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00:01:34.640 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of all the hacks, a show about

00:01:41.200 | upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:01:43.120 | If you're new here, I'm Chris Hutchins.

00:01:44.800 | And each week I sit down with the world's best experts to learn the

00:01:48.120 | strategies, tactics, and frameworks you can use to have a happier,

00:01:51.680 | healthier, and wealthier life.

00:01:53.320 | This week, I'm talking to Jordan Grumet.

00:01:55.800 | He's a hospice doctor whose passion for personal finance and storytelling

00:01:59.760 | has led him to educate others on living mindfully when it comes

00:02:02.920 | to money, time, and meaning.

00:02:04.640 | As a hospice doctor, he's had an intimate look at people's regrets,

00:02:08.560 | mistakes, and decisions at the end of life.

00:02:10.920 | He's also the host of the award-winning podcast that I've had the pleasure

00:02:13.800 | of joining, Earn and Invest.

00:02:15.240 | And he's got a new book, Taking Stock, a Hospice Doctor's Advice on

00:02:19.360 | Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life.

00:02:23.520 | The book shares some of his advice about making the most at the end of life,

00:02:26.520 | about our finances, our relationships, and our time.

00:02:29.120 | Today, we're going to talk about what some of the biggest regrets people

00:02:32.480 | have are at the end of their life and what you can do to avoid them.

00:02:35.480 | What Jordan calls the money mind meld and how to get away from focusing too

00:02:39.480 | much on money and not enough on the life you want, why the best financial

00:02:43.440 | plans are like a dining room table, why it's hard to talk about the issues

00:02:47.120 | of death, both with ourselves and our family members, why time perception

00:02:51.720 | work might be more useful than productivity hacks.

00:02:54.400 | So without further ado, Jordan, welcome to the show.

00:02:59.120 | Thank you for having me.

00:03:00.760 | I'm so excited for this conversation.

00:03:02.280 | Yeah, me too.

00:03:03.480 | So this isn't the first time we've talked about regret on the podcast.

00:03:06.720 | Dan Pink and I talked about his book, which is all about regret.

00:03:09.640 | Ben Nempton had a bunch of learnings about regrets of the dying that sparked

00:03:13.800 | him to totally change and upend his career and his life, but both of them

00:03:18.000 | approached it from surveys and data, which I'm sure you've read, but you've

00:03:21.880 | also sat down with thousands of patients at the end of their life and had these

00:03:26.040 | conversations.

00:03:26.960 | So what have you learned that might not have come out in the data that many

00:03:30.160 | of us have heard?

00:03:30.840 | So in hospice care, when we're taking care of the terminally ill, it is a

00:03:35.440 | very normal thing for us to sit down with patients and talk to them about

00:03:39.480 | their lives.

00:03:39.960 | We call it a life review.

00:03:41.200 | So as opposed to a quantitative look, this is very qualitative.

00:03:45.480 | We sit down with people and we ask what was important in your life.

00:03:48.400 | What did you achieve?

00:03:49.400 | What didn't you achieve?

00:03:51.200 | What do you hope to achieve in the next few months?

00:03:54.240 | What are some of your regrets?

00:03:55.880 | And the interesting thing about this is it's completely unstructured.

00:03:59.440 | I mean, the questions we ask are somewhat structured, but above and beyond that, it

00:04:04.040 | gives people a chance to tell their stories.

00:04:07.560 | And so this is where you get past the numbers and you start hearing about what

00:04:12.320 | people's lives were like, what they accomplished and what they didn't

00:04:16.400 | accomplish.

00:04:17.000 | And so no surprise here, almost no one says, I wish I worked more nights and

00:04:21.960 | weekends.

00:04:22.360 | Like I've never heard that with any of my patients.

00:04:25.560 | Almost no one refers to certain economic goals.

00:04:28.800 | No one says, I wish I hit a net worth of a million dollars, right?

00:04:32.440 | I only made it to 500,000 and really, I wish I made it to a million.

00:04:36.120 | It is true that people have regrets when they're dying, if they don't have enough

00:04:39.760 | to cover some basic needs, but above and beyond that, it's a lot more about the

00:04:45.320 | things that were purposeful to them, that they never strive towards, that they

00:04:50.600 | never looked in the mirror and said, okay, life is finite.

00:04:54.280 | I only have a certain amount of time on this earth.

00:04:56.800 | And these are the real important things to me.

00:04:59.080 | First and foremost, people don't want to spend time even thinking about what

00:05:01.960 | purpose and identity look like in their life.

00:05:03.920 | So a lot of people don't even ask themselves the question because it's hard

00:05:08.000 | work and it's scary and the answers aren't simple.

00:05:10.520 | Next, if people do kind of say, oh, you know, I really like to do this at some

00:05:15.880 | point, whether that's climbing Mount Everest or starting a certain hobby or

00:05:20.160 | writing that book, a lot of times we put it off.

00:05:23.120 | We figure we're always going to have more time.

00:05:25.480 | So what I get to experience when I talk to people is because death is around the

00:05:30.600 | corner, it relieves them of all society's expectations.

00:05:34.440 | It relieves them all of family expectations.

00:05:37.120 | They get to drop all the junk and look at their lives and say, what was important

00:05:41.320 | to me and did I accomplish it?

00:05:42.720 | And often those things are what I like to call the climb, right?

00:05:47.400 | There are things that have to do with what purpose is in our lives.

00:05:50.920 | There are things that we're deeply interested in doing.

00:05:53.880 | There are things that bring us happiness.

00:05:55.720 | And often at the end of life, what people really regret is that they didn't spend

00:05:58.440 | enough time doing those things, right?

00:05:59.920 | They didn't write that book.

00:06:00.920 | They didn't spend more time with those people who are important to them.

00:06:03.720 | They didn't resolve that fight they had with their best friend from 20 years ago.

00:06:07.560 | These are the kinds of things that really weigh on people.

00:06:10.840 | And what happens is they really then have to try to catch up and achieve some of

00:06:16.480 | those things in whatever the weeks or months they have, right?

00:06:19.080 | Can I get back in contact with this person and make amends?

00:06:22.080 | Maybe I wanted to go to climb Mount Everest.

00:06:25.440 | I obviously don't feel good enough to do that, but maybe I want to try to make a

00:06:28.640 | trip to Nepal just to see it, right?

00:06:30.600 | What are the things we can do to try to bring some closure to these purposeful,

00:06:35.640 | meaningful things in our life that we never addressed?

00:06:38.280 | And I think that's what people really regret.

00:06:40.360 | Interestingly enough, they don't regret failing you on your deathbed.

00:06:44.920 | We'll sit there and say, you know what?

00:06:46.440 | I gave it my best and I didn't succeed.

00:06:48.160 | I failed, but at least I tried.

00:06:49.720 | It's the things that we never had the courage to try that I think really.

00:06:53.560 | Gets to us when we find out that we have a terminal on this.

00:06:58.960 | In the book, you say living a regret-free life, but is it really more about assessing

00:07:03.720 | and tackling the regrets you've had than trying to completely avoid them?

00:07:07.520 | And is it about learning from them so that you can live more intentionally than

00:07:11.280 | trying to pretend that they don't exist?

00:07:12.960 | I think the problem is we often take these things that are deeply important to us and

00:07:19.000 | put them off, and maybe that's because we're trying to make money.

00:07:22.040 | Maybe that's because we're trying to build a career.

00:07:23.600 | Maybe, like I said, it's because they're scary and they're hard.

00:07:27.040 | And so when we get to the end of this life and we haven't addressed these issues, we

00:07:30.680 | do feel regret.

00:07:31.760 | I think if we can start thinking about these things much earlier, the regrets won't

00:07:37.680 | form because then we can start taking action earlier in our lives today.

00:07:41.680 | Not when we're on our deathbeds, not when we need that sudden plot twist that fixes

00:07:45.880 | everything. But in a sense, I think the way to avoid regrets is to start thinking about

00:07:51.240 | purpose and meaning now, because that's what people regret in the end is that they

00:07:54.880 | didn't address it earlier.

00:07:56.560 | So, yes, when I'm 40, I can look back and say, hey, I really regret that I didn't

00:07:59.720 | think about these things when I'm 20.

00:08:01.440 | But hopefully if you live to 70 or 80.

00:08:04.520 | If you started thinking about these things at 40, you're not going to have a lot of

00:08:08.600 | regrets when you get to 60, 70 or 80.

00:08:10.840 | So, yes, even in the middle of life, we have regrets and we can start addressing them.

00:08:14.640 | But I think when we get towards the end of life and we start doing that life

00:08:17.560 | evaluation and we have to come face to face with our own mortality, if we think about

00:08:22.800 | these things earlier on, we are a lot less likely to have regrets.

00:08:27.440 | You said they're hard conversations.

00:08:29.200 | They're difficult. The question you just posed of what is my purpose?

00:08:31.960 | Like these are difficult things.

00:08:33.840 | How would someone listening in their 20s, 30s or 40s start to approach to understand

00:08:39.520 | that, to process it?

00:08:40.880 | Do you have suggestions?

00:08:42.200 | Well, this is exactly why I found it so amazing that my life as a hospice doctor could

00:08:48.320 | start informing my life as a personal finance person and someone thinking about quality

00:08:52.680 | of life today.

00:08:54.000 | I think the dying have a lot to teach us about how to look for purpose in life today,

00:08:59.200 | decades and decades before we're going to deal with that kind of stuff.

00:09:02.520 | With the dying, we do something called the life review, which, as I said, is the

00:09:06.080 | structured series of questions where people kind of look at their life, what was

00:09:09.560 | meaningful to them and did they pursue it?

00:09:11.040 | I think we should start trying to do these life reviews way earlier.

00:09:15.360 | Like we should probably do them yearly starting in our 20s.

00:09:18.320 | I talk in the book exactly about how to go through a life review, but a quick exercise

00:09:23.960 | a quick visualization that I think any young person can do right now is to start with

00:09:28.200 | the basic question.

00:09:29.200 | If you were lying in your deathbed, bemoaning your life and thinking to yourself, I

00:09:34.160 | really regret that I never had the energy, courage or time to like whatever comes next

00:09:39.720 | in that sentence is germane to your sense of purpose.

00:09:42.640 | And the sooner we start thinking about these things, the sooner we can start striving

00:09:46.920 | towards them now, as opposed to waiting to a later time.

00:09:49.640 | There are all sorts of other exercises that you can do or questions you can ask

00:09:53.520 | yourself that start getting you working on this idea of purpose.

00:09:57.320 | Now, one that I love to ask people, which is just so simple as like, when was the last

00:10:01.720 | time you woke up in the middle of the night with this idea and you were so excited you

00:10:06.600 | couldn't fall asleep?

00:10:07.520 | Did you pursue that idea?

00:10:09.280 | Like how many times that happened in your life and what came of it?

00:10:13.000 | Because those kind of things, too, are the messages to us of what our purpose is.

00:10:17.680 | If that doesn't work, then you have to start doing other stuff.

00:10:22.080 | Like I often tell people like you got to start saying yes to new experiences that you've

00:10:25.800 | never done before, right?

00:10:26.880 | People ask you to go do something that normally you'd say no to.

00:10:29.960 | You have to say yes to people in places and things you've never done.

00:10:33.160 | You have to start experiencing life and see what sticks.

00:10:35.600 | It's like throwing spaghetti against the wall.

00:10:37.120 | What ends up being meaningful to you?

00:10:40.440 | What brings you joy when you do it?

00:10:42.160 | And how can you then start building that as a bigger part of your life?

00:10:45.280 | In the book trailer, you said your patients often die as they live.

00:10:50.560 | You know, some express sorrow, hope, but it's a time of thoughtfulness.

00:10:54.120 | It seemed the way you said that, like that was a revelation for you.

00:10:57.920 | Did that change the way you lived when you process that thought and how has it?

00:11:01.960 | Well, so it's this interesting idea, right?

00:11:05.320 | People die as they live, and so people often ask me, like, is death painful?

00:11:10.280 | Is it scary?

00:11:11.280 | How is it going to feel for me?

00:11:12.480 | So what I see in hospice patients is people who are anxious and uptight and unhappy in

00:11:16.840 | life tend to be anxious, uptight and unhappy in death.

00:11:20.280 | And vice versa, people who are at peace, people who feel content, who have strong

00:11:25.400 | relationships and a sense and purpose in life tend to feel the same way in death.

00:11:29.120 | So if the germane question is, how do I die a good death?

00:11:34.720 | The answer is, let's start working on living a good life.

00:11:38.160 | So I think if we come to terms with some of these issues at a much younger age, the

00:11:42.320 | process of dying becomes a lot easier because you're a lot more at peace with what

00:11:45.920 | happened in your life.

00:11:46.960 | So, yeah, it was kind of a revelation because it, again, made me start to look back and

00:11:51.360 | say, we're doing this too late.

00:11:53.520 | We're having these conversations and thinking about these things when we're old and

00:11:58.000 | retired or getting a terminal illness.

00:12:00.240 | And we should really be talking about these things in our 20s when we're setting off on

00:12:04.160 | our career journey and trying to decide what kind of life to build.

00:12:07.560 | And someone listening to this right now might not think, oh, this is a personal finance

00:12:12.880 | conversation, right? It maybe hasn't gone there yet, but where I think a lot of people

00:12:17.440 | get held up is so much of your younger career is tied into

00:12:23.240 | earning, making money, progressing, and maybe for some people that is their passion,

00:12:28.360 | maybe for others it's not.

00:12:29.560 | How did all of these learnings kind of intersect for you with personal finance and

00:12:35.440 | come together to be the same conversation?

00:12:37.840 | So the problem is we're doing it all wrong.

00:12:41.520 | We're putting money first and then figuring out once we get our career and our money in

00:12:45.520 | order, we can start working on life.

00:12:47.280 | My argument in this book and my argument from my experience as a hospice doctor and a

00:12:51.680 | personal finance expert is we need to put the money aside, especially when we're young,

00:12:56.640 | just for a moment.

00:12:57.760 | That doesn't mean we're going to stop working, that doesn't mean we're going to stop

00:13:01.040 | thinking about how we're going to build wealth, but we need to put those ideas aside and

00:13:05.120 | start thinking about purpose, identity, and connections first.

00:13:08.440 | And the reason why is we make this mistake that money is the end goal, where my argument

00:13:14.200 | is money is a tool and money is a tool ultimately so that we can live lives of purpose,

00:13:19.160 | identity, and connections, right?

00:13:20.400 | The fire movement, financial independence, retire early.

00:13:22.920 | We are all rushing, rushing, rushing to make enough money so we can stop working so we

00:13:26.280 | can do what?

00:13:26.880 | Live purposeful lives.

00:13:28.520 | I'm trying to flip the switch and say, let's start with purpose, identity, and

00:13:32.360 | connections.

00:13:32.840 | Let's start doing some of those exercises and the hard work and figuring out what that

00:13:36.680 | means.

00:13:37.560 | And then once we're on that path, that's when you start looking at your finances and

00:13:44.280 | saying, how can I now build a path to financial independence or a financial structure that

00:13:49.640 | supports that purpose, identity, and connections?

00:13:51.800 | And that way we can be really intentional about why we make money, how we make money,

00:13:56.680 | and what we're doing this all for.

00:13:58.040 | When we don't do that purpose and identity work first, we are chasing after money as

00:14:03.160 | a goal, and often we don't even know why.

00:14:06.680 | We get this idea of a certain net worth, we get this idea of a certain job position, and

00:14:10.360 | it sounds great, and it sounds meaningful.

00:14:13.240 | But a lot of times when we get to that place, we get to that net worth, or we get to that

00:14:17.800 | job we were so excited about, we actually feel more depressed as opposed to happy.

00:14:22.360 | And there's a few reasons for that.

00:14:23.480 | One is because money is a little bit of a false goal.

00:14:25.800 | Looking at your bank account isn't going to make you feel more purposeful or give you

00:14:28.760 | a better sense of identity.

00:14:30.040 | So when you get to that place, you thought that was so great, like a million dollars

00:14:32.840 | in the bank, most likely two things are going to happen.

00:14:35.800 | One, you're going to start saying, oh, well, I don't feel as good as I thought I'd feel.

00:14:39.000 | Maybe I have to start going after 1.5 or 2 million.

00:14:41.560 | So before you know it, you're right back on the treadmill trying to make more.

00:14:45.000 | The other thing is this idea of loss aversion.

00:14:47.240 | The fear of losing is almost twice as bad as the fear of never getting there in the

00:14:51.320 | first place.

00:14:51.800 | The minute you get to that million dollar net worth, or you get to that job promotion

00:14:54.840 | that was so exciting, you start worrying about losing it.

00:14:57.880 | Like, oh my God, the market's going to change.

00:15:00.280 | Something's going to happen.

00:15:01.160 | I'm going to have this big expense and all of a sudden I'm not going to have my million

00:15:03.560 | dollars anymore.

00:15:04.600 | And that actually causes us to be more fearful than happy.

00:15:07.400 | And I see this, especially in the financial independence movement.

00:15:09.960 | When people get to financial independence, they get to that net worth number and they

00:15:13.720 | find themselves crushed, anxious and afraid.

00:15:16.680 | And the reason why is because none of those things really have a real sense of purpose

00:15:20.200 | and identity.

00:15:21.000 | There's no meaning in those things.

00:15:22.680 | They're just these easy goals we set up.

00:15:25.000 | And they're really easy because they keep us from doing the hard work of trying to figure

00:15:29.800 | out purpose and identity.

00:15:31.320 | It's really easy to go for the low hanging fruit.

00:15:33.720 | It's really comfortable.

00:15:34.680 | It's what society expects of us.

00:15:37.400 | We can go on Instagram and see all the pictures of people taking beautiful vacations and having

00:15:41.000 | beautiful things.

00:15:41.800 | And it's really easy to strive for all that.

00:15:45.000 | But in the end, I don't think it makes us happy.

00:15:46.760 | And so that's kind of where I'm coming at this from.

00:15:50.120 | That's why I realized when I started looking into personal finance, I started blogging

00:15:55.720 | and podcasting.

00:15:56.360 | I was already financially independent.

00:15:57.640 | So to me, it wasn't really exciting to go, OK, how do I invest?

00:16:01.400 | How do I save?

00:16:02.120 | How do I set up my 401k?

00:16:03.560 | I felt like those one-on-one conversations are important, but they weren't what I wanted

00:16:06.920 | to have.

00:16:07.480 | I want to have those two-on-one conversations now that I'm starting to get a hold of my

00:16:11.640 | finances.

00:16:12.280 | What do I do?

00:16:13.080 | But in having these conversations, I realized I was a little bit late to the game, like

00:16:17.800 | my life would have been served much better if I had started thinking about what was purposeful

00:16:21.800 | first and then started building my financial framework.

00:16:26.760 | Let's say we're all bought in with we need to figure this purposeful conversation out

00:16:30.040 | at the beginning.

00:16:31.080 | Is that just the life review?

00:16:32.680 | Are there more steps to that process before if you've set money aside, bring it back into

00:16:37.240 | the conversation?

00:16:38.120 | Or how long should someone expect it to take to figure that out?

00:16:42.120 | So I think figuring out your purpose and identity are things that take years.

00:16:47.320 | But I actually suggest that people take a few months to really start doing some meditation,

00:16:52.120 | some thought and some of these purpose and identity exercises.

00:16:55.240 | And we can go into some other ones like identity exercises if you want.

00:16:57.960 | Once you start doing that and start saying, okay, these are the things in my life I feel

00:17:03.720 | that are important.

00:17:04.760 | I think then it's fine to start looking at your financial structure and saying, okay,

00:17:08.920 | I need to build a financial pathway, but let's see how I can at least take this idea of purpose

00:17:14.360 | and identity and build it into that.

00:17:15.960 | So what kind of jobs am I doing?

00:17:17.480 | What's my end goal?

00:17:18.600 | What am I going to take this tool of money that I'm making and how am I going to use

00:17:23.240 | it?

00:17:23.880 | The important question is how are we going to, instead of deferring all of our gratification

00:17:28.920 | and spending all of our time front-loading the sacrifice and grinding it out to do well

00:17:32.360 | at work and make lots of money, the idea is how can we enjoy today and tomorrow, not just

00:17:37.080 | kind of put it off till later.

00:17:38.920 | And so I think this happens simultaneously, but I think you need at least a few months

00:17:44.520 | of thinking about purpose and identity before you really start jumping into how you're going

00:17:48.200 | to change your financial life.

00:17:49.720 | So in the book, you mentioned these three brothers, and one of them sounds like the

00:17:52.920 | one you just referenced, right?

00:17:53.960 | The eldest brother front-loads all this effort and work to enjoy all the fruits of his labor

00:17:57.960 | or her labor at the end.

00:17:59.160 | The middle brother takes breaks along the way, like sabbaticals, and the youngest one

00:18:02.520 | just enjoys the journey.

00:18:03.800 | When I read that, I thought, okay, well, there's multiple ways to enjoy this journey.

00:18:08.520 | Is the message that all three ways could work or is the message that the first one is not

00:18:15.000 | really as good as it seems?

00:18:16.360 | The message is that all three ways could work.

00:18:19.160 | So my hypothesis is once you start thinking about purpose, identity, and connections and

00:18:23.960 | start getting a hold of what those things are in your life, now is the time then to

00:18:28.280 | use that information to help you build a path towards financial independence.

00:18:31.720 | The parable of the three brothers talks about three ways of doing it.

00:18:34.680 | The eldest brother, which we talked about, was more front-loading the sacrifice, that

00:18:38.200 | traditional fire movement, grind it out, make it high net worth.

00:18:41.880 | Once you hit that net worth, quit and let your money support you.

00:18:45.480 | The middle brother was much more like the passive income and side hustles.

00:18:49.320 | Financial independence wasn't some big net worth number.

00:18:51.880 | It was actually making enough money through passive income and side hustles each month

00:18:56.520 | to pretty much support your needs.

00:18:58.440 | And then the youngest brothers, the passion play.

00:19:01.000 | This is the idea that if the goal of financial independence is to live a life of purpose,

00:19:04.680 | identity, and connections, if you're lucky enough to come out of college or high school

00:19:08.920 | and find a job that fulfills your sense of purpose, identity, and connections, something

00:19:12.600 | you do, even if you weren't getting paid for, but you happen to get paid enough to cover

00:19:16.680 | your monthly needs.

00:19:17.800 | In a sense, you're immediately financially independent, although you may work till 60

00:19:21.160 | or 70 because you're probably not saving a lot and you're just covering what you need.

00:19:25.000 | Any of these three mechanisms, these archetypes are fine.

00:19:29.240 | In fact, I argue that we may switch back and forth from time to time, or we might even

00:19:34.520 | borrow some of the different techniques of each of these brothers.

00:19:37.720 | So when I look at my own trajectory, my father died when he was 40 and I was seven and he

00:19:42.840 | was a doctor.

00:19:43.960 | And all I wanted to do was be a doctor like him.

00:19:46.040 | I had no care about money.

00:19:47.240 | So in a sense, I was very much a youngest brother.

00:19:50.920 | I wanted to enjoy the past.

00:19:52.600 | I thought that medicine would give me a sense of purpose, identity, and connections.

00:19:55.720 | I could care less about money.

00:19:57.880 | This is what I wanted to do with my life.

00:19:59.480 | Something happened though.

00:20:00.280 | I went to medical school residency.

00:20:01.560 | I started practicing it and I burned out and I'm like, I can't live this life anymore.

00:20:07.000 | But I also realized that to leave my job in medicine, I needed to build up a certain amount

00:20:11.320 | of money so that I could quit my job.

00:20:14.280 | So I started grinding it out and doing things to make lots of money.

00:20:17.960 | So I transitioned from a youngest brother to an eldest brother, right?

00:20:21.960 | All of a sudden I was grinding it out, front-loading the sacrifice, making as much money as I could

00:20:25.400 | so I could quit and then find my sense of purpose, identity, and connections because

00:20:29.560 | I was done working.

00:20:30.600 | But in the midst of doing that, I started picking up these little medical side hustles

00:20:35.160 | to make a little extra money on the side.

00:20:36.600 | One of them was hospice.

00:20:37.800 | Hospice was something that I really enjoyed that ended up being a side hustle.

00:20:43.560 | So in a sense, I also took a little bit of the road of the middle brother.

00:20:47.560 | Interestingly enough, hospice also became the thing I would do even if I wasn't getting

00:20:51.480 | paid for it.

00:20:52.040 | So by doing the side hustle, I learned that I had a new passion.

00:20:55.160 | So then again, I started back looking like a youngest brother.

00:20:58.280 | The point is you can change from time to time to time, but those pathways need to be in

00:21:03.320 | service of your purpose and identity.

00:21:04.840 | And the mistake that we make is we don't even consider purpose and identity a lot of times

00:21:08.200 | when we start going towards a career pathway.

00:21:10.760 | We just zoom off into it thinking that we'll achieve some status of either wealth or position

00:21:17.960 | and that becomes what we think is meaningful or important to us.

00:21:20.760 | And for a small subset of people, it may be.

00:21:22.840 | But for the majority of us, all that does is delay the hard work.

00:21:26.600 | Do you have an example of someone that you've met along this journey of writing the book

00:21:32.200 | and blogging and podcasting that kind of ran through this exercise maybe for a month or

00:21:37.720 | two of purpose and the kinds of changes that came after it?

00:21:40.440 | I mean, I did.

00:21:42.760 | That's exactly what I did.

00:21:44.840 | So what happened with me is I realized I was burning out of medicine.

00:21:50.040 | I didn't want to be a doctor anymore.

00:21:51.480 | I went to my accountant, my financial advisor said, "How much money do I need to retire

00:21:57.800 | early and start pursuing the life I want to pursue?"

00:22:01.640 | They gave me all sorts of cockamamie numbers that made no sense.

00:22:04.280 | But eventually, Jim Dolly, the White Coat Investor, sent me his book to review for my

00:22:07.880 | medical blog.

00:22:09.080 | And that gave me the vocabulary to understand financial independence.

00:22:11.720 | And I realized I had enough money.

00:22:13.160 | My net worth was high enough to actually leave work right away.

00:22:17.240 | The problem was I hadn't done any of that purpose and identity work.

00:22:22.040 | So I had no clue what I wanted to do with myself.

00:22:26.040 | So I became depressed and anxious.

00:22:27.720 | I didn't know what to do.

00:22:28.680 | Like I could walk away from this identity that had been my whole life after my father

00:22:33.320 | died.

00:22:34.200 | But then who was I and what was life about?

00:22:36.200 | So instead of leaving work, I slowly started subtracting the things out of work I didn't

00:22:40.360 | like that were giving me friction.

00:22:41.720 | But then I had to do the hard work of figuring out purpose and identity.

00:22:45.480 | And I did a lot of the exercise in the book.

00:22:47.400 | At that point, I was treating hospice patients.

00:22:49.240 | And I was thinking about what has purpose for me.

00:22:51.880 | I also started writing a blog where I daily wrote about finances and life and what they

00:22:57.000 | meant to me.

00:22:57.400 | It was almost like an online diary.

00:22:59.400 | And then I had to do the hard identity work.

00:23:01.880 | What I suggest in the book is the great identity exercises to ask yourself or say the statement

00:23:06.280 | I am and then fill in the blank, right?

00:23:08.520 | So the first thing that came to my mind is I am a doctor, which is how I totally identified

00:23:12.360 | most of my life.

00:23:12.920 | But then I realized that's just what I do for a living.

00:23:16.040 | It's not all of who I am.

00:23:17.640 | Eventually, I kept asking myself that question.

00:23:19.640 | I am, you know, a father, a son, a spouse.

00:23:22.360 | Okay, those are my family relationships.

00:23:24.120 | I am a Plutus Award winner for the Yearning to Invest podcast.

00:23:26.920 | That's an achievement.

00:23:27.720 | But is it really who I am?

00:23:28.760 | After doing all this hard work, doing these exercises, I came to I am a podcaster, a public

00:23:35.560 | speaker, a writer, and that kind of coalesced into I am a communicator.

00:23:39.320 | And that identity fit.

00:23:42.120 | So now I had a sense of purpose was to have these great, amazing conversations where we

00:23:48.760 | talked about important things.

00:23:49.960 | Identity was that of being a communicator.

00:23:52.440 | And I had to get there before I could actually transition fully out of being a doctor and

00:23:56.760 | start subtracting more and more out of my job until I was left with the one thing that

00:24:00.680 | was still very purposeful for me, which was the hospice work.

00:24:03.960 | So I've done this exact process.

00:24:07.320 | The interesting thought when it comes to my career is when I started medical school, I

00:24:13.080 | actually volunteered in hospice the first week of my medical career.

00:24:16.200 | So my first patient I ever saw was as a hospice volunteer.

00:24:19.320 | Something in my chest was telling me hospice work is for you.

00:24:22.520 | But instead, I ignored that.

00:24:24.520 | And part of the reason I ignored it is because it wasn't as prestigious and it didn't make

00:24:27.640 | as much money as all the other things I could do.

00:24:29.640 | But I go back now and I say, if I had understood purpose and identity, if I had done some of

00:24:36.280 | this hard work at a much younger age, I might have started my medical career in hospice

00:24:40.600 | and I probably would have never burned out.

00:24:43.160 | And interestingly enough, I probably would have made a lot less money.

00:24:45.880 | I probably wouldn't have made it to financial independence, maybe into my 50s and 60s, as

00:24:51.000 | opposed to now.

00:24:52.280 | I kind of made it in my early 40s.

00:24:53.880 | But I probably would have enjoyed my career more and it would have been an alternate pathway

00:24:59.400 | that probably would have saved me a lot of pain and anxiety that I got as I burned out

00:25:04.040 | in medicine when it wasn't really meeting my expectations.

00:25:06.600 | So I had to do this work and I'm a perfect example of why putting purpose and identity

00:25:11.400 | first might have made my trajectory easier and less painful.

00:25:14.760 | I feel like I have a similar experience where I meet people that have known me well and

00:25:19.960 | tell them that I started this podcast and they're like, "Yeah, you were supposed to

00:25:22.520 | do this 10 years ago."

00:25:23.560 | And I was like, "Well, why didn't you tell me 10 years ago?"

00:25:25.880 | It seems like everyone I know thought that this is what I should be doing, but somehow

00:25:30.440 | I was the last person to figure it out.

00:25:32.120 | I don't remember if I read the exercise in the book, but sometimes I like asking other

00:25:36.840 | people who know you really well to talk about you because it was shocking to me that everyone

00:25:42.760 | thought I should be doing this before I knew it.

00:25:45.560 | And I thought, "Man, if I could just have somehow interviewed them and asked them."

00:25:49.080 | So now, I regularly ask people that know me well, like, "What are things that you think

00:25:53.880 | that I should be doing more of?

00:25:55.480 | What are the things I'm doing that you wonder why I'm doing?"

00:25:57.960 | To try to pull that information out.

00:26:00.600 | I mentioned that in the identity section in the book.

00:26:03.640 | And if you're having trouble with the statement, "I am" and filling in the blanks, it's

00:26:07.800 | a great time to do exactly that.

00:26:09.400 | Go ask family and friends and be aspirational.

00:26:13.000 | Like, "Not only what am I today, but what could I be?

00:26:17.000 | Like, what am I in my most heroic life?"

00:26:19.720 | And I think, again, those type of exercises, interviewing your family, say, "Well, how

00:26:23.400 | do you see me as?"

00:26:24.840 | It's very powerful because you're right, we ourselves have these blind spots.

00:26:28.760 | And again, I think sometimes we spend a lot of our time pursuing things and worrying about

00:26:35.240 | what we think we're supposed to be doing as opposed to what we want.

00:26:38.840 | And so, we do so little work trying to figure out what we want.

00:26:43.160 | Again, the dying, it's amazing.

00:26:45.640 | You find out you're dying and all of a sudden, all you can think about is what you want.

00:26:49.480 | And so, I'm trying to bring some of that urgency a little earlier in our lives so that

00:26:53.560 | it can help guide us.

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00:29:15.240 | Along the journey you shared for yourself, you talked about this trap that in the book

00:29:20.840 | you call "The Money Mind Meld", where you care way more about the money.

00:29:24.120 | And I found myself in the same trap.

00:29:25.800 | It's like, we got to get to this net worth.

00:29:27.160 | We got to get to this net worth.

00:29:28.680 | I recently read "Die With Zero" and I was like, maybe the net worth I'm really targeting

00:29:32.440 | is ending with zero.

00:29:33.800 | Like, maybe the number doesn't matter.

00:29:35.480 | But how did you get out of it?

00:29:38.360 | A lot of people that I think listen to the show, people that I know are optimizers stuck

00:29:42.440 | in that.

00:29:43.000 | Can you talk about that transition?

00:29:44.440 | Yeah.

00:29:45.500 | So, I talk about the money mind meld.

00:29:48.440 | It's this idea that we become mesmerized with so much about money that especially when we're

00:29:52.600 | in the pursuit of it, it's the only thing we can see, right?

00:29:55.640 | We forget about everything else that's important to us.

00:29:58.120 | The problem with the money mind meld is once you reach that goal, you get to that place

00:30:03.720 | that you thought was so vaunted, you don't find yourself happy.

00:30:08.200 | And this is really what it comes down to.

00:30:09.960 | Money doesn't really ultimately make us happy.

00:30:13.800 | And so we have to change our mindset and really start thinking about money as a tool instead

00:30:19.560 | of a goal, right?

00:30:20.440 | Money itself does nothing for us, right?

00:30:23.000 | There are numbers on a computer screen or useless pieces of green paper if you happen

00:30:27.480 | to have cash.

00:30:28.200 | But when you think about it, that doesn't mean anything.

00:30:30.440 | What it means in society today is money is a currency, right?

00:30:34.920 | It's a storing of energy, potential energy.

00:30:37.640 | It's a storing of goods and services.

00:30:40.200 | So we can use that money to buy goods and services.

00:30:43.720 | But what we're really talking about is freeing up our life with that money so we can pursue

00:30:48.760 | our sense of purpose and meaning.

00:30:50.520 | That's all it really does for us.

00:30:52.040 | So in order to really get past the money mind meld, you have to realize that money is not

00:30:57.320 | making you happy.

00:30:58.200 | Money will solve your basic money problems, but nothing else.

00:31:01.480 | And that money is a tool, one of many tools, right?

00:31:04.680 | So we have our youth.

00:31:05.720 | We have our energy.

00:31:06.520 | We have our intelligence.

00:31:07.560 | We have our communities.

00:31:09.080 | We have all these tools and all of these tools are in the pursuit of a goal of living a purposeful

00:31:14.600 | life.

00:31:14.920 | We have to stop looking at money as the only tool or the goal and start realizing where

00:31:21.160 | it fits.

00:31:22.040 | One of the ways I really tell people is, you know, think about what happens when you reach

00:31:26.600 | that money goal.

00:31:27.560 | How will you feel?

00:31:29.720 | And at first people like, oh, I'd be so excited and happy.

00:31:32.280 | And then you kind of say, well, what next?

00:31:34.200 | What would you do?

00:31:36.520 | What would that money get you?

00:31:38.760 | Why would your life be better because of that?

00:31:41.160 | Right?

00:31:41.640 | And so on some level, people are going to say, I could take that great vacation or I

00:31:44.520 | could fly first class.

00:31:45.800 | But when you really drill down, you realize that those things aren't truly the key to

00:31:50.040 | happiness.

00:31:50.520 | Like they're nice perks, right?

00:31:51.880 | But they're not the true key to happiness.

00:31:53.720 | So then you start pushing further and saying, okay, what would this really allow you to

00:31:57.320 | do?

00:31:57.480 | And if people are really thoughtful, they'll eventually get to this point where they're

00:32:01.640 | like, it'll allow me to do this thing.

00:32:03.320 | I always wanted to do that.

00:32:04.360 | I was so scared that I never had time.

00:32:07.880 | And then you start saying, well, why couldn't you do those things now?

00:32:12.760 | Like, is it really money that's holding you back?

00:32:14.840 | And what you realize is that money often becomes an excuse, right?

00:32:19.000 | Yes.

00:32:19.640 | If you had all the money in the world, you could stop working completely.

00:32:22.760 | And that would give you a certain amount of more time to pursue things.

00:32:26.120 | But most people realize that when they actually get a hold of what's purposeful and has meaning

00:32:31.000 | for them in their life, they could start bringing those things into their life now.

00:32:35.640 | And that the money is just an enabler.

00:32:37.880 | But again, we have some of these other enablers.

00:32:39.880 | And when you only focus on the money, a lot of times when we get to that point where we

00:32:43.800 | have enough money, instead of actually allowing it to enable us, it makes us more fearful.

00:32:48.360 | And we either go for more money because we don't know what the heck we want to do with

00:32:50.840 | our lives.

00:32:51.160 | Or we just get afraid that we're going to lose it.

00:32:52.760 | This is part of my gripe with the fire movement.

00:32:56.280 | Now, I'll caveat.

00:32:58.120 | So I was in a documentary on it, playing with fire.

00:33:01.560 | I'm guessing you've seen it because a lot of the community has watched it.

00:33:05.560 | If anyone hasn't, I'll link to it in the show notes.

00:33:07.480 | But in the recent past, especially through your book, I really struggle with the RE part.

00:33:13.320 | Like this idea that we should get all this money so that we can stop working and just

00:33:17.320 | kind of do nothing or travel or whatever it is.

00:33:21.640 | And I think the word retirement is too messy.

00:33:25.720 | Many people I think say, "Oh, retirement.

00:33:27.720 | No more work."

00:33:28.840 | For me, I think if we could reframe that concept as financial independence is just when money

00:33:34.280 | lets you do the thing you want to do.

00:33:36.200 | And if you're already doing it, then you already are.

00:33:38.120 | Like you said, if you had been a hospice doctor from the beginning, maybe you had been financially

00:33:41.640 | independent out of medical school.

00:33:43.480 | Or maybe once you paid your medical bills, but maybe not.

00:33:45.560 | And so, that stresses me out thinking about people trying to have this goal of just doing

00:33:51.000 | nothing.

00:33:51.480 | How do you feel about that RE part of the movement?

00:33:53.880 | I think that was both the greatest thing for the movement because it made it exciting and

00:34:00.520 | fun to talk about, but also the most detrimental to the real message.

00:34:04.840 | Because the real message is not retire early.

00:34:08.280 | Most of us got here because we actually enjoy some kind of work.

00:34:11.880 | And I think we find purpose in work.

00:34:15.080 | The point being is that what really matters is not whether you're working or not.

00:34:19.960 | Because I think we work most of our lives.

00:34:21.560 | And I think most of us enjoy doing some kind of work.

00:34:23.880 | It's more about the autonomy and the mastery and the independence.

00:34:28.200 | All those things that make us feel good about work.

00:34:30.520 | I think that's what, when we're talking about retiring early, we're not really talking about

00:34:34.040 | not doing things.

00:34:34.600 | We're talking about reclaiming our control of doing things that make us feel good.

00:34:38.760 | Those things may actually create money.

00:34:41.320 | Often they do or create some kind of content or product, right?

00:34:44.200 | We build something, we make something, we write something.

00:34:46.680 | This is all very important to our sense of identity and our sense of waking up in the

00:34:51.960 | morning and feeling like we have something productive and exciting to do.

00:34:56.040 | But what we're really looking for is control.

00:34:58.600 | Control and independence.

00:35:00.120 | And so, it's really, you get to financial independence and then you have control of

00:35:05.480 | what type of work you do, when you do it, and what the end goal of that work is.

00:35:11.080 | And that's something that most people feel is lacking in traditional employment today.

00:35:15.560 | I would challenge anyone listening that feels like they want to achieve this fire journey

00:35:22.040 | goal to stop worrying about trying to save enough that you could stop working for the

00:35:26.760 | rest of your life.

00:35:27.640 | I think what you said about people often end up being able to monetize whatever they would

00:35:31.960 | do if they stopped working is very true.

00:35:34.680 | So, I try to challenge people to say, "What if you just took a year off, did the thing

00:35:37.960 | you love?"

00:35:38.840 | I think for a good number of people, not everyone, but for a good number of people they'd find

00:35:43.320 | within a year, that thing that they love actually does generate income.

00:35:47.480 | And all of the math of, "Oh, I need to save enough to live on 4%."

00:35:51.560 | Well, that's true if you're not working.

00:35:53.880 | But that goal of maybe if you're on the coast, maybe you think you need $10 million, but

00:35:58.200 | if you take a year off, find out that the thing you love doing makes more than $0, well,

00:36:03.400 | then the amount you actually need to do that full time could be half of what you need.

00:36:08.040 | It could be nothing because it makes enough money to sustain your lifestyle.

00:36:12.040 | So, I think that far too often we assume that in retirement, we make no money, when in reality,

00:36:19.000 | if your retirement is just doing something you would do for free, many of us can get

00:36:23.160 | paid to do that thing also and it changes the entire equation.

00:36:27.080 | When I have these conversations, I want to be really clear about this because people

00:36:32.840 | look at my story and even probably your story, a lot of our stories and people say, "Well,

00:36:36.840 | duh, it's really easy to say that when you have money, right?

00:36:39.960 | You have space, you've made money, you have savings, you have investments, it's really

00:36:44.280 | easy for you to say these things, but I'm a 22-year-old out of college, I have just

00:36:49.560 | enough money to cover my rent, I'm barely putting food on the table, you know, it might

00:36:53.880 | be easy for you, but for me, I don't have time to do all this stuff."

00:36:56.600 | And this is the conversation I really want to have, right?

00:36:58.840 | Because again, it's easy for us in our 40s and our 50s when we have some savings to start

00:37:02.920 | talking about meaning and purpose and side hustling and monetizing things so that we

00:37:07.160 | can stop doing what we don't like.

00:37:08.680 | But, you know, the 20-year-olds, the people who are struggling to put money on the table

00:37:13.560 | are looking at us and saying, "Yeah, that's a real privileged version of life that we

00:37:17.240 | don't have."

00:37:17.720 | But I want to start thinking about those people too, because I think it's really important.

00:37:22.440 | We talk about money as if it is the and only tool, but the truth of the matter is we have

00:37:29.480 | lots of tools that help us live a purposeful and meaningful life.

00:37:32.760 | So, if you are 22, you just got out of school or you didn't go to school and you're just

00:37:37.720 | working that eight to six, barely getting by.

00:37:40.280 | And you're like, "I don't have space in my life for side hustles.

00:37:42.360 | I don't have space in my life for these things."

00:37:43.800 | I would like to look at those people and say, "Well, money is one tool.

00:37:48.200 | But again, you have other tools.

00:37:50.040 | You've got your energy.

00:37:51.240 | You've got your youth.

00:37:52.280 | You've got your communities.

00:37:53.960 | You've got your skills.

00:37:55.400 | So, maybe you work your eight to six Monday through Friday.

00:37:58.360 | And then on Saturday night for three hours, pick something you're really passionate about

00:38:02.520 | and start a side hustle, right?

00:38:04.200 | Three hours on a Saturday.

00:38:06.840 | Let's see what happens with this in six months.

00:38:08.840 | If after six months, you've been doing this passionate side hustle three hours every Saturday

00:38:13.080 | and you make zero money from it, guess what?

00:38:14.840 | You still just added purpose into your life by doing something you like and you're passionate

00:38:19.480 | about.

00:38:19.720 | So, you've won even if you haven't made any money.

00:38:22.040 | But let's say you were lucky enough to make a little money doing this side hustle.

00:38:27.480 | You used your tool of energy, which I don't have in my 50s.

00:38:30.760 | I've got kids.

00:38:31.720 | I'm busy.

00:38:32.760 | I don't have nearly as much energy, but you're in your 20s.

00:38:34.760 | So, you have a little more energy.

00:38:36.600 | You use that tool of energy instead of the tool of money.

00:38:38.760 | You created the side hustle.

00:38:39.800 | The side hustle made a little money.

00:38:41.560 | You hate your eight to five.

00:38:43.240 | Maybe it becomes a nine to five.

00:38:45.960 | Or maybe it becomes a four day a week instead of a five day a week.

00:38:50.600 | And then because you have a little more energy now and you're really liking that side hustle

00:38:55.880 | because you're passionate about it, you keep building it out.

00:38:58.280 | Maybe in three or four years, it's covering 50% of your income and you drop your job even

00:39:03.400 | further.

00:39:04.600 | Or maybe it allows you to go to a job that you make a little less, but you like doing

00:39:08.360 | it a lot more.

00:39:09.240 | So the point is, how do we use purpose to create space in our life?

00:39:14.520 | How do we use all these other tools we have, including money, to start being more thoughtful

00:39:20.360 | about what we're doing with our time now?

00:39:22.200 | So you and I can look as we get older, as we have more money and say, OK, now we have

00:39:26.760 | this tool of money to get us to this place where we have more control.

00:39:30.360 | But I'd like younger people also to start thinking about ways they can take more control

00:39:33.960 | too of the lives they're living so they don't get caught in that rut where they're 40 or

00:39:37.800 | 50 and they have tons of money, but they've never really spent any time thinking about

00:39:41.160 | what's really meaningful to them.

00:39:42.440 | So you mentioned money is a tool.

00:39:44.360 | It's an important tool.

00:39:45.800 | I do want to spend some of the conversation to talk about that tool.

00:39:48.680 | You spent a lot of time in the book talking about financial planning and after you do

00:39:53.160 | the hard work about how to do it.

00:39:55.080 | And I like this idea of bringing something fun to the conversation.

00:39:58.600 | So it's a dining room table.

00:39:59.960 | You said it's not a flamingo.

00:40:01.480 | It's not a three legged stool.

00:40:03.880 | Talk a little bit about what that is.

00:40:05.560 | What is the financial plan to you?

00:40:06.920 | Because I think as someone who started a financial planning company, it can be a big thing that's

00:40:11.960 | daunting, that is complicated and takes hours and hours to go through.

00:40:16.200 | Or you can kind of think about it in a more simple framework like I think you present.

00:40:20.200 | So the idea is, you know, the American table, the dining room table is an institution in

00:40:25.560 | our country, right?

00:40:26.200 | This idea that the family sits around it.

00:40:28.040 | And I like it as a model for how our financial plans should be because it's stable, right?

00:40:32.680 | It's hard to knock over a dining room table.

00:40:34.680 | It's solid, well built, and it supports us.

00:40:38.040 | And I think we should look at our financial plan the same way.

00:40:41.240 | So a lot of people build a financial plan that looks a lot like a flamingo, right?

00:40:45.000 | Think about a flamingo.

00:40:45.960 | They've got their one leg.

00:40:47.000 | They're incredibly unstable.

00:40:48.600 | Anything could knock them over.

00:40:50.120 | This is a person who really puts all their eggs in one basket, right?

00:40:54.040 | They have their W2 job.

00:40:55.480 | They work for some company.

00:40:57.880 | And maybe if they do invest at all in stock, maybe it's through their 401K.

00:41:03.000 | Maybe it's actually in that company itself.

00:41:05.240 | And so everything depends on this one company.

00:41:08.600 | And God forbid, a la Enron, this company goes down, something happens to it.

00:41:13.240 | The flamingo is incredibly easy to knock over.

00:41:16.520 | So then you can think about a two-legged table or stool.

00:41:19.800 | Still not that stable, but a little bit better.

00:41:22.680 | That might be someone who has a W2 job.

00:41:25.080 | And maybe they now have a 401K with some broad-based index funds, right?

00:41:29.080 | Or maybe some bonds.

00:41:30.360 | So again, a little bit more stability, but still not perfect.

00:41:34.600 | And then we start thinking, how can we even make it more stable?

00:41:37.480 | Like a three-legged stool.

00:41:38.520 | Now, maybe we add in a side hustle or some real estate, right?

00:41:43.720 | And so then again, we're now creating more space.

00:41:47.000 | And then the four-legged dining room table, something that even if you knock a leg off

00:41:51.320 | is still going to be incredibly stable is your W2 job plus the broad-based index funds,

00:41:56.120 | plus some real estate, plus a side hustle.

00:41:58.920 | Maybe if you're excited about some alternatives, you have a little crypto here or there.

00:42:03.000 | Again, the idea is you're creating these different legs.

00:42:05.880 | It's this idea of a diversification, but it makes it a little bit more obvious.

00:42:09.480 | And again, the whole point of this is really what we want to do is we want to build a financial

00:42:17.000 | plan that supports our sense of purpose, identity, and connections.

00:42:20.600 | We want to build meaning into our life.

00:42:22.040 | To do that, we build a stable financial plan, and then we practice risk medication, right?

00:42:27.160 | What we're really doing is trying to protect ourselves against the unknown risks, like

00:42:31.960 | you suddenly lose your job, like an economic downturn, like a healthcare crisis or problem.

00:42:37.640 | Like all of these things, we want to create that dining room table that's going to support

00:42:42.200 | us so that we can withstand whatever trauma, whatever black swan, or I call them white

00:42:46.520 | swan events that happen, right, these events that a black swan event is a totally unexpected

00:42:51.720 | event that can really ruin our financial lives.

00:42:54.120 | White swan events are events that can ruin our financial lives, but they're not totally

00:42:58.120 | unexpected, like a healthcare problem, right?

00:43:00.200 | People get sick and end up spending a lot of money on healthcare.

00:43:02.440 | It's common.

00:43:02.840 | A divorce, right?

00:43:05.320 | The whole point of all this is to build a solid financial foundation so you can mitigate

00:43:11.800 | your risk and withstand the winds of change that are going to affect you and your financial

00:43:15.800 | plan so that you can continue using that money to do what it's supposed to do, which is give

00:43:20.840 | you the space and time to do meaningful things.

00:43:22.840 | So at its core, would it be fair to say a lot of times people think of the financial

00:43:28.600 | plan as what do I do with my savings?

00:43:30.760 | And your point is, you have your income, you have your savings, but then you might also

00:43:35.480 | have some other assets you own, whether it's a business, whether it's real estate, and

00:43:39.320 | you might also have not just your job, but your other income.

00:43:42.680 | And the more you can start to build different buckets of money that aren't just your savings,

00:43:48.040 | the more stable you can be.

00:43:49.400 | You mentioned the dining room table was four.

00:43:51.960 | At some point, maybe you don't need your 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th.

00:43:55.320 | Like if you can get four, which if one falls off, three is still a little stable, four

00:44:00.440 | kind of solid pieces of financial wealth, if you will, whether it's a job or that's

00:44:05.640 | kind of a place to strive for.

00:44:07.080 | Yeah, and perfect is the enemy of good.

00:44:09.080 | I love these posts on social media where you have someone in the personal finance world

00:44:14.040 | that says, I've got nine forms of income, and they love to say the different side hustles

00:44:18.680 | and the difference.

00:44:19.640 | That's great.

00:44:20.440 | But for the majority of us, four or five revenue streams that are stable, that are diversified,

00:44:26.440 | that are uncorrelated, like I don't want to go too far, but how can we start building

00:44:30.840 | these streams and be thoughtful about it, right?

00:44:32.680 | So, OK, I'm going to retire.

00:44:35.320 | Do I have a pension?

00:44:36.440 | Do I have a 401(k) that I can start taking distributions from?

00:44:39.560 | Do I want to set up an insurance policy that'll pay me like a spia?

00:44:42.760 | There are different ways of doing this so that when one revenue stream drops off, you

00:44:47.400 | can create another revenue stream.

00:44:48.920 | And therefore, again, you can protect yourself from change because that's ultimately we have

00:44:53.960 | no control over change.

00:44:55.160 | We have only control over the best planning we can do and then what we do with our lives.

00:44:59.400 | So that's the planning piece.

00:45:00.680 | But you do talk a little bit about how one of the ways to tackle your finances is to

00:45:06.600 | spend less.

00:45:07.240 | A lot of these tactics are, OK, you can get a side hustle, you can make more.

00:45:10.040 | But you talk about not just trying to do the small things, but really building that kind

00:45:15.080 | of savings frugality mindset into your daily life.

00:45:17.960 | Can you share some examples of how you've done it and how people might do that to make

00:45:21.960 | their finances a little more automated in terms of how they save for the future?

00:45:26.200 | Yeah, you know, there's some tips in the book about just simple things.

00:45:29.640 | I especially talk about it when I talk about budgeting, because I think budgeting is something

00:45:33.000 | that people really struggle with.

00:45:34.440 | And my family has never been a good spreadsheet budgeter.

00:45:38.120 | So there's great apps nowadays and you can do all sorts of spreadsheets on budgeting.

00:45:42.680 | But I think there's some really easy things you can do that help streamline your budget

00:45:50.920 | to make sure that you're not spending frivolously.

00:45:53.400 | So with my wife and I, we were lucky enough to both be employed and have two decent jobs.

00:45:57.880 | So a basic rule for us is we lived always off of one salary and the other salary went

00:46:03.000 | directly into either savings accounts or into investment accounts with us not even seeing

00:46:08.840 | them.

00:46:09.400 | So it was as easy as you want to buy something.

00:46:12.040 | There's either money in that checking account or there isn't.

00:46:14.920 | We took half this money off the table before we even had a chance to think about it.

00:46:20.280 | So simple things like that.

00:46:21.640 | Other little things, you don't have this as much today, but it used to be back in the

00:46:25.880 | day, if you wanted to buy something from a vending machine or something, you had to have

00:46:29.960 | the money on you, right?

00:46:30.840 | You used to have to have cash.

00:46:31.720 | It was before the days where we all had phones and we could just hold our phone up to the

00:46:34.440 | vending machine.

00:46:35.000 | So an easy thing I did is I never carried cash.

00:46:37.720 | Some people never carry credit cards.

00:46:39.160 | It's like, okay, I'll have my one safety credit card, but I'm not even going to give myself

00:46:42.280 | the means to spend.

00:46:43.240 | Other things you can do is like, we rarely make big purchases on a whim or on a spur.

00:46:51.080 | So if we're at Target or if we're at some place and we see something that's $500 or

00:46:55.240 | even $250, we're unlikely to go buy at the moment we see it and think we need it.

00:47:00.360 | So often there's a cooling off period, especially with something new that we want to buy, where

00:47:03.880 | we give ourselves a week to think about it, just to make sure we truly need and want this

00:47:07.880 | thing.

00:47:08.120 | I think there are a bunch of other different hacks we can use.

00:47:12.920 | We can automate, we can, again, make sure that our money is going right out of our paycheck

00:47:17.400 | into things like our 401k so we don't even see it.

00:47:19.960 | But I always say with savings that you can only squeeze so much water out of a stone,

00:47:24.440 | right?

00:47:24.680 | There's only a certain amount of movement we can make there.

00:47:27.080 | And it doesn't make sense to squeeze so hard that life is painful.

00:47:31.240 | If you have the choice, right?

00:47:32.200 | If you don't have the choice, you don't have the choice.

00:47:33.960 | But if you have the choice, you don't want to squeeze so hard that you're not enjoying

00:47:37.800 | your days and that you're suffering.

00:47:39.160 | Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

00:47:43.960 | I get it.

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00:48:53.400 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:48:59.000 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

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00:49:09.880 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:49:12.760 | So I'm going to transition a little bit here.

00:49:15.080 | We talked about our personal finances as people listening, thinking about it.

00:49:18.440 | But another important thing is thinking about others' finances, especially the legacy you

00:49:23.800 | leave, the legacy your family leaves.

00:49:25.160 | You intentionally don't use estate planning as much as financial legacy documents.

00:49:29.320 | So I'd love to hear that story because I think it makes it a little easier.

00:49:33.080 | But how do you think people should approach that as well as the conversation with their

00:49:37.880 | loved ones who maybe aren't thinking about it?

00:49:40.840 | I think when we talk about estate planning, it's this big, scary idea, and it's really

00:49:45.640 | easy to put that off or not pay attention to it because it seems so complicated.

00:49:50.440 | And again, let's not forget when we're talking about estate planning, what we're really talking

00:49:54.600 | about is what's going to happen when we or our loved one dies.

00:49:57.480 | And no one likes to talk about that, right?

00:49:59.320 | Because you start thinking about what's going to happen when this important person is gone.

00:50:02.280 | I like to talk about our legacy documents instead, because as opposed to thinking about

00:50:08.120 | when someone's gone and no longer with us, I like to approach it as this is the way you're

00:50:12.760 | going to stay positively in people's lives, right?

00:50:16.440 | By planning appropriately, by doing these financial legacy planning or the financial

00:50:21.720 | legacy documents or the medical legal legacy documents, this is so that your impact remains,

00:50:27.400 | that you still affect those people you love and that even God forbid when you die or a

00:50:31.800 | family member dies, that that positive effect is still out there in the world for years

00:50:37.480 | and years later.

00:50:38.280 | So this is your mark on the world.

00:50:40.120 | But it's a difficult conversation to have.

00:50:42.760 | And I especially think for people in our age group, a lot of us are in that sandwich generation

00:50:46.760 | where we have young kids, but we also have parents who are getting older.

00:50:50.440 | And I'm dealing with this right now with my in-laws who are currently moving.

00:50:54.840 | It's really hard to talk to your parents about money issues in your money situation.

00:51:01.720 | So in the book, I talk about a few tactics that help you start these conversations.

00:51:07.640 | In a way that's non-confrontational.

00:51:09.560 | So one of my favorite ways to start these conversations is you ask for advice, right?

00:51:15.000 | So people are very open to having us ask them for advice.

00:51:18.280 | So let's say you actually understand this legacy planning yourself.

00:51:22.680 | You actually have a good hold on it, but you want to start broaching it with your parents.

00:51:26.120 | The easiest way to say, look, I was thinking about doing a will and maybe a trust.

00:51:30.040 | Mom and dad, what did you guys do?

00:51:32.360 | Like, what should I do with this?

00:51:33.880 | It's kind of foggy in my mind.

00:51:35.720 | I don't know what to do.

00:51:36.840 | It's a really great way of assessing where your parents are,

00:51:39.880 | because then they're going to feel like they're giving you advice.

00:51:42.040 | So they're going to be open.

00:51:43.080 | They're not thinking you're like, mom, dad, when you die, what am I going to get of yours?

00:51:46.760 | That's not what you're asking them.

00:51:47.720 | You're saying, I need to do this for my family.

00:51:50.520 | You know, what should we do?

00:51:51.960 | It's a great way to broach the subject and get a feel for how much thinking they've done on this.

00:51:56.040 | You may find that they've done tons of thinking about it.

00:51:59.320 | They have their wills and their trust, and they can actually tell you and help you do it yourself.

00:52:04.120 | Or they might look at you and say, hmm, we've never thought about this before.

00:52:07.880 | And that's a perfect chance to say, well, I'm doing it.

00:52:10.040 | You want to do this together?

00:52:11.160 | It's a great way to start the conversation.

00:52:14.120 | That's one way to do it.

00:52:15.640 | Another way I really like to broach the conversation is being in hospice.

00:52:20.040 | I've seen some real tragedies.

00:52:21.480 | So it's easy for me to approach my parents and say,

00:52:25.800 | I was taking care of this guy and his mom was sick and she had Alzheimer's.

00:52:31.400 | And the dad had taken over everything, the medical power of attorney.

00:52:35.400 | He had taken over the finances for the family.

00:52:37.800 | My patient, he was really happy.

00:52:39.800 | His parents were managing all these things because his mom was getting sick and he just

00:52:43.080 | wanted to be with his mom.

00:52:44.440 | Then COVID came along and all of a sudden his dad got sick and was on a ventilator.

00:52:48.120 | And guess what?

00:52:49.480 | I didn't have the financial power of attorney.

00:52:52.600 | My patient couldn't pay for his mom's needs because his dad was on a ventilator.

00:52:57.160 | And he didn't have any rights to all the financial paperwork,

00:53:00.440 | to the checking account, to any of that.

00:53:02.280 | So I've experienced these things.

00:53:04.680 | And I could go to my parents and say, you know what?

00:53:06.120 | The funniest thing happened to one of my patients.

00:53:08.280 | Tell that story and say, gosh, I hope that kind of thing doesn't happen to us.

00:53:13.080 | And so by talking about how other people have had these bad experiences,

00:53:17.800 | it's a wonderful way to actually breach the conversation with your loved ones.

00:53:21.320 | And it's a real non-confrontational easy way.

00:53:24.120 | So that's another way to do it.

00:53:25.320 | And the last way I really like to do it is to talk about it in terms of legacy.

00:53:29.560 | So instead of saying, when you die, who's going to get what stuff of yours

00:53:33.000 | to go to your parents and say, you know what?

00:53:36.200 | My kids are young.

00:53:38.440 | And I, as well as I want my kids to really remember you the way you are after you're gone.

00:53:45.880 | Let's talk about how you want to be remembered.

00:53:49.080 | What do you want the kids to have of you?

00:53:51.480 | What do you want them to remember?

00:53:52.840 | What is your legacy?

00:53:54.520 | And a lot of times that leads to talking about things, even like property, like mom and dad.

00:53:59.080 | Every year we take all the grandkids and we go to that cabin that you guys own in Wisconsin.

00:54:05.080 | After you die, what should be done with that?

00:54:07.800 | Like, do you want us to still do that and think of you every year when we go do this?

00:54:12.120 | Do you want us to sell it?

00:54:13.240 | What would you want done with this thing?

00:54:15.160 | But by framing it in terms of their legacy,

00:54:18.920 | I think then you can open up a difficult conversation

00:54:22.040 | and make it about celebrating the people we're talking about.

00:54:27.080 | Because the idea behind this, and no one thinks of it this way, but

00:54:30.120 | really estate planning should be a celebration of people's lives, right?

00:54:34.280 | We should celebrate with their medical legacy planning, like

00:54:37.480 | living will, medical power of attorney.

00:54:41.480 | What we're doing is we're celebrating their dignity and what they want

00:54:44.760 | done for them when they can't speak for themselves.

00:54:47.240 | With their financial legacy documents, like their wills and their trust,

00:54:51.160 | we're celebrating all they've achieved economically, all the things they've acquired,

00:54:56.680 | and how those things are going to continue in the world after they're gone,

00:54:59.480 | and they're going to stay present in our lives.

00:55:01.320 | So, if we can reframe this as a celebration,

00:55:03.880 | it makes it much more approachable and it makes the conversations much easier.

00:55:07.960 | - You just gave me an idea, which I think is really interesting.

00:55:11.320 | So, two things came from this when I was just listening.

00:55:13.400 | One, something I want to make sure my wife and I do is,

00:55:17.400 | and I wish that we had done with my grandparents,

00:55:20.760 | is take some time to capture who they are, their story,

00:55:23.960 | whether that's on video, whether that's written, so you have something to share.

00:55:27.080 | So, that's just something that's top of mind for me is,

00:55:29.880 | I saw Sean, I think from My First Million, posted that he did a podcast with his mom,

00:55:36.120 | where he interviewed his mom like he was doing an interview.

00:55:38.840 | But he didn't publish it, right?

00:55:40.200 | He didn't go out and share it with the world.

00:55:42.600 | He just did it because he wanted to have an archive of a conversation he had.

00:55:47.000 | So, that was one, which I thought was just really interesting,

00:55:49.080 | was trying to document these people that are important in your lives

00:55:52.040 | that won't be there forever.

00:55:53.560 | But the other is talking about ways that you could keep alive things.

00:55:58.840 | So, in your case, there's an actual physical cabin, right?

00:56:01.800 | That might be something that's a lot easier and tangible.

00:56:05.080 | But if your family has really loved going to a cabin, but always renting it,

00:56:09.880 | maybe you could ask your parents, if you have money left over,

00:56:13.480 | yeah, you could give it to someone.

00:56:14.440 | But is there anything you want to do with it?

00:56:15.800 | You think about people with tons of money and they grant these scholarships,

00:56:19.720 | so kids could go to school under a program.

00:56:22.200 | Or I remember my sister's college, someone donated a pool of money

00:56:26.920 | and the whole purpose of it was, it was enough money that the interest on the donation

00:56:31.240 | would be able to buy a passport for every kid at the university that never had one.

00:56:35.240 | And I thought that was so cool.

00:56:36.760 | And I'm now thinking, oh, if I have money when I die,

00:56:40.200 | I would love to not just leave it, but also leave a purpose for it.

00:56:44.200 | I would love you to take this money and take a trip every year

00:56:48.520 | like we took when we were kids, you know, that kind of thing.

00:56:50.840 | So, trying to talk about this with your parents,

00:56:53.560 | but maybe to turn their legacy into something tangible

00:56:56.920 | that you can bring to life with your family

00:56:59.080 | and can be passed on is a really interesting idea that I'd never thought about.

00:57:03.240 | I think our lives are like a stone being dropped in the ocean.

00:57:06.840 | We are here for so little time and once we break the water, we're gone.

00:57:11.640 | But the ripple effect of that stone can carry on for miles and miles and miles.

00:57:17.640 | And so, a lot of the thought is, what is going to be the ripple of my life?

00:57:23.480 | And so, I'm convinced that living this life of meaning and purpose

00:57:26.600 | is going to affect those people around you by thinking about your legacy planning,

00:57:31.640 | by setting aside money to do those important things,

00:57:34.360 | that's going to be your ripple that will carry on after you're gone.

00:57:39.400 | And I personally find that extremely comforting.

00:57:42.040 | I imagine those in their final days would find it comforting to know that

00:57:47.320 | what they care about is going to kind of transcend their own life into others.

00:57:51.960 | Yeah, totally. I mean, it's about legacy and that's why I think we should call it legacy planning.

00:57:57.560 | Are there any things that you think are commonly missed in legacy planning that

00:58:01.400 | aren't as daunting to go tackle as maybe an entire estate plan or maybe you've done that?

00:58:05.880 | Things that you're like, "Hey, even if you think you've done it,

00:58:08.920 | make sure to think about X or Y or Z that might not be the obvious."

00:58:12.360 | I hate to say it and it's so estate planning 101, but it's so straightforward.

00:58:16.920 | Everyone needs to go check their beneficiaries.

00:58:20.040 | You need to of all your policies and you need transfer on death for all your bank accounts.

00:58:26.280 | Right? It's just such an easy thing to do

00:58:29.400 | that everyone forgets to do and it can save you a huge amount of hassle.

00:58:33.880 | I talk about in the book and I actually interviewed someone on my podcast

00:58:36.520 | whose husband died and they were both very young and he never changed the beneficiary on his life

00:58:42.760 | insurance policy because he had set it up a decade earlier and he had an ex-girlfriend's name on it.

00:58:46.760 | And think about how painful and difficult that could be.

00:58:50.760 | A life insurance policy is supposed to, God forbid,

00:58:53.960 | you die, it's supposed to make your family's life easier and then you find out that this

00:58:58.280 | money is all set to go to a stranger. Lucky enough, the stranger in this case

00:59:02.680 | transferred the money over to the true beneficiary, to the person's wife.

00:59:06.360 | But these are easy things and we forget to do them.

00:59:11.480 | So do the easy things first and then we can start looking at the wills and the trusts and the big

00:59:16.760 | stuff. But do the easy things first. One thing that really resonated with me in

00:59:21.640 | Silicon Valley where lots of people have earnouts and golden handcuffs is this one more year syndrome.

00:59:26.600 | So the one more year syndrome is - the idea is that it becomes really easy to convince yourself

00:59:33.400 | to put off doing the hard work, to pursuing a life of real meaning and purpose for you

00:59:38.040 | because you're just going to stick around one more year so the things are a little more solid.

00:59:42.440 | So your net worth goes up a little bit more. So you have insurance for one more year.

00:59:46.360 | You start convincing yourself, "Hey, this job isn't so bad. I don't love it. It's easy to

00:59:50.840 | stick around." And a corollary to that is the what-if syndrome. What if the stock market drops?

00:59:56.120 | What if I have a healthcare crisis? What if all these bad things happen the minute I leave my job?

01:00:00.600 | And so what this allows us to do is to stay in jobs that we don't like, that aren't fulfilling

01:00:06.120 | a sense of purpose or meaning for us. And years turn into decades and we still haven't left.

01:00:12.280 | It's like it allows us to put off doing the hard work and it becomes an excuse.

01:00:18.440 | And so we do this because we don't want to do the real hard work. Life is finite,

01:00:22.760 | time is finite and at some point you run out of years. And especially when you get to the end,

01:00:27.400 | you really will wish that you would utilize those years instead of sticking around at a

01:00:31.080 | job you really didn't need. Any help for someone struggling with that right now of how do I

01:00:36.440 | stop worrying and get out when I feel like it's the right thing but I keep saying one more year?

01:00:41.480 | So what I've done and what I certainly did in my career is instead of taking the full plunge

01:00:48.040 | of just going from working full-time being a doctor to not being a doctor at all, I started

01:00:52.840 | just subtracting out stuff I didn't like at work. So I took the middle ground. I just said, okay,

01:00:56.920 | let's look at all the things in my job I don't like and start getting rid of them. So can you

01:01:00.280 | go part-time? Can you go half-time? Can you get rid of the clients you don't like anymore?

01:01:03.960 | Can you hire someone out within your job to do all the things you don't like and just spend

01:01:09.000 | the time doing things you do like? How can we bring more purpose even within that work setting?

01:01:14.440 | That's one way. The other way is to just at some point bite the bullet and say, you know what?

01:01:19.160 | If I leave my job and I don't like what's happening, I can always go back to work.

01:01:22.680 | And for a lot of people, they can. And so a lot of times you have to turn it around

01:01:27.480 | and stop saying, what if this bad thing happens? And start saying, what if I don't have that much

01:01:35.400 | time left? Like people worry about running out of money, but what if you run out of life?

01:01:41.000 | And I think when you start framing things in those terms, they realize that yes,

01:01:45.320 | if your finances are iffy, maybe you do need one more year, but if it's pretty clear cut and you're

01:01:49.320 | like, this is pretty good, realize that life and time are finite. And the only thing we can control

01:01:56.120 | is what we spend doing in those time units, those little slots of time we have, you are specifically

01:02:01.960 | choosing to do something you don't like in that time slot for no other reason than it's easy.

01:02:06.680 | And so, how can we change that mindset?

01:02:08.360 | A lot of the purpose of this entire conversation has been around the fact that there is some

01:02:15.080 | finite amount of time. And some people find out it's less than they thought. Some people have a

01:02:20.840 | lot of it, but even when you have a lot, the days, the weeks, the months, they always feel like you

01:02:25.320 | don't. And you have a whole section of the book about time perception and the way you think about

01:02:29.560 | time is really important in a well-rounded life. So, I'm curious what some of the best ways people

01:02:34.840 | should approach their time differently or alter that perception to be happier and to live that

01:02:39.800 | well-rounded life. In personal finance, we always talk about time as if it's a commodity, right?

01:02:45.400 | You can buy it, you can sell it, you can trade it. Nothing is farther from the truth. Time passes no

01:02:51.080 | matter what we do. We have no control. We don't know how much time we have on this earth, right?

01:02:56.280 | We don't know if it's 50 years or 80 years or 70 years. We don't know, but that's out of our

01:03:00.680 | control mostly, right? We can exercise, we can do a few things, but we've got a set amount of time

01:03:04.680 | on this earth that time passes and you can't do a thing about it. So, there are really two choices

01:03:10.440 | here. If you look at time as a series of time slots, because it's just easier, days, weeks,

01:03:15.880 | months, hours, however you want to look at it, we can try to control the activities we place in

01:03:20.920 | those time slots or we can try to mess with our perception of time and that's it, right? So,

01:03:27.800 | when it comes to what activities we place in those time slots, this gets back to trying to figure out

01:03:32.680 | what's purposeful to us and then building a financial life around it so that we can fill up

01:03:37.560 | as many of those time slots as possible with things that are purposeful to us and subtract

01:03:43.240 | out as many as possible of those things that have no meaning or give us friction, right? So, that's

01:03:48.680 | the one thing we can do and that's what the book is mostly about is learning to bring more purpose

01:03:52.840 | in your life, whether you have money or not, but then ultimately bringing money as a tool to even

01:03:58.360 | help you do that further. That's point one. Then we can mess with the perception of time and this

01:04:02.680 | is a little bit harder to understand. There are all these sayings that kind of touch on this idea

01:04:07.160 | but aren't clear about it, like when you have kids, you say the days are long but the years

01:04:11.160 | are short. We always talk about this idea that when you're young, time lasts forever, but when

01:04:15.560 | you're old, time flies by. The point about thinking about this is just if we know how we feel about

01:04:22.840 | time, we can change some things to help us perceive it a little bit better, right? And a lot

01:04:28.680 | of this is very personal. It depends who you are. So, for like me, I was very cognizant of the fact

01:04:36.600 | that time felt like forever when I was a kid, but as I get older, time seems to fly by. So, for me,

01:04:42.280 | the path of the eldest brother actually made a lot of sense because I didn't mind grinding it out

01:04:47.240 | when I was a kid. I thought I had all the time in the world as I was in my 20s and 30s. I didn't

01:04:52.280 | mind doing the hard work of being a physician. That allowed me to accrue a lot of money so that

01:04:56.280 | eventually I could retire early. Now, time seems to fly by, but I have so much more control over

01:05:02.120 | my time than I ever did at any other time in life. So, the perception is that time is flying,

01:05:07.240 | but I feel so much more freedom and space because I don't have that many things I have to put in my

01:05:12.200 | time slots anymore. It's all up to me. Like, I don't have any official things. I don't have to

01:05:16.680 | do anything for work. Really, I get a lot more control over this. That was especially the thinking

01:05:22.280 | of the financial independence fire people of old was to do that, right? Because they perceived that

01:05:27.400 | sometime in the future would be more valuable than time today. Funny, younger people who are

01:05:34.200 | entering the fire movement today look at it the exact opposite. They perceive that time today is

01:05:38.680 | just as important and they don't want to put off purpose and identity and connections. So, for them,

01:05:44.360 | they're looking at the path of the middle or the youngest brother because they want to enjoy today.

01:05:48.360 | They don't want to grind it out. They don't want to waste a second. So, they perceive today as

01:05:53.160 | more important or at least just as important as tomorrow. So, for them, they're not going to really

01:05:58.280 | do that path of the eldest brother. They're going to really look to be a middle or a youngest

01:06:01.800 | brother. So, we can play with what we put in those time slots and we can look at how we perceive time

01:06:06.840 | and what feels more important to us. And that's the only control we have of this most important

01:06:12.680 | thing in our life that pretty much is going to pass and happen no matter what we do.

01:06:16.600 | And are there things you do that you haven't mentioned whether it's daily or annual or weekly

01:06:22.840 | routine that you think make your use of time more optimal now than it maybe was in the past?

01:06:29.320 | So, strangely enough, I feel like I have all the time in the world. So, I feel really now a place

01:06:37.080 | of time abundance. And I think there are a few reasons for that. One is I wake up really early.

01:06:43.560 | I love waking up early. And the strange thing when you wake up at 4.35 in the morning,

01:06:48.200 | you just feel like your days last forever. So, for me, that's a great way to

01:06:53.000 | combat these worries about time. The other thing is because I've been real thoughtful over the

01:06:59.640 | years and have been financially successful as well as in other realms of my life, I've really

01:07:03.640 | been able to subtract out the things I hate. And so, I feel like partially I have an abundance

01:07:08.600 | of time because I've been able to get rid of the things I don't like. All those things about work

01:07:12.280 | I didn't like, being on call, working weekends, all those stressors in my life. So, I think that's

01:07:17.560 | a good thing for us to do whether we have lots of money or not is to say, "How can we substitute

01:07:21.880 | things we like in place of things we don't like and start getting rid of those things we don't

01:07:27.400 | like?" I've also do some other kind of daily habits that really help me. I like something

01:07:33.320 | called work bursting. So, as opposed to spending lots of time doing important things, I like to

01:07:39.080 | set a good two hours aside or an hour and do really hard stuff in a real concentrated burst

01:07:45.480 | of energy. And then I put it down and I do something leisurely for the next few hours.

01:07:50.600 | So, it makes me feel like I have a lot of time in my days because that really hard,

01:07:55.800 | concentrated work I do in short bursts. And so, I really enjoy doing that. There are also some

01:08:01.240 | hacks. In the book, I talk a little bit about Parkinson's Law and the Pareto Principle. We can

01:08:04.840 | talk about that now if you want, but this idea that we can take advantage of these principles

01:08:11.080 | like Parkinson's Law says that basically the time you have to do a task will end up being the amount

01:08:18.440 | of time it takes to do that task, right? So, if you have a task and you have five hours to do it,

01:08:22.600 | it's going to take you five hours to do. On the other hand, if the same task, you only have two

01:08:25.640 | hours to do it, it's going to take you two hours to do. So, you can play around with this a little

01:08:31.000 | bit by for instance, halving the amount of time you give yourself to do things. So, if something

01:08:34.760 | normally takes you five hours, say "okay, I'm only going to do it in two hours". Most likely,

01:08:40.280 | you'll get 80 to 90% of the quality by spending a lot less time doing it. And there's some other

01:08:44.760 | tricks you can do. A big part of that, especially when you're doing these tasks, especially if

01:08:49.000 | they're burdensome, is being really clear about defining what done looks like. And so, making a

01:08:55.160 | goal of what done looks like and then deciding that when you hit that point, you'll stop and

01:08:59.400 | it's unrelated to time because often we go way past what's appropriate, especially if we feel

01:09:05.080 | like we have five hours allotted to something instead of two. So, I think there's some other

01:09:08.920 | tricks and hacks you can do, but the idea is to be thoughtful about how you use time most

01:09:14.360 | efficiently and then put those things in place to give you the sense of time abundance.

01:09:19.880 | You mentioned that you used to be in a place where you were filled with time stress and

01:09:24.840 | running around trying to get more and more done and now you've gotten comfortable letting go and

01:09:30.520 | letting your wife, your kids set the pace for things. For people that are type A out there,

01:09:36.280 | and that sounds crazy, any advice?

01:09:40.200 | I think it's about being really thoughtful. I mean, a lot of us who are successful are used

01:09:45.320 | to being super efficient. It's how we got to our success because we could do three things at once

01:09:50.760 | or we could get more done in a day than other people. And I love that, right? I think that's

01:09:56.200 | really served me at times in my career, but the other side is you become so super efficient that

01:10:02.440 | it becomes anxiety provoking. And then instead of feeling time abundance, you start feeling

01:10:07.480 | time scarcity. And it's the oddest thing that the more efficient we get, the more we start cramping

01:10:13.480 | more and more into smaller spaces and start convincing yourself we don't have enough time

01:10:17.560 | so we start rushing through things. So, for me, I've had to really let go of the reins and really

01:10:24.280 | put things in place so that I don't have as much control over time. So, one of those ways is again,

01:10:29.240 | like as opposed to rushing around to go somewhere, I now let someone else decide our time frame

01:10:35.560 | and make myself stick to what they want. And so unload that worry about time because I've

01:10:43.160 | gotten so good and efficient at time that I'm rushing everywhere and I knew that had to stop.

01:10:46.920 | So, it's two signs of a coin, right? In one way, it's really great because it allows us to do a

01:10:51.720 | lot of things. But if you get too crazy about time, then you're no longer enjoying yourself

01:10:57.080 | and you're rushing to get through what you're doing now to get to the next thing, which kills

01:11:01.000 | all sorts of enjoyment or being present in what you're doing. And that's no good either.

01:11:05.480 | We didn't talk much about the fact that you have children. I now have children.

01:11:09.320 | You've spent a lot of time thinking about money at a level and purpose and identity

01:11:14.840 | at a level that I haven't yet. And I certainly haven't for my kids. Two months, two years old,

01:11:19.480 | maybe it's too early. But given what you've thought and for any parents listening,

01:11:23.800 | what advice do you have for taking some of these lessons, whether they're purpose-driven,

01:11:27.640 | whether they're financial-driven and teaching them to children as parents?

01:11:33.720 | Get it together yourself and then model that behavior and your kids will follow suit.

01:11:39.320 | I think we often talk about what exercises we should do with our children,

01:11:43.240 | what we specifically should teach them didactically, what we should get them involved

01:11:49.000 | in. I'm thoroughly convinced that the way your kids actually learn is watching how you navigate

01:11:54.920 | the world. So, it sounds a little funny, but I think that we as adults should concentrate on

01:12:00.920 | ourselves, develop these great meaningful habits and live them out in front of our children so

01:12:08.280 | they can see. And I think that more than anything else will give them a good handle on what living

01:12:14.120 | a purposeful life, a full life looks like. I'll add a caveat to what you said, which is

01:12:19.880 | for some of these lessons, just doing them only works if you also expose your children to it.

01:12:27.480 | So, from a financial standpoint, I might be organized and thoughtful about my personal

01:12:32.280 | finances and maybe at two years old and two months old, it's not the time. But at some point,

01:12:37.160 | I can't just live that, I also have to bring the family into it. Making sure that you're

01:12:42.600 | not just doing it, but you're also sharing that you're doing it. For some of these things matters.

01:12:46.840 | Maybe for doing a job you're fulfilled, people will kind of get that through osmosis with you

01:12:52.040 | in the house. But I do think that when it comes to finances, some of the things that I want to do in

01:12:57.320 | the future, at least just not make them taboo topics that we don't talk about as a family.

01:13:01.800 | Yeah. And I think also part of that modeling good behavior to go the next step forward and be a

01:13:07.880 | little more explicit is also giving them the space to then try those techniques and fail safely. So,

01:13:13.960 | in our household, one way we did that is our kids could watch how we dealt with things financially,

01:13:18.840 | but then we started giving them a yearly allowance, which we gave to them the first of the year.

01:13:23.960 | We clearly stated what they were responsible for and what we were responsible for. And then

01:13:28.200 | they had to decide what to do with that allowance the whole year. They weren't getting any more from

01:13:31.960 | us. And so, that was a way we'd been modeling for years good behavior, but then we could actually

01:13:37.480 | set up a controlled experiment where the truth of the matter was there was no real risk for them,

01:13:43.640 | but they could then experiment, try some of those things, those techniques that we had been modeling,

01:13:48.520 | see what worked for them, see that hadn't, make some mistakes, have a little egg on their face

01:13:53.080 | when they did something wrong and then learn. So, I think that's part of that modeling is then to

01:13:57.320 | give them some space. - And how did the allowance for the year up front experiment go? - In some

01:14:04.120 | ways, it did some unexpected things, but then at least we could address it. So, for instance,

01:14:08.280 | my daughter, we found became ultra scared of spending and always had way more left at the

01:14:13.720 | end of the year than she probably should have. My son, on the other hand, was confident everything

01:14:18.760 | would work and often spent too much in the beginning and then a catastrophe would hit and

01:14:23.160 | he'd find that he didn't have enough money. A perfect example is he spent most of his money,

01:14:27.640 | he had just a little bit left and he had about three or four months left, and then he dropped

01:14:31.000 | his phone into a lake when we were paddle boarding. And so, all of a sudden, he's like,

01:14:37.400 | "I have zero money. I can't buy a used phone. I can't do anything, but I didn't foresee this

01:14:42.120 | coming because I thought I was doing a good job, but I didn't see that something unexpected might

01:14:46.280 | happen." It plays out differently with different kids, but the idea then is then to have those

01:14:50.440 | gentle conversations. With my daughter, it might be, "Hmm, you know, it's great. You had a lot of

01:14:55.000 | money left over. Your bank account's really growing, but are you enjoying that money?"

01:14:58.840 | Right? And then for my son, it might be like, "Yeah, money's a powerful tool, but if you're

01:15:02.920 | not careful and a good steward of it, you may find you don't have it when you need it." And so,

01:15:06.840 | those are different conversations you can have, but it all starts with the modeling,

01:15:10.280 | then kind of those simple experiments, and then the talking to him.

01:15:13.320 | So, did you loan your son money against his future year of allowance? How do you handle that one?

01:15:19.160 | The darn problem with my son is he's so goddarn innovative. Here's a perfect example. Like,

01:15:23.720 | my son is known as the electronics guy on the neighborhood. So, people give him old

01:15:27.960 | or broken electronics. The other day, someone gave him an old or broken phone,

01:15:31.960 | and he realized it was still under warranty, sent it back to an Apple, and they sent him a new phone.

01:15:35.880 | [Laughter]

01:15:36.920 | Okay. So, he figured it out himself.

01:15:38.360 | So, he's a pretty savvy guy. He figures out either how to fix most things

01:15:43.000 | or to find his way into something new. The problem with this phone is it ended

01:15:46.040 | up at the bottom of the lake. He couldn't get it back.

01:15:48.040 | This has been fantastic. There's a lot more in the book, and I want to hear more about where

01:15:52.600 | to find everything you're working on. But before that, one thing I like to do is ask people to pick

01:15:57.960 | a place that they know well, anywhere in the world, and share with listeners who may go there someday,

01:16:04.600 | a place to eat, a place to grab a drink, and maybe an unusual activity that they should check out

01:16:09.320 | to kind of fulfill their inspiration for travel. Is there a place you have in mind?

01:16:13.800 | I'm not a big travel guy, okay? But here has been my joy with my family and I've spent so much time

01:16:22.040 | remembering and thinking about these vacations. So, it's added a huge amount of joy in my life.

01:16:26.600 | Once a year, especially before COVID, my whole family would take a week and go to Mexico. A lot

01:16:32.600 | of times we go to like Playa del Carmen or someone in the Cancun sign, and we go to an

01:16:36.040 | all-inclusive hotel, and we would literally sit by the pool for a week altogether. The all-inclusives

01:16:42.600 | have good restaurants, and the wonderful thing about it is it costs a lot up front, but once

01:16:46.360 | you pay for it, everything's paid for, right? So, you get pretty much all the food, all the drinks,

01:16:51.000 | all the sun, all the pool, all the spa that you want. So, it's expensive up front,

01:16:55.400 | but I've had so many joyful weeks. It's still the one thing I look forward to every single year.

01:17:02.280 | It's the thing I dream about in the middle of the winter in Chicago when it's cold and we're

01:17:05.880 | all like snuggled up in our beds. And the time I got with my family, with the kids,

01:17:10.680 | to think about the progression every year and how they changed and how we were together

01:17:15.320 | is priceless. So, I guess the moral of the story is if you get the chance,

01:17:20.440 | take some time to go somewhere where you don't have a lot of things planned, but that's just

01:17:26.200 | a fun place to be, where you can be with your family with no responsibilities and no worries

01:17:31.560 | about money and just be for a week. And it's really, really valuable.

01:17:35.800 | - I don't know if this has always been the case, but there are some

01:17:39.320 | really nice all-inclusive resorts. I think my assumption is always that they're all like these

01:17:45.000 | cheap crappy resorts. That is not the case. - Oh no, there are some nice ones if you're

01:17:48.600 | willing to pay for it. But again, if people are listening to your show, they probably understand

01:17:52.440 | how to travel hack, they probably get free flights, they'll probably get some bonuses

01:17:56.600 | and some free things from the hotel they go to. So, for them, it may not actually end up being

01:18:00.680 | that expensive, but it's a wonderful luxury. And I suggest anyone, especially with a family,

01:18:05.800 | do it if you can. - Wonderful. You could go find the book

01:18:09.000 | anywhere books are sold, but where can people stay on top of everything you're doing and working on?

01:18:13.320 | - So, the easiest way is to go to jordangrumet.com. That's J-O-R-D-A-N-G-R-U-M-E-T.com.

01:18:19.560 | There you can see links to the book. You can also see links to the three ways in which I create

01:18:24.360 | content. So, from 2005 to 2018 or so, I wrote a medical blog, over a thousand posts there about

01:18:31.880 | being a doctor, about life in general. That's linked there. The diversify blog was the blog

01:18:37.880 | I started about personal finance, that's linked there. And then the earn and invest podcast is

01:18:42.040 | what I spend my most time doing right now, which is the most current, and that's also linked there.

01:18:46.440 | Or you can just go to earnandinvest.com. But jordangrumet.com or earnandinvest.com are the

01:18:50.760 | easiest ways. You can see links to all my socials there and everything.

01:18:53.720 | - Yeah. And you're on a podcast now, so you can also just search for the earn and invest podcast.

01:18:57.880 | While you're listening, there's a great episode with me, of course.

01:19:00.520 | - Well, of course. That was a great episode.

01:19:03.000 | - Well, Jordan, thank you so much for being here.

01:19:05.160 | - Thanks for having me. This was a blast.

01:19:07.000 | - I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

01:19:12.440 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

01:19:17.400 | I would really appreciate it. And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me,

01:19:21.480 | or just want to say hi, I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:19:27.160 | That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.

01:19:30.680 | (upbeat music)

01:19:40.760 | you