RPF0297-Jim_Wang

00:00:00.000 | One of the most incredible things about human beings

00:00:02.220 | is that we are creators,

00:00:04.480 | and we're able to think abstractly and conceptually.

00:00:07.760 | We're able to visualize places that we aren't,

00:00:12.760 | both physical places and places in life,

00:00:17.880 | non-physical concepts.

00:00:20.340 | And I think this is really, really valuable

00:00:21.760 | when it comes to goal setting.

00:00:22.760 | We want to think about,

00:00:24.040 | is being in a different place worth it?

00:00:26.500 | If I go down this path of building wealth

00:00:29.640 | and becoming financially independent,

00:00:31.320 | is it gonna be worth it?

00:00:32.600 | It's one reason why I encourage you,

00:00:34.580 | spend a lot of time with wealthy people.

00:00:36.280 | Take once a week, take somebody rich out to lunch

00:00:38.920 | and ask them, how did you get where you got to?

00:00:41.560 | Well, I try to do that here on the show for you a little bit

00:00:44.420 | and today I'm thrilled to have Jim Wang.

00:00:46.140 | Jim is an awesome guy,

00:00:47.880 | built a website called Bargaineering,

00:00:49.520 | was at the Pioneer,

00:00:50.880 | he's one of the pioneers

00:00:51.800 | of the online personal finance community,

00:00:54.240 | sold the website, got rich,

00:00:55.600 | and he's here today to tell us what it's like

00:00:58.320 | so you can decide if you want to copy him.

00:01:01.640 | (upbeat music)

00:01:04.220 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

00:01:19.920 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.

00:01:22.220 | I'm your host, I'm your guide, I'm your Sherpa,

00:01:24.960 | I'm your lead adventurer.

00:01:28.340 | Working hard each and every day to build a rich life now,

00:01:33.340 | while also constructing the foundation

00:01:36.620 | for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:01:40.060 | And today, my guest has done both those things.

00:01:43.340 | (upbeat music)

00:01:45.920 | Longtime listeners of the show will recognize

00:01:52.020 | that as I really try to narrow in

00:01:54.420 | on what's the message of financial independence,

00:01:56.780 | or excuse me, what's the message

00:01:58.260 | of radical personal finance?

00:01:59.260 | I tried to home in on that and really get clear.

00:02:01.860 | And as far as I'm concerned,

00:02:03.220 | the best I've got so far is,

00:02:04.900 | it's about living a rich life now

00:02:06.700 | and building financial freedom

00:02:08.580 | in a short enough time span

00:02:10.060 | where you can actually conceive of it.

00:02:12.020 | I'm not against building financial freedom in 40 years,

00:02:14.740 | but I also don't think you gotta wait 40 years.

00:02:17.300 | I think a decade is a really reasonable amount of time.

00:02:19.960 | And so part of my fulfilling that mission,

00:02:22.620 | that vision, that outline, that catchy statement

00:02:25.820 | is to bring you examples of people who've done it.

00:02:28.860 | And we'll talk in the future, what is financial freedom?

00:02:31.580 | I've got the stages and steps of financial freedom,

00:02:33.780 | lots of different ways to define that.

00:02:35.220 | But today, my guest has done it.

00:02:38.120 | He lived a rich life and built financial freedom

00:02:40.460 | in 10 years or less.

00:02:42.020 | And he proves that it's doable.

00:02:45.780 | More importantly, not only was it doable once,

00:02:48.420 | he's doing it again.

00:02:49.900 | He's proving it again.

00:02:51.220 | And so I think you're really gonna enjoy

00:02:52.860 | this conversation with Jim Wang.

00:02:54.740 | Before I play the interview for you,

00:02:56.700 | two sponsors today.

00:02:58.000 | Number one sponsor is Paladin Registry.

00:03:00.660 | Paladin Registry is my go-to solution

00:03:02.740 | that I went out and tried to find for you guys

00:03:04.940 | in answering the question of how do I find

00:03:06.540 | a great financial advisor?

00:03:07.960 | Many of you have written to me and spoken to me

00:03:09.780 | and said, Joshua, I appreciate the show.

00:03:11.260 | And it's nice to have somebody

00:03:12.560 | who's a former financial advisor showing

00:03:14.260 | and talking about what it's like

00:03:15.500 | from an accurate perspective.

00:03:17.220 | And hey, would you work with me?

00:03:18.220 | And my answer is no.

00:03:19.180 | I'm not willing to make the time to do it.

00:03:21.620 | I have 24 hours in a day and I'm focused

00:03:23.980 | on trying to create good media.

00:03:25.620 | But I needed a solution.

00:03:26.820 | So I went out and found Paladin Registry,

00:03:28.900 | which was my way for you to be able to

00:03:31.980 | build for yourself a financial advisory team.

00:03:34.240 | Now, I can't promise you that you're going

00:03:36.340 | to find a financial advisor that works for you

00:03:39.260 | through Paladin Registry.

00:03:40.980 | But I can promise you that if you start your search there,

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00:03:46.340 | The way it works is Paladin Registry

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00:03:51.820 | apply to be accepted.

00:03:53.280 | Then the Paladin team does some detailed

00:03:55.780 | due diligence on them, their credentials,

00:03:57.660 | their background, their history of complaints,

00:04:00.260 | their philosophy, et cetera.

00:04:02.060 | And then only after they are approved and vetted

00:04:04.620 | do they enter them into the registry service.

00:04:06.620 | So you go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/paladin,

00:04:10.460 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/P-A-L-A-D-I-N,

00:04:14.300 | link in the blog post for today's show,

00:04:16.060 | or if you just go on the website,

00:04:17.060 | you'll see on the sidebar,

00:04:18.420 | banners for Paladin Registry.

00:04:19.800 | Click that banner.

00:04:20.640 | That'll take you to a landing page.

00:04:22.100 | You'll put in your name.

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00:04:27.220 | Put in that information and Paladin will choose

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00:04:34.980 | They'll get in touch with you.

00:04:35.980 | You can get in touch with them.

00:04:36.900 | They'll send you the information so you're expecting it.

00:04:38.900 | And then you can start the interview process

00:04:40.800 | to see if they can serve you and help you.

00:04:43.300 | Each of them will be different.

00:04:44.240 | I encourage you to interview multiple people

00:04:46.140 | and choose the one that works the best for you.

00:04:48.740 | Radicalpersonalfinance.com/Paladin.

00:04:51.140 | Sponsor number two today is Jay Fleischman

00:04:53.460 | and the Student Loan Show.

00:04:54.580 | Jay's been a guest on Radical Personal Finance

00:04:56.740 | several times and Jay's an awesome guy.

00:04:59.380 | He does a great podcast, the Student Loan Show podcast.

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00:06:02.140 | And with that, here is the interview with Jim Wang.

00:06:04.740 | (electronic whirring)

00:06:07.660 | Jim, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.

00:06:09.540 | - Thanks for having me.

00:06:10.380 | Pleasure to be here.

00:06:11.200 | - So I love getting the opportunity

00:06:12.220 | to talk with guys like you.

00:06:13.660 | Having started to take an interest

00:06:15.960 | in the online world of personal finance

00:06:17.820 | back in the mid-2000s myself.

00:06:20.380 | Now, 10 years later, I look back

00:06:23.380 | and see all these names of people,

00:06:25.560 | and you're one of those guys who were involved

00:06:28.000 | in the very early days of online personal finance,

00:06:30.540 | and it's a real honor to spend a little time with you.

00:06:32.780 | And I'm thrilled to bring your story to my audience.

00:06:34.860 | I'd like to start with a simple question.

00:06:37.660 | You grew up rich, knew everything you needed to know

00:06:40.080 | about personal finance, and then have always been rich, right?

00:06:43.860 | What's your story with personal finance?

00:06:45.580 | - I think very few people that grow up rich

00:06:50.580 | sort of have good personal finance upbringings.

00:06:56.180 | 'Cause I mean, what's actually, it's funny you say that,

00:06:59.420 | because I think a lot of creativity

00:07:02.300 | comes out of not having a ton of money, right?

00:07:05.300 | You talk about, you think about startups.

00:07:08.020 | Startups, they get a ton of funding.

00:07:09.380 | They run into a lot of problems,

00:07:10.980 | because now they have the pressure

00:07:12.860 | to have to spend this money.

00:07:13.860 | A lot of problems, you turn the money to solve them.

00:07:16.540 | You lose a bit of that creativity.

00:07:18.820 | And while I'm not, just to set the record straight,

00:07:23.100 | didn't grow up rich.

00:07:24.100 | We grew up middle class.

00:07:25.700 | - There was heavy sarcasm intended in the leading question.

00:07:29.020 | - I don't wanna run past that and let everybody,

00:07:31.140 | you know, think like that. - Indeed.

00:07:33.340 | - I was one of those guys that was rich and lost it all.

00:07:35.620 | No, no, not like that.

00:07:37.420 | But we grew up, my parents immigrated here

00:07:42.900 | in the late '70s, '78.

00:07:45.300 | My dad came here on an education visa.

00:07:47.540 | My mom joined him a year later.

00:07:49.660 | And then I was born about a year after that.

00:07:52.340 | We were, I never felt like we were poor,

00:07:58.540 | though we certainly weren't rich.

00:07:59.900 | Like every family, we had to make trade-offs

00:08:02.100 | on what we wanted to spend on and what we didn't.

00:08:04.460 | And one of the big things that was important for us

00:08:07.260 | is family.

00:08:08.940 | And all of our family at the time was back in Taiwan.

00:08:12.860 | I mean, a lot of them are still there now.

00:08:15.100 | Many also moved to California.

00:08:16.860 | But in order to see them, you'd have to get on a plane.

00:08:20.220 | And if you can imagine flights,

00:08:22.300 | even today if you wanna get a flight to Taiwan,

00:08:24.340 | it's still a thousand plus dollars per person.

00:08:27.380 | - For sure.

00:08:28.420 | - You think about back in the '80s, right?

00:08:31.580 | You didn't have direct flights.

00:08:33.100 | Well, I remember we had flights where,

00:08:35.900 | I grew up in New York.

00:08:37.660 | New York to LA, LA to Alaska, Alaska to Japan,

00:08:41.940 | then Japan to Taiwan.

00:08:43.380 | It was over 24 hours.

00:08:44.740 | But so we would make trade-offs of what we wanted,

00:08:48.660 | which was to visit family.

00:08:49.940 | And given the limited income,

00:08:52.900 | I think, I look back and I didn't think that we were poor

00:08:59.100 | or anything like that, but we certainly weren't rich.

00:09:01.780 | - When did you start taking an interest

00:09:05.420 | in personal finance topics?

00:09:07.540 | - I think when I started working full-time

00:09:11.700 | my dad had always sort of preached being smart with money.

00:09:15.780 | And for them, they very much wanted me and my sister

00:09:20.100 | to focus on our education because when you move here,

00:09:23.500 | education is the clearest, most guaranteed path

00:09:28.420 | towards being able to support your family,

00:09:30.220 | get a good job and sort of live that American dream.

00:09:33.620 | There are so many different paths,

00:09:35.300 | but why is there always the sort of stereotype

00:09:39.380 | of Chinese kids, you should be a doctor, a lawyer,

00:09:43.580 | whatever, a lot of these professional type of degrees

00:09:46.460 | is because it's not a guarantee,

00:09:49.580 | but it's certainly better than say starting a business

00:09:53.660 | or things like that, because if you could start young

00:09:56.020 | and get that education as opposed to move here

00:09:58.580 | as an immigrant without necessarily the college degree

00:10:02.380 | or things that sort of the economics here

00:10:05.940 | will recognize as being valuable.

00:10:08.940 | You know, that's more of a guarantee than anything else.

00:10:12.060 | - Definitely.

00:10:13.100 | - And so, you know, they never really talked about money.

00:10:17.100 | Like even to this day, I don't know how much my dad makes

00:10:20.460 | or my mom makes.

00:10:22.300 | There's something we never talked about,

00:10:23.540 | it was sort of the adults took care of it

00:10:25.220 | and the kids, you focus on school.

00:10:27.680 | The only exceptions were when I started working,

00:10:30.660 | you know, my dad said, "All right,

00:10:31.500 | we're gonna open up a Roth IRA."

00:10:33.740 | And I was like, "I don't know what this is."

00:10:35.580 | He's like, "It's for your retirement.

00:10:36.580 | Don't worry about it, this is what you should do."

00:10:38.660 | And it wasn't until I started, you know,

00:10:41.260 | paying for the bills myself, sort of in college,

00:10:43.980 | not as much because there weren't that many bills.

00:10:45.820 | But once you start working and you have rent and utilities,

00:10:49.340 | and now your credit cards and things like that,

00:10:51.180 | once you start paying the bills,

00:10:53.380 | you start to really care about where this money's coming

00:10:56.580 | and going because now you're sort of out of the nest, right?

00:10:59.520 | We had for the time period until I was in college,

00:11:02.060 | my parents were sort of watching

00:11:03.860 | and making sure everything was okay,

00:11:05.860 | financially and otherwise.

00:11:07.900 | And once you graduate and you go out to the,

00:11:09.700 | quote unquote, "real world,"

00:11:11.300 | sort of that safety blanket's removed

00:11:14.340 | and you sort of have to learn it.

00:11:15.980 | You know, I got help from my parents

00:11:17.240 | and they would explain things to me,

00:11:18.260 | but it was more like, here's real life, figure it out.

00:11:22.840 | And I felt like, you know, I have to figure this out,

00:11:25.300 | otherwise things will go badly.

00:11:26.900 | - When and why did you start bargaineering?

00:11:30.420 | - So I started it in 2005 or four, I forget.

00:11:37.780 | But I started it because I had an interest.

00:11:41.380 | So I started working in 2003, worked a couple years.

00:11:45.260 | And at the time, my girlfriend, now my wife,

00:11:47.920 | was, she had a year left in school

00:11:51.060 | and then she worked, you know, two hours away

00:11:54.280 | for another year until we moved in,

00:11:56.560 | got married, all that stuff.

00:11:58.300 | And so I had all this free time at night.

00:12:01.000 | Like I wasn't going out, I wasn't doing any of that stuff.

00:12:04.060 | So I said, well, what am I gonna do with this?

00:12:05.620 | So I would just read about finance stuff.

00:12:09.500 | You know, I'd go to the gym, I'd come back,

00:12:10.860 | and I wasn't really a big television watcher.

00:12:13.900 | So I was like, well, what am I gonna do?

00:12:14.940 | I just started studying these different things,

00:12:17.100 | like 401ks, and you know, you get the employee manual.

00:12:20.020 | And I'm like, what is all this stuff?

00:12:22.100 | And I just started getting interested in it.

00:12:24.740 | And I said, well, you know,

00:12:26.260 | I also worked in a secure environment.

00:12:28.220 | I was in the defense industry.

00:12:29.660 | So I couldn't really like take notes and things like that.

00:12:33.020 | I wanted to be able to see what I was reading

00:12:35.980 | and interpreting while I was at work.

00:12:39.380 | And so I was like, oh, why don't I start a journal?

00:12:42.380 | And I just put, well, why don't I put it on the internet?

00:12:44.580 | And my background is in computer science.

00:12:46.120 | So the whole technical, sort of the light technical aspects

00:12:49.580 | of starting a blog weren't that challenging.

00:12:52.460 | So why don't I just start a blog?

00:12:54.160 | And over time, I've met other people,

00:12:57.380 | and it sort of snowballed into something bigger.

00:13:00.860 | - How long did you run bargaining before the site was sold?

00:13:04.340 | - I ruled five years.

00:13:07.400 | - Did you do it the entire time as a part-time endeavor,

00:13:12.000 | or how much were you working on the site?

00:13:13.700 | Did you transition from day job to full-time on the site?

00:13:17.820 | What was the story there?

00:13:19.620 | - So it's funny.

00:13:21.260 | I worked on it for three years full-time.

00:13:24.880 | And at the time that I quit my job,

00:13:27.580 | the site had been earning multiple of my salary,

00:13:31.060 | even though I was spending more of my hours at work.

00:13:33.940 | And it was interesting because I'd always associated

00:13:39.780 | sort of hard work and the actual time

00:13:43.820 | with how much money it was worth.

00:13:45.820 | Right, so I was paid a salary to go to work,

00:13:47.660 | and I enjoyed it a lot.

00:13:48.900 | I was doing interesting things.

00:13:50.020 | I was working with great people.

00:13:51.740 | So my work situation was great.

00:13:54.140 | And then I had this sort of side project

00:13:56.620 | that due to the scale of the internet was just enormous.

00:14:00.580 | But I only worked a couple hours a night on it.

00:14:03.460 | And near the end it started getting to be a little much

00:14:05.900 | 'cause I had all this work that I wanted to do

00:14:07.660 | and only so much time.

00:14:08.740 | So I started stretching it more and more at night.

00:14:11.460 | And so it got to the point where like,

00:14:14.180 | I have to spend more time on this,

00:14:16.020 | even though it's kind of a solitary effort.

00:14:18.100 | I was working on it on my own.

00:14:21.060 | I would lose the social aspect of hanging out with people

00:14:23.720 | and just chatting and whatnot.

00:14:26.580 | But I remember when I called my dad

00:14:29.540 | to just ask for his advice.

00:14:30.980 | I was like, oh, here's the website.

00:14:33.260 | And for him, my parents are very pragmatic,

00:14:36.800 | but you can imagine, like, we put all this education.

00:14:40.360 | I have a lot of degrees associated with engineering

00:14:43.720 | and computer science.

00:14:45.140 | And here I was telling my dad, hey,

00:14:47.380 | all these years I spent, all this money we spent,

00:14:50.340 | I'm gonna go work on this website

00:14:52.820 | that I created three years ago.

00:14:55.500 | And my dad was like, are you sure?

00:14:58.360 | And that's all he said.

00:15:01.180 | I mean, he said other things, but near the end,

00:15:02.780 | it was just like, are you sure?

00:15:03.980 | He wasn't trying to dissuade me.

00:15:05.580 | There's an understanding that due to my expertise

00:15:10.340 | and my experience and the fact that I had certain clearances

00:15:13.400 | I could get back into the work I was doing relatively easily

00:15:17.100 | as long as I didn't wait like 10 years.

00:15:19.220 | But a couple of years, I could probably get back into it

00:15:21.180 | without much of a problem.

00:15:22.940 | So I was like, well, if this fun little experiment fails

00:15:26.060 | in say three years, I can always go back.

00:15:27.640 | It's not a big deal.

00:15:28.640 | I don't know if I could go back after,

00:15:31.780 | even now, I guess 10 years later.

00:15:33.980 | I guess it's only been seven years

00:15:35.820 | since I quit my job in '08.

00:15:37.400 | But it was interesting when I went in to tell people

00:15:43.500 | because they were a little like,

00:15:48.180 | ah, it stinks you're going,

00:15:50.040 | but they were really intrigued.

00:15:51.900 | Like you have this website on the side.

00:15:54.700 | I was never anonymous,

00:15:55.660 | but I never shared this with my coworkers.

00:15:59.900 | It just never really came up too much.

00:16:02.660 | But you're gonna quit your job in the defense industry,

00:16:06.780 | pretty stable, pretty high paying to work on a website?

00:16:10.200 | And there were thoughts like, is this porn?

00:16:14.460 | Like, are you in porn?

00:16:15.380 | I'm like, no, I'm not.

00:16:16.420 | (laughing)

00:16:19.340 | But that was always the running joke

00:16:20.700 | a couple years afterwards.

00:16:22.140 | Like, really?

00:16:22.980 | So you work at home on a website.

00:16:25.320 | Yeah, but it's been amazing.

00:16:31.060 | - What did you do when you went from,

00:16:34.300 | 'cause you had a salary,

00:16:35.860 | and then you had, at the time that you quit,

00:16:38.140 | you were making much more than that with the website,

00:16:40.700 | and then following on,

00:16:41.580 | and we'll get to the big change

00:16:45.260 | when the site was sold later,

00:16:46.200 | but what did you do with the extra money?

00:16:49.540 | How did that change your life?

00:16:50.600 | Did you start spending it?

00:16:51.540 | Did you know better enough to save it?

00:16:53.100 | What did you do?

00:16:53.940 | - So in my mind, I had always considered

00:16:56.740 | the salary that I was earning

00:16:58.900 | was essentially buying time in the future.

00:17:01.500 | So I thought, all right,

00:17:02.620 | if let's say it made three times my salary that year,

00:17:06.900 | or five times, whatever it is,

00:17:07.940 | I was buying three to five years of just experimentation.

00:17:11.820 | Like, that was my psychological thinking

00:17:14.620 | in being able to quit a stable job, right?

00:17:17.220 | You can either trade an income stream

00:17:19.620 | that theoretically will be until I retire,

00:17:22.600 | say 30 or 40 years,

00:17:24.460 | for this sort of less stable,

00:17:27.760 | little riskier stream that's three or five times more,

00:17:31.620 | but may disappear in a year.

00:17:33.340 | So my thinking was, I'm just essentially,

00:17:36.360 | present value of my future.

00:17:37.700 | I was saying, all right,

00:17:38.580 | I can screw around for the next five years

00:17:41.800 | with this money as my income.

00:17:44.080 | So I saved it all.

00:17:45.120 | I saved as much as I could.

00:17:46.220 | I didn't buy anything extravagant.

00:17:48.780 | And I put a lot, as much as I could,

00:17:52.220 | into a SEP IRA,

00:17:55.500 | and just tried to reinvest as much as I could

00:17:59.540 | back into the business,

00:18:00.900 | to the extent that I knew how to.

00:18:02.980 | But the rest just went into savings.

00:18:05.580 | - So I read in an online,

00:18:08.220 | in a Forbes article, profile of you,

00:18:10.380 | that you ran bargaineering for five years,

00:18:12.660 | and then ultimately it was sold for about $3 million.

00:18:15.980 | You don't have to confirm or deny that.

00:18:17.380 | I read it on the internet, so it must be true.

00:18:19.540 | That's a big difference as far as a financial situation,

00:18:23.020 | where you go from earning a salary as an engineer,

00:18:25.920 | to having a really nice windfall.

00:18:29.160 | Facing that situation,

00:18:32.340 | what did you do when the checks started clearing?

00:18:35.100 | - I didn't do anything yet.

00:18:40.220 | Like, I waited a couple months.

00:18:42.420 | - To see if the money was gonna disappear

00:18:44.140 | out of the bank account. (laughs)

00:18:45.620 | - It wasn't so much that.

00:18:46.460 | It was just like, you kinda,

00:18:48.900 | my feeling was like, you have to kinda sit with it

00:18:50.700 | for a little bit,

00:18:52.300 | and kinda not make any sort of rash decisions,

00:18:56.780 | and any guesses.

00:18:57.980 | I remember,

00:19:01.320 | I remember riding the train back home,

00:19:06.300 | and realizing that that had happened.

00:19:07.940 | I was like, wow, this is not at all what I had expected

00:19:11.780 | when I first started it.

00:19:15.260 | This is really cool.

00:19:17.180 | Well, part of me was also like,

00:19:18.140 | what am I gonna do next,

00:19:19.900 | in terms of professional career?

00:19:22.500 | - Because that was your whole life at that time.

00:19:24.700 | - Yeah, it was everything.

00:19:26.620 | And we could talk about sort of like,

00:19:29.020 | the emotional challenges that came a little after that.

00:19:32.860 | But, you know, initially I was just like,

00:19:34.340 | I'm just gonna sit with this, wait for a little bit,

00:19:36.940 | and then maybe talk to some professionals

00:19:41.660 | to see if there's something I'm not getting.

00:19:44.940 | And yeah, a lot of it has to just do with comfort

00:19:48.900 | with the fact that it's such a large number.

00:19:51.100 | Right, like when you think about it,

00:19:53.260 | if that's all invested in the stock market,

00:19:54.900 | you know, 1% for most people,

00:19:57.420 | if you have 100 grand in the stock market,

00:19:59.460 | it goes down 1%, that's $1,000.

00:20:01.940 | That's, you could swallow that.

00:20:04.100 | - Right. - You could be like,

00:20:04.940 | oh, okay, this is something I'm not gonna touch

00:20:06.820 | for 30 years.

00:20:08.100 | Well, if you're in the millions and it goes down 1%,

00:20:10.700 | now you're talking sums that would equate

00:20:13.900 | to annual salaries.

00:20:15.340 | - Right, right.

00:20:16.620 | - Like there were times when the stock market

00:20:18.180 | was going up and down in 2008 where it was like

00:20:23.100 | how much I would have made in a single year,

00:20:26.480 | that first year I was working.

00:20:28.140 | And it was like, it's something you just gotta deal with.

00:20:31.340 | And you sort of get comfortable with it over time

00:20:34.020 | because you realize, you know, trough to peak,

00:20:37.980 | it's no more than a couple years.

00:20:40.960 | And if you're looking at it for 20 years,

00:20:44.400 | you're like, all right, this is gonna happen

00:20:45.640 | probably a couple more times, don't freak out.

00:20:47.960 | But yeah, it's, I don't know if I'm still comfortable

00:20:52.360 | with it, and actually I'm certain I'm still not comfortable

00:20:54.640 | with it, but I just tell myself, don't touch it.

00:20:59.180 | Just let it be there.

00:21:00.680 | Have an insurance plan in place if everything

00:21:04.000 | goes to sort of crap, but don't freak out.

00:21:07.600 | - What was the emotional journey like

00:21:10.440 | over the last five or six years?

00:21:12.600 | - So the emotional journey, this is the thing

00:21:17.240 | that sort of caught me off guard,

00:21:19.120 | was oftentimes we associate our worth

00:21:24.120 | with maybe how much we make, but also what we're doing.

00:21:27.720 | You couple that with, I very much need something

00:21:32.320 | to be working on, or I need to be working on something.

00:21:35.720 | And so for the longest time I was working on bargainering.

00:21:39.240 | Waking up, getting excited, jumping out of bed.

00:21:41.720 | I had this laundry list of things that I wanted to do.

00:21:44.480 | Wasn't things that I was forced to do, I wanted to do it,

00:21:47.000 | and I was excited to think about how am I gonna overcome

00:21:49.240 | all these challenges.

00:21:50.880 | And then overnight, it was like gone.

00:21:54.520 | There's the old adage, no one washes a rental car.

00:21:58.920 | Well, now I was in charge of a rental car,

00:22:01.720 | and while I was still invested financially,

00:22:06.760 | but also emotionally, it wasn't the same.

00:22:10.000 | I have two kids.

00:22:14.440 | I wonder if that sort of emptiness will happen

00:22:17.720 | when kids go off to college and graduate

00:22:20.120 | and start living their own lives.

00:22:22.080 | You spend all this time always thinking about

00:22:24.000 | making sure they're okay, building them up, all that stuff.

00:22:28.240 | And then that responsibility disappearing could be jarring.

00:22:32.440 | But yeah, so for a couple months, weeks or months,

00:22:36.880 | I can't exactly recall.

00:22:38.520 | I just felt a little empty.

00:22:41.200 | And while I wouldn't say I was depressed,

00:22:43.240 | a lot of people describe depression as not so much sadness

00:22:46.480 | but an emptiness.

00:22:48.180 | And that's sort of what I felt in the closest that I think

00:22:51.840 | that I have been to being depressed.

00:22:54.600 | But at least I sort of understood

00:22:56.280 | the thing that caused it.

00:23:00.480 | But yeah, but after that, I started finding other projects

00:23:03.480 | that I was interested in, and I started working on those,

00:23:06.160 | and they sort of filled in that space for me.

00:23:09.020 | - Did you ever, so it's obvious by the way that you speak,

00:23:15.520 | by your professional education resume,

00:23:17.560 | that at least you come across as very engineering,

00:23:22.040 | which is awesome.

00:23:23.480 | - Is that good?

00:23:24.760 | - It's a great thing.

00:23:25.640 | I mean, engineers are some of the most productive creators

00:23:29.760 | and accumulators of wealth because the careful personality,

00:23:34.120 | the controlled emotions, the logical mind,

00:23:37.080 | those skill sets when transferred over

00:23:39.380 | to financial management are really, really,

00:23:43.120 | really, really valuable.

00:23:44.760 | But I gotta ask, did you at some point pop the relief valve

00:23:48.640 | and buy something fun?

00:23:50.100 | - No, I don't know.

00:23:55.360 | - Nothing, not a car, a house?

00:24:00.160 | - But it wasn't related to that.

00:24:01.880 | It was because we needed a little more room.

00:24:03.480 | We were in a townhouse, and we bought a house

00:24:07.600 | that now in the Washington, D.C. area had 11 acres.

00:24:12.600 | So we, you know, granted, as I think back,

00:24:16.360 | would we have bought the house we're living in now

00:24:18.560 | if I was still working in the defense industry

00:24:21.480 | that I probably wouldn't have?

00:24:24.600 | But that's really the only extravagant thing.

00:24:29.240 | Yeah, I wonder, so my wife very much loves

00:24:35.040 | to celebrate little wins, and I know that celebrating wins

00:24:39.720 | is a very healthy thing to do.

00:24:42.480 | I just have never felt the need to.

00:24:45.880 | Like, I'm just like, oh, this is a good result.

00:24:49.100 | You know what it is?

00:24:50.600 | It is the engineer.

00:24:51.480 | It's the, you focus on the process

00:24:54.140 | and not necessarily the result,

00:24:55.400 | because the result can be a function

00:24:57.520 | of a variety of things, and it's your process

00:24:59.960 | that you need to sort of hone in and get right.

00:25:04.140 | And sometimes it doesn't work out

00:25:07.120 | due to things that are out of your control.

00:25:09.340 | And I think my thinking is just, you know,

00:25:11.040 | I'm focusing on the process.

00:25:12.680 | And, you know, it's not like we don't,

00:25:15.280 | we do enjoy it in the sense that we go on vacations

00:25:18.360 | and things like that, but nothing really crazy.

00:25:24.180 | - At this point in time, I know you--

00:25:26.780 | - Should I?

00:25:27.620 | You're the professional here.

00:25:28.860 | (laughing)

00:25:29.700 | I'm just the engineer pretending to be a financial guy.

00:25:34.700 | - I think it's almost a balance,

00:25:37.740 | and the reason I'm probing so hard on this,

00:25:41.780 | and I appreciate your candor, is because this is

00:25:44.680 | a conversation that rarely happens in the public space.

00:25:50.220 | Many people, me included, many people who,

00:25:55.220 | me included in the past, who are working

00:25:58.040 | toward a financial goal, what happens is we tend

00:26:01.200 | to set our sights on the financial goal.

00:26:03.680 | For me, the most striking thing was when I had set a goal

00:26:07.720 | of getting out of debt, and I put that

00:26:10.880 | as my number one goal, I put that as a primary focus,

00:26:13.560 | I put that as a very high goal, and I achieved it.

00:26:19.380 | And then I was left with that almost sense of loss,

00:26:23.900 | of saying, well, what do I do now?

00:26:25.900 | Where do I go from here?

00:26:27.460 | What's the next thing?

00:26:28.940 | And I tried to put the goal then,

00:26:30.700 | and set the next financial goal on an income goal,

00:26:34.040 | or a savings goal, and I achieved some of those things

00:26:36.860 | as well, and I still had that sense of, wait a second,

00:26:39.780 | this is the wrong thing.

00:26:41.220 | And then I started paying attention to what,

00:26:44.700 | I guess I just started, because I was coming through

00:26:47.900 | that sense of dissatisfaction with actually achieving

00:26:51.940 | the goal, I started to analyze it and realize

00:26:54.660 | that what I really enjoyed was the work,

00:26:56.860 | was the process, was that sense of focus,

00:26:59.420 | that sense of clear perspective.

00:27:01.620 | And I came to a couple of conclusions for myself,

00:27:05.540 | that money is a terrible goal, there may be things

00:27:09.140 | along the way that can be bought with money,

00:27:11.180 | that can be helpful, a little bit fulfilling,

00:27:13.500 | give a sense of value and of purpose,

00:27:16.560 | but money is a terrible goal.

00:27:18.660 | You might think it means a little bit different,

00:27:22.660 | you might think that looking at numbers on a spreadsheet

00:27:24.980 | is gonna, or in your bank account,

00:27:26.680 | is gonna be satisfying, and it is a little bit.

00:27:29.420 | Right now, I've got more money in my checking account

00:27:32.460 | right now, due to selling some investments

00:27:35.220 | and repositioning all of my finances for the next stage

00:27:38.920 | of my personal finance plan, I got more money

00:27:40.460 | sitting in my checking account than I've ever had.

00:27:42.260 | I'm sitting there looking at it, but it's like,

00:27:45.020 | okay, well I always dreamed of being able to look

00:27:46.980 | at that number there, but realistically,

00:27:48.940 | it's not, it's just a number.

00:27:51.060 | And so I purpose to focus on the process

00:27:54.680 | and focus on the journey, and I thought that

00:27:57.080 | the best encapsulation of it was who, I guess,

00:28:02.080 | Jim Rohn popularized it, but where he talks about

00:28:05.440 | the most important thing of becoming a millionaire

00:28:08.340 | is not having a million dollars.

00:28:10.560 | The most important thing of becoming a millionaire

00:28:12.860 | is becoming a millionaire, becoming the type of person

00:28:16.880 | who accumulates a million dollars.

00:28:18.540 | And then once you're there, that's one reason why

00:28:21.600 | the rich continually get richer and the poor

00:28:23.540 | continually get poorer, is the first million

00:28:26.040 | really is the hardest, because the person

00:28:27.860 | that you've gotta become to go from zero to a million

00:28:30.460 | dollars is very different than the person

00:28:32.160 | who starts at zero and stays at zero.

00:28:34.240 | But once you're the kind of person who puts together

00:28:36.320 | a million dollars, well, to add another million dollars,

00:28:39.320 | you're already that person, so you've already

00:28:41.180 | accomplished that personal transformation,

00:28:43.800 | those character development, that skill set,

00:28:45.940 | that stability, that careful approach,

00:28:48.120 | all of those skills that go into it.

00:28:50.120 | And so I guess I determined to always set my goals longer

00:28:55.120 | and to always be thinking about the next things

00:28:57.320 | and not to tie my goals to financial,

00:29:00.000 | not to tie them to finance.

00:29:03.900 | It's good to have financial benchmarks,

00:29:05.700 | but I don't have any monetary financial goals.

00:29:08.420 | My goals are about who I am and who I want to be

00:29:11.560 | and what I want to do, and then I need specific

00:29:14.200 | benchmarks along the way for those,

00:29:17.460 | to make sure that I'm on track and I'm not fooling myself

00:29:20.360 | toward the accomplishment of my goals.

00:29:22.260 | - Yeah, if you have, I'm very much a systems

00:29:27.080 | versus goals type of person, and what's funny

00:29:30.720 | is I recently stumbled upon Douglas Adams' blog

00:29:34.940 | and his book, Douglas Adams, the same guy

00:29:36.560 | that made Dilbert, and he's a really--

00:29:38.200 | - Scott Adams. - Scott Adams.

00:29:39.380 | - Sorry, yeah.

00:29:40.220 | - Okay.

00:29:41.060 | I grabbed my pen and I was writing Douglas Adams,

00:29:43.820 | I never heard of this guy.

00:29:44.660 | - I also love Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide

00:29:46.760 | to the Galaxy, his books too.

00:29:49.620 | Scott Adams, yeah, sorry about that.

00:29:52.920 | But he writes a lot about sort of the things

00:29:56.240 | that he's discovered going through life,

00:29:58.480 | and one of them is the idea of systems versus goals.

00:30:01.980 | And it basically echoes what you were saying,

00:30:05.300 | like goals are tricky because it doesn't actually

00:30:08.660 | talk about how you get there.

00:30:10.860 | Right, it's like, oh, I wanna make a million dollars,

00:30:12.460 | or I wanna have a million, or whatever,

00:30:14.340 | and it's like, well, how are we actually gonna do it?

00:30:17.220 | Well, that's actually the system that you put into place.

00:30:20.160 | Well, before you can get the system into place,

00:30:21.780 | you have to figure out how are you gonna develop

00:30:23.380 | the habits, right, how do you become the millionaire

00:30:25.980 | before you actually have a million bucks

00:30:27.540 | on your balance sheet, and that's,

00:30:32.620 | a lot of the things, his book is really good

00:30:35.500 | for a lot of those sort of, those thinking type of ideas.

00:30:39.060 | But yeah, I fully agree.

00:30:41.140 | I mean, goals are what makes you do silly things,

00:30:44.780 | like, oh, I want to have a net worth of a million dollars

00:30:47.220 | by the end of the year, so you start doing all these

00:30:49.860 | like, you know, financial engineering type of things

00:30:53.180 | to make it happen, when in reality, like, does it matter?

00:30:56.160 | Not really, it's good to have a goal,

00:30:57.760 | but it's a system that's much more important.

00:31:00.660 | - I also think it's important to recognize

00:31:03.860 | that from what I hear from your story

00:31:07.220 | is that your character, your personality,

00:31:09.620 | the skills and habits that you've put in place,

00:31:11.980 | those are the things that have allowed you to enjoy

00:31:15.680 | and benefit from sudden wealth, a windfall event,

00:31:20.380 | rather than to be destroyed by it.

00:31:23.020 | Because I guess the person who best encapsulated it

00:31:26.900 | was T Harv, years ago I read T Harv Eker's book,

00:31:29.820 | "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind",

00:31:30.780 | and he made a big point about talking about

00:31:32.540 | the concept of the money thermostat,

00:31:34.340 | the idea that we all have a comfort level.

00:31:36.860 | Some people have a comfort level

00:31:38.260 | of zero dollars in their bank account.

00:31:40.180 | Some people have a comfort level of $1,000.

00:31:42.100 | Some people have 10,000.

00:31:43.340 | Some people have hundreds of thousands.

00:31:44.660 | Some people have millions of dollars.

00:31:47.100 | And as you described, it can take a little while

00:31:50.260 | when there's a sudden change, upward or downward,

00:31:52.820 | it can take a little while to adjust our self-image,

00:31:55.660 | our perception of ourself, to that different number.

00:31:59.780 | The example I use is, let's say Donald Trump woke up

00:32:02.620 | and found himself with 10 million bucks in the bank.

00:32:06.300 | Would he be rejoicing at the fact

00:32:08.060 | that he has $10 million in the bank?

00:32:10.060 | He would be horrified, and he would immediately cancel

00:32:14.700 | anything, he would cancel his presidential campaign

00:32:17.420 | and say, "I've gotta make some money."

00:32:19.500 | Because his self-image, his financial thermostat,

00:32:23.260 | is set in the billions of dollars.

00:32:25.580 | That's where he's comfortable.

00:32:27.100 | Whereas many of us, if we woke up with $10 million,

00:32:30.300 | I don't know, if I woke up all of a sudden

00:32:32.060 | with $10 million in the bank,

00:32:33.260 | and I hadn't gone through the process

00:32:35.060 | of gradually adjusting my comfort level

00:32:37.660 | and my self-image to that place,

00:32:40.140 | I might do something stupid and get rid of it.

00:32:42.500 | Hopefully I wouldn't, but it's a real danger.

00:32:45.180 | And it describes why character and planning

00:32:48.180 | and structure is so important for us

00:32:53.180 | to build into ourselves, so that when we come

00:32:56.040 | into those windfall events, instead of destroying our lives,

00:32:59.660 | they can enhance our lives.

00:33:01.500 | - Yeah, and I also think that, as you talk

00:33:04.700 | about the thermostat, there are lessons

00:33:06.060 | that you learn managing 10,000, 50,000, 100,

00:33:10.580 | before you get to the million.

00:33:12.800 | And those things, while they'll also move your thermostat

00:33:15.780 | and your comfort level, they also give you

00:33:18.860 | the information and skills, so that when you do

00:33:22.020 | get the windfall, it's not as crazy of an event.

00:33:25.900 | And you don't, like you say, do something foolish.

00:33:29.040 | I mean, 'cause before, it wasn't like the lottery,

00:33:31.240 | where one day there was seven figures

00:33:34.260 | in a bank account somewhere.

00:33:36.000 | The site had been generating significant income up to then,

00:33:40.860 | and so I still had to figure out,

00:33:42.760 | I can contribute this much to my retirement accounts

00:33:45.480 | and this and that, and how I should invest it

00:33:47.560 | in the allocation of things.

00:33:49.040 | So it wasn't as big of a shock for that reason also.

00:33:54.000 | - Have you been able to find good financial advice

00:33:57.480 | at this point, since you've achieved

00:34:01.280 | almost a different perspective in life?

00:34:03.440 | Have you found a good financial advisor

00:34:05.120 | or trusted advisors to work with you?

00:34:07.400 | - We have a financial advisor.

00:34:10.920 | She's fee-only.

00:34:12.420 | We don't do any investments with her,

00:34:14.120 | and she's sort of just, is someone that can act

00:34:18.120 | as a sounding board for ideas, and just sort of

00:34:21.880 | has an eye on where we're going and making sure

00:34:24.760 | that our future needs are funded in some way.

00:34:28.040 | But we don't actually have any investments with her.

00:34:31.660 | - When you started, you were primarily, I think,

00:34:34.920 | focusing on just basic personal finance topics.

00:34:37.960 | That was, as I understand it,

00:34:40.840 | that was kind of just the standard approach,

00:34:43.120 | starting with basic personal finance topics,

00:34:44.960 | money management, budgeting, debt, credit cards,

00:34:47.200 | just the standard, basic level.

00:34:51.260 | You're now at a different financial position.

00:34:53.040 | I'd like to know, what was the theme, I guess,

00:34:57.440 | that continued forward, that has come forward

00:35:00.140 | over the last 10 years, where you started talking

00:35:02.200 | and writing about 10 years ago versus where you are today?

00:35:05.800 | What's the same?

00:35:07.080 | And also, what's different?

00:35:08.460 | What were you talking about then that now,

00:35:10.480 | in retrospect, you see is very different

00:35:12.360 | in your current place in life?

00:35:14.020 | - I think now, what's different now is a bigger focus.

00:35:21.000 | So, what's different now, yeah, is a bigger focus

00:35:23.360 | on sort of the systems and developing good habits,

00:35:26.320 | as opposed to in the past, say 10 years ago,

00:35:29.080 | I might be writing about how to save money on X,

00:35:33.320 | and it would be maybe a service or something like that.

00:35:38.220 | And it was very much shorter term than it is today.

00:35:42.740 | I think today, I try to just figure out how, yeah,

00:35:46.360 | how to install systems so I can spend more time

00:35:49.360 | on things that are more valuable to me

00:35:51.480 | and worry less about the sort of the hardcore,

00:35:56.040 | like money-saving things where you're trading

00:35:58.040 | a lot of time for money and things of that nature.

00:36:00.840 | I think it's because, I've also gotten older.

00:36:05.120 | When you're in your early 20s, you have nothing but time.

00:36:08.540 | Now, I'm in my 30s, my time is valuable

00:36:12.720 | because there's so many different competing interests.

00:36:16.400 | And so, a lot of things I try to put into place

00:36:19.320 | are to make sure that I'm still on top of my money,

00:36:21.800 | but without spending a ton of time doing it.

00:36:24.220 | - You, based upon your birth story

00:36:28.460 | and your parents immigrating into the United States,

00:36:31.340 | you're in a very interesting position

00:36:33.640 | of observing your parents,

00:36:36.080 | who are immigrants to a different culture,

00:36:39.600 | but then you basically growing up

00:36:41.440 | within the US American culture.

00:36:43.220 | When you look at the difference between

00:36:45.920 | mainstream US American culture and traditional Asian culture,

00:36:50.120 | what are the things that, with regard to wealth,

00:36:54.720 | stand out as being the most crazy to you about US Americans?

00:36:59.000 | And what are the things that you perhaps value

00:37:03.440 | from your traditional Asian culture?

00:37:06.460 | - So, I've thought about this a little bit,

00:37:11.320 | and my thinking is,

00:37:14.780 | I don't know if this applies to traditional Asian cultures

00:37:18.040 | or just to my parents and family,

00:37:20.560 | but if you think about when the Depression

00:37:23.820 | was in the United States,

00:37:25.400 | and then you think about when the Cultural Revolution

00:37:30.400 | and World War II, that whole era in China and Taiwan,

00:37:35.480 | you have the need for frugality

00:37:39.860 | differs by 30 years, 20 years, something like that.

00:37:44.200 | So, it's basically one generation.

00:37:46.300 | So, if you think back, in American culture,

00:37:48.100 | if you think back to your grandparents,

00:37:50.420 | or maybe your grandparents, and how frugal they are,

00:37:55.380 | it's sort of like how my parents are today.

00:37:58.420 | And you have that sort of development.

00:38:02.260 | Like, when you live in an era

00:38:04.100 | where you have to like scrimp everything

00:38:05.880 | when you're a child, that sticks with you.

00:38:08.740 | Those are habits that you develop

00:38:10.820 | that are gonna continue on.

00:38:13.080 | And so, my parents were very frugal,

00:38:14.860 | 'cause they came here, and they were saving up

00:38:16.820 | so we could go visit home,

00:38:18.540 | and we would shut off the electricity,

00:38:21.620 | or shut off the heat at night,

00:38:23.420 | and just bundle up in blankets.

00:38:24.780 | And we lived in New York, and it got cold at night.

00:38:27.700 | Just sort of the things that you would do.

00:38:29.380 | And if you think back to a lot of folks' grandparents,

00:38:32.740 | that's probably what they did too, during that era.

00:38:35.900 | So, I think that's probably the biggest analogy

00:38:39.100 | that can help folks understand

00:38:41.260 | why certain groups are frugal.

00:38:43.080 | You just think about when they had

00:38:44.400 | sort of a significant belt-tightening moment,

00:38:47.480 | and it often translates.

00:38:49.880 | I don't know if there's anything too crazy.

00:38:52.600 | I do know that one of the,

00:38:56.160 | maybe the big disadvantages I had

00:38:58.440 | was in not having more of a financial education.

00:39:02.360 | And I don't know if anybody else

00:39:04.600 | had a better financial education.

00:39:06.800 | But money isn't just something

00:39:11.340 | that you should be saving all the time.

00:39:12.940 | Like, you should be investing it.

00:39:14.200 | You should be thinking about ways

00:39:15.500 | of making it grow and work for you.

00:39:17.380 | And that just, money can be seen

00:39:19.660 | as sort of like this living thing,

00:39:21.700 | and not just an asset to be consumed or saved.

00:39:25.900 | And that's just something that took me a while to understand.

00:39:28.840 | And part of it was through blogging

00:39:30.780 | and talking with more people, and saying,

00:39:32.100 | all right, so there's a certain group of people

00:39:33.740 | that they take this money,

00:39:35.780 | and they're investing in the stock market,

00:39:37.400 | or they're putting it into real estate.

00:39:39.380 | And it's not so much like a gamble as it is,

00:39:42.680 | you spread it out and try to make it grow,

00:39:47.140 | and not just put it all in one thing

00:39:48.540 | and look for an awesome deal or something like that.

00:39:51.500 | So, yeah, I don't know if I answered that

00:39:54.060 | or if I just started rambling, but--

00:39:55.900 | - How old are your children now, Jim?

00:39:57.700 | - They're four and two.

00:39:59.180 | - What's your plan for their financial education?

00:40:02.440 | - Good question.

00:40:05.000 | I don't currently have one.

00:40:07.860 | Though, I mean, I imagine it'll evolve as they get older.

00:40:12.860 | I do know that every so often my son, who's four,

00:40:16.420 | will come in and say,

00:40:17.260 | hey, I wanna sell you this thing, whatever.

00:40:20.820 | It'll be like a block.

00:40:22.420 | I'm like, sell?

00:40:23.260 | Where'd you learn to sell?

00:40:24.080 | He's like, I don't know, but I wanna sell it to you.

00:40:26.540 | I was like, how much?

00:40:27.380 | He was like, $1.

00:40:29.980 | Like, that's it, just $1?

00:40:30.820 | He's like, $3.

00:40:32.380 | I'm like, okay, fine, $3.

00:40:35.080 | I don't know, we'll just grow it from there.

00:40:38.440 | But I think that he'll probably, I don't know.

00:40:43.440 | How should I do it?

00:40:46.720 | - Well. (laughs)

00:40:49.120 | - They're young, so it's, are they young?

00:40:53.440 | You tell me.

00:40:54.280 | Are they too young yet?

00:40:55.440 | - So, I'll recognize, I've got a two-year-old

00:40:57.720 | and a six-month-old, so we're at similar stages.

00:41:00.760 | I've perhaps spent maybe more time thinking about it

00:41:03.760 | because it's important to me,

00:41:05.160 | and I'm gonna be doing a bunch of shows

00:41:06.420 | on radical personal finance in the future

00:41:08.420 | on my own ideas and plans, and I've been studying,

00:41:12.160 | I've been studying many people,

00:41:14.000 | and success stories, failure stories.

00:41:15.880 | I guess the biggest thing is to recognize

00:41:17.600 | that the axiom, or the aphorism, I'm not sure

00:41:21.400 | which is the appropriate word,

00:41:22.240 | the saying is, shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves

00:41:24.280 | in three generations, and that is your biggest danger.

00:41:27.760 | As an affluent father, your parents sacrificed

00:41:32.720 | to come to the US.

00:41:34.800 | They raised you with frugality.

00:41:37.680 | You've taken that frugality, used those habits

00:41:40.600 | and that character to pass on and build wealth.

00:41:45.020 | Now, the danger is, usually by the third generation,

00:41:47.280 | the third generation doesn't see,

00:41:48.640 | you saw the sacrifice of your parents' generation.

00:41:51.200 | Your kids aren't gonna grow up seeing you sacrifice.

00:41:54.740 | You're gonna live in a nice house,

00:41:58.000 | you're gonna enjoy the fruits of your labor.

00:42:00.480 | They're not gonna see the sacrifice.

00:42:02.400 | And so, what happens is they tend not

00:42:04.920 | to value things as much, and most parents,

00:42:08.360 | number one, parents tend, we have a tendency

00:42:10.680 | toward indulging our children, and those with means

00:42:14.300 | have a tendency to indulge more than those without.

00:42:17.360 | And so, it's a big, big concern.

00:42:20.080 | In my mind, the key is to mold and shape their character

00:42:25.080 | and build their education and their skills.

00:42:28.880 | And the way to do it is gonna be different

00:42:31.800 | within each family.

00:42:32.640 | I think it's important to, my personal opinion is,

00:42:36.280 | I think it's important to maintain

00:42:39.420 | some austerity in their lives.

00:42:41.560 | It's nice to be able to enjoy the fruits of wealth,

00:42:44.120 | but there should not be, in order to build

00:42:47.640 | similar character and hunger into our children,

00:42:50.840 | they can't be indulged to the point

00:42:52.880 | of having everything they want without work.

00:42:55.820 | That doesn't mean you can just ignore

00:42:58.000 | the status that we have in life.

00:43:00.520 | All of us are affluent on a global scale,

00:43:03.040 | but the question is how do we build an appreciation

00:43:06.440 | in them and build that character and form it

00:43:08.960 | in them in an appropriate way,

00:43:10.840 | and then how do we involve them in our family finances?

00:43:13.880 | Because there's, based upon what you're describing,

00:43:17.120 | unless you were to go through some radical change,

00:43:19.920 | I mean, your children are going to come

00:43:23.160 | into the stewardship of very large amounts of wealth.

00:43:26.960 | Unless you make foolish investments

00:43:28.480 | or somehow spend the money or give it all away,

00:43:30.160 | they're going to come into the possession

00:43:32.240 | of very large amounts of wealth.

00:43:33.520 | And so the biggest financial challenge you have

00:43:35.800 | is to shape and mold their character

00:43:37.640 | so that it doesn't destroy their lives.

00:43:39.600 | - So you know, it's interesting.

00:43:42.560 | So when you asked me what we're doing,

00:43:44.320 | I was thinking strictly in sort of the financial education

00:43:48.120 | sort of arena of skills of what we teach.

00:43:51.200 | And so while we're too early for that,

00:43:52.960 | I think now is obviously the prime time

00:43:55.560 | for the character building grit

00:43:58.440 | and being able to persevere sort of through adversity.

00:44:02.640 | And we try to do that.

00:44:06.040 | You know, we try to instill good habits

00:44:08.000 | of like making your bed and cleaning your room

00:44:10.320 | and things like that where you start off early.

00:44:12.840 | And it's already paying off dividends for us

00:44:16.240 | just because now there's areas

00:44:17.880 | that he'll pick up after himself.

00:44:20.480 | And yeah, so we're trying to teach him more

00:44:24.280 | how to be like a decent to good human being.

00:44:28.280 | And hopefully the actual concrete financial lessons

00:44:32.120 | will come later.

00:44:33.720 | But yeah, it's tough 'cause they have their own opinions

00:44:36.640 | and it's a tendency of all human beings to be lazy,

00:44:40.120 | especially when your parents are there.

00:44:42.440 | - Definitely.

00:44:43.280 | And it's, yeah, absolutely.

00:44:45.520 | You have been involved since leaving bargaining,

00:44:48.760 | you've been involved in various other online endeavors.

00:44:52.280 | And specifically I'd like to ask you

00:44:53.560 | about the world of blogging.

00:44:56.320 | Today I see many people,

00:44:58.040 | especially in the personal finance situation, sphere,

00:45:01.600 | who are building blogs and they're primarily doing it

00:45:05.560 | in order to build an income for themselves.

00:45:09.320 | And I'm guilty of the same thing.

00:45:11.000 | I built Radical Personal Finance with the intention,

00:45:14.100 | I experimented a little bit,

00:45:15.080 | and then I've built it with the intention

00:45:17.040 | of providing an income for me

00:45:18.820 | based upon talking about finance topics.

00:45:21.840 | Share with me what,

00:45:23.480 | is what happened in your situation duplicatable

00:45:27.240 | today in 2016?

00:45:28.840 | - Oh yeah.

00:45:31.160 | I think everything that anyone's really ever done

00:45:34.040 | is duplicatable, not necessarily in the same way.

00:45:38.760 | Like you can build up an internet property,

00:45:41.720 | a website, a blog, whatever you wanna call it,

00:45:44.000 | so that it's valuable to someone else

00:45:45.480 | and then sell it for a large sum.

00:45:47.880 | Is it, was it, will it be as easy as before?

00:45:52.240 | I don't know.

00:45:53.080 | I guess you would define,

00:45:54.400 | you'd have to define what easy is.

00:45:57.480 | But if you work hard enough,

00:45:59.280 | I think that anyone can build sort of a following

00:46:01.760 | and then either sell products or sell their own products

00:46:05.040 | or someone else's products to that audience.

00:46:08.400 | And yeah, I don't see why not.

00:46:10.520 | I mean, I'm trying to do it again, in part because,

00:46:13.160 | so one of the things that prompted me

00:46:15.160 | to start bargaining in the first place,

00:46:17.960 | or actually one of the reasons why it started making money

00:46:21.240 | was because I started seeing affiliate links

00:46:23.560 | and the sort of puzzle solving gene in me

00:46:27.520 | or whatever you wanna call it, part of my brain said,

00:46:29.200 | what is this?

00:46:30.320 | How can I figure this out?

00:46:31.840 | I'm very much fascinated by how other systems work

00:46:35.720 | and reverse engineering them.

00:46:36.880 | Like there's the engineer again.

00:46:39.120 | And I think even today,

00:46:42.080 | maybe the methods are slightly different,

00:46:44.920 | but it's still definitely possible.

00:46:46.760 | You just have to spend the time,

00:46:47.800 | study what other people are doing,

00:46:50.240 | copy them and then innovate on it

00:46:52.920 | in order to sort of take it beyond

00:46:54.720 | where they're able to take it.

00:46:57.040 | - Many times in growth phases,

00:46:58.800 | there's a factor of individual skill

00:47:01.160 | and there's a factor of fortuitous timing.

00:47:03.400 | For example, you can look at various investors

00:47:06.800 | in the stock market and some component of their results

00:47:11.240 | might be based upon the generalized market trend.

00:47:14.400 | I had a 30 year bull market trend

00:47:16.040 | and so that helped you to look like a better investor

00:47:17.920 | and some of it may be based upon their individual skill.

00:47:20.400 | Looking back at bargaining,

00:47:22.280 | if you were gonna guess a percentage of your success

00:47:25.800 | and assign a percentage to your own personal skill,

00:47:29.480 | uniqueness in the niche versus the general trend

00:47:32.640 | of growth of online personal finance blogs,

00:47:35.720 | how would you break those numbers out?

00:47:37.640 | - Good question.

00:47:40.720 | I would probably 20% timing, 80% personal.

00:47:46.720 | I think, and in the personal aspect,

00:47:49.680 | there's, as we talked about our kids

00:47:52.440 | and grit and perseverance,

00:47:54.000 | like part of that is just sticking around long enough.

00:47:56.800 | And granted, start to finish of five years

00:48:00.600 | is not quote unquote long at all,

00:48:03.040 | but there are plenty of blogs that quit out

00:48:05.680 | in the first year, first six months.

00:48:08.320 | So, I mean, 80% skill, I would like to say, 90, 70.

00:48:14.520 | It's hard to assign numbers

00:48:17.000 | to what is essentially a qualitative thing.

00:48:21.360 | But I mean, if you look, so if you look towards today

00:48:24.000 | and compare the experience now and then,

00:48:27.540 | I would say the 20% then was the fortunate timing

00:48:31.560 | of how much easier it was to do search engine optimization.

00:48:36.460 | And remember, search engine optimization,

00:48:40.320 | how high you're listed on Google search results

00:48:44.680 | now is gonna be a lot harder

00:48:46.240 | in part because of how they do the rankings

00:48:48.240 | in the first place, but also how many more sites there are

00:48:51.560 | and how many more high quality sites

00:48:53.360 | writing about similar things.

00:48:55.240 | These days though, the technology exists

00:48:58.240 | that you can build a following,

00:49:00.600 | a much closer following, a tribe, what have you,

00:49:03.880 | more easily than you did five years ago

00:49:06.280 | or even 10 years ago.

00:49:07.480 | So there's always going to be something, right?

00:49:10.720 | There's going to be a bull market somewhere.

00:49:13.940 | And now in terms of building a business or a blog,

00:49:17.260 | you have to find out where your efforts are best put.

00:49:21.180 | - When did you recognize in your journey,

00:49:26.880 | as you started it just as, okay,

00:49:28.200 | I'm gonna scratch this personal itch,

00:49:30.840 | write about these things,

00:49:31.680 | when did you recognize that you were in a rising market?

00:49:37.120 | - I think when, so I started it in January

00:49:39.960 | and then in September, I was in the New York Times

00:49:42.660 | on like a Sunday edition photo,

00:49:47.560 | what was it, Sunday of their business, I don't know.

00:49:49.720 | But I was like, whoa, I could start a blog

00:49:52.320 | and get my picture in the New York Times.

00:49:56.600 | I'm not a financial professional.

00:49:58.560 | There's really no reason I should be here

00:50:03.120 | other than this is an article

00:50:04.280 | about people sharing their net worths.

00:50:06.560 | And that's when I was like, oh, this is gonna be a thing.

00:50:10.560 | And even though it didn't make any money,

00:50:13.960 | I guess I made money off ads,

00:50:15.880 | but it wasn't like a financial windfall by any means.

00:50:19.160 | But it was sort of something that said,

00:50:21.520 | hey, blogs are for real.

00:50:23.940 | Even though for years people had joked about

00:50:27.160 | people sharing their journals and how boring they were.

00:50:30.220 | Sort of like how they started in the beginning of Twitter,

00:50:33.200 | right, when they're like, oh, you're sharing

00:50:34.320 | what you had for breakfast, awesome, no one cares.

00:50:36.920 | And then a bunch of celebrities go on

00:50:38.480 | and now they're publicly traded,

00:50:40.560 | although not doing that great.

00:50:41.960 | But still, this is a service that has people

00:50:44.840 | share 140 characters, like what is this?

00:50:47.280 | - The reason I was pressing on that is a trick question,

00:50:52.200 | is to develop a theme, I guess just an opinion I have.

00:50:55.960 | And I wanted to hear it from you,

00:50:57.080 | 'cause I was like, test my opinions on other people.

00:50:59.460 | But I would say that,

00:51:03.180 | so my way of answering the trick question is,

00:51:05.740 | I think 100% of your, well, I would say 99%

00:51:08.380 | of your success was skill, and part of that skill

00:51:11.020 | was being able to recognize the timing

00:51:13.020 | of what was going on in the market.

00:51:15.120 | Because if you hadn't looked and seen,

00:51:18.220 | okay, I've been doing this for two or three years,

00:51:20.740 | let's say you'd done it for three years

00:51:22.580 | and you weren't getting any traction,

00:51:23.680 | you looked around and nobody was reading finance blogs

00:51:26.560 | and that New York Times article hadn't happened,

00:51:29.280 | then you wouldn't have continued doing it.

00:51:32.500 | So I think recognizing timing is a skill,

00:51:35.980 | and paying attention to the industries

00:51:37.540 | and the things that you're involved in,

00:51:39.100 | part of that is a skill.

00:51:40.280 | Now we can't control the macro trend of timing necessarily.

00:51:45.260 | We can't control the fact that we live in the digital age

00:51:48.260 | where we're able to create this digital content

00:51:50.620 | and influence other people.

00:51:52.140 | We can't control that, but we can recognize what's going on.

00:51:55.300 | And I've done the same thing with Radical Personal Finance.

00:51:57.220 | When I was, I started it just a little bit,

00:51:59.740 | podcasts, we're in the wave of podcasting,

00:52:02.580 | where more people are starting podcasts,

00:52:04.540 | more people are, it's a hot new thing.

00:52:07.020 | A couple years ago when I went to FinCon

00:52:08.380 | within our industry, everyone's,

00:52:09.860 | okay, I've got to get into podcasting,

00:52:10.980 | got to get into podcasting.

00:52:12.400 | Well, part of the skill for me, I'm convinced,

00:52:15.860 | is I was watching that and I said,

00:52:18.020 | I see the next wave because I'm my best consumer,

00:52:20.900 | I know what's coming, and I've got to start now

00:52:24.140 | with my own podcast journey.

00:52:25.900 | I've got to take the leap because I see the trend

00:52:28.780 | in the wave that's coming.

00:52:30.140 | And I think this is something that we've got

00:52:31.820 | to pay attention to in our careers,

00:52:33.500 | whether it's a digital career,

00:52:35.060 | whether it's something else, in any business,

00:52:38.480 | this is an applicable lesson.

00:52:40.700 | Can you time the market?

00:52:42.040 | Can I time the market?

00:52:43.440 | I can't, I don't have the interest or the connection

00:52:46.460 | to pay attention to it, to the generalized stock market

00:52:51.060 | on that much of an interest.

00:52:52.380 | But I can time my market if I pay attention.

00:52:54.840 | I can know my industry, whatever that industry is,

00:52:57.980 | I can search for the trends, I can stay plugged in.

00:53:00.580 | And that can be something that draws a major difference

00:53:05.460 | in my growth rate in my career.

00:53:07.380 | And I think it's important for my audience

00:53:10.380 | to recognize that and apply it to their career,

00:53:12.580 | whether it's a blog, whether it's a podcast,

00:53:15.080 | or whether it's owning tire stores

00:53:17.620 | and car repair stores or whatever.

00:53:19.660 | Always staying tuned and saying,

00:53:21.500 | what's the generalized trend?

00:53:23.420 | And how can I take my unique, specific advantages

00:53:26.900 | and apply them over to the generalized trend?

00:53:29.940 | I tried to start a personal finance blog back in 2000

00:53:33.820 | and about six or seven.

00:53:36.820 | I launched the site, I posted some articles,

00:53:39.460 | I would sit down on a Sunday night and I would try to write.

00:53:41.780 | But writing is not my skill set.

00:53:43.680 | And at that time, I didn't have enough content

00:53:45.500 | or material where it flowed.

00:53:46.780 | And so I shuttered the blog, took it offline,

00:53:49.020 | and went on.

00:53:50.540 | But when you recognize the intersection between your skills,

00:53:53.420 | your ability, your interests, and the generalized trend,

00:53:58.420 | and so for you, if that was writing, for me, it's speaking,

00:54:03.300 | that's where a major growth can occur in our careers.

00:54:06.900 | I just, I don't know.

00:54:08.060 | You agree, disagree?

00:54:09.860 | - I totally agree.

00:54:10.860 | Also, a couple things I wanted to share.

00:54:12.760 | So I had to take the SAT2 writing exam to get into college.

00:54:17.760 | It was actually required by Carnegie Mellon,

00:54:21.380 | even though I was going into computer science,

00:54:23.300 | like they required it.

00:54:24.180 | I guess they wanted us to be semi-well-rounded.

00:54:27.020 | And I couldn't write.

00:54:28.940 | Like, I was terrible at writing.

00:54:30.300 | I was a typical engineer.

00:54:31.900 | And I mean, I did fine on the SAT verbal,

00:54:34.820 | 'cause that's just definitions and whatever it used to be.

00:54:39.540 | But writing, I had to get a tutor,

00:54:41.220 | and I don't know what I scored.

00:54:42.900 | It was like 500-something out of 800.

00:54:45.700 | I still got into college,

00:54:46.660 | so I guess the bar wasn't particularly high.

00:54:50.000 | So I wasn't a good writer,

00:54:51.220 | but I became better the more I did it.

00:54:53.060 | Like any other skill, you get better as you do it.

00:54:56.820 | But to go back to your whole starting a blog

00:55:01.820 | and deciding it's not for you,

00:55:03.540 | like I'm sure you learned things from that experience

00:55:06.020 | that helped when you started Radical.

00:55:08.020 | - Definitely.

00:55:08.860 | - You didn't have to figure out how to register a domain

00:55:10.740 | and get hosting, and you were able to get that,

00:55:12.980 | which far less friction.

00:55:14.340 | And then you were then able to focus

00:55:17.100 | on the thing that you wanted to do,

00:55:18.140 | which was record and publish podcasts.

00:55:22.420 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:55:23.260 | - I totally agree.

00:55:24.460 | - And that's why just experimenting

00:55:26.740 | and trying different things.

00:55:27.900 | Today, everyone should have a blog.

00:55:29.780 | Everyone should have a podcast.

00:55:30.900 | Everyone should have a YouTube video

00:55:32.260 | because the process of creating it

00:55:34.820 | will teach you something,

00:55:36.060 | and then you'll be more well-equipped

00:55:37.660 | where when you identify the thing

00:55:39.060 | that's appropriate for you, it's not the first time.

00:55:41.420 | It's a whole new skill set,

00:55:42.580 | and this skill set is important

00:55:44.300 | to start building before you need it.

00:55:46.580 | - Exactly.

00:55:47.620 | And then there's also the point of like

00:55:49.980 | you aren't going to be able to find every single trend,

00:55:53.260 | but if you see something and you get yourself into it

00:55:55.740 | and investigate it, and granted,

00:55:58.100 | if you're gonna open up a tire store,

00:55:59.500 | that's gonna be a much higher startup cost,

00:56:03.540 | but starting a blog, starting a podcast,

00:56:06.140 | starting any of these mostly online endeavors

00:56:09.220 | won't require a tremendous amount of time.

00:56:10.940 | You won't have to sign a lease

00:56:13.700 | or commit to a huge liability.

00:56:16.740 | So I say you try 'em all,

00:56:18.820 | and then if one doesn't work, then you shutter it.

00:56:22.420 | There's always the tricky question of

00:56:24.820 | do you wanna quit too,

00:56:25.940 | how do you avoid quitting too early?

00:56:28.260 | How do you try to survive and things like that?

00:56:30.700 | But I remember when I went to college,

00:56:33.980 | it was 1998, dot-com boom.

00:56:36.980 | I'm like this is great, I'm gonna do computer science,

00:56:38.980 | I'm gonna graduate, work at a startup,

00:56:42.060 | and then March 2001, everything implodes,

00:56:45.900 | and I'm like well, I still got a year left of school,

00:56:48.860 | so what am I gonna do in the worst market

00:56:51.420 | for computer science graduates?

00:56:54.380 | And then I graduated, I found a job, everything was fine,

00:56:57.800 | and then I'm looking to buy a house,

00:57:01.300 | I catch it at the peak of the boom,

00:57:03.420 | I'm like man, my timing is incredible

00:57:05.660 | for all these major life decisions.

00:57:07.940 | But it just goes to show those are huge markets

00:57:11.380 | that you're trying to predict,

00:57:13.140 | and not only are they huge from

00:57:14.620 | different factors perspective,

00:57:17.020 | there are a lot of different players

00:57:18.340 | that are going to be spending a lot more time,

00:57:20.460 | have a lot more technology than you do.

00:57:22.980 | Try to play in a world that's a little bit smaller,

00:57:26.080 | that isn't as developed,

00:57:28.380 | and where the players in it aren't nearly as mature,

00:57:32.020 | and you're more likely to succeed.

00:57:34.480 | - Play in the world that you know.

00:57:37.460 | - Exactly.

00:57:38.300 | - What are your current projects?

00:57:40.520 | - My current projects, so I mentioned

00:57:41.860 | that I was starting up another blog,

00:57:43.580 | I started about four or five months ago,

00:57:45.300 | it's called Wallet Hacks,

00:57:47.060 | and it's sort of taking that engineer's eye

00:57:48.940 | towards finances, how do you build systems

00:57:51.060 | so you can manage your money,

00:57:52.180 | and it's not taking up a tremendous amount of your time,

00:57:55.580 | how do you just be smarter with money,

00:57:58.060 | just with that engineer's eye.

00:57:59.660 | Have a meal plan business,

00:58:04.060 | so I like solving problems,

00:58:06.360 | and one of them was trying to figure out

00:58:07.460 | how do we build sort of a membership site,

00:58:10.140 | and help folks that, it started about two years ago,

00:58:14.740 | a year and a half ago,

00:58:16.500 | very much in the how do we help folks save money

00:58:18.940 | on one of their biggest expenses,

00:58:20.580 | which is food and meals,

00:58:22.380 | and so it's called $5 Meal Plan,

00:58:24.240 | and I work on that with a great partner,

00:58:26.420 | Erin, at $5 Dinners, it's all her recipes,

00:58:29.300 | tested, she has four kids, and it's great.

00:58:32.580 | Those are the two main projects I'm working on right now.

00:58:36.020 | - Why do you work on those,

00:58:39.900 | why do you work, why do you do that?

00:58:42.380 | - They're fun.

00:58:43.980 | I don't know, it's just the whole problem solving again,

00:58:46.780 | like you asked before,

00:58:50.220 | can you create a blog today and build it to be a success?

00:58:53.820 | And I don't know if the answer is 100% yes,

00:58:57.400 | but I'm gonna try to do it again,

00:58:59.060 | I'm gonna do it a little differently

00:59:00.380 | since the environment has changed,

00:59:04.320 | and it's just fun to learn these things.

00:59:06.900 | And it's also, one of the big things that I missed

00:59:10.460 | about working sort of in an office was that social aspect,

00:59:14.220 | and when, the meal plan business was fun

00:59:17.880 | from the perspective of how do we build a membership site,

00:59:20.300 | how do we build a community, and work with a partner,

00:59:24.060 | and that's been great, it's exceeded my expectations,

00:59:28.060 | but sort of writing about personal finance

00:59:29.620 | is a constant interest of mine,

00:59:31.340 | and then seeing if I can rebuild the blog has been fun.

00:59:35.020 | Like I miss getting emails for those years

00:59:37.420 | that I didn't have a site,

00:59:38.980 | I miss getting the emails from folks,

00:59:40.500 | like asking questions,

00:59:41.780 | and just learning about their experiences,

00:59:43.980 | and I guess I'm trying to relive old glory,

00:59:48.780 | and seeing if I can make it new glory again.

00:59:50.700 | (laughing)

00:59:51.900 | - It is kind of fun just to see,

00:59:53.300 | hey, I wonder if I could still do that,

00:59:54.700 | I think about that, I was like,

00:59:56.100 | I wonder if I could still sell insurance,

00:59:57.580 | I bet I could, but it's fun to be tested against the market.

01:00:03.540 | Are you enjoying it more this time around,

01:00:05.100 | now that it's more of the challenge,

01:00:07.460 | but the financial pressure is gone,

01:00:08.940 | what's the same, what's different,

01:00:10.580 | of this versus in the past?

01:00:12.340 | - So here's the funny,

01:00:13.260 | like it's fun because I don't have to fight through

01:00:16.580 | the frustrating elements,

01:00:18.660 | because like I said, when you started a blog before,

01:00:20.420 | you learned things, and now you don't have to relearn them.

01:00:23.220 | You know, it was fun not to have to do that again,

01:00:25.420 | and like have things break and not realize what's going on.

01:00:28.420 | The other thing is that,

01:00:30.420 | and I never realized how much of an impact this had on me,

01:00:32.700 | but when people, I guess when they had low expectations

01:00:37.140 | of you, like whether because you're young or whatnot,

01:00:39.980 | like it's really fun to prove people wrong,

01:00:42.740 | and when you don't have that,

01:00:45.940 | there's a little bit of that motivation,

01:00:48.380 | it's not a big piece of my sort of internal motivation,

01:00:51.260 | but when people aren't like,

01:00:52.900 | wow, you really built an awesome thing,

01:00:54.620 | when you come at it years later,

01:00:56.820 | after you've had success,

01:00:59.500 | people are like, oh, well of course you're gonna do well.

01:01:02.340 | Like of course, what do you mean of course

01:01:03.580 | I'm gonna do well?

01:01:04.420 | Like you have all the friends and networks and connections,

01:01:07.220 | like yeah, but think about if you were to redo it,

01:01:09.620 | would you just go begging around everyone

01:01:12.180 | to like let you do this and that,

01:01:14.180 | without regard to what value you're providing them?

01:01:16.540 | No, of course not.

01:01:17.940 | Right, you'd essentially not start from zero,

01:01:19.980 | but you wouldn't be like asking all your friends for help.

01:01:23.180 | You wanna rebuild it on your own.

01:01:24.940 | And so there's a little bit of that,

01:01:26.980 | you know, oh, of course it'll be easy.

01:01:28.780 | That can get a little annoying,

01:01:30.860 | but I mean, whatever, you still gotta do the work.

01:01:34.500 | - Four final rapid fire questions.

01:01:37.460 | Favorite finance related book?

01:01:40.580 | - Favorite finance related book?

01:01:43.700 | Oh, I don't have one.

01:01:50.340 | I don't know if I've ever,

01:01:54.600 | yeah, I don't have a favorite finance book.

01:01:57.980 | - Is there one that's impacted you more than most others?

01:02:00.820 | Doesn't have to be, just curious.

01:02:07.420 | - No, I just, there was a book that The Motley Fool put out

01:02:11.740 | years and years ago that I remember,

01:02:13.860 | it was probably the first one that I read,

01:02:15.700 | and I wish I could remember.

01:02:17.580 | Yeah, I could send you the title maybe later.

01:02:21.140 | - That kind of stuff, unless it was unique,

01:02:24.020 | it was one of those, here's the general guide

01:02:25.640 | in line and out line, framework type of thing.

01:02:28.300 | That's easy to find.

01:02:29.320 | All right, favorite personal finance related blog

01:02:31.540 | that's not wallethacks.com in today's world?

01:02:35.040 | - Ooh.

01:02:37.020 | So, man, now I feel like if I name one,

01:02:42.640 | this is what happens when you have a lot of friends.

01:02:45.120 | They're all like, oh, well, thanks for not.

01:02:47.320 | (laughing)

01:02:48.540 | - It's okay if it's someone that's not prominent.

01:02:50.380 | I'm just always interested in who,

01:02:53.380 | who are you paying attention to?

01:02:54.520 | Who are you enjoying reading?

01:02:55.680 | Not exclusive, who are you enjoying reading right now?

01:02:58.880 | - Who am I enjoying reading?

01:03:00.440 | So, there's, oh, you know what?

01:03:03.000 | One that I don't think a lot of people,

01:03:05.600 | there are two that come to mind.

01:03:07.880 | One is, I think it's Dad Is Cheap.

01:03:10.960 | The guy's name's Victor, Vic.

01:03:13.120 | I think, I'm always just interested in his stories.

01:03:17.520 | He only recently started his blog,

01:03:20.420 | and he lost his job and is spending more time at home,

01:03:24.320 | and it's just a very interesting,

01:03:25.640 | a lot of it mirrors the experiences I have.

01:03:28.120 | I didn't lose my job, but I spent a lot of time at home

01:03:30.280 | with the kids, and they go to daycare,

01:03:32.360 | but some of the same issues.

01:03:34.320 | The other one I like is Brokepedia.

01:03:39.320 | It's Kristen.

01:03:41.400 | She also writes for Lifehacker, their Two Cents blog.

01:03:44.860 | But, yeah, those are the two that I'm really getting into.

01:03:49.360 | - That's cool. - That maybe aren't

01:03:50.200 | as well-known.

01:03:51.020 | - Yeah, that's cool, 'cause I haven't heard of either one,

01:03:52.440 | so that's awesome.

01:03:53.400 | All right, favorite, or a personal finance

01:03:56.240 | or finance-related podcast or other podcast that you enjoy?

01:03:59.720 | Obviously, you would say Radical Personal Finance,

01:04:01.780 | but other than Radical Personal Finance.

01:04:03.780 | - There are a lot of really good podcasts.

01:04:07.740 | So, I mean, I really like Farnoosh,

01:04:10.640 | Tarabi's So Money. - So Money.

01:04:11.480 | - But I feel like she doesn't need any more press.

01:04:13.880 | She's already a rock star.

01:04:15.240 | - She is, absolutely. - So.

01:04:17.120 | I like Listen, Money Matters, Always a Reverend.

01:04:20.540 | That's always fun.

01:04:21.940 | And then Stacking Benjamins is fun.

01:04:23.880 | Yeah, those are the ones for me.

01:04:28.460 | - Cool, and is there a YouTube channel,

01:04:30.580 | someone that you see doing a great job on YouTube

01:04:32.740 | that you'd like to shine a little light on?

01:04:34.840 | - Ooh.

01:04:36.780 | Yes, but I don't know the name of the channel.

01:04:43.560 | I just know it's Thomas Frank.

01:04:45.440 | - That's the guy's name? - He does study hacks.

01:04:48.060 | Yeah, it's like study hacks type of things.

01:04:50.300 | - Awesome. - But it's for students.

01:04:51.660 | And it's, they're like things on like

01:04:53.460 | how to take notes really quickly.

01:04:55.180 | And I just like how well the videos are done.

01:04:57.580 | I don't watch a lot of stuff on YouTube.

01:05:00.100 | I mean, I suppose I do, but it's not cat videos.

01:05:02.900 | But they're all like Conan O'Brien videos

01:05:05.540 | where they're like driving around a car

01:05:06.900 | or getting an Uber, things like that.

01:05:09.240 | I don't know if those count.

01:05:10.820 | But they're hilarious.

01:05:12.100 | - Well, awesome.

01:05:14.100 | Jim, I wanna thank you for coming on the show today.

01:05:15.060 | I've enjoyed it.

01:05:16.140 | Congratulations on being one of the grandfathers

01:05:18.700 | of our budding personal finance industry.

01:05:22.700 | If you were gonna give some closing words of advice

01:05:25.300 | to somebody who's interested in personal finance

01:05:27.580 | or listening to my show because they're interested

01:05:29.620 | in building their knowledge and their wealth,

01:05:31.900 | and you were gonna close with some final words of advice,

01:05:35.140 | what would you say?

01:05:36.860 | - I would say, if you ever have any questions,

01:05:38.740 | you can email me, jim@wallethacks.com.

01:05:41.900 | But there is, just keep working hard at it.

01:05:47.640 | If you wanna start a blog or any sort of business,

01:05:49.960 | perseverance is sort of underrated.

01:05:54.300 | And just keep after it.

01:05:55.560 | You'll learn a lot, even if things end up

01:05:57.700 | not as well as you'd hope.

01:06:00.200 | But just keep after it.

01:06:01.640 | - Thanks for coming on.

01:06:04.080 | - Oh, it's a pleasure.

01:06:05.000 | Thanks a lot.

01:06:05.840 | - I chose to profile this interview very intentionally.

01:06:11.000 | And I want you to pay attention to one major theme

01:06:13.500 | that came through the interview.

01:06:14.420 | Jim gave a lot of great experience, a lot of great advice.

01:06:16.400 | Pay attention to this theme.

01:06:17.800 | Jim is financially independent.

01:06:20.200 | But yet, what does he find himself doing?

01:06:23.200 | Working and building businesses.

01:06:26.100 | So, I am working to be financially independent

01:06:32.020 | based upon being able to live off of the income

01:06:34.560 | from my investment portfolio, but I'm not there yet.

01:06:37.560 | But you know what?

01:06:38.400 | I've built financial freedom through working

01:06:41.860 | and building businesses.

01:06:43.440 | It's not quite the same financial freedom

01:06:45.120 | that Jim Wang enjoys at this point.

01:06:47.480 | He's got more money than I do.

01:06:49.200 | I'll get there, but you know what?

01:06:50.560 | I'm enjoying the process.

01:06:52.320 | And I'm at a phase in my life where, at this point,

01:06:54.680 | I'm not willing to do a full-time job

01:06:57.320 | and work nights and weekends and everything on the show.

01:06:59.560 | I'm at a different family stage than he was at that time.

01:07:02.460 | But I can still figure out my plan.

01:07:04.600 | Jim figured out his plan, and you can figure out your plan.

01:07:07.880 | Can't promise it's gonna work.

01:07:11.040 | Nobody can, of course not.

01:07:12.800 | But I can promise that if you try,

01:07:14.720 | you'll be closer to it working than if you don't try.

01:07:17.940 | So the best way to get started

01:07:19.960 | is to simply get started and adjust, correct.

01:07:23.000 | If you wanna see adjustments and corrections,

01:07:24.680 | just listen to this show.

01:07:26.080 | Go back and listen to the archives,

01:07:27.800 | and you'll see adjustments and corrections everywhere.

01:07:30.680 | I'm always figuring it out, still working on it.

01:07:33.360 | But still, that doesn't mean that the process

01:07:36.440 | isn't worth it and that you can't make it happen.

01:07:39.000 | So learn from the example,

01:07:40.880 | work toward financial freedom in 10 years or less,

01:07:43.840 | but also live a rich life now.

01:07:46.300 | Thank you so much for listening to today's show.

01:07:48.640 | I hope it's been useful to you.

01:07:49.720 | I hope you found it encouraging, inspiring.

01:07:51.760 | If you have benefited and appreciated the show,

01:07:53.680 | number one, send Jim a note and let him know,

01:07:55.440 | say thanks for coming on.

01:07:56.640 | Feel free to connect with him at all the links mentioned

01:07:58.520 | and linked in the show notes for today's show.

01:08:00.780 | Also, however, if you'd like to support me

01:08:02.560 | and my ability to continue doing this for you,

01:08:05.000 | go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:08:07.360 | Sign up to become a paying patron of the show.

01:08:10.680 | I am at your service in that capacity.

01:08:13.240 | Radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:08:15.400 | And I appreciate the many of you who do that.

01:08:17.560 | Radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:08:19.320 | Be back with you very soon.

01:08:21.140 | (upbeat music)

01:08:23.720 | (upbeat music)

01:08:26.300 | (upbeat music)

01:08:28.880 | (upbeat music)

RPF0297-Jim_Wang_Interview