has happened. And I

01:03:09.920 | understand it. If you have one child, you don't even have enough chairs in your home for us.

01:03:17.520 | And I get it. And nobody is, I don't judge anybody, no one is being critical. But one of the

01:03:22.000 | things that we can do is we can work on solving some of this social isolation that we experience

01:03:28.400 | by implementing some of these techniques that I have described. And it makes a big difference.

01:03:35.360 | That's why we don't always just have to go to a restaurant and pay money at the restaurant.

01:03:39.760 | There are other ways, and we need to embrace those things. Today, I only have five children.

01:03:45.920 | And while my children are young, they're fairly well-mannered. I work really hard on teaching

01:03:50.000 | them to sit at a table. We try not to destroy stuff, and there's exceptions, but we work really

01:03:54.080 | hard on that stuff. But the social isolation that happens is pretty intense. The first change that

01:04:01.760 | happens is once you, so when you're single, you go out with all your single friends, and that's

01:04:07.600 | totally normal. Once you're married, you go out with your single, and you're married, and you're

01:04:10.880 | coupled friends, and that's okay. Once you have children, however, then the schedule changes.

01:04:16.960 | And so just simply because you can't go out to dinner at eight o'clock on Friday night,

01:04:21.040 | your invitations start to decrease. And so you start hanging out with other families with

01:04:26.400 | children. But that's really hard. It's hard, I'm sure, for single people who wish to still have

01:04:31.840 | their friends that are now on children's schedules, but it's also hard on married people's

01:04:38.160 | social lives. And right now, all across the United States, virtually all of my friends who have

01:04:45.040 | children, they find it very challenging to engage in social relationships because of the way that

01:04:53.280 | children are excluded from our society. And most of the things that we do are pretty uncomfortable

01:05:00.320 | for children. They're not really welcomed. They're, I'm not complaining, it sounds too

01:05:06.560 | complainy pants. That's not my goal. My point is to say that most people are pretty socially

01:05:10.720 | isolated. And it's very challenging for parents with two or three children to call a babysitter

01:05:18.400 | and go out to dinner with you. It's challenging. Not impossible, but it's challenging. And then

01:05:24.160 | because they're in an intense phase financially with lots of bills, and braces, and speech therapy,

01:05:30.480 | and private education, all the other things, that their budgets get squeezed. And so going out to

01:05:35.840 | dinner is challenging. So what can you do? Well, if you want to support people to have children,

01:05:42.960 | and you have money, then use your money to facilitate it. So first of all, you could be

01:05:48.880 | one who invites other people out and makes it clear and recognize that if this dad and mom over

01:05:56.320 | here have three children, that anytime they are going to go out to eat, they're going to go out

01:06:03.440 | to eat and they have to pay for five meals. For you, however, who is, say, a middle-aged or older

01:06:10.800 | couple of two, you can easily pick up those five meals, but for them it's hard. So if necessary,

01:06:16.800 | just downgrade the class of restaurant you go to. Go to Olive Garden or wherever you think is kind

01:06:22.160 | of a low-class place and downgrade it. Or just throw them a, find out what would be really fun

01:06:28.400 | for them. And so you be the one to cater the picnic in the park and recognize that it may be totally

01:06:35.600 | normal for you to get together with your friends, but your friends that are parents, it's not normal

01:06:40.880 | for them. And as they have more children, they become more and more socially isolated.

01:06:47.680 | I'm not intending to, yeah, I don't think any, this is not, in the last couple of years,

01:06:55.680 | I can count on a couple of fingers the number of dinner invitations that my family gets.

01:07:03.200 | I'm not asking for sympathy. I'm not complaining. I understand it. It's totally understandable. And

01:07:07.920 | I make up for it. I invite people over to my house and that just, that's how I handle it.

01:07:12.160 | But just recognize that your friends with children, they don't get invited over. And so if you do,

01:07:18.640 | it will make an enormous difference for them and they will love it because even though they have

01:07:22.960 | children, they're starving for adult conversations and you can facilitate that. That's something that

01:07:28.320 | you can do. And if we want to grow our society, we need to encourage and help parents. Parenting

01:07:34.480 | is something that takes a village in a very real sense. And you and I can be part of that village.

01:07:39.840 | We can help others in a very real and practical way. When we do this, we don't have to give

01:07:47.120 | anything up. Just by way of example, recently this summer, or I guess it was last sometime,

01:07:54.240 | a few months ago, my wife and I and our children, we were visiting some friends in France and these

01:08:00.560 | particular friends have, I think, seven children. And so it's, what's totally normal is we have

01:08:07.280 | five, they have seven. It's totally normal and understandable where that we're not going to go

01:08:12.560 | to a expensive restaurant and try to sit everyone down and line them all up and order an entree for

01:08:18.160 | each one of us. So what's neat about it though is you can take a fifth of the money and provide a

01:08:25.040 | five times greater experience for everyone by planning a really great picnic. And so that's

01:08:30.640 | what we did is we went out for a really great picnic on the mountainside and we had all kinds

01:08:35.280 | of charcuterie, all kinds of cheeses, all kinds of fancy breads, wine, all the stuff. And we had a

01:08:41.120 | much more memorable experience. And the pictures that, my wife makes basically yearbooks for our

01:08:50.320 | children, and the pictures that are in the yearbooks for the children from that experience

01:08:56.000 | of the picnic out on the mountainside, those are the ones that are vivid. Those are the ones that

01:09:01.280 | are real, not just the ones in, "Hey, it's another restaurant with a tablecloth," because of the full

01:09:06.720 | orbed experience. And this is something that we can do so many times when we apply it,

01:09:11.520 | is we can get better experiences that are more memorable in our minds and include a good

01:09:18.400 | expenditure of money on relationships and on experiences. And the closing charge I want to make

01:09:24.800 | is, to repeat, one of the best things you can do is spend your money on buying friendships.

01:09:33.520 | There's this very strange parable in the New Testament that Jesus relates. It's very strange

01:09:40.960 | because the application is very hard to understand. But paraphrasing it loosely,

01:09:47.440 | there's a steward that is taking care of the king, and the steward is an unfaithful steward;

01:09:54.080 | he's not doing his job properly for the king. And so, he realizes, "You know what? My stewardship,"

01:09:59.280 | meaning my job, my position, "is pretty quickly going to end. This king is going to punish me

01:10:03.200 | because I'm not doing a great job." So, he calls in all of the people that owe the king money,

01:10:07.760 | and he says, "Quick, listen, mark down your debts. You owe the king 10 units of money. Well,

01:10:13.120 | let's mark that down to two." And he starts canceling all these debts. So, the king finds

01:10:18.000 | out about it, and he says, "Well, you may not be a great steward, but you're very shrewd,

01:10:23.440 | and I respect that. After all," you know, what does the verse say? Something like,

01:10:28.720 | "If you use your unrighteous mammon," meaning money, "to buy friends for yourself on earth."

01:10:36.080 | And to me, that, while again, I can't elucidate all of the meanings of the parables, I just think

01:10:44.960 | that's one of the best mindsets to have around money. Use your unrighteous mammon, use the money

01:10:49.840 | that you have, and use it to buy friends for yourself on earth. And he is no fool who spends

01:10:55.520 | his money and is surrounded by friends in an appropriate way. That's a good use of money.

01:11:01.440 | So, if you can be one, like my friend and mentor was for me for so many years, who is taking a

01:11:08.240 | young high school student and a young college student on experiences that I never would have

01:11:14.560 | been able to afford, those experiences are so valuable for me today. They were different from

01:11:19.760 | the experiences I could have in other parts of my life, and this is something that we need to

01:11:24.160 | encourage for young people. It's a diversity of experience. Be that guy, be that gal who

01:11:31.280 | takes your nieces and your nephews and your friends and acquaintances on different experiences.

01:11:37.920 | Help their parents in that way by showing them the world or showing them a side of things that

01:11:42.560 | they wouldn't otherwise experience. Be that person who takes your money and invites the family out

01:11:48.000 | to dinner. And yes, you may have to save for a couple months to be able to feed all their children

01:11:53.600 | at the fancy restaurant, but they're going to be very grateful, and they're going to really

01:11:58.240 | appreciate that, and that's a really good use of money. Be that person who opens your home up to

01:12:04.160 | other people so that you can consistently entertain others and consistently help to facilitate human

01:12:11.360 | relationships. At its core, this is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and we have to

01:12:18.720 | work on it. We have to do better, and we can use our money to solve a significant amount of the

01:12:23.200 | social isolation. What's amazing is once you spend a little bit of money, spend a little bit of time

01:12:28.480 | with people, that's when the real problems come out, and that's when the real relationship starts.

01:12:33.360 | That's when you can really get at the heart of the matter and really understand what's going on in

01:12:39.600 | someone's life, and quite literally, you can save a life. Somebody in your network right now is

01:12:47.360 | thinking about committing suicide right now, and he's sitting there asking himself, "Does anybody

01:12:53.360 | even care?" and you can be the one who does it. I haven't touched on – just a quick brief

01:13:01.200 | suggestion in passing – I haven't touched on cocktail parties, things like that. There's a

01:13:06.880 | really great book that an acquaintance of mine named Nick Gray wrote recently that I have read,

01:13:13.120 | and I really like it. It's called The Two-Hour Cocktail Party, How to Build Big Relationships

01:13:18.240 | with Small Gatherings. This is on my required reading list for my children because while we

01:13:24.480 | certainly host a lot, and I think that my children will absorb that, I think that one of the best

01:13:29.920 | things that you can do when you are young, single, or just in that scenario is learn how to throw a

01:13:36.480 | great cocktail party. This is something that was very common in many cultures in the United States

01:13:42.800 | in times past, is still common to some degree today, but is not nearly as common as it once was.

01:13:48.960 | And so this book by Nick Gray, again, is called The Two-Hour Cocktail Party, How to Build Big

01:13:54.640 | Relationships with Small Gatherings. If you will take half of your dining out budget that you spend

01:14:01.200 | on restaurants and invest it instead into hosting regular cocktail parties in your home, I think you

01:14:08.800 | will get a 10x return on the money spent. It's a really, really great way for you to connect with

01:14:15.360 | people. And so I recommend that book to you. It's wonderful. I've learned a lot about building

01:14:21.840 | relationships, making friends, using money and social occasions to do that, even in moving to

01:14:28.000 | a new city. But if I move to a new city, then today, the first thing I'm going to do is start

01:14:35.120 | hosting a regular cocktail party, probably monthly, but even if it's more occasional than that,

01:14:41.920 | it's a phenomenal way for you to build relationships and a really good use of money.

01:14:46.640 | No matter where you are, people are doing it. And I want to reaffirm, this is so important,

01:14:51.840 | which is why I'm emphasizing it three times over. Nobody cares how fancy your house is.

01:14:59.200 | Nobody cares how expensive your rent is. What people care about is relationship. So if you're

01:15:05.920 | someone who, like me, suffers from some kind of inferiority complex that you don't have a $10,000

01:15:15.440 | couch, get rid of that idea and start having people over with your side of the road couch,

01:15:24.960 | because all your friends are desperate for somebody to start creating opportunities for

01:15:30.320 | them. And so having a cocktail party is a really, really great way to approach it.

01:15:35.600 | There are other books that I have appreciated in terms of how to host a great party. I think that

01:15:41.520 | as you host cocktail parties using the framework that Nick Gray teaches in his book,

01:15:47.440 | I think you can move on to dinner parties in a really beautiful way. And I think that

01:15:52.160 | having dinner parties is a phenomenal way to spend your money. As I described, even if you need to

01:15:58.880 | bring in caterers or outside chefs, it's so easy in the United States with all the to-go food and

01:16:03.600 | all the catering food that we have. You don't even need a private chef. But go ahead and use your

01:16:08.160 | home regularly for those kinds of events. People really appreciate it. And learn how to have a

01:16:13.120 | multi-phased dinner party, because this mixing and mingling of people is a really phenomenal way to

01:16:21.360 | improve your events. You should have pre-dinner cocktails, and you'll have some guests that come

01:16:26.320 | for pre-dinner cocktails and then leave. Then you'll have your dinner party, and then you'll

01:16:29.920 | have your after-dinner drinks, your after-dinner cigars, whatever it is, however you like to fit

01:16:34.560 | that into your evening's events. And have people come in and out, and your friends will love you

01:16:38.800 | for it. And if you want to build a wide network of relationships, then develop the skills of

01:16:43.440 | becoming a super connector, and your friends will really value you. I'm getting beyond my script

01:16:50.000 | here, as is probably obvious, but becoming a super connector and a facilitator of relationships is

01:16:57.760 | really important. It's a really important component of your own life on many levels. You want to be

01:17:03.840 | the guy that if you need a job, you pick up the phone, you make three phone calls,

01:17:07.920 | and you've got a job. That should be your goal and your ambition. But in order for that to work,

01:17:13.600 | as we can take from the great book by Harvey McKay, you need to dig your well before you're

01:17:17.600 | thirsty. You always dig your well before you're thirsty. And so you need to invest in relationships

01:17:22.560 | much long before you ever need them, in order to have a robust set of connections. And so

01:17:30.560 | start with the two-hour cocktail party and go from there. For anybody who is touched by what

01:17:37.360 | I said about American churches and American Christianity, I would urge you to read a book

01:17:42.560 | by Alexander Strauch, S-T-R-A-U-C-H, called The Hospitality Commands. This is a very theological...

01:17:49.600 | that was the wrong word. This is a very Christian book, and it doesn't give any specifics like how

01:17:54.400 | to host a cocktail party, but it is a very excellent book, and it shows why Christians

01:18:01.040 | should be the most hospitable people out there. And it brings me great shame to know that this

01:18:06.640 | is not the case right now, but we can change it. It just begins with us. So check out the book by

01:18:12.800 | Alexander Strauch called The Hospitality Commands, and I promise you that that's what we need more of.

01:18:18.960 | We need much more of that in our culture. And the final comment I want to make is simply remember

01:18:25.920 | the podcast episode that I did on why purchasing a second home may be your best investment.

01:18:32.480 | This week I've been with my family in Florida, and I'm just reminded at the moment my family,

01:18:38.720 | my large extended family, we don't have a great party house at the moment. And I don't see an

01:18:44.720 | alternative pathway, but I recognize the need for it. What I mean is that I don't think that

01:18:49.920 | my parents should have the party house right now, but I'm reminded that it would be really great if

01:18:54.320 | they did. So if you are wealthier, then do as I strongly encouraged both in this episode and

01:19:01.040 | also in that previous episode where I talked about it. Spend your money to buy a really great house.

01:19:07.280 | And what you're looking for is you're looking for a house that is conducive to interaction and is

01:19:12.160 | conducive to activities. What you'll find is that, of course, if you are an adult, then you're

01:19:18.080 | perfectly happy to sit down and spend all your time just sitting and talking around a table.

01:19:22.720 | Our children look at us and they're mystified by the way that we live our lives. But if you

01:19:28.960 | have children or teenagers, then choose a house that's going to be conducive to those activities.

01:19:33.520 | Choose a house that has an appropriate venue for entertaining. Choose a house that has

01:19:37.520 | appropriate activities. Look for a lake house with a boat and set of skis and wakeboards,

01:19:43.120 | a couple of jet skis, some canoes, whatever it is. Look for a house that has a big field for

01:19:48.160 | sports activities and a volleyball game and physical things. Look for a beach house where

01:19:52.960 | you've got various beach activities and you can get out the surfboards or the kite boards or

01:19:57.200 | whatever is appropriate for where you are. Look for a house with a great game room or build a

01:20:01.760 | house with a great game room and lots of activities. Spend the money on this stuff and then fill your

01:20:06.480 | house up with love. Fill your house up with people. And this is a really good use of your money.

01:20:12.000 | If you don't have the house, then just develop the equipment for it. And you can learn how to

01:20:18.800 | cook in the local park. You can host, be a great host, even if you don't have the infrastructure

01:20:24.720 | for this. I've proven it. Years ago, my wife and I sold our house, moved into a small apartment.

01:20:30.480 | I realized we're going to have a harder time entertaining. And so I went and I bought one of

01:20:35.280 | the Camp Chef three-burner stoves, got a nice carrying bag for it. I bought a Camp Chef griddle,

01:20:40.160 | 36-inch griddle that goes in that, super portable, but great griddle. I invested in just kind of a

01:20:45.040 | simple cooking infrastructure, a couple of totes with cooking stuff. And I hosted parties at the

01:20:49.840 | local park where I fed 50 to 100 people without too much difficulty. And that really works as

01:20:55.040 | well. There is something that you can do. There is some way that you can spend money to buy friends

01:21:00.000 | for yourself here on earth. And as your official financial advisor, I hereby endorse that practice

01:21:06.000 | very highly. Anything you can do to spend money on people is going to be a great use of your money.

01:21:12.160 | Thank you for listening. I'll be back with you very soon.

2024-04-02_How_to_Navigate_the_Social_Financial_Complexities_of_Dining_Out