ATHLLC6157337334

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.560 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:05.560 | a show about upgrading your life, money and travel.

00:00:08.760 | I cannot believe I'm saying this,

00:00:10.320 | but welcome to episode 100.

00:00:12.760 | It seems so surreal that I've come this far with the podcast

00:00:15.840 | but it really wouldn't be possible without your support.

00:00:18.680 | So thank you so much for listening

00:00:20.800 | and supporting me on this journey.

00:00:22.680 | Okay, as for this week's episode,

00:00:24.520 | I wanted to try something a bit different.

00:00:26.480 | And the idea came up as I was talking

00:00:28.560 | to my good friend Brad Barrett,

00:00:29.960 | who hosts the Choose Fi podcast,

00:00:32.200 | and was also my guest for episode two

00:00:34.560 | on financial independence.

00:00:36.320 | We started having a conversation

00:00:37.960 | about me making it to episode 100,

00:00:40.200 | him taking his show over on his own

00:00:42.520 | and all the things we've learned the past few months

00:00:45.040 | and how we're applying them to our lives this year.

00:00:47.600 | Things like focusing on what matters the most,

00:00:50.120 | optimizing our life towards net fulfillment,

00:00:52.580 | outsourcing tasks and a lot more.

00:00:55.100 | But instead of having that whole conversation,

00:00:57.120 | we paused and decided to record it

00:00:59.360 | and share it with you today.

00:01:01.160 | It'll also be in the Choose Fi podcast feed next week.

00:01:04.360 | So while you might not need to listen to it twice,

00:01:06.520 | you should definitely check out his show.

00:01:08.740 | It is so fantastic and it touches on every aspect

00:01:12.000 | of financial independence.

00:01:13.700 | Okay, enough of the intro.

00:01:15.200 | Let's get into the episode right after this.

00:01:17.760 | (upbeat music)

00:01:19.440 | Brad, I am so excited we're doing this.

00:01:21.960 | - Yeah, Chris, this should be fun.

00:01:23.680 | We always have a lot of interesting conversations offline.

00:01:26.560 | So this should be a fun meandering little chat here.

00:01:29.400 | - And I don't know if you knew this.

00:01:30.280 | So this is my episode 100, but I went back and looked

00:01:33.720 | and I know you weren't my episode one,

00:01:36.000 | but you're episode two on all the hacks.

00:01:38.400 | And we actually recorded that first.

00:01:40.400 | So my very first hit record on a podcast was with you.

00:01:44.000 | So I'm very excited and thankful for you doing that.

00:01:46.720 | And it's fun to be celebrating 100 with you.

00:01:49.900 | - Oh, that's so cool.

00:01:50.840 | Well, I am honored that I was the first guest

00:01:52.920 | and back for 100 here.

00:01:54.920 | Yeah, it's wild.

00:01:55.760 | I can't believe you've been doing it that long.

00:01:57.600 | 100 episodes.

00:01:58.640 | - I love how Brad is saying this

00:01:59.880 | because if you haven't listened to "Choose If I", his show,

00:02:03.240 | Brad's probably done 600 episodes at this point.

00:02:05.400 | I feel like I'm way, way, way behind.

00:02:07.640 | But when I started, I wasn't sure

00:02:09.360 | if it was gonna be 10 episodes

00:02:10.640 | and it just wasn't gonna be a good fit.

00:02:11.980 | So the idea that I've gone from side project

00:02:15.240 | to full-time job on podcasting, I'm lucky to do that.

00:02:18.440 | I'm so thankful for everyone listening

00:02:20.140 | that has enabled me to do that.

00:02:22.040 | And I'm just excited for the next 100.

00:02:24.240 | - Yeah, I hear you.

00:02:25.560 | What's wild about podcasting

00:02:26.960 | is there's no downside essentially to trying it.

00:02:29.520 | So yeah, we're coming up right on 600,

00:02:31.320 | but when we started, it was just me and Jonathan

00:02:34.880 | sitting in a random spare office in Jonathan's house

00:02:38.960 | in Richmond, Virginia, talking into two microphones.

00:02:42.160 | It cost us essentially nothing to start.

00:02:44.400 | And we figured, what the hell?

00:02:45.720 | Let's experiment with this.

00:02:46.760 | And if it goes nowhere, no harm, no foul in essence, right?

00:02:50.040 | Like nobody's ever gonna hear it other than our parents.

00:02:52.640 | And if it goes somewhere,

00:02:54.720 | then who knows what kind of impact it could have.

00:02:56.880 | It's pretty wild.

00:02:57.840 | Certainly podcasting is something

00:02:59.440 | that I never would have guessed in a million years

00:03:01.360 | would transform my life.

00:03:02.480 | I was a corporate accountant.

00:03:04.000 | I did corporate state tax returns,

00:03:06.040 | which is as horrible and mind-numbing as you can imagine.

00:03:09.220 | And now I'm a financial independence podcaster

00:03:12.240 | with 60 million downloads.

00:03:14.320 | It's crazy.

00:03:15.160 | And then to see your life transformed so dramatically

00:03:18.560 | since the first time I met you,

00:03:20.440 | which I guess was through

00:03:21.600 | the "Playing With Fire" documentary, right?

00:03:23.680 | - Yeah, I went to the FIRE,

00:03:25.320 | well, I guess it's not technically a FIRE conference,

00:03:27.360 | but FinCon seems like it's pretty rooted

00:03:29.560 | in the financial independence movement for my startup.

00:03:31.800 | 'Cause I was like, "Oh, we're building software

00:03:33.080 | "for financial planners and people

00:03:35.040 | "who wanna be better with finances.

00:03:36.220 | "I should go to this conference."

00:03:37.440 | We met and it's been a great friendship.

00:03:39.440 | And really kind of like how this episode came to be

00:03:42.080 | was we were just talking about things in life

00:03:44.620 | and catching up and we're like, "We should record this."

00:03:47.120 | Like people would probably wanna hear

00:03:49.120 | what we're thinking about, how last year went,

00:03:51.200 | what we're planning to do next year,

00:03:53.040 | what's going on with the FIRE movement,

00:03:54.800 | all the things, health and data breaches, everything.

00:03:58.300 | So I'm excited to just jump in

00:04:00.560 | and go through what we go through.

00:04:01.640 | And if this does well, people like it,

00:04:03.560 | obviously reach out to Brad and I, let us know,

00:04:05.760 | and we can make it a regular thing.

00:04:07.560 | - Yeah, I would love to do this a couple of times a year

00:04:10.640 | and that's for damn sure.

00:04:11.480 | So yeah, let's kick it off.

00:04:13.240 | The biggest thing in your world,

00:04:16.000 | I don't wanna put words in your mouth,

00:04:17.240 | but you're full-time now on this podcast

00:04:19.800 | and you left Wealthfront fairly recently, right?

00:04:23.760 | It's not an easy decision no matter where you are in life.

00:04:26.520 | I know obviously like you have a degree

00:04:29.520 | of financial security that a lot of people don't necessarily

00:04:33.000 | when they're making job transitions,

00:04:35.160 | but nevertheless, that's not an easy step.

00:04:38.760 | And I'm curious, like how you thought through it.

00:04:41.160 | - For me, I am always a fan of the side hustle

00:04:45.360 | to full-time hustle path.

00:04:46.880 | I started the podcast as a thing on the side.

00:04:49.640 | I kind of experimented with working with partners

00:04:52.600 | and then got it to a point where it was, I guess,

00:04:55.640 | big enough, financially stable enough

00:04:58.320 | that it was worth the risk.

00:05:00.040 | Is it financially stable enough

00:05:01.120 | that I would make as much money

00:05:02.400 | as if I had a corporate job right now?

00:05:03.920 | Probably not.

00:05:04.760 | But do I see a path there and can I make it work?

00:05:07.360 | Yes.

00:05:08.200 | And so that was really all I needed.

00:05:10.600 | I still love Wealthfront, the product.

00:05:12.520 | I still love the team.

00:05:13.720 | In fact, the one thing that is sad

00:05:16.000 | about being a full-time creator is it's kind of lonely.

00:05:18.200 | You don't have that kind of water cooler team experience

00:05:21.440 | that you do at a company.

00:05:22.320 | And so I do miss that.

00:05:23.280 | I still have a text thread

00:05:24.840 | with all of the Wealthfront people that I was close with.

00:05:26.840 | We're talking almost every day,

00:05:28.720 | but I felt like it was an opportunity

00:05:31.560 | that if a friend asked me if they should take on,

00:05:33.680 | I was like, "Yes, you should."

00:05:35.120 | So I needed to do it myself.

00:05:36.760 | I needed to kind of take my own advice.

00:05:38.200 | And you, you had a co-host for a long time

00:05:40.560 | and now you're kind of running the show.

00:05:43.520 | Quite literally.

00:05:45.800 | Quite literally running the show.

00:05:47.760 | Yeah, it's hard to believe.

00:05:48.960 | Yeah, so Jonathan,

00:05:50.640 | I guess it was probably August of last year.

00:05:53.200 | Yeah, we're coming five months and change.

00:05:54.920 | He came to me and said,

00:05:56.080 | "I think I'm gonna step back from the podcast."

00:05:58.000 | And it was definitely a surprise.

00:06:00.560 | And to everybody out there who,

00:06:02.240 | 'cause I got a ton of emails.

00:06:03.680 | I'm like, "Oh, what's going on?

00:06:04.840 | "Is everything okay?"

00:06:06.000 | Everything's great.

00:06:06.920 | Jonathan and I are still great friends.

00:06:08.640 | In fact, I just came from a workout with him at the gym.

00:06:11.520 | We're working out together four days a week now

00:06:13.480 | and he's doing stuff behind the scenes for Choose a Vice.

00:06:15.840 | So we're still business partners.

00:06:17.080 | Everything's great.

00:06:17.920 | He's gonna come back on the show every now and again.

00:06:19.920 | But yeah, man, it's been interesting.

00:06:21.600 | And you and I have talked a ton of times,

00:06:23.960 | talked shop actually, which is funny.

00:06:25.440 | Like though I've been a podcaster,

00:06:27.600 | I basically just have always showed up and recorded

00:06:30.480 | and that was it.

00:06:31.320 | And Jonathan kind of took care of everything.

00:06:32.880 | Yeah, when you're saying running the show,

00:06:34.200 | it's been a big change for me, honestly.

00:06:36.040 | And what I've always been good at in terms of the podcast

00:06:39.800 | was kind of like sitting back and just listening critically

00:06:43.680 | and asking questions.

00:06:45.280 | And I mean, frankly, like for me and my skillset,

00:06:48.320 | that was pretty easy.

00:06:49.160 | It wasn't a heavy lift.

00:06:50.120 | I just listened and asked her a couple of questions

00:06:52.200 | here and there, hopefully incisive, interesting questions.

00:06:54.640 | But damn, now I've got to do Jonathan's part and mine,

00:06:58.440 | which is Jonathan was always,

00:07:00.200 | hey, he was the engine behind the show.

00:07:02.320 | The reason why I'm going into this,

00:07:03.640 | I'm curious of like your process is,

00:07:05.840 | it is not just 2X the work for me.

00:07:08.440 | Now, like being the engine behind the show,

00:07:10.360 | the story arc, and then the questions,

00:07:13.120 | there's some like exponential factor,

00:07:15.560 | especially with my brain.

00:07:16.960 | Like when I get done with this, I'm fried, man.

00:07:19.560 | I mean, normally like on a interview,

00:07:21.920 | because you have to essentially bifurcate your brain of,

00:07:26.080 | okay, this side has to think about the story arc

00:07:29.680 | and moving it forward and making interesting and logical

00:07:32.280 | and coming to a conclusion.

00:07:33.920 | But then the other side has to think of questions

00:07:36.200 | that are interesting and, oh, what would I want to ask

00:07:39.240 | if I were the podcast listener?

00:07:41.440 | 'Cause that's how I think of myself.

00:07:43.240 | And man, it is exponentially more difficult,

00:07:46.200 | but so far, I think it's going pretty well.

00:07:48.760 | It's been 20 plus episodes now and so far so good.

00:07:51.520 | It's been a challenge.

00:07:52.360 | I'm not gonna lie.

00:07:53.200 | It's been a challenge, but it's been good.

00:07:54.680 | - I think people that are listening think,

00:07:56.000 | oh yeah, podcasting, it's so great.

00:07:57.320 | You just hop on, have a conversation,

00:07:58.640 | but there's a lot of work behind the scenes.

00:08:00.160 | I spend a lot of time just trying to plan out

00:08:02.560 | what is the topics.

00:08:03.560 | And somebody emailed me and said,

00:08:05.160 | hey, it'd be great if you could work

00:08:06.960 | with more sponsors I've never heard of.

00:08:09.480 | And you could interview people

00:08:10.440 | that have never been on other shows.

00:08:11.960 | And it's like, yes, but finding those people,

00:08:14.560 | finding those companies to work with,

00:08:16.200 | it's definitely a full-time job.

00:08:17.520 | I didn't want to start another startup

00:08:19.000 | 'cause I didn't want to have another 80 hour a week job.

00:08:21.240 | And my wife and I joke together.

00:08:22.960 | It's like, oh, you did start a startup.

00:08:24.440 | You just didn't call it a startup.

00:08:25.600 | So it's definitely demanding, but it's great.

00:08:28.360 | You get a lot of flexibility and people listening

00:08:30.800 | probably know that I've been experimenting a lot with,

00:08:33.360 | okay, well, what if I just do some solo episodes?

00:08:35.200 | What if I talk about a country?

00:08:37.000 | What if I do something different

00:08:38.800 | and don't necessarily stick to only the interview regime?

00:08:42.480 | I mean, this is an example of that.

00:08:43.840 | It's kind of an interview,

00:08:44.760 | but it's really more of conversation.

00:08:46.120 | So that's been fun.

00:08:47.800 | And then I've been trying to make sure

00:08:49.200 | that it's not my only thing.

00:08:50.560 | We could talk about podcasting forever,

00:08:52.160 | but the average person listening here is probably like,

00:08:54.320 | oh, I don't have a podcast.

00:08:55.400 | I appreciate the background.

00:08:56.760 | It's interesting, but we are able to use the topic

00:08:59.400 | of the people we talk to and the content we consume

00:09:02.120 | as kind of research for the show

00:09:03.640 | as ways to think about other things in life.

00:09:06.160 | That's also been a fun part of it,

00:09:07.880 | which is you do an episode with someone, talk about health,

00:09:09.840 | and now you got to go deep on your own health,

00:09:11.720 | and now that's a big project.

00:09:12.880 | I know that's one of the things

00:09:14.240 | we're both really thinking about this year.

00:09:16.240 | I thought maybe for this episode,

00:09:17.400 | it'd be fun to talk about some of the major things

00:09:20.680 | that have happened in the last month or two

00:09:22.640 | that have sparked missions or goals

00:09:25.120 | for what we want to do this coming year

00:09:26.840 | and talk about it openly.

00:09:27.920 | And hopefully people find that interesting.

00:09:29.480 | When I hear you talk about your side,

00:09:30.960 | I'm like, yes, please tell me taking notes,

00:09:32.920 | all that kind of good stuff.

00:09:34.600 | - Yeah, and certainly right back at you.

00:09:36.360 | I told you offline that a couple of your most recent episodes

00:09:39.440 | have really significantly impacted me.

00:09:41.320 | No joke.

00:09:42.160 | I have listened to the Bill Perkins episode.

00:09:44.840 | I think it came out in mid-December.

00:09:47.000 | And Dan Martell with "Buy Back Your Time."

00:09:49.680 | Listened to each of those twice already.

00:09:51.720 | It's fascinating.

00:09:52.880 | I consume a lot of podcasts,

00:09:55.160 | probably more than I should, frankly,

00:09:56.520 | but you never know when an idea is just gonna hit you.

00:10:00.000 | And if I'm honest with myself,

00:10:02.400 | the Bill Perkins "Die With Zero" concept

00:10:06.440 | would not have resonated with me two years ago,

00:10:09.160 | certainly five years ago.

00:10:10.760 | It would have fallen on deaf ears completely.

00:10:13.600 | I read his book, really good book, certainly,

00:10:15.960 | but it didn't impact me as much

00:10:18.080 | as hearing him on your podcast.

00:10:20.320 | And then I heard him on Peter Tia's "The Drive."

00:10:23.000 | And I think just the confluence of a couple things,

00:10:26.000 | so like that, and I had my buddy Dominic Cortuccio

00:10:29.720 | on our podcast on "Choose a Buy," episode 419,

00:10:33.440 | just a couple of weeks ago.

00:10:34.880 | And he was talking about your bold move for 2023.

00:10:39.200 | So his conceptual framework is,

00:10:41.200 | he comes up with like one bold move

00:10:44.120 | that kind of typifies that year.

00:10:46.640 | And he's been doing this now for,

00:10:48.600 | I think this is the ninth or 10th year.

00:10:51.000 | And it just sounded really cool

00:10:53.480 | to A, have like an operating principle behind a year,

00:10:58.160 | but also to be able to then look back

00:11:01.400 | on a decade of growth and fun and experience and say,

00:11:04.680 | "Oh, I was in that place when I did this bold move."

00:11:08.480 | And the confluence of those three things have just like,

00:11:12.360 | without sounding hyperbolic,

00:11:13.640 | just fried my brain in the best possible way.

00:11:15.960 | And I think for a while,

00:11:18.800 | and I'm probably a little like neurotic

00:11:21.520 | and get inside my head.

00:11:22.520 | I have like, you know, prone to anxiety and such.

00:11:25.200 | It was actually a little stressful, Chris.

00:11:27.240 | And when I spoke with Dominic,

00:11:29.720 | I just didn't have an answer.

00:11:31.560 | And then in hearing Perkins and Martel,

00:11:36.080 | like it crystallized to me that I just need to explore more.

00:11:41.080 | Like I need more fun in my life.

00:11:43.200 | What I actually hit on was my healthiest year ever.

00:11:46.960 | That's my kind of operating principle for 2023.

00:11:50.040 | And what that means in practical terms

00:11:52.160 | is actually like loosening the purse strings.

00:11:54.360 | I don't consider myself like a frugal

00:11:56.280 | or cheap person anymore.

00:11:57.680 | Not that frugal and cheap are exactly synonymous,

00:11:59.800 | but obviously, you know very well,

00:12:01.480 | the old school, fine mindset of watching every penny.

00:12:04.720 | I think both of us, frankly,

00:12:05.880 | have gotten a lot better with that.

00:12:07.560 | So I'll let you jump in now,

00:12:09.040 | because I know that last thing is very impactful for you

00:12:13.480 | and how your mindset has changed

00:12:15.360 | just since I've met you, honestly.

00:12:17.240 | - It's funny, when I first found

00:12:18.680 | the financial independence movement,

00:12:20.240 | I was like, "Oh, this is great.

00:12:21.080 | "This is how I've been living my life."

00:12:22.440 | Which was like save every dollar possible,

00:12:24.520 | find every hack there is

00:12:25.960 | to spend less on everything you wanna do,

00:12:28.400 | whether it's house hacking or travel hacking or anything,

00:12:31.280 | so that I could save as much as possible.

00:12:32.720 | My original goal was to do that

00:12:34.480 | because I hadn't found a career that I loved.

00:12:37.160 | And I was like, "I can't work a job I don't love."

00:12:39.000 | So there was a real reason behind it.

00:12:41.280 | But I feel like I went to an extreme

00:12:45.360 | that was very hard to get out of

00:12:47.160 | once I realized, "Oh, I actually do like what I do."

00:12:49.640 | And now it was very hard to do the most silly things.

00:12:53.680 | Like, "Oh, I'm at a restaurant

00:12:54.640 | "and I really want a miso soup."

00:12:56.560 | But miso soup's usually $3 and this place it's $6.

00:13:00.200 | And I'm like, "Ah, that just seems egregious.

00:13:02.880 | "I shouldn't get this miso."

00:13:03.960 | It's like, "All I want is a miso soup."

00:13:06.080 | And we're talking about $3.

00:13:07.840 | And I would get stressed out about it

00:13:09.600 | to the point that I wouldn't get the miso soup.

00:13:11.560 | And my wife had ended up acting similarly.

00:13:13.840 | So we would both be sitting there like,

00:13:14.940 | "All we want is a miso soup,

00:13:15.860 | "but for $6 between the two of us, we can't do it."

00:13:18.080 | But we could if it was $3.

00:13:19.360 | It got to be a little crazy.

00:13:21.040 | And I hadn't been able to articulate

00:13:24.240 | and process those feelings.

00:13:26.040 | It's like something I'd been thinking about.

00:13:27.880 | And I remember going to dinners where someone's like,

00:13:30.400 | "We'll buy a really expensive bottle of wine

00:13:31.920 | "if you just put in $20."

00:13:33.880 | And I'm like, "Why would I put in $20?

00:13:35.040 | "I'm only getting a glass

00:13:35.980 | "and there's a glass on the menu for $12."

00:13:37.640 | And they're like, "Come on, just spend eight more dollars."

00:13:39.720 | Everyone's just trying to get me

00:13:41.040 | to spend a little bit more.

00:13:42.800 | And when I sat down with Bill Perkins and we talked,

00:13:46.060 | I was like, "What is all of this money for?"

00:13:49.180 | That was one big component.

00:13:50.600 | And then the other big component

00:13:51.960 | that I probably haven't talked a lot about

00:13:54.280 | is that sometimes spending your money is not a net negative.

00:13:59.280 | So for me, when I think about the podcast,

00:14:02.040 | I'm like, "Oh, okay."

00:14:03.240 | I've never been in a circumstance

00:14:04.640 | where the business you work at or run,

00:14:07.040 | the expenses you create for it directly affect your income.

00:14:11.440 | When you work at a company,

00:14:12.640 | if you spend a little bit more of the company's money,

00:14:15.080 | yes, there's an indirect trickle-down effect

00:14:17.480 | of the company being less profitable and might affect you.

00:14:20.180 | But when you're owning your own business,

00:14:21.680 | if you spend all of the money the business makes,

00:14:23.820 | you don't have a salary.

00:14:24.980 | Like, it's very different.

00:14:26.220 | So as I think about the year ahead,

00:14:28.940 | there are opportunities to build cool products

00:14:31.700 | that everyone listening right now might benefit from

00:14:34.860 | to save money on travel, to get cool deals.

00:14:36.940 | Like, I have all these ideas,

00:14:38.700 | but to go spend the time and energy to do that,

00:14:40.940 | I either need to hire people or invest more time

00:14:43.380 | or get an assistant or something.

00:14:46.060 | And I struggle with that,

00:14:48.360 | even though I know that it's a good investment.

00:14:50.620 | It's like, I'm gonna invest money in my own business.

00:14:53.080 | So I'm trying to get better at it.

00:14:54.800 | I don't have a bold move for the year,

00:14:56.400 | but if I did, it would be like value my time

00:14:59.480 | or invest in myself.

00:15:01.360 | Maybe it's invest in myself, but I don't know.

00:15:03.880 | I feel like that might be too broad

00:15:05.280 | 'cause you'd be like, "Well, is it your health?

00:15:06.560 | Is it your time?"

00:15:07.400 | And then you can just, it's hard.

00:15:08.800 | And I think if there's anything I learned

00:15:10.160 | from running companies, you can't have a bunch of goals.

00:15:12.440 | You need like a single theme that everything falls under.

00:15:15.560 | Otherwise, you just have this endless to-do list

00:15:17.540 | and you don't know how to prioritize.

00:15:19.460 | - Yeah, I hear you.

00:15:21.100 | And like you said, "Oh, I could build out this thing

00:15:24.220 | to help people with travel rewards

00:15:25.800 | and it may be a good investment."

00:15:27.540 | But I think one of the operating principles

00:15:29.500 | that I operate under is actually this question

00:15:31.740 | that I ask myself is, what are you optimizing for?

00:15:34.800 | And I think it's just really impactful

00:15:37.240 | just to ask yourself that.

00:15:38.460 | And like literally ask myself that quite often.

00:15:40.420 | Like, what in this situation are you optimizing for?

00:15:43.660 | From my daughter and what high school she's gonna go to

00:15:48.660 | is, okay, what are you optimizing for?

00:15:51.680 | Are you optimizing for signaling of,

00:15:53.920 | "Look how smart my kid is."

00:15:55.160 | Are you looking for,

00:15:56.280 | "Hey, this is a nice neighborhood school

00:15:58.120 | where she could be on the marching band

00:16:00.460 | and we don't have to drive her halfway across the county."

00:16:02.760 | Like, what are you actually optimizing for?

00:16:04.600 | Are you optimizing for elite college entrants?

00:16:07.480 | So that's something that's been rolling around in my head.

00:16:09.880 | And the question to ask yourself is like,

00:16:11.240 | really, what are you optimizing for?

00:16:14.160 | What would growth mean to you?

00:16:15.800 | Like in your case,

00:16:16.720 | and I'm not necessarily looking for an answer,

00:16:18.560 | it's mostly rhetorical, but is it money?

00:16:21.280 | Is it impact?

00:16:22.860 | Is it building something new the world hasn't seen

00:16:25.800 | that like only Chris Hutchins

00:16:27.680 | and his inimitable style with hacks can put together?

00:16:31.240 | Like, is it some alchemy of all three of those things

00:16:34.640 | or something that I didn't listen?

00:16:35.960 | I think it's really important to ask that from the outset

00:16:39.400 | because you might get down a road where,

00:16:42.140 | "Hey, this is a good investment.

00:16:43.440 | This is gonna have impact.

00:16:45.280 | But damn, if it isn't gonna take up 40 hours a week

00:16:48.920 | out of my 168, is that worth it?"

00:16:52.400 | - And I like to sleep.

00:16:53.240 | So 168 just isn't a real number in my mind.

00:16:55.680 | But no, it's a really valuable exercise.

00:16:59.520 | I had Sahil Bloom on the podcast a week ago,

00:17:02.640 | and we just talked about doing that personal annual review.

00:17:05.200 | And he has like, here are seven questions to ask yourself

00:17:07.760 | to reflect on the year past,

00:17:09.280 | which I think is just a really valuable exercise

00:17:12.240 | to try to figure out, not necessarily just to reflect,

00:17:15.040 | but things like what created energy last year

00:17:17.700 | or what drained energy?

00:17:19.360 | How do you do less of that thing

00:17:20.760 | and do more of something else?

00:17:22.400 | If that's not something that anyone listening has done,

00:17:25.040 | I would encourage it 'cause it's really helpful

00:17:26.880 | before you start planning for this year

00:17:29.220 | to figure out what worked well, what didn't work well,

00:17:31.680 | what can you optimize for based on how last year went.

00:17:34.840 | And then you can start to focus on

00:17:36.120 | what do I wanna focus on now?

00:17:37.760 | You and I both kind of cut our teeth

00:17:39.440 | in the financial independence world.

00:17:41.120 | And I think most people think that we spend all of our time

00:17:43.880 | optimizing our money, when I think in reality,

00:17:47.000 | in terms of like our investments and our savings

00:17:49.520 | and our bank accounts,

00:17:50.840 | it's like one of the few things we spend almost no time on.

00:17:52.800 | It's like this funny paradox

00:17:54.200 | of the people who care about their money the most

00:17:56.200 | and talk about it the most

00:17:57.200 | actually spend the least amount of time thinking about it,

00:17:59.160 | use it more as a tool.

00:18:00.200 | So it was funny.

00:18:01.800 | Sam Parr posted this thing on Twitter where he's like,

00:18:04.480 | would you rather earn 8% guaranteed forever,

00:18:08.440 | but at the expense of you can never invest in startups,

00:18:11.520 | you can never buy stocks.

00:18:13.360 | And so many people were like, no, I wouldn't.

00:18:18.040 | And it's like, what?

00:18:19.200 | So many people just really get caught up

00:18:20.840 | in that like eking for returns.

00:18:22.400 | I don't know what your reaction was to that.

00:18:24.000 | But for me, this year,

00:18:25.720 | I'm not trying to turn the dials on my investments.

00:18:28.120 | I'm trying to focus on my life.

00:18:29.760 | - Yeah, focus on life is the critical part.

00:18:31.920 | And it is this funny paradox that for people like us

00:18:35.680 | who have always been attuned to our money,

00:18:38.320 | really our financial lives

00:18:39.880 | are the easiest part of our entire lives

00:18:42.560 | because it's on autopilot, right?

00:18:45.280 | Like that's how I have my whole financial life set up.

00:18:47.560 | I kind of famously say,

00:18:49.000 | I spend 10 minutes a month on my finances

00:18:51.200 | and that's maybe a little bit of an exaggeration.

00:18:53.480 | It's probably ever so slightly more than that,

00:18:55.360 | but not that much more.

00:18:56.520 | You set everything on autopay, autopilot.

00:18:59.640 | For me, it's stress minimization.

00:19:02.440 | So that's how I kind of conceptualize my finance.

00:19:04.920 | I'm not looking to optimize every penny.

00:19:07.960 | I'm looking to optimize for stress mitigation.

00:19:11.720 | What that means in practice is

00:19:13.560 | I'll keep a little bit extra money

00:19:15.720 | sitting in my checking account,

00:19:16.960 | five or 10 grand, whatever it is, it doesn't even matter.

00:19:20.160 | And then I don't have to worry about timing.

00:19:22.320 | Like, oh, I have a big credit card bill this month.

00:19:24.560 | Who cares?

00:19:25.400 | There's a big buffer there.

00:19:26.240 | I never wanna have to think about the timing of anything.

00:19:29.000 | So all of my transfers happen pretty much on autopilot,

00:19:33.440 | except for a couple of random, you know, HSA.

00:19:36.320 | I max out on January 1st of every year,

00:19:39.520 | but I have a little task in Todoist,

00:19:41.520 | which is my task manager, and it's just max out HSA.

00:19:44.840 | And then I never have to think about it again.

00:19:46.320 | But anyway, this thread from Sam was so interesting

00:19:50.280 | and it's especially fascinating.

00:19:51.800 | So Sam Parr is one of the co-hosts

00:19:54.560 | of the My First Million podcast,

00:19:56.280 | which both you and I thoroughly enjoy.

00:19:58.560 | And interestingly enough, Sean Puri is his co-host.

00:20:02.440 | And he basically said,

00:20:04.280 | "I asked Sean and a few others this question.

00:20:06.800 | "I'm shocked at how many said no.

00:20:08.600 | "They'd prefer to buy individual stocks and other things

00:20:10.980 | "in hopes of a return greater than 8%.

00:20:13.800 | "They wanna manage their own money.

00:20:15.080 | "This baffles me."

00:20:16.520 | And I actually wrote back to this,

00:20:18.520 | which Sean wrote back to,

00:20:19.840 | and I don't think was altogether thrilled,

00:20:21.680 | but I said, "Baffling and just silly.

00:20:23.660 | "Sean is a poker player, so he knows better.

00:20:26.060 | "The highest likelihood of success

00:20:28.080 | "over an investing lifetime

00:20:29.720 | "is to match the market with low fees.

00:20:32.140 | "Everybody thinks they're Warren Buffet.

00:20:34.080 | "They're not.

00:20:35.100 | "Match the market and get rich.

00:20:36.860 | "Find your fun in real life."

00:20:39.800 | That last part was the point that I wanted to make

00:20:42.000 | is for most people,

00:20:45.080 | like a lot of these people on this thread

00:20:47.080 | were basically saying like,

00:20:48.160 | "Oh, but I learn so much.

00:20:49.840 | "I get fun out of this."

00:20:51.160 | I mean, my argument is there's so many other ways

00:20:53.100 | to actually have fun in life.

00:20:54.120 | And Sam's actual original post said,

00:20:56.460 | "You can still build your own startups.

00:20:58.200 | "It's just you can't invest in this wacky stuff."

00:21:02.000 | And I think for me,

00:21:04.040 | I look at life through the lens of like a poker player

00:21:07.560 | and what increases my odds of success long-term.

00:21:11.200 | So it's like the aggregation of marginal gains, right?

00:21:13.400 | 1% differences might not make a difference

00:21:16.600 | in the short term,

00:21:17.760 | but over a lifetime,

00:21:19.720 | if you make the right decision

00:21:21.280 | over and over and over again, thousands of times,

00:21:23.840 | it's going to have an effect.

00:21:25.280 | It's going to have a positive expected value,

00:21:27.300 | plain and simple.

00:21:28.220 | If you put a gun to someone's head and say,

00:21:30.000 | "Are you gonna outperform the market net of fees

00:21:32.880 | "and net of taxes, essentially,

00:21:34.580 | "from all your wacky trading over a 50-year time period?"

00:21:38.540 | No, virtually nobody is going to outperform.

00:21:41.260 | So you're willingly taking a lower net worth

00:21:44.220 | for no reason whatsoever other than to have fun

00:21:47.420 | and to just be an idiot, essentially.

00:21:49.980 | And it makes no sense to me.

00:21:51.580 | It's totally illogical.

00:21:52.820 | I don't care how much money you have.

00:21:54.460 | You can tell this gets me hot and bothered.

00:21:56.140 | It makes no sense whatsoever.

00:21:58.980 | Go out and have fun in a million other ways.

00:22:01.660 | But to me, money, it's about maximizing net worth,

00:22:05.220 | especially if you can do it the brain-dead way

00:22:07.900 | by investing in index funds, right?

00:22:09.460 | Like if the easiest way possible

00:22:11.540 | to maximize your net worth is the no-brainer way,

00:22:16.120 | man, that's a win-win in every possible way.

00:22:18.220 | Why would you not pick that?

00:22:19.580 | - I'll play a slight devil's advocate, which is...

00:22:22.100 | - I thought you might.

00:22:22.940 | - I'm not sure that picking stocks is the alternative

00:22:26.460 | that I'll put in this camp.

00:22:27.760 | The question kind of carved out the ability

00:22:29.980 | to start your own companies.

00:22:31.340 | But I do think that I've seen lots of people

00:22:34.060 | in my peer group and my friends at

00:22:35.500 | who've taken their money and built companies

00:22:37.480 | and taken their money and launched products

00:22:39.180 | that have generated returns that exceed what an index fund

00:22:42.260 | or a set of stocks would do, so that's true.

00:22:44.180 | I do think there is some uncontrollable instinct

00:22:47.760 | that I love this thing, I want to bet on it.

00:22:50.020 | It's like betting on yourself

00:22:51.380 | because you have this belief in the world.

00:22:53.580 | And I like to do that with a small part of my portfolio,

00:22:55.940 | but it's so small that it doesn't matter,

00:22:57.640 | and I would give it up if I had to.

00:22:59.420 | The big thing I'll say is all of the investing advice,

00:23:03.100 | if you asked this question three years ago,

00:23:04.640 | before the pandemic, and you said,

00:23:05.900 | "Stocks and bonds, how correlated are they?"

00:23:08.140 | It's like, historically, they're always not correlated.

00:23:10.460 | The 60/40 portfolio is always gonna do great,

00:23:12.840 | that's why you diversify, and then it didn't.

00:23:15.280 | And so I will say that as much as I don't believe

00:23:18.380 | what I'm about to say is something that you should factor in,

00:23:21.020 | I'll at least share it, which is that

00:23:23.180 | all of the knowledge we have about

00:23:24.620 | how much better index funds are than stocks,

00:23:26.660 | I mean, it's all based on what happened in the past,

00:23:28.980 | and there are all kinds of things happening

00:23:30.940 | that could mean a different future.

00:23:32.440 | That said, I don't think any of the people I know

00:23:35.660 | that are choosing to make all these active trades

00:23:37.740 | and active investments are doing it for that reason.

00:23:40.940 | I think they're doing it for a different reason.

00:23:42.380 | I did this episode with Brian Feraldi,

00:23:44.100 | who has a whole checklist on how to be an investor

00:23:46.100 | and invest in stocks, and he approaches stock investing

00:23:49.460 | much differently than most,

00:23:50.980 | building out a portfolio of stocks,

00:23:52.600 | almost like creating your own indexes

00:23:54.100 | and doing some kind of research and that kind of stuff.

00:23:56.020 | And I would say, if that's your approach,

00:23:57.860 | then I feel a lot better, but if your approach is more,

00:24:01.220 | I just pick crazy things 'cause I wanna win,

00:24:03.200 | and I read about them on Reddit, I'm less excited.

00:24:05.140 | But we could go down that rabbit hole forever.

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00:26:36.080 | I think both of us, almost all of our money

00:26:40.860 | is in some form of investment account.

00:26:42.700 | I am curious, I think you manage yours on your own.

00:26:45.780 | So you're doing the rebalancing,

00:26:47.420 | you're doing the tax-loss harvesting.

00:26:50.060 | I think, not because I did work at Wealthfront,

00:26:52.860 | but just because I believe that it is a better use of my time

00:26:56.180 | to not do that and to get the extra edge

00:26:58.620 | from things like direct indexing and all that kind of stuff.

00:27:01.120 | Have you ever considered not managing it yourself?

00:27:04.620 | - Yeah, that's a good question.

00:27:05.540 | Under your advisement, I did open a Wealthfront account.

00:27:08.140 | I don't know if you ever actually even knew

00:27:09.880 | that I did that or not,

00:27:10.780 | but I have been putting some money in there.

00:27:12.100 | So just more to kind of see how the tax-loss harvesting

00:27:17.100 | worked, essentially.

00:27:18.580 | And it's pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie.

00:27:20.700 | There is no world where I would do that on my own.

00:27:24.340 | I haven't done analysis, certainly,

00:27:26.020 | of like, is the benefit that I'm getting,

00:27:28.300 | does it outweigh the fees?

00:27:30.260 | I suspect that it does, but in all candor, I haven't.

00:27:33.860 | I'm sure you have that information committed to memory.

00:27:35.940 | But in general, for me, if I were to not manage my money,

00:27:40.860 | I think it would be more psychological than anything.

00:27:44.460 | I like to believe that I don't make poor decisions,

00:27:48.980 | like sell when the world is going to hell in a handbasket

00:27:52.500 | in March of 2020, et cetera, et cetera.

00:27:54.540 | But I think I'm as susceptible to that as anyone.

00:27:57.700 | So I probably have underperformed

00:28:00.220 | what I should have performed

00:28:01.940 | if I just did what I advise all the time

00:28:05.100 | and just keep pumping money and go to sleep,

00:28:08.500 | wake up in 10, 20, 30 years,

00:28:10.780 | and essentially have more money than I can imagine.

00:28:13.060 | Obviously, nobody cried for me, I'm doing fine,

00:28:15.340 | I've reached financial independence.

00:28:16.860 | At the end of the day, it's fine,

00:28:18.380 | but I know in my heart of hearts,

00:28:19.700 | I've probably made suboptimal decisions based on emotion.

00:28:23.500 | When we talked about, hey, like,

00:28:25.980 | the actual nuts and bolts of money is the easy part,

00:28:28.700 | I stand with that, and I hold to that, certainly,

00:28:31.820 | because I think it's precisely the psychological part

00:28:34.540 | that's really the hard part.

00:28:36.140 | You let your brain get involved,

00:28:37.660 | and it just kind of does stupid crap.

00:28:39.900 | I've always noticed that the financial independence community

00:28:42.460 | and myself included, always hate fees.

00:28:44.660 | Like, it just is one of those things

00:28:45.820 | that people just hate paying fees.

00:28:47.420 | And so I know that's been a lot of the aversion

00:28:49.620 | to an investment advisor, a financial advisor,

00:28:52.220 | a robo-advisor, any of those things.

00:28:53.420 | And what really changed it for me one time

00:28:55.220 | was I had created this portfolio

00:28:57.460 | that was like eight index funds,

00:28:59.340 | and I was going through trying the process of rebalancing

00:29:02.460 | and managing it and all that.

00:29:04.140 | And I remember at one point, I was like,

00:29:05.180 | well, what trades do I have to make?

00:29:06.820 | Do I have to sell these three to rebalance?

00:29:08.940 | And it was just like,

00:29:09.780 | I actually wasn't sure if I could make the trades.

00:29:11.620 | And then I was like, well,

00:29:12.700 | I don't know if these trades are gonna have to clear

00:29:14.060 | before I can rebuy.

00:29:15.180 | And so I just kept pausing, pausing, pausing,

00:29:17.100 | and I watched the market move and I was like,

00:29:18.740 | what am I doing?

00:29:19.580 | I don't think that doing this full-time

00:29:21.500 | is a priority enough that I'm doing it.

00:29:22.820 | I have to offload it.

00:29:24.300 | The added benefit was that things like direct indexing,

00:29:27.220 | when you can start to break apart the index fund

00:29:29.500 | and actually say, well, instead of investing in the S&P 500

00:29:31.700 | or Vanguard at VTI or VTSAX,

00:29:33.940 | you can just buy all the individual things.

00:29:35.540 | Well, obviously that's completely untenable

00:29:37.340 | for a person to do and go buy hundreds and hundreds

00:29:40.420 | of stocks, but there's some advantages there

00:29:42.620 | when it comes to being able to tax loss harvest

00:29:44.780 | with a hundred or whatever number of stocks.

00:29:46.460 | So we could go down here quite a bit.

00:29:49.140 | I will attempt to pull back and stay on the money theme

00:29:52.060 | and just think, okay, so we're talking about money.

00:29:54.260 | We've identified not focus on that side of money,

00:29:56.220 | but what are we focused on and how do we spend it?

00:29:58.620 | Are there things that you think next year

00:30:00.940 | you're gonna spend more time thinking on

00:30:02.840 | when it comes to money or how you spend it?

00:30:05.780 | - Yeah, without a doubt.

00:30:07.140 | And your podcast has kind of helped inform a lot of this.

00:30:11.220 | And I think for me, it's experiences and health.

00:30:15.460 | So those are the two things that at this point

00:30:18.100 | I am prioritizing.

00:30:19.780 | And I think what that's gonna mean in reality

00:30:22.620 | is spending money and that's perfectly okay.

00:30:25.180 | And I think Brad circa five years ago

00:30:27.460 | would not have been okay with that.

00:30:28.660 | And I am now, and I think that's perfectly fine.

00:30:30.700 | And I'm frankly very happy about it.

00:30:32.420 | - Are there any particular experiences

00:30:33.980 | that you're like this year, this is what I wanna spend on?

00:30:36.220 | - So you and I are both lovers of Japan

00:30:40.180 | and I desperately want to get back to Japan

00:30:44.940 | and I want to climb Mount Fuji.

00:30:46.820 | That is like an absolute goal of mine.

00:30:50.540 | Will that happen in 2023?

00:30:52.540 | I don't know if it will or not.

00:30:54.380 | So sophomore year of college over the summer,

00:30:58.340 | lived with a host family in a city called Hamamatsu.

00:31:02.420 | And it was a couple hours south of Tokyo

00:31:04.660 | and the Shinkansen.

00:31:06.260 | And the only time that I saw Mount Fuji

00:31:09.220 | was on the bullet train and it just appeared.

00:31:13.040 | And obviously, you know how majestic it is.

00:31:16.100 | It was the cloudy season.

00:31:17.540 | And unfortunately, I only got like a couple

00:31:19.460 | little quick glimpses of it.

00:31:20.860 | But I'm like, damn, I will be back there someday.

00:31:23.200 | At this point, it's going on 20 plus years.

00:31:25.620 | So I have not been so great with the follow through on that.

00:31:28.260 | So my older daughter is now a roller coaster enthusiast,

00:31:32.900 | which is actually a thing.

00:31:34.180 | Like that is an actual term, roller coaster enthusiast.

00:31:36.820 | There are like massive organizations

00:31:38.820 | of these roller coaster enthusiasts throughout the world.

00:31:40.700 | And in the town immediately adjacent to Mount Fuji

00:31:45.700 | is one of Japan's best roller coasters.

00:31:48.260 | So I'm using this as like my little hook

00:31:50.380 | to get my family there.

00:31:51.340 | I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

00:31:52.700 | You now have two kids and I have two,

00:31:55.500 | I guess my kids are older at this point,

00:31:57.140 | which is kind of crazy to say, but it's still hard to travel.

00:32:00.300 | And we have not been as good at that

00:32:02.220 | as I wish that we were, frankly.

00:32:04.500 | So the very short answer to your question is,

00:32:07.540 | yeah, I need to get back to Japan.

00:32:09.740 | I wanna show my family, my wife, just that amazing culture.

00:32:13.980 | That's the hope on like one of the big adventures.

00:32:16.460 | - So if you're listening to this

00:32:17.300 | and you haven't been to Japan, you absolutely have to.

00:32:19.460 | Next week, I have an episode

00:32:21.180 | that's entirely devoted to Japan.

00:32:23.140 | - Seriously?

00:32:23.980 | - Yeah, I sat down with Brandon Presser,

00:32:25.940 | who is a previous guest,

00:32:27.500 | who I think said has been to Japan every year

00:32:30.020 | for the last 20 years, except one.

00:32:31.980 | He's written, I don't know, five or six guidebooks on Japan.

00:32:35.140 | We sat down, the episode's gonna be long.

00:32:37.060 | We might even split it into two next week

00:32:39.060 | because we were talking for a couple hours.

00:32:41.020 | The goal was to be a masterclass

00:32:42.460 | in planning a trip to Japan.

00:32:43.780 | Overview the culture, the people, the travel, the transit,

00:32:46.380 | Tokyo, Kyoto, other places to go,

00:32:48.740 | some hotspots that he loves, unknown little corner places.

00:32:51.620 | So if Japan is anything you've ever even considered,

00:32:54.420 | you should listen and I'm gonna try to fit in

00:32:57.140 | to this incredibly long episode at the end,

00:32:59.820 | a little thing about like,

00:33:00.660 | how do you use your points and miles to get there?

00:33:02.300 | 'Cause that's what I love.

00:33:03.220 | Like, how do you make it an affordable trip?

00:33:04.820 | Japan is known for being expensive,

00:33:06.340 | but so is San Francisco and New York and LA.

00:33:08.620 | And somehow we all find ways to get to those cities.

00:33:10.860 | So yes, Japan should be on everyone's list.

00:33:13.260 | I've been four times and it's still on my list,

00:33:16.020 | but I'm gonna come back to your travel with kids thing.

00:33:19.240 | And it's something I've been really thinking about.

00:33:21.180 | And I actually had a really funny conversation this week

00:33:24.220 | with Tony Hawk, funny enough to bring it all together

00:33:26.900 | about travel to Japan.

00:33:28.740 | When he was in his early twenties, he had a kid.

00:33:31.340 | And for all we know that Tony Hawk being successful

00:33:34.100 | and famous and rich and all these things,

00:33:36.000 | at that point in time of his life,

00:33:37.260 | he was anything but that, like living on ramen, everything.

00:33:40.460 | And he got these demo offers in Japan

00:33:42.700 | and he couldn't afford childcare.

00:33:44.020 | So he brought his kid to Japan when he was young.

00:33:46.620 | And he would be like at a skate demo with a infant

00:33:49.420 | or toddler, just like hanging out there

00:33:51.780 | because he just had to do it.

00:33:53.700 | He didn't have any options.

00:33:54.940 | But his advice was by doing that

00:33:57.780 | and being forced to do that,

00:33:59.420 | his kids just got so comfortable rolling with the punches.

00:34:01.860 | So we took what I think was a very ambitious trip

00:34:04.780 | to Paris and London with a six month old and a two year old.

00:34:08.180 | And it was nothing like a trip to London

00:34:09.980 | that you would take with no kids,

00:34:11.940 | but we learned how to make it work.

00:34:15.260 | Was it as fun as it was before?

00:34:17.680 | In many ways, no, but in a few ways, yes.

00:34:20.540 | And maybe you could argue it too in six months,

00:34:22.180 | they're not quite old enough

00:34:23.500 | to necessarily appreciate the culture,

00:34:25.780 | but they are learning how to sit on an airplane for 10 hours.

00:34:28.340 | My daughter loves airplanes.

00:34:30.020 | We invest in a lot of things that are painful.

00:34:31.900 | If you wanna learn how to run,

00:34:33.540 | the first getting out the gate

00:34:34.980 | and starting to run as an adult is painful.

00:34:37.240 | And then it gets easier and it gets easier.

00:34:38.740 | I think the same thing is true with travel with kids.

00:34:41.140 | And sure, I'm gonna do an episode in 2023

00:34:43.660 | about all the travel hacks I've learned traveling with kids

00:34:46.360 | from the Stokke JetKids suitcase,

00:34:48.700 | which if you have a small kid is amazing.

00:34:50.700 | It basically converts any coach seat

00:34:52.500 | into like a business class seat,

00:34:54.260 | at least in the eyes of a young kid.

00:34:56.180 | Does nothing for adults, by the way.

00:34:57.680 | But I think you just have to do it.

00:34:59.380 | The rule I heard from someone,

00:35:00.580 | just plan one thing a day, that's it.

00:35:02.340 | Your itinerary is one thing a day,

00:35:04.080 | at least when they're really young.

00:35:05.340 | Now that you're way past naps and early bedtimes

00:35:08.580 | and the ability to not miss like five meal snack times a day

00:35:12.540 | like you're past that.

00:35:13.420 | So I think it's gonna be a little bit more enjoyable,

00:35:15.220 | but at the young ages, I just keep telling myself,

00:35:18.000 | I'm building up the travel resilience

00:35:20.060 | so that a few years when they really learn

00:35:22.060 | to appreciate things,

00:35:22.980 | we just have things so much more dialed in.

00:35:25.220 | - Yeah, that's cool.

00:35:26.460 | I like that.

00:35:27.300 | And yeah, it's funny.

00:35:28.120 | My kids at this point both go to sleep after me.

00:35:31.020 | So I'm like the old man that goes to sleep at 9.30.

00:35:34.020 | I'm like fanatical about my bedtime.

00:35:35.820 | So yes, I do not have to worry about nap time anymore

00:35:38.700 | or schedules, but nevertheless, you have to make the effort.

00:35:41.580 | And going back to your question about experiences,

00:35:43.460 | I think it's about making the effort.

00:35:45.480 | You talked about the loneliness

00:35:47.780 | of maybe not being in the office

00:35:50.140 | and not being around people all the time.

00:35:53.060 | And frankly, working at home,

00:35:55.740 | regardless of whether we have conversations

00:35:57.400 | like this or not,

00:35:58.240 | and also being financially independent and being home

00:36:02.780 | and all of your friends are at work,

00:36:05.540 | you have to make an effort to actually see people.

00:36:09.280 | And I think it's very, very easy to get into a rut.

00:36:14.200 | And I think I have been in a rut for a while

00:36:17.340 | in terms of actually making the effort

00:36:20.780 | to see people that I wanna see and do new things.

00:36:25.780 | That's another thing, as you can tell,

00:36:27.940 | I'm a fanatical listener of all the hacks, right?

00:36:30.100 | Like one of the things you've talked about

00:36:31.700 | is like that one thing a month.

00:36:33.380 | - Yeah.

00:36:34.220 | - And that just always resonated with me.

00:36:35.180 | I thought that was super cool the first time

00:36:37.060 | that I heard you talk about that.

00:36:38.880 | And the operating principles.

00:36:41.320 | Like, can I be looking for adventure?

00:36:43.500 | Do I have an answer to your question right now, Chris?

00:36:45.220 | I don't.

00:36:46.060 | I could BS like, I'm gonna learn how to, I don't know,

00:36:49.380 | do archery and drive a race car.

00:36:51.780 | I could BS anything you wanted right now,

00:36:53.540 | but it's not true.

00:36:54.740 | Because the only thing that I know for sure right now

00:36:57.980 | is like my aperture is open to experience

00:37:02.980 | and fun and connection.

00:37:05.100 | And like, those are the things that are like

00:37:06.700 | rolling around in my head of,

00:37:08.620 | hey, in conjunction with Die With Zero from Perkins,

00:37:11.900 | it's like, hey, you have some money.

00:37:14.180 | You have some time.

00:37:15.780 | And you have people you haven't seen in a while.

00:37:17.540 | Like, what would it look like to get together with people

00:37:19.980 | and to do something just cool and different?

00:37:22.820 | And that I normally wouldn't do

00:37:24.780 | because I frankly haven't done it for years.

00:37:26.740 | So I think that's where I am right now.

00:37:28.780 | So yeah, the next time we do this,

00:37:30.280 | hopefully I'll have an update for you.

00:37:31.580 | I don't even know if I can be as adventurous as you

00:37:33.740 | with the one a month,

00:37:34.580 | but what if I tried five new things and just try to explore?

00:37:38.940 | So long story short is I'm gonna see how this rolls.

00:37:41.860 | So I don't know.

00:37:42.860 | What do you think?

00:37:43.720 | You used to do one of these a month

00:37:45.380 | and obviously with COVID and the world shutting down

00:37:48.660 | and you having kids,

00:37:50.180 | how has that changed and how are you looking at it now?

00:37:52.620 | - I talked earlier about my goal for the year,

00:37:54.060 | my bold move is gonna be about valuing time.

00:37:56.220 | So I think what that allows you to do

00:37:58.420 | is make time for whatever that thing is,

00:38:00.300 | whether it's something you wanna learn,

00:38:01.460 | whether it's something you wanna do.

00:38:02.660 | I was talking to someone the other day

00:38:04.420 | and they were like,

00:38:05.260 | we're going on a trip without our kids.

00:38:06.980 | Our parents are gonna watch it.

00:38:07.900 | And they had not done this and their youngest kid was five.

00:38:10.580 | This is the first trip they're taking alone.

00:38:12.260 | And it's a weekend trip.

00:38:13.260 | It's not a crazy thing.

00:38:14.640 | So I think you can make a lot of experiences

00:38:16.600 | that aren't the experiences of years past

00:38:18.740 | where it's like, let's take a two week backpacking trip to,

00:38:20.700 | yeah, that's a great experience.

00:38:22.020 | I just pulled off the bookshelf, Ben Nempton,

00:38:24.500 | who I had on episode 36,

00:38:26.740 | who wrote this book called "The Bucket List Journal".

00:38:29.540 | And the reason I pulled it off

00:38:30.580 | is 'cause I'd encourage everyone to check this out.

00:38:32.760 | We did an episode, you can get some of it there.

00:38:35.060 | But he created this journal that is about

00:38:37.860 | a list that he created with some friends

00:38:39.860 | and it's an insane bucket list.

00:38:41.780 | But he created a book to help people create their own.

00:38:44.920 | But the thing he did that I think is so great,

00:38:47.560 | and I'm reading his do's or don'ts.

00:38:48.900 | It's like, do's, go on a date a month,

00:38:50.720 | like run five miles twice a week.

00:38:52.200 | He was kind of trying to give people ideas,

00:38:54.200 | but he breaks everything into categories.

00:38:56.660 | And he breaks it into travel and adventure,

00:38:58.440 | physical health, material, creative, professional,

00:39:01.280 | intellectual, financial, mental health,

00:39:03.560 | relationships, and giving.

00:39:05.540 | So I wanna encourage people that when you hear us say

00:39:07.520 | experiences and things you wanna do,

00:39:09.160 | and you wanna think about how to be ambitious

00:39:11.160 | with your years ahead,

00:39:12.440 | don't assume that every experience

00:39:14.040 | needs to be like jump out of an airplane,

00:39:16.340 | or like the traditional big audacious experience thing.

00:39:20.020 | One of the things that I have on my bucket list

00:39:22.200 | is to cook a seven course meal for friends.

00:39:24.780 | Not necessarily go out to a fancy restaurant,

00:39:26.640 | just to make this incredible, awesome dinner

00:39:28.520 | where you think about it and you plan it

00:39:29.920 | and you shop and you do all this stuff.

00:39:31.480 | Like that is an experience.

00:39:32.720 | It's not jumping out of an airplane.

00:39:33.840 | It's not traveling around the world.

00:39:35.120 | I'm trying to prioritize things in other categories

00:39:38.840 | that I think are also really meaningful.

00:39:40.520 | And so that's something I'm thinking about this year.

00:39:43.040 | But when it comes to mine on valuing time,

00:39:46.880 | which I think is a big one for me,

00:39:48.160 | I wanna share some of the things I've done

00:39:49.920 | and some of the things I'm gonna do.

00:39:51.880 | I think that one thing that's really unfortunate,

00:39:54.220 | I remember sharing an app to a friend of mine

00:39:56.460 | and saying, oh, this is a great app, Paprika.

00:39:58.080 | It's a food app, right?

00:39:59.240 | And it's recipe management, meal planning, all this stuff.

00:40:03.040 | And they were like, oh, it's expensive.

00:40:04.160 | It costs, I don't know, five, 10, $20.

00:40:05.880 | So I was like, okay.

00:40:06.880 | We've kind of trained ourselves to assume,

00:40:08.520 | oh, software should all be free.

00:40:09.680 | Content should all be free and all that stuff,

00:40:11.200 | which is fair because it's not like we've been trained.

00:40:14.240 | It's not like we just decided this.

00:40:15.920 | And I have a similar problem.

00:40:17.200 | I'm like, do I wanna buy an app for $20?

00:40:19.200 | This is crazy.

00:40:20.040 | Most apps are free.

00:40:21.400 | But then I'm trying to equate things to

00:40:23.600 | how much is this gonna make my life easier?

00:40:25.680 | And of course, $20 is a good amount.

00:40:27.660 | So there are a bunch of products

00:40:28.840 | that some of which I've partnered with,

00:40:30.680 | some I haven't because I'm just such a big fan.

00:40:32.620 | So Paprika is one.

00:40:33.960 | It costs money and I love it.

00:40:35.640 | It saves me so much time.

00:40:37.000 | We meal plan on it, we grocery shop on it.

00:40:39.440 | I think it's great.

00:40:40.320 | Partners of ours, Delete Me,

00:40:42.100 | is this site that I think is an incredible product

00:40:45.420 | that will basically go and remove

00:40:46.680 | all your data off the internet.

00:40:48.120 | So I went pretty deep last year on cybersecurity

00:40:50.460 | and like, how do I get my data off?

00:40:52.120 | How do I make sure I'm protected?

00:40:53.560 | I did a whole two-part episode series

00:40:55.880 | where I interviewed someone

00:40:56.920 | and then did a ton of research and published it.

00:40:59.640 | So you can go back and listen to those.

00:41:01.640 | But that was one where I actually started

00:41:04.320 | and I was like, you know what?

00:41:05.560 | I don't know if I wanna pay for a service

00:41:07.040 | that's gonna go delete all my information off the internet.

00:41:09.160 | I could just go to every individual

00:41:10.680 | data broker website and do it.

00:41:12.320 | Like, why would I pay for someone to do this for me?

00:41:14.720 | And then I started doing it.

00:41:15.920 | And one, I found that I spent five or 10 hours

00:41:18.980 | and I wasn't finished.

00:41:19.820 | And I was like, this is crazy.

00:41:20.900 | I do not value my time.

00:41:22.180 | And then two, after I did it manually,

00:41:24.840 | I was like, you know what?

00:41:25.680 | Let's at least see if I got it all.

00:41:26.880 | And I didn't.

00:41:28.320 | So like, I spent all these hours trying to do it.

00:41:30.200 | And then I realized,

00:41:31.040 | not only could I pay someone to save me time,

00:41:32.620 | but I could pay someone to do it better than me.

00:41:34.600 | So that was an interesting one and a product I love.

00:41:38.000 | I use 1Password.

00:41:39.240 | They're not really a partner of the show.

00:41:40.440 | I think there's an affiliate link for them if you sign up,

00:41:42.640 | but I think I make a dollar.

00:41:43.720 | It's not like a big deal.

00:41:44.640 | It's just like, because I already love it,

00:41:45.940 | I might as well put the link in on the website.

00:41:48.220 | But just managing passwords,

00:41:50.360 | like I'm glad to pay for a service like that.

00:41:52.360 | I'm glad to pay for photo storage.

00:41:54.240 | We talked about money.

00:41:55.480 | I love a product called Kubera, right?

00:41:58.100 | And it is a product that replaces

00:42:01.380 | your like spreadsheet balance sheet, right?

00:42:03.720 | Like that's what it replaces.

00:42:05.040 | And it syncs with all of the sites.

00:42:06.760 | It's a premium service.

00:42:08.000 | It's not free.

00:42:09.000 | I think it's $150 a year,

00:42:11.040 | but they've worked with all the data aggregators

00:42:13.080 | so that they use the best,

00:42:14.240 | whether it's Plaid or Yoda,

00:42:15.240 | all these ways you sync your accounts,

00:42:16.520 | the best one for each account.

00:42:18.080 | And they just built all the features I want.

00:42:20.080 | And now I don't spend an hour a month

00:42:22.560 | updating my balance sheet spreadsheet in Google Sheets.

00:42:25.580 | And it's like, if I can save 12 hours a year,

00:42:28.500 | plus get some extra insight,

00:42:29.800 | I would, of course I should be willing

00:42:31.280 | to pay something for that.

00:42:32.720 | And that's something I've gotten really in tune with.

00:42:36.680 | And this year going forward, I'm like,

00:42:38.520 | maybe I need to try one of these

00:42:40.760 | virtual assistant services out.

00:42:42.180 | I just signed up for Fancy Hands,

00:42:43.800 | which I'm not sure if it's going to be the right fit

00:42:45.600 | because it's not really like a dedicated person

00:42:47.360 | that learns you.

00:42:48.380 | But I just want to get myself comfortable

00:42:50.480 | with paying to save myself time

00:42:53.440 | because I'm using that time to be creative with my business,

00:42:57.000 | which hopefully will generate revenue in the future.

00:42:59.120 | I'm using this time to spend with my kids,

00:43:01.040 | which I want to do.

00:43:02.200 | So that's been a really hard thing for me.

00:43:04.920 | And I think one of the biggest unlocks

00:43:06.720 | was starting to pay for products and services

00:43:10.880 | that will save me time.

00:43:12.040 | It starts out really easy when it's hour obvious,

00:43:15.080 | where it's like, I'm going to have someone

00:43:16.240 | help clean my house,

00:43:17.860 | which I know would take me this many hours,

00:43:19.940 | but I'm trying to extend that to,

00:43:21.160 | I'm going to use this software that's going to save me time.

00:43:23.920 | Or I'm going to buy this product that costs more,

00:43:26.320 | but it's going to save me time.

00:43:27.440 | Are you good at that?

00:43:28.320 | - I'm getting better.

00:43:29.440 | I'm trying.

00:43:30.400 | I share the same affliction that you share,

00:43:32.840 | which is, oh, of course I can do this on my own.

00:43:35.520 | Or of course, if that's going to cost a couple hundred

00:43:38.360 | dollars, I can do it.

00:43:39.920 | I can do it just the same.

00:43:41.120 | But like you said,

00:43:42.240 | it almost invariably takes way longer than you anticipate.

00:43:45.640 | And in the case of Delete Me,

00:43:47.440 | you don't do as good a job, right?

00:43:48.920 | I think I'm a work in progress on a lot of this stuff.

00:43:52.080 | It's just reorienting,

00:43:53.800 | even down to meal planning and cooking meals at home.

00:43:58.500 | So for years, we have, I guess at chooseava.com/meals,

00:44:03.120 | we have a PDF of like 30 recipes that she's curated.

00:44:06.520 | They're not like her recipes.

00:44:07.520 | They're recipes she's curated over the years of essentially,

00:44:11.220 | it was like $2 per person per meal.

00:44:13.480 | And these are fabulous, delicious meals,

00:44:15.320 | like our like A+ meals in essence.

00:44:17.800 | And that's been fantastic.

00:44:19.920 | And we meal plan and we save time, we save money, et cetera.

00:44:23.080 | But it's still a lot of hours.

00:44:26.320 | And not to mention on the front side,

00:44:27.840 | but on the backside too,

00:44:28.800 | like you don't think about this, the cleanup, right?

00:44:30.960 | Like if you're cleaning up pans every single time

00:44:35.320 | and putting all the dishes away,

00:44:36.400 | it's like 20 plus minutes for each of us.

00:44:38.680 | That's 40 person minutes, right?

00:44:41.040 | And then when you think about that times seven

00:44:44.440 | or times how many of our meals per week,

00:44:46.440 | it's just an absurd amount of time.

00:44:48.120 | I think we've been much more cognizant of our time recently.

00:44:51.540 | So we're actually spending significantly more

00:44:53.800 | on food recently and still in the cosmic scheme of things,

00:44:57.480 | it's not that much Chris,

00:44:58.400 | but we're able to get delicious food

00:45:01.320 | from one of our favorite restaurants.

00:45:02.760 | And it winds up being like $5 per person per meal.

00:45:06.120 | And they cook it for you.

00:45:08.000 | They have this like amazing, they call it like Sunday supper.

00:45:10.680 | And the way that it works is you can get enough food

00:45:13.320 | that for us, it lasts four dinners for the rest of the week.

00:45:16.580 | It's like $50.

00:45:17.680 | It's absurdly cheap.

00:45:19.200 | - Brad doesn't live in the Bay area for anyone listening,

00:45:22.000 | where dinner for four that doesn't last the whole week

00:45:25.680 | is like more than $50.

00:45:27.960 | (laughing)

00:45:28.800 | - Yes, I am in a low cost of living area.

00:45:30.560 | I'm in Richmond, VA, but yeah, it's fun.

00:45:32.760 | Like it's actually fun

00:45:34.120 | because there's a new menu every week.

00:45:36.560 | We try something new.

00:45:38.080 | My wife, this is the way that things have been delivering

00:45:40.760 | in our house 'cause she generally likes cooking.

00:45:42.920 | She's always been the one who made the food

00:45:45.220 | and she's been doing that for a long time.

00:45:47.640 | Especially when you have kids

00:45:48.680 | who we got into the bad habit

00:45:50.160 | of making different meals for people,

00:45:51.920 | which I don't advise at all.

00:45:53.720 | And she's just kind of done with it.

00:45:55.840 | It's a lot of fun, frankly, to like try new food every week.

00:45:58.880 | And we don't have nearly as much,

00:46:01.600 | obviously on the front side, but on the backside also,

00:46:03.940 | they give you the pans to cook these things in.

00:46:07.200 | There's no cleanup.

00:46:08.080 | So it's just, well, damn, would I pay $3 extra a meal

00:46:11.860 | to not have to waste an hour of prep time and cleanup time?

00:46:15.880 | Of course I would, a hundred times out of a hundred.

00:46:18.040 | And the food frankly is as good or better

00:46:20.680 | and it's different every week.

00:46:21.680 | We actually just recently hired someone

00:46:23.920 | to clean the house once a month and that's been great.

00:46:28.000 | Just like little things.

00:46:29.380 | I think I'm kind of dipping my toe in here.

00:46:31.360 | I'm not maybe quite as advanced as you at this point

00:46:33.840 | in terms of like the virtual assistants and things like that.

00:46:37.040 | I'm open to it.

00:46:38.360 | I think it's just more like, I need to conceptualize.

00:46:41.640 | Like, what does that actually look like?

00:46:43.240 | How are you thinking about that?

00:46:44.320 | - Well, I did this episode with Dan Martell

00:46:45.800 | that you already referenced about buying back your time.

00:46:48.300 | And I consider Dan, having talked to him,

00:46:50.200 | to be like the pro.

00:46:51.280 | I'm like, you don't spend one second of your day

00:46:53.880 | on something that isn't a good use of your time.

00:46:56.160 | And I'm not sure I have the roadmap

00:46:57.600 | on how to exactly get there.

00:46:59.120 | And some of the things he's doing require more capital

00:47:02.400 | than I'm willing to spend on it, but I'm working on it.

00:47:05.920 | We experimented with hiring someone to drop off meals

00:47:08.140 | and do the preparation.

00:47:09.480 | We're trying to go out or do carry out a couple nights a week

00:47:11.720 | just to give ourselves a break.

00:47:13.000 | We built bulk cook so that we have enough meals

00:47:15.800 | for another day.

00:47:16.720 | I hope to have an update in the next time we chat,

00:47:19.420 | which is some of the experiments and the results of them.

00:47:23.040 | - Did you know that someone new gets impacted

00:47:25.080 | by identity theft every two seconds?

00:47:27.820 | It makes sense when there's so much

00:47:29.640 | of our personal information getting shared online

00:47:32.240 | without our consent.

00:47:33.760 | I found a listing for my dad on a site called Family Tree Now

00:47:37.720 | that had his name, age, address, phone number, email,

00:47:41.680 | past addresses, and the names of his relatives.

00:47:44.560 | And that was just one of the 69 listings that had his info.

00:47:49.080 | Fortunately, instead of spending hours finding all the sites

00:47:52.360 | with his info and submitting the request to take it down,

00:47:55.200 | I got it all done in minutes with Delete.me from Abine,

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00:48:37.100 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/deleteme.

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00:49:45.960 | I just wanna thank you quick for listening to

00:49:48.120 | and supporting the show.

00:49:49.600 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:49:52.440 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals,

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00:49:56.920 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:50:00.480 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:50:03.600 | For the interest of time,

00:50:04.680 | are there any other money things

00:50:05.800 | you're thinking about going forward?

00:50:07.660 | - I am kind of at a crossroads

00:50:09.680 | with my real estate investing.

00:50:11.880 | So I know a bunch of our listeners

00:50:14.360 | have asked for an update with this is,

00:50:15.960 | I went to buying,

00:50:16.980 | and I don't know if I ever told you this,

00:50:18.360 | but two single family rental properties

00:50:21.440 | down in Georgia a couple of years ago.

00:50:22.960 | It's probably three or four years ago at this point.

00:50:25.240 | And I've never liked real estate.

00:50:28.680 | Kind of scares me.

00:50:29.520 | I had a bad experience of like kind of speculation

00:50:31.960 | back in my 20s, and it just scarred me for life.

00:50:34.680 | I've gotten over it to a large degree

00:50:36.240 | in terms of like, okay, idiot,

00:50:38.160 | don't look at this as like,

00:50:39.800 | you're gonna make a quick buck.

00:50:41.040 | This is gonna go up.

00:50:41.860 | Like, look at it as a business.

00:50:43.220 | I'm a CPI.

00:50:44.060 | I should be looking at this as a business.

00:50:46.000 | And does it have cashflow?

00:50:48.200 | Is there positive net income?

00:50:49.520 | And what's the return on investment?

00:50:51.020 | So I actually bought both these properties in cash

00:50:54.400 | and they've been great.

00:50:55.940 | They've returned phenomenally.

00:50:57.920 | Like the bigger pockets, 1% rule.

00:51:00.600 | Now, obviously for anybody in the Bay Area,

00:51:02.400 | or like this is for your own personal residence,

00:51:04.640 | this is laughable.

00:51:05.960 | But for an investment property in rural Georgia

00:51:09.320 | or in Alabama or in many places throughout the country,

00:51:12.680 | you can find it's like 1% of the purchase price

00:51:17.160 | as the monthly rent.

00:51:18.960 | So now for instance, I bought these properties

00:51:21.280 | after renovation, I bought them for basically $55,000 a piece.

00:51:25.120 | So 1% of that would be $550 a month.

00:51:28.620 | So that would be then like a 12% gross return per year.

00:51:33.160 | But actually, Chris, I rent them for like 750 and 800 a month.

00:51:37.000 | So it's like one and a half percent, which is phenomenal.

00:51:40.440 | And so far, and it's a small sample size, obviously,

00:51:43.120 | but I haven't been hit with any major extraordinary expenses.

00:51:46.700 | Obviously, there's always stuff that comes up as a homeowner

00:51:49.200 | or a landlord, but they've returned phenomenally.

00:51:52.340 | And then that brings the question, OK, yeah,

00:51:55.640 | I kind of don't love real estate,

00:51:57.280 | but these have been like an unmitigated success.

00:52:01.440 | And then I had Alan Corey on the podcast a couple of weeks

00:52:04.160 | ago talking about, hey, maybe that sounds great,

00:52:08.160 | but what would that have looked like if you had bought eight

00:52:10.760 | of these with 25% down instead of two with 100% cash,

00:52:16.680 | in essence?

00:52:17.240 | Those index funds, they're so easy.

00:52:19.000 | There's no overhead.

00:52:19.920 | Oh, index funds are so easy.

00:52:22.200 | And that's the constant tension in my life

00:52:25.200 | is I just want simplicity.

00:52:28.840 | Simplicity is everything to me.

00:52:31.160 | But the diversification--

00:52:33.160 | Chasing those returns.

00:52:35.040 | Yeah, those returns.

00:52:36.040 | That's what it comes down to.

00:52:37.240 | You can know intellectually, but damn,

00:52:39.200 | those returns are great, right?

00:52:40.560 | And is that a small sample size?

00:52:42.440 | Is this replicable?

00:52:43.880 | Am I going to not sleep as well at night

00:52:45.880 | if I have a mortgage on something?

00:52:47.880 | So these are all kind of rolling around in my head.

00:52:50.120 | What are your time-adjusted returns?

00:52:52.120 | Because I promise you that buying that rental property

00:52:55.580 | and managing that rental property

00:52:57.200 | has a cost of time that is greater than how long it

00:53:00.440 | took you to buy VTI or VTSX or whatever index fund.

00:53:03.680 | And I don't know if there's an easy way to factor that in,

00:53:06.720 | but I don't know.

00:53:07.920 | For me, the only real estate that we

00:53:10.400 | have other than our primary residence

00:53:12.200 | is a fractional home that we stay in, and that's it.

00:53:15.800 | We're not trying to rent it out.

00:53:17.360 | We're not trying to make money.

00:53:18.660 | It's just a good way for us to be able to have

00:53:20.840 | another place to go to.

00:53:22.040 | I've always struggled with this.

00:53:23.340 | I did this episode with Brandon Turner,

00:53:24.960 | and he has a real estate empire and has amassed a net worth far

00:53:29.460 | greater than both of us combined through real estate.

00:53:31.880 | But every time I think about it, I'm just like,

00:53:33.840 | I don't know if I want to play the game.

00:53:35.500 | It doesn't excite me.

00:53:36.580 | Being a landlord is not fun for me in any scalable thing.

00:53:40.200 | I just published a newsletter, as we're recording this today,

00:53:43.080 | but last week, about house hacking.

00:53:45.400 | Love that concept.

00:53:46.320 | If we could build an ADU in our house, it would be awesome.

00:53:48.700 | Being a one-off landlord and taking on that kind of little

00:53:51.700 | work is not too much, but actually turning it

00:53:54.320 | into a profession and doing it, it's for a lot of people.

00:53:57.180 | And I think a lot of people do really well with it.

00:53:59.300 | My brother and sister-in-law, they've

00:54:00.800 | bought up a bunch of auto repair and tire shops.

00:54:03.600 | There are a lot of businesses that you can own,

00:54:05.740 | and they can be very successful, and you

00:54:07.400 | could do well with them.

00:54:08.620 | That's just not what I want to do.

00:54:09.660 | But they've done a great job.

00:54:10.900 | And it's funny how real estate seems

00:54:13.500 | like the obvious alternative of what to do with your money.

00:54:17.180 | But then you listen to someone like Cody Sanchez, who's

00:54:19.940 | going to be coming on the podcast soon,

00:54:22.060 | and she's like, I'm buying laundromats.

00:54:23.680 | I'm buying all these businesses.

00:54:25.020 | There's lots of ways you can buy businesses, one of which

00:54:27.840 | is a rental property.

00:54:29.160 | But do you want to do that professionally or not?

00:54:32.220 | And what is the opportunity cost?

00:54:34.500 | If you put a little bit more of time instead of into that

00:54:36.980 | into your side hustle, or to your day job,

00:54:39.540 | or to the company you run, or something,

00:54:41.620 | will that be as lucrative in the long run?

00:54:43.540 | It's hard to compare because there's

00:54:45.040 | no average return on investment of spending time

00:54:48.660 | on your side hustle.

00:54:49.820 | But I encourage people to realize that real estate has

00:54:53.620 | a time component that, if you don't love,

00:54:56.180 | can feel like a lot of work.

00:54:57.980 | Yeah, and I think a lot of the real estate people

00:55:00.500 | who pontificate about how wonderful it is,

00:55:02.980 | I think there's a large degree of survivorship bias to it.

00:55:06.740 | Frankly, you don't hear about all the people

00:55:08.860 | that got wrecked by leverage and just made stupid decisions.

00:55:11.940 | I think there's some aspect of that, certainly.

00:55:14.340 | And no matter how I run the numbers,

00:55:16.580 | even without factoring in leverage--

00:55:18.500 | because any time you factor in leverage,

00:55:20.540 | there's always that risk of this going kaboom.

00:55:23.180 | Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves.

00:55:24.900 | But without leverage, even that 1% rule,

00:55:27.780 | there are very few people, very few markets in the country

00:55:31.140 | that can find that 1% rule.

00:55:33.260 | Again, 1% of the purchase price per month in rent.

00:55:35.820 | Yeah, you're not going to find it here.

00:55:37.580 | Right, no, not in a million years.

00:55:39.220 | In the Bay Area, that's for damn sure.

00:55:40.820 | And I mean, that's a 12% gross return.

00:55:43.740 | And then, again, bigger pockets.

00:55:45.460 | You mentioned Brandon Turner.

00:55:46.940 | They say you should anticipate about 50% of the gross rent

00:55:52.860 | as expenses.

00:55:54.660 | So OK, your 12% gross return turns into a 6% net return.

00:56:00.780 | 6%.

00:56:01.980 | That's not so fantastic.

00:56:03.180 | And then, obviously, there's appreciation.

00:56:05.060 | But appreciation, in my opinion, is speculation.

00:56:07.940 | You cannot bank on appreciation by any means.

00:56:10.380 | So it's speculative.

00:56:11.620 | But that said, you can anticipate a couple percent

00:56:15.060 | appreciation.

00:56:15.740 | So we're still back at 7%, 8%, 9%,

00:56:20.140 | which is pretty analogous to what we anticipate

00:56:22.820 | in the stock market.

00:56:23.660 | And like you said, it's a whole hell of a lot easier

00:56:25.820 | to buy VTI or VTSAX than it is to run a real estate rental

00:56:31.620 | company, if you will, or whatever you want to conceptualize

00:56:33.900 | it as.

00:56:34.380 | So is the juice worth the squeeze?

00:56:36.620 | I think if you like it, great.

00:56:39.340 | If you enjoy that, like I enjoy optimizing my travel, great.

00:56:44.100 | I think it's awesome.

00:56:45.580 | But just don't go into it thinking it's

00:56:47.300 | the best thing in the world.

00:56:48.740 | Teach his own.

00:56:49.380 | Teach his own.

00:56:50.100 | There are people that love it.

00:56:51.380 | But without leverage being included,

00:56:54.180 | because leverage can go both ways,

00:56:56.620 | it's no better than essentially anything else.

00:56:59.740 | And obviously, again, the real estate people

00:57:01.580 | will pontificate about the tax benefits and the 1031

00:57:04.660 | and all this stuff.

00:57:05.420 | There is that to some degree.

00:57:06.860 | But like you said, you got to factor in your time

00:57:09.060 | a little bit.

00:57:09.620 | I think that's important.

00:57:11.140 | So the only other money thing I had

00:57:12.860 | was that we have an au pair from Italy.

00:57:15.460 | She's amazing.

00:57:16.340 | Our last few au pairs didn't drive, but she does.

00:57:18.700 | And we're adding her to our insurance.

00:57:20.340 | And when you add someone who hasn't ever

00:57:22.220 | had a license in the US, who's under 25,

00:57:24.660 | your insurance goes up.

00:57:25.860 | And so that inspired me to start going to reprice my insurance.

00:57:29.220 | And I'm going to do an episode all about insurance,

00:57:31.380 | so keep an ear out for it.

00:57:32.980 | But I would just say it's amazing

00:57:35.500 | that every few years, different insurance companies completely

00:57:39.260 | change the way they price different things.

00:57:41.860 | And I've consistently in my life found

00:57:44.260 | that every couple of years, I just send all--

00:57:46.620 | I keep it in a nice, easy formatted thing

00:57:48.380 | where I'm like, here's the level of coverage we need.

00:57:50.220 | Here's all the things we need to cover.

00:57:51.820 | And I'll just send it to a few insurance reps or brokers

00:57:55.380 | and be like, hey, could you give me some quotes for this?

00:57:57.940 | Because for some reason in California now,

00:58:00.060 | most of the websites don't let you price yourself anymore.

00:58:02.740 | This is just my experience.

00:58:03.860 | I went to State Farm, couldn't price it myself.

00:58:05.820 | So I had to email it to someone.

00:58:07.160 | But I did that.

00:58:08.220 | And sure enough, I think I'm going

00:58:09.740 | to save $600, $700 a year on insurance.

00:58:12.700 | Might even be closer to $1,000 just

00:58:14.820 | by shopping around and repricing.

00:58:16.420 | So that's my little fun thing for 2023

00:58:19.060 | is if you haven't repriced your insurance in a little while,

00:58:22.060 | especially if you've got your home or your rental,

00:58:24.180 | you've got your car, maybe you've

00:58:25.540 | got an umbrella policy, you start to add all the things up,

00:58:28.380 | could be worth shopping around and getting a deal.

00:58:30.780 | Yeah, I think there are a lot of these little one-time-a-year

00:58:34.820 | things that you should do that a lot of us don't do, frankly.

00:58:37.420 | But at least to be mindful of it, like I said,

00:58:39.660 | throw it in some task list that you

00:58:41.500 | have come up in mid-January.

00:58:43.020 | And you could do it more often.

00:58:44.740 | But frankly, is the juice worth the squeeze?

00:58:46.580 | So I think one-time-a-year, price insurance.

00:58:49.780 | One-time-a-year, hopefully at minimum but certainly

00:58:52.860 | one-time-a-year, go through your credit card bill.

00:58:54.860 | Just line by line, are there any recurring things

00:58:57.500 | that you just forgot about?

00:58:59.100 | This happened to me a couple of times with random Peacock

00:59:02.300 | or Hulu or some kind of Paramount Plus or some such.

00:59:05.260 | And like, oh, I wanted to watch Top Gun Maverick,

00:59:07.700 | so I got Paramount Plus.

00:59:08.860 | And I'm probably going to be paying

00:59:10.660 | for that for a couple of months because I'm stupid

00:59:13.700 | and I didn't cancel it.

00:59:14.940 | Just use Rocket-- look, they're a partner of the show.

00:59:17.380 | They're not paying me to say this,

00:59:18.800 | but Rocket Money is so good at this.

00:59:21.340 | Do tell.

00:59:22.300 | Free app, you sync your cards, and then they

00:59:24.780 | scan for things that are recurring.

00:59:26.420 | And then they just give you an easy view

00:59:28.220 | of here are your recurring subscriptions.

00:59:29.420 | That's cool.

00:59:29.980 | Now, their business model is, OK,

00:59:32.740 | is there a recurring subscription?

00:59:34.460 | You can go cancel it.

00:59:35.500 | Or you could just tap one button,

00:59:37.060 | be like, go cancel it for me.

00:59:38.500 | And you need their premium subscription to do that.

00:59:40.700 | But then they'll go reach out to whatever company is

00:59:43.180 | and just cancel it for you.

00:59:44.380 | And depending on the state you live in-- in California,

00:59:46.980 | companies are required to let you opt out online.

00:59:49.260 | But if you have a New York Times subscription

00:59:50.980 | and you don't live in California,

00:59:51.900 | it's so hard to cancel.

00:59:52.860 | By the way, if you don't live in California

00:59:54.260 | and you have things to cancel, next time you're in California,

00:59:56.500 | just go online and do that.

00:59:57.620 | Or if you have a VPN that has a California option,

01:00:00.620 | it's really easy to cancel online here.

01:00:02.220 | That's very cool.

01:00:02.980 | Now, it's certainly very timely, as I'm

01:00:04.540 | talking about doing it manually.

01:00:05.700 | We're talking about saving time.

01:00:06.740 | Saving time, saving time.

01:00:08.060 | That's the whole game.

01:00:08.980 | But when you do reprice your insurance,

01:00:10.540 | make sure you actually look at how many miles you

01:00:12.620 | drive on your car.

01:00:13.420 | So we don't drive that much.

01:00:15.060 | And so one of our car policies is priced at 5,000 miles

01:00:18.260 | a year, one's at 3,000.

01:00:19.580 | But if you don't tell your insurance company,

01:00:21.460 | they price it at like 10,000 or 12,000 a year.

01:00:23.580 | And you can actually save a ton of money

01:00:24.900 | if you don't use your car a lot.

01:00:26.060 | I think a lot of us now that we're working from home more

01:00:28.220 | might not be driving as much as you used to.

01:00:30.180 | So you might be overpaying for insurance,

01:00:32.220 | even without switching carriers, just

01:00:33.840 | because you didn't tell them that you're

01:00:35.540 | using less than whatever they set as your average mileage.

01:00:39.100 | That's a cool tip.

01:00:40.020 | I like that.

01:00:40.660 | I mean, that's easy, right?

01:00:41.820 | Like, hey, just a quick email, quick phone call.

01:00:44.580 | That's cool.

01:00:45.340 | I think we're describing, like, how do you do simple things

01:00:48.620 | that it's just not going to take a ton of time?

01:00:50.540 | And you've heard me reference Todoist a bunch of times here.

01:00:53.040 | But I want to offload everything out of my brain, everything.

01:00:57.740 | So I have all of these recurring tasks.

01:01:00.420 | And I don't think that's the best answer.

01:01:02.300 | Knowing you, you have some better answer than Todoist.

01:01:04.500 | I don't doubt it for one second.

01:01:05.880 | But for me, it's like, OK, if I am 100% essentially adamant

01:01:13.200 | about putting everything in my life into Todoist,

01:01:15.800 | then I don't have to think about it ever again.

01:01:18.400 | So if a task comes up, even down to-- like,

01:01:20.880 | I just renewed global entry.

01:01:23.520 | And literally, the next time I have to renew is 2027.

01:01:27.920 | So I just quite literally put the task in.

01:01:30.560 | It comes due July of 2027 for February 2027.

01:01:35.880 | And now I never have to think about that ever again.

01:01:38.600 | Because I know when 2027 rolls around February,

01:01:41.880 | I'm going to see that.

01:01:42.840 | And I have the URL for where I need to renew.

01:01:45.840 | And it's just there.

01:01:46.720 | The psychological baggage of getting all of this nonsense

01:01:50.200 | out of your head, when you free that,

01:01:53.120 | it's like the most freeing feeling you'll ever experience.

01:01:55.600 | Think about all of those things that

01:01:57.120 | are rattling around in most people's heads of,

01:01:59.120 | oh, I have to do this next week.

01:02:00.440 | And I have to make that phone call two weeks from now,

01:02:02.680 | whatever.

01:02:03.720 | You don't have to do that.

01:02:04.840 | Just get it out of your head.

01:02:06.560 | Put it, in this case, on digital paper.

01:02:09.240 | And your life is so much better.

01:02:10.960 | So that is probably the thing that

01:02:13.440 | has improved my life most significantly

01:02:15.080 | in the last couple of years.

01:02:16.720 | But again, like I said, you have to be 100% compliant with it.

01:02:20.440 | Because if you're not, then you'll always

01:02:22.360 | have that nagging doubt that, oh, is it really in there?

01:02:25.360 | Can I really trust this?

01:02:26.960 | But when you can trust it 100%, you're golden.

01:02:29.040 | So I don't know.

01:02:29.960 | Do you use anything like that?

01:02:31.600 | I do not have a good system like that.

01:02:33.640 | I do use this app called Trustworthy,

01:02:35.560 | which I'll call the family operating system, where

01:02:38.280 | you can basically store all of your IDs,

01:02:41.840 | your vaccination cards, your passports, your tax returns.

01:02:44.960 | It's like a secure, organized repository.

01:02:47.560 | You could have a Dropbox folder and put all this there.

01:02:50.240 | But it's not as organized.

01:02:51.880 | This has an app.

01:02:52.840 | So when I'm at the doctor's office, and they're like,

01:02:55.080 | can we reconfirm your daughter's insurance?

01:02:56.600 | I'm like, yes, I know where her insurance card is.

01:02:58.440 | You get in a car accident, where's your car insurance?

01:03:00.360 | I know exactly where that is.

01:03:01.560 | And then on top of that, I like it

01:03:03.360 | because you can nominate a person, which for us

01:03:05.800 | is like my sister-in-law and my wife.

01:03:07.440 | It's like, if something were to happen to you,

01:03:09.520 | let these people, through some verification,

01:03:11.840 | have access to all of our stuff.

01:03:13.600 | So we just store all of our stuff there.

01:03:15.880 | And it actually has a feature like this.

01:03:17.480 | You upload your passport or your driver's license,

01:03:20.480 | and you put in the expiration date.

01:03:22.080 | And then they remind you, hey, your driver's license

01:03:24.440 | expires in six months.

01:03:25.440 | So it's a little bit different in that it's not

01:03:27.440 | a central repository.

01:03:28.880 | But for a lot of those kind of expiring things,

01:03:31.480 | I have that in there.

01:03:32.600 | But I have not found a task management solution that I love.

01:03:35.480 | I got to work on that.

01:03:36.400 | But we are well on our way to filling an episode.

01:03:40.560 | And we had a whole topic of health.

01:03:42.920 | Do we want to jump into that?

01:03:44.160 | Do we want to do that again the next time?

01:03:45.840 | What do you think?

01:03:46.600 | Maybe we give a quick overview, because I suspect

01:03:49.600 | with a lot of this stuff, we're at the beginning of the year

01:03:51.640 | here.

01:03:52.160 | We're both exploring.

01:03:53.400 | And I think what could be cool is

01:03:55.920 | for there to be some accountability

01:03:57.880 | to the audience of, hey, we're going to actually follow

01:04:00.960 | through on this.

01:04:01.360 | Because I think that's what we tell our audience

01:04:03.480 | all the time is, it's great to take in information,

01:04:06.360 | and that's all well and good.

01:04:08.280 | But if you don't take action, it's all worthless.

01:04:10.760 | So you have to get up off the couch and take action.

01:04:13.320 | Also, frankly, I fall down on this a lot.

01:04:15.720 | There are probably dozens of things

01:04:17.880 | that I promised over the years that, oh, I'm going to do this,

01:04:20.480 | and I don't follow up, because there's no accountability.

01:04:22.840 | So it would be pretty cool, maybe on some level,

01:04:25.600 | for us to be accountability partners,

01:04:27.280 | and then by extension, the audience to some degree.

01:04:30.040 | I don't have a prepared list of things

01:04:31.720 | I want you and the audience to hold me accountable for when

01:04:34.360 | it comes to some of these things.

01:04:35.720 | I know you have a few on health.

01:04:37.760 | Why don't we set the stage for this at a high level

01:04:40.960 | and say, look, health is a big thing for us.

01:04:42.920 | We want to spend some time focused on it.

01:04:44.640 | So one, if this is interesting as an episode,

01:04:47.560 | definitely reach out to Brad.

01:04:48.840 | If you're listening to all the hacks, reach out to me.

01:04:50.160 | If you're listening to us, reach out to both of us.

01:04:51.440 | It doesn't matter.

01:04:52.000 | But let us know, so we know, should we keep this up?

01:04:54.080 | Should we keep doing this?

01:04:54.960 | You don't have to send a long email.

01:04:56.240 | You can send Chris at all the hacks and say, do Brad again.

01:05:00.200 | I'd rather get the feedback than get this really nice response.

01:05:03.000 | Whether it's on social or email or whatever format you like,

01:05:06.240 | I'd love to know what people think of this,

01:05:08.120 | so we can come back and finish this whole health thing.

01:05:10.400 | What do you think?

01:05:11.160 | That's a great idea.

01:05:12.040 | Same for either your audience or mine.

01:05:14.560 | Go to chooseavi.com or just get on my newsletter

01:05:17.160 | at chooseavi.com/subscribe.

01:05:19.440 | When you hit reply, it literally comes to me.

01:05:21.400 | So I'm the one who'll be reading all those emails.

01:05:23.600 | So let us know what you think about this.

01:05:25.440 | We kind of conceptualize this as, like you said,

01:05:27.640 | a conversation, just kind of a random show of, hey,

01:05:30.480 | what's going on in our lives?

01:05:31.680 | And I think just to set the stage for this,

01:05:34.200 | certainly for next time, is, yeah, I think my bold move,

01:05:37.720 | as I talked about with that episode with Dominic Cortuccio,

01:05:40.520 | is I want this to be my healthiest year ever.

01:05:43.680 | I don't precisely know today how I can quantify that.

01:05:48.040 | But I'm not letting that limit me.

01:05:50.080 | With my kind of over-anxiety analytical brain,

01:05:53.600 | I would have let that be the limiting factor

01:05:55.680 | and not gotten started.

01:05:57.200 | But I'm going in with an open mind of, hey,

01:06:00.120 | I want to experiment.

01:06:01.000 | So just a couple of things that I've

01:06:03.040 | been doing so far which I think have made a big difference.

01:06:06.600 | First, Chris, you know more than anybody,

01:06:08.680 | I am a massive fanboy of Dr. Peter Attia.

01:06:11.800 | I've been following him since, I think,

01:06:13.360 | episode 50 of The Tim Ferriss Show, which came out maybe

01:06:15.840 | nine years ago, plus or minus, which is crazy.

01:06:19.040 | He's a pretty high-performing athlete throughout his life.

01:06:23.880 | And a couple of years back, he decided

01:06:26.400 | to what seemed like basically stop

01:06:28.960 | a lot of his heavy training in favor of this program called

01:06:33.040 | DNS, so it's Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization.

01:06:37.720 | And it sounded fascinating to me,

01:06:40.040 | because I'd kind of been plagued with some shoulder issues

01:06:43.040 | and neck issues.

01:06:43.840 | And everything that I tried was always a band-aid.

01:06:46.520 | There was no actual substantive fix to it.

01:06:50.640 | And the more I learned about DNS,

01:06:53.320 | the more that I thought this could be the answer.

01:06:55.760 | There aren't that many DNS practitioners in the US,

01:06:57.960 | but luckily, there's one here in Richmond.

01:06:59.960 | And I've been going to him for the last month

01:07:02.160 | or two at this point.

01:07:03.520 | And Chris, I kid you not, it has been the best thing

01:07:06.640 | that I've ever done for my body.

01:07:09.320 | I feel so much better, because it actually

01:07:12.800 | looks at the brain and nervous system

01:07:16.440 | as almost going back to developmental milestones

01:07:19.840 | from when we were infants.

01:07:21.440 | And if you missed a milestone, it's

01:07:24.520 | not like you were incapacitated for the rest of your life.

01:07:26.680 | Obviously, I've been a fairly normal person.

01:07:28.600 | But you always are coming up with some workaround.

01:07:31.960 | And what that leads to in a lot of cases

01:07:33.680 | is injury and/or stress in certain spots.

01:07:38.000 | So very long story short, because again, we'll

01:07:40.200 | talk about this more in depth, is my neck and my hip flexors,

01:07:44.480 | which are constantly tight, have never felt better.

01:07:48.200 | I wake up in the morning, and I'm like, holy cow.

01:07:51.160 | I can move my hips in a way that I didn't think was possible.

01:07:54.080 | Like, I didn't think it was possible

01:07:55.720 | that I could feel this good.

01:07:57.160 | And that's just from a handful of times

01:08:00.280 | going to this DNS doctor.

01:08:01.640 | And again, with the experimenting and not

01:08:03.960 | worrying about money and just trying to explore this,

01:08:07.040 | it's fairly expensive.

01:08:08.000 | That's not covered by insurance.

01:08:09.320 | I'm paying out of pocket every single time I go.

01:08:11.880 | But it's working.

01:08:13.520 | And I would be foolish, in my opinion, to not do it

01:08:16.840 | and to not continue just over dollars, which, as Perkins

01:08:20.920 | would say, when you wake up and you're 85

01:08:23.320 | and you have more money than you could ever use,

01:08:25.480 | are you going to look back on whatever?

01:08:26.840 | And now he would talk about experiences and memory

01:08:29.040 | dividends and all these things.

01:08:30.340 | But in my case, I might get extra years of vitality

01:08:34.480 | out of spending this money.

01:08:36.040 | So to me, it's an absolute no-brainer.

01:08:37.720 | The other thing is morning walks.

01:08:40.360 | I also listen to the Huberman Lab podcast a ton.

01:08:42.800 | So he's always talking about getting morning sunlight.

01:08:45.440 | Easiest way to do that is just go on a walk.

01:08:47.920 | And it's just wonderful to be out in nature,

01:08:50.560 | peaceful in the morning.

01:08:51.520 | Nobody's around.

01:08:52.560 | You get some morning sunlight.

01:08:53.960 | It's just been these add-on effects.

01:08:55.840 | The third and biggest thing, though this is the newest,

01:08:58.360 | so I don't have all that much to it,

01:08:59.860 | is I hired an online fitness coach who I found through

01:09:04.040 | Twitter that I believed in what he was espousing.

01:09:08.120 | And he wound up having this program.

01:09:11.320 | And now, like I said before, I'm going

01:09:13.140 | in to the gym with Jonathan, my Choose a Vibe business

01:09:16.480 | partner, four times a week.

01:09:18.160 | And it's just awesome.

01:09:19.800 | It's also, frankly, like I talked about,

01:09:21.480 | making the effort for connection is now

01:09:24.080 | I get to hang out with my buddy Jonathan six to eight hours

01:09:26.600 | a week when I wasn't previously.

01:09:29.120 | I am working towards something because I

01:09:31.560 | think that's the other thing.

01:09:32.720 | Like, I'm in reasonably good shape.

01:09:34.280 | So it's not like I'm going from couch potato

01:09:37.000 | to trying to be Mr. Olympia.

01:09:38.880 | That's not what we're doing here.

01:09:40.220 | But when I go into the gym, when I go into CrossFit, I love it,

01:09:43.920 | but it doesn't feel like I'm working towards something.

01:09:46.200 | I think having goals and having tangible improvements

01:09:50.240 | and having an accountability partner

01:09:52.240 | are really going to benefit me.

01:09:54.080 | We're in week two here.

01:09:55.080 | This is workout number eight.

01:09:56.280 | So it's a very small sample size.

01:09:57.800 | But I think the conjunction of all of these things

01:10:00.400 | are really working pretty well.

01:10:01.960 | And then it's a mindset of exploration

01:10:05.400 | and just wanting to be as healthy as I possibly can.

01:10:07.680 | Because, frankly, I'm 43 years old, which I still

01:10:10.760 | can't believe, and not getting any younger, obviously.

01:10:13.520 | And the time is now.

01:10:15.520 | That's how I'm thinking about it.

01:10:17.640 | I'm turning 39 this year.

01:10:19.320 | And my goal is to dial in health before I turn 40.

01:10:22.800 | I did an episode with Dr. Jordan Shlain.

01:10:24.840 | We talked about I've got high cholesterol and then

01:10:27.160 | the impact of that.

01:10:28.000 | That's the thing that I'm tackling first.

01:10:30.120 | And through a combo of both medicine and lifestyle changes.

01:10:35.080 | But I'm very early in that journey.

01:10:36.840 | When you have two small kids and you start a podcast

01:10:39.280 | and you go full time on it, I felt like for a while

01:10:41.600 | I was treading water.

01:10:42.800 | And now I'm like, OK, we're starting

01:10:44.480 | to get things dialed in.

01:10:45.800 | Need to get the exercise back on the regular regime.

01:10:48.960 | I think we've been doing well with food.

01:10:50.600 | So I'm not too worried there.

01:10:51.840 | But that's the big one I'm focused on right now.

01:10:54.960 | Going back to very early conversation,

01:10:57.360 | I was talking about apps and how it's crazy to spend money.

01:11:00.080 | It's crazy how medical things are the same.

01:11:02.840 | It seems wild to pay for a doctor that

01:11:06.400 | isn't covered by your insurance, or to pay for a treatment,

01:11:09.040 | or to pay to get blood work done,

01:11:11.160 | or blood analysis, or DNA analysis, all these things.

01:11:13.880 | But it also seems crazy to not allocate

01:11:18.040 | some portion of your budget to your health.

01:11:20.280 | And so we actually had a conversation

01:11:22.200 | on that episode a few weeks ago about how

01:11:24.120 | do you think about what to allocate

01:11:25.800 | in your budget towards health?

01:11:27.320 | And after the fact, I emailed Jordan.

01:11:30.680 | I was like, hey, I'm thinking about a doctor.

01:11:32.600 | So Jordan runs a concierge practice that, for me,

01:11:35.040 | is not within the budget that I want for my health.

01:11:37.640 | It's quite expensive.

01:11:38.760 | But I was like, do you know someone

01:11:40.440 | that I could work with that's not as expensive?

01:11:42.000 | And he was like, what's your budget?

01:11:43.040 | And I was like, I don't know.

01:11:44.160 | And then I asked Amy.

01:11:45.000 | And I was like, what's our budget for health?

01:11:46.520 | And we're like, I don't know.

01:11:47.720 | So it's something that I need an answer to,

01:11:50.000 | because I'm not necessarily always the budgeting type.

01:11:53.520 | But a budget gives you permission to spend.

01:11:56.440 | And so in some areas, I feel like I don't necessarily

01:11:58.800 | need a budget.

01:11:59.440 | I know what's a reasonable amount

01:12:00.800 | to spend just instinctively.

01:12:02.280 | But with health, I feel like I need to create a budget.

01:12:05.160 | And I might even start doing this with an FSA,

01:12:07.720 | though open enrollment just ended,

01:12:09.400 | so I've got to wait a year.

01:12:10.520 | But I feel like I need to force myself

01:12:13.000 | to be comfortable spending money on health.

01:12:14.840 | And if I could create a budget that says,

01:12:16.520 | you have $2,000 to spend on health,

01:12:18.680 | then maybe the answer is you say, whatever's not here,

01:12:21.280 | we're going to give away.

01:12:22.560 | Something that makes it a little bit more accountable.

01:12:24.760 | With an FSA, it would be like that.

01:12:25.960 | Whatever you don't spend, you actually can't use.

01:12:28.560 | You lose it.

01:12:29.240 | I would encourage anyone who has an expiring FSA

01:12:31.520 | to go buy stuff that a local shelter needs

01:12:33.760 | and don't let it go to waste.

01:12:35.360 | But I want to create something there,

01:12:37.280 | because I feel like I need to force myself

01:12:39.040 | to spend more on my health.

01:12:40.160 | That's a big one.

01:12:40.640 | We had a whole list of 10 or 12 bullets

01:12:42.520 | of what we want to focus on with health.

01:12:44.240 | We're going to have to save that for the next time.

01:12:46.000 | Yeah, to be continued.

01:12:47.040 | We didn't get to travel and some of that stuff.

01:12:48.560 | So we got a lot.

01:12:49.240 | Kids, Brad's superpower is teaching his kids

01:12:52.080 | all these amazing lessons.

01:12:53.120 | So we're going to get to that.

01:12:54.440 | But I feel like we hit on a lot.

01:12:57.880 | I'm like jazzed to go do a lot of the things

01:13:00.160 | we talked about that you shared.

01:13:01.480 | This is awesome.

01:13:02.880 | Yeah, I knew this was going to be fun.

01:13:04.440 | It worked out even better than I anticipated.

01:13:06.520 | And it's pretty wild.

01:13:07.600 | We have so many of these things, A, to follow up on.

01:13:10.160 | This will be some accountability.

01:13:11.560 | But B, there's all these topics we didn't get to.

01:13:13.600 | I'm up for doing this a handful of times a year minimum.

01:13:15.960 | I think this would be awesome.

01:13:17.200 | I think it'll be fun and super valuable, obviously.

01:13:19.720 | It's always good to talk to you, my friend.

01:13:21.480 | Selfishly, that's the best part.

01:13:23.040 | So I would say, if you're listening,

01:13:24.520 | if you like this or don't like it,

01:13:25.920 | I mean, genuinely, if you listen to this

01:13:27.600 | and you're like, this was not a good episode,

01:13:29.440 | please let me know.

01:13:30.400 | I want to create content that you like.

01:13:32.400 | Brad and I can have this conversation

01:13:34.160 | and not record it or record it.

01:13:35.680 | We're going to have it anyways.

01:13:37.000 | So let us know.

01:13:38.440 | But if you do like it, send us topics

01:13:40.120 | that you think would be fun.

01:13:41.280 | But if you have questions that might be better suited

01:13:43.520 | for a conversation than just a response, send them in.

01:13:47.160 | And unless we get a bunch of bad feedback,

01:13:48.960 | we'll probably do this again, and we'll see where it goes.

01:13:51.480 | Nice.

01:13:52.000 | Yeah, sounds like a plan.

01:13:53.400 | Awesome.

01:13:53.880 | Very, very cool, Chris.

01:13:55.200 | Always good to chat.

01:13:56.160 | And yeah, until next time, please send in the feedback.

01:13:59.040 | The cool thing is we could talk about anything.

01:14:01.400 | That's what's fun about these conceptualized random shows

01:14:04.160 | is it can be anything.

01:14:05.120 | All right.

01:14:05.640 | Thanks for being here.

01:14:06.760 | I look forward to the next one.

01:14:09.640 | I hope you enjoyed episode 100.

01:14:11.200 | And honestly, thank you so much for all the support

01:14:13.800 | the last two years.

01:14:14.680 | I really don't know if I could have

01:14:16.120 | kept going if I didn't know all of you

01:14:17.960 | were here with me for the journey.

01:14:19.400 | So I am excited for everything 2023

01:14:22.040 | will have in store for All The Hacks.

01:14:23.560 | And I can't wait to share more of that with you.

01:14:25.560 | Finally, one quick reminder to go check out Brad's podcast,

01:14:29.040 | Choose a Five, which is awesome.

01:14:30.720 | If you have any feedback on the show, questions for me,

01:14:33.280 | or just want to say hi, I'm Chris at allthehacks.com.

01:14:36.400 | That's it for this week.

01:14:37.520 | See you next week.

01:14:39.480 | [BIRDS CHIRPING]

01:14:42.820 | [BLANK_AUDIO]