Make Your Life Matter: A Hospice Doctor's Life Changing Advice

00:00:00.000 | I talk about the money mind meld. It's this idea that we become mesmerized with so much

00:00:04.480 | so much about money that especially when we're in the pursuit of it, it's the only thing we can see.

00:00:08.960 | What it means in society today is money is a currency, right? It's a storing of energy,

00:00:14.160 | potential energy. It's a storing of goods and services. So we can use that money to buy goods

00:00:20.080 | and services. But what we're really talking about is freeing up our life with that money

00:00:25.280 | so we can pursue our sense of purpose and meaning. That's all it really does for us.

00:00:29.600 | So in order to really get past the money mind meld, you have to realize that money is not making

00:00:35.120 | you happy. Money will solve your basic money problems but nothing else. And that money is a

00:00:40.000 | tool, one of many tools, right? So we have our youth, we have our energy, we have our intelligence,

00:00:45.120 | we have our communities. We have all these tools. And all of these tools are in the pursuit of a

00:00:51.760 | goal of living a purposeful life. We have to stop looking at money as the only tool or the goal

00:00:58.160 | and start realizing where it fits. - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:01:03.360 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. If you're new here, I'm Chris Hutchins,

00:01:07.520 | and each week I sit down with the world's best experts to learn the strategies, tactics,

00:01:11.760 | and frameworks you can use to have a happier, healthier, and wealthier life. This week,

00:01:16.960 | I'm talking to Jordan Grumet. He's a hospice doctor whose passion for personal finance and

00:01:21.600 | storytelling has led him to educate others on living mindfully when it comes to money,

00:01:26.320 | time, and meaning. As a hospice doctor, he's had an intimate look at people's regrets, mistakes,

00:01:31.920 | and decisions at the end of life. He's also the host of the award-winning podcast that I've had

00:01:35.920 | the pleasure of joining, Earn & Invest, and he's got a new book, Taking Stock, A Hospice Doctor's

00:01:41.280 | Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. The book shares

00:01:46.560 | some of his advice about making the most at the end of life, about our finances, our relationships,

00:01:50.880 | and our time. It's a fantastic book. Today, we're going to talk about what some of the biggest

00:01:56.080 | regrets people have are at the end of their life and what you can do to avoid them, what Jordan

00:02:00.560 | calls the money mind meld, and how to get away from focusing too much on money and not enough

00:02:05.280 | on the life you want, why the best financial plans are like a dining room table, why it's hard to

00:02:10.640 | talk about the issues of death, both with ourselves and our family members, and why time perception

00:02:15.760 | work might be more useful than productivity hacks. Jordan, welcome to the show.

00:02:25.280 | Thank you for having me. I'm so excited for this conversation.

00:02:28.320 | Yeah, me too. So this isn't the first time we've talked about regret on the podcast. Dan Pink and

00:02:33.520 | I talked about his book, which is all about regret. Ben Nempton had a bunch of learnings

00:02:38.240 | about regrets of the dying that sparked him to totally change and upend his career and his life,

00:02:43.360 | but both of them approached it from surveys and data, which I'm sure you've read,

00:02:47.760 | but you've also sat down with 1000s of patients at the end of their life and had these conversations.

00:02:53.440 | So what have you learned that might not have come out in the data that many of us have heard?

00:02:57.040 | So in hospice care, when we're taking care of the terminally ill, it is a very normal thing for us

00:03:02.800 | to sit down with patients and talk to them about their lives. We call it a life review. So as

00:03:08.240 | opposed to a quantitative look, this is very qualitative. We sit down with people and we ask

00:03:13.280 | what was important in your life? What did you achieve? What didn't you achieve? What do you

00:03:18.320 | hope to achieve in the next few months? What are some of your regrets? And the interesting thing

00:03:23.040 | about this is it's completely unstructured. I mean, the questions we ask are somewhat structured,

00:03:28.160 | but above and beyond that, it gives people a chance to tell their stories. And so this is

00:03:34.560 | where you get past the numbers and you start hearing about what people's lives were like,

00:03:39.920 | what they accomplished and what they didn't accomplish. And so no surprise here, almost

00:03:45.600 | no one says, I wish I worked more nights and weekends. Like I've never heard that with any

00:03:50.960 | of my patients. Almost no one refers to certain economic goals. No one says, I wish I hit a net

00:03:56.960 | worth of a million dollars, right? I only made it to 500,000. And really, I wish I made it to a

00:04:01.840 | million. It is true that people have regrets when they're dying, if they don't have enough to cover

00:04:06.320 | some basic needs. But above and beyond that, it's a lot more about the things that were purposeful

00:04:13.200 | to them that they never strive towards, that they never looked in the mirror and said, okay,

00:04:18.640 | life is finite. I only have a certain amount of time on this earth. And these are the real

00:04:24.320 | important things to me. First and foremost, people don't want to spend time even thinking

00:04:27.600 | about what purpose and identity look like in their life. So a lot of people don't even ask

00:04:32.400 | themselves the question because it's hard work. And it's scary. And the answers aren't simple.

00:04:36.560 | Next, if people do kind of say, Oh, you know, I really like to do this at some point,

00:04:42.400 | whether that's climbing Mount Everest, or starting a certain hobby or writing that book.

00:04:47.120 | A lot of times we put it off, we figure we're always going to have more time. So what I get

00:04:52.480 | to experience when I talk to people is, because death is around the corner, it relieves them of

00:04:58.800 | all society's expectations, it relieves them all of family expectations, they get to drop all the

00:05:04.560 | junk, and look at their lives and say, what was important to me? And did I accomplish it? And

00:05:09.200 | often those things are what I like to call the climb, right? There are things that have to do

00:05:14.800 | with what purpose is in our lives. There are things that we're deeply interested in doing.

00:05:20.240 | They're things that bring us happiness. And often at the end of life, what people really regret is

00:05:23.840 | that they didn't spend enough time doing those things, right? They didn't write that book,

00:05:27.200 | they didn't spend more time with those people who are important to them, they didn't resolve that

00:05:30.960 | fight they had with their best friend from 20 years ago. These are the kind of things that

00:05:35.680 | really weigh on people. And what happens is they really then have to try to catch up and achieve

00:05:42.320 | some of those things in whatever the weeks or months they have, right? Can I get back in contact

00:05:46.800 | with this person and make amends? You know, maybe I wanted to go to climb Mount Everest, I obviously

00:05:52.320 | don't feel good enough to do that. But maybe I want to try to make a trip to Nepal just to see

00:05:56.400 | it, right? What are the things we can do to try to bring some closure to these purposeful, meaningful

00:06:02.800 | things in our life that we never addressed? And I think that's what people really regret.

00:06:06.720 | Interestingly enough, they don't regret failing. Like, you on your deathbed will sit there and say,

00:06:13.600 | you know what, I gave it my best and I didn't succeed, I failed, but at least I tried. It's

00:06:17.440 | the things that we never had the courage to try that I think really gets to us when we find out

00:06:23.920 | that we have a terminal. - In the book, you say, you know,

00:06:26.800 | living a regret-free life, but is it really more about assessing and tackling the regrets you've

00:06:33.200 | had than trying to completely avoid them? And is it about learning from them so that you can kind

00:06:38.960 | of live more intentionally than trying to pretend that they don't exist?

00:06:42.160 | - I think the problem is we often take these things that are deeply important to us and put

00:06:47.760 | them off. And maybe that's because we're trying to make money. Maybe that's because we're trying

00:06:51.360 | to build a career. Maybe, like I said, it's because they're scary and they're hard. And

00:06:55.680 | so when we get to the end of this life and we haven't addressed these issues, we do feel regret.

00:07:00.160 | I think if we can start thinking about these things much earlier, the regrets won't form,

00:07:07.120 | because then we can start taking action earlier in our lives today, not when we're on our deathbeds,

00:07:11.760 | not when we need that sudden plot twist that fixes everything. But in a sense, I think the way to

00:07:17.440 | avoid regrets is to start thinking about purpose and meaning now, because that's what people

00:07:22.640 | regret in the end is that they didn't address it earlier. So yes, when I'm 40, I can look back and

00:07:27.760 | say, "Hey, I really regret that I didn't think about these things when I'm 20." But hopefully,

00:07:32.000 | if you live to 70 or 80, if you started thinking about these things at 40, you're not going to have

00:07:37.680 | a lot of regrets when you get to 60, 70, or 80. So yes, even in the middle of life, we have regrets

00:07:44.000 | and we can start addressing them. But I think when we get towards the end of life and we start doing

00:07:47.760 | that life evaluation, and we have to come face to face with our own mortality, if we think about

00:07:53.840 | these things earlier on, we are a lot less likely to have regrets. You said they're hard conversations.

00:07:59.520 | They're difficult. The question you just posed of what is my purpose? These are difficult things.

00:08:05.200 | How would someone listening in their 20s, 30s, or 40s start to approach to understand that,

00:08:11.680 | to process it? Do you have suggestions? Well, this is exactly why I found it so amazing that

00:08:18.240 | my life as a hospice doctor could start informing my life as a personal finance person and someone

00:08:23.360 | thinking about quality of life today. I think the dying have a lot to teach us about how to

00:08:28.240 | look for purpose in life today, decades and decades before we're going to deal with that

00:08:33.600 | kind of stuff. With the dying, we do something called the life review, which as I said,

00:08:37.520 | is a structured series of questions where people kind of look at their life, what was meaningful

00:08:41.600 | to them, and did they pursue it? I think we should start trying to do these life reviews

00:08:46.160 | way earlier. We should probably do them yearly starting in our 20s. I talk in the book exactly

00:08:52.160 | about how to go through a life review, but a quick exercise, a quick visualization that I think any

00:08:57.360 | young person can do right now is to start with the basic question. If you were lying in your

00:09:04.000 | deathbed, bemoaning your life and thinking to yourself, "I really regret that I never had the

00:09:08.560 | energy, courage, or time to," whatever comes next in that sentence is germane to your sense of

00:09:15.040 | purpose. The sooner we start thinking about these things, the sooner we can start striving towards

00:09:20.000 | them now as opposed to waiting to a later time. There are all sorts of other exercises that you

00:09:24.720 | can do or questions you can ask yourself that start getting you working on this idea of purpose.

00:09:30.800 | Now, one that I love to ask people, which is just so simple is, "When was the last time you woke up

00:09:36.000 | in the middle of the night with this idea and you were so excited you couldn't fall asleep? Did you

00:09:42.160 | pursue that idea? How many times has that happened in your life and what came of it?" Because those

00:09:48.240 | kind of things too are the messages to us of what our purpose is. If that doesn't work, then you

00:09:54.880 | have to start doing other stuff. I often tell people, "You got to start saying yes to new

00:09:58.720 | experiences that you've never done before." People ask you to go do something that normally you'd say

00:10:03.520 | no to. You have to say yes to people and places and things you've never done. You have to start

00:10:07.600 | experiencing life and see what sticks. It's like throwing spaghetti against the wall.

00:10:11.040 | What ends up being meaningful to you? What brings you joy when you do it? How can you then start

00:10:17.280 | building that as a bigger part of your life? In the book trailer, you said, "Your patients

00:10:22.880 | often die as they live. Some express sorrow, hope, but it's a time of thoughtfulness."

00:10:28.240 | It seemed the way you said that, that was a revelation for you. Did that change the way

00:10:34.480 | you lived when you processed that thought? How has it?

00:10:37.440 | It's this interesting idea. People die as they live. People often ask me, "Is death painful?

00:10:45.680 | Is it scary? How is it going to feel for me?" What I see in hospice patients is people who

00:10:52.080 | are anxious and uptight and unhappy in life tend to be anxious, uptight, and unhappy in death,

00:10:57.280 | and vice versa. People who are at peace, people who feel content, who have strong

00:11:02.400 | relationships and a sense and purpose in life tend to feel the same way in death.

00:11:06.080 | If the germane question is, "How do I die a good death?" the answer is, "Let's start working on

00:11:14.080 | living a good life." I think if we come to terms with some of these issues at a much younger age,

00:11:19.120 | the process of dying becomes a lot easier because you're a lot more at peace with what happened in

00:11:23.360 | your life. It was a revelation because it, again, made me start to look back and say,

00:11:29.600 | "We're doing this too late. We're having these conversations and thinking about these things

00:11:34.080 | when we're old and retired or getting a terminal illness. We should really be talking about these

00:11:39.520 | things in our 20s when we're setting off on our career journey and trying to decide what kind

00:11:44.240 | of life to build." Someone listening to this right now might not think, "Oh, this is a personal

00:11:48.800 | finance conversation." It maybe hasn't gone there yet, but where I think a lot of people get held

00:11:55.280 | up is so much of your younger career is tied into earning, making money, progressing. Maybe for some

00:12:04.320 | people, that is their passion. Maybe for others, it's not. How did all of these learnings intersect

00:12:10.480 | for you with personal finance and come together to be the same conversation?

00:12:15.440 | The problem is we're doing it all wrong. We're putting money first and then figuring out once

00:12:21.600 | we get our career and our money in order, we can start working on life. My argument in this book

00:12:26.480 | and my argument from my experience as a hospice doctor and a personal finance expert is we need

00:12:31.440 | to put the money aside, especially when we're young, just for a moment. That doesn't mean we're

00:12:36.880 | going to stop working. That doesn't mean we're going to stop thinking about how we're going to

00:12:39.520 | build wealth, but we need to put those ideas aside and start thinking about purpose, identity,

00:12:44.240 | and connections first. The reason why is we make this mistake that money is the end goal,

00:12:50.720 | where my argument is money is a tool. Money is a tool ultimately so that we can live lives of

00:12:56.320 | purpose, identity, and connections. The FIRE movement, financial independence, retire early,

00:13:00.480 | we are all rushing, rushing, rushing to make enough money so we can stop working so we can do

00:13:04.160 | what? Live purposeful lives. I'm trying to flip the switch and say, "Let's start with purpose,

00:13:09.520 | identity, and connections. Let's start doing some of those exercises and the hard work and figuring

00:13:13.600 | out what that means." And then once we're on that path, that's when you start looking at your

00:13:21.120 | finances and saying, "How can I now build a path to financial independence or a financial structure

00:13:26.960 | that supports that purpose, identity, and connections?" And that way, we can be really

00:13:30.720 | intentional about why we make money, how we make money, and what we're doing this all for.

00:13:35.760 | When we don't do that purpose and identity work first, we are chasing after money as a goal.

00:13:41.200 | And often, we don't even know why. We get this idea of a certain net worth or we get this idea

00:13:46.640 | of a certain job position, and it sounds great, and it sounds meaningful. But a lot of times,

00:13:52.160 | when we get to that place, we get to that net worth, or we get to that job we were so excited

00:13:56.480 | about, we actually feel more depressed as opposed to happy. And there's a few reasons for that.

00:14:01.120 | One is because money is a little bit of a false goal, looking at your bank account isn't going

00:14:04.880 | to make you feel more purposeful or give you a better sense of identity. So when you get to that

00:14:08.480 | place, you thought that was so great, like a million dollars in the bank, most likely, two

00:14:12.720 | things are going to happen. One, you're going to start saying, "Oh, well, I don't feel as good as

00:14:15.520 | I thought I'd feel. Maybe I have to start going after 1.5 or 2 million." So before you know it,

00:14:20.320 | you're right back on the treadmill trying to make more. The other thing is this idea of loss

00:14:24.160 | aversion. The fear of losing is almost twice as bad as the fear of never getting there in the

00:14:28.880 | first place. The minute you get to that million dollar net worth, or you get to that job promotion

00:14:32.400 | that was so exciting, you start worrying about losing it. Like, "Oh my God, the market's going

00:14:37.120 | to change. Something's going to happen. I'm going to have this big expense, and all of a sudden,

00:14:40.320 | I'm not going to have my million dollars anymore." And that actually causes us to be more fearful

00:14:44.480 | than happy. And I see this, especially in the financial independence movement. When people

00:14:47.920 | get to financial independence, they get to that net worth number, and they find themselves crushed,

00:14:52.720 | anxious, and afraid. And the reason why is because none of those things really have a

00:14:56.880 | real sense of purpose and identity. There's no meaning in those things. They're just these

00:15:01.120 | easy goals we set up. And they're really easy because they keep us from doing the hard work

00:15:06.720 | of trying to figure out purpose and identity. It's really easy to go for the low-hanging fruit. It's

00:15:11.520 | really comfortable. It's what society expects of us. We can go on Instagram and see all the

00:15:17.520 | pictures of people taking beautiful vacations and having beautiful things. And it's really

00:15:21.440 | easy to strive for all that. But in the end, I don't think it makes us happy.

00:15:25.280 | And so, that's kind of where I'm coming at this from. That's why I realized when I started looking

00:15:32.480 | into personal finance, I started blogging and podcasting, I was already financially independent.

00:15:36.240 | So, to me, it wasn't really exciting to go, "Okay, how do I invest? How do I save? How do

00:15:40.880 | I set up my 401(k)?" I felt like those 101 conversations are important, but they weren't

00:15:44.800 | what I wanted to have. I wanted to have those 201 conversations. Now that I'm starting to get

00:15:49.680 | ahold of my finances, what do I do? But in having these conversations, I realized I was a little bit

00:15:55.440 | late to the game. My life would have been served much better if I had started thinking about what

00:15:59.440 | was purposeful first and then started building my financial framework. Let's say we're all bought in

00:16:05.760 | with we need to figure this purposeful conversation out at the beginning. Is that just the life review?

00:16:10.640 | Are there more steps to that process before you kind of, if you've set money aside, bring it back

00:16:15.840 | into the conversation? Or how long should someone expect it to take to figure that out?

00:16:20.960 | I think figuring out your purpose and identity are things that take years,

00:16:26.000 | but I actually suggest that people take a few months to really start doing some meditation,

00:16:30.800 | some thought, and some of these purpose and identity exercises. We can go into some other

00:16:34.960 | ones like identity exercises if you want. Once you start doing that and start saying, "Okay,

00:16:40.800 | these are the things in my life I feel that are important," I think then it's fine to start

00:16:44.720 | looking at your financial structure and saying, "Okay, I need to build a financial pathway,

00:16:49.760 | but let's see how I can at least take this idea of purpose and identity and build it into that.

00:16:56.080 | What kind of jobs am I doing? What's my end goal? What am I going to take this tool of money that

00:17:01.600 | I'm making and how am I going to use it?" The important question is how are we going to,

00:17:06.000 | instead of deferring all of our gratification and spending all of our time front-loading the

00:17:10.720 | sacrifice and grinding it out to do well at work and make lots of money, the idea is how can we

00:17:14.960 | enjoy today and tomorrow, not just put it off till later. I think this happens simultaneously,

00:17:22.720 | but I think you need at least a few months of thinking about purpose and identity before you

00:17:26.880 | really start jumping into how you're going to change your financial life.

00:17:29.680 | In the book, you mentioned these three brothers, and one of them sounds like the one you just

00:17:34.400 | referenced. The eldest brother front-loads all this effort and work to enjoy all the fruits

00:17:38.320 | of his labor or her labor at the end. The middle brother takes breaks along the way like sabbaticals,

00:17:43.360 | and the youngest one just enjoys the journey. When I read that, I thought, "Okay, well,

00:17:48.000 | there's multiple ways to enjoy this journey." Is the message that all three ways could work,

00:17:54.320 | or is the message that the first one is not really as good as it seems?

00:17:58.640 | The message is that all three ways could work. My hypothesis is once you start thinking about

00:18:04.720 | purpose, identity, and connections and start getting a hold of what those things are in your

00:18:07.840 | life, now is the time then to use that information to help you build a path towards financial

00:18:13.120 | independence. The parable of the three brothers talks about three ways of doing it. The eldest

00:18:17.360 | brother, which we talked about, was more front-loading the sacrifice, that traditional

00:18:20.960 | fire movement, grind it out, make a high net worth. Once you hit that net worth, quit and

00:18:25.920 | let your money support you. The middle brother was much more like the passive income and side

00:18:30.800 | hustles. Financial independence wasn't some big net worth number. It was actually making enough

00:18:36.480 | money through passive income and side hustles each month to pretty much support your needs.

00:18:40.080 | Then the youngest brother is the passion play. This is the idea that if the goal of financial

00:18:45.280 | independence is to live a life of purpose, identity, and connections, if you're lucky

00:18:48.320 | enough to come out of college or high school and find a job that fulfills your sense of purpose,

00:18:53.360 | identity, and connections, something you'd do even if you weren't getting paid for,

00:18:56.640 | but you happen to get paid enough to cover your monthly needs, in a sense, you're immediately

00:19:01.040 | financially independent, although you may work till 60 or 70 because you're probably not saving

00:19:04.720 | a lot and you're just covering what you need. Any of these three mechanisms, these archetypes

00:19:10.880 | are fine. In fact, I argue that we may switch back and forth from time to time, or we might

00:19:15.920 | even borrow some of the different techniques of each of these brothers. When I look at my own

00:19:21.200 | trajectory, my father died when he was 40 and I was seven, and he was a doctor. All I wanted to

00:19:27.040 | do was be a doctor like him. I had no care about money. In a sense, I was very much a youngest

00:19:32.400 | brother. I wanted to enjoy the past. I thought that medicine would give me a sense of purpose,

00:19:36.800 | identity, and connections. I could care less about money. This is what I wanted to do with my life.

00:19:41.600 | Something happened, though. I went to medical school residency. I started practicing it,

00:19:44.400 | and I burned out. I'm like, "I can't live this life anymore." I also realized that to leave my

00:19:50.800 | job in medicine, I needed to build up a certain amount of money so that I could quit my job.

00:19:56.560 | I started grinding it out and doing things to make lots of money. I transitioned from a youngest

00:20:01.920 | brother to an eldest brother. All of a sudden, I was grinding it out, front-loading the sacrifice,

00:20:06.480 | making as much money as I could so I could quit, and then find my sense of purpose,

00:20:10.560 | identity, and connections because I was done working. In the midst of doing that,

00:20:14.960 | I started picking up these little medical side hustles to make a little extra money on the side.

00:20:18.720 | One of them was hospice. Hospice was something that I really enjoyed that ended up being a side

00:20:25.360 | hustle. In a sense, I also took a little bit of the road of the middle brother. Interestingly enough,

00:20:30.880 | hospice also became a thing I would do even if I wasn't getting paid for it. By doing the side

00:20:35.360 | hustle, I learned that I had a new passion. Then again, I started back looking like a youngest

00:20:40.080 | brother. The point is you can change from time to time to time, but those pathways need to be

00:20:45.200 | in service of your purpose and identity. The mistake that we make is we don't even consider

00:20:48.960 | purpose and identity a lot of times when we start going towards a career pathway. We just zoom off

00:20:54.560 | into it thinking that we'll achieve some status of either wealth or position. That becomes what

00:21:01.120 | we think is meaningful or important to us. For a small subset of people, it may be,

00:21:04.960 | but for the majority of us, all that does is delay the hard work.

00:21:08.720 | Do you have an example of someone that you've met along this journey of writing the book and

00:21:13.840 | vlogging and podcasting that ran through this exercise maybe for a month or two of purpose and

00:21:19.760 | the kinds of changes that came after it? I did. That's exactly what I did.

00:21:25.040 | What happened with me is I realized I was burning out of medicine. I didn't want to be a doctor

00:21:31.680 | anymore. I went to my accountant. My financial advisor said, "How much money do I need

00:21:36.160 | to retire early and start pursuing the life I want to pursue?" They gave me all sorts of

00:21:43.120 | cockamamie numbers that made no sense, but eventually Jim Dolley, the white coat investor,

00:21:47.040 | sent me his book to review for my medical blog. That gave me the vocabulary to understand

00:21:51.520 | financial independence. I realized I had enough money. My net worth was high enough

00:21:55.200 | to actually leave work right away. The problem was I hadn't done any of that purpose and identity

00:22:02.320 | work. I had no clue what I wanted to do with myself. I became depressed and anxious. I didn't

00:22:08.560 | know what to do. I could walk away from this identity that had been my whole life after my

00:22:13.520 | father died, but then who was I and what was life about? Instead of leaving work,

00:22:18.560 | I slowly started subtracting the things out of work I didn't like that were giving me friction,

00:22:22.320 | but then I had to do the hard work of figuring out purpose and identity. I did a lot of the

00:22:27.120 | exercises in the book. At that point, I was in hospice and treating hospice patients. I was

00:22:31.760 | thinking about what has purpose for me. I also started writing a blog where I daily wrote

00:22:36.960 | about finances and life and what they meant to me. It was almost like an online diary.

00:22:41.360 | Then I had to do the hard identity work. What I suggest in the book is the great identity

00:22:47.360 | exercises to ask yourself or say the statement, "I am," and then fill in the blank.

00:22:51.040 | The first thing that came to my mind is I am a doctor, which is how I totally identified most

00:22:55.920 | of my life, but then I realized that's just what I do for a living. It's not all of who I am.

00:23:01.040 | Eventually, I kept asking myself that question. I am a father, a son, a spouse. Those are my

00:23:06.560 | family relationships. I am a Plutus Award winner for the Yearning to Invest podcast.

00:23:10.320 | That's an achievement, but is it really who I am? After doing all this hard work,

00:23:15.360 | doing these exercises, I came to I am a podcaster, a public speaker, a writer,

00:23:20.640 | and that coalesced into I am a communicator. That identity fit. Now I had a sense of

00:23:27.760 | purpose was to have these great, amazing conversations where we talked about

00:23:33.200 | important things. Identity was that of being a communicator. I had to get there before I could

00:23:38.400 | actually transition fully out of being a doctor and start subtracting more and more out of my job

00:23:43.120 | until I was left with the one thing that was still very purposeful for me, which was the hospice

00:23:47.680 | work. I've done this exact process. The interesting thought when it comes to my career is when I

00:23:55.680 | started medical school, I actually volunteered in hospice the first week of my medical career.

00:24:00.320 | My first patient I ever saw was as a hospice volunteer. Something in my chest was telling me

00:24:05.280 | hospice work is for you, but instead I ignored that. Part of the reason I ignored it is because

00:24:10.240 | it wasn't as prestigious and it didn't make as much money as all the other things I could do.

00:24:13.600 | But I go back now and I say, "If I had understood purpose and identity, if I had done some of this

00:24:20.480 | hard work at a much younger age, I might have started my medical career in hospice and I

00:24:25.680 | probably would have never burned out. Interestingly enough, I probably would have made a lot less

00:24:29.200 | money. I probably wouldn't have made it to financial independence maybe into my 50s and 60s,

00:24:34.800 | as opposed to now, I made it in my early 40s, but I probably would have enjoyed my career more.

00:24:41.920 | It would have been an alternate pathway that probably would have saved me a lot of pain

00:24:45.840 | and anxiety that I got as I burned out in medicine when it wasn't really meeting my expectations.

00:24:50.560 | I had to do this work and I'm a perfect example of why putting purpose and identity first

00:24:56.000 | might have made my trajectory easier and less pain.

00:24:58.960 | I feel like I have a similar experience where I meet people I talk about that have known me well

00:25:04.560 | and tell them about that I started this podcast and they're like, "Yeah, you were supposed to

00:25:07.760 | do this 10 years ago." I was like, "Well, why didn't you tell me 10 years ago?" It seems like

00:25:12.640 | everyone I know thought that this is what I should be doing, but somehow I was the last person to

00:25:17.760 | figure it out. I don't remember if I read the exercise in the book, but sometimes I like asking

00:25:23.120 | other people who know you really well to talk about you, because it was shocking to me that

00:25:29.440 | everyone thought I should be doing this before I knew it. I thought, "Man, if I could just have

00:25:34.880 | somehow interviewed them and asked them." Now, I regularly ask people that know me well, "What are

00:25:40.960 | things that you think that I should be doing more of? What are the things I'm doing that you wonder

00:25:45.600 | why I'm doing?" to try to pull that information out. I mentioned that in the identity section in

00:25:52.000 | the book. If you're having trouble with the statement, "I am," and filling in the blanks,

00:25:56.480 | it's a great time to do exactly that. Go ask family and friends and be aspirational. Not only

00:26:03.200 | what am I today, but what could I be? What am I in my most heroic life? I think, again, those type

00:26:10.000 | of exercises, interviewing your family, say, "Well, how do you see me as?" It's very powerful,

00:26:15.840 | because you're right. We ourselves have these blind spots. Again, I think sometimes we spend a

00:26:22.480 | lot of our time pursuing things and worrying about what we think we're supposed to be doing,

00:26:27.840 | as opposed to what we want. We do so little work about trying to figure out what we want.

00:26:34.160 | Again, the dying, it's amazing. You find out you're dying, and all of a sudden,

00:26:38.320 | all you can think about is what you want. I'm trying to bring some of that urgency a little

00:26:43.200 | earlier in our lives, so that it can help guide us.

00:26:45.440 | - Along the journey you shared for yourself, you talked about this trap that in the book,

00:26:51.440 | you call the money mind meld, where you care way more about the money. I found myself in

00:26:56.000 | the same trap. It's like, "We got to get to this net worth. We got to get to this net worth."

00:26:59.440 | I recently read Die With Zero, and I was like, "Maybe the net worth I'm really targeting is

00:27:04.480 | ending with zero. Maybe the number doesn't matter." But how did you get out of it? A lot of people

00:27:12.320 | that I think listen to the show, people that I know, are optimizers stuck in that.

00:27:16.640 | Can you talk about that transition?

00:27:18.320 | - I talk about the money mind meld. It's this idea that we become mesmerized with

00:27:22.720 | so much about money, that especially when we're in the pursuit of it, it's the only thing we can see.

00:27:27.680 | We forget about everything else that's important to us. The problem with the money mind meld is

00:27:33.760 | once you reach that goal, you get to that place that you thought was so vaunted,

00:27:39.200 | you don't find yourself happy. This is really what it comes down to.

00:27:42.800 | Money doesn't really ultimately make us happy. We have to change our mindset and really start

00:27:52.080 | thinking about money as a tool instead of a goal. Money itself does nothing for us.

00:27:57.280 | They're numbers on a computer screen or useless pieces of green paper if you happen to have cash,

00:28:02.880 | but that doesn't really, when you think about it, that doesn't mean anything.

00:28:07.120 | What it means in society today is money is a currency. It's a storing of energy, potential

00:28:12.960 | energy. It's a storing of goods and services. We can use that money to buy goods and services,

00:28:19.440 | but what we're really talking about is freeing up our life with that money so we can pursue our

00:28:24.560 | sense of purpose and meaning. That's all it really does for us. In order to really get past the money

00:28:30.320 | mind meld, you have to realize that money is not making you happy. Money will solve your basic

00:28:35.520 | money problems, but nothing else. That money is a tool, one of many tools. We have our youth,

00:28:41.440 | we have our energy, we have our intelligence, we have our communities. We have all these tools.

00:28:46.480 | All of these tools are in the pursuit of a goal of living a purposeful life.

00:28:51.600 | We have to stop looking at money as the only tool or the goal and start realizing where it fits.

00:29:00.400 | One of the ways I really tell people is think about what happens when you reach that money goal.

00:29:06.160 | How will you feel? At first, people are like, "Oh, I'd be so excited and happy." Then you say,

00:29:12.160 | "Well, what next? What would you do? What would that money get you? Why would your life be better

00:29:19.280 | because of that?" On some level, people are going to say, "I could take that great vacation or I

00:29:23.360 | could fly first class," but when you really drill down, you realize that those things aren't truly

00:29:28.480 | the key to happiness. They're nice perks, but they're not the true key to happiness.

00:29:32.720 | Then you start pushing further and saying, "Okay, what would this really allow you to do?"

00:29:36.400 | If people are really thoughtful, they'll eventually get to this point where they're like,

00:29:40.720 | "It'll allow me to do this thing I always wanted to do that I was so scared that I never had time."

00:29:45.600 | Then you start saying, "Well, why couldn't you do those things now? Is it really money that's

00:29:52.960 | holding you back?" What you realize is that money often becomes an excuse. Yes, if you had all the

00:29:59.040 | money in the world, you could stop working completely and that would give you a certain

00:30:02.880 | amount of more time to pursue things, but most people realize that when they actually get ahold

00:30:08.400 | of what's purposeful and has meaning for them in their life, they could start bringing those things

00:30:12.240 | into their life now and that the money is just an enabler. Again, we have some of these other

00:30:18.160 | enablers. When you only focus on the money, a lot of times when we get to that point where we have

00:30:22.800 | enough money, instead of actually allowing it to enable us, it makes us more fearful and we either

00:30:28.000 | go for more money because we don't know what the heck we want to do with our lives or we just get

00:30:30.880 | afraid that we're going to lose it. Yeah, this is part of my gripe with the fire movement.

00:30:35.680 | Now, I'll caveat. I was in a documentary on it, playing with fire. I'm guessing you've seen it

00:30:42.080 | because a lot of the community has watched it. If anyone hasn't, I'll link to it in the show notes.

00:30:47.440 | But in the recent past, especially through your book, I really struggled with the RE part. This

00:30:54.400 | idea that we should get all this money so that we can stop working and just do nothing or travel or

00:31:01.200 | whatever it is. I think the word "retirement" is too messy. For me, it actually... Many people,

00:31:09.360 | I think, say, "Oh, retirement. No more work." For me, I think if we could reframe that concept as

00:31:15.280 | financial independence is just when money lets you do the thing you want to do. If you're already

00:31:20.000 | doing it, then you already are. Like you said, if you had been a hospice doctor from the beginning,

00:31:24.160 | maybe you would have been financially independent out of medical school or maybe once you paid your

00:31:28.640 | medical bills, but maybe not. That stresses me out thinking about people trying to have this

00:31:36.080 | goal of just doing nothing. What do you think? How do you feel about that RE part of the movement?

00:31:41.440 | So I think that was both the greatest thing for the movement because it made it exciting and

00:31:48.720 | fun to talk about, but also the most detrimental to the real message. Because the real message is

00:31:55.120 | not retire early. Most of us got here because we actually enjoy some kind of work and I think we

00:32:01.600 | find purpose in work. The point being is that what really matters is not whether you're working or

00:32:08.000 | not, because I think we work most of our lives and I think most of us enjoy doing some kind of work.

00:32:12.080 | It's more about the autonomy and the mastery and the independence, all those things that make us

00:32:17.440 | feel good about. I think that's what, when we're talking about retiring early, we're not really

00:32:21.840 | talking about not doing things. We're talking about reclaiming our control of doing things

00:32:25.840 | that make us feel good. Those things may actually create money, often they do, or create some kind

00:32:30.960 | of content or product. We build something, we make something, we write something. This is all

00:32:36.800 | very important to our sense of identity and our sense of waking up in the morning and feeling

00:32:40.720 | like we have something productive and exciting to do. But what we're really looking for is control,

00:32:46.800 | control and independence. And so it's really, you get to financial independence and then you

00:32:51.440 | have control of what type of work you do when you do it and what the end goal of that work is.

00:32:59.280 | And that's something that most people feel is lacking in traditional employment today.

00:33:04.960 | Yeah, I would challenge anyone listening that feels like they want to achieve this kind of

00:33:10.000 | fire journey goal to stop worrying about trying to save enough that you could stop working for

00:33:15.920 | the rest of your life. I think what you said about people often end up being able to monetize

00:33:20.480 | whatever they would do if they stopped working is very true. So I try to challenge people to say,

00:33:25.360 | what if you just took a year, took a year off, did the thing you love? I think for a good number

00:33:30.880 | of people, not everyone, but for a good number of people, they'd find within a year that thing that

00:33:35.920 | they love actually does generate income. And all of the math of, "Oh, I need to save enough to live

00:33:41.440 | on 4%." Well, that's true if you're not working. But that goal of maybe if you're on the coast,

00:33:47.680 | maybe you think you need $10 million. But if you take a year off, find out that the thing you love

00:33:52.240 | doing makes more than $0. Well, then the amount you actually need to do that full time could be

00:33:58.400 | half of what you needed. It could be nothing because it makes enough money to sustain

00:34:02.480 | your lifestyle. So I think that far too often, we assume that in retirement, we make no money,

00:34:08.960 | when in reality, if your retirement is just doing something you would do for free,

00:34:15.760 | many of us can get paid to do that thing also. And it changes the entire equation.

00:34:21.440 | When I have these conversations, I want to be really clear about this because people look at

00:34:26.720 | my story and even probably your story, a lot of our stories and people say, "Well, duh, it's really

00:34:31.200 | easy to say that when you have money. You have space, you've made money, you have savings,

00:34:36.000 | you have investments. It's really easy for you to say these things. But I'm a 22-year-old out

00:34:41.680 | of college. I have just enough money to cover my rent. I'm barely putting food on the table."

00:34:46.240 | It might be easy for you, but for me, I don't have time to do all this stuff. And this is the

00:34:51.040 | conversation I really want to have. Because again, it's easy for us in our 40s and our 50s when we

00:34:55.200 | have some savings to start talking about meaning and purpose and side hustling and monetizing things

00:35:00.640 | so that we can stop doing what we don't like. But the 20-year-olds, the people who are struggling

00:35:06.480 | to put money on the table are looking at us and saying, "Yeah, that's a real privileged version

00:35:10.640 | of life that we don't have." But I want to start thinking about those people too, because I think

00:35:15.680 | it's really important. We talk about money as if it is the and only tool, but the truth of the

00:35:22.720 | matter is we have lots of tools that help us live a purposeful and meaningful life. So if you are

00:35:28.160 | 22, you just got out of school or you didn't go to school and you're just working that eight to six,

00:35:34.320 | barely getting by, and you're like, "I don't have space in my life for side hustles. I don't have

00:35:37.680 | space in my life for these things." I would like to look at those people and say, "Well,

00:35:42.080 | money is one tool, but again, you have other tools. You've got your energy, you've got your youth,

00:35:48.240 | you've got your communities, you've got your skills. So maybe you work your eight to six

00:35:52.480 | Monday through Friday, and then on Saturday night for three hours, pick something you're

00:35:57.200 | really passionate about and start a side hustle. Three hours on a Saturday. Let's see what happens

00:36:04.560 | with this in six months. If after six months, you've been doing this passionate side hustle

00:36:08.720 | three hours every Saturday and you make zero money from it, guess what? You still just added

00:36:13.440 | purpose into your life by doing something you like and you're passionate about. So you've won,

00:36:17.840 | even if you haven't made any money. But let's say you were lucky enough to make a little money

00:36:23.440 | doing this side hustle. You used your tool of energy, which I don't have in my 50s. I've got

00:36:28.480 | kids, I'm busy, I don't have nearly as much energy, but you're in your 20s, so you have a

00:36:32.240 | little more energy. You use that tool of energy instead of the tool of money. You created the

00:36:36.080 | side hustle. The side hustle made a little money. You hate your eight to five. Maybe it becomes

00:36:41.680 | a nine to five, or maybe it becomes a four day a week instead of a five day a week.

00:36:47.200 | And then, because you have a little more energy now, and you're really liking that side hustle

00:36:52.560 | because you're passionate about it, you keep building it out. Maybe in three or four years,

00:36:56.640 | it's covering 50% of your income and you drop your job even further. Or maybe it allows you to go to

00:37:02.960 | a job you like a little bit less where you're still working a lot, or that you make a little

00:37:07.040 | less, but you like doing it a lot more. So the point is, how do we use purpose to create space

00:37:13.120 | in our life? How do we use all these other tools we have, including money, to start being more

00:37:19.520 | thoughtful about what we're doing with our time now? So you and I can look, as we get older,

00:37:24.480 | as we have more money and say, okay, now we have this tool of money to get us to this place where

00:37:28.480 | we have more control. But I'd like younger people also to start thinking about ways they can take

00:37:32.960 | more control too of the lives they're living so they don't get caught in that rut where they're

00:37:37.440 | 40 or 50 and they have tons of money, but they've never really spent any time thinking about what's

00:37:42.160 | really meaningful. - Yeah. So you mentioned money as a tool. It's an important tool. I do want to

00:37:48.560 | spend some of the conversation to talk about that tool. You spent a lot of time in the book talking

00:37:53.440 | about financial planning and after you do the hard work about how to do it. And I like this kind of

00:38:00.080 | idea of bringing something fun to the conversation. So it's a dining room table.

00:38:04.160 | You said it's not a flamingo. I can't remember all the others. It's not a three-legged stool.

00:38:07.840 | Talk a little bit about what that is. What is the financial plan to you? Because I think

00:38:13.440 | as someone who started a financial planning company, it can be a big thing that's daunting,

00:38:18.960 | that is complicated and takes hours and hours to go through, or you can kind of think about it in a

00:38:24.320 | more simple framework like I think you present. - So the idea is the American table, the dining

00:38:30.000 | room table is an institution in our country, right? This idea that the family sits around it.

00:38:34.480 | And I like it as a model for how our financial plans should be because it's stable, right? It's

00:38:39.200 | hard to knock over a dining room table. It's solid, well-built, and it supports us. And I

00:38:45.520 | think we should look at our financial plan the same way. So a lot of people build a financial

00:38:49.600 | plan that looks a lot like a flamingo, right? Think about a flamingo. They've got their one

00:38:53.120 | leg. They're incredibly unstable. Anything could knock them over. This is the person who really

00:38:58.560 | puts all their eggs in one basket, right? They have their W-2 job. They work for some company.

00:39:03.760 | And maybe if they do invest at all in stock, maybe it's through their 401(k), maybe it's actually in

00:39:11.120 | that company itself. And so everything depends on this one company. And God forbid, a la Enron,

00:39:18.240 | this company goes down, something happens to it, the flamingo is incredibly easy to knock over,

00:39:24.000 | right? So then you can think about a two-legged table or stool, still not that stable, but a

00:39:29.920 | little bit better, right? That might be someone who has a W-2 job, and maybe they now have a 401(k)

00:39:36.320 | with some broad-based index funds, right? Or maybe some bonds. So again, a little bit more stability,

00:39:42.720 | but still not perfect. And then we start thinking, how can we even make it more stable? Like a

00:39:47.360 | three-legged stool. Now maybe we add in a side hustle or some real estate, right? And so then

00:39:54.560 | again, we're now creating more space. And then the four-legged dining room table, something that even

00:40:01.120 | if you knock a leg off is still going to be incredibly stable, is your W-2 job plus the

00:40:06.560 | broad-based index funds, plus some real estate, plus a side hustle. Maybe if you're excited about

00:40:12.000 | some alternatives, you have a little crypto here or there. Again, the idea is you're creating these

00:40:16.560 | different legs. It's this idea of a diversification, but it makes it a little bit more obvious.

00:40:21.120 | And again, the whole point of this is really what we do want to do is we want to build a financial

00:40:28.880 | plan that supports our sense of purpose, identity, and connections. We want to build meaning into

00:40:33.600 | our life. To do that, we build a stable financial plan, and then we practice risk medication, right?

00:40:39.040 | What we're really doing is trying to protect ourselves against the unknown risks, like you

00:40:44.080 | suddenly lose your job, like an economic downturn, like a healthcare crisis or problem. All of these

00:40:50.400 | things, we want to create that dining room table that's going to support us so that we can withstand

00:40:55.600 | whatever trauma, whatever black swan or I call them white swan events that happen, right? These

00:41:00.000 | events that a black swan event is a totally unexpected event that can really ruin our

00:41:04.960 | financial lives. White swan events are events that can ruin our financial lives, but they're

00:41:09.520 | not totally unexpected, like a healthcare problem, right? People get sick and end up spending a lot

00:41:13.680 | of money on healthcare. It's common. A divorce, right? The whole point of all this is to build

00:41:19.360 | a solid financial foundation so you can mitigate your risk and withstand the winds of change that

00:41:26.720 | are going to affect you and your financial plan so that you can continue using that money to do

00:41:31.040 | what it's supposed to do, which is give you the space and time to do meaningful things.

00:41:35.040 | To its core, would it be fair to say a lot of times people think of the financial plan as,

00:41:41.440 | "What do I do with my savings?" Your point is, you have your income, you have your savings,

00:41:47.920 | but then you might also have some other assets you own, whether it's a business,

00:41:51.200 | whether it's real estate. You might also have not just your job, but your other income.

00:41:56.560 | The more you can start to build different buckets of money that aren't just your savings,

00:42:01.840 | the more stable you can be. You mentioned the dining room table with four. At some point,

00:42:08.080 | maybe you don't need your eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth. If you can get

00:42:11.760 | four, which if one falls off, three is still a little stable, four solid pieces of financial

00:42:19.200 | wealth, if you will, whether it's a job or that's a place to strive for.

00:42:24.000 | Yeah. Perfect is the enemy of good. I love these posts on social media where you have someone in

00:42:29.600 | the personal finance world that says, "I've got nine forms of income," and they love to say the

00:42:34.240 | different side hustles and the difference. That's great, but for the majority of us,

00:42:38.800 | four or five revenue streams that are stable, that are diversified, that are uncorrelated,

00:42:44.720 | I don't want to go too far, but how can we start building these streams and be thoughtful about it?

00:42:49.040 | Okay, I'm going to retire. Do I have a pension? Do I have a 401(k) that I can start taking

00:42:55.040 | distributions from? Do I want to set up an insurance policy that'll pay me like a spia?

00:43:00.640 | There are different ways of doing this so that when one revenue stream drops off,

00:43:05.120 | you can create another revenue stream, and therefore, again, you can protect yourself

00:43:09.360 | from change, because ultimately, we have no control over change. We have only control over

00:43:14.480 | the best planning we can do and then what we do with our lives.

00:43:17.280 | So that's the planning piece, but you do talk a little bit about how

00:43:20.560 | one of the ways to tackle your finances is to spend less. A lot of these tactics are,

00:43:27.280 | okay, you can get a side hustle, you can make more, you can do it, but you talk about not just

00:43:31.600 | trying to do the small things, but really building that kind of savings frugality mindset into your

00:43:37.520 | daily life. Can you share some examples of how you've done it and how people might do that to

00:43:42.320 | make their finances a little more automated in terms of how they save for the future?

00:43:47.200 | Yeah, you know, there's some tips in the book about just simple things. I especially talk about

00:43:51.040 | it when I talk about budgeting, because I think budgeting is something that people really struggle

00:43:54.560 | with and my family has never been a good spreadsheet budgeter. So there's great apps

00:43:59.760 | nowadays and you can do all sorts of spreadsheets on budgeting, but I think there's some really easy

00:44:04.800 | things you can do that help streamline your budget to make sure that you're not spending frivolously.

00:44:13.760 | So with my wife and I, we were lucky enough to both be employed and have two decent jobs. So

00:44:18.640 | a basic rule for us is, you know, we lived always off of one salary and the other salary went

00:44:23.840 | directly into either, you know, savings accounts or into investment accounts with us not even seeing

00:44:30.080 | them. So it was as easy as you want to buy something, there's either money in that checking

00:44:34.800 | account or there isn't. We took half this money off the table before we even had a chance to think

00:44:41.200 | about it. So simple things like that. Other little things, you don't have this as much today, but it

00:44:46.080 | used to be back in the day, if you wanted to buy something from a vending machine or something,

00:44:50.800 | you had to have the money on you, right? You used to have to have cash. It was before the days where

00:44:53.840 | we all had phones and we could just hold our phone up to the vending machine. So an easy thing I did

00:44:57.840 | is I never carried cash. Some people never carry credit cards. It's like, okay, I'll have my one

00:45:01.520 | safety credit card, but I'm not even going to give myself the means to spend. Other things you can do

00:45:06.160 | is like, we rarely make big purchases on a whim or on a spur, right? So if we're at Target or if

00:45:14.160 | we're at someplace and we see something that's $500 or even $250, we're unlikely to go buy it

00:45:20.960 | the moment we see it and think we need it. So often there's a cooling off period, especially

00:45:24.800 | with something new that we want to buy, where we give ourselves a week to think about it just to

00:45:28.080 | make sure we truly need and want this thing. I think there are a bunch of other different

00:45:34.480 | hacks we can use. We can automate. We can, again, make sure that our money is going right out of our

00:45:39.600 | paycheck into things like our 401(k) so we don't even see it. But I always say with savings that

00:45:46.400 | you can only squeeze so much water out of a stone, right? There's only a certain amount of movement

00:45:50.720 | we can make there. And it doesn't make sense to squeeze so hard that life is painful, right? If

00:45:56.960 | you have the choice, right? If you don't have the choice, you don't have the choice. But if you have

00:46:00.320 | the choice, you don't want to squeeze so hard that you're not enjoying your days and that you're

00:46:05.200 | suffering. So I'm going to transition a little bit here. We talked about our personal finances

00:46:09.840 | as people listening and thinking about it. But another important thing is thinking about

00:46:13.360 | others' finances, especially the legacy you leave, the legacy your family leaves.

00:46:18.240 | You intentionally don't use estate planning as much as financial legacy documents. So

00:46:24.240 | I'd love to hear that story because I think it makes it a little easier. But how do you think

00:46:28.560 | people should approach that as well as the conversation with their loved ones who maybe

00:46:33.840 | aren't thinking about it? I think when we talk about estate planning, it's this big,

00:46:38.240 | scary idea. And it's really easy to put that off or not pay attention to it because it seems so

00:46:44.000 | complicated. And again, let's not forget, when we're talking about estate planning, what we're

00:46:48.800 | really talking about is what's going to happen when we or our loved one dies. And no one likes

00:46:53.120 | to talk about that, right? Because you start thinking about what's going to happen when this

00:46:55.760 | important person is gone. I like to talk about our legacy documents instead, because as opposed

00:47:02.400 | to thinking about when someone's gone and no longer with us, I like to approach it as this

00:47:06.720 | is the way you're going to stay positively in people's lives, right? By planning appropriately,

00:47:12.800 | by doing these financial legacy planning or the financial legacy documents or the medical legal

00:47:18.240 | legacy documents, this is so that your impact remains, that you still affect those people you

00:47:23.760 | love, and that even God forbid, when you die or a family member dies, that that positive effect is

00:47:30.240 | still out there in the world for years and years later. So this is your mark on the world. But it's

00:47:36.160 | a difficult conversation to have. And I especially think for people in our age group, a lot of us are

00:47:40.080 | in that sandwich generation where we have young kids, but we also have parents who are getting

00:47:44.640 | older. And I'm dealing with this right now with my in-laws who are currently moving.

00:47:49.520 | It's really hard to talk to your parents about money issues in your money situation. So in the

00:47:56.960 | book, I talk about a few tactics that help you start these conversations in a way that's

00:48:03.040 | non-confrontational. So one of my favorite ways to start these conversations is you ask for advice,

00:48:09.520 | right? So people are very open to having us ask them for advice. So let's say you actually

00:48:14.640 | understand this legacy planning yourself, you actually have a good hold on it, but you want

00:48:20.320 | to start broaching it with your parents. The easiest way to say, "Look, I was thinking about

00:48:24.160 | doing a will and maybe a trust. Mom and Dad, what did you guys do? What should I do with this? It's

00:48:30.080 | kind of foggy in my mind. I don't know what to do." It's a really great way of assessing where

00:48:35.040 | your parents are, because then they're going to feel like they're giving you advice. So they're

00:48:38.800 | going to be open. They're not thinking you're like, "Mom, Dad, when you die, what am I going

00:48:42.640 | to get of yours?" That's not what you're asking them. You're saying, "I need to do this for my

00:48:46.160 | family. What should we do?" It's a great way to broach the subject and get a feel for how much

00:48:51.360 | thinking they've done on this. You may find that they've done tons of thinking about it. They have

00:48:56.240 | their wills and their trust, and they can actually tell you and help you do it yourself. Or they

00:49:01.200 | might look at you and say, "Hmm, we've never thought about this before." And that's a perfect

00:49:04.960 | chance to say, "Well, I'm doing it. You want to do this together?" It's a great way to start the

00:49:10.000 | conversation. That's less than one way to do it. Another way I really like to broach the conversation

00:49:15.520 | is, being in hospice, I've seen some real tragedies. So it's easy for me to approach my

00:49:22.400 | parents and say, "I was taking care of this guy, and his mom was sick, and she had Alzheimer's.

00:49:28.880 | And the dad had taken over everything, the medical power of attorney. He had taken over the finances

00:49:34.800 | for the family. And my patient, he was really happy. His parents were managing all these things

00:49:40.640 | because his mom was getting sick, and he just wanted to be with his mom. Then COVID came along,

00:49:44.960 | and all of a sudden, his dad got sick and was on a ventilator. And guess what? I didn't have the

00:49:50.720 | financial power of attorney. My patient couldn't pay for his mom's needs because his dad was on

00:49:55.280 | a ventilator, and he didn't have any rights to all the financial paperwork, to the checking account,

00:50:00.640 | to any of that. So I've experienced these things. And I could go to my parents and say, "You know

00:50:05.280 | what? The funniest thing happened to one of my patients." Tell that story and say, "Gosh, I hope

00:50:10.720 | that kind of thing doesn't happen to us." And so by talking about how other people have had these

00:50:16.080 | bad experiences, it's a wonderful way to actually breach the conversation with your loved ones.

00:50:21.040 | And it's a real non-confrontational, easy way. So that's another way to do it.

00:50:24.560 | And the last way I really like to do it is to talk about it in terms of legacy. So instead of saying,

00:50:29.920 | "When you die, who's going to get what stuff of yours?" To go to your parents and say,

00:50:34.800 | "You know what? My kids are young, and I as well as I want my kids to really remember you the way

00:50:43.200 | you are after you're gone." Let's talk about how you want to be remembered. What do you want the

00:50:49.760 | kids to have of you? What do you want them to remember? What is your legacy? And a lot of times

00:50:54.880 | that leads to talking about things even like property. Like mom and dad, every year we take

00:51:00.320 | all the grandkids and we go to that cabin that you guys own in Wisconsin. After you die, what

00:51:06.080 | should be done with that? Do you want us to still do that and think of you every year when we go do

00:51:11.360 | this? Do you want us to sell it? What would you want done with this thing?" But by framing it in

00:51:16.160 | terms of their legacy, I think then you can open up the difficult conversation and make it about

00:51:26.080 | celebrating the people we're talking about. Because the idea behind this, and no one thinks

00:51:30.080 | of it this way, but really estate planning should be a celebration of people's lives.

00:51:34.480 | We should celebrate with their medical legacy planning, like living will, medical power of

00:51:42.160 | attorney. What we're doing is we're celebrating their dignity and what they want done for them

00:51:46.400 | when they can't speak for themselves. With their financial legacy documents, like their wills and

00:51:52.000 | their trust, we're celebrating all they've achieved economically, all the things they've acquired and

00:51:58.320 | how those things are going to continue in the world after they're gone and they're going to

00:52:01.520 | stay present in our lives. If we can reframe this as a celebration, I really think it makes it much

00:52:07.760 | more approachable and it makes the conversations much easier. Yeah, you just gave me an idea,

00:52:12.640 | which I think is really interesting. Two things came from this when I was just listening. One,

00:52:18.160 | something I want to make sure my wife and I do is, and I wish that we had done with my

00:52:23.840 | grandparents, is take some time to capture who they are, their story, whether that's on video,

00:52:29.200 | whether that's written, so you have something to share. That's just something that's top of

00:52:33.520 | mind for me. I saw Sean, I think from My First Million, posted that he did a podcast with his

00:52:41.360 | mom, where he interviewed his mom like he was doing an interview, but he didn't publish it.

00:52:46.480 | He didn't go out and share it with the world. He just did it because he wanted to have

00:52:51.040 | an archive of a conversation he had. So that was one, which I thought was just really interesting,

00:52:55.360 | was trying to document these people that are important in your lives that won't be there

00:52:59.680 | forever. But the other is talking about ways that you could keep alive things. So in your case,

00:53:06.720 | there's an actual physical cabin, right? So that might be something that's a lot easier and

00:53:12.640 | tangible. But if your family has really loved going to a cabin, but always renting it, maybe

00:53:18.560 | you could ask your parents, if you have money left over, yeah, you could give it to someone.

00:53:23.840 | But is there anything you want to do with it? You think about people with tons of money, and they

00:53:27.920 | grant these scholarships, so kids could go to school under a program. Or I remember my sister's

00:53:33.680 | college, someone donated a pool of money, and the whole purpose of it was enough money that

00:53:39.520 | the interest on the donation would be able to buy a passport for every kid at the university that

00:53:44.240 | never had one. And I thought that was so cool. And I'm now thinking, oh, if I have money when I die,

00:53:50.640 | I would love to not just leave it, but also leave a purpose for it. I would love you to take this

00:53:55.920 | money and take a trip every year. And you know, like we took when we were, you know, that kind

00:54:01.840 | of thing. So trying to talk about this with your parents, but maybe to turn their legacy into

00:54:07.280 | something tangible that you can bring to life with your family, and can be passed on is is a really

00:54:12.400 | interesting idea that I'd never thought about. I think our lives are like a stone being dropped in

00:54:17.360 | the ocean. We are here for so little time. And once we break the water, we're gone. But the ripple

00:54:23.920 | effect of that stone can carry on for miles and miles and miles. And so a lot of the thought is,

00:54:31.520 | what is going to be the ripple of my life. And so I'm convinced that living this life of meaning and

00:54:37.200 | purpose is going to affect those people around you by thinking about your legacy planning by

00:54:42.960 | setting aside money to do those important things. That's going to be your ripple that will carry on

00:54:49.520 | after you're gone. And I, I personally find that extremely comforting. I imagine those in their

00:54:56.240 | final days would find it comforting to know that what they care about is going to, you know, kind

00:55:02.000 | of transcend their own life into others. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's about legacy. And that's

00:55:06.560 | why I think we should call it legacy planning. Are there any things that you think are commonly

00:55:11.760 | missed in legacy planning that, you know, aren't as daunting to go tackle as maybe an entire estate

00:55:17.360 | plan? Or maybe you've done that. But you know, things that you're like, hey, even if you think

00:55:21.600 | you've done it, make sure to think about x or y or z that might not be the obvious. Yeah, you know,

00:55:26.320 | I hate to say it. And it's so estate planning 101. But it's so straightforward. Everyone needs to go

00:55:32.800 | check their beneficiaries. You just you need to have all your policies and you need transfer on

00:55:38.160 | death for all your bank accounts. Right? It's just such an easy thing to do that everyone forgets to

00:55:44.720 | do. And it can save you a huge amount of hassle. I talk about in the book, and I actually interviewed

00:55:49.440 | someone on my podcast, whose husband died, and they were both very young. And he never changed

00:55:55.440 | the beneficiary on his life insurance policy because he had set it up a decade earlier,

00:55:58.960 | and he had an ex girlfriend's name on it. And think about how painful and difficult that could

00:56:04.480 | be a life insurance policy is supposed to, God forbid, you die, it's supposed to make your life

00:56:09.520 | family's life easier. And then you find out that this money is all set to go to a stranger. Lucky

00:56:14.560 | enough, you know, the stranger in this case, transfer the money over to the true beneficiary

00:56:20.080 | to the person's wife. But these are easy things. And we forget to do them. And so like do the easy

00:56:27.840 | things first. And then we can start track, you know, looking at the wheels and the trusts and

00:56:32.240 | the big stuff. But do the easy things first. One thing that really resonated with me and

00:56:37.600 | Silicon Valley, where lots of people have earnouts and golden handcuffs is this one

00:56:41.280 | more year syndrome. You talk a little bit about that. So the one more year syndrome is

00:56:45.760 | the idea is that it becomes really easy to convince yourself to put off doing the hard work

00:56:52.640 | to pursuing a life of real meaning and purpose for you. Because you're just going to stick around

00:56:57.680 | one more year so that things are a little more solid. So your net worth goes up a little bit

00:57:01.360 | more. So you have insurance for one more year. You start convincing yourself, hey, this job isn't so

00:57:06.560 | bad. I don't love it. But, you know, it's easy to stick around. And a corollary to that is, you know,

00:57:13.600 | the what if syndrome, you know, what if the stock market drops? What if I have a healthcare crisis?

00:57:17.760 | What if all these bad things happen the minute I leave my job? And so what this allows us to do is

00:57:23.360 | to stay in jobs that we don't like that aren't fulfilling a sense of purpose or meaning for us.

00:57:28.000 | And days, you know, years turn into decades, and we still haven't left. It's like it allows us to

00:57:35.040 | put off doing the hard work. And it becomes an excuse. And so we do this because we don't want

00:57:41.440 | to do the real hard work. But, you know, life is finite, time is finite. And at some point,

00:57:46.320 | you run out of years. And especially when you get to the end, you really will wish that you

00:57:50.560 | would utilize those years instead of sticking around at a job you really didn't need.

00:57:53.760 | So any, any help for someone struggling with that right now of how do I stop worrying and get out

00:58:00.640 | when I feel like it's the right thing, but I keep saying one more year.

00:58:03.680 | So what I've done, and what I certainly did my career is instead of taking the full plunge of

00:58:10.640 | just going from working full time being a doctor to not being a doctor at all, I started just

00:58:15.440 | subtracting out stuff I didn't like at work. So I took the middle ground, I just said, okay,

00:58:19.440 | let's look at all the things in my job I don't like and start getting rid of them. So can you

00:58:22.800 | go part time? Can you go half time? Can you get rid of the clients you don't like anymore?

00:58:26.480 | Can you hire someone out within your job to do all the things you don't like and just spend the

00:58:31.600 | time doing things you do like, like, how can we bring more purpose even within that work setting?

00:58:36.480 | That's one way. You know, the other way is to just at some point, bite the bullet and say,

00:58:41.360 | you know what, if I leave my job, and I don't like what's happening, I can always go back to work.

00:58:45.840 | And for a lot of people, they can. And so a lot of times, you have to turn it around

00:58:50.640 | and stop saying, what if this bad thing happens? And start saying, what if I don't have that much

00:58:58.560 | time left? Like, people worry about running out of money, but what if you run out of life?

00:59:03.600 | And I think when you start framing things in those terms, they realize that yes,

00:59:08.480 | if your finances are iffy, maybe you do need one more year, but if it's pretty clear cut,

00:59:12.240 | and you're like, this is pretty good, realize that life and time are finite. And the only thing we

00:59:18.720 | can control is what we spend doing in those time units, those little slots of time we have,

00:59:24.240 | you are specifically choosing to do something you don't like in that time slot for no other reason

00:59:28.240 | than it's easy. And so how can we change that mindset? A lot of the purpose of this entire

00:59:34.240 | conversation has been around the fact that there is some finite amount of time. And some people

00:59:40.480 | find out it's less than they thought some people have a lot, a lot of it. But even when you have a

00:59:46.160 | lot, the days, the weeks, the months, they always feel like you don't. And you have a whole section

00:59:50.160 | of the book about time perception and why, you know, the way you think about time is really

00:59:54.880 | important in a well rounded life. So I'm curious how you think some of the or I'm curious what some

01:00:01.680 | of the best ways people should approach their time differently or kind of alter that perception

01:00:06.720 | to be happier and to live that well rounded life. In personal finance, we always talk about time as

01:00:12.320 | if it's a commodity, right? You can buy it, you can sell it, you can trade it. Nothing is farther

01:00:17.200 | from the truth. Time passes, no matter what we do, we have no control. We don't know how much time

01:00:23.600 | we have on this earth, right? We don't know if it's 50 years or 80 years or 70 years. We don't

01:00:27.520 | know. But that's out of our control mostly, right? We can exercise, we can do a few things. But we've

01:00:31.840 | got a set amount of time on this earth that time passes, and you can't do a thing about it. So

01:00:36.720 | the really two choices here. If you look at time as a series of time slots, because it's just easier

01:00:43.440 | days, weeks, months, hours, however you want to look at it, we can try to control the activities

01:00:48.480 | we place in those time slots. Or we can try to mess with our perception of time. And that's it,

01:00:54.960 | right? So when it comes to what activities we place in those time slots, this gets back to

01:01:00.240 | trying to figure out what's purposeful to us and then building a financial life around it,

01:01:04.720 | so that we can fill up as many of those time slots as possible with things that are purposeful

01:01:09.920 | to us and subtract out as many as possible of those things that have no meaning or give us

01:01:15.680 | friction, right? So that's, that's the one thing we can do. And that's what the book is mostly about

01:01:19.520 | is learning to bring more purpose in your life, whether you have money or not. But then ultimately

01:01:25.280 | bringing money is a tool to even help you do that further. That's point one. Then we can mess with

01:01:29.680 | the perception of time. And this is a little bit harder to understand. You know, there are all these

01:01:33.840 | sayings that kind of touch on this idea, but aren't clear about it. Like, you know, when you have kids,

01:01:38.160 | you say the days are long, but the years are short. We always talk about this idea that when you're

01:01:43.920 | young, time lasts forever, but when you're old, time flies by. The point about thinking about this

01:01:50.240 | is just if we know how we feel about time, we can change some things to help us perceive it a little

01:01:57.040 | bit better. Right. And a lot of this is very personal. It depends who you are. So for like me,

01:02:03.920 | I was very cognizant of the fact that time felt like forever when I was a kid,

01:02:09.440 | but as I get older, time seems to fly by. So for me, the path of the eldest brother actually made

01:02:14.400 | a lot of sense because I didn't mind grinding it out when I was a kid. I thought I had all the time

01:02:19.920 | in the world as I was in my twenties and thirties, I didn't mind doing the hard work of being a

01:02:24.240 | physician that allowed me to accrue a lot of money so that eventually I could retire early.

01:02:28.240 | Now time seems to fly by, but I have so much more control over my time than I ever did at any other

01:02:34.080 | time in life. So the perception is that time is flying, but I feel so much more freedom and space

01:02:40.560 | because I don't have that many things I have to put in my time slots anymore. It's all up to me.

01:02:44.960 | Like I don't have any official things. I don't have to do anything for work. Really. I get a

01:02:49.520 | lot more control over this. That was especially the thinking of the financial independence fire

01:02:54.400 | people of old was to do that, right? Because they perceived that sometime in the future would be

01:02:59.120 | more valuable than time today. Funny, younger people who are entering the fire movement today,

01:03:06.080 | look at it the exact opposite. They perceive that time today is just as important and they don't

01:03:10.800 | want to put off purpose and identity and connections. So for them, they're looking

01:03:15.360 | at like the path of the middle or the youngest brother because they want to enjoy today. They

01:03:19.200 | don't want to grind it out. They don't want to waste a second. So they perceive today as

01:03:23.840 | more important or at least just as important as tomorrow. So for them, they're not going to really

01:03:28.960 | do that path of the eldest brother. They're going to really look to be a middle or youngest brother.

01:03:33.120 | So we can play with what we put in those time slots and we can look at how we perceive time

01:03:37.520 | and what feels more important to us. And that's the only control we have of this most important

01:03:43.360 | thing in our life that pretty much is going to pass and happen no matter what we do.

01:03:48.400 | And are there things you do that you haven't mentioned in your kind of, whether it's daily

01:03:53.360 | or annual or weekly routine that you think make your use of time more optimal now than it maybe

01:04:00.400 | was in the past? So strangely enough, I feel like I have all the time in the world. So I feel really

01:04:07.760 | now a place of time abundance. And I think there are a few reasons for that. One is I wake up

01:04:15.520 | really early. I love waking up early. And the strange thing, when you wake up at 435 in the

01:04:20.640 | morning, you just feel like your days last forever. So for me, that's a great way to

01:04:25.840 | combat these worries about time. The other thing is because I've been real thoughtful over the

01:04:32.480 | years and have been financially successful as well as in other realms of my life, I've really

01:04:36.480 | been able to subtract out the things I hate. And so I feel like partially I have an abundance of

01:04:41.520 | time because I've been able to get rid of the things I don't like, all those things about work

01:04:45.120 | I didn't like, being on call, working weekends, all those stressors in my life. So I think that's

01:04:50.400 | a good thing for us to do, whether we have lots of money or not, is to say, how can we substitute

01:04:54.720 | things we like in place of things we don't like and start getting rid of those things we don't?

01:05:00.240 | I've also do some other kind of daily habits that really helped me. I like something called

01:05:06.400 | work bursting. So as opposed to spending lots of time doing important things, I like to set a good

01:05:12.480 | two hours aside or an hour and do really hard stuff in a real concentrated burst of energy.

01:05:18.880 | And then I put it down and I do something leisurely for the next few hours. So it makes

01:05:24.880 | me feel like I have a lot of time in my days because that really hard concentrated work,

01:05:29.760 | I do in short bursts. And so I really enjoy doing that. There are also some hacks. I mean,

01:05:34.640 | in the book, I talk a little bit about Parkinson's law and the Pareto principle. We can talk about

01:05:38.160 | that now if you want. But this idea that we can take advantage of these principles, like Parkinson's

01:05:45.360 | law says that basically the time you have to do a task will end up being the amount of time it

01:05:51.840 | takes to do that task. So if you have a task and you have five hours to do it, it's going to take

01:05:56.080 | you five hours to do. On the other hand, if the same task, you only have two hours to do it,

01:05:59.280 | it's going to take you two hours to do. So you can play around with this a little bit by,

01:06:04.400 | for instance, halving the amount of time you give yourself to do things. So if something

01:06:07.760 | normally takes you five hours, say, "Okay, I'm only going to do it in two hours." Most likely,

01:06:13.280 | you'll get 80 to 90% of the quality by spending a lot less time doing it. And there's some other

01:06:18.560 | tricks you can do. A big part of that, especially when you're doing these tasks, especially if

01:06:23.840 | they're burdensome, is being really clear about defining what done looks like. And so making a

01:06:30.080 | goal of what done looks like, and then deciding that when you hit that point, you'll stop. And

01:06:34.320 | it's unrelated to time, because often we go way past what's appropriate, especially if we feel

01:06:40.000 | like we have five hours allotted to something instead of two. So I think there's some other

01:06:43.840 | tricks and hacks you can do. But the idea is to be thoughtful about how you use time most

01:06:49.280 | efficiently, and then put those things in place to give you the sense of time abundance.

01:06:55.120 | You mentioned that you used to be in a place where you were filled with time stress and

01:06:59.840 | running around trying to get more and more done. And now you've gotten comfortable letting go and

01:07:05.600 | letting your wife, your kids set the pace for things. For people that are type A out there,

01:07:12.080 | and that sounds crazy, any advice? I think it's about being really thoughtful.

01:07:18.160 | I mean, a lot of us who are successful are used to being super efficient. It's how we got to our

01:07:24.000 | success because we could do three things at once, or we could get more done in a day than other

01:07:28.880 | people. And I love that, right? I think that's really served me at times in my career. But the

01:07:34.960 | other side is you become so super efficient that it becomes anxiety provoking. And then instead

01:07:41.520 | of feeling time abundance, you start feeling time scarcity. And it's the oddest thing that the more

01:07:46.800 | efficient we get, the more we start cramping more and more into smaller spaces and start convincing

01:07:52.320 | yourself we don't have enough time, so we start rushing through things. So for me, I've had to

01:07:57.040 | really let go of the reins and really put things in place so that I don't have as much control over

01:08:03.040 | time. So one of those ways is, again, as opposed to rushing around to go somewhere, I now let

01:08:09.040 | someone else decide our timeframe and make myself stick to what they want. And so I unload that

01:08:18.160 | worry about time because I've gotten so good and efficient at time that I'm rushing everywhere,

01:08:22.480 | and I knew that had to stop. So it's two signs of a coin, right? In one way, it's really great

01:08:28.560 | because it allows us to do a lot of things. But if you get too crazy about time, then you're no

01:08:34.000 | longer enjoying yourself and you're rushing to get through what you're doing now to get to the next

01:08:37.920 | thing, which kills all sorts of enjoyment or being present in what you're doing. And that's no good

01:08:42.560 | either. - We didn't talk much about the fact that you have children. I now have children.

01:08:48.320 | You've spent a lot of time thinking about money at a level and purpose and identity

01:08:54.000 | at a level that I haven't yet. And I certainly haven't for my kids, two months, two years old,

01:08:59.520 | maybe it's too early. But given what you've thought and for any parents listening, what advice do you

01:09:04.560 | have for taking some of these lessons, whether they're purpose-driven, whether they're financial

01:09:08.560 | driven, and teaching them to children as parents? - Get it together yourself and then model that

01:09:16.400 | behavior and your kids will follow suit. I think we often talk about what exercises we should do

01:09:21.680 | with our children, what we specifically should teach them didactically, what we should get them

01:09:28.000 | involved in. I'm thoroughly convinced that the way your kids actually learn is watching how you

01:09:33.920 | navigate the world. So it sounds a little funny, but I think that we as adults should concentrate

01:09:40.240 | on ourselves, develop these great meaningful habits and live them out in front of our children

01:09:47.600 | so they can see. And I think that more than anything else will give them a good handle on

01:09:52.960 | what living a purposeful life, a full life looks like. - I'll add a caveat to what you said, which

01:09:58.400 | is for some of these lessons, just doing them only works if you also expose your children to it. So

01:10:07.120 | from a financial standpoint, I might be organized and thoughtful about my personal finances and maybe

01:10:13.680 | at two years old and two months old, it's not the time, but at some point, I can't just live that,

01:10:18.800 | I also have to bring the family into it. So whether that's talking about what you're doing,

01:10:25.200 | making sure that you're not just doing it, but you're also sharing that you're doing it,

01:10:28.720 | for some of these things matters. Maybe for doing a job you're fulfilled, people will kind of get

01:10:34.800 | that through osmosis with you in the house. But I do think that when it comes to finances,

01:10:39.760 | some of the things that I want to do in the future, at least just not make them taboo

01:10:44.000 | topics that we don't talk about as a family. - Yeah, and I think also part of that modeling

01:10:48.800 | good behavior to go the next step forward and be a little more explicit is also giving them the

01:10:54.080 | space to then try those techniques and fail safely, right? So in our household, one way we did that

01:11:00.000 | is our kids could watch how we dealt with things financially, but then we started giving them a

01:11:04.720 | yearly allowance, which we gave to them the first of the year. We clearly stated what they were

01:11:09.680 | responsible for and what we were responsible for, and then they had to decide what to do with that

01:11:14.080 | allowance the whole year, they weren't getting any more from us. And so that was a way we'd

01:11:18.960 | been modeling for years good behavior, but then we could actually set up a controlled experiment

01:11:25.200 | where the truth of the matter was, there was no real risk for them, but they could then experiment,

01:11:30.000 | try some of those things, those techniques that we had been modeling, see what worked for them,

01:11:34.000 | see that hadn't, make some mistakes, have a little egg on their face when they did something wrong,

01:11:38.800 | and then learn. So I think that's part of that modeling is then to give them some space.

01:11:43.040 | - And how did the allowance for the year upfront experiment go?

01:11:47.920 | - You know, in some ways it did some unexpected things, but then at least we could address it.

01:11:52.640 | So for instance, my daughter, we found became ultra scared of spending and always had way more

01:11:58.560 | left at the end of the year than she probably should have. My son, on the other hand, was

01:12:03.120 | confident everything would work and often spent too much in the beginning, and then a catastrophe

01:12:08.000 | would hit and he'd find that he didn't have enough money. A perfect example is, you know, he spent

01:12:12.560 | most of his money, he had just a little bit left and he had about three or four months left, and

01:12:15.840 | then he dropped his phone into a lake when we were paddle boarding. And so all of a sudden he's like,

01:12:23.040 | "I have zero money, I can't buy a used phone, I can't do anything." But I didn't foresee this

01:12:28.800 | coming 'cause I thought I was doing a good job, but I didn't see that something unexpected might

01:12:33.040 | happen. So, you know, it plays out differently with different kids, but the idea then is then

01:12:37.280 | they can, you know, to have those gentle conversations. With my daughter, it might be,

01:12:42.720 | you know, "It's great, you had a lot of money left over, your bank account's really growing,

01:12:46.320 | but are you enjoying that money?" Right? And then for my son, it might be like,

01:12:50.000 | "Yeah, money is a powerful tool, but if you're not careful and a good steward of it,

01:12:53.520 | you may find you don't have it when you need it." And so those are different conversations

01:12:57.040 | you can have, but it all starts with the modeling, then kind of those simple experiments,

01:13:01.120 | and then the talking to him. - So did you loan your son

01:13:04.800 | money against his future year of allowance, or how do you handle that one?

01:13:08.880 | - The darn problem with my son is he's so goddarn innovative that I think he,

01:13:12.800 | you, like, here's a perfect example. Like, my son is known as the electronics guy on

01:13:18.400 | the neighborhood, so people give him old or broken electronics. The other day,

01:13:22.240 | someone gave him an old or broken phone, and he realized it was still under warranty,

01:13:25.840 | sent it back to an Apple, and they sent him a new phone.

01:13:28.080 | - Okay, so he figured it out himself. - So he's a pretty savvy guy. He figures

01:13:33.440 | out either how to fix most things or to find his way into something new. The problem with this phone

01:13:38.640 | is it ended up at the bottom of the, above the lake. He couldn't get it back.

01:13:41.920 | - This has been fantastic. There's a lot more in the book, and I wanna hear more about where

01:13:47.600 | to find everything you're working on, but before that, one thing I like to do is ask people to

01:13:53.280 | pick a place that they know well, anywhere in the world, and share with listeners who may go there

01:13:59.200 | someday, you know, a place to eat, a place to grab a drink, and maybe an unusual activity that they

01:14:04.880 | should check out to kind of fulfill their inspiration for travel. Is there a place you have

01:14:09.600 | in mind? - Here has been my joy with my family,

01:14:13.840 | and it has added, I've spent so much time remembering and thinking about these vacations,

01:14:20.320 | so it's added a huge amount of joy in my life. Once a year, especially before COVID, my whole

01:14:25.840 | family would take a week and go to Mexico. A lot of times, we'd go to like Playa del Carmen or

01:14:29.680 | someone on the Cancun sign, and we'd go to an all-inclusive hotel, and we would literally sit

01:14:37.120 | by the pool for a week altogether. We'd go to, like, the all-inclusives have good restaurants,

01:14:41.600 | and the wonderful thing about it is it costs a lot up front, but once you pay for it, everything's

01:14:45.520 | paid for, right? So you get pretty much all the food, all the drinks, all the sun, all the pool,

01:14:50.400 | all the spa that you want. So it's expensive up front, but I've had so many joyful weeks. It's

01:14:57.760 | still the one thing I look forward to every single year. It's the thing I dream about in the middle

01:15:02.720 | of the winter in Chicago when it's cold and we're all, like, snuggled up in our beds. And the time

01:15:08.000 | I got with my family, with the kids, to think about the progression every year and how they

01:15:13.760 | changed and how we were together is priceless. And so I guess the moral of the story is if you

01:15:21.920 | get the chance, take some time to go somewhere where you don't have a lot of things planned,

01:15:27.760 | but that's just a fun place to be, where you can be with your family with no responsibilities and

01:15:33.360 | no worries about money, and just be for a week. And it's really, really valuable.

01:15:38.080 | I don't know if this has always been the case, but there are some

01:15:41.280 | really nice all-inclusive resorts. I think my assumption is always that they're all,

01:15:46.560 | like, these cheap, crappy resorts, but that is not the case.

01:15:49.360 | There are some nice ones if you're willing to pay for it. But again, if people are listening

01:15:52.560 | to your show, they probably understand how to travel hack. They probably get free flights.

01:15:56.880 | They'll probably get some bonuses and some free things from the hotel they go to. So

01:16:00.800 | for them, it may not actually end up being that expensive, but it's a wonderful luxury.

01:16:05.680 | And I suggest anyone, especially with a family, do it if you can.

01:16:10.880 | You could go find the book anywhere books are sold, but where can people

01:16:14.160 | stay on top of everything you're doing and working on?

01:16:16.640 | 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.

01:16:22.800 | There, you can see links to the book. You can also see links to the three ways in which I create

01:16:27.280 | content. So from 2005 to 2018 or so, I wrote a medical blog, over a thousand posts there about

01:16:35.600 | being a doctor, about life in general. That's linked there. The Diversify blog was the blog

01:16:42.400 | I started about personal finance. That's linked there. And then the Earn and Invest podcast is

01:16:46.560 | what I spend my most time doing right now, which is the most current, and that's also linked there.

01:16:51.920 | Or you can just go to earnandinvest.com. But jordangrumet.com or earnandinvest.com are the

01:16:56.240 | easiest ways. You can see links to all my socials there and everything.

01:16:59.520 | And you're on a podcast now, so you can also just search for the Earn and Invest podcast.

01:17:02.720 | While you're listening, there's a great episode with me, of course.

01:17:06.880 | Of course. That was a great episode.

01:17:10.960 | Cool. Jordan, thank you so much for being here.

01:17:13.200 | Thanks for having me. This was a blast.

Make Your Life Matter: A Hospice Doctor's Life Changing Advice

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