Pandemic
00:00:00.000 | Hello, everybody. It's Sam and Cindy from Financial Samurai. And in this episode, we
00:00:05.640 | want to relive the pandemic days, because the pandemic was really an experience in hedging
00:00:13.100 | our lives. On May 11 2023, the federal government lifted the public health emergency for COVID-19.
00:00:23.560 | So officially, the pandemic is over, even though supposedly something like 40,000 people
00:00:28.380 | have died year to date due to COVID-19. But life must go on. And in this episode, I just
00:00:36.160 | wanted to recap what life was like in 2020, what we did during the pandemic, and what
00:00:43.440 | we should have done. So, Cindy, what are your thoughts now that the pandemic is officially
00:00:49.800 | declared over? I'm so happy. And it's been a long way coming. I feel like I was starting
00:00:57.680 | to get a lot more comfortable in the last year. But especially this year, it's people,
00:01:03.800 | I think in San Francisco as well, in general are just a lot more comfortable that things
00:01:10.120 | have, you know, we've moved on, we were not getting sick anymore. And we're living our
00:01:16.600 | lives to the fullest again. Yeah, we actually went to several packed events. And we didn't
00:01:23.480 | have kind of any worry, nobody wore masks anymore. And it just it just seems surreal,
00:01:28.640 | though, because I think we forget what life was like, maybe in 2020. And 2021, if we don't
00:01:37.000 | really drill down to the details. I remember in early 2020, as soon after the lockdowns,
00:01:44.240 | the public parks were closed in San Francisco. And I was thinking to myself, what do you
00:01:48.680 | mean the public parks, the playgrounds are closed, it's outdoor space. Come on now. And
00:01:54.640 | so what happened the first two weeks was, we ended up doing a lot of chalk drawings
00:01:59.200 | on the cement in our backyard. And I still have this video, this really heartwarming,
00:02:04.880 | but sad video of our son, walking up a chalk drawing ladder and then scooting his butt
00:02:13.480 | down the chalk drawing slide. And that was kind of the moment where I thought to myself,
00:02:19.800 | you know what, screw the parks being closed. We're gonna go to the damn park. Yeah, it
00:02:25.360 | was very happy sad to see that. I mean, super happy sad. I was like, we know it was happy
00:02:31.600 | because we try to make do with what we had. And he was smiling. And he was smiling. And
00:02:37.120 | he was like, Oh, this is how you slide if pretend slide, but then it made me sad and
00:02:41.720 | also angry that something like this could happen that you know, our freedom, our freedom
00:02:47.080 | was restricted. And for someone who has been free since 2012, and you since 2015, I was
00:02:54.240 | I was like, there, there's no way you're gonna keep me down. Yeah, and keep our children
00:02:59.920 | down. So let's discuss some of the things that we did do during the 2020 and 2021 period,
00:03:09.720 | to try to hedge against our life because one of the reasons why I decided to leave work
00:03:13.920 | behind at 34 was to hedge against an early death. I figured if I left at 34, and I lived
00:03:20.720 | until 60, and age 60 was the age that I thought, okay, just give me until age 60. And then
00:03:27.000 | I'll live a happy life. And I thought about that when I was in my 20s. Then I could live,
00:03:32.120 | you know, like 2526 years of the good life, not having maximum amount of money because
00:03:37.880 | I'm not working more, but a life full of freedom. And then if I passed away, you know, that
00:03:44.080 | would suck. But at least I would minimize my regret. There were just too many close
00:03:50.520 | calls that happened in my life, where I wasn't constantly aware of my mortality. And so when
00:03:58.680 | the pandemic hit, I immediately thought to myself, okay, if we live through this pandemic,
00:04:05.560 | which we probably would have, but then we kept our lives like, like we were living in
00:04:10.960 | prison, we would probably really get pissed off about this time period. And then so we
00:04:17.560 | had to do something to make sure that we didn't look back with regret. So let's talk about
00:04:24.320 | several positives. The first positive is we had our daughter in December 2019. We had
00:04:31.560 | no idea what was coming. We had no idea it was it was serendipitous. We plan to stay
00:04:37.680 | at home for at least two years after she was born anyway. And so in retrospect, how was
00:04:45.520 | raising a baby like during the pandemic for you? Initially, it wasn't it wasn't that different.
00:04:51.840 | I mean, we were really lucky that we didn't have to deal with any of the hospital lockdowns
00:04:57.240 | because she was born in December. Oh, yeah, and I could actually be there for the yeah,
00:05:00.760 | and you were able to be there. We didn't have any of stress around the birth. So we were
00:05:04.320 | lucky that way. I think we were just more we weren't so worried about leaving the house.
00:05:10.760 | We were worried about getting through each night, you know, is she gonna sleep? So we
00:05:16.200 | kept our minds off of a lot of the, you know, the lockdown part because we were busy, you
00:05:23.440 | know, being parents being parents. Yeah. You know, when you first have a baby, it's all
00:05:30.280 | about care and making sure they survive. Yeah, things like sudden infant death syndrome and
00:05:37.440 | choking on something and all that is already really heightened. And so for me, the pandemic
00:05:44.080 | just kind of heightened that risk of death even further. Right? We had to make sure that
00:05:51.200 | she especially was protected because she had the weakest immune system in the whole family.
00:05:55.720 | Basically, so that was something that, you know, I had to really contend with if I was
00:06:00.360 | to go out to the playground, right, right. You know, I remember the first time I went
00:06:05.000 | to the playground, I got the alcohol wipes and just wipe down the swings and the slides
00:06:09.880 | just in case, right? Yeah. And of course, you know, we wore masks that the first several
00:06:14.920 | times because just in case well, why risk it? But raising a baby during a pandemic in
00:06:22.880 | retrospect was good. So if there is a have you believe there's a future pandemic coming?
00:06:29.320 | I think you know, having a baby then is actually a good idea because you want to spend as much
00:06:34.000 | time raising your child anyway. And also for the people who are able to work at home while
00:06:39.560 | having a newborn, you know, it was definitely a struggle to do both work and childcare.
00:06:45.440 | But I think it was also a blessing where so many families were able to pop in check in
00:06:51.600 | and all that. Right. One of the analogies I thought about regarding having a baby during
00:06:57.080 | the pandemic was, let's say your flight is delayed, or you're stuck on the highway because
00:07:03.440 | of an accident for several hours. And you have your favorite book, which in this case
00:07:08.280 | would be your baby. You would just read your book, you would take care of your baby and
00:07:14.200 | make use of that time. And actually, the best time to take care of your baby or read the
00:07:19.120 | book is during a very difficult time. Because whether you spend an hour reading your book
00:07:24.640 | on an airplane or in the lounge because of a five hour delay or at the beach, that hour
00:07:30.600 | is all the same. The second positive of the pandemic is we bought a house, we bought a
00:07:36.720 | larger house that we did not anticipate buying because we bought a fixer in 2019. However,
00:07:44.240 | after going through the permitting and the remodeling, I soon realized this house was
00:07:50.040 | not going to get finished in time to house our growing family. So it was really, really
00:07:55.880 | hairy times buying a house that I saw in April 2020. We got into contract in May and we closed
00:08:02.000 | I think end of July 2020. Super, super difficult time decision to leverage up and buy a property.
00:08:09.960 | But I believe that well, worst case scenario, the house price declines another 5-10%, maybe
00:08:16.640 | 10%. And at least I get to shelter our larger family in a fully remodeled home. So what
00:08:24.280 | are your thoughts on buying that house? Because I remember before buying this house, you were
00:08:29.520 | pretty hesitant. Well, I'm always resistant to moving because of the logistics and whatnot.
00:08:36.080 | And once I get settled, it's hard for me to want to move. So thinking about moving at
00:08:41.920 | that time was hard. But in retrospect, I'm really glad we did it. We love this house.
00:08:46.720 | I'm really happy here. The kids love it. It's good layout for us. And we maximized it to
00:08:54.720 | the full extent during the pandemic and still now too. Yeah. There's more levels. So there's
00:09:02.280 | actually more privacy in terms of sound noise, which is good for writers like myself who
00:09:10.040 | need peace and quiet to write. And there's more space. It's like 50% larger. Yeah. Because
00:09:16.880 | our old house, you know, we had lost, we demolished like 600 square feet of space. And then it
00:09:23.520 | was just, it's just so much better now. Yeah. And even though like construction was halted
00:09:28.000 | for the longest time, the fact that we were able to move out and not have to live through
00:09:32.960 | that was huge because we, you and I did that before kids, we, we lived through a remodel,
00:09:39.480 | a gut remodel. Wow. That was, that was tough. That was tough. We were like living on a day
00:09:47.200 | bed. This was one night. It's interesting. We were living on this day bed. That was just
00:09:52.200 | two of us, right? Just thinking back to college and then twin size, twin size. And then did
00:09:57.320 | I have the, it was my epiphany to, it was like the couch, what is it called? Like a
00:10:04.480 | sofa bed. Right. So I was like, okay, why, why are we both sleeping side by side on this
00:10:09.680 | twin size sofa bed? So I was like, Oh, okay. Hey, look, the mattress lifts up. Let's put
00:10:15.680 | that on the floor. And then one of us can sleep on that. And the other one can sleep
00:10:20.120 | on the sofa without the mattress on it. And it worked out much better. Yeah. Are you sure
00:10:25.120 | that was your idea? I'm sure it was my idea. That sounds like my genius. No, no, no, no,
00:10:29.920 | no. But this one was mine, but this is a great, great idea. Um, so props to you. And this
00:10:35.080 | is an example of how you see like a problem and then you just, well, or a situation, you
00:10:40.880 | just accept it, but sometimes you just don't want to accept, you shouldn't accept it. There's
00:10:45.240 | a better solution. Yeah. You got to let your ideas percolate in your mind. Yeah. This reminds
00:10:51.040 | me of a story when I was in high school, uh, or maybe it was middle school. I was first
00:10:55.080 | learning how to write an address on an envelope. And so I was writing the address on the envelope
00:11:02.240 | because you know, you put your return to sender address on the top left and then to whoever
00:11:06.620 | in the middle. Right. So I was writing it and, and then, and then I turned over the
00:11:12.240 | envelope. I was like, Oh, I wrote the address upside down. I was about to rip it up and
00:11:16.280 | throw it away. And my dad was like, what are you doing? It's okay. It doesn't really
00:11:20.920 | matter. You can just put the, you know, I was like, Oh, okay. Don't waste the envelope.
00:11:26.880 | But I didn't even think about that. So I wonder how many things are like no dumb moments where
00:11:32.520 | you don't really think about where you can improve. So given I was able to convince you
00:11:37.680 | to come to this house, it's like so much better over the past almost three years. What are
00:11:43.080 | your thoughts on, you know, getting a larger house? I knew you'd ask me that. You know,
00:11:48.160 | like the pain of packing and moving and the cost is, is, is terrible in the beginning.
00:11:55.120 | But if it lasts, if we last in a new house, bigger house for 10 more years, wouldn't that
00:11:59.200 | be pretty amazing? Yeah. It's just for me, I don't know. I feel like we don't need more
00:12:04.400 | space. And again, I'm harder to convince because once I get settled in, I just don't want to
00:12:11.000 | move. And we've also fixed a lot of things in this house. We know where the potential
00:12:16.280 | leaks are. We've, we've repaired them. You know, we know this house inside and out now.
00:12:21.360 | So to start from scratch again, I don't know. It's just, well, you know, this is really
00:12:26.880 | interesting because I wonder how many people because they just don't want to go through
00:12:31.920 | the short term pain of something better. Never go after their dreams. Who knows if that's
00:12:39.960 | actually going to be better though? Well, everything is a risk. Everything is a leap
00:12:43.360 | of faith. Yeah. All I know is that the house that we live in is fantastic. We're happy
00:12:49.640 | here. There's no need or sense of urgency to move. There's never a need to do anything
00:12:56.880 | once you have the basics. That's the thing. But as I wrote, wrote in the past, the best
00:13:01.520 | time to own the nicest house you can afford is when you have children, when you have the
00:13:06.080 | most number of heartbeats at home. But don't forget classic tale of Warren Buffett who
00:13:13.640 | still lives in his same house that he bought in his what, thirties? Yeah. His house is
00:13:18.320 | like 7,000 square feet. It's like massive. And who knows? There might be an underground
00:13:22.600 | bunker that goes two levels down. That's another 5,000. That would be very interesting. I bet.
00:13:27.600 | I bet there's some, I mean, he flies private and does whatever. So yes. And Warren Buffett
00:13:32.520 | example. All right, cool. So we're going to move to another house. All right. Good. Good.
00:13:37.240 | Good that we agreed. So three, another positive. We homeschooled our son. Yeah. You know, Oh,
00:13:43.240 | but the funny thing is, is that it's not funny. It's like we spent two years trying to get
00:13:46.880 | him into preschool. Yeah, I know. And then we spend like a thousand dollars in application
00:13:51.160 | fees. He got it. He got into preschool and then five months later we pulled him. Yeah,
00:13:57.120 | that was tough. It was tough, but it was definitely tough to lose that spot. But we did have some
00:14:04.120 | reassurance that we could get him back in if we needed to. Yeah. And we just weren't
00:14:10.360 | comfortable putting him at risk and then him at risk, us at risk and more importantly,
00:14:18.120 | our daughter at risk. Oh, you know what? Now I, now I remember before we pulled him, he
00:14:22.920 | was getting sick all the time in those five months and we were too, and we were too. And
00:14:27.200 | I was miserable. I was like, gosh, we're sending our kid to preschool for him to get sick.
00:14:31.880 | And then for all of us to get sick. So if all of us got sick, that means our baby would
00:14:35.020 | get sick. Yeah. And then when, when the school did reopen, I think it was late in the summer
00:14:40.840 | of 2020 it was, it was limited. Like, Oh yeah. Hybrid. And I think it only started with three
00:14:47.620 | hours a day that would be all in the outside. Even if it was dumping rain, we were just,
00:14:54.220 | you know, taking all the different factors into consideration and it just, we didn't
00:14:57.740 | feel right about it. And I think it all worked out well in the end. He didn't end up needing
00:15:02.880 | to go back to that school. Uh, and we had a great time with him. Yes, it was exhausting,
00:15:08.840 | but it was fun. And he learned so much from us and he was so excited too. We were like,
00:15:13.360 | do you want to go to homeschool or real school? And he's like, homeschool. And now I, and
00:15:20.080 | now I realize also another reason why we didn't send him back. It's because we have the flexibility
00:15:24.680 | to homeschool them. Yeah. We were very fortunate. So my thinking back then was, okay, we both
00:15:29.860 | don't have day jobs. We had the flexibility to homeschool them. If we don't homeschool
00:15:34.920 | them and he gets COVID and gets really sick and he gets our daughter sick, how would we
00:15:39.860 | live with ourselves? We would basically, I would feel bad because it would just basically
00:15:44.300 | be laziness to not homeschool them because we could homeschool them. And I realized that
00:15:49.540 | not everybody has that opportunity or ability because of work. Yeah. And then there's also
00:15:55.060 | the positive that we saved like $2,000 a month from the preschool tuition. Yeah. All right.
00:16:00.940 | Four, uh, lost some weight. I lost, I first, I gained some weight, you know, like if you
00:16:06.380 | have, well, you, you had a baby, so you, you, you have all the reasons to be able to gain
00:16:12.140 | weight. Uh, but you know, the combination of new baby and a pandemic being locked down,
00:16:16.980 | less social activity is not a great combination. It was hard. Yeah. But because I played a
00:16:25.260 | lot of tennis and then I played a lot of softball, like softball almost every Saturday. Uh, and
00:16:32.260 | then I saw like pictures after pictures by the media about people dying from COVID and
00:16:38.860 | the number one consistent thing of the people dying or that they were obese or morbidly
00:16:43.860 | obese. It just kind of scared me into trying to lose that weight that I had gained and
00:16:48.660 | try to be more healthy in general. How about yourself? Like how did you, how did you view
00:16:56.180 | those pictures and how did you view health during the pandemic? I mean, I definitely
00:17:01.660 | felt scared. I mean, if you, when you pay attention to too many news articles, it can
00:17:07.460 | send you into a panic, you know? So I, I definitely curtailed my, um, news consumption during
00:17:14.260 | the pandemic. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I tried, tried to try to eat well. I mean, I had to
00:17:20.020 | stay healthy because I was still breastfeeding. Um, you know, I didn't exercise as much as
00:17:25.620 | I could have and should have. Um, but you know, as time went on, things got better.
00:17:30.180 | Um, you know, we got outdoors more, I got moving more, uh, and you know, you sure there
00:17:35.740 | were days where I had to eat my feelings because it was so stressed and tired. Um, but I think
00:17:40.380 | in general we did prioritize our health. Um, and you know, we got through it. Yeah. I mean,
00:17:46.980 | it was very basic. It was like, do you want to live longer? Uh, do you want to be able
00:17:52.660 | to combat COVID if you, if we do get it, um, by being in better shape? And the answer was
00:17:59.180 | yes, especially when you have a newborn. Yeah. So five, we made some money and then we lost
00:18:04.140 | some money like 2020, 2021 boom times for risk assets, right? Um, buying the house turned
00:18:11.420 | out to be a good move. And then the stocks that we did hold turned out to be good. And
00:18:17.660 | then the muni bonds that I sold to come up with a down payment for this house ended up
00:18:24.500 | going well, they went up in 2020, but then went down to any one and then 2022 for sure
00:18:30.820 | by about 13%. Um, so that was a good move. Yeah. Um, so making money was what actually
00:18:37.200 | made going through the pandemic a little bit more palatable. Unfortunately, you know, we
00:18:41.380 | gave up a lot of our gains from 2021 because of the bear market in 2022, but there was
00:18:48.580 | also another positive about the pandemic and that was so many different ideas for content
00:18:55.180 | on financial samurai. Yeah. Because of the pandemic, I, I spent it up, I ended up writing
00:19:00.700 | more and then I wrote a post called how to predict a stock market bottom like Nostradamus
00:19:06.300 | in March, 2020. So that turned out well, wrote a post called real estate buying strategies
00:19:11.100 | during COVID-19. And that turned out well, if you took some of that advice and basically
00:19:16.220 | I was writing about stuff that I was thinking about doing. And in general, almost all the
00:19:22.220 | time, if I'm writing about something, I'm thinking about it and I'm going to try to
00:19:25.660 | take action to do something. And then I spent time focusing more on online entrepreneurship
00:19:31.100 | because when you're stuck at home and you have an online website, you have a website
00:19:35.340 | that you might as well try to make more money. And in turn, because of these new business
00:19:40.180 | relationships, I think it's helped me at least feel more comfortable about providing for
00:19:45.660 | the family. Yeah. And then finally, what, uh, what happened? Let's see, wrote a bestselling
00:19:51.860 | book by this, not that, that was, that was not an easy task. That was not an easy task.
00:19:57.980 | The offer came in at the end of 2019. I wasn't really that gung ho about writing because
00:20:04.500 | I had written how to engineer your layoff and which has recently been updated thanks
00:20:10.580 | to you and your work for 2023. But then once the pandemic hit, I was like, all right, well,
00:20:17.020 | we're going to be locked down for who knows how long might as well take up this off this
00:20:21.860 | offer because I don't know in the future, I think if I look back, I would regret not
00:20:27.440 | having written this book. So this book basically took up the entire pandemic to write, edit
00:20:33.980 | and market because it came out July 19, 2022 and it became a Wall Street Journal bestseller.
00:20:39.720 | So this is something that I'm super proud of because when our kids ask, Hey, do you
00:20:46.200 | remember what happened during the pandemic? Well, hopefully they'll remember, like at
00:20:49.000 | least our son will know. Yeah. But our daughter might not remember, right? She probably won't
00:20:52.920 | remember, but I'll just say, you know, daddy and mommy, we decided to write an editor book
00:20:57.880 | that did well to help other people achieve financial freedom sooner rather than later.
00:21:03.100 | So overall, the pandemic, because we survived and because we don't have long COVID, I think
00:21:10.780 | was maybe a net positive. I wouldn't have written the book. I wouldn't have bought this
00:21:15.860 | house. I wouldn't have made as much as we did from risk assets. I wouldn't have spent
00:21:20.180 | as much time with our son. Right. So it sounds like win-win-wins. However, there are always
00:21:26.240 | regrets. And so I have several regrets that we didn't do during the pandemic. What's your
00:21:33.500 | biggest one? The biggest one, the absolute biggest one was that we didn't move to Honolulu,
00:21:38.300 | Hawaii before the pandemic began or the first year of the pandemic. I had been looking intently
00:21:45.740 | since 2016 to buy a nice property in Honolulu, Hawaii. Right. You were with me, right? When
00:21:52.100 | we saw like, went to see some open houses, nothing really, you know, captivated us. Oh,
00:21:57.700 | no, no, no. Okay. There are some amazing houses, but they were out of our, you know, they're
00:22:02.620 | expensive. Yeah. There's this amazing house, like 4,600 square feet, five bedroom, five
00:22:08.780 | bath writers den. And it wasn't even just a den. It was like a full one bedroom, one
00:22:14.220 | bath with a living room and kitchen like off the side of the house. And then there was
00:22:18.660 | a pool and it was only a block and a half away from the beach. And I was just like,
00:22:24.460 | oh, this house is amazing. This is awesome. We saw it so many times. We did. Over the
00:22:29.380 | years. And you know, the prices were, it kept on ticking down. I was like, oh, okay, let's
00:22:34.020 | wait a little bit longer. Tick down a little further. Well, there were just some quirky
00:22:38.220 | things. I don't know. Like what? What was quirky about? Oh, there was like, the way
00:22:42.220 | they did the kitchen was kind of weird. There was like two kitchens stuck together. That's
00:22:46.740 | cool. That's the back kitchen in the front kitchen. They could have designed it better.
00:22:50.820 | And that was like the interesting Mormon church across the street or something. Yeah, there
00:22:55.020 | was that was congregation czar. Yeah. So there was a lot of foot traffic and not that much.
00:23:02.100 | I don't know. We saw a lot of people coming and going. Bottom line, we should have bought
00:23:06.540 | that house because we don't enjoy that house with a lot more space. Just being in Hawaii.
00:23:11.820 | Think about it for two years during the pandemic before they started prohibiting visitors,
00:23:17.500 | international visitors, and then just being able to spend more time with my parents. I
00:23:21.700 | know it's not with your parents, but we didn't see your parents anyway during the pandemic.
00:23:26.140 | So you know, the bottom line is, man, I really wish I had the guts to pull the trigger to
00:23:31.820 | buy that house in Hawaii. You know, there's two hard things. I pulled the trigger to buy
00:23:36.180 | this house in the most difficult of times. But it's another thing to pull the trigger
00:23:40.860 | to buy an expensive house and move your entire family. Yeah, I would have been very hard
00:23:45.420 | to convince to especially with a newborn. Yeah, that's the thing. The new when you have
00:23:49.820 | a newborn, you have doctors you're familiar with. You know, you have issues where you
00:23:54.700 | have to heal and see checkups. But the thing here's the thing, though, Hawaii has the best
00:24:02.100 | health care. I know. It's just it's, you know, moving within your city is one thing but moving
00:24:08.380 | to another city and then actually out of state and Hawaii is an island right you can't drive
00:24:12.740 | there you have to fly there I don't know it's just very different moving logistics. I know
00:24:17.500 | but man I've been thinking about this for seven years now since 2016. It's okay. We
00:24:22.140 | have a great house now we're happy here. It's all good. Next time. Next time there's pandemic
00:24:27.020 | where we're gone. I swear to God, we're we're we're going. So to one of the regrets I thought
00:24:33.980 | was regret but then I thought about a little more maybe not a regret. I didn't fly more
00:24:38.140 | often. So best got really lucky that time you did fly. Yeah, November 20. Yeah, because
00:24:45.420 | right after you came back, there was a big surge. So you escaped that. But you think
00:24:51.620 | about it like 2020 2021 flights were cheaper. True. It's less crowded. It's probably safer
00:24:58.500 | because there's less people. But I now realize I remember now, anybody who did travel or
00:25:04.580 | seen as traveling for non essential reasons, were seen as selfish. You know, we were all
00:25:09.180 | trying to contain the spread as much as possible. So if you're going to go you know, to Bali
00:25:13.020 | to Hawaii, I remember that now like people were flying and sharing on Instagram or whatever
00:25:17.340 | how fabulous their lives were shamed by Yeah, so there was that social pressure and also
00:25:23.100 | the unknown of and again, if I flew somewhere, I might catch something on the way back because
00:25:29.340 | it's like so stupid, right? Like everybody was afraid of getting COVID outdoors or in
00:25:34.580 | lines so that we social distanced at the airport. And then you you all pack into a plane. I
00:25:40.500 | know. I know. I remember reading some headline to about someone who rented an RV to like
00:25:45.900 | drive across the country, but which was great for her. But then she ended up getting like,
00:25:51.460 | shamed by the media for it because she was endangering other people by crossing state
00:25:56.580 | lines and yada yada yada. There was a lot of shame being thrown around. Yeah, there's
00:26:00.900 | peer pressure. Yeah. And so I guess I'm proud to say that we did not contribute to the pandemic.
00:26:08.460 | We didn't travel until I traveled in November 2021. Yeah, after the vaccine, I think was
00:26:15.140 | available then. Yeah, yeah, it was available. And even if we wanted to travel to like places
00:26:20.060 | like Asia, there were two week quarantine periods. You get there and you got to stay
00:26:24.220 | in a hotel for maybe tolerable by yourself, but no, not with a whole family. No, no, no,
00:26:31.220 | no. All right, third regret should have owned a vacation single family home instead of a
00:26:38.660 | vacation condo. This was interesting, because we have friends who have vacation properties
00:26:44.460 | in Napa Sonoma, Lake Tahoe, Stinson Beach, these are 45 minutes to three and a half hour
00:26:51.900 | drives away. And they were able to live a more enjoyable life during the pandemic because
00:26:57.260 | they could just drive there and mix things up. Right. And the whole the whole property
00:27:01.940 | is their own. They don't have to worry about other people. Exactly. So we on the other
00:27:06.820 | hand, own a condo at a resort. So we could have gone up there, but not in the earlier
00:27:13.300 | early early days because the resort closed down. Yes, it did. So it closed down for at
00:27:18.980 | least three months, maybe six, I don't remember. It was and it was like sudden to whenever
00:27:25.260 | there was a surge was like, Okay, we're shutting down. And we're like, wait, what's happening?
00:27:29.500 | And right. And so not only could we not go up there, we couldn't even earn rental income.
00:27:33.420 | Yeah, exactly. So it was like a lot of reservations that had to be canceled because of the closures.
00:27:40.020 | So this is something good to know, folks. If you own a single family property as a vacation
00:27:44.780 | property, you're the king and queens of the castle, you can do what you want, you don't
00:27:48.660 | have to fear people using your stuff, sleeping in your beds, whatever it is. But now that
00:27:54.020 | the pandemic is over, I did ask our kids, do you like the Lake Tahoe vacation property,
00:27:59.300 | or this really nice single family home, our friend owns in Sonoma Valley, and they all
00:28:03.940 | said the condo vacation property. Because even though the condo is 80% cheaper than
00:28:11.820 | the single family vacation property, our friend owns, it's actually way bigger, right? The
00:28:15.860 | land is like 10x bigger, many more amenities and things to do. All right. Finally, there's
00:28:23.740 | a couple more regrets and has to do with investing. One I was thinking, maybe I should have speculated
00:28:29.500 | more, I should have been more intentional, and allocated a certain amount of money to
00:28:34.940 | speculate on all these wild and crazy things like meme stocks, crypto and NFTs. You wrote
00:28:41.380 | a post about NFTs. And at the end of the post, you're like, what the hell is this stupid?
00:28:46.260 | Who's the hell is buying this? But the thing is, folks, it kind of doesn't really matter
00:28:50.220 | how stupid the asset is. If you make money, if you buy it, and it goes up 5x, and you
00:28:57.140 | sell, you make a lot of money. So the idea is to be a good investor, you need to actually
00:29:01.060 | recognize the trends. And no matter how dumb the investment is, it's like if capital is
00:29:06.540 | flying towards these investments, you want to be involved. But you can't make this type
00:29:11.840 | of speculative money if you don't pay attention. So in retrospect, I should have specifically
00:29:17.040 | allocated a lump sum of money. And maybe I should have spent an hour a day trying to
00:29:21.460 | speculate. But this is a revisionist history. I mean, maybe I could have lost my shirt as
00:29:25.020 | well. Yeah. And then finally, I should have sold more stock, de-risked more when valuations
00:29:31.100 | in the tech field, tech sector, we're getting out of control at the end of 2021. And if
00:29:37.100 | that happened, we wouldn't have round tripped many of our big gains from 2020 and 2021.
00:29:44.260 | But thankfully, hopefully, all of you are wealthier now than you were in early 2020.
00:29:52.740 | So that's basically it talked about some positives, some negatives. The worst negative, of course,
00:29:59.540 | are the deaths due to the virus. And we can never get back those lives. So we have to
00:30:06.020 | remember them and we have to appreciate our lives. What are your thoughts in conclusion
00:30:11.100 | about the past two and a half, three years? Well, I'm I'm proud that we got through it
00:30:16.860 | and that we were productive during the time. And it's definitely something that we will
00:30:23.580 | remember forever. Yeah, most definitely. We need to spend more time with our loved ones,
00:30:30.340 | our parents, if they're still around, our uncles and aunts and our nieces and nephews.
00:30:36.300 | You know, I'm reading the Good Life book about the 80 year Harvard longitudinal study about
00:30:42.380 | what makes a good life. And the consistent theme is having good relationships with the
00:30:47.860 | people you care about the most and also having some soft relationships with just people you
00:30:54.140 | see infrequently as well to keep in touch, to listen, to understand, to empathize with
00:31:00.300 | their situation, and to just be there for them in times of need. Because the longer
00:31:06.020 | we live, the more good and bad things will happen. And so just just having more kindness
00:31:12.260 | and having more patience is so important. And that's something that I have tried to
00:31:17.740 | adopt and I will adopt going forward. Because for all of us, I think it was difficult times.
00:31:24.100 | Well, we try to look at the positives, and we try to be productive and take action. Because
00:31:30.220 | if there's another one coming, I think we're going to be better prepared. Yeah, there's
00:31:34.380 | going to be less fear obviously depends on the virality of the next virus. But I think
00:31:41.820 | we're going to get through it better. Yeah, and I think all of us will. So we'd love to
00:31:46.780 | hear from all of you on what were some of the positives and some of the negatives and
00:31:52.740 | the regrets during the past two and a half years of the pandemic. Really try to think
00:31:58.700 | back to the months of March, April, May, June, July, August of 2020. Because it's easy to
00:32:05.140 | forget. And it's easy for me to forget. And the only reason why I haven't forgotten is
00:32:10.580 | because I wrote a lot of posts back then. And I recorded a lot of episodes back then.
00:32:15.540 | And this has been one of my main reasons for keeping Financial Samurai going for so long
00:32:20.020 | is so that I won't forget because experiences tend to appreciate over time. And experiences,
00:32:27.300 | if you remember them, help teach you more about the past, you can live a better future.
00:32:33.180 | Thanks so much, everyone for listening. If you'd like to subscribe to our weekly newsletter,
00:32:37.360 | it's at financialsamurai.com/news. If you're looking for an affordable term life insurance
00:32:43.700 | policy, both my wife and I got two 20 year term policies during the pandemic. And that
00:32:50.180 | provided some tremendous mental relief. You can check out policygenius@financialsamurai.com/pg.
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