ATHLLC8522838912

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.000 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:04.360 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:06.960 | If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins,

00:00:08.760 | and I'm a diehard optimizer who loves doing all the research

00:00:11.560 | to help you get the best experience in life

00:00:13.720 | without necessarily an expensive price tag.

00:00:16.320 | Though, here's a thought experiment.

00:00:18.420 | Imagine that one day you die

00:00:19.600 | and you have all this money in your account,

00:00:22.520 | but actually you don't.

00:00:23.600 | How does that feel?

00:00:24.620 | You die with zero?

00:00:25.680 | Scary, like you did something wrong?

00:00:27.500 | That's exactly what today's guest recommends.

00:00:30.160 | He's Bill Perkins, a longtime hedge fund manager

00:00:32.500 | and energy trader who's written a book called "Die With Zero,

00:00:35.400 | Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life."

00:00:38.300 | I loved the book.

00:00:39.700 | You might have a lot of objections to his concept,

00:00:41.860 | and I actually did before I read it,

00:00:43.940 | but now I'm a huge convert,

00:00:45.900 | so we're gonna dive into all of it.

00:00:47.300 | We're gonna talk about what it actually means

00:00:48.860 | to die with zero,

00:00:50.020 | why you might wanna stop maximizing net worth

00:00:52.220 | and focus on net fulfillment,

00:00:53.980 | why you should bank memory dividends,

00:00:55.940 | and the ways to do that for maximum ROI,

00:00:58.780 | why Bill thinks, contrary to financial advice,

00:01:01.480 | you should save less money when you're young,

00:01:03.980 | why you should think about your life

00:01:05.200 | as distinct seasons or time buckets,

00:01:07.140 | and how that can help you make the best choices

00:01:09.140 | about spending your money, and a lot more.

00:01:11.420 | So let's get started right after this.

00:01:13.580 | Just a quick heads up

00:01:15.500 | that there's some language in this episode

00:01:17.040 | that you might not want your kids to hear,

00:01:18.740 | so maybe throw your headphones in for this one.

00:01:21.420 | A quick word from our sponsor today.

00:01:24.980 | Bill, welcome to the show, and thank you for being here.

00:01:27.780 | - Thanks for having me.

00:01:28.620 | It's great to be here.

00:01:29.440 | Wow, we got a lot to go over, don't we?

00:01:30.900 | - I didn't even mention something yet.

00:01:31.820 | We got two daughters.

00:01:32.660 | There's a lot we could talk about,

00:01:34.380 | but your book's all about dying with zero,

00:01:36.540 | and that many people save too much money

00:01:38.860 | and leave it behind instead of spending it

00:01:41.240 | in ways that are more meaningful.

00:01:43.140 | You've obviously been very skilled

00:01:44.460 | and fortunate at building wealth,

00:01:45.860 | so before we jump into all these lessons,

00:01:47.960 | I just wanna make sure I understand who this is for,

00:01:50.580 | and does it actually apply to people

00:01:52.100 | with just a modest income or who haven't built wealth yet?

00:01:55.000 | - So the book is a bunch of mental models,

00:01:56.980 | and it's a counterfactual regret minimization algorithm

00:02:00.460 | that's solving for net fulfillment.

00:02:02.540 | A lot of people have algorithms for building wealth.

00:02:04.580 | It's solving for building wealth.

00:02:05.820 | I'm solving for net fulfillment.

00:02:07.820 | So what variables are the inputs?

00:02:10.020 | Your wealth, your health, and your time.

00:02:12.140 | Even though people may have more wealth

00:02:14.280 | or better health or more time,

00:02:16.420 | those variables still you can use formulaically

00:02:20.300 | with these mental models to maximize your net fulfillment.

00:02:23.620 | I wouldn't say this book isn't for unhealthy fat people.

00:02:26.740 | They can still get value out of this

00:02:28.220 | to maximize their own net fulfillment,

00:02:30.600 | and the same thing for people with not that much money.

00:02:33.620 | Obviously, a person who's over-saving by millions

00:02:37.840 | is formulaically getting more value

00:02:40.740 | in terms of the amount of waste that they're wasting

00:02:44.580 | by dying with a bunch of money in the bank,

00:02:46.680 | but everybody still gets value relative to them

00:02:49.220 | to get more out of this one ride called life.

00:02:52.380 | - And how do you define net fulfillment?

00:02:54.620 | - So I basically say that the sum of your experiences,

00:02:58.440 | your choices, every moment in your life,

00:03:01.140 | when you make a decision, those choices,

00:03:03.300 | that is what constitutes your life,

00:03:05.660 | and the sum of all those decisions and experiences

00:03:08.340 | that you consume will determine whether you've had

00:03:11.380 | a full life or fulfilling life or a not-so-fulfilling life

00:03:15.380 | relative to the best life you can possibly have.

00:03:18.460 | And so I define net fulfillment as your choices,

00:03:21.860 | i.e. your experiences, and when I use experiences,

00:03:24.100 | I mean it in the broadest sense of the word.

00:03:26.340 | I don't necessarily mean always taking a trip.

00:03:28.500 | It could be walking with grandmother.

00:03:30.140 | It could be donating to a charity.

00:03:31.780 | It's just every single choice that you make.

00:03:34.140 | - And before we jump in, I actually wanna talk

00:03:35.760 | about a few common misconceptions,

00:03:37.500 | because I feel like some of them came up

00:03:39.660 | a little bit late in the book.

00:03:40.980 | Some of them came up early.

00:03:41.820 | So I feel like this is important.

00:03:43.100 | So one I'll share, and I'll ask if there are others,

00:03:45.800 | is around retirement, and it's that the amount

00:03:49.940 | you actually need in retirement is often lower

00:03:51.620 | than people think, and it's no surprise

00:03:53.580 | that also people increase their assets in retirement.

00:03:56.380 | Not all of them, but a good number of them.

00:03:58.460 | And so something that was helpful for me to realize

00:04:00.860 | is if we're all thinking, oh, I should save all this money

00:04:03.500 | because I'm gonna need it, because I'm gonna be spending,

00:04:06.220 | well, it turns out you probably will spend less

00:04:08.080 | based on actual studies, not just your opinion,

00:04:10.540 | and you might actually make more in retirement.

00:04:12.500 | Are there other things that might be common misconceptions

00:04:15.500 | people have that understanding might make

00:04:17.560 | this whole conversation easier to process

00:04:19.860 | in those mindsets?

00:04:20.700 | - Yeah, adjacent to what you're saying about spending,

00:04:22.780 | the data's kind of overwhelming that people spend less,

00:04:25.520 | even adjusting for healthcare costs, right?

00:04:27.300 | Like people are like, what about healthcare

00:04:28.620 | and rising healthcare?

00:04:29.860 | It's their bodies, the deterioration,

00:04:33.740 | the change in their attitudes, et cetera,

00:04:35.700 | their ability to do or enjoy certain activities.

00:04:38.780 | Probably all of us have a relative

00:04:39.960 | that doesn't like to fly.

00:04:41.420 | You could take them somewhere, but they're like,

00:04:42.780 | I don't wanna sit on a plane for three hours

00:04:44.700 | because it hurts my back or my knees

00:04:46.220 | or something to that effect.

00:04:47.540 | There's probably people my age or younger,

00:04:49.740 | 40s, used to be athletic and like could not go play

00:04:52.460 | a pickup game of flag football right now.

00:04:54.260 | It wouldn't be as enjoyable.

00:04:55.260 | They could play it.

00:04:56.180 | The misconception that's out there

00:04:57.540 | is people think their lives are gonna be

00:04:58.580 | like a carnival commercial when they retire,

00:05:01.620 | and it cannot be further from the truth.

00:05:03.700 | And having lived in the Virgin Islands

00:05:05.940 | where these cruise lines all park up,

00:05:08.100 | like we'd have three, four to seven ships

00:05:10.340 | during high season coming in,

00:05:11.800 | and the main activity is going into the shops, right?

00:05:15.940 | Not these athletic activities to buy something,

00:05:18.640 | not for themselves, but for their granddaughters

00:05:20.680 | or a relative, et cetera.

00:05:22.060 | Like they're actually looking for ways

00:05:26.220 | to consume the money that they have

00:05:27.740 | because they cannot consume it into the experiences

00:05:29.880 | that they thought they would.

00:05:31.400 | - You talk about the declining utility of money with age.

00:05:34.480 | You have all this money and you say,

00:05:35.600 | oh, I'm gonna punt on this awesome, amazing trip

00:05:37.920 | till I'm retired and I can take time off work.

00:05:40.000 | And then you're like, I don't know.

00:05:41.400 | Do I really want to go walk around Japan nonstop?

00:05:44.840 | I say this because I took my family,

00:05:46.640 | my sister, her husband, my parents to Japan.

00:05:49.760 | And the degree to which we wanted the kids to go explore

00:05:53.580 | was just not the degree to which my parents

00:05:55.500 | were willing to go.

00:05:56.960 | And I don't know if they would have thought

00:05:58.480 | that was the case 20 years ago,

00:06:00.440 | but there were things they had to miss out on

00:06:02.400 | because they're just older and they couldn't keep up.

00:06:05.280 | - Yeah, I think a lot of people have the model in their head

00:06:07.660 | that their ability to convert money into experiences,

00:06:10.840 | like your body is static, it will remain the same.

00:06:13.360 | They kind of divorce this idea that,

00:06:15.560 | wow, my mental acuity is gonna decline,

00:06:17.320 | my lung capacity is gonna decline,

00:06:18.600 | my bone density is gonna decline,

00:06:20.480 | my muscle mass is gonna decline about 1% a year

00:06:23.960 | after age like 35.

00:06:26.000 | So they don't put all these facts together in that,

00:06:29.480 | hey, this is obviating either my desire or ability

00:06:34.480 | to actually enjoy these activities.

00:06:36.640 | And so you have a prime example of walking around Japan

00:06:39.360 | and Tokyo and so they delayed that trip

00:06:41.480 | or that gratification, let's just assume they did,

00:06:44.040 | to a point where there really wasn't any gratification.

00:06:47.680 | Tokyo was less valuable a trip to them.

00:06:50.240 | - I think there were things where we came home

00:06:51.880 | and we were like, oh, you missed this thing.

00:06:53.820 | They were like, we're okay,

00:06:54.880 | because if we had pushed ourselves,

00:06:56.160 | it would have been a mess, but we had a great trip.

00:06:58.200 | Like, I think they had a great trip,

00:06:59.440 | but I think that five, 10 years ago,

00:07:02.440 | they would have gotten to do 20% more

00:07:04.200 | and it would have been a better trip.

00:07:05.400 | - Correct, you do the best with what you have.

00:07:07.120 | There's no sense in crying over spilt milk

00:07:09.000 | or what they did or didn't do,

00:07:10.640 | but you can easily look at the scenario

00:07:12.520 | and say that was not the optimal time

00:07:14.880 | for them to take that trip

00:07:16.440 | in the totality of the arc of their lives.

00:07:18.600 | We don't get to play a sim game and Monte Carlo our lives,

00:07:21.320 | be like, well, let me do this trip here and that, whatever.

00:07:23.260 | But what I try to do with this book

00:07:25.640 | is get people to think about

00:07:28.080 | how do I optimize for net fulfillment?

00:07:30.280 | Where do experiences belong?

00:07:32.600 | First, what experiences do I want, right, in my life?

00:07:35.560 | And then very importantly,

00:07:38.000 | where do those experiences belong?

00:07:40.020 | Where does the trip to Japan belong?

00:07:41.960 | Where does going to the opera belong?

00:07:43.560 | Where does hiking this mountain belong?

00:07:45.040 | When does the ski trip belong?

00:07:46.440 | And that matters, it may matter more than the what.

00:07:49.560 | - I'll give an example that you basically put on

00:07:52.720 | a banger of a 50th birthday party,

00:07:54.520 | but you decided to just do it when you were 45

00:07:56.880 | because it would be a better experience.

00:07:59.040 | To me, that was a big moment, I was like,

00:08:00.320 | oh, you always think let's do this thing

00:08:02.240 | at this milestone in life.

00:08:03.680 | And you were just like, let's just do it earlier

00:08:05.520 | so that I get more out of it.

00:08:06.920 | - Yeah, there's other smaller examples.

00:08:09.000 | I was in an island and guys were gonna go wakeboarding.

00:08:11.480 | You may have heard me say this.

00:08:12.640 | And I was like, nah, I'm just gonna chill here,

00:08:14.800 | relax, et cetera.

00:08:15.920 | And I have a degenerative cartilage in L3, L4.

00:08:19.480 | And so my wakeboarding days are limited.

00:08:22.720 | And if I was gonna go wakeboarding,

00:08:24.960 | it's not five years from now.

00:08:26.320 | And then I was like, okay, when is the next time

00:08:28.600 | I'm gonna be on an island where it's warm

00:08:30.520 | and there's actually a wakeboard and a wakeboard boat

00:08:32.440 | with these friends, et cetera, to go wakeboarding

00:08:34.420 | that I physically can do it.

00:08:36.280 | And I quickly came to the conclusion, never.

00:08:39.560 | It's now or never.

00:08:40.880 | This is the last wakeboarding chance

00:08:42.760 | I'm probably gonna have for the rest of my life.

00:08:45.120 | And so I quickly said I can lounge on the beach

00:08:49.440 | and relax until my 80s.

00:08:50.920 | I can't go wakeboarding.

00:08:52.000 | So now is the time to go wakeboarding.

00:08:53.360 | So I got on the boat and said, I'm just gonna go do this.

00:08:55.880 | And that was my last wakeboarding run ever.

00:08:58.280 | - I have a similar experience, but it wasn't my last.

00:09:00.600 | I'd always as a kid been a skateboarder, snowboarder,

00:09:03.100 | and I'd always wanted to go wakeboarding.

00:09:05.160 | And for some reason, just the opportunity never arose.

00:09:07.440 | And finally, I was like, you know what?

00:09:09.300 | I'm not getting to the point

00:09:10.240 | that I couldn't wakeboard in five years,

00:09:11.800 | but I'm getting to the point that

00:09:13.160 | if I wanna try to do crazy stuff on a wakeboard,

00:09:14.840 | I probably should do it now.

00:09:16.160 | - Yeah.

00:09:17.000 | - And then we rented a boat.

00:09:17.840 | My brother-in-law and I went out

00:09:19.680 | and literally the boat was defective

00:09:21.800 | and could not go fast enough to do anything.

00:09:23.520 | So I still need to get that checked off my list

00:09:25.760 | because we basically were just trolling around on this boat

00:09:28.560 | and we got a refund, which was cool,

00:09:29.840 | but I still haven't ticked that one off.

00:09:32.120 | - And you talk about trying to bucket these things.

00:09:34.060 | So you have all these ideas in life.

00:09:36.700 | Your theory is instead of saying, make this big list,

00:09:39.500 | you can have a bucket list,

00:09:40.540 | but you kind of have this anti-bucket list.

00:09:42.540 | So why is bucketing things so different than a bucket list?

00:09:45.020 | And why is the distinction important?

00:09:46.740 | - I like to go backwards to either zero and infinity

00:09:50.100 | to try and get a concept across.

00:09:51.580 | So just before you were born, you're in heaven,

00:09:53.700 | the universe, the matrix, creators, whatever your thing is.

00:09:56.340 | And then God says to you,

00:09:59.180 | what experiences do you wanna have

00:10:01.300 | on your journey on planet earth?

00:10:02.860 | You have 86 years, 79 years, whatever it is,

00:10:05.740 | what experiences you wanna have?

00:10:06.820 | And you go to the hall of experiences,

00:10:09.380 | which is really the hall of choices, right?

00:10:11.340 | You're like, I wanna go skateboarding this many times,

00:10:13.420 | then I'm gonna go traveling, I wanna have kids,

00:10:15.100 | I wanna get a degree, I wanna say I love you

00:10:17.380 | this many times, every single thing you can think of.

00:10:19.500 | I'm gonna donate charities, I'm gonna whatever.

00:10:21.700 | You throw it into your infinite bucket of experiences.

00:10:25.140 | It's not infinite because you're a human, et cetera.

00:10:27.140 | God goes, great, you can have all those experiences.

00:10:30.860 | There's only one problem, you have to get the order right.

00:10:33.260 | And so the guy who puts the like,

00:10:34.940 | I wanna go hella skiing and puts it in the 80 to 85 bucket,

00:10:38.780 | probably doesn't get to go hella skiing, right?

00:10:41.660 | 'Cause our decisions are dynamic,

00:10:43.340 | our body has a health curve, utility curve,

00:10:46.780 | and certain things belong in certain areas.

00:10:48.860 | So I'd pick like kind of these cartoon exaggerated examples

00:10:52.820 | of the why the timing matters, what experiences belong when,

00:10:57.820 | but there's tons of them.

00:10:59.740 | People have kids and they're like,

00:11:01.180 | oh, I'm gonna hang out with my kids

00:11:03.580 | when they're 13 or 14 more.

00:11:05.060 | We're gonna go this, I'm gonna wait for this.

00:11:06.700 | And your kids don't wanna know you when you're 13 and 14,

00:11:09.020 | or they don't wanna do the same activities

00:11:10.620 | when you're younger.

00:11:11.460 | And people are very acutely aware

00:11:13.060 | of how they spend time with their kids

00:11:15.780 | and what activities they can do with their kids

00:11:18.020 | at certain periods in their life

00:11:19.620 | and certain seasons of life.

00:11:20.700 | But that applies to everyone, in every relationship,

00:11:23.260 | even business, your health, spiritual, et cetera.

00:11:26.100 | And not only are there limits,

00:11:28.260 | there's your attitude changes,

00:11:30.100 | certain experiences are orthogonal to other experiences.

00:11:33.980 | My flag football days are done, man.

00:11:36.380 | I'm not trying to pull a hamstring, twist a knee, et cetera,

00:11:38.980 | because of my body, the recovery time.

00:11:41.780 | Not that I can't do it,

00:11:42.700 | not that it wouldn't be fun while I'm doing it,

00:11:44.220 | but it would be less enjoyable afterwards.

00:11:46.260 | And it wouldn't be as enjoyable,

00:11:48.060 | let's say in my 20s or 30s.

00:11:49.380 | Like, hey, let's go play football after work.

00:11:52.220 | I would never say that now, right?

00:11:54.660 | Never ever, right?

00:11:55.740 | So if I had in my bucket of experiences,

00:11:58.300 | that had to happen in the 20 to 33 bucket.

00:12:02.260 | - We haven't talked about memory dividends,

00:12:03.700 | but I think it's interesting,

00:12:04.980 | because just because you did that in your 30s

00:12:08.300 | doesn't mean you don't get value out of it

00:12:10.540 | in your 40s or your 50s or your 60s.

00:12:12.100 | Just something I'd never seen or heard or thought about,

00:12:14.220 | which was you could stack these memories

00:12:16.540 | throughout the rest of your life

00:12:17.860 | if you actually do them and enjoy them

00:12:19.580 | and document them maybe to enhance it.

00:12:21.620 | - Yeah, the purpose of money is to fulfill your life, right?

00:12:23.860 | It's for your consumption.

00:12:25.220 | You want to use all your resources that you have,

00:12:27.700 | your wealth and health and time

00:12:28.820 | to get the maximum fulfillment.

00:12:30.460 | Let's just go with that.

00:12:31.780 | I always ask people this, what are you saving for?

00:12:34.620 | They'll give me some abstract, like retirement.

00:12:36.220 | I'm like, no, no, no, no, like house, home, whatever.

00:12:38.620 | Okay, I'll give you survival.

00:12:40.100 | Once your survival is covered, what are you saving for?

00:12:43.380 | I want to know exactly in your mind,

00:12:45.820 | what are you saving for?

00:12:46.980 | Sometimes people will give me like a very definitive answer

00:12:49.980 | of like, I want to take this trip.

00:12:51.580 | I want to go to the opera.

00:12:52.700 | I want to be able to take a cruise.

00:12:55.060 | Every single year of my life from 66 to the grave

00:12:58.740 | or whatever it is.

00:12:59.580 | But a lot of times it's in abstract land.

00:13:02.260 | It's just this autopilot answer.

00:13:04.740 | And when you save money,

00:13:09.140 | it's attached to some future consumption or experience.

00:13:13.020 | And that experience is going to give you

00:13:14.780 | some sort of fulfillment or joy.

00:13:16.700 | When you consume an experience,

00:13:19.340 | you have joy from that experience.

00:13:22.140 | But also when you recall that experience

00:13:25.420 | and revisit that experience, you get joy from it.

00:13:28.660 | So it pays a dividend, what I call the memory dividend.

00:13:31.940 | Anybody who's had a first kiss,

00:13:33.460 | hit a game winning home run,

00:13:35.460 | they've told that story over and over again.

00:13:37.580 | And when they tell that story and they recall that story,

00:13:39.980 | they get a sense of fulfillment from it.

00:13:42.460 | That experience, that original experience

00:13:44.740 | is paying a dividend and also creating a new memory.

00:13:47.500 | As I discuss with you, hey, my backpacking trip

00:13:50.460 | or my trip to Asia, et cetera.

00:13:52.700 | And that adds up to our fulfillment.

00:13:54.980 | Now you can do it the other way around.

00:13:56.500 | You can say, well, here is the original experience

00:13:59.220 | and here are the dividends

00:14:00.260 | and here's the total fulfillment there.

00:14:02.220 | Or I could put the money in this investment,

00:14:04.380 | it will pay dividends, I'll have more money

00:14:06.380 | and I'll buy more experiences in the future.

00:14:08.860 | And we have to weigh these two things out to optimize it.

00:14:11.180 | Is it better to take one ski trip now

00:14:15.380 | with my friends and buddies

00:14:17.540 | or two ski trips 10 years from now?

00:14:20.700 | Because the money is for consumption.

00:14:21.940 | We're going to use it all.

00:14:23.300 | So the question is, when is the best time to allocate

00:14:25.820 | and which provides the total return on fulfillment?

00:14:29.140 | What gets me the highest fulfillment?

00:14:31.380 | Depending on who you are, what your age is

00:14:33.500 | and the things you like,

00:14:34.820 | going through that mental exercise

00:14:36.220 | may produce different results.

00:14:37.460 | Me at 53, a lot of the times,

00:14:40.060 | the answer is not two trips 10 years from now.

00:14:42.220 | It's the activity now plus the dividends

00:14:44.780 | will surely exceed two of the activity later in life.

00:14:49.780 | You can just calculate what that return is.

00:14:52.180 | - Is it as simple as a rule of thumb

00:14:53.860 | where it's like for however many years in the future,

00:14:56.340 | this thing will be a memory?

00:14:58.180 | It is worth, I don't know, 10% more every year.

00:15:02.100 | Is there some simple math?

00:15:03.380 | - I would put it to you and your followers

00:15:04.860 | and be like, hey, we're going to run a calculator

00:15:06.660 | and you can put in your health degradation,

00:15:09.220 | all these formulas and we'll give you a better idea

00:15:11.620 | of what it's going to be worth to you

00:15:13.700 | later in life versus now.

00:15:15.020 | But for me, I just deeply think about it.

00:15:17.820 | Like I sit down, like wakeboarding.

00:15:20.620 | There is no future wakeboarding, right?

00:15:22.380 | It might've been two wakeboarding trips later,

00:15:24.420 | spend the money, be with your friends, et cetera.

00:15:27.060 | But generally, as you get older,

00:15:29.060 | I think the answer is like when you're 20, 22,

00:15:31.860 | maybe two ski trips, two and a half ski trips at 30

00:15:35.220 | is a much better deal.

00:15:36.380 | You're more mature, you'll have your stuff together,

00:15:38.380 | other things been going on.

00:15:39.580 | I'll have some friends that'll be bigger and better.

00:15:41.260 | I can afford the upgrade, whatever.

00:15:42.860 | Maybe it's a better trip.

00:15:44.060 | For me at 53, two ski trips is not the answer.

00:15:48.180 | - I went on this trip, my wife and I,

00:15:49.700 | and I hadn't read your book.

00:15:50.740 | So somehow I had this spark of let's quit our jobs

00:15:53.740 | and let's spend all our savings

00:15:55.100 | and let's backpack around the world for seven months.

00:15:57.500 | And we did this in our 20s.

00:16:00.140 | I am 100% certain that the money that we spent

00:16:04.140 | wouldn't even buy one trip around the world for two months

00:16:08.380 | now that we have a different lifestyle,

00:16:10.140 | we have kids and all this stuff.

00:16:11.560 | So I think it's especially interesting

00:16:13.780 | for someone in their 20s or early 30s,

00:16:16.420 | foregoing that trip now isn't gonna let your money grow

00:16:20.140 | to be two trips because I'm almost certain

00:16:22.660 | that by the time that money is enough for the two trips,

00:16:25.780 | the cost of a trip is gonna be twice or three times as much.

00:16:28.500 | It might not even be enough to go on one.

00:16:30.380 | - You're including also the economic inflation of the trip,

00:16:32.740 | also the fact that you become more bougie as you get older.

00:16:35.580 | Like it's hard to do the youth hostel backpacking thing

00:16:38.500 | as you get older.

00:16:39.420 | That's not even a physical thing.

00:16:40.620 | That's like your attitude changes.

00:16:42.220 | You realize that certain activities,

00:16:44.260 | going back to this time bucketing, belong in your 20s

00:16:47.980 | and they don't transfer well to your 30s.

00:16:51.540 | Now you may be able to do them,

00:16:53.300 | but it's just not as enjoyable

00:16:54.980 | or it'll cost infinite more money or whatever it is.

00:16:57.820 | And that the 20s activity,

00:17:00.780 | not only do you get to enjoy it more,

00:17:02.500 | but you get to enjoy the discussion,

00:17:04.340 | the memories, the conversation.

00:17:05.900 | It's the thing that makes you interesting.

00:17:07.260 | Like when I sit down and talk with somebody at a dinner,

00:17:09.260 | I just met them,

00:17:10.580 | I'd say 80% of the conversation is what have they done?

00:17:13.860 | What experiences that they have?

00:17:15.140 | What were their learnings?

00:17:16.460 | What has been their journey?

00:17:17.780 | And maybe 20% is what they're going to do

00:17:19.700 | or what's going on currently, et cetera.

00:17:21.540 | And that is what drives your fulfillment

00:17:24.060 | when you're meeting somebody.

00:17:25.020 | It makes you an interesting character.

00:17:26.340 | And so getting the order right and figuring out,

00:17:29.900 | hey, is it worth it to delay or not,

00:17:31.820 | is a very personal thing.

00:17:33.660 | And it's very dependent on which activities

00:17:35.660 | or things fulfill you.

00:17:37.140 | But it's definitely the thought process

00:17:39.020 | that you want to go through.

00:17:40.340 | - My takeaway so far is,

00:17:42.340 | don't necessarily focus on accumulating money to all extent

00:17:45.460 | because you can use that money earlier

00:17:47.980 | to create experiences that provide value

00:17:49.660 | the rest of your life.

00:17:50.740 | - If the purpose is I'm going to get the max value

00:17:53.340 | and I say the max value is fulfillment,

00:17:55.660 | you got to change your optimization algorithm in your head

00:17:59.380 | to optimize for fulfillment.

00:18:01.340 | A lot of people keep optimizing for money.

00:18:05.340 | And I'm like, listen, okay,

00:18:06.340 | why don't you optimize for the most money at 86?

00:18:09.300 | And they'll obviously will go, no, that's dumb.

00:18:12.300 | Well, it's the same thing is true at 85 or 84 or 83

00:18:16.260 | or any year, we should be optimizing for fulfillment.

00:18:20.060 | Money is just a tool for your fulfillment.

00:18:23.180 | You are not a tool to make money.

00:18:25.740 | And a lot of people operating in the latter, not the former.

00:18:29.700 | - I want to come back to identifying that,

00:18:31.700 | but there's a couple of things on bucketing experiences

00:18:33.820 | and memoring them.

00:18:34.660 | So we had a wedding as many people do,

00:18:36.900 | and we paid for a photographer, videographer,

00:18:39.380 | although many people that have listened know

00:18:41.260 | that we negotiated to pay for the videographer

00:18:43.420 | by swapping frequent flyer miles instead of dollars

00:18:46.020 | 'cause we wanted to get a deal.

00:18:47.100 | But looking back, that video has not been seen

00:18:50.540 | by millions of people, it's friends and family,

00:18:52.580 | and we've watched it every few years.

00:18:54.700 | But I think it's really reinforced the memory of the wedding

00:18:58.900 | and the photos do the same.

00:19:00.180 | I'm curious if there are any other tactics

00:19:02.500 | that can enhance the dividends that our memories pay

00:19:06.380 | so that we can get more value of them after we have them.

00:19:09.060 | - I think technology is doing something wonderful.

00:19:11.100 | Google Photos or iPhones will do this.

00:19:12.900 | They'll be on this date,

00:19:14.180 | and then photos will pop up of what happens.

00:19:16.980 | And then you get joy out of that,

00:19:19.100 | and it sparks a conversation.

00:19:20.420 | You get fulfillment from an experience that you had

00:19:22.660 | and the recall of it.

00:19:23.980 | So it's triggering and tapping in to your memory dividend,

00:19:28.500 | to your memories to provide you value.

00:19:30.460 | One of the gifts my fiance at the time gave me was a box

00:19:34.020 | and it had photos and memories and little comments

00:19:36.260 | on what it was.

00:19:37.100 | And I was like, "This is the best gift."

00:19:39.060 | Close to zero cost of any kind of purchase, et cetera,

00:19:42.220 | paper, cards, some photos printed out, et cetera,

00:19:45.260 | and her perspective.

00:19:46.300 | But it was amazing on how much joy it was.

00:19:49.020 | And really, I was just mining the prior experience

00:19:51.460 | and experience dividend.

00:19:52.580 | If somebody comes up with another tool

00:19:54.060 | or another idea or another method, I'm open to it.

00:19:56.820 | I really wanna mine the memory dividend

00:19:58.740 | and get the most out of my investments.

00:20:00.460 | And my investments are, I invest in experiences

00:20:03.540 | 'cause that's what fulfills me.

00:20:04.980 | Just like Warren Buffett says,

00:20:05.980 | "When do you start investing?"

00:20:07.220 | "Early, now, now, now."

00:20:09.180 | In order to get the maximum,

00:20:11.060 | what I call memory dividend, maximum return.

00:20:13.220 | - Everyone says compound interest is so important.

00:20:15.340 | You should invest as early as you can

00:20:17.020 | to have the most money possible.

00:20:18.620 | You're saying, "I have the same principle.

00:20:20.700 | "It's just, I'm not optimizing for money."

00:20:22.460 | So invest, invest, invest as early as possible

00:20:24.700 | in the kinds of experiences

00:20:26.020 | that will maximize your fulfillment of life.

00:20:28.500 | - Yeah, I agree.

00:20:29.860 | When people are focused on returns

00:20:31.780 | and compound interest, et cetera,

00:20:33.820 | they're optimizing for maximum money.

00:20:36.460 | That's a vertical, your wealth, getting your wealth up.

00:20:38.820 | And there's lots of books and lots of tools, tricks, hacks

00:20:41.740 | on how to get the most out of every dollar you spend,

00:20:44.460 | how to make the most money, et cetera.

00:20:46.620 | But I'm at a top level optimization.

00:20:49.220 | I'm at a much higher optimization

00:20:50.940 | on like your life fulfillment, your net fulfillment.

00:20:55.020 | And the memory dividend is a huge calculation in it.

00:20:57.740 | And I really encourage people to invest

00:21:00.740 | in making those memory dividends,

00:21:02.140 | or at least think about that when you're deciding

00:21:05.220 | whether to delay gratification

00:21:07.540 | or actually have gratification now.

00:21:09.540 | - One thing that's helped me in this is

00:21:11.980 | if you think about the marginal dollar that you're saving,

00:21:14.540 | and so often I hear people,

00:21:15.940 | this is probably people with a little more money,

00:21:17.460 | but they're like, "Oh, well, I should save more money."

00:21:19.580 | And I'm like, "Well, why?"

00:21:20.660 | And they're like, "Well, then I'll have more money.

00:21:21.820 | "And I get a higher net worth."

00:21:22.980 | And I say, "Well, what's that next marginal dollar

00:21:24.900 | "gonna do for you?"

00:21:26.140 | Because people always say,

00:21:27.140 | "Well, if I save an extra $1,000 a month,

00:21:29.420 | "that's my kid's college."

00:21:30.540 | And it's like, "Well, do you already have

00:21:32.060 | "your kid's college saved?

00:21:32.980 | "'Cause if so, then what's that extra dollar doing?

00:21:36.100 | "And would that extra dollar

00:21:37.020 | "actually be better spent today?"

00:21:38.740 | - Yeah.

00:21:39.580 | Going back to, I try and get people to map their money

00:21:41.540 | to what the consumption is.

00:21:43.340 | A lot of people saving, they're like,

00:21:44.420 | "Oh, I'm saving, I'm working."

00:21:45.460 | I'm like, "Listen, it's okay to save.

00:21:47.060 | "Just tell me what the party is and when's the party.

00:21:50.920 | "Just tell me when the party is.

00:21:52.000 | "I'm okay with it."

00:21:53.100 | You know what I mean?

00:21:53.940 | Like it gets them thinking like,

00:21:54.760 | "Oh, 65, no, that's not really when I have the party.

00:21:57.500 | "Wait, what kind of party do I have?

00:21:58.860 | "What are the things I really wanna do?"

00:22:00.780 | Because what happens is, I believe,

00:22:02.820 | is people get habituated.

00:22:04.540 | They get really good at optimizing for money,

00:22:07.380 | making money, doing deals, whatever it is they are,

00:22:10.500 | programmers, et cetera, and they keep piling it.

00:22:13.020 | And much like a rat in a wheel with a cheese experiment,

00:22:17.380 | pretty soon, you can just show 'em the wheel

00:22:18.900 | and not give 'em the cheese.

00:22:19.980 | There's no reward.

00:22:20.940 | And so people are in default mode network

00:22:23.760 | of accumulating wealth, making money, earning money,

00:22:26.940 | optimizing money.

00:22:28.060 | I read the book on how to save on this.

00:22:29.780 | I got 18 million flea court flyer miles.

00:22:31.780 | I discounted that.

00:22:32.760 | Look at all these Chuck E. Cheese tokens I got.

00:22:36.100 | And then they die with a bunch of Chuck E. Cheese tokens

00:22:38.780 | and never really go to Chuck E. Cheese.

00:22:40.780 | And I'm like, "When you going to Chuck E. Cheese?"

00:22:43.060 | You know?

00:22:43.900 | You've been running this rat wheel, right?

00:22:46.220 | You got all these tickets, everything,

00:22:48.620 | but what are we buying here?

00:22:49.820 | What are we saving for?

00:22:50.940 | And I think people become detached

00:22:55.860 | from what their original dream was,

00:22:58.460 | what they really wanted to do,

00:23:00.820 | such that the game and the puzzle solving,

00:23:03.300 | people become addicted to the puzzle of saving more money,

00:23:07.340 | as opposed to being addicted to the puzzle

00:23:09.420 | of how do I fulfill my life?

00:23:11.500 | What potluck thing am I going to do?

00:23:13.660 | How do I expose myself to other things?

00:23:15.580 | What choices should I be making today?

00:23:18.340 | What experiences do I want in this time period of my life

00:23:21.020 | and the next time period of life?

00:23:22.180 | And how do those fit together?

00:23:24.260 | They're more focused on a different puzzle.

00:23:26.580 | - When it comes to these bucketing of experiences,

00:23:28.580 | is there a number of years that you say,

00:23:30.020 | "Well, try to bucket them in tranches of five years

00:23:32.540 | "or 10 years," or how do you think about that?

00:23:35.000 | So people can actually go home and be like,

00:23:36.600 | "Let's start doing this today."

00:23:37.860 | - I try and do five years.

00:23:39.300 | Like when I got to my 65, I broke it out 65 to 75.

00:23:43.760 | It gets wider.

00:23:44.600 | And obviously, the further you go in future,

00:23:47.900 | the less your visibility, even for yourself.

00:23:50.340 | Like, okay, yeah, 53 to 58, this is what I want to do.

00:23:53.340 | I want to do this.

00:23:54.180 | I want to take a train.

00:23:55.000 | I want to go to my daughter's graduation.

00:23:56.500 | I want to stay healthy.

00:23:57.720 | I want to go on a trip.

00:23:58.700 | I want to go to Tokyo again.

00:23:59.900 | I have all those things kind of down, right?

00:24:01.700 | And then the next five years, it gets harder.

00:24:03.660 | I kind of think I want to be doing this, right?

00:24:05.420 | They're a little bit more thematic.

00:24:07.120 | And then 65, 75, 75 to the grave,

00:24:10.580 | it gets even more thematic.

00:24:12.140 | But I can tell you that when I look at those choices,

00:24:15.420 | when I try and time bucket my life,

00:24:17.420 | I can see the level of activity going down.

00:24:19.620 | I see it harder for me to spend money.

00:24:21.500 | It's like visit grandchildren, hang out with daughters,

00:24:25.900 | read the books I haven't read.

00:24:27.900 | It's not like go raging, stay up till 7 a.m.

00:24:31.180 | in a club in Tokyo, travel here, swim that.

00:24:34.100 | If you could perfectly lay out the experiences

00:24:37.280 | you wanted to have, which you can't,

00:24:38.980 | you would see this natural curve

00:24:41.500 | in the cost of those experiences,

00:24:43.900 | this natural consumption pattern.

00:24:45.940 | And then you start to say,

00:24:46.940 | well, I don't want to give up hours of my life

00:24:49.940 | for a bunch of Chuck E. Cheese tokens

00:24:51.340 | that I'm not going to use.

00:24:52.740 | So I'm going to go to Chuck E. Cheese.

00:24:53.900 | And then you start to lay out,

00:24:54.940 | well, I'm probably going to go to Chuck E. Cheese a lot here.

00:24:57.340 | I'll play the whack-a-mole game.

00:24:58.500 | That costs a lot.

00:24:59.340 | And I'll do whatever.

00:25:00.160 | And then another time,

00:25:01.000 | I'm just going to sit around and eat pizza.

00:25:02.540 | And then you have this nice, beautiful curve

00:25:05.340 | on consuming and spending your money down to zero

00:25:08.580 | as you have the most fulfilling Chuck E. Cheese experience.

00:25:11.060 | Basically the most fulfilling life.

00:25:12.580 | Now I don't know why I'm stuck on Chuck E. Cheese,

00:25:13.980 | but I am for some reason.

00:25:16.100 | This is strange, but two nights ago,

00:25:18.060 | we talked about Chuck E. Cheese randomly.

00:25:19.500 | And I was showing our au pair from Spain

00:25:21.700 | what Chuck E. Cheese was because she was like,

00:25:23.620 | I have no idea what you're talking about.

00:25:24.780 | I was like, man, Chuck E. Cheese has kind of become

00:25:26.260 | a more depressing place than I remember it in my childhood.

00:25:29.420 | You're talking about it.

00:25:30.300 | I'm like, oh man, don't want to be the Chuck E. Cheese guy.

00:25:32.540 | I don't want to be going there in my fifties.

00:25:34.740 | - It's kind of, to me, like cold water.

00:25:36.060 | It was like going into the Atlantic ocean.

00:25:38.060 | I was like, wow, I used to go in here as a kid all the time.

00:25:40.100 | Like, no problem.

00:25:40.940 | Now it's freezing.

00:25:41.780 | I would never go in there.

00:25:42.860 | That's kind of like an activity.

00:25:44.020 | If you're in heaven, it's like go swimming and frolicking

00:25:46.500 | and body surfing in the Atlantic ocean.

00:25:48.500 | You're probably not going to enjoy it

00:25:49.700 | as much as when you were nine or five

00:25:52.020 | and immune to the cold for whatever reason,

00:25:53.940 | because it was just so we, to when you're like 20 something,

00:25:57.020 | you're like, this is freezing.

00:25:58.300 | Like, why am I here?

00:25:59.340 | That type of thing.

00:26:00.180 | - Are there any experiences that maybe you regret

00:26:02.740 | not doing more of younger or things that people listening

00:26:05.380 | in their twenties and thirties should maybe prioritize more?

00:26:08.140 | - Yeah, I think it's very personal

00:26:09.740 | and it has to do with like travel,

00:26:11.460 | that kind of backpacking experience,

00:26:13.220 | that kind of gap year thing that people do.

00:26:16.260 | I just really didn't take advantage of that time period.

00:26:19.500 | I was so focused on trying to get ahead

00:26:22.740 | and make money and not taking breaks

00:26:24.820 | and was on this autopilot of like must succeed.

00:26:28.300 | And not saying that wasn't a great focus

00:26:31.260 | and didn't help me get to here,

00:26:32.700 | but the success I want is the most fulfilling life.

00:26:36.220 | And I gave up things that would have been

00:26:37.700 | extremely fulfilling, not only then,

00:26:39.980 | but now as I look back on my life.

00:26:42.420 | And that's going to be different for everybody.

00:26:43.740 | I'd be like, ah, I wish I went to go play

00:26:45.060 | in this chess tournament.

00:26:45.940 | It could be anything.

00:26:47.100 | I knew at an early age that travel and meeting new cultures

00:26:51.180 | and doing adventurous things really fulfills me.

00:26:53.420 | I really enjoy that.

00:26:54.940 | And I did not take advantage of those opportunities

00:26:57.580 | that I had.

00:26:59.140 | I didn't really think about the context.

00:27:00.620 | I'm like, you know what?

00:27:01.460 | I can go to a club in Manhattan any day.

00:27:03.180 | I can hang out on this weekend, any day.

00:27:04.940 | Like, why don't I get the super saver ticket,

00:27:07.540 | go here for the weekend, come back, et cetera.

00:27:10.300 | That type of thing.

00:27:11.340 | I was really lucky because I got laid off in 2008.

00:27:15.100 | And so I didn't have a job.

00:27:16.740 | And my wife was working at a company

00:27:18.460 | that she just absolutely hated

00:27:20.140 | and didn't want to stay in that field.

00:27:22.100 | And so we kind of got forced in this situation

00:27:24.300 | where she was like, well, I'm going to quit my job

00:27:26.220 | and I don't know what's next.

00:27:27.300 | And I already didn't have a job.

00:27:29.020 | So we ended up taking this trip for, I don't know,

00:27:31.100 | seven months backpacking, just as you describe.

00:27:34.220 | But I think it would have been so much harder

00:27:36.740 | had at least one of us not been forced out of a job

00:27:39.500 | and kind of pushed into this.

00:27:41.300 | And so what I'm curious to get your take on

00:27:42.940 | is the culture of work in America, at least,

00:27:46.380 | and probably many other countries,

00:27:48.300 | makes it so hard to be like, let's take a year off.

00:27:51.660 | And now I'm thinking in 30s and 40s,

00:27:54.220 | let's cut back so I'm not grinding so hard.

00:27:57.420 | Or my wife's thinking in her career,

00:27:59.740 | she's like, oh, wow, if I ever got another job,

00:28:02.260 | like it's got to level it up, got to level it up.

00:28:04.580 | Whereas usually leveling it up

00:28:05.980 | is more responsibility and more time.

00:28:08.780 | How can people in the work environment

00:28:11.220 | we've created in this country still live to these ideals

00:28:15.300 | and not get caught in that hamster wheel?

00:28:17.220 | - Wow, it's really tough to escape your culture, right?

00:28:21.060 | It's extremely tough.

00:28:22.540 | Culture changes slowly.

00:28:24.500 | Regards to work and optimizing

00:28:27.420 | for not being afraid of running out of money

00:28:30.820 | and status and having more and more money,

00:28:32.780 | it's really hard to step back and go,

00:28:34.740 | wait, does this serve me?

00:28:36.900 | Does this serve my one and only life that I have?

00:28:39.580 | Is this really going to fulfill me?

00:28:41.740 | Or have I become a robot hamster in a wheel,

00:28:45.380 | grinding and puzzle addicted to solving this puzzle

00:28:48.260 | called more money, more status, more fame, et cetera.

00:28:51.220 | I call that autopilot.

00:28:52.260 | I say, we're always on autopilot.

00:28:54.140 | I'm on autopilot just as much as the next person.

00:28:56.020 | And we have to snap out of it and be like,

00:28:57.940 | what really fulfills me?

00:29:00.420 | What do I really want out of life?

00:29:02.220 | What do I really want out of life

00:29:03.540 | out of these next five years?

00:29:06.060 | We're so trained, like, I want the promotion

00:29:07.860 | and I want the thing.

00:29:08.700 | Well, why do you want the promotion?

00:29:10.700 | Because the promotion, the thing, and I have more money.

00:29:12.620 | Well, why do you want the more money?

00:29:14.380 | 'Cause the more money is better.

00:29:15.860 | The thing, it's all the way down.

00:29:17.660 | It's so inculcated into us about success.

00:29:22.380 | Success is more money.

00:29:23.980 | And it's so abstract that we lose the final connection

00:29:26.700 | that money is an abstract.

00:29:28.300 | It's a tool.

00:29:29.140 | It's like a hammer and a saw.

00:29:29.980 | Builders don't want hammers and saws

00:29:31.900 | because they love hammers and saws.

00:29:33.580 | They want hammers and saws to build houses.

00:29:35.580 | That is the goal.

00:29:36.900 | They're not like, must accumulate more hammers and saws,

00:29:39.420 | more hammers and saws.

00:29:40.460 | This is how people are.

00:29:41.420 | They're like, we must accumulate more money

00:29:42.860 | to have more money, to more money, money, money.

00:29:46.220 | And I'm like, no life, motherfucker.

00:29:48.900 | We're here to fulfill your life.

00:29:50.220 | You are solving the wrong problem.

00:29:53.180 | You're optimizing for the wrong problem.

00:29:55.460 | And culture has pretty much jammed that on everyone.

00:30:00.020 | Really hard because there's this fear of not having money.

00:30:03.020 | You don't want to run out of money

00:30:04.100 | and fear of retirement is this whole fear game

00:30:06.500 | with retirement.

00:30:07.860 | People ask, why do old people keep growing their wealth

00:30:10.620 | while they're older?

00:30:11.460 | And I'm just like, they can't spend it down.

00:30:12.980 | Life has passed them by.

00:30:13.980 | That's the cold hard truth.

00:30:15.100 | I'm really harsh about that.

00:30:16.300 | I'm like, they fucked it up.

00:30:18.020 | That's why they can't spend it down.

00:30:19.260 | They fucked it up.

00:30:20.860 | And it's too late for them.

00:30:22.660 | My book, these algorithms, these mental models

00:30:25.420 | are to help you not fuck it up as much.

00:30:28.460 | We're all gonna fuck it up a little bit.

00:30:29.660 | Like it can't be perfect,

00:30:30.740 | but it's like, let's not fuck it up.

00:30:33.900 | I use Daffy to organize all my giving

00:30:36.420 | and charitable tax savings in one place.

00:30:38.860 | And I am excited to be partnering with them

00:30:40.700 | for this episode.

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00:30:43.940 | that makes it so much easier to maximize

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00:30:47.900 | especially before the upcoming December 31st deadline.

00:30:51.180 | And pro tip, you should always donate appreciated stocks,

00:30:54.980 | ETFs or crypto over cash if you can.

00:30:58.460 | You'll avoid paying capital gains taxes

00:31:00.900 | and you'll immediately claim the full value

00:31:03.340 | as a charitable deduction in the year

00:31:05.340 | you make the donation.

00:31:06.900 | Plus, the charity gets more money

00:31:08.780 | when you donate the stock directly

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00:31:36.260 | and there is a special offer

00:31:37.620 | when you donate stocks, ETFs or crypto this year.

00:31:40.380 | Just go to allthehacks.com/DAFFY.

00:31:44.660 | - Hey everyone, Amy here, Chris's wife.

00:31:48.580 | I convinced him to let me do this today

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00:32:10.820 | Honestly, I'm decked out in Viorey every single day

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00:32:37.340 | to know that it's my go-to gift

00:32:38.980 | because it's always going to be a winner.

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00:32:51.920 | So check them out at allthehacks.com/viorey.

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00:33:00.640 | and get yourself the greatest clothing on the planet.

00:33:04.600 | - I worked with this woman whose job is to kind of

00:33:07.040 | help people take their outlook on life

00:33:09.240 | that might have some different

00:33:10.600 | unconventional contrarian thoughts

00:33:12.080 | and really boil it down to some framework, some model.

00:33:14.840 | And we kind of arrived at like my nine principles

00:33:18.120 | of living an optimized life.

00:33:19.360 | And I'm not ready to share them all yet,

00:33:21.140 | but one of them was questioning the outcome

00:33:23.120 | you actually want.

00:33:24.600 | And I want to bring it up because

00:33:25.840 | of what you just said earlier.

00:33:27.680 | Met someone who said, "Gosh, I need more money."

00:33:29.240 | And I was like, "Why do you need more money?"

00:33:30.560 | And they said, "I want to spend more time with my kids.

00:33:32.280 | "And if I have more money, I'll be able to retire sooner

00:33:34.240 | "and spend more time with my kids."

00:33:35.600 | And through this conversation, we were like,

00:33:37.320 | "What if you had a different job

00:33:38.960 | "that earned you a little less money,

00:33:40.540 | "but gave you the freedom to work four days a week.

00:33:42.480 | "And now you have a whole day that you could spend more time

00:33:44.800 | "with your kids and you weren't grinding as hard."

00:33:46.880 | And they're like, "Well, then I wouldn't have any money."

00:33:48.120 | And I was like, "You don't need the more money anymore

00:33:49.940 | "because you don't need to retire early

00:33:51.340 | "to spend your time with your kids at 50.

00:33:53.100 | "You could start spending it now."

00:33:54.740 | And in product management, when we're building software

00:33:56.900 | and talking to customers, we always ask the five whys.

00:33:59.460 | So if someone says, "Oh, I want this."

00:34:00.620 | And it's like, you got to ask why five times

00:34:02.420 | before you actually understand what someone wants.

00:34:04.660 | So I'll challenge people thinking they want more money

00:34:07.060 | to go through that thought experiment themselves

00:34:08.980 | of being like, "Why do you want the more money?"

00:34:10.260 | And drill down and then ask yourself,

00:34:12.700 | "Is there actually, once you get to that fifth why,

00:34:15.060 | "a way you could achieve what you want

00:34:17.140 | "that actually isn't about just accumulating more money?"

00:34:19.660 | And I would argue that more often than not,

00:34:21.660 | the answer will be yes.

00:34:22.800 | - The book, "Your Money or Your Life"

00:34:24.060 | kind of hits on this concept of enough

00:34:26.380 | and what are you really solving for.

00:34:28.060 | You're doing like spend more time with your kids,

00:34:30.220 | but I'm making more money to save time with your kids.

00:34:31.780 | But if you make more money, are they really kids then?

00:34:34.100 | Do they want to spend time with you?

00:34:35.580 | There's a lot of variables going on,

00:34:36.920 | but going through that thought experiment,

00:34:38.940 | you actually get to pull out more from them.

00:34:40.340 | They're like, "It's really about the status.

00:34:43.100 | "It's really because you've been habituated

00:34:44.820 | "into making more money."

00:34:46.020 | There may be this desire to spend more time with your kids,

00:34:48.500 | but it's not the real reason.

00:34:50.740 | There's other reasons, whether they be habit

00:34:53.520 | or some sort of goal, et cetera,

00:34:55.100 | that we gotta address, we gotta look at

00:34:57.060 | and be like, "Do those reasons serve you?"

00:34:58.900 | - What would you say to someone,

00:35:00.060 | let's say in their mid-30s,

00:35:01.860 | who's got a great job and looking to do something new

00:35:05.380 | and feeling like the only option

00:35:07.260 | is to go take that next level up job

00:35:09.420 | that's gonna be higher pay and more responsibility

00:35:12.020 | and probably limit their ability

00:35:14.500 | to have the kinds of experiences they want

00:35:16.940 | because they're so engulfed in work,

00:35:19.460 | but they're stressed out because they feel like

00:35:21.700 | doing anything else would be a downgrade in their career.

00:35:24.780 | How would you talk them through that?

00:35:26.180 | - The main thing is what are we solving for?

00:35:28.180 | And all of them, the first variable,

00:35:29.420 | the second variable, and the third variable.

00:35:31.100 | And how can we max them out?

00:35:32.420 | They're like, "Oh, I wanna actually spend time

00:35:34.280 | "and have more fun and do X, Y, and Z."

00:35:35.860 | And I'd be like, "Whoa, okay, this is one of 'em.

00:35:38.460 | "I'm gonna be my own insurance agent."

00:35:39.940 | I talk about that in a book.

00:35:41.100 | People try and basically be their own insurance agent

00:35:44.020 | by saving enough money for every single calamity.

00:35:46.540 | That's their backup default skew.

00:35:47.980 | Well, just what if this happens?

00:35:49.140 | What if that happens?

00:35:50.020 | I try and find these things

00:35:51.420 | that they're actually solving for

00:35:53.340 | and then help them make the decision

00:35:54.580 | on what's the best decision for them.

00:35:56.300 | We may come to the conclusion

00:35:57.500 | that taking on more responsibility now

00:35:59.420 | because the job pays so much damn money

00:36:01.100 | and then quitting in a year

00:36:02.580 | will actually lead to more fulfillment and more fun,

00:36:04.780 | and then I'll quit and I'll goof off and do whatever.

00:36:06.900 | The stock options are gonna go into money

00:36:08.740 | and I'm gonna make a zillion dollars

00:36:10.060 | and I'm gonna have seven years of just bliss

00:36:12.540 | and goofing off as opposed to grinding it out

00:36:15.420 | five years in this lower paying job, et cetera.

00:36:17.460 | I'll have 100% of the time.

00:36:18.780 | But that's usually the rarity in these scenarios.

00:36:22.300 | - And they never quit.

00:36:23.140 | - Yeah, they never quit.

00:36:24.060 | It's like, you don't have to quit your job.

00:36:26.020 | You just have to consume the fruits of your labor.

00:36:28.940 | You have to get everything.

00:36:30.660 | You have to find your balance.

00:36:31.980 | You can love what you do,

00:36:34.060 | but you should also be able to do what you love.

00:36:38.420 | A lot of people went to work 'cause they wanted a house

00:36:40.380 | and they wanted to have kids

00:36:41.460 | and they wanted to travel and they wanted to ski

00:36:44.300 | and they wanted to start a rock band

00:36:46.220 | or some expensive hobby with telescopes or whatever it is.

00:36:49.340 | And somewhere along the way,

00:36:51.820 | those things kind of fall to the wayside.

00:36:55.020 | They don't exist anymore.

00:36:57.220 | And it's the money and whatever.

00:36:59.780 | And we kind of instinctively attack some sort of reason.

00:37:03.500 | Oh, the kids.

00:37:04.660 | I'm gonna spend more time on my kids.

00:37:05.900 | I'm like, nah, no, you don't.

00:37:07.700 | That's not what you're solving for with this job.

00:37:09.500 | Or at least this equation doesn't compute.

00:37:12.260 | If they were my friends, like real close friends,

00:37:14.100 | I'm like, no, you don't.

00:37:14.980 | You're bullshitting yourself.

00:37:16.580 | You can lie to me, but just don't lie to yourself.

00:37:18.420 | And then we go through it.

00:37:19.780 | And a more gentle approach is let's just see

00:37:21.500 | if this formula computes.

00:37:22.940 | Let's put it up on the board.

00:37:24.900 | Let's map out the time, get really detailed.

00:37:27.180 | Like, okay, how much more money are you gonna get?

00:37:29.820 | When are you gonna have the time?

00:37:31.300 | How much more spare time are you gonna have?

00:37:32.700 | When does this happen?

00:37:33.580 | Is your kid still a kid?

00:37:34.540 | Do they still wanna hang out with you?

00:37:35.980 | Okay, what's this other job?

00:37:37.380 | No two-hour commute.

00:37:39.020 | That's two hours a day you can have your kids.

00:37:40.700 | Well, it seems like if we're solving for time with the kid,

00:37:44.060 | this job may be better than this job

00:37:46.940 | because the money you accumulate,

00:37:49.180 | you really don't have the time to spend it

00:37:50.620 | 'cause you're working harder

00:37:51.540 | and you have more responsibilities

00:37:53.100 | and it's in the future and your kid's not a kid anymore.

00:37:56.260 | And they're gone.

00:37:57.100 | We might come to that conclusion

00:37:58.420 | depending on what we put on the board.

00:38:00.340 | So much like you do, you're digging in.

00:38:02.060 | If I switch this and I fly this plane

00:38:04.020 | and I do this on Tuesday,

00:38:05.420 | I get the most frequent flyer miles.

00:38:06.900 | You're optimizing for the most miles.

00:38:09.380 | I will look at a trip as like,

00:38:10.460 | yeah, miles is one of the things I'm optimizing for,

00:38:12.500 | but ultimately I'm optimizing for the best fucking trip

00:38:15.420 | and the most memory dividends

00:38:16.980 | and the most fulfillment out of this trip.

00:38:18.860 | So that's number one priority and number two is the miles.

00:38:22.220 | - I think when we went to South Africa

00:38:23.460 | for this trip around the world,

00:38:24.380 | we had like five layovers

00:38:25.540 | because we stopped at one place,

00:38:26.860 | then we changed planes and the plane landed in Sudan,

00:38:29.180 | but we couldn't even get off the plane.

00:38:30.420 | So we just sat there until it took off again

00:38:32.220 | and all this stuff.

00:38:33.580 | Now I'm like, how can I get there with zero to one stop?

00:38:36.380 | If it's really far, one stop.

00:38:37.940 | If it's really close, zero stops.

00:38:39.580 | And that's forced me to reprioritize what I want.

00:38:43.420 | I wanna talk about a few things.

00:38:44.460 | How do we implement this?

00:38:45.340 | But maybe first some of the common objections

00:38:48.420 | to changing this.

00:38:50.140 | So two things you talked about.

00:38:51.540 | One is preventing running out of money.

00:38:53.380 | I think everyone I know is like,

00:38:55.420 | oh, I wanna make sure I have enough.

00:38:56.820 | What if I live to 110?

00:38:58.060 | What if health gets so great that I'm living forever?

00:39:00.500 | What do you tell to people who are trying to optimize

00:39:03.300 | for every possible thing that could happen?

00:39:05.580 | How to just get either comfortable with the risk

00:39:07.700 | that they don't need it?

00:39:08.540 | Or you even mentioned the book, just get an annuity.

00:39:11.700 | - If you're worried about running out of money,

00:39:13.180 | get an annuity.

00:39:14.020 | Get the reverse of life insurance.

00:39:15.220 | Everybody gets life insurance, right?

00:39:16.300 | They're like, oh, I have life insurance

00:39:17.220 | if I die early, et cetera.

00:39:18.460 | Well, if you're worried about living too long,

00:39:20.380 | it's the exact opposite.

00:39:21.580 | They have an insurance product for that.

00:39:22.940 | Or they're worried about what if I need nurses or whatever?

00:39:25.060 | I'm like, long-term healthcare insurance is pretty cheap.

00:39:29.380 | It's actually very cheap.

00:39:30.500 | Because I think one of the reasons is

00:39:32.500 | when you need those nurses, you're on your way out.

00:39:34.540 | They're not gonna be paying that long.

00:39:35.900 | But it's pretty cheap.

00:39:36.860 | Particularly if you get it while you're younger,

00:39:38.660 | 30s and 40s, it's actually trivial for people,

00:39:42.020 | the wealth category that you're talking about.

00:39:44.220 | I look at things that people are acting

00:39:46.860 | as an insurance agent inefficiently,

00:39:48.620 | and I'm like, let's be more efficient

00:39:51.180 | on how we insure away these risks.

00:39:53.220 | And it might be an insurance product, et cetera.

00:39:55.300 | And some of the things that, let's say,

00:39:56.640 | there's not an insurance product

00:39:58.280 | or whatever their fear of, I try and convert their fear

00:40:01.300 | of you should fear wasting your life

00:40:03.940 | more than you fear running out of money.

00:40:05.420 | I try and redirect them to that.

00:40:07.100 | What are the things you wanna have?

00:40:08.500 | What experience you wanna have when this is your life,

00:40:11.780 | you will die, it doesn't go on forever.

00:40:14.540 | What is urgent to you?

00:40:16.500 | And what is urgent for each period?

00:40:18.780 | When we have that conversation,

00:40:20.780 | in my presence and their presence,

00:40:22.580 | while I think about it, you're like, yeah, you're right.

00:40:24.660 | The key is to keep them on that.

00:40:26.520 | Because you have that conversation and they go back

00:40:28.060 | and they're right back on the autopilot.

00:40:30.060 | Let's go running the wheel

00:40:31.300 | 'cause it's fun to run the wheel.

00:40:32.540 | No tease, no reward, no fulfilling life.

00:40:35.140 | Just a battery, a robot, a cog in the wheel

00:40:37.540 | for the economic system.

00:40:39.180 | I implore them to stay focused on,

00:40:41.900 | always attach your efforts to what the goal,

00:40:45.860 | what the consumption is.

00:40:47.340 | So that is how I get them on the goal.

00:40:50.980 | And in every single objection,

00:40:52.560 | whether it's what if I live too long,

00:40:54.780 | what if I need long-term care, insurance, et cetera,

00:40:57.940 | there is a way to minimize that risk

00:40:59.860 | or mitigate that risk more efficiently

00:41:01.940 | than the way they are doing it right now.

00:41:03.500 | Because honestly, they've just been doing it on autopilot.

00:41:05.620 | It's just a backstop reason to back up why they're doing it.

00:41:09.460 | You know how some behaviors you'll just do 'em

00:41:11.020 | and then you'll throw a reason after the fact

00:41:13.260 | on why you're doing it?

00:41:14.460 | And you're just doing it because it's on autopilot?

00:41:16.680 | That's a lot of those reasons.

00:41:17.700 | Well, I'm working real hard because of whatever.

00:41:19.580 | What if I get sick?

00:41:20.980 | Like, okay, when you get sick

00:41:22.700 | and it's $20,000 a night in the hospital bed,

00:41:25.060 | are you really the insurance agent?

00:41:26.420 | No, you're buying insurance for that.

00:41:27.780 | Let's really think this through.

00:41:28.980 | So when you're sitting across someone,

00:41:32.260 | sometimes it's a lot of chalkboard work.

00:41:34.100 | You know what I mean?

00:41:34.940 | It's a lot of going through it.

00:41:36.100 | And that's why I tell people,

00:41:36.940 | like, you need to sit down and think about this honestly

00:41:39.900 | with yourself and work through these priorities

00:41:43.300 | and what your fear is.

00:41:44.460 | Let's go one by one to try to mitigate 'em

00:41:46.340 | because if we're solving for the most fulfilling life,

00:41:50.380 | everything else is secondary

00:41:51.540 | and everything else needs to be solved.

00:41:53.700 | We wanna consume as much as possible in the right times.

00:41:57.220 | - And you talk a lot about risk,

00:41:58.800 | but is it sometimes that risk is really just fear?

00:42:02.300 | - Yeah, it's just fucking fear.

00:42:05.200 | And a lot of it's fear of embarrassment,

00:42:07.560 | fear of running out of money.

00:42:08.680 | That is like the worst thing for people,

00:42:10.840 | not because they can't go get some basic job and survive,

00:42:15.120 | just the embarrassment, the status, the ego attached to it.

00:42:18.520 | And I guess why, because like,

00:42:20.520 | if you run out of money or you were at high status

00:42:23.440 | and now you're working at McDonald's say, or whatever,

00:42:25.800 | and you get that shame and people mocking you, whatever,

00:42:28.640 | if you waste your life and die, nobody's mocking you.

00:42:31.120 | You can't know, you're dead.

00:42:33.520 | The people who are alive are like,

00:42:34.400 | "Wow, that fucking guy, what a clown, dude.

00:42:36.840 | "That guy died with $4 billion.

00:42:39.000 | "What a fucking idiot.

00:42:40.860 | "He got completely habituated

00:42:42.360 | "to be a cog in the fucking wheel.

00:42:44.400 | "Great one, dude."

00:42:45.760 | You know what I mean?

00:42:46.600 | "Thank you for your service.

00:42:47.960 | "Thank you for putting out all this value,

00:42:49.560 | "getting a fraction of yourself and never using it,

00:42:51.960 | "and then donating 40% to the US Treasury.

00:42:54.680 | "We fucking love that guy."

00:42:56.200 | They don't hear that, they're dead.

00:42:57.440 | But if you somehow go start some business and it fails,

00:43:01.120 | people are like, "I told you so.

00:43:02.400 | "I knew it was gonna happen.

00:43:03.360 | "Shoulda, woulda, coulda."

00:43:04.200 | And your ego can't handle that.

00:43:05.960 | So I always think it's fear.

00:43:08.640 | And the fear is not the actual bad thing.

00:43:11.720 | The fear is the ego associated with the failure.

00:43:14.560 | But that's just me.

00:43:15.720 | - It would help if society put more of an emphasis on like,

00:43:19.160 | "Wow, you didn't go and spend your money.

00:43:21.580 | "You didn't go on a trip this year.

00:43:22.920 | "You did nothing this year."

00:43:24.400 | - Yeah, somebody said,

00:43:25.760 | I put it to a bunch of 20-year-olds or a class

00:43:28.040 | or something is like,

00:43:29.640 | "Who would switch right now with Warren Buffet?"

00:43:32.880 | None of 'em.

00:43:33.700 | None of 'em.

00:43:34.540 | They're like, "Well, he's got X billion dollars or whatever.

00:43:36.800 | "I don't wanna be that rich and old.

00:43:38.660 | "There's no amount of money you can give me

00:43:40.700 | "to give up my life."

00:43:42.280 | So a lot of people are doing some version of this.

00:43:44.960 | I always tell people there's no amount of money

00:43:46.400 | you can pay me to do five years in Sing Sing.

00:43:49.020 | Maybe at 19 you coulda done it.

00:43:50.540 | But right now, no amount of money.

00:43:53.040 | And some people are doing some sort of version of jail,

00:43:55.460 | giving up their life for this money.

00:43:57.680 | - I liked how you reframed someone

00:43:59.240 | who wouldn't take the risk to move,

00:44:01.800 | to make more money, to do something,

00:44:03.400 | as like they're paying to just sit still

00:44:05.720 | by not taking up an opportunity.

00:44:07.560 | I like these mindset shifts that you introduce in the book,

00:44:10.080 | which is just like, think about it this different way

00:44:12.640 | and maybe that'll help you get over that hurdle.

00:44:14.720 | - Yeah, just quantify it.

00:44:15.760 | And you may come to the same decision.

00:44:17.040 | "Yes, I'm happy paying the fines sitting here."

00:44:19.240 | Or you might be like, "That's ludicrous.

00:44:20.760 | "I actually would get much more money

00:44:23.560 | "and I would be able to spend more quality time

00:44:25.840 | "with the people I love that I'm leaving

00:44:27.560 | "than I do right now."

00:44:28.620 | I've had this conversation where people are like,

00:44:30.040 | "Oh, I don't wanna leave New York

00:44:30.880 | "because my mom's here and so-and-so's here," et cetera.

00:44:33.900 | I was like, "Okay, let's break this down.

00:44:35.620 | "How many times do you see them?

00:44:37.000 | "A week, a month, okay.

00:44:39.200 | "Let's write that down.

00:44:40.040 | "And how many, all right, whatever.

00:44:41.560 | "And then, okay, what's the money difference?

00:44:43.800 | "And then what's a plane ticket back and forth?"

00:44:46.340 | And then you could probably take 'em on vacation

00:44:48.140 | and you spend more time.

00:44:48.980 | So, in theory, you can spend more time,

00:44:53.800 | more quality time, and make more money,

00:44:57.480 | expand your contact network, et cetera, with this move,

00:45:01.960 | even though you're saying you don't wanna move

00:45:03.480 | because of the people that are here.

00:45:05.240 | And sometimes that formula doesn't work out,

00:45:06.640 | but at least you go through the exercise.

00:45:08.120 | And then you know you don't have this future regret,

00:45:11.640 | like you have this regret minimization.

00:45:13.240 | You'd be like, "I made the right decision.

00:45:15.100 | "I went through all the avenues, et cetera.

00:45:18.280 | "I actually get more time with my family by staying here.

00:45:20.600 | "Or I've made the right decision.

00:45:22.660 | "I've actually expanded my network, have more money,

00:45:26.520 | "and actually spent more time with the people I love

00:45:28.820 | "in a better way, in a better format,

00:45:30.840 | "in a more fulfilling format."

00:45:33.340 | And so, that's the book.

00:45:34.460 | This is the mental model.

00:45:35.460 | We're solving for net fulfillment.

00:45:37.140 | - I did an interview, episode 40, with Dan Pink,

00:45:40.260 | who wrote a book about regret.

00:45:41.700 | And he talked about one of the big four regrets

00:45:43.900 | is a regret of boldness.

00:45:45.340 | And people in their old age are like,

00:45:47.080 | "I just wish when I wanted to do this thing,

00:45:49.680 | "I went and did it."

00:45:50.980 | And I almost feel like a default assumption should be,

00:45:53.740 | instead of when you're thinking, "Should I move?

00:45:55.840 | "Should I go on this adventure?

00:45:57.300 | "Should I do this thing?"

00:45:58.380 | Just try to, every time, be like, "Should I not do it?"

00:46:01.220 | Try to always assume that you're going to do this bold thing

00:46:05.420 | and see if you can talk yourself out of it

00:46:07.060 | instead of talk yourself into it.

00:46:08.700 | It's not easy, but if you're ever faced

00:46:11.000 | with this kind of tough, "Should I do this big thing?"

00:46:13.260 | Just try to say, "Okay, let's assume I do it.

00:46:15.060 | "Why shouldn't I do it?"

00:46:16.140 | And I think that could help change that mindset.

00:46:18.820 | 'Cause I think it's hard.

00:46:20.300 | One thing I did once, and you did a similar one

00:46:22.180 | that I think was more extreme,

00:46:23.020 | is I find that if you're ever worried about money,

00:46:25.620 | go experience what it's like to make money

00:46:28.280 | doing something without a job.

00:46:29.780 | So for me, my wife was at Lyft and I was like,

00:46:31.460 | "I'm just gonna sign up for a Lyft driver."

00:46:32.980 | I did it for two reasons.

00:46:33.960 | One, it was really rewarding to realize

00:46:36.940 | I can convert my time to money in a moment.

00:46:41.140 | If I don't have a job, if I don't have anything,

00:46:42.420 | I could still convert it to money.

00:46:43.980 | The second thing it was good was

00:46:45.300 | it just put probably too low,

00:46:47.100 | but it put a threshold on what my time is worth.

00:46:49.140 | And it helped me realize that like every hour

00:46:51.660 | I'm not driving my car around picking people up,

00:46:54.300 | I am spending money to not do that

00:46:57.060 | because I could be making money.

00:46:58.540 | You went panhandling just to try a similar experience.

00:47:00.860 | - Yeah, I've done that.

00:47:02.060 | That was an exercise from an emotional intelligence class.

00:47:04.580 | I went panhandling and it was really, really, really

00:47:07.340 | moving, enlightening, humbling,

00:47:08.780 | all these things at the same time.

00:47:10.060 | One, it was like, "Oh, I can survive."

00:47:12.860 | Like I can make $54,000 easy panhandling a year.

00:47:16.220 | That was the kind of annualized, I was running the rate

00:47:18.140 | and I didn't even really have a sign or anything.

00:47:20.060 | I just took my shirt out, put it in size out,

00:47:22.420 | rubbed it on the concrete,

00:47:23.980 | and then just had a cup on a corner on an intersection.

00:47:26.980 | And I was like, "Well, if I was at a busier intersection."

00:47:29.420 | You know, I was like doing the calculations, et cetera.

00:47:31.820 | But I was like, I may be in a humbling situation,

00:47:35.620 | but I can make money just in a panhandling way.

00:47:39.660 | It was also kind of freeing.

00:47:41.220 | But I've always had that risk mindset.

00:47:43.580 | Like I'll always be able to exchange hours of my life

00:47:47.740 | for money in order to eat, shelter myself.

00:47:51.140 | And I don't mean like, "Hey, I'm living high on the hog.

00:47:53.180 | I can get like these cheap ass apartments,

00:47:55.020 | these one bedrooms, et cetera."

00:47:56.460 | I will always be able to do that.

00:47:57.780 | So it liberates me to go,

00:47:59.460 | "There's really not that much downside."

00:48:00.820 | It's an ego downside, it's a humbling downside,

00:48:02.860 | but there's really not much downside.

00:48:03.860 | I should be swinging for the motherfucking fences,

00:48:06.180 | even more so.

00:48:07.300 | Like I'm okay with it.

00:48:08.860 | - You don't really need to insure yourself

00:48:10.460 | against the risk that you run out of money

00:48:11.780 | because you've now established

00:48:13.700 | that like just sitting on the ground can make you money.

00:48:16.660 | You could do that when you're young,

00:48:17.580 | you could do that when you're old.

00:48:18.500 | If you've established that you can,

00:48:20.260 | maybe you're comfortable not saving

00:48:23.060 | to insure against every possible risk.

00:48:26.140 | - There's people out there who insure against these risks

00:48:28.940 | that you don't want to have.

00:48:29.780 | These boogeymen that do it for less of a cost

00:48:32.020 | of you wasting your life.

00:48:33.260 | Like they're more efficient.

00:48:34.100 | Think, any kind of waste in your time,

00:48:36.540 | whether you're exchanging your time for money

00:48:38.980 | or your money for time, any kind of waste

00:48:40.860 | leads to less fulfillment.

00:48:42.740 | And so you really want to be like,

00:48:44.340 | am I the right person to insure myself against this calamity

00:48:47.780 | or should I pay an insurance agent, whatever this fee is,

00:48:51.220 | and that will be more efficient,

00:48:52.900 | result in net fulfillment for me.

00:48:54.820 | When I look at this activity or whatever,

00:48:56.900 | should I be exchanging hours of my life for money

00:48:59.900 | or should it be the other way around?

00:49:01.660 | What's an hour of my time worth?

00:49:03.500 | At this level, at that level, et cetera.

00:49:05.820 | These are questions we should be asking ourselves

00:49:07.460 | all the time.

00:49:08.540 | Is that shirt really worth two hours of my time?

00:49:12.340 | Am I going to get two hours of fulfillment out of it?

00:49:14.380 | Does that really fulfill me?

00:49:15.900 | You know, that was the beauty of your money or your life

00:49:17.340 | is that it really connected me with my values.

00:49:19.180 | It really made me think what I want out of life,

00:49:22.340 | what I'm willing to give up an hour of my life for or not.

00:49:25.340 | And then also hit home that I really want a value

00:49:29.780 | of hour of my time to be extremely high.

00:49:31.900 | I went the other way so that I didn't have to worry about it.

00:49:34.460 | But even after like, I'd not have to worry about it.

00:49:36.420 | Now, let's say I have all these resources

00:49:38.020 | called wealth and I have my health.

00:49:40.620 | How am I going to allocate this over my life

00:49:42.500 | to get the max fulfillment?

00:49:44.060 | That was the next step.

00:49:44.900 | I was like, great, now I'm rich.

00:49:47.060 | Now, what do I do?

00:49:48.380 | When should I spend it all?

00:49:50.140 | - Perfect.

00:49:50.980 | You just teed up what I want to talk about,

00:49:51.820 | which is like implementing this.

00:49:53.540 | I now have a lot of the mindset ideas

00:49:55.620 | and the frameworks on how to do this.

00:49:57.140 | And when I left the book thinking, I was like, okay,

00:50:00.660 | how does someone figure out based on where I'm at today,

00:50:04.660 | should I be spending more money?

00:50:05.900 | Should I be spending less money?

00:50:07.420 | How do you answer that question?

00:50:09.620 | - It's a tricky question.

00:50:10.460 | The first thing I ask is the experience

00:50:12.060 | that we all want for us is survival.

00:50:14.180 | So have we survived for our survival number?

00:50:16.620 | So I introduced that concept of like,

00:50:18.140 | okay, when you no longer can work or et cetera,

00:50:20.580 | do you have enough to have the very basics

00:50:23.900 | like food, shelter, clothing?

00:50:26.100 | And depending on where you are, that's a different number.

00:50:28.380 | And then after that, like, how do I spend my money?

00:50:31.700 | I try and use health as a forcing function

00:50:34.180 | because it is on the allocation of spending money.

00:50:37.620 | I look at my parents, my ancestors.

00:50:39.220 | We literally had to kidnap my mom

00:50:42.300 | to take her to Scotland for her 80th birthday.

00:50:45.300 | It was an ordeal.

00:50:46.140 | She had the time of her life,

00:50:46.980 | but it was like an ordeal to get it.

00:50:48.980 | We're like, you're coming, whatever.

00:50:51.660 | We're getting you out here.

00:50:52.620 | But what I realized is that my mom

00:50:54.820 | does not consume much money at all.

00:50:57.540 | My grandmother did not consume much money at all.

00:51:00.580 | My dad did not want to leave his apartment

00:51:03.460 | when he was coming home.

00:51:04.300 | Now, I always say I'm gonna be different

00:51:05.620 | 'cause I'm gonna be in shape or whatever,

00:51:06.860 | but the reality is I'm going to be some version of that.

00:51:09.180 | So I'm like, the idea that I'm going to be

00:51:13.740 | having this Chronicle Cruise life at 77 to 86 is bullshit.

00:51:18.740 | I'm not gonna be consuming that much.

00:51:21.260 | So I'm thinking if I'm going to have parties,

00:51:24.220 | if I'm going to travel,

00:51:25.740 | if I'm going to hike these mountains,

00:51:27.720 | if I'm going to do these activities,

00:51:29.260 | if I'm going to even just go on a walk in the park

00:51:31.780 | and do a seven mile hike with my kids, a free activity,

00:51:36.780 | those activities belong here and I need to consume them now.

00:51:41.060 | So even the free ones have to get bucketed.

00:51:43.880 | And I always think about that aspect of it

00:51:47.260 | because I'm like, how do I allocate my fund

00:51:49.500 | once my survival is covered?

00:51:51.100 | There is no perfect answer, but I do look at that,

00:51:55.380 | hey, my net worth should be peaking between 45 and 55.

00:52:00.660 | And if I'm in the peak, how does this curve go down?

00:52:04.580 | And I try and match it for me.

00:52:06.300 | I've been talking to these doctors like Peter Tia

00:52:09.660 | and Chris Renna, et cetera.

00:52:12.000 | And what I really want to know is

00:52:13.340 | what is the pace of my body deteriorating?

00:52:15.260 | What is the pace of my mind deteriorating?

00:52:16.940 | What is the pace of my lung capacity deteriorating?

00:52:19.540 | And then I know like, oh, if you are this type of activity,

00:52:24.540 | your enjoyment of activity goes down linearly

00:52:30.060 | with this decline and your ability to do it

00:52:32.380 | completely cuts off once you reach this level.

00:52:35.500 | Read somewhere, I think it's like two watt hours

00:52:37.540 | per kilogram to climb a flight of stairs

00:52:39.380 | or something like that.

00:52:40.300 | There's like formulas out there.

00:52:41.460 | I'm like, oh, okay.

00:52:42.580 | So if you need to run and play soccer

00:52:44.300 | and jump and play basketball,

00:52:45.260 | you need X watt hours per kilogram of energy muscle

00:52:48.340 | and what that converts to.

00:52:49.380 | And then we know how many watt hours per kilogram

00:52:53.140 | people have as they age.

00:52:54.980 | And I was like, wow, this would be great

00:52:56.660 | to figure out where my consumption is.

00:52:59.060 | And that's what I was trying to build with this model.

00:53:00.820 | Like you're an optimizer and build this model.

00:53:02.260 | And I realized this is impossible.

00:53:04.500 | There's so many goddamn inputs.

00:53:06.180 | So really it comes down to a mental model of each activity.

00:53:11.180 | Like, okay, here's the straight line to the grave

00:53:15.460 | of spending down all my money.

00:53:17.100 | Here's kind of the curve I think it should be

00:53:19.300 | to get to my survival number, et cetera.

00:53:22.100 | And then when I look at my time bucketing,

00:53:25.820 | wait a minute, I said I was gonna be spending less,

00:53:28.060 | but I like riding on trains

00:53:29.500 | and that doesn't take any energy,

00:53:30.900 | but it costs a lot of money.

00:53:31.900 | So let's change the spending and the curves like this.

00:53:34.300 | So it's not gonna necessarily always be this perfect

00:53:37.100 | log normal curve down to zero from your peak.

00:53:39.420 | It could be, no, but there's trains

00:53:41.420 | and I wanna ride trains and then down.

00:53:43.260 | Each person is different.

00:53:45.140 | It really takes a lot of thinking,

00:53:46.580 | a lot of off autopilot

00:53:48.140 | 'cause you have to know what you want.

00:53:50.020 | You have to have an idea at least 70% of what you want.

00:53:53.460 | A lot of it's gonna be discovery, potluck.

00:53:55.580 | And then you have to think about the wins.

00:53:58.100 | You have to be honest with yourself.

00:53:59.460 | A lot of people are like,

00:54:00.300 | "Oh, I'm in better shape than I was when I was 30 and 50."

00:54:03.260 | I'm like, "Well, that means you were just

00:54:04.420 | really out of shape at 30."

00:54:05.860 | And so that's it.

00:54:08.420 | And I know that's not like the answer people wanna hear.

00:54:10.620 | They're like, "I want the spreadsheet and the formula

00:54:12.540 | and the detailed thing and I wanna be told."

00:54:14.260 | I present like kind of the macro top line.

00:54:18.500 | Your net fulfillment is an operation

00:54:20.500 | of your wealth, health and time.

00:54:21.740 | And I leave it to the crowd to go and be like,

00:54:23.900 | "I built this kick-ass spreadsheet."

00:54:25.820 | - So let me throw out my version,

00:54:27.380 | which is not yet a spreadsheet,

00:54:28.660 | but you had this formula where you're like,

00:54:30.820 | "Okay, your survival threshold is how much

00:54:33.620 | it's gonna cost you to live one year

00:54:35.500 | times the number of years left to live

00:54:38.060 | and then deduct 70% 'cause that money will grow

00:54:40.840 | and you can withdraw from it."

00:54:42.580 | So what I'm doing in my head is,

00:54:44.220 | okay, assuming you can make money,

00:54:45.860 | at some point you'll stop being able to make money

00:54:48.500 | and then you'll live for some number of years.

00:54:50.260 | Let's call that number 20.

00:54:52.860 | Okay, so you can live for 20 years.

00:54:54.540 | How much does it cost you to live in one year?

00:54:57.420 | I think everyone always estimates

00:54:59.660 | the highest amount it could ever cost you.

00:55:01.540 | And I'm gonna use your standpoint of like,

00:55:04.340 | actually estimate low 'cause many people

00:55:06.500 | end up saving more than they think and spending less.

00:55:08.900 | So it doesn't make sense to go to the extremes.

00:55:11.260 | So let's say for the sake of math,

00:55:13.640 | you need $50,000 to live in your old age

00:55:17.440 | for 20 years times 0.7, that's $700,000,

00:55:22.780 | which might seem like a lot,

00:55:24.020 | but if you have your whole life to save that $700,000

00:55:27.140 | and let it grow and compound,

00:55:28.780 | I guess that would be a number

00:55:30.060 | that once you've saved an amount of money

00:55:32.580 | that by the time you're, let's call it 65,

00:55:36.600 | you will have that, you could stop saving effectively.

00:55:39.700 | I didn't even include social security

00:55:41.340 | and all these other things.

00:55:42.340 | - It's not necessarily you can stop saving for survival.

00:55:45.280 | Now it's maybe you wanna go on some big expensive trip

00:55:48.580 | when you're 75.

00:55:50.100 | Now we can start talking about our enjoyment,

00:55:52.260 | the things that fulfill us besides surviving.

00:55:54.340 | We can solve for thriving.

00:55:55.940 | - So you could decide I want to equally distribute

00:56:00.500 | my enjoyment of life over my life.

00:56:02.640 | And then your goal is,

00:56:04.620 | as long as you're putting aside enough

00:56:06.180 | to get to 700,000 by the time you're 65,

00:56:08.340 | well then every year you could just spend

00:56:11.660 | all the excess on enjoyment and you'd be fine.

00:56:15.080 | What that wouldn't let you do is

00:56:17.220 | maybe you wanna take this crazy giant adventure

00:56:19.860 | when you're 45 or 50, you might wanna save for that.

00:56:22.940 | But it made me think that if you've already saved enough

00:56:26.100 | that 30, 40 years from now it'll grow

00:56:29.580 | to be enough to survive in retirement,

00:56:32.820 | all of the excess you can maybe even think of

00:56:35.300 | as a separate bucket for enjoying life.

00:56:37.580 | How do I wanna distribute it?

00:56:38.920 | And separate your savings that's for living in retirement

00:56:43.700 | in a home, being able to feed yourself, there's that money.

00:56:46.840 | And I think maybe one thing

00:56:48.540 | that I've never really thought of

00:56:49.500 | until I'm speaking it out loud right now is,

00:56:51.540 | in my mind I'm saving one amount of money

00:56:53.480 | that's savings for the future.

00:56:55.300 | But if we separated it out and said,

00:56:57.300 | okay well here's how much you've saved

00:56:59.100 | and let's set that aside 'cause you need it to live.

00:57:01.660 | Now the rest is all money you can spend however you want.

00:57:04.740 | And you need to make sure that balance also goes to zero.

00:57:07.340 | Like the other one's probably gonna go to zero

00:57:08.860 | 'cause you're gonna spend it in retirement.

00:57:10.060 | But that one needs to go to zero.

00:57:11.860 | - Correct, and that's what I do in the book.

00:57:13.300 | If separating it out makes it easier for you

00:57:15.520 | to figure out what experiences do I bring forward

00:57:18.420 | or which money do I bring forward and spend now?

00:57:21.060 | And what do I push back in terms of just the fun bucket?

00:57:23.500 | My life is covered.

00:57:24.340 | Let's just say you had the best pension ever.

00:57:26.140 | Now it's just like, wee, where do I spend the money?

00:57:28.980 | So like you've covered your pension

00:57:30.980 | that covers your survival.

00:57:32.140 | Now it's like what fulfills you

00:57:33.660 | and when's the best time to consume those experiences

00:57:37.180 | that fulfill you?

00:57:38.460 | - And it's probably not when you're retired.

00:57:41.700 | - For 99.999 many nines of people

00:57:45.140 | it's absolutely not.

00:57:46.820 | - Yeah, and particularly for Americans

00:57:49.460 | because we don't have the health for the activity.

00:57:52.580 | If I went to the Japanese,

00:57:53.660 | I would say the curves are distinctly different in Japan

00:57:57.380 | than they are in America.

00:57:59.460 | Because when you go to Japan,

00:58:00.300 | you'll see 80s and 90s old shopping, hanging out,

00:58:02.540 | cleaning, doing whatever, like having this very active life.

00:58:05.080 | - Hiking.

00:58:05.920 | - Hiking, doing whatever, all kinds of consumption.

00:58:07.860 | They're like, yeah, well, I'm gonna travel.

00:58:09.300 | I'm gonna go to Australia.

00:58:10.340 | And they'll be like, whoa, wait, what?

00:58:11.740 | You're 85 traveling by yourself going to Australia?

00:58:14.020 | They can actually consume it for most America, no shock.

00:58:17.500 | I've seen it.

00:58:18.340 | So many people die on cruise ships,

00:58:21.140 | getting out and trying to go swimming on the warm water,

00:58:23.700 | having heart attacks and stuff like that.

00:58:25.220 | It's amazing when you watch it in real life.

00:58:27.620 | Like if you just observe it.

00:58:29.020 | I'm not saying I was out there with a lab coat,

00:58:30.680 | watching people, et cetera,

00:58:31.760 | but I've seen so many senior geared entertainment activities

00:58:36.760 | where it's really not that active.

00:58:40.140 | - I love this idea of creating a bucket

00:58:42.820 | that is your pension

00:58:43.660 | and then the rest you decide how you spend over your life.

00:58:46.580 | And if that number is not decreasing,

00:58:48.220 | it sounds like by the time you're 55,

00:58:50.300 | non-pension side of it,

00:58:51.820 | you're probably doing something wrong.

00:58:53.620 | Or you figured out how to live much longer

00:58:55.660 | than I'm aware is possible.

00:58:57.500 | - You either have kind of like a abnormal time bucket

00:59:01.300 | where there's some sort of activity in the future

00:59:03.700 | that costs a lot of money.

00:59:04.940 | And that can happen.

00:59:05.780 | You can be like, I really love super yacht cruises

00:59:08.640 | and this is what I'm saving for.

00:59:10.620 | And that's really gonna fulfill me the most.

00:59:13.060 | I don't really care about anything.

00:59:14.100 | I really want to just play chess

00:59:15.740 | because my mental acuity is really stronger now

00:59:18.460 | and you're gonna be better at chess now.

00:59:20.300 | And I wanna win tournaments

00:59:21.140 | and I just wanna play chess tournaments.

00:59:22.420 | And then I wanna go on yacht trips later.

00:59:24.220 | And so you can be like, okay,

00:59:25.060 | maybe you're not consuming the most money now.

00:59:26.540 | But by and large, the rule is it's now or it's a mistake.

00:59:31.540 | You're completely fucking it up.

00:59:32.980 | You're doing life wrong.

00:59:34.300 | - And it's not just that it's now,

00:59:35.940 | it's that now benefits you.

00:59:37.380 | I wanna recap what we talked about earlier.

00:59:38.980 | It's like doing it now will also benefit you later.

00:59:41.700 | - Yeah, it benefits your future self

00:59:42.980 | because your future self reaps the memory dividends.

00:59:45.140 | Things you did in high school,

00:59:46.260 | the things you did in college,

00:59:47.820 | the trips you had, the honeymoon you had,

00:59:50.100 | the adventure you took,

00:59:51.220 | the business you started and failed,

00:59:53.700 | the business you started and succeeded.

00:59:56.020 | Like all those things right now,

00:59:58.500 | you are reaping the dividends right now.

01:00:01.480 | And as I'm talking,

01:00:02.400 | there's probably people in the audience.

01:00:03.820 | Oh yeah, I remember that, remember that.

01:00:05.100 | They're like filled, right?

01:00:07.020 | They were getting the same endorphins, et cetera,

01:00:09.540 | a piece of that fulfillment as actually doing the activity.

01:00:13.260 | My favorite thing on this is the Coke Pepsi experiment.

01:00:16.340 | Do you know about this one?

01:00:17.340 | That Pepsi tends to win in a blind taste test,

01:00:20.220 | but people, you know, Coke destroys them.

01:00:21.880 | And it's because when you consume a Coke,

01:00:24.180 | you consume not only the Coke,

01:00:25.820 | but all the memories and the advertising

01:00:27.300 | associated with it.

01:00:28.460 | 'Cause it was more advertised

01:00:29.700 | and they've done this with fMRI.

01:00:31.900 | You literally consume the experiences

01:00:35.360 | when you have a Coke, your prior experiences.

01:00:37.320 | You literally are getting memory dividends

01:00:38.920 | from the commercial and the advertising

01:00:40.440 | and the feel good and have a Coke and a smile

01:00:42.660 | and all that stuff.

01:00:43.700 | The years and years of that in your brain

01:00:45.820 | is unlocked when you consume a Coke

01:00:47.760 | and you know it's a Coke.

01:00:49.220 | Same thing happens with every same activity you have.

01:00:51.340 | It's like you access and partially relive

01:00:54.340 | every single experience that you have when you recall it.

01:00:57.140 | And so I always say maximize positive life experiences.

01:00:59.540 | - One of your memory dividend enhancements

01:01:02.000 | was like reunions with the people

01:01:03.700 | you enjoyed the memories with.

01:01:05.420 | And I went on this crazy trip to Australia once

01:01:09.320 | where we basically had a bunch of money

01:01:11.560 | that we had to spend in seven days.

01:01:13.520 | And so it was just kind of a wild, fun time.

01:01:15.400 | And every time I hang out with my friend

01:01:17.360 | who we went on this trip with,

01:01:18.480 | it's not 100% we were there, but it's not zero.

01:01:20.680 | I feel like we have a society

01:01:22.040 | where there were lots of family reunions

01:01:24.040 | because families are way more distributed.

01:01:25.720 | That kind of goes down.

01:01:26.640 | And my wife and I have been talking about

01:01:28.360 | whether we have like, I don't know what you call this.

01:01:31.480 | Like we have a second wedding

01:01:32.960 | where you just invite all of your best friends.

01:01:34.240 | It's like what you did for your birthday.

01:01:35.720 | Invite all the people you care about on some regular cadence

01:01:38.840 | get to really relive those memories and get all this value.

01:01:41.920 | And you don't even have to do the things again.

01:01:43.860 | It's not a cultural thing to have friends reunions

01:01:45.680 | but I think we should.

01:01:46.880 | - I was just joking recently,

01:01:48.000 | like these dates on the calendars,

01:01:49.400 | these events are just excuses for us to throw parties

01:01:51.540 | and see each other.

01:01:52.960 | And somebody also just said to me,

01:01:54.400 | work is something we do

01:01:55.800 | so we have an excuse to hang out with each other.

01:01:57.800 | Thought that was pretty powerful

01:01:58.840 | and that's true to a certain extent.

01:02:00.240 | That's the people that, well, I love my job.

01:02:02.120 | Well, you really love the people.

01:02:03.720 | - I think that's a lot why people I know

01:02:05.240 | in the last few years being home and not seeing them,

01:02:07.680 | they're like, I hate my job.

01:02:08.880 | It's like, well, maybe you don't hate your job.

01:02:10.840 | Maybe it's just the thing that you thought you loved

01:02:13.120 | was your job.

01:02:13.960 | And you actually just love the people

01:02:14.800 | you're around all the time.

01:02:16.040 | And if you're not around them

01:02:17.000 | or you're just only seeing them on a screen or something

01:02:19.440 | and you don't have that social stuff, it feels different.

01:02:22.120 | - I encourage people to deconstruct

01:02:23.480 | what is it about the job you love

01:02:25.120 | and has the job replaced other muscles?

01:02:28.560 | Have you atrophied your social muscle

01:02:30.780 | to go meet people and hang out and have dinner

01:02:33.040 | and go out to lunch with people

01:02:34.520 | because work is the only place that you did these things.

01:02:37.880 | And so the thing you loved was,

01:02:39.760 | oh, wow, I let work consume everything.

01:02:42.200 | Like I don't take vacations.

01:02:43.640 | I don't do walks in parks.

01:02:44.840 | I'm not really to the extent that I would like to do.

01:02:47.440 | And I've let work take it all over.

01:02:48.880 | It's how I met my spouse or my significant other.

01:02:51.480 | It's where I go figure out to go eat.

01:02:53.160 | It's where most of my dinner is going out on a town

01:02:55.520 | or business dinners or whatever.

01:02:57.040 | Where I go to lunch is usually close to work, et cetera.

01:03:00.120 | And those things are enjoyable,

01:03:02.880 | but it's not the work.

01:03:04.720 | It's, I like going to lunch with people.

01:03:07.120 | I like camaraderie.

01:03:08.160 | I like seeing these people.

01:03:09.520 | I like going to fancy dinners and stuff like that.

01:03:11.880 | When people retire or quit these jobs sitting remote,

01:03:15.240 | they're like, fuck, I don't know what to do with myself.

01:03:17.660 | And I'm like, it's because you've atrophied

01:03:20.640 | all these other muscles and you put all your time

01:03:24.760 | into habituating yourself and to being very good

01:03:27.400 | at this thing.

01:03:28.720 | And this thing has been your whole life, your whole world.

01:03:31.040 | But it doesn't mean that's the optimal place

01:03:32.880 | for you to build social relationships,

01:03:34.520 | to find a mate, to pick dinner spots, to pick lunch spot.

01:03:38.360 | It just became the default autopilot thing to do.

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01:06:13.280 | I just wanna thank you quick

01:06:16.360 | for listening to and supporting the show.

01:06:18.660 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

01:06:21.500 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals,

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01:06:32.680 | I've spent a bunch of time talking to people

01:06:34.920 | in the financial independence movement,

01:06:36.600 | people who are, let's save all the money we can,

01:06:38.500 | let's spend nothing so that we can be financially free.

01:06:41.520 | Some want to retire early, some just want independence.

01:06:44.260 | What's your take on FIRE?

01:06:46.600 | I have a couple of takes.

01:06:47.420 | The things I like about it

01:06:48.260 | and the things I absolutely hate.

01:06:49.700 | The thing I like about it is the FIRE movement

01:06:52.760 | forces you to be aware of the concept of enough.

01:06:56.100 | It forces you to get on autopilot,

01:06:58.120 | what things are important to me,

01:06:59.920 | what am I consuming because I really enjoy it

01:07:02.640 | and it fulfills me,

01:07:03.480 | and what am I consuming just to consume it,

01:07:05.280 | like advertising and I'm on some sort

01:07:06.880 | of consumption autopilot.

01:07:08.540 | It really gets them to think about their lives

01:07:11.640 | in a totality, what the things

01:07:13.480 | that they really wanna be doing,

01:07:14.640 | like I really wanna do this for the rest of my life,

01:07:16.460 | I really wanna do this for my life,

01:07:17.520 | and they use FIRE as a tool to get that.

01:07:21.200 | Things I hate about FIRE.

01:07:22.360 | One is they all follow this model of,

01:07:25.600 | I'm gonna work, work, work,

01:07:26.440 | I'm gonna save up this money

01:07:28.040 | and I'm going to live off the interest.

01:07:30.380 | And I'm like, what about the fucking principle?

01:07:32.820 | You gotta spend down the principle.

01:07:34.380 | It's all about not giving your life away to money

01:07:38.620 | but having an enjoyable life,

01:07:39.740 | but like you're giving your life away to money

01:07:41.760 | that you're never gonna spend down.

01:07:43.140 | So they need to readjust their formulas

01:07:44.780 | to include spending down the principle, okay?

01:07:46.940 | Two, at the extreme, these guys are doing a version

01:07:51.180 | of autopilot and making a fatal error

01:07:54.100 | of not paying attention to time bucketing

01:07:56.780 | and the power of memory dividends.

01:07:58.720 | They're basically doing a version of,

01:08:00.700 | I'm going to go to jail for seven years or 10 years

01:08:04.500 | in order to be free and have a great life from 40 on,

01:08:08.500 | or whatever their retirement age is.

01:08:09.980 | Going back to my original statement,

01:08:11.180 | there's no amount of money you can pay me

01:08:12.460 | to do five years in Sing Sing.

01:08:14.060 | Well, these guys are doing 10, 12 year stints in Sing Sing.

01:08:16.660 | And there are certain activities,

01:08:18.580 | certain expenditures that you should be having

01:08:20.760 | that only fit in that 30 to 45 bucket.

01:08:25.760 | They're giving that up unconsciously

01:08:29.260 | for some future Shangri-La.

01:08:31.780 | And then they get to the future Shangri-La,

01:08:33.220 | and I'm not saying it's not great,

01:08:34.700 | but like, fuck, I really regret not doing X, Y, and Z.

01:08:38.800 | Or I should have done this when grandmother was alive.

01:08:41.620 | Or I should have done this when my kids were young

01:08:43.580 | and we should have went to Disney World

01:08:44.900 | instead of saving money to go on an extra trip now.

01:08:47.980 | At the extreme, FIRE is another version of autopilot.

01:08:51.900 | It's not really correctly solving for net fulfillment,

01:08:55.820 | and there needs to be some adjustments.

01:08:57.800 | - Somewhere in the middle between the FIRE autopilot

01:09:00.180 | and the standard American autopilot is probably optimal.

01:09:03.060 | - Yeah, it's definitely great.

01:09:04.420 | It's just like, okay, these are people who like,

01:09:06.100 | they got the spreadsheet, they're in touch

01:09:07.780 | with what they want, they know the concept of nothing.

01:09:09.660 | I'm like, guys, why are you not spending on a principal?

01:09:11.860 | This is craziness.

01:09:13.820 | You're trying to get the most out of life,

01:09:15.060 | but you exchange 10 years of your life

01:09:18.340 | for something that you're never gonna consume.

01:09:20.900 | You're just gonna consume the drips and drabs of it.

01:09:23.060 | - Is that like the 2% rule?

01:09:24.500 | I'm making it up, but it's like,

01:09:25.460 | if you could live off the interest at 4% forever,

01:09:29.020 | what would you need to just not spend at all?

01:09:32.680 | - What I tell these people is that basically,

01:09:34.660 | you're overworking.

01:09:35.820 | You're giving up an extra two or three years of your life

01:09:38.540 | because you're not including spending down the principal.

01:09:41.180 | You're overshooting.

01:09:42.260 | The main thing is though, that autopilot

01:09:45.020 | really leads to future regret with certain experiences

01:09:48.780 | if they're not really conscious

01:09:50.180 | about what experiences belong when.

01:09:52.920 | - You didn't mention one criticism that I have,

01:09:54.960 | which is it assumes often,

01:09:57.460 | at least with the retire early side,

01:09:59.580 | that once you stop working, you don't make money.

01:10:02.100 | And I think most people, I'm sure there are exceptions,

01:10:05.780 | but most people can't just do nothing for 50 years,

01:10:11.300 | especially when those years are in your 30s and 40s

01:10:14.140 | and 50s and 60s.

01:10:15.260 | So I think if you assume you're not gonna work at all,

01:10:18.780 | then you need so much money.

01:10:20.780 | But if you assume maybe you could work some,

01:10:23.820 | then it changes the calculus wildly.

01:10:25.980 | Like you go from needing millions and millions of dollars

01:10:28.880 | to maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

01:10:31.480 | - Yeah, the sledgehammer of fire in our culture

01:10:35.660 | is probably more needed than not the sledgehammer of fire

01:10:38.940 | because we have so many people just needlessly attached

01:10:42.460 | to things that don't serve them

01:10:44.320 | that they don't even really want.

01:10:45.780 | But there's plenty of criticism of the fire's autopilot

01:10:49.960 | and that sledgehammer and that kind of militant,

01:10:52.660 | I'm gonna save for this and whatever.

01:10:54.280 | There's these assumptions in there that are not true.

01:10:57.260 | You pointed out that, yeah, you're probably gonna work

01:10:59.220 | or have a side hustle or sell your art

01:11:01.380 | that you're gonna make or whatever.

01:11:02.500 | There'll be some form of income that you could have

01:11:05.180 | or you will have.

01:11:06.060 | Not everybody, somebody's gonna be like, not me,

01:11:07.600 | I'm going backpacking and I'm not making a dime.

01:11:10.260 | Okay, you're that guy.

01:11:11.300 | There is a version of autopilot and fire and it's dangerous

01:11:14.700 | because I'm talking about wasting your life.

01:11:16.680 | And when you say, I'm gonna grind, not consume,

01:11:19.420 | not go anywhere for 10 years, I'm like,

01:11:21.940 | that's a lot of fucking life or 15 years to be giving away.

01:11:25.740 | That's extremely dangerous in the net fulfillment game,

01:11:28.680 | in the not waste your life game.

01:11:30.260 | - I'm much more comfortable with if there was a way

01:11:33.700 | to reframe it as like, you need this much money

01:11:37.140 | to experiment with financial independence

01:11:39.700 | for a period of time, which is like maybe change your job

01:11:42.220 | to a job that pays less, that gives you the time you want.

01:11:44.680 | But that number is so much smaller

01:11:46.660 | that you don't need to save it by giving up everything.

01:11:49.900 | So I'm gonna challenge anyone in the audience

01:11:51.740 | and email me, just Chris at AllTheHacks.

01:11:53.900 | If anyone wants to try to like build a model

01:11:56.020 | or a framework or something to try to create

01:11:58.300 | this middle ground, I wanna see it.

01:12:00.140 | I wanna get in the spreadsheet.

01:12:01.380 | I wanna build the model with you and see if we could do it.

01:12:04.060 | - You have to take an individualistic approach though.

01:12:06.140 | The problem with like building a spreadsheet

01:12:07.900 | for just the masses is that everyone is different

01:12:11.420 | and everybody has different things that fulfill them,

01:12:13.700 | which means they're always gonna have different spend curves

01:12:16.620 | and different needs.

01:12:17.460 | And you'd be like, yeah, the thing you want,

01:12:19.740 | you really need to just bust your ass for two years

01:12:22.060 | and get it, right?

01:12:22.980 | 'Cause there's this step function and cost.

01:12:25.380 | Like the only thing I want is a trip to Mars

01:12:27.260 | and that ticket costs $225,000.

01:12:29.500 | Well, okay, there's no half going to Mars.

01:12:31.500 | You have to get the $225,000 or whatever the price is.

01:12:34.700 | I'm making that up.

01:12:35.820 | But if it's like, I like roller skating

01:12:37.700 | and I like hanging out with my kids and I like whatever.

01:12:39.660 | And then there's some middle ground.

01:12:40.660 | You can still roller skate.

01:12:41.540 | Let's go roller skating now.

01:12:42.540 | You don't have to save up all the money

01:12:43.740 | to go roller skating 10 years from now.

01:12:45.180 | As a matter of fact,

01:12:46.380 | daughter's probably not gonna go roller skating

01:12:47.940 | with you 10 years from now.

01:12:48.780 | She's gotta have her own life and her own thing.

01:12:50.260 | So let's optimize for that thing that fulfills you.

01:12:52.580 | You can build a model spreadsheet

01:12:53.900 | for kind of like the average person,

01:12:55.660 | which there's no such thing as the average person,

01:12:58.380 | but it's very like, this is me.

01:13:01.180 | I've built out this spreadsheet.

01:13:03.340 | And I think the beauty of that spreadsheet

01:13:05.460 | that somebody builds out is not the actual formulas

01:13:08.100 | that I'll be able to copy and paste to my life,

01:13:10.300 | but the methodology of their thinking.

01:13:12.460 | It's the model that is the most powerful thing.

01:13:15.180 | You want the method of thinking like,

01:13:16.780 | how do I think about this problem?

01:13:18.940 | What variables do I consider?

01:13:20.540 | - I think the thing we might be able to build pretty easily.

01:13:23.340 | So in the Wealthfront app, there's this idea of an FU number.

01:13:26.420 | We call it the financial utopia number.

01:13:28.180 | But the idea is once you have this amount of money,

01:13:30.060 | you could stop working.

01:13:31.940 | And the number that I want to build a simple calculator for

01:13:35.100 | is kind of like the pension number,

01:13:36.580 | where it's like, once you've started saving X,

01:13:39.940 | you've solved for the money you need to live in retirement.

01:13:44.940 | It's not about stopping working.

01:13:46.580 | It's about starting to realize

01:13:48.540 | you now have crossed over a threshold of being on track

01:13:52.340 | to pay for life in retirement, basic needs,

01:13:55.460 | that you're now at a point

01:13:56.380 | where you can start to allocate your excess.

01:13:58.820 | You could allocate it now, you could allocate it

01:14:00.460 | in the future, but I imagine that for many people,

01:14:03.660 | getting to the point that they're like,

01:14:05.340 | just maxing out their 401k gets them to that point.

01:14:08.740 | Like if you max out your 401k for your whole life,

01:14:10.820 | and I haven't done the math,

01:14:11.780 | but maybe you have solved for retirement basic needs.

01:14:16.780 | And now you're at a point that you can figure out

01:14:19.220 | what to do with all of your excess each month.

01:14:20.900 | Sure, you could save it so you can spend it in your 50s.

01:14:22.820 | You can spend it in your 30s.

01:14:23.860 | You could spend it in your 70s,

01:14:25.820 | but at least coming up with a framework

01:14:27.500 | to help people understand.

01:14:28.740 | Because in the Wealthfront app, we say, okay,

01:14:30.420 | this is your financial utopia number, your FU number,

01:14:32.460 | but it might be $5 million because if you're 30,

01:14:35.700 | it's the amount of money you need today

01:14:37.220 | to never work again and keep spending what you spend today.

01:14:40.660 | But I don't know if that's helpful.

01:14:41.660 | I think it'd be more helpful to have a number

01:14:43.860 | that is here is how much money you need to have saved

01:14:48.300 | to have retirement solved.

01:14:49.940 | And now all the excess that you save each month,

01:14:52.260 | you could spend.

01:14:53.100 | That simple thing might be universal.

01:14:55.260 | Obviously it would need variables

01:14:56.500 | of how much you need to spend in retirement.

01:14:58.260 | - I think it helps get the concept across.

01:14:59.860 | I would say that it's not optimal,

01:15:02.620 | the front load you're saving for retirement,

01:15:05.460 | and then go say the rest of the money I make

01:15:07.580 | is for goofing off and allocating it.

01:15:09.020 | I think getting the concept across

01:15:10.740 | and people freeing their mind,

01:15:11.900 | I'm like, holy shit, this money is for fun.

01:15:14.300 | And when do I wanna have fun?

01:15:15.580 | And I'm gonna allocate the fun

01:15:16.780 | at the right times in my life.

01:15:17.980 | It's powerful.

01:15:18.820 | What I would say is that you don't work two years

01:15:21.500 | for retirement and then start spending spun.

01:15:23.500 | You work some for retirement and some goes to fund,

01:15:26.060 | some goes to fund, and it gets there at a certain point,

01:15:28.740 | particularly because of time bucketing

01:15:31.220 | and the fact that certain experiences belong then.

01:15:33.300 | And if you take that money,

01:15:35.020 | and if you don't have that experience in this time period,

01:15:38.260 | you never have that experience.

01:15:40.300 | And that leads to future regret and less fulfillment.

01:15:43.940 | And so it is not optimal, the front load retirement.

01:15:47.300 | May solve some sort of fear in you,

01:15:49.140 | but to get the concept across,

01:15:50.420 | I think most of your audience is like,

01:15:52.260 | they really have retirement covered, right?

01:15:54.020 | They really have their survival number covered.

01:15:55.820 | So if they could separate that out,

01:15:57.940 | maybe some of the young people don't,

01:15:59.540 | but if you can separate that out and think,

01:16:01.180 | okay, I'm putting this into a retirement bucket.

01:16:02.940 | I'm on track to hit retirement.

01:16:04.580 | How do I spend my fun money?

01:16:06.540 | And how do I allocate that throughout my life?

01:16:08.100 | I think it's better than nothing

01:16:09.500 | 'cause it's mainly getting that concept across.

01:16:11.580 | It's the way of thinking.

01:16:13.180 | I want it to sink in.

01:16:14.100 | I wrote the book not as like some sort of economics book

01:16:18.100 | or physics book or calculus book.

01:16:19.980 | The reason why the book has stories in it

01:16:21.860 | is because you have to get past people's habits and egos.

01:16:25.020 | There's a reason why the book starts out with a death,

01:16:27.620 | a premature death.

01:16:29.020 | It's because immediately your ego disappears

01:16:31.980 | and you think, yeah, I'm going to die.

01:16:33.940 | How am I gonna allocate the hours of my life?

01:16:35.500 | How am I gonna spend the money?

01:16:36.420 | Even though my life is longer,

01:16:37.780 | and this guy's was two years, we have the same problem.

01:16:41.060 | And the reason why we go over objections

01:16:43.300 | is to get it in a way to get past your ego,

01:16:45.180 | the habits that you're formed

01:16:46.180 | so that you actually execute on these ideas,

01:16:50.180 | build on these ideas to have a more fulfilling life.

01:16:52.940 | You probably heard me say it,

01:16:54.300 | I'm out here trying to save people's lives.

01:16:56.300 | And a lot of times people are like,

01:16:58.820 | the fuck are you talking about, Perkins,

01:17:00.260 | save people's lives?

01:17:01.100 | You wrote a goddamn book about optimizing

01:17:04.140 | and net fulfillment.

01:17:04.980 | And I use this example of, listen,

01:17:08.100 | when you pull somebody drowning in a pool,

01:17:11.660 | they're drowning and you pull them out,

01:17:13.380 | you give them mouth to mouth

01:17:14.380 | and get the water out or whatever.

01:17:16.340 | And they're like, oh my God, you saved my life.

01:17:19.460 | I'm like, guess what?

01:17:20.740 | They're still gonna fucking die.

01:17:22.460 | They're just not gonna die that day.

01:17:24.740 | They're still going to die, 100%.

01:17:28.540 | So what have you given them?

01:17:30.340 | You've given them more choices, more time,

01:17:33.900 | more experience, more I love yous,

01:17:36.300 | more going to the opera,

01:17:37.580 | more hanging out with their grandmother.

01:17:39.300 | You've given them more of their life,

01:17:41.540 | more experience to have and then they ultimately die.

01:17:43.860 | And so with this book,

01:17:45.700 | when I get you to optimize for net fulfillment,

01:17:47.820 | I'm giving you more choices, more trips with grandma,

01:17:51.140 | more going to the opera, more charities, more ski trips.

01:17:54.820 | It's the same thing.

01:17:55.740 | It's the same thing.

01:17:56.940 | In my mind, I'm just gonna go with that.

01:17:58.300 | So I'm like a fanatic when it comes to this

01:18:01.820 | because I truly believe that

01:18:03.580 | when you optimize your life that much,

01:18:05.500 | just the same way you optimize by saving,

01:18:07.340 | you get more trips and more life,

01:18:09.100 | that I'm saving people's lives.

01:18:11.500 | - I've started putting some of this into place.

01:18:13.460 | My wife and I actually had a conversation about money.

01:18:15.860 | My wife was like, oh, we should try to hit this goal.

01:18:18.100 | And then I was like, no, no, no.

01:18:19.100 | I've been reading this book.

01:18:20.700 | Why are we even trying to hit a higher goal?

01:18:22.060 | What is it even for?

01:18:23.340 | And now we're like, no,

01:18:24.180 | we actually have a new net worth goal and it's down.

01:18:26.540 | - Yeah, it might be.

01:18:27.980 | That conversation is a great one to have

01:18:29.620 | because she might pull something out

01:18:31.020 | because this is the trip I wanna go on.

01:18:33.820 | And it's like this big expensive thing

01:18:35.460 | or I wanna fly around in a G650 or whatever it is.

01:18:38.900 | You'd be like, okay,

01:18:39.740 | at least we've attached what we're working for.

01:18:44.020 | A lot of people forget what they're working for.

01:18:48.340 | If you ask them,

01:18:49.260 | they'll just regurgitate the autopilot answer.

01:18:52.860 | To get more money to the thing or whatever,

01:18:55.100 | because it's like, no, stop, stop, stop.

01:18:57.380 | You're going to work and they're gonna give you money.

01:18:59.220 | What's the money for?

01:19:00.340 | Why do you need more money?

01:19:01.500 | What can you not afford that you need to work for

01:19:05.780 | in order to consume?

01:19:07.340 | And then we have a real conversation.

01:19:09.740 | - She would be the first to admit

01:19:11.220 | she was just on this path of accumulate, accumulate.

01:19:14.020 | She hadn't taken the pause to think about it.

01:19:15.900 | - And then when we did,

01:19:17.420 | it clicked and the conversation was totally different.

01:19:19.900 | I still think we need to figure out

01:19:20.820 | what we wanna do with money and savings and spending

01:19:23.300 | and when we wanna do it.

01:19:24.620 | But I think we've both now been like,

01:19:26.980 | we're off the, let's just rack up money.

01:19:30.020 | That is no longer a goal.

01:19:31.340 | So thank you.

01:19:32.180 | - I'm gonna hit a point

01:19:33.020 | because a lot of people are probably thinking,

01:19:34.660 | well, there's nothing I wanna do.

01:19:36.020 | They're listening to this and they're like,

01:19:37.180 | I don't wanna do anything else.

01:19:38.460 | And the reason why you don't wanna do anything else

01:19:41.260 | is because you've been a rat on a wheel.

01:19:42.980 | You haven't been exercising those muscles.

01:19:45.780 | You don't know how to play anymore.

01:19:47.380 | You forgot.

01:19:48.420 | You do wanna do things.

01:19:49.620 | They're just buried so deep

01:19:51.620 | under all these routines you built to acquiring money.

01:19:54.540 | And those muscles are so atrophied.

01:19:56.580 | It's like you haven't gone to the gym for five years.

01:19:58.380 | You can come in and you try and lift 225 pounds.

01:20:00.700 | It's not happening.

01:20:01.540 | You need to build up into it.

01:20:02.660 | You need to start small and be like,

01:20:05.060 | okay, let me think about these things I wanna do.

01:20:07.060 | Do I really like that?

01:20:08.180 | Let me just go out and discover

01:20:09.260 | because life is discovery.

01:20:10.220 | You don't necessarily know everything you wanna do.

01:20:12.220 | You have to go out and be exposed to it.

01:20:13.860 | But you have only been exposed to work

01:20:15.660 | and making more money and climbing the career ladder

01:20:17.740 | and doing more deals and solving this puzzle

01:20:20.460 | that you've been solving that you've been addicted for.

01:20:22.460 | And you haven't been working on the what fulfills me?

01:20:25.060 | What trips do I like?

01:20:26.140 | What experience do I have?

01:20:27.420 | How would I spend money if I had it?

01:20:29.020 | You don't even think about those things.

01:20:31.380 | And so it takes time.

01:20:33.220 | Don't be discouraged.

01:20:35.380 | You're not going to just show up in the gym once

01:20:38.980 | and get in shape overnight.

01:20:40.300 | You're not gonna just quit your job

01:20:41.740 | and know exactly what you wanna do overnight.

01:20:43.460 | You have to build yourself back up.

01:20:46.340 | You have to get back in touch and don't get discouraged.

01:20:49.220 | If I quit completely doing training

01:20:51.620 | and I think about this all the time,

01:20:53.380 | wow, I got a lot of time.

01:20:55.380 | I don't know what to do.

01:20:56.620 | And you get this panic, oh, I gotta go back to work.

01:20:58.740 | You just got thrown into the water

01:21:00.340 | and you forgot how to swim.

01:21:01.460 | You're like, calm down, float for a little bit.

01:21:03.660 | Do a little stroke, you'll get there.

01:21:05.300 | Then you'll have the more fulfilling life.

01:21:07.020 | - Awesome.

01:21:07.860 | And a couple of random things totally separate

01:21:09.580 | that I think maybe tie in, maybe don't.

01:21:11.260 | - Okay.

01:21:12.100 | - Before we wrap.

01:21:12.940 | I wanna just get your take.

01:21:14.180 | You're an optimizer.

01:21:15.020 | You wrote a book about optimizing, me too.

01:21:17.380 | Talk me through a few things

01:21:18.620 | that I just need someone like you

01:21:20.140 | to tell me why I'm being crazy.

01:21:21.820 | I think one of the challenges I have with both money

01:21:24.580 | and you made a joke about a person

01:21:26.180 | that's accumulated millions of miles, that's me.

01:21:28.340 | And one of my challenges with using money,

01:21:30.660 | miles, currency, anything,

01:21:32.380 | is that I'm aware of how much more optimal it could be used.

01:21:37.380 | I know that if I really find the right trip,

01:21:40.220 | 500,000 miles will take the whole family around the world.

01:21:43.140 | But if I book it today for the thing I want,

01:21:45.220 | it's a million and I struggle.

01:21:46.940 | Or we were talking about the holidays this year.

01:21:49.420 | We're like, we have time off, we don't have plans,

01:21:51.940 | but wow, it's four times more expensive

01:21:53.940 | to go on any vacation at the end of December

01:21:56.700 | than it is in January.

01:21:57.900 | We don't have the time off in January,

01:21:59.220 | so we're not actually gonna do that.

01:22:00.940 | But in my mind, it's like punt

01:22:03.420 | 'cause it's an inoptimal use of that money.

01:22:06.540 | - My main thing for you is you're solving

01:22:08.660 | for max flyer miles

01:22:10.300 | and you're not solving for max fulfillment.

01:22:12.460 | - Yeah.

01:22:13.300 | - And so what you don't realize

01:22:15.220 | is that max fulfillment for you costs this much

01:22:18.340 | and that's just the cost.

01:22:20.100 | So there's a time period where it belongs

01:22:22.620 | and this is the optimal time for it to happen

01:22:24.740 | and this is the purchase price.

01:22:25.940 | And you're like, but I can do the trip

01:22:27.900 | at a suboptimal time at less fulfillment for 500,000 miles.

01:22:31.940 | And I'm like, you can do that,

01:22:34.060 | but realize that you're solving for spending less miles

01:22:37.140 | and not solving for max fulfillment.

01:22:39.780 | If you're the type of guy

01:22:40.700 | that when you look back on your death bed,

01:22:42.060 | you'd be like, wow, I saved all these goddamn miles

01:22:44.780 | as opposed to, holy shit, I fucked up my fulfillment

01:22:48.460 | in this time period when my kids were this age,

01:22:50.660 | when it was time for me to doing this

01:22:52.260 | and I misallocated my time,

01:22:53.700 | then go ahead and solve for miles.

01:22:55.700 | - Or money in that case also.

01:22:57.020 | - Yeah, money, miles, whatever it is you're solving for,

01:22:58.780 | you're optimizing for miles.

01:23:00.020 | And I'm like, listen, fulfillment first, miles second.

01:23:02.700 | There's gonna be some blend,

01:23:04.180 | but the maximum fulfillment is what we're solving for.

01:23:06.700 | And so sometimes you're gonna have to vaporize the miles

01:23:09.780 | 'cause that's what it costs.

01:23:10.740 | And then lo and behold, the airlines know this.

01:23:14.500 | They know that in Western culture, these holidays,

01:23:18.100 | this is when people want to fulfill their lives, et cetera,

01:23:20.940 | so we get to charge more for fulfillment.

01:23:23.140 | And when kids are in finals, et cetera,

01:23:25.780 | there's no family trips, et cetera, so we can charge less.

01:23:28.620 | They know this.

01:23:29.460 | This is the cost of fulfillment, everything costs.

01:23:32.860 | And you're like, no, no, no, no,

01:23:34.620 | I wanna just have the lowest cost.

01:23:36.020 | And I'm like, no, I wanna have the highest fulfillment.

01:23:38.780 | So if you get back on,

01:23:40.500 | I'm solving for max fulfillment with my family,

01:23:43.220 | I think you'll become less detached

01:23:45.700 | on the value of the conversion of the points

01:23:48.420 | for certain activities.

01:23:49.580 | - Maybe the answer is, sit down and say, look,

01:23:52.380 | we have two choices.

01:23:53.500 | And in the next X hours, days, whatever,

01:23:55.900 | we're gonna pick one.

01:23:57.060 | Either we actually do commit

01:23:58.980 | and we go book the trip in January when it's better.

01:24:02.140 | I'm not saying punt years.

01:24:03.300 | I'm saying either you say, look,

01:24:04.660 | we're just gonna find a way to make it work

01:24:06.180 | at a lower price,

01:24:07.260 | or we're just gonna pay the price to go when it's convenient

01:24:11.100 | but not let ourselves escape the decision.

01:24:13.780 | I think that's the thing.

01:24:15.100 | It's like you either pay up

01:24:16.340 | because you want the fulfillment

01:24:17.900 | or you adjust life to make it work at a better price

01:24:21.220 | as long as you don't not take the experience.

01:24:24.540 | - To me, it's like trip here, trip here, trip here,

01:24:27.220 | trip here, trip here.

01:24:28.300 | What is the most fulfilling?

01:24:29.660 | Is it worth it?

01:24:30.860 | What is gives me the net fulfillment?

01:24:32.380 | It might be not the January.

01:24:33.540 | It might be trip here and another trip and two trips.

01:24:36.420 | And since they're in the same time bucket,

01:24:39.060 | that's actually more fulfillment.

01:24:40.380 | Two different environments, et cetera.

01:24:41.860 | There's gonna be a lot of variables.

01:24:42.980 | Like we'd get off the chalkboard.

01:24:44.340 | I'd go over with you and I'm like,

01:24:45.620 | all right, you're really gonna take two trips?

01:24:46.860 | Yeah, I'm really gonna take two trips.

01:24:48.060 | And that's a million miles for two trips,

01:24:49.940 | but it's not over Christmas.

01:24:51.700 | How do you feel about the fulfillment score?

01:24:53.540 | Let's put a fulfillment score on each trip.

01:24:55.060 | Okay, it seems to add up more than the trip over Christmas.

01:24:57.460 | Are we sure about that?

01:24:58.660 | Yeah, we're sure about that.

01:24:59.660 | We're not sure about that.

01:25:00.700 | We'd go through this whole exercise

01:25:02.780 | with your wife and talk about it.

01:25:04.500 | And then we'd come to a decision

01:25:06.340 | and then we would make the right decision

01:25:08.740 | knowing that we solve for net fulfillment, not miles.

01:25:12.820 | The miles was an input.

01:25:14.340 | It's like wealth, health and time, right?

01:25:15.900 | So miles is kind of in the wealth bucket.

01:25:18.060 | That was an input to solve for net fulfillment.

01:25:20.660 | And we slid it back and forth in time.

01:25:22.900 | Like, all right, two trips.

01:25:24.140 | Two trips, not Christmas actually is better.

01:25:27.100 | We'll hang out at home and play board games

01:25:29.460 | and then go on two trips.

01:25:30.820 | I look forward to sending you a note saying,

01:25:32.940 | we took the trip or the two trips or the three trips.

01:25:36.380 | Whatever it works out to be or a trip and a half

01:25:38.260 | or a trip plus an upgrade.

01:25:39.580 | These are the things that I don't have the right answer

01:25:42.380 | because the inputs matter the most,

01:25:43.660 | but like the mental model is there.

01:25:44.980 | Like you're thinking about it.

01:25:46.340 | The other thing I wanna touch on is health.

01:25:48.220 | So it seems like one of the biggest opportunities

01:25:51.260 | to unlock a lot of this equation

01:25:54.140 | is to be healthier, live longer.

01:25:55.900 | You talked about how in Japan people are just

01:25:58.220 | as a society that, I know you've spent a lot of time

01:26:00.900 | with some of these great doctors.

01:26:03.140 | Are there things that someone listening

01:26:04.700 | who doesn't get a chance to talk to Peter or Tia

01:26:07.580 | or something on a regular basis,

01:26:09.260 | is there stuff you've learned,

01:26:10.380 | whether it's tests to consider doing now

01:26:13.620 | or ways you've changed your diet or your health

01:26:16.420 | that people could do to improve or extend the time

01:26:20.620 | that they can do more active things

01:26:22.100 | and I guess live longer or?

01:26:24.540 | - I think I pay a lot for the last 15%.

01:26:27.100 | Like 85%, even the fanciest doctors,

01:26:29.420 | it's all low hanging fruit.

01:26:30.700 | And the lowest hanging fruit is like,

01:26:32.180 | hey, do an activity that makes you sweat

01:26:35.340 | for four hours a week, maintain your weight,

01:26:37.820 | try not to consume added sugar,

01:26:39.780 | reduce all your sugars in your sugar intake,

01:26:41.940 | no alcohol, don't smoke.

01:26:43.220 | Like the super low hanging fruit

01:26:45.660 | about not being overweight, staying in shape,

01:26:48.780 | not consuming added sugars, like sugar is the worst,

01:26:52.020 | and exercise, even if it's hiking

01:26:53.900 | or walking three miles a day or three miles,

01:26:57.140 | four times a week or something like that,

01:26:59.260 | that's amazing low hanging fruit

01:27:01.340 | to make your current experiences better

01:27:05.100 | and your future experiences better.

01:27:06.660 | Because activity by health is the fulfillment

01:27:09.980 | and if your health is shitty,

01:27:11.140 | either you don't get to do the activity

01:27:12.540 | or the activity is not as enjoyable.

01:27:14.060 | I used to walk like seven to 12 miles around Paris

01:27:16.380 | when I was there, just with a backpack on.

01:27:18.700 | Now I can maybe do six or five before I'm like,

01:27:22.620 | my knees kinda hurt, I don't like it anymore.

01:27:24.380 | So I got more of Paris.

01:27:26.180 | On a trip for the same dollar than I do now.

01:27:29.300 | And the more in shape I am, the less overweight I am,

01:27:32.380 | the less weight I'm carrying

01:27:33.620 | and force I'm hitting into my knees,

01:27:34.940 | the more enjoyable every single activity is.

01:27:36.820 | I would argue and say to people like,

01:27:39.220 | that low hanging fruit has such a huge yield

01:27:42.100 | on your fulfillment.

01:27:43.820 | Whether you're gonna be able to enjoy playing

01:27:46.260 | with your kids or relatives or be around

01:27:48.580 | or even enjoy getting on a plane, et cetera,

01:27:51.180 | later on in life is highly correlated

01:27:53.700 | and highly dependent on the state of your health right now.

01:27:56.780 | I can't emphasize it enough.

01:27:57.900 | It's not a health book.

01:27:58.740 | I'm like, listen, there are tons of book,

01:28:01.580 | podcasts, motivational speakers, et cetera,

01:28:04.460 | on like how to be healthy.

01:28:06.740 | And I just say, this vertical is uber important.

01:28:09.820 | Make sure you're addressed it.

01:28:11.420 | Try and do activities that fulfill you

01:28:15.140 | irrespective of the health benefits.

01:28:16.740 | And one of the ones I found is hiking.

01:28:18.240 | Like going hiking with a friend,

01:28:19.380 | I get a great experience talking with them,

01:28:21.900 | seeing nature, discovering what's around me.

01:28:25.060 | And it's also has these health benefits,

01:28:26.860 | cardio benefits, strength, legs, et cetera,

01:28:30.260 | that make future experiences better.

01:28:31.940 | So I get a double whammy.

01:28:33.300 | - Yeah.

01:28:34.140 | - Not overeating, not doing X, Y, and Z.

01:28:36.700 | Try and develop the habits that lead you to the goal

01:28:39.500 | 'cause your motivation goes up and down.

01:28:40.940 | So develop these habits.

01:28:42.860 | Get rid of the snacks, make 'em move far away.

01:28:45.300 | Don't even buy 'em.

01:28:46.460 | Then you can't get to 'em.

01:28:47.500 | - You said, if you're looking at a cookie,

01:28:49.660 | just be like, is this cookie worth an hour on the treadmill?

01:28:52.300 | - That's the way I do it.

01:28:53.140 | I convert all these things into like time.

01:28:55.560 | Some resources that I'm fighting for,

01:28:57.300 | which I think at the end of the day,

01:28:58.300 | everybody's fighting for.

01:28:59.260 | They want free time.

01:29:00.220 | They want time to do what they want.

01:29:01.460 | They want more time on the planet.

01:29:02.940 | And so, if I'm trying to maintain my health

01:29:05.020 | and my weight is very important to my future enjoyment,

01:29:07.340 | my knees, et cetera, like,

01:29:09.180 | is that cookie worth an hour on the treadmill?

01:29:11.580 | Sometimes a cookie is actually worth an hour on a treadmill.

01:29:14.620 | If it's a nice, good chocolate chip cookie,

01:29:16.380 | I will go on the treadmill for these cookies.

01:29:18.300 | And sometimes it's, nope.

01:29:20.220 | (laughs)

01:29:21.060 | - What if I push you since you said you'd answer anything,

01:29:22.940 | like to peel back some of that 15%

01:29:25.620 | that you've learned that I might not know?

01:29:28.020 | - I think diagnostics is the key.

01:29:29.940 | Many diseases, ailments, and their progression

01:29:32.980 | are thwarted if you find them earlier enough.

01:29:35.020 | Some of the cancers that are like always fatal,

01:29:36.740 | if they had a test for it and they found it early,

01:29:39.340 | you'd survive.

01:29:40.300 | Heart diagnostics, MRI diagnostics.

01:29:42.100 | Somebody once said to me,

01:29:42.940 | "You should be spending 10% of your income on your health."

01:29:48.340 | I was like, that's fucking crazy.

01:29:50.220 | I have a pretty high income.

01:29:51.420 | Then I thought about it and I was like,

01:29:53.140 | no, that includes like diet,

01:29:55.300 | whether I buy pre-packaged meals or have a chef,

01:29:57.820 | that includes doctors, diagnosis, et cetera, health plans.

01:30:01.900 | And I was like, it's actually low.

01:30:04.140 | - Yeah.

01:30:04.980 | - It's actually low.

01:30:05.820 | It's so important.

01:30:06.660 | And so, a lot of the secret sauce of these doctors is,

01:30:10.420 | you know, every quarter they come in

01:30:11.740 | and they draw like 32, 36 vials of blood.

01:30:14.420 | This is your mineral absorption.

01:30:15.700 | This is so-and-so.

01:30:16.540 | This is what your thyroid is doing.

01:30:18.220 | And this is whatever.

01:30:19.060 | And here's all the metrics.

01:30:19.940 | And you're kind of out over here.

01:30:21.360 | Like you need to do Edware and here's your cholesterol.

01:30:24.140 | And these things, that preventative,

01:30:27.060 | ounce of paraphernalia is worth a pound of cura.

01:30:29.240 | That is the key.

01:30:30.240 | - Yeah.

01:30:31.080 | - And the prescription of like,

01:30:32.020 | you need to be doing more cardio or you need to do this,

01:30:33.980 | or you should be avoiding these foods

01:30:35.420 | because they inflame you.

01:30:37.100 | And inflammation is death.

01:30:38.260 | So, diagnostics, diagnostics.

01:30:41.040 | - One of the companies that I partner with on the show

01:30:43.540 | is called Inside Tracker.

01:30:44.880 | And they do 43 biomarker paired with genetic testing

01:30:49.420 | to give you an analysis of both like,

01:30:51.880 | different biomarkers and what that means,

01:30:53.500 | what your optimal range is adjusted for your genetics,

01:30:56.540 | and like what your inner age is,

01:30:58.140 | which is like looking at all the biomarkers

01:31:00.020 | of where you should be.

01:31:01.220 | Are you like ahead or behind?

01:31:02.660 | So, that's one thing that's a little more accessible.

01:31:05.580 | I know there's some GRAIL tests for early cancer detection.

01:31:08.640 | I know there's PRENUVO, which is like the full body MRI.

01:31:12.180 | So, I'll punt on pushing on the 15%.

01:31:14.220 | And I'm just gonna go find a doctor who I've met,

01:31:16.980 | and we're gonna go deeper on this.

01:31:18.340 | - Yeah, you do the MRI, you look at your telomeres,

01:31:20.740 | they're like, "Oh, you can do a hyperbaric chamber."

01:31:23.820 | Like one of the things you can do

01:31:25.420 | that is out of Israeli studies,

01:31:26.900 | I'll go into one of the cutting edge,

01:31:30.020 | but pain in the ass things, okay?

01:31:32.060 | That I actually stopped doing.

01:31:33.740 | You can go to hyperbaric chamber for two hours,

01:31:35.540 | and in theory, it lengthens your telomeres,

01:31:37.380 | it makes you younger at the cellular level.

01:31:39.380 | - Wow.

01:31:40.200 | - Which means in theory, you know,

01:31:41.140 | you're gonna live longer

01:31:41.980 | 'cause your organs are not gonna break down at the time,

01:31:43.900 | they're gonna break down,

01:31:44.740 | you're gonna get some extension on your telomeres.

01:31:46.540 | And it has all these other therapeutic supposed properties.

01:31:50.100 | So, I'd have to go drive an hour to the hyperbaric chamber.

01:31:54.700 | I was gonna run the same experiment that the Israelis did.

01:31:57.020 | So, you have to do X months of hyperbaric chambers,

01:32:00.940 | whatever it is, it's a lot.

01:32:02.740 | But the place I had to go to was an hour away.

01:32:07.180 | You go dive down, you dive to pressure.

01:32:09.700 | So, it takes a while to get to pressure.

01:32:11.380 | Then you stay at pressure for an hour

01:32:12.860 | or whatever the timeframe is,

01:32:14.020 | and then you have to come out.

01:32:15.380 | And then I gotta drive an hour back.

01:32:17.480 | And I was like, okay, I'm going to get X benefit

01:32:21.900 | and live longer this timeframe,

01:32:23.620 | but I'm wasting three to four hours a day

01:32:26.620 | traveling to this hyperbaric chamber back and forth.

01:32:29.620 | And I was just like, nope, not worth it.

01:32:31.660 | I'll die earlier.

01:32:32.500 | You know what I mean?

01:32:33.340 | I'll die a year earlier or whatever it is.

01:32:35.060 | Time is too valuable to me right now in this time bucket.

01:32:37.340 | So, that's one, hyperbaric chambers.

01:32:39.220 | - But might not be worth it.

01:32:40.100 | - No, it's not be worth it.

01:32:40.940 | I mean, if I had a hyperbaric chamber in my house

01:32:42.780 | and I could just do it when I sleep,

01:32:44.340 | I'd be like, I would 100% do it.

01:32:45.980 | But that commute to the facility

01:32:48.020 | was just absolutely crushing me.

01:32:50.180 | - Yeah, I feel that way about cold plunge and sauna

01:32:53.440 | to the extent that it's like,

01:32:54.540 | I should just get one and put it outside.

01:32:56.220 | - The sauna, there's data on the health benefits.

01:32:59.180 | The cold, the studies aren't there.

01:33:00.600 | There may be benefits

01:33:01.440 | and people are raving about the benefits,

01:33:02.820 | but the research isn't there.

01:33:04.540 | A sauna definitely confers health benefits,

01:33:07.640 | longevity, less chance of a heart attack,

01:33:09.980 | yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda.

01:33:11.740 | The sauna's a hack.

01:33:13.260 | There's all these like other hacks that are out there.

01:33:15.740 | - That's the show.

01:33:16.580 | So, I'm gonna totally hack the sauna.

01:33:19.420 | Hyperbaric chamber might not be worth it,

01:33:21.100 | but it's out there.

01:33:22.140 | Full diagnostics, MRIs, those 3D colon scanners

01:33:25.900 | where they actually scan your whole body.

01:33:28.380 | There's latest and greatest imaging technology, et cetera,

01:33:31.540 | where they're gonna scan you and be like,

01:33:33.600 | oh, you got too much visceral fat, you got this.

01:33:35.700 | I remember when I went there and they were like,

01:33:37.100 | do you smoke?

01:33:37.940 | And I was like, no.

01:33:38.760 | He's like, yeah, I can tell when I look at your liver.

01:33:40.300 | I can tell what you do.

01:33:41.260 | They can tell my habits based on looking at my insides.

01:33:45.900 | - Wow.

01:33:46.740 | - And I was like, okay, I like this.

01:33:48.140 | - I just wrote a newsletter about FSAs and HSAs.

01:33:51.060 | So, one cool hack to compound it

01:33:54.020 | is you could put pre-tax money in from your employer

01:33:56.220 | and then use that for some of these health things

01:33:58.480 | that aren't covered by insurance.

01:33:59.820 | We've done that for LASIK, for IVF, for blood tests,

01:34:04.820 | all that kind of stuff.

01:34:05.780 | But the last thing I wanna jump on

01:34:08.020 | is every time I talk to someone,

01:34:09.540 | I let them pick a place

01:34:11.340 | that they're pretty familiar with in the world

01:34:13.460 | and tell people that are headed there

01:34:15.580 | how to have a great day there,

01:34:16.700 | whether it's doing, drinking, dining, anything.

01:34:19.080 | So, pick a place.

01:34:20.140 | - I'm gonna pick St. Barts.

01:34:21.500 | So, one, get prepared to spend money.

01:34:24.020 | Not a cheap island.

01:34:25.200 | You can do it cheap.

01:34:26.040 | I'm sure you'll hack away and find the great Airbnb

01:34:28.620 | on a discount, on a so-and-so,

01:34:30.420 | or be a room reviewer

01:34:31.580 | or something like that gets you down there cheap.

01:34:33.140 | But let's say you get down there.

01:34:34.700 | St. Barts is what I think the perfect match

01:34:38.340 | of beauty and environment and commerce and fun.

01:34:41.640 | I would recommend either staying on Fleman's Beach,

01:34:46.340 | Fleman, or Grand Cul-de-Sac, like Bartholomew,

01:34:49.620 | or at the Eden Rocks.

01:34:50.860 | The main thing is the food.

01:34:52.060 | So, you wanna go get yourself a little Moke car

01:34:55.700 | or something that's a convertible when you rent a car,

01:34:58.980 | and make sure you drive around the island.

01:35:01.220 | It's not that far to drive around the island.

01:35:02.940 | You can drive a little bit and check out little areas.

01:35:05.520 | You wanna go to visit all the beaches.

01:35:08.440 | I think Governor Beach is probably the best beach

01:35:12.080 | in the world, or one of the best beaches in the world.

01:35:14.600 | But I also enjoy St. Lean Beach, Grand Cul-de-Sac,

01:35:17.260 | all these places.

01:35:18.480 | Eating along the beach and just checking the vibe

01:35:20.600 | and hanging out is amazing.

01:35:22.520 | At Shell Beach, there's a restaurant there.

01:35:24.300 | You definitely wanna have lunch there.

01:35:25.680 | There's Le Tamarin, which is like kinda in this garden.

01:35:28.440 | At night, you definitely wanna eat there.

01:35:30.260 | I would say more for dinner than the lunch.

01:35:32.660 | There's always gonna be a party somewhere, someplace.

01:35:35.940 | So, in Gustavia, walking around and shopping,

01:35:38.800 | there's Nikki Beach, there's the hotels,

01:35:41.460 | there's kite surfing, there's lounging.

01:35:45.260 | I would say definitely visit the other hotels

01:35:47.400 | and have lunch on the beach.

01:35:49.360 | Like, that's good places.

01:35:50.300 | And then go check out the little shops.

01:35:51.920 | A lot of it is vibing and hiking and driving around

01:35:56.920 | and just finding little places

01:35:59.220 | and enjoying the nexus of the French culture.

01:36:02.100 | Because the French are known for being rude,

01:36:03.620 | but in St. Barts, it's the nicest of the French.

01:36:06.300 | It's competitive to come work there and come be there.

01:36:08.860 | So, you don't get the rude French, you get the nice French.

01:36:11.700 | And you get French cuisine, which is amazing.

01:36:14.740 | It's very good.

01:36:15.580 | And you get a beautiful island and crystal clear water

01:36:19.380 | and great beaches and windsurfing and paddle surfing

01:36:22.220 | and swimming with turtles and things like that.

01:36:25.220 | And then you get to drive.

01:36:26.040 | This island has different climates

01:36:27.620 | where it has a dry side and a wet side.

01:36:30.580 | And there's all kinds of little experiences

01:36:33.660 | you can have in the island life way.

01:36:35.980 | - I'm ready to go.

01:36:36.820 | (laughing)

01:36:38.060 | - It's developed enough, but not overdeveloped.

01:36:40.740 | That's what I would say.

01:36:42.380 | And that's the beauty of St. Barts.

01:36:44.140 | And it's clean and it's safe.

01:36:45.780 | - Sounds fantastic.

01:36:46.620 | - The biggest drawback to St. Barts is it's expensive.

01:36:49.260 | - Well, there's a time for expensive trips.

01:36:51.500 | Save for it.

01:36:52.340 | - There is a time.

01:36:53.160 | - Budget it.

01:36:54.000 | Spend the money on the trip.

01:36:54.820 | Don't die with it.

01:36:55.660 | I think that's my takeaway.

01:36:56.620 | - Yeah, that's your takeaway.

01:36:57.860 | - Any parting advice or places people should head

01:37:00.020 | to check you out where you're working online?

01:37:01.900 | - I use Instagram and Instagram stories

01:37:03.540 | as kind of like my own life diary.

01:37:05.160 | Going back to that hack,

01:37:06.220 | how can you use the memory dividend?

01:37:07.700 | I use my stories as my memory dividend.

01:37:09.660 | They save to my phone and get backed up to Google Cloud.

01:37:12.140 | And then, you know, it will show like on this day

01:37:14.940 | and I'll have all these little snippets and videos

01:37:16.640 | of like what happened on this trip or what I did.

01:37:19.040 | So I am Bill Perkins on Instagram.

01:37:21.100 | You can follow me.

01:37:22.500 | Sometimes it's just me and my cat doing nothing exciting,

01:37:25.420 | but sometimes it's exciting.

01:37:27.060 | If you want hot takes or chaos,

01:37:28.980 | you can follow me on Twitter, @bp22 on Twitter.

01:37:32.340 | I don't recommend it.

01:37:33.300 | Sometimes it's markets.

01:37:34.600 | Sometimes it's finance advice.

01:37:36.220 | Sometimes it's hot political takes.

01:37:38.460 | I'm a libertarian, so everybody hates me.

01:37:40.740 | Left, the right.

01:37:42.620 | Sometimes it's just goofing off.

01:37:44.060 | If you're in for the chaos.

01:37:45.140 | It's a format that I like where I can actually interact

01:37:47.160 | with people enough and talk to them, et cetera.

01:37:48.980 | So I love Twitter too much.

01:37:51.700 | - But diewithzerobook.com.

01:37:53.220 | - Oh, diewithzerobook.

01:37:54.500 | We're all where books are sold everywhere.

01:37:56.680 | It's on audio book.

01:37:57.940 | You can listen to it.

01:37:59.060 | You can read it everywhere, diewithzerobook.com.

01:38:01.620 | You can go there.

01:38:02.460 | It'll list the languages that it's sold.

01:38:04.340 | So it's in Spanish.

01:38:05.300 | It's in Polish.

01:38:06.260 | It's in Chinese.

01:38:07.700 | It's in German.

01:38:09.160 | It's in Japanese.

01:38:10.080 | And actually the book is most successful in Japan.

01:38:13.480 | - That's awesome.

01:38:14.320 | - The book is everywhere.

01:38:15.140 | That's what I mean to say.

01:38:16.180 | - I have the book.

01:38:17.020 | I recommend the book.

01:38:18.220 | It's had a huge impact on me.

01:38:19.620 | Thanks for writing it.

01:38:20.700 | Thank you for being here.

01:38:21.860 | - I'm glad to be here.

01:38:23.140 | Thanks for hearing me blather.

01:38:24.400 | I'm always down to blather again if you want.

01:38:26.700 | - I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:38:30.180 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:38:31.940 | If you haven't already left a rating

01:38:33.440 | and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

01:38:36.860 | I would really appreciate it.

01:38:38.580 | And if you have any feedback on the show,

01:38:40.020 | questions for me, or just want to say hi,

01:38:42.380 | I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:38:46.660 | That's it for this week.

01:38:47.740 | I'll see you next week.

01:38:48.940 | (upbeat music)

01:38:51.780 | (electronic beeping)

01:38:54.860 | (electronic buzzing)

01:38:57.940 | (birds chirping)

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