Pickleball
00:00:00.000 | Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai wishing you happy holidays. I'm
00:00:05.240 | actually sitting in the car right now recording this episode because both my
00:00:10.260 | daughter and son rebuffed me. I took them out to the playground and I wanted to
00:00:15.280 | play with them but my daughter didn't want to play see-saw and my son didn't
00:00:20.800 | want to ride a bike and so I told them okay if you don't want to play I'm gonna
00:00:25.120 | go record a podcast and make some lemonade and you guys can go play with
00:00:29.200 | mommy. So in a very big way recording these episodes and writing on Financial
00:00:34.440 | Samurai has been a savior for me as I try to be a good stay-at-home father.
00:00:39.600 | It's been over five and a half years now and it's been very tough because both my
00:00:44.840 | wife and I stay at home and when you have two stay-at-home parents there's
00:00:50.120 | not much of an outlet so you need to create an outlet. So Financial Samurai
00:00:54.640 | has been my outlet from fatherhood and I've discovered a new outlet from
00:01:00.000 | Financial Samurai because Financial Samurai can often take a lot of work,
00:01:04.000 | there's often a lot of criticism and sometimes there's just general lack of
00:01:08.120 | support. As a writer and as a podcaster now you just want to be heard, you just
00:01:14.000 | want to have some positive banter and to feel appreciated and sometimes that road
00:01:18.240 | is tough and so that outlet I've discovered from Financial Samurai and
00:01:23.200 | also parenthood is Pickleball. Now obviously Pickleball is not really
00:01:28.000 | personal finance related but it is life related and a lot of my episodes and a
00:01:33.520 | lot of my writing talks about how to lead a happier more purposeful better
00:01:38.600 | life with the money we have. During the pandemic my outlet was tennis you know
00:01:45.120 | find some friends and we'd go to any public park we could find that was
00:01:49.880 | unlocked and that didn't have reservations and we'd play and we'd feel
00:01:53.080 | better mentally and physically. However I overdid it I played over 29 official USTA
00:02:00.280 | tennis league matches in 2022 and as a result my right shoulder I think has a
00:02:06.680 | torn labrum or something it hurts I hurts a lot every time I serve and I
00:02:12.760 | hit high topspin forehands and then my hips my hips are popping a little bit
00:02:17.780 | and then my knees they've been they've been giving me issues for over a decade
00:02:21.000 | now but I've played through it and I haven't had all these physical problems
00:02:25.160 | in a while because I hadn't been playing so much but since 2022 when things
00:02:30.480 | started opening up and everybody became more social I started to play more
00:02:34.440 | tennis almost like a catch-up like a catch-up from not playing as much in
00:02:38.040 | 2020 and 2021 and it's kind of like the travel boom in 2022 everybody's catching
00:02:43.960 | up to travel like crazy because they didn't travel as often in the past two
00:02:48.920 | years. So with my injuries I needed to find some other outlet and that outlet
00:02:55.720 | is pickleball because pickleball is about 20 to 30 percent of the impact
00:03:01.280 | tennis has on my body and I think most people's body so you can play two to
00:03:06.520 | three times longer to start before you start feeling those aches and pains or
00:03:10.320 | you can play the same amount of time as you play tennis if you play tennis and
00:03:13.880 | you'll feel 70 to 80 percent less aches and pains. Another great reason why you
00:03:21.280 | should play pickleball is if you're looking for an activity to do with your
00:03:25.880 | partner, your friend, your loved one because my wife and I you know we love
00:03:30.920 | to do things together but we have different interests. She's musically
00:03:34.560 | talented I'm not really I play some guitar I play a lot of sports she
00:03:39.200 | doesn't you know we can go on hikes which is one of our favorite activities
00:03:42.640 | but we wanted to find new activities to do as we get older and with pickleball
00:03:47.640 | there is a low low hurdle to overcome to start playing. You can start hitting the
00:03:52.880 | ball back and forth within five ten minutes and then within 30 minutes to an
00:03:57.640 | hour two hours tops you can get good enough to play regular games. However
00:04:02.840 | with tennis it's a much higher hurdle sport to overcome so if you have
00:04:08.440 | dissimilar levels it's not gonna be that fun for both parties. And then when my
00:04:13.360 | father and mother finally visited for the first time in three years well I did
00:04:17.760 | see them a year ago because I flew to Hawaii to see them but I hadn't seen him
00:04:21.600 | in a year and I realized hmm at 77 years old and 75 years old they could sure use
00:04:29.160 | some more physical activity light impact low impact physical activity and they
00:04:34.960 | could sure use some more community and once I started playing pickleball I
00:04:38.720 | realized wow the game is so much better for your body on your body and the
00:04:43.880 | community aspect was wonderful wonderful wonderful there were plenty majority of
00:04:49.600 | people were over 60 years old and everybody was nice everybody was nice
00:04:54.680 | and the games were quick you just put your paddle down on a on a court and at
00:04:59.760 | most you wait 15 minutes and usually you wait under 10 minutes to start playing.
00:05:03.760 | When we get older we get more lonely you heard about that in a previous episode
00:05:08.640 | and you read about that in a previous post and one day one day we might not
00:05:14.000 | have anybody as people die out or people have different lives to lead so that
00:05:19.000 | community aspect if you want to feel less lonely I think pickleball is it's
00:05:23.440 | been the most welcoming sports community I have ever been a part of and I've done
00:05:28.440 | tennis I've done soccer and I've done softball pickleball is by far the most
00:05:35.600 | welcoming sport I gotta be frank I think my fear of loneliness is getting to me
00:05:42.280 | which is why I've recorded this podcast previous podcast and written a post
00:05:47.720 | about loneliness I see my parents aging one day they won't have each other and I
00:05:53.720 | know it's gonna be the same thing for us and I know that our kids will want to
00:05:58.120 | play with their friends I mean already they don't want to play with me so I'm
00:06:02.320 | trying to find an outlet elsewhere and so you know holiday season can be really
00:06:07.200 | good or it can feel really lonely as this is the time where you really know
00:06:13.400 | who your friends and family are and if they're not around relative to other
00:06:19.080 | people sharing their family stories and travels and trips you're probably gonna
00:06:23.800 | feel a little bit down so I just wanted to share this episode to tell you how
00:06:28.640 | much pickleball has helped me get through the tough times the down moments
00:06:33.400 | I do believe there's a an important mental to physical connection to
00:06:37.840 | everything we do we just can't you know type on our computers for eight to ten
00:06:42.040 | hours a day I think we need balance and part of that balance is having physical
00:06:46.280 | exercise feeling the Sun on your face laughing with friends meeting new people
00:06:52.360 | exercising getting out there that has always made me feel happier and I know
00:06:57.760 | it'll make you feel happier as well one of the most important things any
00:07:02.480 | financial samurai should do is plan for the future pre-mortem planning plan 5 10
00:07:09.360 | 15 years out planning is free and as a 45 year old I know my life is half over
00:07:15.520 | now but I'm trying to plan for the future where I'll get slower I'll get
00:07:20.560 | more injured maybe I'll have different interests and maybe some people will
00:07:25.120 | come and go in my life so I'm trying to lock down that one stable thing that I
00:07:30.000 | could do that could bring me joy and that's pickleball planning ahead is
00:07:34.800 | something in 1999 I did to plan ahead to try to retire by 40 and starting
00:07:40.560 | financial samurai was planning ahead so I had something purposeful and meaningful
00:07:45.560 | to do after I retired from finance because I read everything I could about
00:07:50.600 | early retirement and I knew there were a lot of downsides including loneliness
00:07:55.480 | boredom lack of purpose and also a lack of identity all of us want to build more
00:08:02.160 | wealth we want to generate enough passive income so we can do what we want
00:08:05.760 | but even if we get to a level where we are absolutely free life is just not
00:08:10.880 | that fun if we don't have purpose if we don't have a goal we don't have meaning
00:08:14.860 | you know with pickleball it might sound silly everybody should find their own
00:08:18.840 | pickleball if pickleball is not for you but for me it gives me a purpose to stay
00:08:23.160 | in shape so I can be more competitive on the court I want to learn all about the
00:08:27.760 | strategies so fun learning about double strategies and single strategies I want
00:08:32.240 | to test out new equipment you know paddles are $60 to $250 I'm gonna work
00:08:37.280 | my way up and you know try them out it's gonna be so fun what I realize is that
00:08:42.480 | we should all try new things something awesome to do starting from the
00:08:47.360 | beginning is the most fun because you experience the most amount of progress
00:08:51.000 | you're the most passionate about something I remember playing golf when I
00:08:55.440 | was like a 25 handicapper going to a 10 handicapper was exhilarating but trying
00:09:00.640 | to break 10 handicap consistently was no fun anymore you know I had to get on the
00:09:06.120 | green and regulation to putt you know to try to get par and hit some occasional
00:09:11.200 | birdies and that was really really challenging and not as fun so go out
00:09:15.600 | there find something new to do that challenges you that makes you happy that
00:09:20.240 | gets you outside if it's not pickleball hopefully you can find something else
00:09:24.120 | because life is so much better when you have this great fun activity to look
00:09:29.920 | forward to thanks so much everyone for listening if you like this episode or
00:09:34.640 | any episodes I love a five-star positive review and also if you want to support
00:09:38.880 | my work you can check out by this not that at financial samurai comm forward
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00:09:53.360 | to financial samurai comm forward slash news talk to you later