Providers_Clock
00:00:00.000 | Hello everybody, it's Sam and Sydney from the Financial Samurai podcast where we try
00:00:12.800 | to help you achieve financial freedom sooner rather than later.
00:00:16.920 | In this episode, we want to talk about a concept called a provider's clock for men.
00:00:25.100 | Women can definitely have a provider's clock too, but I'm trying to think about it from
00:00:28.640 | a man's point of view because I'm a man and this is something that I came up with.
00:00:33.720 | So what is a provider's clock?
00:00:36.160 | A provider's clock starts ticking as soon as a man's first born son or daughter is born.
00:00:45.240 | And it keeps on ticking at least until the age of 18, but likely for 25, maybe 30 years
00:00:53.080 | until the father knows their child can be financially independent and stand on their
00:00:58.780 | own two feet or has found someone who loves them as much as he loves their children and
00:01:05.400 | can provide for them.
00:01:06.900 | So that is my definition of a provider's clock.
00:01:10.620 | And I liken the provider's clock to a woman's biological clock.
00:01:16.440 | And the biological clock for a woman starts maybe teenage years, maybe after college where
00:01:24.260 | the woman might start thinking about having children up till the age of 45.
00:01:31.400 | And when I say 45, because after 45, the chances of having a child naturally declines to less
00:01:37.760 | than 5%.
00:01:39.680 | But really after 35, the chances of a woman conceiving and giving birth naturally starts
00:01:46.640 | really going down because of abnormalities in chromosomes.
00:01:51.200 | It's just biology.
00:01:52.860 | So that clock starts ticking and it gets louder and louder as that deadline comes and then
00:02:00.280 | it eventually fades.
00:02:02.260 | What are your thoughts about these two types of clocks, the provider's clock and the biological
00:02:08.520 | clock?
00:02:09.520 | Well, you're the first person I've come across to use the term provider's clock, so props
00:02:14.120 | to your originality.
00:02:16.360 | And I think this topic that you've brought up is quite relatable for a lot of folks and
00:02:23.200 | I think it makes for a great discussion.
00:02:25.200 | Alrighty.
00:02:26.200 | Well, hopefully this concept of provider's clock resonates with all of y'all and it becomes
00:02:31.000 | a more popular term going forward because I think it's very important.
00:02:35.640 | I wanted to record this episode because I don't like feeling negativity and I don't
00:02:40.640 | really like judging people either.
00:02:43.240 | I want people from all types to read Financial Samurai, share their perspectives in a respectful
00:02:49.160 | manner and feel welcome.
00:02:52.340 | So this negative feeling started around 2005 when we moved into this other house in the
00:02:58.760 | Marina district on the north side of San Francisco.
00:03:02.200 | Across the street was a neighbor who threw parties.
00:03:05.560 | His dad bought him the house while he was in law school.
00:03:08.200 | So he was like, I don't know, 24, 25 years old and the house was bought for $1.8 million.
00:03:15.480 | Pretty nice, right?
00:03:16.520 | He also drove an Audi S4, which at the time probably cost $40,000 to $50,000.
00:03:22.440 | And we were hearing the noise and our bedroom was facing the front street facing their house.
00:03:28.200 | And this is when I started getting annoyed because I needed to wake up at 5am, no later
00:03:32.540 | than 5.30am every single morning for my job.
00:03:35.440 | And these guys are throwing parties every weekend or every other weekend and disturbing
00:03:39.560 | me.
00:03:40.720 | And so that resentment, that anger, that negativity started boiling up in me because this guy
00:03:48.240 | was getting a free ride from the bank of mom and dad, whereas we had just purchased this
00:03:52.880 | house.
00:03:53.880 | We went all in.
00:03:54.880 | I saved a lot of money.
00:03:56.120 | I took a lot of investment risks and I put down hundreds of thousands of dollars and
00:04:00.640 | took on this big mortgage.
00:04:02.480 | So I had this huge responsibility.
00:04:04.880 | I was more stressed than normal and I wasn't sleeping on the weekend sometimes because
00:04:09.840 | of the neighbor.
00:04:11.760 | And so that resentment built.
00:04:14.240 | Then in 2014, we bought a fixer in Golden Gate Heights, which is on the West side of
00:04:19.060 | San Francisco with some nice ocean views, really quiet, quaint neighborhood and my favorite
00:04:23.900 | neighborhood in all of San Francisco.
00:04:26.680 | And that's when I met my other neighbor, a 24 year old son who was quite cold.
00:04:33.400 | He took a long time to graduate college and he moved back in with his parents.
00:04:38.320 | Every time I'd walk by him, he wouldn't say a thing.
00:04:41.960 | He was really, really prickly.
00:04:44.480 | And so I got to wondering, yo, what's, what's wrong with you?
00:04:47.560 | I'm just saying, hi, I'm just the friendly neighbor.
00:04:49.800 | What's up?
00:04:50.800 | Well, 10 years later in 2024, he's still living at home with his parents.
00:04:58.000 | His parents moved out, but the parents just let him stay at home.
00:05:01.860 | So knowing this, I started feeling a little negative about him again, right?
00:05:06.340 | He was really not a nice guy, but here's this guy.
00:05:10.440 | He went to college, his bank of mom and dad paid for his house again, and he was essentially
00:05:16.200 | living for free.
00:05:17.600 | So I've noticed a lot of this happening, particularly for men, where the parents take
00:05:23.000 | care of the men and the men stay at home with their parents.
00:05:27.500 | And I know San Francisco home prices are higher than normal, so this is pretty common.
00:05:31.680 | But I don't see a lot of women living at home with their parents.
00:05:35.300 | They are either independent or they're living with their partner.
00:05:39.400 | And then in 2017, we had our first child, a beautiful baby boy.
00:05:45.180 | And all this worry kind of came back to me during the middle of the night, you know,
00:05:50.920 | when I was rocking him to sleep or singing him to sleep.
00:05:54.800 | Will our son turn out to be like one of these entitled boys who are cold and prickly and
00:06:01.160 | don't care about their neighbors?
00:06:04.040 | That's when it hit me.
00:06:05.600 | I was like, what is going on with some of the men in our society?
00:06:10.540 | And there's this book out there.
00:06:11.880 | I think Richard Reeves, he wrote a book called Of Boys to Men, and it talks about the problems
00:06:17.320 | more and more young men face in society.
00:06:20.720 | And I started to get word.
00:06:22.320 | And then as one of the pioneers of the modern day fire movement, when I started writing
00:06:27.220 | about reaching financial independence and retiring early in 2009 with the launch of
00:06:31.960 | Financial Samurai, I have noticed over the past four or five years, maybe the past three
00:06:38.480 | years in particular, more and more men claim they are financially independent while they
00:06:44.800 | have working spouses, working wives.
00:06:49.040 | And some blogging friends I know retired 12 years ago and their wives are still working
00:06:54.920 | even though they don't want to work.
00:06:57.660 | And no woman who is a stay at home parent, stay at home mom, has ever said that they
00:07:02.860 | are retired.
00:07:04.780 | And so I was just very curious about why there's such this difference.
00:07:09.680 | And I didn't feel as much respect and love for these men who claim they're financially
00:07:15.300 | independent while their wives continue to work and make hundreds of thousands of dollars
00:07:19.940 | and earn retirement benefits and pay for healthcare benefits.
00:07:24.600 | And I think part of the reason why is because our situation is not like that.
00:07:30.140 | We both don't have traditional day jobs and I feel a lot of pressure to be a stay at home
00:07:36.420 | father and to make sure our finances are okay.
00:07:41.100 | So this is why.
00:07:43.300 | This is kind of like my therapy session to try to understand why I've been feeling this
00:07:48.580 | type of growing negativity towards men who are still living at home with their parents.
00:07:53.380 | What does it matter to me?
00:07:54.380 | It shouldn't bother me at all.
00:07:56.300 | But once I had my son, those worries started creeping in because I know, for example, the
00:08:02.300 | men who claim financial independence while depending on their working wives are actually
00:08:06.340 | secretly a little bit perturbed and they're a little bit maybe embarrassed that they can't
00:08:11.540 | let their wives enjoy the freedom they have as well.
00:08:16.020 | And maybe they're a little bit embarrassed because they can't cut it in the workplace
00:08:20.080 | anymore.
00:08:21.080 | Hey, I couldn't cut it in the workplace anymore after 13 years.
00:08:23.180 | I was burned out.
00:08:24.180 | I said forget about it.
00:08:25.260 | So I understand that.
00:08:26.740 | At the end of the day, we're just fooling ourselves if we're saying we're financially
00:08:31.540 | good while we're depending on our spouses.
00:08:34.660 | So Cindy, do you have a biological clock?
00:08:36.900 | And if you do have a biological clock, when do you think that clock started ticking?
00:08:41.140 | That's a good question.
00:08:43.300 | It's hard for me to say exactly when I first started to feel anxious about having kids.
00:08:49.420 | But I will say when I was in my 20s and even in my early 30s, I went through a period where
00:08:56.580 | I wasn't sure if I felt confident about having kids at all.
00:09:02.020 | And I think this was because it just seemed like such a foreign concept to me initially
00:09:05.740 | and not something I felt ready to grapple with because I was so focused on my career
00:09:10.740 | for so long and I was struggling a lot with work like balance and I just didn't know that
00:09:16.740 | I could take anything else on.
00:09:18.980 | But I would say that once I hit my mid-30s, that's when I really felt like, okay, I do
00:09:26.220 | want to have kids.
00:09:27.540 | And you were also on the same page at that point and I felt mature enough, I felt that
00:09:33.100 | I had gone far enough in my career, I felt we were financially stable and secure and
00:09:38.660 | I was really ready for a lifestyle change.
00:09:41.720 | You were feeling okay starting in your mid-30s, but I would say that that is pretty late.
00:09:46.580 | It may sound late, but for San Francisco, that's actually very common.
00:09:51.980 | A lot of moms that I know also had kids late compared to the rest of the country at least.
00:10:01.300 | I think there's been a shift in our country as a whole with more couples getting married
00:10:07.260 | later and then also naturally having children later.
00:10:10.820 | I think cost has a lot to do with it, lifestyle has a lot to do with it, juggling so many
00:10:16.420 | things.
00:10:17.420 | Yeah.
00:10:18.420 | For me, I felt like I needed to be on a career path with a real clear trajectory at the age
00:10:25.660 | of 30.
00:10:26.660 | I didn't have time for kids and then I remember my friend who I worked with at Golden Saks,
00:10:32.500 | he went to Yale, he grew up quite privileged and now he's at a hedge fund and he said,
00:10:37.740 | "I'm not having kids until I have a million-dollar net worth."
00:10:41.540 | And I was thinking to myself, okay, million-dollar net worth sounds like a good target.
00:10:45.340 | I didn't know better when I was in my 20s.
00:10:47.860 | I was 22 to 24 at the time when I worked at Goldman and I thought, okay, it stuck with
00:10:53.500 | me ever since.
00:10:55.260 | For me, I've always thought by age 30, you need to be someone in your career and then
00:11:00.020 | have a million-dollar net worth to have kids.
00:11:02.260 | Now that I'm 46, I think to myself, well, obviously that's unnecessary to have a million-dollar
00:11:06.940 | net worth.
00:11:07.940 | The majority of Americans don't wait until they have a million-dollar net worth to have
00:11:11.940 | kids but here I was living in Manhattan and then San Francisco where the median home price
00:11:18.140 | is $1.7 million now and I was thinking to myself, well, that kind of makes sense.
00:11:23.860 | Did you have any kind of financial goals before or career goals before wanting to have kids?
00:11:29.020 | I didn't have as specific goals as you did but I did want to get to a certain point in
00:11:36.220 | my career which I managed to do and I also wanted to feel that we were stable and also
00:11:43.700 | emotionally ready because it's a big step in life and in marriage and I didn't want
00:11:50.180 | to commit to having a family until we both felt ready.
00:11:56.060 | The problem with that though is going back to the biological clock.
00:11:59.540 | If you look at the data, having kids for women after age 35 becomes increasingly more difficult
00:12:06.200 | for natural conception and then once you hit 45, basically there's almost no chance to
00:12:13.500 | conceive naturally.
00:12:15.500 | Did you ever feel that pressure or did you know those statistics when you were in your
00:12:20.500 | earlier 30s or mid-30s?
00:12:22.340 | I think I started to look at it when I crossed over 30 and yeah, it's a lot to take in.
00:12:29.380 | I think a lot of couples feel concerned about whether having a family will be possible for
00:12:36.440 | them because it frankly doesn't always happen when you want it to.
00:12:41.360 | No.
00:12:42.360 | I just feel that so much planning actually needs to be involved in order for couples
00:12:49.400 | nowadays to have children, especially couples who live in very expensive cities like San
00:12:54.000 | Francisco, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC and so forth.
00:13:01.560 | If you wait too long and if you don't plan well enough, I think it's going to be hard
00:13:05.520 | for a lot of folks who are waiting after age 35 for women that is.
00:13:10.360 | Do you have friends or colleagues who just couldn't have children because they waited
00:13:15.280 | too long or they had to go the IVF route?
00:13:18.320 | Yeah, I do.
00:13:20.240 | Some of them were younger.
00:13:21.960 | Some of them were older.
00:13:23.960 | Even if you're in your 20s, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to have a baby
00:13:29.040 | right away.
00:13:30.560 | Getting pregnant is harder than most people realize until they're actually trying to start
00:13:34.620 | a family and it's emotional.
00:13:37.440 | It's emotional for both sides.
00:13:39.800 | Fortunately, something that more and more people are opening up to talking about and
00:13:46.360 | this greater awareness I think will help more people plan as the younger generations are
00:13:52.560 | growing up.
00:13:53.560 | Yeah, I think family planning is just as important if not more important than financial planning
00:14:00.200 | because biology, it's either going to cooperate or it's not going to cooperate.
00:14:05.200 | Whereas financial planning, you know that if you save an X amount of money over a Y
00:14:09.760 | period of time with a Z percentage return, compound annual return, you're going to get
00:14:16.320 | to a financial figure that will make you happy and make you financially independent or not.
00:14:24.280 | Whereas with family planning, you got to meet the right person, you got to get married,
00:14:32.200 | you got to live your life before having children, then you have children and you got to calculate
00:14:36.680 | how many years between if you want X number of children and then you got to pay for the
00:14:41.680 | children.
00:14:43.420 | For those of you who are younger, who are newlyweds or new couples thinking about starting
00:14:48.440 | a family, you've got to plan.
00:14:50.720 | You've got to plan carefully and you have to have different scenarios just like financial
00:14:55.760 | planning.
00:14:56.760 | Now, I want to turn back to this idea of the provider's clock for men which is like the
00:15:02.360 | biological clock for women because I feel, correct me if I'm wrong, the biological clock
00:15:08.160 | for women could last maybe 30 years, maybe let's say from age 15 to 45 and I use 45 because
00:15:15.260 | after 45, it's almost impossible to conceive naturally.
00:15:19.420 | Do you think 30 years is a reasonable amount of time?
00:15:22.500 | I mean obviously, it's there, the clock starts but I would say a lot of women probably aren't
00:15:28.040 | thinking about it until mid-20s, late-20s but again, it depends on when you meet someone,
00:15:35.420 | when you settle down, where you are with your career, it can be all over the place frankly.
00:15:40.380 | Yeah.
00:15:41.380 | But let's say mid-20s, so 25, so 25 to 45, so 20 year ticking biological clock.
00:15:47.620 | Now, so for men, the provider's clock starts with the birth of your son or daughter and
00:15:55.060 | then it ends, it has to end at least at the earliest at age 18 I would say because that's
00:16:03.060 | technical adulthood and maybe up until age, after 25 years maybe or 30 years or whatever
00:16:10.220 | that time period is when your child is financially independent.
00:16:14.820 | What do you think about that concept of the provider's clock and that time frame?
00:16:19.040 | I think that all makes sense.
00:16:20.820 | Okay.
00:16:21.820 | Well, I have realized, I feel that the desire for a man to provide for his family is innate,
00:16:31.540 | it's biological, it's part of evolution to allow our species to survive over the years
00:16:39.100 | and of course, women have a provider's clock as well.
00:16:42.820 | I'm just looking at it from a male's point of view, a man's point of view where I was
00:16:47.620 | perplexed.
00:16:49.080 | I was perplexed for the longest time of why I felt like, "Man, you're 35 years old and
00:16:55.980 | you're still living at home with your parents.
00:16:58.020 | I've got literally, we've got what, 5, 6 male neighbors who are still living at home with
00:17:02.980 | their parents in their late 20s and 30s and I was thinking to myself, "Yo, let's get on
00:17:08.620 | with it.
00:17:09.700 | Your life is ticking by.
00:17:11.540 | Let's try to be independent.
00:17:13.900 | Go live on your friend's couch if you need to but try to get out and launch.
00:17:20.300 | Otherwise, life is going to pass you by."
00:17:22.620 | I think it's harder to find someone if you're living at home with mom and dad and I think
00:17:27.180 | it's hard to impress someone if you're still living at home with mom and dad in your mid-30s
00:17:32.860 | for example.
00:17:33.860 | Now, this is judgmental thinking and this is why I wanted to change and so I realized
00:17:39.980 | to overcome my lack of admiration for men who don't provide in terms of financially,
00:17:47.820 | I realized, "Ah, it's biological."
00:17:51.180 | In the sense that some people have louder provider's clocks than others.
00:17:56.300 | So if you have a really loud provider's clock that's wound up, you're going to want to work
00:18:02.800 | and produce for society and do something meaningful and productive probably for the rest of your
00:18:08.260 | life no matter how rich you get.
00:18:10.900 | And if you have a quiet provider's clock, you'd be willing to, maybe you'd work hard
00:18:16.780 | in the beginning but then you'd be willing to just check out earlier, retire earlier
00:18:20.740 | as they say, and let your wife be the primary breadwinner which is totally fine and that's
00:18:28.260 | my realization that everybody is wired differently because genetics is different for everybody.
00:18:34.020 | Yes, I can totally see how everybody is wired differently and the level of desire that each
00:18:42.740 | person has in terms of how much they want to work and provide, it's going to be different.
00:18:49.020 | And I just realized something, so for our daughter and actually for our son, I think
00:18:53.540 | it's important if you're going to be with someone, if you're going to commit to someone
00:18:58.060 | in a committed relationship, marry them, whatnot, is to find out how strong is their biological
00:19:04.780 | clock and their provider's clock.
00:19:07.480 | So let's say our daughter finds someone in the future and they have a very weak or soft
00:19:14.260 | provider's clock.
00:19:15.620 | It's important for her to know this because that means that she will likely have to work
00:19:20.180 | hard for a longer period of time, right?
00:19:22.540 | And so if that's the case, she needs to be okay with that, to be with someone with a
00:19:27.580 | quiet provider's clock.
00:19:29.460 | And I do think it's important to have as many serious conversations before getting married
00:19:34.980 | as possible about what both partners want in the future.
00:19:40.500 | If one person is adamant about not having children and the other person really wants
00:19:45.740 | to have children, they need to have some serious conversations about whether or not they're
00:19:50.460 | going to be compatible long term.
00:19:52.420 | And the other thing is, if you want to retire early in your career, like you already know
00:19:57.220 | this, right?
00:19:58.540 | You need to find someone with a very loud provider's clock.
00:20:02.380 | Someone who maybe grew up poor or who faced a lot of discipline and struggle in their
00:20:10.460 | childhood where they need to prove to their parents that they can be on their own.
00:20:16.420 | And so it's almost like you have to really strategically think about how strong someone's
00:20:22.180 | drive is if you are thinking about taking it easier, right?
00:20:26.340 | Because strategically, we know some people marry rich so they don't have to grind it
00:20:30.380 | out, whereas some people are fine to be independent and grind as long as possible because they
00:20:36.580 | have that strong provider's clock.
00:20:38.580 | So something to think about and teach our children about that both biological clock
00:20:43.660 | and provider's clock going forward.
00:20:45.660 | Alrighty, folks, we hope you enjoyed this discussion about biology and the provider's
00:20:51.220 | clock.
00:20:52.220 | If you ever encounter someone that bothers you, that does something that you wouldn't
00:20:56.900 | do, that makes you mad, maybe angry, maybe miffed, just think about how biology affects
00:21:03.300 | us.
00:21:04.300 | I think biology is probably the majority of how we think, our personalities, how we act.
00:21:12.740 | The majority means 50.1%, right?
00:21:15.140 | I think biology probably governs maybe 70% of who we are and the rest is the environment,
00:21:21.180 | how we were raised, how we were taught.
00:21:24.380 | So in other words, a lot of us just can't help the way we are.
00:21:29.060 | Some of us have more positive demeanors.
00:21:31.860 | Some of us are nicer, more patient, have better charisma, laugh more, or some of us are sulkier,
00:21:38.380 | you know, Debbie Downers, whatever it is.
00:21:42.060 | And we should try to step back next time we see someone we don't like or something and
00:21:47.760 | try to understand what is it exactly that's bothering us.
00:21:52.140 | And maybe the reality is they just are who they are and we have to accept them for who
00:21:58.340 | they are.
00:21:59.340 | And if they're not doing anything negatively to affect us, then we should just let them
00:22:04.420 | be and stop judging.
00:22:06.860 | Thanks everyone for listening.
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00:22:13.320 | We read all the reviews and they motivate us to keep on going.
00:22:17.700 | But also if you want to increase your chances of achieving financial independence sooner,
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00:22:29.200 | Thanks so much.
00:22:30.200 | Bye everyone.
00:22:30.720 | [Music]
00:22:35.720 | you