Not_Wasting_A_Single_Day
00:00:00.000 | Hey guys, it's Sam from Financial Samurai.
00:00:03.000 | I haven't been recording much recently because I got sick again.
00:00:08.000 | And when you're sick, you can't really speak, as you can hear somewhat of a raspy voice right now.
00:00:13.000 | But it's also been a really tough week with Kobe Bryant surprisingly passing away and his daughter.
00:00:21.000 | I mean, it was just so, so devastating.
00:00:24.000 | I heard about the news after I just played tennis Sunday morning with a buddy of mine.
00:00:29.000 | And I was at the Xfinity Comcast place returning just my cable box.
00:00:35.000 | And I just saw the news and I thought it was a hoax.
00:00:38.000 | And everybody said, "Nope, it wasn't a hoax."
00:00:41.000 | And it was just so, so devastating because not only was he a great player and a good citizen for America,
00:00:52.000 | but his daughter and it's just the family and the people he leaves behind.
00:00:56.000 | He had a daughter in 2019.
00:00:59.000 | I had a daughter in 2019.
00:01:02.000 | And I just cannot imagine not being with them right now.
00:01:06.000 | And I was really surprised by how much his death affected me.
00:01:11.000 | I woke up that Sunday morning at around 6 a.m.
00:01:15.000 | And I didn't go to bed really until about 4 a.m. the next morning.
00:01:22.000 | Maybe it was 5 a.m. I just thought to myself, "What if I passed out and I never woke up again?"
00:01:31.000 | And so it's been really tough.
00:01:34.000 | I probably cried five or six times on Sunday, another five or six times on Monday,
00:01:41.000 | and another five or six times on Tuesday.
00:01:45.000 | But then finally on Wednesday, I stopped crying.
00:01:50.000 | That pain that had been hurting so much is still there, but I've stopped crying.
00:01:59.000 | And I've wondered about this for a while.
00:02:01.000 | I haven't felt this type of grief in a long time since my grandmother passed away years ago.
00:02:09.000 | And I'm kind of bracing myself for this type of grief because my parents are still alive.
00:02:18.000 | My in-laws are still alive. My sister is still alive.
00:02:22.000 | My relatives are still alive.
00:02:25.000 | Yet every day we get older.
00:02:27.000 | And so I just want to encourage everyone to just appreciate every single moment,
00:02:34.000 | to drop the grudges that you have with your friends or your colleagues or your relatives,
00:02:42.000 | to tell each other how much you care for them, how much you love them, how much you appreciate them.
00:02:48.000 | I really don't think we tell people how much we appreciate them enough.
00:02:54.000 | I think we kind of take people for granted.
00:02:57.000 | And we take them for granted, and then one day they're not here with us.
00:03:02.000 | And so tonight or tomorrow, every day that you can, tell someone how much you appreciate them.
00:03:10.000 | Tell them about the specific things that you really, really admire about them, that you love about them.
00:03:18.000 | I think it's going to go a long way.
00:03:20.000 | And please hug your friends and your family tighter every day.
00:03:25.000 | I feel so blessed to have my family, and I also feel the weight, the weight on my shoulders of having to take care of my family.
00:03:36.000 | And so this fear, this pressure keeps me going.
00:03:42.000 | It keeps me going every single day because I cannot fail my family.
00:03:48.000 | And I think these type of incidences where someone famous or someone you admire passes away really puts things in perspective.
00:03:58.000 | And it really makes me think about what is the purpose of my life, how I want to be remembered by if I were to suddenly go.
00:04:08.000 | And I thought about it every single day for the past week.
00:04:12.000 | And I think the bottom line is that I'm doing what I really, really love to do.
00:04:17.000 | Back when I worked in finance, I remember one of the CEOs of a company we were taking public said,
00:04:24.000 | "Sam, you know you have a BS job, right?"
00:04:28.000 | And at the time I was thinking, "Well, gee, buddy, that's not really nice to say."
00:04:34.000 | But I thought about it and I was thinking, "Well, I'm here trying to help Asian companies go public in the United States or in Asia.
00:04:44.000 | I'm trying to connect capital to help fund their dreams and grow businesses. I don't think that's that bad."
00:04:51.000 | But I started feeling a little bit empty inside after about 10 years.
00:04:57.000 | After 10 years of doing something, just a job, I think any kind of job or most jobs, you kind of get bored and you kind of want to do something else.
00:05:08.000 | And so when I discovered online writing and more specifically talking about personal finance and living life
00:05:17.000 | and going through all of these mysterious things in life, figuring things out, I really loved it.
00:05:24.000 | And I hope you guys can tell that I really love to write about personal finance, life, happiness, family and so forth.
00:05:34.000 | I've been doing this since 2009 and I hope to do it for a very long time until my kids hopefully grow up and see what their dad does.
00:05:45.000 | And maybe they want to learn something about writing and communications and marketing and so forth.
00:05:52.000 | And so how do I want to be remembered? I just want to be remembered as a good father, someone who tried really, really hard
00:06:01.000 | and tried to exceed expectations based on the talents that were given to me.
00:06:06.000 | And I want to be remembered as someone who tried every day to help someone figure out how to lead a better financial life.
00:06:16.000 | Because I think if we lead better financial lives, we can live happier lives.
00:06:22.000 | We can become more confident and we can take care of our family more and we can do the things we really, really want to do.
00:06:31.000 | It is true that life goes by quicker as we age because we have less years left.
00:06:40.000 | Let's say we were all blessed to live to 100. The first year of your life is 1/100th of your life.
00:06:48.000 | But if you're 50, the 51st year of your life is 1/50th of your life.
00:06:53.000 | So it's literally twice as valuable, the time is twice as fast that's passing by.
00:07:00.000 | Let's try to wake up every morning and count our blessings and highlight the things that we are grateful for.
00:07:09.000 | And then before we go to bed, let's count our blessings again and think about all the things we've accomplished.
00:07:18.000 | I think it will be absolutely wonderful if we can appreciate every single day and not waste a single moment.
00:07:26.000 | And frankly, I need to focus more on recording some podcasts.
00:07:31.000 | Because one of the key reasons why I want to record a podcast is so that if I were to die an untimely death,
00:07:40.000 | my children, my two and a half year old and my six week old, can listen to their old man and hear his voice and know, you know, what are some of the things that
00:07:55.000 | their dad liked to talk about or felt about and just, you just never know.
00:08:04.000 | And so I write and I will record for as long as I can.
00:08:11.000 | Thanks so much everyone. I've been up to actually a lot of things.
00:08:16.000 | Again, I had a cold for a couple weeks again.
00:08:20.000 | There should be a lot of things coming up, so stick around. Keep on reading, keep on sharing, keep on listening.
00:08:27.000 | I appreciate your support and I'll see you guys around.