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00:01:34.640 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:41.760 | your life, money, and travel.

00:01:43.600 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am so excited you're here today.

00:01:46.560 | It's a bit crazy to think that I'm already at episode 50.

00:01:50.160 | For those of you who've been with me on the journey, thank you so much for

00:01:53.800 | listening.

00:01:54.560 | And for those of you who are new today, looking to upgrade your own life,

00:01:58.120 | definitely don't miss out on the previous 49 episodes.

00:02:01.680 | They cover everything from travel hacking, maximizing your credit card

00:02:05.480 | points, honing your negotiation skills, mastering your charisma, optimizing your

00:02:10.360 | health, and so much more.

00:02:12.080 | I am certain that if you scroll through the archives, there will be an episode

00:02:16.160 | that speaks to you and improves your life meaningfully.

00:02:19.520 | And in today's episode, we're not only going to talk about improving our own

00:02:23.720 | lives, but improving the lives of others.

00:02:26.160 | Because I'm joined by my good friend, Adam Nash, and we're going to be talking

00:02:30.680 | about giving and philanthropy.

00:02:32.560 | Adam is a seasoned executive, investor, and advisor.

00:02:36.440 | He sits on the board at the investing company, Acorns.

00:02:39.600 | He teaches a personal finance for engineers course at Stanford, and he was

00:02:44.240 | previously the president and CEO at Wealthfront, though it was before my time

00:02:48.320 | there.

00:02:48.640 | But most relevant to our conversation today, he is currently the co-founder and

00:02:53.560 | CEO of Daffy, a not-for-profit community built around a new and modern way to

00:02:59.360 | give.

00:02:59.800 | It is a fantastic product that I love, and I'm not an advisor or investor in the

00:03:05.040 | company.

00:03:05.560 | I am just a fan.

00:03:06.960 | In our conversation, we're going to talk about all aspects of philanthropy, how

00:03:12.000 | much people give, the friction in giving, how to pick and vet charitable

00:03:15.560 | organizations, the tax benefits of being charitable, and ways to maximize those

00:03:20.440 | benefits.

00:03:21.160 | There is a lot to cover, so let's jump in.

00:03:23.920 | Well, after I remind you that Chris Hutchins works at Wealthfront.

00:03:28.240 | All opinions expressed by Chris and his guests are solely their own opinions and

00:03:32.040 | do not reflect the opinion of Wealthfront.

00:03:33.800 | This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for

00:03:37.720 | investment decisions.

00:03:38.680 | Adam, thank you so much for being here.

00:03:41.320 | Chris, great to be here.

00:03:42.880 | Excited to talk about all of these topics.

00:03:45.000 | Awesome.

00:03:46.840 | So I just want to kick us off.

00:03:48.720 | What do you think is one of the biggest misconceptions people have today when it

00:03:52.080 | comes to philanthropy?

00:03:52.960 | You know, there's a lot of things about philanthropy that people don't know, but

00:03:57.840 | the most common misperception in my book is that people think it's something just

00:04:01.600 | for billionaires.

00:04:02.520 | They get so obsessed with what billionaires are doing with their money and how much

00:04:05.840 | they're giving.

00:04:06.400 | It makes the news.

00:04:07.280 | It's in your feed.

00:04:08.200 | You don't realize that actually the research shows that almost everyone gives.

00:04:12.320 | Almost everyone was raised to believe that to be a good person, you remember that no

00:04:16.480 | matter what's going on in your life, there are people out there less fortunate than

00:04:20.160 | yourself, right?

00:04:21.480 | And that everyone can make a difference.

00:04:23.520 | And the data backs it up, right?

00:04:25.520 | In the U.S., somewhere between 60 to 70 million households every year give

00:04:29.680 | proportionally.

00:04:30.680 | People with less money actually give a higher percentage of their income and wealth

00:04:34.520 | than wealthier people.

00:04:35.680 | But the conversation tends to be dominated by a few billionaires when really, from my

00:04:41.280 | point of view, what's helpful for people is understanding what you can do and what

00:04:46.560 | you should do and what makes you feel good to do.

00:04:48.880 | And so that's probably the biggest misperception I see out there when I talk

00:04:52.280 | about giving.

00:04:52.880 | One of my favorite stats, I guess it's not a stat, but a piece of research on giving

00:04:56.840 | was from a book called Happy Money.

00:04:58.360 | And if you haven't read it, they try to break down like things you can use your

00:05:01.880 | money for to be happy and giving is one of them and helping others.

00:05:04.760 | Is there any kind of framework that's generic enough to apply to anyone about how

00:05:09.080 | to think about giving or how much to give?

00:05:11.640 | I don't know if there's one answer, but it's funny, I actually just wrote a post

00:05:14.520 | about this a few weeks ago about my own personal experience, which I actually have

00:05:18.720 | found that is shared with a number of people.

00:05:20.800 | It was about 10, 11 years ago that LinkedIn went public and I was the head of product

00:05:25.800 | there for a number of years.

00:05:27.360 | So that was actually my first exposure to a donor advised fund, like an account

00:05:32.160 | dedicated for charity.

00:05:33.400 | And the minute you have to open one of these accounts, you face this question that you

00:05:37.720 | don't know, which is like, well, how much do I put in there?

00:05:39.480 | How much do I give to charity?

00:05:41.280 | And it sounds like such a simple question.

00:05:43.560 | My accountant said it was simple, right?

00:05:45.840 | You know, you've had a big year.

00:05:47.120 | LinkedIn's going public.

00:05:48.240 | Think about how much you give to charity every year and multiply it by 10.

00:05:52.440 | And that's a good place to start for funding your account.

00:05:54.960 | But that didn't make it any easier because I don't know how much I gave to charity

00:05:58.640 | every year. I could look at my Quicken.

00:05:59.920 | I'm like one of these old time people, like I have a Quicken file that goes back to

00:06:03.760 | 1994, so I actually can go back and look at these things and what my spending is.

00:06:07.840 | But it actually was a great moment for me and my wife to actually talk about what we

00:06:12.000 | wanted to give and how we thought about it.

00:06:14.200 | The biggest thing I advocate for people and recommend is just to have a goal, just

00:06:19.120 | have a number, right?

00:06:20.400 | Like we have goals for all sorts of things.

00:06:21.920 | You and I both know, right, like saving for retirement, saving for college, saving for

00:06:26.880 | a house. There's two things that you do to make that one is you actually figure out

00:06:30.640 | what your goal is. And second, you automate it.

00:06:32.560 | Right. And giving can be the same way.

00:06:35.000 | And so that question of how much you should give actually was amazing.

00:06:39.280 | Doing user research for Daffy, I had the chance to ask dozens and dozens of people what

00:06:43.880 | they think they should give to charity every year.

00:06:46.120 | And the amazing thing is that almost no one agrees.

00:06:48.760 | Like some people use percentages, some people use numbers, big numbers, small numbers.

00:06:54.160 | For some people, it's about where they are in life and if they can afford to do it.

00:06:58.000 | But the thing that was universal is that actually almost everyone does have an opinion

00:07:02.760 | about it. And almost everyone I talked to thought it should be something, not nothing.

00:07:07.880 | OK. And so I try not to be prescriptive to people on how much they should give as much

00:07:13.440 | as asking them how much they think they should give every year and actually spend a

00:07:17.240 | little bit of time setting that goal.

00:07:18.920 | And then, of course, we all know great ways to stick to goals once we set them.

00:07:22.720 | Yeah, automation is great.

00:07:24.640 | Are there benchmarks even for people who are not sure what's even normal?

00:07:28.440 | You know, the data actually exists, right?

00:07:30.640 | So the IRS publishes data every year based on zip code and a number of different factors

00:07:36.160 | about how much giving happens.

00:07:37.480 | There are also private institutions.

00:07:39.640 | I'm actually an investor in one private company called Zest is This for Nonprofits, etc.

00:07:44.120 | So the data is out there, but almost no one accesses it.

00:07:47.680 | It's not easy to come by.

00:07:49.240 | In fact, one of the features we put into our initial release is that it's a mobile app,

00:07:53.160 | right? So based on the zip code, the city or state you're in, we tell you what the median

00:07:57.640 | household in your city gives to charity every year.

00:08:00.600 | OK, but it's a very natural question.

00:08:02.480 | I think most of us want to be good people.

00:08:05.280 | We want to do the right thing.

00:08:06.760 | I actually think one of the problems in philanthropy is that there isn't enough information

00:08:10.920 | available to people, right?

00:08:12.760 | Like, think about how many calculators there are out there that help people figure out

00:08:16.440 | how much they should save for retirement or save for college or how much they need to

00:08:20.400 | do to buy a house.

00:08:21.640 | There's probably too many of those calculators out there, too many articles.

00:08:24.360 | But when it comes to giving, it's all amorphous.

00:08:27.120 | The only data you see published tends to be about the largest gifts.

00:08:30.200 | I mean, maybe if you go to university, right, like and you get the alumni booklet, you can

00:08:34.640 | see the tiers of who's giving and how much.

00:08:36.920 | But we really don't have a lot of information about it.

00:08:39.600 | I think it makes us all a little uncomfortable and we feel a little guilty, I think, because

00:08:44.720 | we don't know if we're doing enough or doing the right amount.

00:08:49.080 | And I think that most of us want to do the right thing.

00:08:51.280 | Well, it sounds like the the best part is if you're just doing it, that's great.

00:08:55.880 | And similar to saving, when I give people advice for saving, I say, well, first off,

00:09:00.360 | just start saving.

00:09:01.200 | And then if you're not sure what to do, start small.

00:09:03.360 | And if it feels like you could do more, increase your savings rate.

00:09:06.200 | And I assume you could just apply a similar metric there.

00:09:09.320 | I don't know how much I can afford to give, but I know I could give a hundred dollars

00:09:13.520 | a month. It's like, great, do that at the end of the year or at the end of six months.

00:09:16.760 | Does that feel low? Maybe try to increase the number if it does.

00:09:19.760 | If it feels like too much, you can dial it back.

00:09:22.360 | But just starting somewhere and tracking it might give you some place to kind of compare

00:09:27.920 | and contrast what changes you'd make in the future.

00:09:30.080 | Yeah, I can't agree more.

00:09:31.760 | This is one of the things I love about this space is I think we've learned a lot in the

00:09:35.360 | last 10 or 20 years about how to help people save, how to help people invest, how to help

00:09:39.760 | people hit their financial goals.

00:09:41.320 | I'm really excited about this idea of applying all those lessons to philanthropy, to

00:09:45.840 | giving. And most of those lessons apply.

00:09:47.480 | So, yeah, just get started, right?

00:09:48.840 | Like, how should I get started saving for retirement?

00:09:51.520 | The first thing to do is actually to start saving for retirement.

00:09:54.400 | And the rest comes pretty naturally.

00:09:55.920 | And I think with giving, it's even better than saving or investing in a number of ways.

00:09:59.880 | I mean, I love saving and investing.

00:10:01.200 | Let's be clear. I do.

00:10:02.880 | But when you give money and you feel that your money went somewhere, had real impact

00:10:07.480 | on real people, on something you care about, it's a different kind of reward.

00:10:11.880 | And so I actually agree with your advice.

00:10:13.800 | I think that you get started giving to cause to an organization you care about, right?

00:10:19.600 | Not just a checkbox on a window, something that you actually meaningfully care about.

00:10:23.480 | And no matter how much the amount is, it can be just a few dollars.

00:10:26.440 | In general, when you do it, it's a good experience and most people want to do it again.

00:10:31.840 | And so, yeah, getting started.

00:10:33.360 | Well, that's that's the right place to start.

00:10:36.160 | I remember I had given to a charity water birthday thing, which was all the rage, maybe

00:10:42.400 | five, 10 years ago.

00:10:43.760 | And then they tracked you and said, hey, here's that well that your money a year or two

00:10:48.280 | ago contribute to opening.

00:10:49.880 | And I remember, oh, wow, that felt really good.

00:10:51.840 | And that level of kind of follow through from the organization was really cool.

00:10:56.400 | One of the questions I think a lot of people have is how do you even decide whether an

00:11:01.040 | organization you might want to give to is a responsible one, is going to follow through

00:11:05.880 | and use the money wisely?

00:11:07.600 | I know there's some sites with ratings, but is that the best way to do it?

00:11:11.520 | Is there a way you recommend people do diligence if they're thinking about where to give?

00:11:16.600 | Well, I think this is another problem that people have and talk about is while everyone

00:11:20.440 | wants to give, everyone has a little bit of an anxiety of, well, how do I know that this

00:11:24.680 | organization is legitimate?

00:11:26.720 | How do I know if this organization is good?

00:11:28.720 | And then, of course, is it where my money will be best spent?

00:11:31.880 | There are a lot of sites and there's a lot of information available.

00:11:35.680 | Once again, the IRS does publish a list of all the valid registered charities for the

00:11:40.080 | most part in the US.

00:11:41.080 | But this gets back to us a problem we have in the US in general, which is that we're

00:11:45.240 | not comfortable talking about money with each other.

00:11:48.480 | We don't talk about giving as well.

00:11:50.040 | I mean, the reason those birthday campaigns are so effective on Facebook and work is because

00:11:56.160 | actually it turns out it's not just social proof.

00:11:58.520 | It's that if you know the person and they think that that charity is a good one, well,

00:12:03.560 | you've outsourced a little bit of that validation, right?

00:12:06.240 | Their reputation, your relationship, you decide to say, well, this is clearly a good enough

00:12:09.880 | organization for them and it's meaningful to them and I will support them.

00:12:14.320 | And it also feels good to give.

00:12:16.560 | And so I do think that that is part of the process.

00:12:18.680 | I think people should be less afraid to ask each other what organizations and causes they

00:12:24.080 | support.

00:12:25.080 | I think people should be less afraid to share the organizations that they personally support

00:12:28.840 | and why.

00:12:29.840 | I mean, last year in the fall on Twitter, I did campaigns for different events where

00:12:33.560 | I talked about some of the charities that I support.

00:12:36.280 | I even did matching campaigns where I said, you know, hey, everyone for this month, if

00:12:40.000 | you give to this charity, like I'll match it type of thing, which you've probably seen

00:12:43.540 | on Twitter from a lot of celebrities and other folks.

00:12:47.100 | And I think there's a lot of value to that and elevating these charities.

00:12:49.440 | If you talk to the folks who run these charities, they're desperate for people to talk more

00:12:53.720 | about what they do.

00:12:54.720 | Like there's no amount of marketing they can do that really has the same impact of actual

00:12:59.920 | validation and endorsement from people who believe in that charity, believe in that cause.

00:13:05.520 | But yes, for people who want to look at the data, there are a number of sites that do

00:13:08.920 | good jobs of ratings and percentages.

00:13:11.560 | We built them into Daffy, for example, but there's a number of other sites that do this

00:13:15.340 | charity Navigator and other ones.

00:13:18.000 | And I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

00:13:20.340 | I'd also encourage people to consider giving locally, right?

00:13:24.180 | Some great organizations are within a mile of where you live, of where you work.

00:13:30.900 | And it's not that hard to find local organizations and certainly not that hard to check them

00:13:34.920 | out and validate them.

00:13:36.980 | But many people tend to just stick to the big names that they've heard of, right?

00:13:41.220 | Because they think that they're safer, right?

00:13:43.300 | Like they've heard of this organization that's been around for decades.

00:13:46.900 | Once again, this gets back to whatever gives you comfort giving probably is a good thing.

00:13:52.180 | The odds of you giving money to a bad organization are much, much lower than the odds of you

00:13:58.360 | just not getting over the hump to give at all.

00:14:02.080 | And remember, that is the point.

00:14:03.420 | The point is to get resources to people and to causes that you believe in.

00:14:07.900 | - We talked briefly about how to pick a number, but do you believe people could be giving

00:14:12.300 | more?

00:14:13.300 | - It depends how you look at it.

00:14:14.300 | I mean, the US is known in philanthropy circles as a very generous nation.

00:14:19.300 | And that's because if you look at the percent of our economy that we actually give, it's

00:14:23.260 | very high.

00:14:24.260 | So in 2020, it was $471 billion in the US.

00:14:28.020 | That roughly worked out to be about 2.3% of GDP.

00:14:32.500 | That's a big number.

00:14:33.500 | I mean, all of agriculture is less than 1% of GDP in the US.

00:14:36.380 | So that's a very big number.

00:14:38.940 | And so you could ask the question, like, why do other countries give less or give more?

00:14:42.820 | Is it about economics, does it tie to economic inequality?

00:14:46.940 | There's all sorts of reasons.

00:14:47.940 | Is it because of religion, right?

00:14:49.540 | The most common donations that people make tend to be to religious and academic institutions.

00:14:54.580 | But I think overall, Americans are generous.

00:14:56.400 | But when you ask the question, could we be more generous?

00:14:58.580 | I mean, absolutely.

00:15:00.100 | There's no question.

00:15:01.100 | You know, one of the things that I was surprised to find out was that there's very good research.

00:15:05.740 | You mentioned behavioral finance earlier and like automating things, etc.

00:15:08.780 | But there's actually very good research that suggests that the amount that we want to give

00:15:14.620 | as individuals is quite a bit higher than what we actually give.

00:15:19.300 | And actually, I validated this myself, just in user research, etc.

00:15:21.860 | If you ask someone how much they think they should give every year, they give you a number.

00:15:27.140 | You ask them how much they actually gave last year, you get a little bit of a pause, a little

00:15:32.980 | bit of guilt, because the truth is, we have busy lives, right?

00:15:37.220 | We don't get around to it.

00:15:38.900 | And so it turns out this research says that we would give about 32% more if we actually

00:15:45.260 | just gave the amount that we think we should, like not even stretching ourselves, not pushing

00:15:51.500 | us to give more than we think we should.

00:15:53.140 | Just if you're the type of person who thinks you should give a few hundred dollars to charity

00:15:56.360 | every year, or a few thousand dollars, or whatever your number is, it turns out for

00:16:00.740 | the most part, we don't stick to it.

00:16:02.680 | And I know you know this, but it's pretty obvious why.

00:16:05.300 | It's the exact same reason.

00:16:06.460 | How much would we save for retirement, if you had to write a check or manually make

00:16:10.900 | the transaction?

00:16:11.900 | We all know that it's like, no, no, no, have the 401k come out of your paycheck, right?

00:16:16.060 | That actually helps people stick to a plan.

00:16:19.000 | And it hasn't been applied to giving.

00:16:21.020 | But yeah, definitely we could all give more, even though we do give a lot.

00:16:24.340 | And like I said, if you look at it, that $471 billion, over $330 billion of that is from

00:16:29.600 | individuals, right?

00:16:31.500 | These aren't foundations and corporations giving all sorts of money.

00:16:34.460 | I mean, they are.

00:16:35.460 | I mean, more than $100 billion a year.

00:16:38.340 | But individuals are generous.

00:16:39.380 | I think they would be more generous, though, if they came up with a system for giving.

00:16:44.900 | Are there other hurdles or barriers other than just the hassle of following through?

00:16:49.500 | Is it finding the right places?

00:16:52.060 | Or what do you think else holds people back?

00:16:54.180 | So you bring up a good question.

00:16:55.180 | You actually brought up some of the issues earlier, which I agree with.

00:16:58.340 | I'm a product person at heart.

00:16:59.860 | So I think of product problems.

00:17:02.220 | And when I looked at giving, it was very clear to me that at minimum, giving is two very

00:17:07.000 | hard problems for people.

00:17:08.820 | There's the how much can I afford to give, right?

00:17:13.180 | Which is a hard problem.

00:17:14.180 | I guess that's tied a little bit to how much you should give.

00:17:16.500 | But people are not very good at budgeting.

00:17:18.580 | They're not very good at allocating numbers, not even very good at understanding what their

00:17:21.740 | income is or their expenses are.

00:17:24.020 | So there's this hard problem of how much to give.

00:17:27.180 | And there's a second set of hard problems around who to give it to.

00:17:30.860 | And this is actually one of the reasons I actually really love the idea of separating

00:17:34.580 | those two problems.

00:17:36.100 | So to our earlier conversation, I think the best thing you can do for that first problem

00:17:40.300 | is just set a goal and put money aside for charity, just like you put money aside for

00:17:44.500 | a number of other things.

00:17:45.940 | Have it somewhere separate so that when people ask you to give or when you find an organization

00:17:51.660 | or cause you believe in, you're not struggling with that first question of how much you can

00:17:55.700 | afford.

00:17:56.700 | You already have it set aside.

00:17:57.940 | It's there for you.

00:17:59.720 | That second question, though, of who to give it to, I don't think there's any shortcut

00:18:03.740 | there.

00:18:04.740 | I think social information can help, knowing who your friends and colleagues give to.

00:18:08.820 | I think research can help.

00:18:10.340 | But I think the truth is most people build those relationships over time.

00:18:15.340 | And that's actually very good for nonprofits, because the truth is they don't want a donation

00:18:19.220 | from you just once.

00:18:21.380 | Most of these organizations have budgets they have to run every year.

00:18:24.980 | So what they really want from someone who supports them is someone who's going to support

00:18:29.300 | them regularly.

00:18:30.580 | They would probably much rather get money from you, a smaller amount, regularly every

00:18:35.420 | year than a one-time birthday raise where they never see that money again.

00:18:41.420 | It's the reason that nonprofits actually spend a lot of money and time fundraising.

00:18:45.300 | It's a very heavy sales process for them, because it's very transactional.

00:18:49.820 | They always have to convince someone to reach in their wallet, pull out some money, give

00:18:53.660 | it to them.

00:18:54.780 | It's a very hard process to get through.

00:18:56.540 | So I tend to recommend people that not feel the pressure to give all the money away at

00:19:01.060 | once as much as build these relationships, find organizations that you support, be comfortable

00:19:06.820 | supporting them, give them your regular support.

00:19:09.620 | And over time, you'll add more and more organizations.

00:19:12.500 | One thing I learned when I was going through this process myself of just evaluating some

00:19:15.700 | organizations is there is a lot of information about every organization.

00:19:20.540 | Not only do they have to file, I'm going to maybe get it wrong, is it a 990?

00:19:24.260 | Is that the right number?

00:19:25.260 | That's right.

00:19:26.260 | With the IRS.

00:19:27.260 | So there's a document that's here's who we are.

00:19:28.820 | Here's how much we spend.

00:19:29.820 | Here's our expenses.

00:19:30.820 | Here's how much we pay our directors.

00:19:33.300 | But almost all of them also have annual reports summarizing the impact they had.

00:19:38.220 | So if there's an organization, I would say there might be charity scams.

00:19:42.300 | I'm sure there are, but there is a lot of validating places like IRS websites, validating

00:19:48.900 | the tax ID numbers to make sure that you're giving to somewhere good.

00:19:52.220 | And there's just a lot of content about who and what is happening within an organization.

00:19:56.580 | So as much as someone might say, like, I don't know about this organization, I feel like

00:20:01.020 | it's if you're thinking that in your head, I feel like it's not a great excuse because

00:20:04.580 | there is information out there.

00:20:06.500 | And with the advent of the Internet, it's never been easier to find it.

00:20:10.260 | I agree with you.

00:20:11.260 | I think it's not hard to get to conviction about different organizations, given how much

00:20:15.300 | content is out there.

00:20:16.980 | That being said, I understand the anxiety.

00:20:18.860 | It's the same thing that happens with sensationalism in every industry, right?

00:20:22.420 | You only read the worst stories.

00:20:24.180 | And there have been stories over the decades of nonprofits where directors embezzled money

00:20:28.780 | or self-enriched themselves in private planes and that sort of thing.

00:20:32.340 | So that anxiety, I think, is real.

00:20:35.420 | But to your point, it's not hard to validate local charities if you're really interested.

00:20:40.060 | It is not hard to ask around of what charities other people support.

00:20:44.540 | And certainly for the national charities, it is not hard to find ample information about

00:20:48.220 | them.

00:20:49.220 | And so I think it's a solvable problem.

00:20:50.620 | I don't want to pretend it's not a problem.

00:20:52.620 | I think it's reasonable for people to have questions of where they're sending money.

00:20:55.900 | But yeah, you're right.

00:20:56.900 | I mean, it's very funny.

00:20:58.260 | The amount of research people want to do to send $100 donation somehow is a lot higher

00:21:03.020 | than the amount of research they do before grabbing that random ad on Instagram for $100.

00:21:08.780 | This is actually one of the opportunities, I think, in the industry is there's no real

00:21:11.200 | reason it has to be that way.

00:21:12.780 | For some reason, we've convinced people that buying that random item on Instagram, that

00:21:18.060 | they can just do that with tap, tap, tap.

00:21:20.980 | We should make giving that easy.

00:21:22.420 | There are reasons why you can't trust a random company on the internet.

00:21:24.980 | One of my first jobs on the internet was at eBay.

00:21:27.800 | And believe it or not, there was a time where it seemed crazy that you would buy something

00:21:31.340 | from a stranger that you'd never met and you would send them money and just you'd assume

00:21:36.460 | that the item would be good and not broken, like as represented.

00:21:40.780 | We take it for granted now, but that seemed ludicrous 20, 30 years ago.

00:21:46.080 | I think that some of that friction we got rid of, right?

00:21:48.420 | Like people now trust, for the most part, e-commerce.

00:21:50.540 | Now, sometimes bad things happen.

00:21:51.980 | There's no question.

00:21:52.980 | I've made a purchase or two online that turned out to be a mistake.

00:21:56.140 | But I think there's no reason why we can't use the same techniques to give people confidence

00:22:02.180 | that hey, if you want to send a gift for a cause or to an organization, we've already

00:22:06.000 | filtered them, it's going to be fine.

00:22:10.020 | Like it's going to be a very rare situation where something goes wrong.

00:22:12.940 | And in the most common case, you will have helped real people with something that matters.

00:22:17.580 | One tactic I had, so in the past month, there's been a lot of giving support for Ukraine.

00:22:24.700 | And I was thinking, gosh, I had never done any research about nonprofits that support

00:22:30.040 | Ukraine.

00:22:31.040 | That was just not something that last year or any previous year had come across my radar.

00:22:36.580 | And one option was, okay, well, let's spend a lot of time to figure this out.

00:22:39.900 | And what I ended up doing was through both, I think, some of your posts, other people's

00:22:43.700 | posts, I came up with a list of 10 organizations, I took how much I wanted to get, I divided

00:22:47.460 | by 10.

00:22:48.460 | And I was like, "Look, if one of these organizations isn't as great as the other, well, I gave

00:22:53.760 | to all 10.

00:22:54.760 | So it's okay."

00:22:55.760 | I played the diversification game.

00:22:58.340 | I crowdsourced the information from friends, from people online, from articles, and gave

00:23:03.700 | to all of them.

00:23:05.020 | And I know that probably doesn't bode well for the recurring ongoing relationship.

00:23:09.820 | But if you're out there thinking, "Gosh, I want to give to this cause, and I'm not sure

00:23:13.380 | how," and you don't want to do the research, maybe pick five organizations that do it.

00:23:18.740 | And the risk that one is bad is now one-fifth as much.

00:23:22.780 | But I would guess if you look at the numbers, the risk is already very, very small.

00:23:27.700 | The risk is small.

00:23:28.700 | And more importantly, I think we have a situation like Ukraine, more important for the bias

00:23:32.340 | just to be to help, to give, to do something rather than nothing.

00:23:35.980 | And so your process sounds good.

00:23:38.180 | I mean, we did a Daffy tweet out a list of nonprofits that we thought were well-researched

00:23:44.260 | and advocated by other institutions.

00:23:48.120 | This is one of these areas that on the one hand, I say, "Listen, yeah, the most important

00:23:51.620 | thing is you find institutions."

00:23:52.940 | I actually like the idea of portfolios or several institutions in an area.

00:23:56.980 | I think that there's something very interesting there for people, I think, about not picking

00:24:01.880 | one organization to give to that actually might make it easier to give.

00:24:07.660 | But at the same time, it's still too hard.

00:24:10.380 | We're not all experts.

00:24:11.860 | But I think what you did sounds like the right thing to do.

00:24:14.420 | They're reputable sources, crowdsource a list, come up with the amount you want to give.

00:24:18.620 | And whether you split it across different organizations or give it to one, the point

00:24:22.000 | is you've actually helped.

00:24:24.540 | And we can debate how much, but you've helped.

00:24:26.940 | And it made it easier.

00:24:27.940 | It was funny.

00:24:28.940 | I'd find another one.

00:24:29.940 | I decided an amount and split it amongst 10, and then an 11th popped up.

00:24:33.780 | And I was like, "Wow, I can't not give to the 11th.

00:24:36.100 | This one looks good too."

00:24:37.420 | So then I ended up giving 10% more to that 11th one than I'd originally planned, and

00:24:42.900 | it felt great.

00:24:43.900 | So I want to take a little bit of a turn.

00:24:46.700 | Okay, if you've been listening to this episode, you already know that I'm a huge fan of Daffy.

00:24:52.440 | They're a not-for-profit community built around a new modern way to give, and they have a

00:24:56.460 | mission I think we can all get behind, helping people be more generous more often.

00:25:02.060 | A Daffy account makes it easy to put money aside for charity.

00:25:05.440 | You can make a one-time contribution, or you can set a little aside each week, month, or

00:25:10.220 | quarter.

00:25:11.220 | And because Daffy Charitable Fund is a registered 501(c)(3), all your contributions are tax

00:25:16.380 | deductible.

00:25:17.380 | Then, whenever you want, you can give to more than 1.5 million charities, schools, and faith-based

00:25:23.580 | organizations in a matter of seconds.

00:25:26.020 | So you can separate the decision to give and get your tax deduction from deciding exactly

00:25:31.540 | which organization you want to support.

00:25:33.780 | And my favorite part is that all the contributions to your Daffy account are invested in a standard

00:25:38.820 | ESG or crypto portfolio, so they can grow tax-free to let you have even more impact

00:25:44.580 | in the future.

00:25:45.580 | So head on over to allthehacks.com/daffy if you want to start giving today, and for a

00:25:51.500 | limited time, if you visit that link, you can get a free $25 to give to the charity

00:25:56.800 | of your choice.

00:25:57.800 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/D-A-F-F-Y.

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00:27:28.820 | N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E.

00:27:32.700 | And talk about, you know, this is all the hacks.

00:27:35.740 | One of the things that's interesting for people who have W-2 income is that there aren't a

00:27:40.740 | lot of hacks, right?

00:27:42.340 | I get lots of questions, "Oh, you know, I have a job, you know, what are the hacks to

00:27:45.900 | save money on my taxes?"

00:27:46.900 | And I'm like, "Well, okay."

00:27:48.460 | So it's like retirement accounts, pre-tax accounts, like HSAs and FSAs, and charitable

00:27:52.540 | donations.

00:27:53.540 | If I'm missing anything, let me know.

00:27:54.940 | I know there's some like technical high-end trust stuff, but for the broad strokes.

00:28:00.580 | And I think I find that people often misunderstand what, you know, some of these tax deductions,

00:28:06.940 | how they work.

00:28:07.940 | Could you just, at a high level, explain the tax benefits the government offers people

00:28:12.220 | for being charitable?

00:28:13.780 | Yeah.

00:28:14.780 | And I want to be careful.

00:28:15.780 | I'm obviously not an accountant, as it turns out.

00:28:17.940 | So I'm sure they are.

00:28:18.940 | Of course.

00:28:19.940 | Take...

00:28:20.940 | Me either.

00:28:21.940 | I don't have to make a disclosure here, but I will.

00:28:22.940 | Do not take what I'm giving you as financial advice.

00:28:25.700 | Not a professional accountant, et cetera, but no, actually, it's well known that the

00:28:29.460 | charitable deduction in the US is one of the most generous.

00:28:32.460 | And the reason it's generous is because it actually is a deduction against AGI, against

00:28:37.820 | your income, right?

00:28:39.380 | Which tends to have the highest tax rates.

00:28:42.020 | And so it's a very useful deduction.

00:28:43.980 | You can deduct right now up to 50% of your AGI, actually, in some cases, 60%, which is

00:28:49.780 | a really high number.

00:28:51.140 | If you think about where most deductions tap up now, the one catch is you have to be someone

00:28:55.940 | who itemizes their deductions.

00:28:58.100 | And ever since the 2017 Tax Act, there are fewer people now.

00:29:01.780 | But for most people who live in high tax states who have a mortgage, they probably itemize

00:29:08.180 | deductions, or could very quickly if you make a charitable deduction.

00:29:12.260 | So the great thing about charitable deductions is that they are an incredible benefit from

00:29:17.300 | taxes.

00:29:18.300 | The problem is, as you know, the tax year is one year.

00:29:21.940 | And because our tax rates go up, our system isn't very good for dealing with what happens

00:29:27.380 | when people have lumpy income, right?

00:29:29.180 | You have big years, you have down years, even though that's becoming more and more common

00:29:33.620 | across the United States.

00:29:35.260 | People's income isn't steady every year, there really are good years and bad years.

00:29:39.860 | The charitable deduction is most valuable in those good years, right?

00:29:43.700 | Because those are the years when you tend to be worried about taxes.

00:29:46.720 | But that stresses that other part of the problem, which is, wait, do you know who to give the

00:29:52.140 | money to?

00:29:53.420 | And that actually catches a lot of people.

00:29:54.980 | There's a lot of people in November, December, who realized that they had a good year, that

00:29:59.660 | their tax bill is going to be higher than expected and say, "Wow, this would really

00:30:03.100 | be a good time to give some money to charity."

00:30:06.340 | But unfortunately, they don't have enough time to pick a charity.

00:30:09.160 | And that's where donor advised funds come in.

00:30:11.120 | Donor advised funds are basically a special type of account.

00:30:14.220 | You know, the way that an IRA is for retirement and a 529 is for college savings, a donor

00:30:19.620 | advised fund is for charity.

00:30:21.680 | And the great thing about donor advised funds is because they're offered by nonprofits,

00:30:26.480 | by charities, you get a tax deduction immediately when you put the money in the account.

00:30:32.680 | And so as a result, the best tax hack around charitable deductions is to make that commitment

00:30:38.920 | to give, put the money in a donor advised fund, get the tax deduction, and then you

00:30:43.720 | have time to figure out which organizations to give it to.

00:30:46.680 | And then for many of these donor advised funds, that money can be invested.

00:30:49.960 | So it's not sitting idle while you're figuring out who to give to.

00:30:54.000 | The money is still invested and growing, but now tax deferred, like a Roth IRA or another

00:30:58.720 | tax deferred account.

00:31:00.840 | My first experience with donor advised funds came in the scenario you described where I

00:31:04.960 | was like, "Oh, it's a higher tax year, which is always a good year."

00:31:08.880 | And I was like, "Gosh, we should just donate."

00:31:11.420 | And funny enough, you said earlier, your advice from your accountant was 10 years.

00:31:14.720 | My advice was also like, "Well, I don't know how much to give, but this is a higher tax

00:31:19.000 | year.

00:31:20.000 | I'd rather give next year's donations this year.

00:31:21.560 | And I'd probably rather give the next year's donations this year."

00:31:24.520 | And I was like, "Well, let's just go 10 years out, take what we were going to give for the

00:31:27.600 | next 10 years."

00:31:28.600 | Which we had to figure out also because we didn't even have a number at the time.

00:31:31.880 | And we put that in a donor advised fund.

00:31:34.440 | And I learned a few things in the process.

00:31:36.520 | And I want to go get to one in a minute, which is about donating the most appreciated things

00:31:41.220 | in your portfolio.

00:31:42.220 | And we could talk about why.

00:31:43.760 | I also learned that even organizations that seemed like they had decent products at the

00:31:50.920 | time when this happened, Vanguard, Fidelity, they had websites, you could log in, you could

00:31:55.440 | buy stocks.

00:31:56.560 | And then I logged into their donor advised portal and I was like, "This is just a different

00:32:00.120 | company."

00:32:01.120 | And I think legally, it actually is a different company.

00:32:02.840 | But I was blown away that the innovation on donor advised funds, even for organizations

00:32:08.540 | that have innovated their investing products, was just completely absent.

00:32:12.000 | I assume that might be part of the founding story here.

00:32:14.600 | But what about the industry did you find that made you say, "We should go build something,"

00:32:19.640 | despite there being lots of organizations out there?

00:32:22.520 | Well, there's a lot of reasons.

00:32:24.480 | I think there's two things that lead to the effect that you saw with existing donor advised

00:32:28.560 | funds.

00:32:29.560 | One that's pretty simple and one that's probably more nuanced.

00:32:32.720 | The simple reason why it is true is that to offer a donor advised fund, you have to be

00:32:36.800 | a non-profit.

00:32:38.800 | But non-profits have trouble investing in technology and operations and all the things

00:32:43.720 | that they need to do to run a donor advised fund.

00:32:45.600 | So they almost always partner with a for-profit company that helps them operate and fund the

00:32:52.560 | development of the firm.

00:32:53.560 | And so Fidelity Charitable partners with Fidelity Investments, Schwab Charitable with Schwab,

00:32:59.200 | of course Vanguard Charitable partners with Vanguard.

00:33:02.360 | And so they're all partnered with investment firms, right?

00:33:06.680 | Not technology firms.

00:33:07.680 | And so it is a little bit of the founding story with DAFI.

00:33:10.160 | DAFI, of course, stands for the Donor Advised Fund for You.

00:33:13.400 | But we said, "Well, what if instead of partnering with an investment firm, you partnered with

00:33:17.120 | a venture-backed technology company, right?

00:33:19.760 | Could you have the same type of engineers, the same type of quality design that we're

00:33:23.440 | used to seeing from Facebook and Google and Apple and the best kind of companies in the

00:33:28.160 | industry?

00:33:29.160 | Could we see that here?"

00:33:30.240 | And so that's a little bit of the founding story.

00:33:32.280 | The second reason, though, is more subtle, which is that because they've partnered with

00:33:35.600 | investment firms, almost every donor advised fund out there, their business model is charging

00:33:40.620 | you a percent of assets.

00:33:42.200 | And that sounds fun.

00:33:43.200 | It's a very normal thing in the investment industry, right?

00:33:45.080 | Even Vanguard does it, right?

00:33:46.200 | A percent of your fund.

00:33:47.600 | The problem there, though, is that because they are charging a percent of assets, they

00:33:54.040 | really are only interested in very large accounts, right?

00:33:57.980 | And so when you think about this, like you might have a large account, say, for retirement.

00:34:01.600 | That's your whole retirement.

00:34:03.020 | College is expensive.

00:34:04.020 | You might save a lot for college.

00:34:06.740 | You have to be very wealthy to have six and seven-figure or even bigger accounts allocated

00:34:13.220 | for charity.

00:34:14.220 | I mean, it's fantastic, but that's a very big number to put out there.

00:34:18.640 | And so as a result, those firms mostly optimize their services around the very wealthy, those

00:34:24.100 | biggest accounts.

00:34:25.100 | I mean, Vanguard, I love Vanguard.

00:34:26.360 | It's one of my favorite firms, changed the industry, idolized.

00:34:30.020 | But even their donor advised fund, you can't even open with less than $25,000.

00:34:34.680 | That's their minimum.

00:34:35.780 | And they charge 60 basis points all the way up to $500,000.

00:34:40.940 | And so I think that's the other problem that you see that the reason they don't invest

00:34:44.100 | in technology heavily there is they're not hitting a mass market audience.

00:34:48.260 | They're mostly hitting people who already have financial advisors and accountants who

00:34:52.100 | probably do it for them.

00:34:54.620 | That makes sense.

00:34:55.620 | And is the reason why a firm like Vanguard, which is known for low fees and for their

00:35:00.860 | consumer products, doesn't charge as high as 60 basis points, can they get away with

00:35:05.860 | it because it's already money that's been given away and there's just not as much scrutiny

00:35:12.140 | over the fees?

00:35:13.300 | Because it's like, "Look, I'm going to give away, in their case, $25,000.

00:35:16.740 | The fees are coming out of money that's not mine anymore.

00:35:19.220 | I'm not paying the fees.

00:35:20.820 | They're coming out of what would otherwise go to charity."

00:35:23.500 | Does that make people less frustrated with high fees, or how are a firm like Vanguard

00:35:28.780 | getting away with charging so much when I can't imagine there's a lot more overhead

00:35:33.660 | to operate this than a regular investment account?

00:35:36.220 | Well, let's be clear.

00:35:37.220 | I think Vanguard has such a great corporate culture and structurally set up.

00:35:43.040 | I don't think that those are their motivations, right?

00:35:45.580 | I think there are other real reasons where because of their lack of investment in technology

00:35:50.820 | and because of the way they run their donor advised fund, it might actually be very expensive

00:35:54.260 | for them to operate.

00:35:55.900 | And so those fees actually reflect their costs.

00:35:58.700 | But I do think that some of the things you talked about are correct.

00:36:01.640 | I think there is a problem.

00:36:03.500 | We've all grown up through this industry.

00:36:04.820 | There was a time where people didn't know to look at how much their mutual funds were

00:36:08.220 | charging them.

00:36:09.680 | And we had to socialise this idea of actually looking at the expense ratios, right?

00:36:13.980 | And all the fees tied with mutual funds, 401ks.

00:36:16.880 | We had to teach people to look at the fees around 401ks, advisors.

00:36:20.880 | How much is your advisor charging?

00:36:22.260 | I've asked dozens of people how much they're paying for their donor advised fund.

00:36:26.180 | Most people don't even know.

00:36:27.700 | It's not on the account statement.

00:36:29.120 | There's no number there.

00:36:30.540 | I've talked to people who are paying literally hundreds, sorry, hundreds of dollars, even

00:36:35.220 | thousands of dollars a year for their donor advised fund, but they don't even know it.

00:36:39.500 | So I do think that with most donor advised funds, the reason they charge what they do

00:36:43.460 | is because they can.

00:36:45.360 | The tax benefit is high enough that it usually is a net positive for wealthy people who open

00:36:50.120 | donor advised funds, right?

00:36:51.540 | So if you were lucky enough to have stock in one of the companies that went public in

00:36:55.380 | the last couple of years, or you invested in crypto, right?

00:36:57.900 | So you have Bitcoin that you bought for $1,000 that's now worth $41,000.

00:37:03.000 | There's so much tax benefit from donating those assets and not having to pay those capital

00:37:08.500 | gains taxes that it's true, probably the high end market for donor advised funds just isn't

00:37:14.940 | that fee sensitive.

00:37:16.140 | But I think a lot of the problem has to do with structurally what the industry has done

00:37:20.420 | to date.

00:37:21.420 | And you're right.

00:37:22.420 | At Daffy, we're hoping to change that.

00:37:24.660 | And you mentioned donating those appreciated assets.

00:37:27.660 | Could you walk through maybe an example of the kind of impact donating something that's

00:37:31.820 | been appreciated would have on your kind of financial situation and the impact it would

00:37:36.940 | have on the organizations that it would ultimately go to?

00:37:39.420 | The reason the benefit of donating assets is because you really win both ways.

00:37:42.740 | We already talked about the fact that the charitable deduction is a great deduction

00:37:46.180 | to have, right?

00:37:47.180 | So if you were going to donate $1,000, getting $1,000 off your income on your taxes, I mean,

00:37:53.060 | especially if you're in a high tax state like California, New York, etc, that can be more

00:37:57.860 | than 50%.

00:37:59.380 | That's a huge number in the aggregate federal state, etc.

00:38:03.040 | But when you donate an appreciated asset, stock, crypto, you never have to pay the capital

00:38:09.040 | gain as well.

00:38:11.020 | And so it ends up being not only better for you, it ends up being better for the nonprofit.

00:38:15.320 | I wrote a recent post about this with real numbers kind of running through, but it's

00:38:18.960 | very, very clear.

00:38:20.800 | Use that Bitcoin example that I gave.

00:38:23.160 | If you bought a Bitcoin for $1,000, and it's now worth $41,000, right, well, if you sold

00:38:29.600 | that Bitcoin, right, you'd owe quite a bit in taxes on it, state, federal, like capital

00:38:34.520 | gains, etc.

00:38:36.480 | And if you donated the money left over, you would have money left over, but it would be

00:38:40.500 | minus the taxes, right?

00:38:42.620 | If you donate the Bitcoin to charity, you get the full charitable deduction for that

00:38:48.640 | $41,000 amount.

00:38:50.720 | You never pay the capital gain.

00:38:52.200 | So you have more money now to give to charity, plus you are getting that $41,000 charitable

00:38:58.200 | deduction off the top.

00:38:59.840 | So you're winning both ways.

00:39:01.440 | So it's very clear how the numbers work out.

00:39:03.800 | If you are in the fortunate enough position to have appreciated assets, and you can donate

00:39:07.960 | those, it's better for everyone involved.

00:39:11.200 | And then of course, the one problem with it is it turns out not every nonprofit is set

00:39:15.040 | up to actually accept stock or crypto.

00:39:19.500 | And this is actually one of the benefits of donor advised funds.

00:39:21.480 | One of the great things about Daffy, one of our first donations was actually to a local

00:39:25.040 | synagogue.

00:39:26.040 | One of our constituents wanted to donate Bitcoin to that synagogue.

00:39:28.400 | The synagogue wasn't set up to take Bitcoin, but they were able to download the Daffy app,

00:39:35.080 | contribute the Bitcoin to their donor advised fund, get the full tax deduction, of course,

00:39:39.240 | and then they let us take care of actually getting the money to the synagogue.

00:39:42.160 | It's a fantastic benefit.

00:39:43.280 | I think most tax advisors, most financial advisors you talk to will recommend at the

00:39:47.720 | end of the tax year that if you have appreciated assets and you want to give money to charity,

00:39:53.520 | donating appreciated assets is clearly the best way to do it.

00:39:56.960 | I love that you can disintermediate this question because one of my things at the end of the

00:40:00.440 | year is, okay, what in my portfolio has enough gains that it would make for a good donated

00:40:06.520 | asset?

00:40:07.520 | The stock that you might have bought 12 years ago could almost be in anything if it was

00:40:11.760 | 12 years ago is probably appreciated quite a bit.

00:40:14.960 | And that's something that I've taken advantage of.

00:40:17.280 | Or if you happen to work at a company and you've been there a long time and you hold

00:40:19.960 | some stock from the early days, there are circumstances I've had friends where it's

00:40:23.800 | literally almost 100% gains and you kind of get the most maximum effect.

00:40:28.600 | So I love that.

00:40:29.960 | Yeah.

00:40:30.960 | And there's a fun hack there.

00:40:31.960 | It's actually one of the examples I use.

00:40:32.960 | So my first job out of school was actually at Apple.

00:40:35.180 | Clearly I should have held more of that stock because it turned out the run from the 90s

00:40:38.360 | to now is once in a lifetime.

00:40:40.720 | But fundamentally, yeah, for employees, people who hold company stock, it doesn't have to

00:40:44.320 | be all or nothing either, right?

00:40:45.960 | Like to use your example, if you have 500 shares of Apple, for example, and a lot of

00:40:50.800 | it has a lot of gains, you can donate a hundred shares of Apple, get that great tax deduction,

00:40:58.580 | and that can actually help cover the taxes from selling some of the rest of your stake,

00:41:02.960 | those other 400 shares.

00:41:04.560 | And so a lot of people actually do that thinking at the end of the year, if they have an advisor,

00:41:08.320 | they help them with it.

00:41:09.320 | And if they do it themselves, though, it's very much thinking about, okay, what's my

00:41:12.440 | tax bill going to be?

00:41:14.320 | Do I have some appreciated assets I could donate?

00:41:17.320 | Or if I want to liquidate something, do I have other appreciated assets I can use to

00:41:22.520 | help defray some of those taxes?

00:41:24.800 | And to your point, it doesn't have to be some go-go stock, it doesn't have to be Bitcoin.

00:41:29.200 | In some years, I've actually donated old ETF shares, a VTI that I've had for a long time,

00:41:35.060 | because it has appreciated quite a bit and has a very low cost basis.

00:41:38.200 | So once you get that in your head, you realize it's something you probably should do every

00:41:42.080 | year, right?

00:41:43.080 | There's no time between Thanksgiving and the New Year's.

00:41:45.800 | You should probably think about what your taxes are going to be.

00:41:49.280 | If they're going to be higher than you expected, think about, is this a good time to give money

00:41:53.160 | to charity?

00:41:54.160 | And if it is, look for appreciated assets to do it, and then just put it in a donor

00:41:56.920 | advised fund.

00:41:58.460 | And now you have an account dedicated to charity.

00:42:00.880 | So anytime you want to give, you have money already set up to do so.

00:42:05.900 | It's almost like the opposite is you've got tax loss harvesting, and then you've got tax

00:42:09.340 | gain harvesting for the purpose of donating.

00:42:11.480 | Yeah, this is this is exactly right.

00:42:13.440 | And you know, I know you're a Wealthfront, and I have always will have a soft spot for

00:42:17.040 | Wealthfront, etc.

00:42:18.040 | One of the things we learned at Wealthfront is that people don't always think of the tax

00:42:21.240 | liability that's sitting in the shares they own, right?

00:42:23.880 | They remember what they bought the stock at or what they bought crypto at.

00:42:26.840 | They know where it is now.

00:42:28.560 | They don't think enough about what the taxes are going to be when they sell it, because

00:42:31.880 | it turns out you have to pay them.

00:42:33.960 | Once you have this idea that, oh, I can donate assets to charity, it doesn't have to just

00:42:38.520 | be cash.

00:42:40.120 | It really opens up your thinking of how to make sure that, you know, you invest for the

00:42:44.020 | long term, you have these assets with a low cost basis, and then you can do a lot of good

00:42:48.640 | with them by donating them to charity.

00:42:52.000 | If you have, like I did, a donor advised fund already at another institution, you can donate

00:42:57.400 | that to another donor advised fund.

00:42:59.560 | So Fidelity Charitable, if you're listening, sorry, I no longer have a donor advised fund

00:43:04.000 | with you.

00:43:05.000 | I moved it all to Daffy.

00:43:06.000 | So that was one thing that I didn't realize because it is also another charity.

00:43:09.460 | So you can move them around.

00:43:10.700 | So while you can never get the money out, right, you've donated it, it's irrevocable,

00:43:15.060 | you can move it to another donor advised fund.

00:43:17.080 | So you're not locked into whatever you're using today.

00:43:19.600 | Yeah, this is another thing.

00:43:20.600 | You know, I remember one of the things that's kind of the bane of the industry a little

00:43:23.520 | bit is somehow rolling over 401ks is still incredibly difficult.

00:43:27.360 | We've been talking about this for decades, but somehow the firms that hold 401ks just

00:43:31.040 | make it really, really hard to get your own money to another institution.

00:43:35.280 | Donor advised funds aren't quite as bad, but they really do not make it obvious that if

00:43:39.380 | you ever want to move any of the money, you can move all of it, you can move some of it,

00:43:43.720 | you can always move it to another donor advised fund.

00:43:46.180 | And yes, of course, I'm biased.

00:43:47.180 | You know, with Daffy, I've had a lot of friends, they have donor advised funds.

00:43:50.420 | Actually, it was a feature we missed in our launch.

00:43:52.600 | When we launched a few months ago, we didn't have support in the app for transfers.

00:43:57.260 | We now do, of course.

00:43:58.820 | And it was really surprising how many people wanted to move money over and they didn't

00:44:02.500 | know how.

00:44:03.500 | And it turns out it's really simple, right?

00:44:04.500 | If you have a donor advised fund, Daffy Charitable Fund has an EIN.

00:44:09.020 | It's another nonprofit.

00:44:10.180 | You just make a grant to us.

00:44:12.180 | And listen, Chris, totally appreciate moving the whole account over.

00:44:16.020 | That's fantastic.

00:44:17.020 | But the truth is from our point of view, anything that makes you comfortable with is great.

00:44:20.100 | So if you want to move over $1,000 to test it out or a few hundred dollars, if you want

00:44:23.680 | to move over half the account, it's all easy.

00:44:25.840 | You just pick the amount, make the grant to Daffy Charitable Fund.

00:44:28.460 | They end up mailing us a check.

00:44:30.620 | A lot of the industry still runs on checks as it turns out.

00:44:33.180 | And we credit it to your account and it gets invested in your portfolio, however you selected

00:44:37.060 | when you signed up.

00:44:39.320 | It was pretty easy.

00:44:40.320 | I mean, obviously, on the behind the scenes, it sounds like it was less easy and that a

00:44:43.220 | check had to go in the mail.

00:44:44.460 | For me, it seemed pretty straightforward.

00:44:45.700 | Well, you probably saved a lot of money doing it because those AUM fees are actually quite

00:44:50.500 | high.

00:44:51.820 | For me, it was save money and it wasn't my money because I've already donated.

00:44:54.980 | So save money for other organizations.

00:44:58.020 | The other thing that I thought was interesting with the product you built, I don't know how

00:45:02.740 | many other donor advised funds have apps, but I don't think Fidelity Charitable did.

00:45:06.660 | They actually do.

00:45:07.660 | Believe it or not, Fidelity Charitable, Fidelity is always well known for some of their investment

00:45:11.620 | in technology.

00:45:12.620 | I realize in the brokerage industry, it's hard to give anyone the gold medal, but Fidelity

00:45:16.620 | has a decent reputation for investing in technology.

00:45:19.300 | But even they, they have an app where you can make donations.

00:45:22.060 | But if you want to open an account, contribute, change your investments, you can't do any

00:45:26.760 | of that from the app.

00:45:28.300 | When we launched Daffy, that was actually one of the big differentiators up front and

00:45:31.640 | still is.

00:45:32.640 | We are the only fully functional donor advised fund in the app store, one where you can open

00:45:37.140 | an account, contribute, cash, stock, crypto.

00:45:41.040 | You can invest the money and of course, make donations to any legal charity in the US.

00:45:45.540 | So yeah, it's hard to believe that in 2022, that's a rare thing.

00:45:48.920 | But I think that's because most people don't know about donor advised funds.

00:45:52.220 | Like I said, historically, it's been this attach rate kind of bespoke product that advisors

00:45:56.860 | use, right?

00:45:57.860 | Like most of the energy at the institutions for it is just a way for them to make sure

00:46:02.460 | the assets stay with them.

00:46:04.400 | Fidelity knows that if you're going to donate stock and you're going to put it into a donor

00:46:07.080 | advised fund, it's better to put it in the Fidelity donor advised fund, right?

00:46:10.220 | And they optimize for that experience.

00:46:12.660 | As a result, they don't really think about the fact that a lot of people start their

00:46:16.460 | experience these days with an app, right?

00:46:18.660 | They started the app store, they don't necessarily start it with a search or by walking into

00:46:22.900 | a branch.

00:46:24.700 | I found that one of the great things about an app experience when it comes to donating

00:46:28.540 | was in this Ukraine example, we were like, "Oh, we found an organization."

00:46:32.180 | My wife's like, "Oh, I found this one."

00:46:34.180 | You didn't have to go to the website and type in all of your name and your billing information.

00:46:38.780 | It was almost too easy.

00:46:41.420 | And that's not a criticism, but it was like this organization, yes.

00:46:45.660 | And I remember sharing a note that I assumed someone that follows me could see, but it

00:46:51.180 | was like, "Done."

00:46:52.180 | And it was like, "Okay, let's do another one."

00:46:54.580 | It made it easy enough that hopefully, it will help remove some of the friction because

00:46:58.860 | I know it did for us.

00:46:59.860 | Oh, yeah, for sure.

00:47:00.860 | And I love that.

00:47:01.860 | I mean, our mission as an organization, as a company is to help people be more generous

00:47:05.640 | more often.

00:47:06.860 | And it's true.

00:47:08.220 | There's a lot of times we have the instinct, we have the urge to give, but all that friction

00:47:14.220 | gets in the way, right?

00:47:15.340 | I'm going to go home, I'm going to get an email, I'm going to have to go to a website.

00:47:20.040 | There's all this extra work.

00:47:21.420 | How often do you end up, like I have kids, I have four kids, I can't tell you how many

00:47:25.660 | back to school nights I've been at and sat through the presentation, where they walk

00:47:29.980 | through and they have a fund.

00:47:31.260 | Maybe it's to support after school sports or art supplies or something that supports

00:47:34.580 | the school.

00:47:35.580 | And you're like, "Okay, I'm going to give to support."

00:47:37.460 | What you write a note to yourself, I'm old school, so I send myself an email so that

00:47:41.780 | when I get home, at some point, I remember to like go to the website and donate.

00:47:45.180 | But when you have the app, tap, tap, tap, you're done.

00:47:48.060 | In downtown Los Altos, a couple months ago, there was a minister doing a bake sale for

00:47:53.260 | his organization, which is actually in Oakland.

00:47:55.860 | And I had a great conversation with him, found out more about the organization, wanted to

00:47:58.940 | support them.

00:47:59.940 | Actually didn't want the bake sale because it turns out I shouldn't eat as many things

00:48:03.620 | for bake sales right now.

00:48:04.940 | But I wanted to give some money and the fact that I could pull out my app, type in the

00:48:08.420 | name of his organization, put in $100, donate that money, have it go to him.

00:48:13.700 | It made it easier to give and it actually felt great because I didn't have this thing

00:48:18.240 | also hanging over my head.

00:48:19.700 | There was no to-do item.

00:48:21.140 | There was no weird anxiety.

00:48:22.760 | I wasn't worried about keeping track of the donation.

00:48:24.860 | I knew it was all in my app.

00:48:26.340 | Actually, surprisingly, one of the features people seem to love a lot, we just went through

00:48:29.580 | our first tax season.

00:48:31.480 | And so just the fact that you don't have to chase down donation receipts at the end of

00:48:34.980 | the year for your account, it's amazing how many people hate whatever system they have.

00:48:39.460 | They print out receipts and keep them in a folder by their desk.

00:48:43.000 | They have like a Gmail search that they do.

00:48:45.160 | So it just turns out to be very convenient.

00:48:46.620 | I think the app is a game changer.

00:48:47.980 | I think it's fantastic.

00:48:48.980 | I'm a huge fan.

00:48:50.580 | Anything we missed?

00:48:51.580 | One of the things I've run into is that there are some people out there who like this idea

00:48:54.940 | of putting money aside for charity, like theoretically, and they like the tax benefit, but they don't

00:49:00.820 | like the idea of money sitting idle, right?

00:49:03.140 | In their head, they feel like there's this return that money should have.

00:49:07.260 | And so one of the things we designed into Daffy from the get-go was the ability that

00:49:11.220 | when you open your account, you can pick from one of nine portfolios to invest your money

00:49:15.020 | in.

00:49:16.020 | We have standard ETF portfolios, low cost, all Vanguard ETFs, only four basis points

00:49:21.140 | for the entire portfolio.

00:49:22.420 | We have ESG portfolios, which are mostly BlackRock products.

00:49:25.240 | They're slightly more expensive, but for many people, they want to align their investing

00:49:29.500 | with their giving and their values.

00:49:31.580 | And then, of course, we have, because it's 2022, we have pure crypto portfolios.

00:49:36.020 | Coinbase is one of our investors.

00:49:37.340 | And so if you want to put your money into a diversified portfolio that includes crypto

00:49:41.100 | or even a pure crypto portfolio of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we do that for people.

00:49:45.740 | And that's been really popular.

00:49:47.180 | It turns out that that's a very hard feature to get.

00:49:50.340 | Most donor advised funds out there do not have crypto options, either for contribution

00:49:54.880 | or for investing.

00:49:56.020 | And a lot of the transfers we've been receiving for donor advised funds, existing ones, are

00:50:00.300 | because we actually have crypto as an option.

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00:52:54.020 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:52:57.820 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:53:00.580 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:53:08.660 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:53:11.860 | I also want to jump into the course you teach.

00:53:15.200 | So I looked up, you wrote a blog post and you shared some of the ratings and it seemed

00:53:18.900 | like everyone loved your class.

00:53:20.900 | There was like seven questions and no one said this was not well or extremely poor.

00:53:26.180 | And I'll send a link.

00:53:27.180 | You actually publish all the slides for the class, which is Personal Finance for Engineers.

00:53:30.980 | I'll put the link in the show notes.

00:53:32.180 | People can check it out.

00:53:33.540 | But outside of philanthropy, outside of giving, what do you think people are getting wrong

00:53:38.380 | about personal finance?

00:53:39.940 | What I always see repeatedly is people looking for this secret to get wealthy.

00:53:44.380 | This one trick.

00:53:45.380 | I'm old enough to remember the infomercial age, you know, late night, the guy on the

00:53:48.500 | boat telling you, like, you could be rich tomorrow and do whatever.

00:53:51.840 | But I know it sounds silly, but I feel like it's an evergreen market.

00:53:54.360 | Like I see every cycle, people looking for this kind of get rich quick.

00:53:58.080 | It could be get rich quick with crypto.

00:54:00.160 | It could be with real estate.

00:54:01.760 | All these different options, the right type of account, the right type of insurance, etc.

00:54:07.160 | And I think the biggest mistake that people make is not realizing that the most likely

00:54:11.160 | path to success is to focus on your career, which by the way, has a high tie to your income,

00:54:18.320 | right?

00:54:19.320 | The top line is actually a big deal.

00:54:20.320 | For many people, it's easier for them to figure out how to make an extra $10,000 than it actually

00:54:25.280 | is for them to figure out how to save $10,000.

00:54:26.760 | It's one of these funny things about society.

00:54:30.040 | Focus on your income, your skills, your career, that top line.

00:54:34.040 | Spend less than you make, right?

00:54:35.520 | And by the way, to your point earlier about increasing things over time, increasing your

00:54:39.020 | savings rate over time, right?

00:54:41.000 | How many people actually save 10% of their income because they live off their salary

00:54:46.120 | and they don't spend the bonus, right?

00:54:48.960 | That's a very easy way in some ways to just not build up a lifestyle that assumes you're

00:54:54.640 | making that money.

00:54:56.480 | And so I think that a lot of people get the basics wrong.

00:54:58.440 | They want to jump to these special things and they focus so much on things that if you

00:55:02.520 | actually do the financial work, will earn them basis points, right?

00:55:05.800 | One hundredth of a percent, 10 basis points, half a percent, 1%.

00:55:10.000 | And I'm not going to pretend that doesn't matter.

00:55:12.000 | You compound an extra percent over 30 years, it's a lot of money.

00:55:15.980 | But it's not as big as just focusing on the basics.

00:55:18.760 | And then by the way, this gets even worse with couples and with households, right?

00:55:22.360 | Like the amount of dysfunction with the way spouses treat money or the way people fail

00:55:26.840 | to plan together or even talk about money with each other probably has a lot more to

00:55:32.040 | do with financial problems people have than the fact that they didn't buy Tesla stock

00:55:37.360 | five years ago.

00:55:38.360 | I think that tracks with some past conversations we've had.

00:55:42.640 | But one thing that keeps coming up and I noticed it was interesting, your final course seems

00:55:48.120 | to be a grab bag of what do people want to talk about?

00:55:50.360 | That's right.

00:55:51.360 | And it's probably no surprise to anyone listening that it's like, let's talk about venture capital

00:55:55.960 | and crypto.

00:55:56.960 | And, you know, I even saw a slide that talked about NFTs.

00:56:00.960 | Where do you think some of the more exciting things fit into place?

00:56:04.480 | And I'll use you as an example.

00:56:06.080 | Obviously, you know, you've been fortunate with some of your career choices and the companies

00:56:10.680 | you've worked at, but eventually you got to a point that you're doing lots of angel investing.

00:56:15.260 | How do some of these alternative investments fit in and not necessarily to the path to

00:56:21.760 | wealth, if you will, but to your investment portfolio?

00:56:24.880 | You know, you've thought a lot about investing at Wealthfront, also at Daffy for your own

00:56:29.200 | life.

00:56:30.200 | How do you think things like investing in startups fits in?

00:56:32.640 | Yeah, that's a great question.

00:56:34.160 | And I don't want to pretend that I think that those things are irrational or not worth doing.

00:56:37.980 | If you do the math and you think about the system, a lot of these investments can make

00:56:42.240 | sense in some situations, right?

00:56:44.440 | The idea of having a small percentage of your portfolio in private equity isn't outlandish,

00:56:50.160 | right?

00:56:51.160 | Like, you know, some of the best money managers in the world who run endowments, etc, allocate

00:56:54.920 | money to private equity and venture capital for good reason.

00:56:58.980 | Same thing is happening, by the way, with alternative asset classes, right?

00:57:01.760 | You know, it's been more than 10 years, but the data is coming in.

00:57:04.160 | And I have to be honest, from my point of view, it seems like this argument on crypto,

00:57:09.240 | which you saw in the slides, that says no, digital assets seem to be a different asset

00:57:14.240 | class, they behave differently, they have different basis, they are not completely correlated

00:57:19.460 | with other asset classes.

00:57:20.800 | And as a result, they might be an interesting addition to a diversified portfolio is a very

00:57:26.400 | rational question to ask.

00:57:27.720 | Actually, I cover a lot of this in my class, I don't have a problem with these assets.

00:57:30.800 | Like I said, the problem is less that people stay away from these things irrationally.

00:57:36.200 | It's usually the opposite.

00:57:37.200 | They, you know, I got a question asked on Twitter just the other day where, you know,

00:57:40.560 | I was talking about crypto, acorns actually added crypto as an option to their portfolio

00:57:44.860 | similar to the way that Wealthfront did.

00:57:46.960 | And the question came in, well, if crypto is so good, why don't you put all your money

00:57:49.440 | into it?

00:57:50.440 | And it's like, whoa, like, that's, that's actually never the answer.

00:57:54.360 | Diversification turns out to be a pretty good deal from most perspectives.

00:57:58.740 | But I do like the education to it.

00:58:00.260 | So each of these topics are different.

00:58:01.400 | It's a Stanford class, right?

00:58:02.400 | So not talking about venture capital and private equity and a Stanford class, Stanford, I mean,

00:58:08.720 | it would just read wrong.

00:58:09.840 | So it's not surprising that students always want to know many of them are going to end

00:58:12.400 | up going to work for startups or venture backed startups, etc.

00:58:15.480 | Some of them will go into venture capital.

00:58:18.080 | Crypto is one of these interesting overlaps where I mean, I will tell you, as someone

00:58:21.520 | who came out of school as an engineer, you know, computer science, etc.

00:58:25.520 | I've run into digital assets many times in my career.

00:58:28.760 | My first startup that I joined is like the fifth engineer was on digital software distribution,

00:58:33.400 | encryption, and how do you do this and this hard problem of what do you do with the fact

00:58:38.440 | that software can be perfectly copied for free is actually something that was endemic

00:58:43.440 | to the entire industry last 50 years.

00:58:45.560 | Like how can you make money on software, if people can make a perfect copy for free, right?

00:58:50.320 | This has affected music and all forms of media.

00:58:53.840 | Even at eBay, I remember doing a strategy once on what eBay's digital asset strategy

00:58:57.260 | should be digital goods strategy.

00:58:59.720 | And at the time, it was not solvable.

00:59:01.760 | Because if you didn't have a central authority, like what Apple did for iTunes, you couldn't

00:59:05.360 | build that platform.

00:59:06.640 | So for me, crypto is a very exciting technology area.

00:59:09.320 | There's a lot of interesting work being doing, the energy is phenomenal.

00:59:12.700 | But from a financial point of view, the simple argument is like, let's, let's go to first

00:59:16.640 | principles, right?

00:59:17.640 | Like, do you think digital assets are a thing that have unique value?

00:59:21.840 | Is it a different thing?

00:59:22.940 | Does it have value?

00:59:24.080 | And will it have value long term?

00:59:26.160 | And then what are the characteristics of that type of investment?

00:59:29.680 | To me, those are actually perfectly appropriate for a class.

00:59:32.300 | And I think a lot of the students enjoyed going through it.

00:59:34.640 | I was actually surprised crypto was not as popular a topic in any of the previous years

00:59:38.720 | as I would have expected.

00:59:39.720 | I expected every student to vote for it.

00:59:41.860 | It turns out the most popular topic with students that they asked for in the beginning continues

00:59:47.020 | to be real estate.

00:59:49.000 | I don't know what branding or marketing is going on that's pushing real estate.

00:59:52.320 | But maybe it's just that you're in Silicon Valley, it's one of those areas where no one

00:59:55.520 | can figure out how you could ever buy a house.

00:59:57.240 | And so, you know, real estate is just one of those options.

00:59:59.640 | But I actually dedicated a whole class to real estate, because there were so many requests

01:00:03.400 | for it.

01:00:04.400 | Yeah, there was a slide you had that was interesting, because I feel like every time I talk to people,

01:00:10.080 | there's people who are like, the path to wealth is to own rental properties.

01:00:13.400 | And then there's everyone else.

01:00:15.040 | And that cohort of people believe that that is the best investment class.

01:00:19.480 | Yeah, that's an area that I flipped around on.

01:00:21.200 | If you had talked to me 10 years ago, I probably mostly would have said there's some really

01:00:25.760 | unhealthy marketing push that's across society in the industry that keeps pushing people

01:00:30.840 | towards rental real estate as somehow the best path to financial freedom.

01:00:36.780 | That being said, I mean, the Federal Reserve, there was a paper that came out at the end

01:00:40.080 | of 2017, I shared in my class, etc, that kind of exposed the fact that most of the data

01:00:46.840 | that historically been aggregated about real estate did not include rental income, right?

01:00:51.800 | So most of the data you saw about real estate as an asset class, covered the idea of the

01:00:56.560 | capital gains from it and not the income from it.

01:01:00.480 | And so they did a very good job of looking across 20 different cities in the Europe and

01:01:04.120 | the US over 100 years, all different timespans, etc.

01:01:07.960 | And it turns out there's actually a pretty fair argument that says that rental properties

01:01:11.520 | are actually a very interesting asset class.

01:01:14.000 | They have lower volatility than stocks.

01:01:16.960 | They don't quite have equity like returns.

01:01:19.200 | But when you do that sharp ratio, right, when you look at the risk adjusted return, rental

01:01:23.960 | properties are better than I think the industry gave them credit for.

01:01:27.240 | And I'm just saying this as, you know, a personal story of what we cover in the class.

01:01:31.520 | But I'm not totally surprised it has the draw anymore.

01:01:33.760 | I mean, the truth is a lot of people want control over their financial lives.

01:01:38.280 | Yeah, look, I'm a founder, right?

01:01:39.920 | You've been a founder.

01:01:40.920 | I think there's a natural instinct from a lot of people, a dream of running their own

01:01:44.720 | business.

01:01:45.720 | And in many ways, owning rental properties sounds like a financial investment, but really

01:01:50.120 | it's running a business, right?

01:01:52.160 | And I think there are a lot of people who like running a business and they like the

01:01:55.040 | idea of learning how that business makes money.

01:01:57.880 | And they like learning how to be successful at it.

01:02:01.200 | And so it is an investment, but it's also an occupation in a way.

01:02:04.800 | It's a lifestyle.

01:02:06.560 | As much as owning a restaurant would be or for you and me, it might be a venture backed

01:02:09.880 | software company.

01:02:11.000 | But I think that I've grown to accept the fact that the reason it's so attractive is

01:02:14.280 | because people don't look at it purely as an investment option.

01:02:18.160 | They look at it also as a better way to live.

01:02:20.280 | Now, I think where people go astray is, you actually even mentioned this, I think, briefly,

01:02:25.240 | considering rental property is some form of passive income.

01:02:28.360 | I think it's too idealistic.

01:02:30.280 | It's a job, right?

01:02:31.960 | No matter how much you invest in property management or whatever, this idea that somehow

01:02:35.240 | you're going to be sitting on the beach somewhere and collecting checks does not match the reality

01:02:40.520 | that most people who get into rental properties have to think about.

01:02:43.400 | I think the questions are reasonable.

01:02:45.360 | And especially, I think, by the way, I don't think those questions are going to wait.

01:02:48.080 | Looking at what's going on with real estate prices, not just in California or the Bay

01:02:51.040 | Area, but nationwide, I mean, we're, everyone got a crash course in real estate in the last

01:02:56.640 | 20 years.

01:02:57.640 | You had the incredible boom in the 2000s, you had the incredible blow up in 2008, 2009.

01:03:03.080 | And now we're seeing real estate across the country surge again.

01:03:07.400 | And now guess what?

01:03:08.400 | Inflation's back.

01:03:09.400 | So everyone has that topic.

01:03:10.400 | And something that seemed like one of those stories that, you know, your parents and grandparents

01:03:15.000 | told you, at least in the US, historically, seeing that come back has people looking at

01:03:19.340 | real assets again.

01:03:20.340 | So I think for better or worse, you're going to see a lot of interest in real estate, probably

01:03:23.300 | too much, given the realities of it as an asset class, but it is reasonable that people

01:03:28.540 | are interested.

01:03:29.540 | As I said, most lawyers are not going to find financial success by investing in rental properties.

01:03:35.540 | They're going to find financial success by being great lawyers, and actually spending

01:03:39.460 | less than they make and investing that capital prudently.

01:03:42.060 | That's just something that I see in the data.

01:03:43.660 | It's something that I believe and it's what I teach in the class.

01:03:47.220 | I asked Morgan Housel for his best hack, and it was like, spend less than you earn and

01:03:52.940 | wait.

01:03:53.940 | Like, that was, you know...

01:03:54.940 | Well, you know, Warren Buffett may not be perfect, but I will tell you, sometimes he

01:03:58.600 | has just the right quotes.

01:04:00.140 | And this, I forget which talk show host it was, that question of like, you're very upfront

01:04:04.140 | with what you do.

01:04:05.140 | Why don't more people invest the way you do?

01:04:08.020 | And he says, well, I found in my life that very few people want to get rich slowly.

01:04:14.840 | And it's just, it's true, right?

01:04:16.340 | And by the way, you look at his results, most of his money, over 90% of it was made after

01:04:21.300 | he was 70.

01:04:22.300 | I think some incredible amount of it was made in the last 10 years, right?

01:04:25.660 | That's how compounding works.

01:04:28.100 | Everyone has an urgency to it, and I understand why, right?

01:04:30.380 | When you're young, you're young.

01:04:31.380 | You want money now.

01:04:32.540 | You want success now.

01:04:33.800 | You want to build your life now.

01:04:35.540 | So I think that tension is always going to be there.

01:04:37.660 | And so that's why I'm so bullish on software and systems, right?

01:04:42.060 | I think that humans are never going to get their emotions out of the way when it comes

01:04:47.060 | to money.

01:04:48.060 | As much as you can tell people that this is the way they should reinvest their dividends,

01:04:51.020 | and this is what they should watch in their expenses, and this is how taxes work.

01:04:54.820 | We're busy.

01:04:55.820 | We have other priorities.

01:04:57.460 | Even if we were fully rational, we probably wouldn't get around to doing it.

01:05:00.820 | And the fact is we're not fully rational.

01:05:03.460 | And so this is why I like apps and services.

01:05:05.220 | I like what Wealthfront did for financial advice and for investing.

01:05:08.700 | I like what Acorns does for saving, getting millions of people have some money at the

01:05:13.420 | end of the month that they wouldn't have.

01:05:15.260 | And I'm hoping that's what Daffy ends up helping to do with giving.

01:05:18.140 | Just systems that make it easier for people to do the right thing with their money.

01:05:22.220 | I want to jump last to the quick few questions outside of finance, outside of giving.

01:05:27.620 | I always like to ask people, if someone's coming to your neck of the woods, where would

01:05:31.740 | you tell them to go for dinner, grab a drink and something to do?

01:05:35.900 | The number one challenge I usually have when people come in to visit is they are always

01:05:40.180 | focused on San Francisco, but I grew up in Silicon Valley.

01:05:43.920 | When it comes to places, I mean, it depends.

01:05:45.700 | There's a little place in Los Altos called The Post, which I like to take people for

01:05:49.580 | lunch.

01:05:50.580 | When I take people for lunch, I found that they have a broad enough menu and it's nice

01:05:53.660 | enough that no matter where you're from, no matter what diet you're on, no matter what

01:05:56.900 | you're avoiding or doing or what, like there's something for everyone.

01:06:00.740 | And so it tends to work when I have people from out of town.

01:06:03.700 | Of course, if you're meeting me for coffee, I'm super boring.

01:06:05.980 | It's always going to be at the Starbucks in Los Altos.

01:06:08.580 | But for dinner, I mean, I like steakhouses.

01:06:12.020 | I mean, I'm a huge fan of Alexander's Steakhouse.

01:06:14.620 | There's several of them.

01:06:15.620 | There's one in San Francisco, of course.

01:06:16.940 | There's actually one in Palo Alto called The Sea and there's one down in Cupertino.

01:06:20.700 | The Cupertino one is the original one.

01:06:22.580 | But if you're looking for a really high quality steak with kind of a more Japanese elements

01:06:28.540 | to it, it's really hard to beat in my book.

01:06:32.100 | That's fantastic.

01:06:33.100 | Any, any, any suggestion to spend a weekend or an afternoon doing something outside of

01:06:37.580 | San Francisco in the Bay Area?

01:06:39.580 | Oh, I'm always a big fan of getting outdoors.

01:06:42.660 | I like taking people, walking them around Stanford.

01:06:45.340 | Stanford's still a beautiful place that I think actually captures a lot of both California

01:06:49.500 | and kind of the environment.

01:06:50.860 | It's almost always warm and full of life.

01:06:53.100 | But I like getting outside, actually, like, you know, hiking the Dish, walking shorelines

01:06:58.420 | beautiful.

01:06:59.420 | There's so many parks around that you can actually go to.

01:07:01.580 | But I'm also going to preface this by saying I'm super boring.

01:07:05.020 | Like there's a reason why most people don't plan their vacations around me.

01:07:09.300 | No, I think these are some good tips.

01:07:11.580 | I really appreciate it.

01:07:13.300 | Before we head out, where can people find the stuff you're working on, the stuff you're

01:07:16.180 | writing online?

01:07:17.180 | Oh, for sure.

01:07:18.540 | So the best place to go, of course, for Daffy, of course, is go to Daffy.org.

01:07:22.820 | All the content is there.

01:07:23.820 | A lot to read up on the articles that I've written are on the Daffy blog.

01:07:27.060 | We have some evergreen resources there.

01:07:28.700 | So if you're interested in philanthropy or giving or anything, I talked about the generosity,

01:07:32.780 | the tax savings on donating stock or crypto, you can find that all in the Daffy blog.

01:07:36.740 | I do blog personally still, although it turns out building a startup takes time and so not

01:07:40.660 | as much as I used to.

01:07:41.980 | But yeah, my blog has been running AdamNash.blog has most of the information I've published

01:07:46.260 | in the last 15 years.

01:07:48.480 | And then, of course, if you're interested in that Stanford class, it's really meaningful

01:07:51.700 | for me to push financial education out as broadly as possible.

01:07:55.780 | One of the reasons to do the Stanford class was to make it more normalized, that there

01:07:59.580 | would be personal finance education.

01:08:02.080 | And so if you're interested in any of those decks that Chris went through, if you actually

01:08:05.100 | go to CS007.blog, all the slides for all the last five years are there.

01:08:10.780 | Yeah, I'll link to all that in the show notes.

01:08:13.400 | And we said it before, if you if you're going to sign up for Daffy and you want to get an

01:08:16.700 | extra $25 in your account, allthehacks.com/daffy.

01:08:19.620 | Adam, thank you so much for joining me.

01:08:22.980 | No, thank you for having me, Chris.

01:08:24.980 | It's great.

01:08:25.980 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:08:28.220 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:08:29.900 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

01:08:34.700 | I would really appreciate it.

01:08:36.500 | And if you have any feedback on the show questions for me or just want to say hi, I'm Chris

01:08:40.760 | at allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:08:44.740 | That's it for this week.

01:08:45.740 | I'll see you next week.

01:09:02.780 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

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01:09:39.060 | your mind.

01:09:40.060 | And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating in their

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