Die With Zero: Net Fulfillment Over Net Worth

00:00:00.000 | Like I'm out here, you probably heard me say it, I'm out here trying to save people's lives.

00:00:05.620 | And a lot of times people are like, "What the fuck are you talking about, Perkins, save

00:00:09.460 | people's lives?

00:00:10.460 | You wrote a goddamn book about optimizing and net fulfillment."

00:00:14.540 | And I use this example of, listen, when you pull somebody drowning in a pool, they're

00:00:21.860 | drowning and you pull them out, give them a mouth-to-mouth and get the water out or

00:00:25.780 | whatever and they're like, "Oh my God, you saved my life."

00:00:28.820 | I'm like, "Guess what?

00:00:30.960 | They're still going to fucking die.

00:00:32.660 | They're just not going to die that day.

00:00:34.960 | They're still going to die, 100%.

00:00:38.760 | So what have you given them?

00:00:40.580 | You've given them more choices, more time, more experience, more I love yous, more going

00:00:46.740 | to the opera, more hanging out with their grandmother.

00:00:49.540 | You've given them more of their life, right?

00:00:52.940 | More experience to have and then they ultimately die.

00:00:55.300 | And so with this book, when I get you to optimize for net fulfillment, I'm giving you more choices,

00:01:02.940 | more trips with grandma, more going to the opera, more charities, more ski trips, it's

00:01:07.980 | the same thing.

00:01:08.980 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life,

00:01:13.260 | money and travel.

00:01:14.260 | If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I'm a diehard optimizer who loves doing

00:01:18.100 | all the research to help you get the best experience in life without necessarily an

00:01:22.140 | expensive price tag.

00:01:23.580 | Though, here's a thought experiment.

00:01:25.840 | Imagine that one day you die and you have all this money in your account, but actually

00:01:30.260 | you don't.

00:01:31.260 | How does that feel?

00:01:32.260 | You die with zero?

00:01:33.260 | Scary, like you did something wrong?

00:01:35.020 | That's exactly what today's guest recommends.

00:01:37.780 | He's Bill Perkins, a longtime hedge fund manager and energy trader, who's written a book called

00:01:41.780 | Die With Zero, getting all you can from your money and your life.

00:01:45.820 | I loved the book.

00:01:47.340 | You might have a lot of objections to his concept and I actually did before I read it,

00:01:51.600 | but now I'm a huge convert.

00:01:53.540 | So we're going to dive into all of it.

00:01:54.920 | We're going to talk about what it actually means to die with zero, why you might want

00:01:58.140 | to stop maximizing net worth and focus on net fulfillment, why you should bank memory

00:02:02.460 | dividends and the ways to do that for maximum ROI, why Bill thinks contrary to financial

00:02:08.260 | advice, you should save less money when you're young, why you should think about your life

00:02:12.620 | as distinct seasons or time buckets and how that can help you make the best choices about

00:02:16.820 | spending your money and a lot more.

00:02:18.620 | So let's get started right after this.

00:02:24.260 | Bill, welcome to the show and thank you for being here.

00:02:29.980 | Thanks for having me.

00:02:30.980 | It's great to be here.

00:02:31.980 | Wow.

00:02:32.980 | We got a lot to go over, don't we?

00:02:33.980 | I didn't even mention some of that.

00:02:34.980 | We got two daughters.

00:02:35.980 | There's a lot we could talk about, but your book's all about dying with zero and that

00:02:40.740 | many people save too much money and leave it behind instead of spending it in ways that

00:02:45.140 | are more meaningful.

00:02:46.780 | You've obviously been very skilled and fortunate at building wealth.

00:02:49.460 | So before we jump into all these lessons, I just want to make sure I understand who

00:02:53.060 | this is for and does it actually apply to people with just a modest income or who haven't

00:02:57.660 | built wealth yet?

00:02:58.780 | So the book is a bunch of mental models, right?

00:03:01.300 | And it's a counterfactual regret minimization algorithm that's solving for net fulfillment.

00:03:07.640 | So a lot of people have algorithms for building wealth, right?

00:03:10.340 | It's solving for building wealth.

00:03:11.500 | I'm solving for net fulfillment.

00:03:13.760 | And so what variables are the inputs?

00:03:16.300 | Your wealth, your health, and your time.

00:03:18.460 | Now, even though people may have more wealth or better health or more time, those variables

00:03:25.620 | still you can use formulaically with these mental models to maximize your net fulfillment.

00:03:32.500 | So yeah, some people are - I wouldn't say this book isn't for unhealthy fat people,

00:03:37.300 | even though they can still get value out of this to maximize their own net fulfillment.

00:03:43.540 | And the same thing for people with not that much money, right?

00:03:46.740 | Like obviously, a person who's oversaving by millions is formulaically getting more

00:03:54.020 | value in terms of the amount of waste that they're wasting by dying with a bunch of money

00:04:00.340 | in the bank, right?

00:04:01.740 | But everybody still gets value relative to them to get more out of this one ride called

00:04:07.420 | life.

00:04:08.420 | And how do you define net fulfillment?

00:04:11.380 | So I basically say that the sum of your experiences, your choices, every moment in your life when

00:04:19.740 | you make a decision, those choices, that is what constitutes your life.

00:04:24.340 | And the sum of all those decisions and experiences that you consume will determine whether you've

00:04:29.860 | had a full life or fulfilling life or not so fulfilling life relative to the best life

00:04:35.580 | you can possibly have, right?

00:04:38.360 | And so I define net fulfillment as your choices, i.e. your experiences.

00:04:42.900 | And when I use experiences, I mean it in the broadest sense of the word.

00:04:46.960 | I don't necessarily mean always taking a trip.

00:04:49.220 | It could be walking with grandmother.

00:04:50.860 | It could be donating to a charity.

00:04:52.540 | It's just every single choice that you make.

00:04:54.980 | And before we jump in, I actually want to talk about a few common misconceptions because

00:04:58.420 | I feel like some of them came up a little bit late in the book.

00:05:01.860 | Some of them came up early and I was like, "Oh, okay.

00:05:03.700 | So I feel like this is important."

00:05:05.140 | So one I'll share and I'll ask if there are others is around retirement.

00:05:11.420 | And it was that the amount you actually need in retirement is often lower than people think.

00:05:16.200 | And it's no surprise that also people increase their assets in retirement.

00:05:20.060 | Not all of them, but a good number of them.

00:05:22.460 | And so something that was helpful for me to realize is if we're all thinking, "Oh, I should

00:05:26.560 | save all this money because I'm going to need it because I'm going to be spending."

00:05:30.540 | So it turns out you probably will spend less based on actual studies, not just your opinion.

00:05:35.880 | And you might actually make more in retirement.

00:05:37.740 | Are there other things that might be common misconceptions people have that understanding

00:05:43.040 | might make this whole conversation easier to process in those mindsets?

00:05:46.660 | Yeah.

00:05:47.660 | I think kind of adjacent to what you're saying about spending, the data is kind of overwhelming

00:05:53.540 | that people spend less, even adjusting for healthcare costs.

00:05:56.020 | People are like, "What about healthcare and rising healthcare?"

00:05:59.660 | It's their bodies, the deterioration, the change in our attitudes, et cetera.

00:06:05.420 | Their ability to do or enjoy certain activities.

00:06:08.300 | I think probably all of us have a relative that doesn't like to fly.

00:06:11.860 | You could take them somewhere, but they're like, "I don't want to sit on the plane for

00:06:14.380 | three hours because it hurts my back or my knees or something to that effect."

00:06:18.300 | Or there's probably people my age or younger, 40s used to be athletic and could not go play

00:06:25.000 | a pickup game of flag football right now.

00:06:26.860 | It wouldn't be as enjoyable.

00:06:27.900 | They could play it.

00:06:29.520 | And so, the misconception that's out there is people think their lives are going to be

00:06:34.700 | like a carnival commercial when they retire.

00:06:37.860 | And it cannot be further from the truth.

00:06:40.400 | And having lived in the Virgin Islands where these cruise lines all park up, like we'd

00:06:45.380 | have three, four to seven ships during high season coming in and the main activity is

00:06:51.620 | going into the shops, right?

00:06:53.840 | Not these athletic activities, right?

00:06:55.480 | To buy something, not for themselves, but for their granddaughters or a relative, etc.

00:07:01.100 | They're actually looking for ways to consume the money that they have because they cannot

00:07:07.140 | consume it into the experiences that they thought they could.

00:07:09.380 | - Yeah, but you talk about the declining utility of money with age.

00:07:13.740 | You have all this money and you say, "Oh, I'm going to punt on this awesome, amazing

00:07:16.700 | trip until I'm retired and I can take time off work."

00:07:19.260 | And then you're like, "I don't know.

00:07:20.660 | Do I really want to go walk around Japan nonstop?"

00:07:24.060 | I say this because I took my family, my sister, her husband, my parents to Japan.

00:07:29.380 | And the degree to which we wanted the kids to go explore was just not the degree to which

00:07:34.160 | my parents were willing to go.

00:07:36.620 | And I don't know if they would have thought that was the case 20 years ago, but there

00:07:40.380 | were things they had to miss out on because they're just older and they couldn't keep

00:07:44.220 | up.

00:07:45.220 | - Yeah.

00:07:46.220 | I think a lot of people have the model in their head that their ability to convert money

00:07:49.220 | into experiences, like your body is some sort of like it's static, right?

00:07:54.540 | It will remain the same, right?

00:07:55.820 | They kind of divorce this idea that, "Wow, my mental acuity is going to decline, my lung

00:07:59.980 | capacity is going to decline, my bone density is going to decline, my muscle mass is going

00:08:03.820 | to decline about 1% a year after age like 35."

00:08:09.960 | And so, they don't put all these facts together in that, "Hey, this is obviating either my

00:08:16.080 | desire or ability to actually enjoy these activities," right?

00:08:21.080 | And so, you have a prime example of walking around Japan and Tokyo.

00:08:25.180 | And so, they delayed that trip or that gratification.

00:08:27.820 | Let's just assume they did to a point where there really wasn't any gratification, right?

00:08:33.540 | Tokyo was less valuable trip to them.

00:08:35.340 | - I wouldn't say there wasn't, but it was certainly, I think there were things where

00:08:38.180 | we came home and we're like, "Oh, you missed this thing."

00:08:40.780 | And I think they were like, "We're okay because if we had pushed ourselves, it would have

00:08:43.540 | been a mess," and we had a great trip.

00:08:46.160 | I think they had a great trip.

00:08:47.480 | But I think that five, 10 years ago, they would have gotten to do 20% more and it would

00:08:52.220 | have been a better trip.

00:08:53.220 | - I mean, you do the best with what you have, right?

00:08:55.500 | There's no sense in crying over spilt milk or what they did or didn't do.

00:08:59.540 | But you can easily look at the scenario and say, "That was not the optimal time for them

00:09:03.860 | to take that trip in the totality of the arc of their lives," right?

00:09:07.940 | We don't get to play a sim game and Monte Carlo our lives and be like, "Well, let me

00:09:12.140 | do this trip here and that," whatever.

00:09:13.500 | But what I try to do with this book is get people to think about how do I optimize for

00:09:19.500 | net fulfillment?

00:09:20.660 | Where do experiences belong?

00:09:22.980 | What experience - first, what experiences do I want, right, in my life, right?

00:09:27.260 | And then very importantly, where do those experiences belong?

00:09:31.740 | Where does the trip to Japan belong?

00:09:33.700 | Where does going to the opera belong?

00:09:35.220 | Where does hiking this mountain belong?

00:09:36.700 | When does the ski trip belong?

00:09:38.540 | And that matters.

00:09:39.540 | It may matter more than the what.

00:09:42.100 | I mean, I'll give an example that you basically put on a banger of a 50th birthday party,

00:09:47.380 | but you decided to just do it when you were 45 because it would be a better experience.

00:09:51.820 | So to me, that was a big mower.

00:09:54.220 | It's like, oh, you always think, "Let's do this thing at this milestone in life."

00:09:57.820 | And you're just like, "Let's just do it earlier so that I get more out of it."

00:10:01.300 | There's other smaller examples.

00:10:03.420 | I was in an island and guys were going to go wakeboarding.

00:10:07.300 | You may have heard me say this and I was like, "No, I'm just going to chill here, relax,

00:10:11.580 | etc."

00:10:12.580 | And I have a degenerative cartilage in L3, L4.

00:10:15.660 | And so, my wakeboarding days are limited, right?

00:10:19.260 | And if I was going to go wakeboarding, it's not five years from now, right?

00:10:24.780 | And then I was like, "Okay, when is the next time I'm going to be on an island where it's

00:10:28.260 | warm and there's actually a wakeboard and a wakeboard boat with these friends, etc.,

00:10:31.820 | to go wakeboarding that I physically can do it?"

00:10:35.100 | I quickly came to the conclusion, "Never.

00:10:38.060 | It's now or never.

00:10:39.340 | This is the last wakeboarding chance I'm probably going to have for the rest of my life."

00:10:43.820 | And so, I quickly said, "I can lounge on the beach and relax until my 80s, right?

00:10:51.020 | I can't go wakeboarding.

00:10:52.020 | So, now is the time to go wakeboarding."

00:10:53.700 | So, I got on the boat and said, "I'm just going to go do this."

00:10:56.500 | And that was my last wakeboarding ever.

00:10:59.320 | I have a similar experience, but it wasn't my last.

00:11:01.740 | I had always, as a kid, been a skateboarder, snowboarder, and I'd always wanted to go wakeboarding.

00:11:07.060 | And for some reason, just the opportunity never arose.

00:11:09.260 | And finally, I was like, "You know what?

00:11:12.100 | I'm not getting to the point that I couldn't wakeboard in five years, but I'm getting to

00:11:15.860 | the point that if I want to try to do crazy stuff on a wakeboard, I probably should do

00:11:18.380 | it now."

00:11:19.380 | And then we rented a boat.

00:11:20.940 | My brother-in-law and I went out and literally the boat was defective and could not go fast

00:11:25.720 | enough to do anything.

00:11:26.720 | So, I still need to get that checked off my list because we basically were just like trolling

00:11:32.160 | around on this boat.

00:11:33.160 | And we got a refund, which was cool, but I still haven't ticked that one off.

00:11:37.840 | And you talk about trying to bucket these things.

00:11:40.280 | So, you have all these ideas in life.

00:11:42.840 | Your theory is instead of saying, "Make this big list," you can have a bucket list, but

00:11:47.680 | you kind of have this anti-bucket list.

00:11:49.160 | So, why is bucketing things so different than a bucket list and why is the distinction important?

00:11:54.280 | I like to go backwards to either zero and infinity to try and get a concept across.

00:11:59.040 | So, let's just go back to just before you were born, you're in heaven or wherever the

00:12:04.440 | universe, the matrix creators, whatever your thing is.

00:12:07.720 | And then God says to you, "What experiences do you want to have on your journey on planet

00:12:15.960 | Earth?"

00:12:16.960 | You have 86 years, 79 years, whatever it is, right?

00:12:20.680 | What experiences do you want to have?

00:12:21.680 | And you go to the hall of experiences, which is really the hall of choices, right?

00:12:26.280 | You're like, "I want to go skateboarding this many times, I don't want to have sex, and

00:12:29.440 | I'm going to go traveling, I want to have kids, I want to get a degree, I want to say

00:12:32.760 | I love you this many times."

00:12:34.340 | Every single thing you think of, "I'm going to donate charities, I'm going to whatever,"

00:12:37.800 | you throw it into your bucket, infinite bucket of experiences.

00:12:41.740 | It's not infinite because you're a human, etc.

00:12:43.760 | God goes, "Great.

00:12:45.420 | You can have all those experiences.

00:12:47.480 | There's only one problem.

00:12:48.480 | You have to get the order right."

00:12:50.200 | The guy who puts the like, "I want to go hella skiing" and puts it in the 80 to 85 bucket

00:12:55.000 | probably doesn't get to go hella skiing, right?

00:12:57.520 | Because our decisions are dynamic, our body has a health curve, utility curve, and certain

00:13:04.260 | things belong in certain areas, right?

00:13:06.800 | So, I pick like kind of these cartoon exaggerated examples, right, of the why the timing matters,

00:13:17.440 | right?

00:13:18.440 | How many experiences belong when, but there's tons of them.

00:13:22.360 | You know, people have kids and they're like, "Oh, I'm going to hang out with my kids when

00:13:28.000 | they're 13 or 14 more.

00:13:29.400 | We're going to go this, I'm going to wait for this," and your kids don't want to know

00:13:32.280 | you when you're 13 or 14 or they don't want to do the same activities when you're younger.

00:13:36.320 | And people are very acutely aware of how they spend time with their kids and what activities

00:13:41.560 | they can do with their kids at certain periods in their life and certain seasons of life.

00:13:45.800 | But that applies to everyone, right?

00:13:48.280 | In every relationship, even business, your health, spiritual, etc.

00:13:53.800 | And so, not only are there limits, there's your attitude changes, certain experiences

00:14:02.160 | are orthogonal to other experiences.

00:14:04.320 | I like to use the strip club in marriage, but that's just me, off-color humor, you know

00:14:09.080 | what I mean?

00:14:10.080 | But you get it, right?

00:14:11.200 | Like my flag football days are done, man.

00:14:14.080 | I'm not trying to pull a hamstring twist the knee, etc. because of my body, the recovery

00:14:19.040 | time.

00:14:20.040 | Not that I can't do it, not that it wouldn't be fun while I'm doing it, but it would be

00:14:22.720 | less enjoyable afterwards and it wouldn't be as enjoyable, let's say, in my 20s or 30s.

00:14:27.400 | Like, "Hey, let's go play flag football after work."

00:14:31.040 | I would never say that now, right?

00:14:34.240 | Never ever, right?

00:14:35.240 | So, if I had in my bucket of experiences flag football with the fellas, you know, that had

00:14:41.800 | to happen in the 20 to 30 bucket, 20 to 33 bucket for me.

00:14:48.480 | - We haven't talked about memory dividends, but I think it's interesting because just

00:14:53.080 | because you did that in your 30s doesn't mean you don't get value out of it in your 40s

00:14:58.080 | or your 50s or your 60s.

00:14:59.080 | And I think that was one of the, I mean, I don't know, it's just something I'd never

00:15:01.720 | seen or heard or thought about, which was you could stack these memories throughout

00:15:05.920 | the rest of your life if you actually do them and enjoy them and document them maybe to

00:15:10.600 | enhance it.

00:15:11.600 | - Yeah, the purpose of money is to fulfill your life, right?

00:15:13.920 | It's for your consumption, right?

00:15:15.840 | You want to use all your resources that you have, your wealth and health and time to get

00:15:19.600 | the maximum fulfillment, right?

00:15:21.520 | So, let's just go with that.

00:15:23.520 | And then, so, the question is when I'm saving, I always ask people this, "What are you saving

00:15:30.080 | for?"

00:15:31.080 | And they're like, "Oh, they'll give me some abstract, like retirement."

00:15:34.800 | I'm like, "No, no, no, like house, home, whatever, okay, I want to survive, I'll give you survival."

00:15:39.760 | Once your survival is covered, what are you saving for?

00:15:42.880 | I want to know exactly in your mind, what are you saving for, right?

00:15:47.440 | And sometimes people will give me like a very definitive answer of like, I want to take

00:15:51.800 | this trip, I want to go to the opera, I want to be able to take a cruise every single year

00:15:57.280 | of my life from 66 to the grave or whatever it is.

00:16:00.540 | But a lot of times it's in abstract land, right?

00:16:03.680 | It's just kind of this autopilot answer.

00:16:06.560 | And when you save money, it's attached to some future consumption or experience, right?

00:16:16.160 | And that experience is going to give you some sort of fulfillment or joy, right?

00:16:21.600 | When you consume an experience, you have joy from that experience but also when you recall

00:16:28.280 | that experience and revisit that experience, you get joy from it.

00:16:33.280 | So, it pays a dividend, what I call the memory dividend.

00:16:37.460 | Anybody who's had a first kiss, hit a game-winning home run, you know, they've told that story

00:16:42.600 | over and over again, right?

00:16:44.380 | And when they tell that story and they recall that story, they get a sense of fulfillment

00:16:48.360 | from it.

00:16:49.360 | That experience, that original experience is paying a dividend and also creating a new

00:16:53.480 | memory as I discuss with you, "Hey, my backpacking trip or my trip to Asia, etc."

00:17:00.200 | And that adds up to our fulfillment.

00:17:02.720 | The same way - now, you can do it the other way around, right?

00:17:05.480 | You could say, "Well, here is the original experience and here are the dividends and

00:17:09.340 | here's the total fulfillment there or I could put the money in this investment, it will

00:17:13.560 | pay dividends, I'll have more money and I'll buy more experiences in the future, right?

00:17:18.040 | And we have to weigh these two things out to optimize it.

00:17:20.780 | Is it better to take one ski trip now with my friends and buddies or two ski trips 10

00:17:29.480 | years from now, right?

00:17:31.400 | Because the money is for consumption, right?

00:17:33.680 | We're going to use it all, right?

00:17:35.240 | So, the question is, when is the best time to allocate and which provides the total return

00:17:41.480 | on fulfillment?

00:17:42.480 | What gets me the highest fulfillment, right?

00:17:45.840 | And if you're - depending on who you are, what your age is and the things you like,

00:17:50.960 | you know, going through that mental exercise may produce different results but you know,

00:17:54.560 | for me, you know, at 53, a lot of the times, the answer is not two trips 10 years from

00:18:01.400 | now.

00:18:02.400 | It's the activity now plus the dividends will surely exceed two of the activity later

00:18:09.920 | in life, right?

00:18:11.960 | And you can just calculate what that return is.

00:18:15.160 | Is it as simple as there - you have kind of a rule of thumb where it's like, for however

00:18:18.800 | many years in the future, this thing will be a memory, you know, it is worth, I don't

00:18:24.640 | know, 10% more every year?

00:18:26.600 | Is there some simple math that makes it easy?

00:18:29.880 | For me, I just deeply think about it like, you know, I sit down like wakeboarding.

00:18:35.520 | There is no future wakeboarding, right?

00:18:37.200 | It might have been two wakeboarding trips later, spend the money, be with your friends,

00:18:41.440 | etc.

00:18:42.440 | But generally, you know, as you get older, I think the answer is kind of like when you're

00:18:45.840 | 20, 22, maybe two ski trips, two and a half ski trips at 30 is a much better deal.

00:18:52.880 | You're more mature, you'll have your stuff together, other things been going on, I'll

00:18:56.000 | have some friends, it'll be bigger and better, I can afford the upgrade, whatever.

00:18:59.400 | Maybe it's a better trip.

00:19:00.400 | For me at 53, two ski trips is not the answer.

00:19:03.840 | Well, I also think, I mean, you just said afford the upgrade and it made me think, you

00:19:07.360 | know, I went on this trip, my wife and I, and I hadn't read your book.

00:19:10.480 | So somehow I had this spark of let's quit our jobs and let's spend all our savings and

00:19:15.240 | let's backpack around the world for seven months.

00:19:18.080 | And we did this in our 20s.

00:19:20.160 | I am 100% certain that the money that we spent wouldn't even buy one trip around the world

00:19:26.800 | for two months now that we have a different lifestyle, we have kids and all this stuff.

00:19:31.640 | So I think it's especially interesting for someone in their 20s or early 30s, you know,

00:19:37.440 | foregoing that trip now isn't going to let your money grow to be two trips because I'm

00:19:42.600 | almost certain that by the time that money is enough for the two trips, the cost of a

00:19:47.120 | trip is going to be twice or three times as much.

00:19:49.240 | It might not even be enough to go on one.

00:19:51.240 | - Right.

00:19:52.240 | You're including also the economic inflation of the trip, also the fact that you become

00:19:56.320 | more bougie as you get older, right?

00:19:58.320 | Like it's hard to do the youth hostel backpacking thing as you get older.

00:20:02.680 | That's not even a physical thing.

00:20:05.360 | That's like your attitude changes.

00:20:08.560 | You realize that certain activities, you know, this going back to this time bucketing, belong

00:20:13.520 | in your 20s and they don't transfer well to your 30s.

00:20:18.320 | Now you may be able to do them, but it's just not as enjoyable or to cost, you know, infinite

00:20:23.280 | more money or whatever it is and that the 20s activity, not only do you get to enjoy

00:20:30.240 | it more, but you get to enjoy the discussion, the memories, the conversation, it's the thing

00:20:34.760 | that makes you interesting, right?

00:20:36.160 | Like when I sit down and talk with somebody at a dinner, I just met them, you know, I'd

00:20:40.520 | say 80% of the conversation is what have they done?

00:20:43.800 | What experiences that they have?

00:20:45.080 | What were their learnings?

00:20:46.440 | You know, what has been their journey, right?

00:20:49.760 | And maybe 20% is what they're going to do or what's going on currently, et cetera, right?

00:20:53.800 | And that is kind of like what drives your fulfillment when you're meeting somebody,

00:20:58.560 | right?

00:20:59.560 | It makes you an interesting character.

00:21:00.560 | And so getting the order right and figuring out, "Hey, is it worth it to delay or not?"

00:21:05.720 | is a very personal thing, right?

00:21:09.840 | And it's very dependent on which activities or things fulfill you, but it's definitely

00:21:13.840 | the thought process that you want to go through.

00:21:16.040 | - Yeah.

00:21:17.040 | I mean, my takeaway so far is don't necessarily focus on accumulating money to all extent

00:21:21.880 | because you can use that money earlier to create experiences that provide value the

00:21:26.120 | rest of your life.

00:21:27.120 | - I mean, if the purpose is like, I'm going to get the max value, right?

00:21:31.600 | And I say the max value is fulfillment, you got to change your optimization algorithm

00:21:36.360 | in your head to optimize for fulfillment.

00:21:39.480 | A lot of people keep optimizing for money.

00:21:43.640 | And I'm like, "Listen, okay, why don't you optimize for the most money at 86?"

00:21:48.120 | And they'll obviously will go, "No, that's dumb," right?

00:21:51.520 | Well, it's the same thing is true at 85 or 84 or 83 or any year, we should be optimizing

00:21:58.480 | for fulfillment.

00:22:00.080 | Money is just a tool for your fulfillment.

00:22:03.160 | You are not a tool to make money.

00:22:05.640 | And a lot of people are operating in the latter, not the former.

00:22:08.680 | - Yeah.

00:22:09.680 | I want to come back to identifying that, but there's a couple of few things on kind of

00:22:14.200 | bucketing experiences and memory.

00:22:16.120 | One that comes to mind, it's kind of interesting to me.

00:22:18.600 | So we had a wedding as many people do, and we paid for a photographer and videographer,

00:22:24.400 | although many people that have listened know that we negotiated to pay for the videographer

00:22:28.160 | by swapping frequent flyer miles instead of dollars, because we wanted to get a deal.

00:22:32.200 | But looking back, my wife and I, that video has not been seen by millions of people.

00:22:37.100 | It's friends and family, and we've watched it every few years.

00:22:40.760 | But I think it's really reinforced the memory of the wedding, and the photos do the same.

00:22:47.020 | I'm curious if there are any other tactics that can kind of enhance the dividends that

00:22:52.120 | our memories pay, so that we can get more value of them after we have them.

00:22:57.520 | - I think technology is doing something wonderful, like with your phone will now, Google will

00:23:04.000 | do it, Google Photos or iPhones will do this, they'll be on this date, right?

00:23:07.960 | And then photos will pop up of what happens, right?

00:23:11.560 | And then you get joy out of that, and it sparks a conversation, you get fulfillment from an

00:23:16.100 | experience that you had and the recall of it.

00:23:18.720 | So it's triggering and tapping in to your memory dividend, right?

00:23:24.440 | Your memories to provide you value.

00:23:27.720 | I have a jar, like one of the gifts my fiancee at the time gave me was a box and it had photos

00:23:35.680 | and memories and little comments on what it was, right?

00:23:38.200 | And I was like, this is the best gift, right?

00:23:41.060 | This is like helping me get to relive this value, zero cost, right?

00:23:47.960 | Like close to zero costs of any kind of purchase, et cetera, paper, cards, some photos printed

00:23:56.780 | out, et cetera, and her perspective.

00:23:58.920 | But it was amazing on how much joy it was, and really was, I was just mining the prior

00:24:03.760 | experience and experience dividend.

00:24:05.600 | If somebody, you know, and really, if somebody comes up with another tool or another idea

00:24:09.640 | or another method, I'm open to it, right?

00:24:11.920 | I really want to mine the memory dividend and get the most out of my investments and

00:24:15.640 | my investments are, I invest in experiences.

00:24:18.520 | Just like Warren Buffet says, right?

00:24:20.000 | When do you start investing?

00:24:21.000 | Early, early, early, now, now, now, right?

00:24:24.000 | In order to get the maximum, what I call memory dividend, maximum return.

00:24:28.080 | - Yeah, I mean, so it's, in some ways everyone says, you know, compound interest is so important,

00:24:32.000 | you should invest as early as you can to have the most money possible.

00:24:35.320 | You're saying, I have the same principle.

00:24:37.800 | It's just, I'm not optimizing for money.

00:24:39.440 | So invest, invest, invest as early as possible in the kinds of experiences that will maximize

00:24:43.900 | your fulfillment of life.

00:24:44.900 | So, you know, when people are focused on returns and compound interest, et cetera, they're

00:24:49.660 | optimizing for maximum money, right?

00:24:52.800 | That's a vertical, right?

00:24:54.000 | Your wealth, getting your wealth up, right?

00:24:55.600 | And there's lots of books and lots of tools, tricks, hacks on how to get the most out of

00:25:00.700 | every dollar you spend, how to make the most money, et cetera.

00:25:04.320 | But I'm at a top level optimization, right?

00:25:07.160 | I'm at a much higher optimization on like your life fulfillment, your net fulfillment.

00:25:13.440 | And that is, the memory dividend is a huge part, huge calculation in it.

00:25:19.600 | And I really encourage people to invest in making those memory dividends, or at least

00:25:24.080 | think about that when you're deciding whether to delay gratification or actually have gratification

00:25:31.880 | now.

00:25:32.880 | - Yeah, one thing that's helped me in this is, if you think about the marginal dollar

00:25:36.840 | that you're saving, and so often I hear people, and this is probably people with a little

00:25:40.880 | more money, but they're like, "Oh, well, I should save more money."

00:25:43.560 | And I'm like, "Well, why?"

00:25:44.560 | And they're like, "Well, then I'll have more money and I'll get a higher net worth."

00:25:47.200 | And I say, "Well, what's that next marginal dollar gonna do for you?"

00:25:50.680 | Because people always say, "Well, if I save an extra $1,000 a month, that's my kid's college."

00:25:54.880 | And it's like, "Well, do you already have your kid's college saved?

00:25:57.360 | Because if so, then what's that extra dollar doing?

00:26:00.600 | And would that extra dollar actually be better spent today?"

00:26:03.280 | - Yeah, going back to, I try and get people to map their money to what the consumption

00:26:08.080 | is.

00:26:09.080 | You know, a lot of people are saving, they're like, "Oh, I'm saving, I'm working."

00:26:11.440 | I'm like, "Listen, it's okay to save.

00:26:13.320 | Just tell me what the party is and when's the party.

00:26:17.120 | Just tell me when the party is, I'm okay with it, right?"

00:26:19.820 | And they're kind of like, "Uh..."

00:26:20.820 | You know what I mean?

00:26:22.200 | Like it gets them thinking like, "Well, 65, no, that's not really when I have the party.

00:26:25.880 | Wait, what kind of party do I have?

00:26:27.520 | What are the things I really want to do?"

00:26:29.480 | Because what happens is, I believe is people get habituated, right?

00:26:32.960 | They get really good at optimizing for money, making money, doing deals, whatever it is

00:26:38.760 | they are, programmers, et cetera, right?

00:26:40.960 | And they keep piling it, right?

00:26:43.160 | And you know, much like a rat in a wheel with the cheese, right, experiment, pretty soon

00:26:48.160 | you can just show them the wheel and not give them the cheese.

00:26:50.440 | There's no reward, right?

00:26:51.720 | And so people are in default mode network of accumulating wealth, right?

00:26:57.480 | Making money, earning money, optimizing money.

00:26:59.520 | I read the book on how to save on this.

00:27:01.280 | I got 18 million Fleetwood Flyer miles.

00:27:03.240 | I discounted that.

00:27:04.240 | I've got all, look at all these Chuck E. Cheese tokens I got.

00:27:09.200 | And then they die with a bunch of Chuck E. Cheese tokens and never really go to Chuck

00:27:12.560 | E. Cheese.

00:27:13.560 | And I'm like, "When are you going to Chuck E. Cheese?"

00:27:15.680 | You know?

00:27:16.680 | You've been running this rat wheel, right?

00:27:20.000 | You got all these tickets, everything, but what are we buying here?

00:27:24.520 | What are we saving for?

00:27:25.760 | And I think people become detached from what their original dream was.

00:27:33.600 | What they really wanted to do such that the game and the puzzle solving, right?

00:27:38.800 | People become addicted to the puzzle of saving more money as opposed to being addicted to

00:27:43.960 | the puzzle of how do I fulfill my life?

00:27:47.040 | What potluck thing am I going to do?

00:27:49.040 | How do I expose myself to other things?

00:27:51.200 | What choices should I be making today?

00:27:54.700 | What experiences do I want in this time period of my life and the next time period of life?

00:27:58.440 | And how do those fit together?

00:28:00.600 | They're more focused on a different puzzle.

00:28:02.960 | When it comes to these bucketing of experiences, is there a number of years that you say, "Well,

00:28:06.800 | try to bucket them in tranches of five years or 10 years, or how do you think about that?"

00:28:11.720 | So people can actually go home and be like, "Let's start doing this today."

00:28:14.600 | I hope people listening start that process tonight.

00:28:17.360 | Generally, I try and do five years earlier, but when I got to my 65, I broke it out 65

00:28:25.400 | to 75.

00:28:26.400 | Right?

00:28:27.400 | It gets wider, right?

00:28:28.400 | Because obviously, the further you go in future, the less your visibility, right?

00:28:33.800 | Like the less your visibility - even for yourself, right?

00:28:35.880 | Like I know like, "Okay, yeah, 53 to 58, this is what I want to do.

00:28:39.400 | I want to do this.

00:28:40.400 | I want to take a train.

00:28:41.400 | I want to go to my daughter's graduation.

00:28:42.560 | I want to you know, stay healthy.

00:28:44.080 | I want to go on a trip.

00:28:45.080 | I want to go to Tokyo again.

00:28:46.520 | You know, I have all those things kind of down, right?

00:28:48.640 | And then the next five years, it gets harder.

00:28:51.600 | I kind of think I want to be doing this, right?

00:28:53.200 | So, they're a little bit more thematic, right?

00:28:56.160 | And then, you know, 65, 75, 75 to the grave, you know, it gets even more thematic.

00:29:02.240 | But I can tell you that when I look at those choices, when I try and time bucket my life,

00:29:09.600 | I can see the level of activity going down.

00:29:13.080 | I see it harder for me to spend money.

00:29:16.280 | You know, it's like visit grandchildren, hang out with daughters, read the books I haven't

00:29:21.960 | read.

00:29:22.960 | You know what I mean?

00:29:24.160 | You know, it's not like go raging, stay up till 7 a.m. in a club in Tokyo, you know,

00:29:29.600 | travel here, swim that, right?

00:29:31.680 | And so, if you could perfectly lay out the experiences you wanted to have, which you

00:29:37.760 | can't, right?

00:29:39.200 | You would see this natural curve in the cost of those experiences, right?

00:29:44.880 | This natural consumption pattern, right?

00:29:47.320 | And then you start to say, well, I don't want to work, give up hours of my life for a bunch

00:29:53.560 | of Chuck E. Cheese tokens that I'm not going to use.

00:29:55.480 | So, I'm going to go to Chuck E. Cheese and then you start to lay out, well, I'm probably

00:29:58.800 | going to go to Chuck E. Cheese a lot here, I'll play the whack-a-mole game that costs

00:30:02.200 | a lot and I do whatever and another time I'm just going to sit around and eat pizza, right?

00:30:06.600 | And then you have this nice, beautiful curve on consuming and spending your money down

00:30:11.920 | to zero as you have the most fulfilling Chuck E. Cheese experience, basically, the most

00:30:16.560 | fulfilling life.

00:30:17.560 | I don't know why I'm stuck on Chuck E. Cheese, but I am for some reason.

00:30:20.560 | I was trying to teach her, I was actually watching, this is strange, but last night

00:30:25.040 | or two nights ago, we talked about Chuck E. Cheese randomly and I was showing our au pair

00:30:28.720 | from Spain what Chuck E. Cheese was because she was like, "I have no idea what you're

00:30:32.400 | talking about."

00:30:33.400 | I was like, "Man, Chuck E. Cheese has kind of become a more depressing place than I remember

00:30:36.600 | it in my childhood."

00:30:37.600 | So, when you're talking about it, I'm like, "Oh man, I don't want to be the Chuck E. Cheese

00:30:41.200 | guy.

00:30:42.200 | I don't want to be going there in my 50s."

00:30:43.200 | Yeah.

00:30:44.200 | Yeah.

00:30:45.200 | It's kind of funny.

00:30:46.200 | It's kind of, to me, like cold water.

00:30:47.400 | I was like, going into the Atlantic Ocean, I was like, "Wow, I used to go in here as

00:30:50.640 | a kid all the time.

00:30:51.640 | Like, no problem.

00:30:52.640 | Now it's freezing.

00:30:53.640 | I would never go in there."

00:30:54.640 | Right?

00:30:55.640 | And that's kind of like an activity if you're in heaven.

00:30:56.640 | It's like, go swimming and frolicking and body surfing in the Atlantic Ocean.

00:31:00.640 | You're probably not going to enjoy it as much as when you were nine or five and immune to

00:31:04.960 | the cold for whatever reason, because it was just so we.

00:31:08.080 | When you're like 20 something, you're like, "This is freezing.

00:31:10.440 | Like, why am I here?"

00:31:11.800 | You know, that type of thing.

00:31:13.160 | Are there any experiences that, you know, maybe you regret not doing more of younger

00:31:17.040 | or things that people listening in their 20s and 30s should maybe prioritize more?

00:31:21.040 | Yeah.

00:31:22.040 | I mean, for me, you know, I think it's very, very personal and it has to do with like travel,

00:31:28.920 | that kind of backpacking experience, that kind of gap year thing that people do.

00:31:34.720 | I just really didn't take advantage of that time period.

00:31:39.160 | I was so focused on trying to get ahead and make money and not taking breaks and was on

00:31:45.040 | this autopilot of like must succeed, right?

00:31:49.800 | And not saying that that wasn't a great focus and didn't help me get to here, but the success

00:31:55.160 | I want is the most fulfilling life.

00:31:57.660 | And I gave up things that would have been extremely fulfilling, not only then, but now

00:32:02.120 | as I look back on my life, right?

00:32:04.880 | And that's going to be different for everybody, right?

00:32:06.280 | But like, I wish I went to go play in this chess tournament, you know, whatever, you

00:32:09.760 | know, like it could be anything.

00:32:12.920 | But you know, I knew at an early age that travel and meeting new cultures and doing

00:32:19.540 | adventurous things really fulfills me.

00:32:21.280 | I really enjoy that.

00:32:24.560 | And I did not take advantage of those opportunities that I had, right?

00:32:28.600 | I kind of didn't really think about the context of my life, like, you know, I can go to a

00:32:31.720 | club in Manhattan any day.

00:32:33.240 | I can hang out in this weekend any day.

00:32:35.120 | Like, why don't I get the super saver ticket, go here for the weekend, come back, you know,

00:32:40.040 | come back, etc.

00:32:41.360 | You know, that type of thing.

00:32:42.360 | So I think I was really lucky because I got laid off in 2008.

00:32:47.000 | And so I didn't have a job.

00:32:48.560 | And my wife was working at a company that she just absolutely hated and didn't want

00:32:52.440 | to stay in that field.

00:32:53.940 | And so we kind of got forced in this situation where she was like, well, I'm going to quit

00:32:57.320 | my job.

00:32:58.320 | And I don't know what's next.

00:32:59.320 | And I already didn't have a job.

00:33:00.820 | So we ended up taking this trip for seven months, backpacking, just as you describe.

00:33:06.280 | But I think it would have been so much harder had at least one of us not been forced out

00:33:10.620 | of a job and kind of pushed into this.

00:33:13.660 | And so what I'm curious to get your take on is the culture of work in America, at least,

00:33:18.880 | and probably many other countries, makes it so hard to be like, let's take a year off.

00:33:24.340 | Or, you know, now I'm thinking in 30s and 40s, let's cut back.

00:33:29.080 | So I'm not grinding so hard.

00:33:31.000 | Or, you know, my wife's thinking, you know, in her career, she's like, oh, wow, if I ever

00:33:35.160 | got another job, like it's got to level it up, got to level it up, whereas usually leveling

00:33:39.920 | it up is more responsibility and more time.

00:33:43.160 | How can people in the work environment we've created in this country, kind of still live

00:33:49.040 | to these ideals and not get caught in that hamster wheel?

00:33:52.560 | It's really tough to escape your culture.

00:33:55.520 | Culture changes slowly.

00:33:57.280 | With regards to work and like, optimizing for, you know, not being afraid of running

00:34:05.200 | out of money and status and having more and more money, it's really hard to step back

00:34:09.840 | and go, wait, wait, wait, does this serve me, right?

00:34:13.320 | Does this serve my one and only life that I have?

00:34:16.000 | Is this really going to fill me?

00:34:18.200 | Or have I become a robot hamster in a wheel, right?

00:34:23.160 | Just grinding and a puzzle addicted to solving this puzzle called more money, more status,

00:34:29.040 | more fame, et cetera.

00:34:30.520 | And so, you know, I call that autopilot, right?

00:34:33.280 | I say we're always on autopilot, you know, I'm on autopilot just as much as the next

00:34:37.440 | person and we have to snap out of it and be like, what really fulfills me?

00:34:42.320 | What do I really want out of life?

00:34:44.160 | What do I really want out of life out of these next five years, right?

00:34:48.680 | And we're so trained, like, I want the promotion and I want the thing.

00:34:51.520 | Why do you want the promotion?

00:34:53.760 | Because the promotion, the thing and I have more money.

00:34:55.720 | Why do you want the more money?

00:34:57.560 | The more money is better, the thing, you know what I mean?

00:35:01.080 | It's all the way down, right?

00:35:03.160 | It's so inculcated into us, right?

00:35:07.240 | About success, success is more money and it's an abstract that we lose the final connection

00:35:13.400 | that money is an abstract, it's a tool, it's a hammer and a saw.

00:35:17.280 | It's like a hammer and a saw.

00:35:18.280 | It's like builders don't want hammers and saws because they love hammers and saws.

00:35:23.040 | They want hammers and saws to build houses.

00:35:25.200 | That is the goal, right?

00:35:27.480 | And so, they're not like must accumulate more hammers and saws, more hammers and saws, right?

00:35:32.640 | This is how people are.

00:35:33.640 | They're like, we must accumulate more money to have more money to more money, money, money.

00:35:38.360 | And I'm like, no life, motherfucker.

00:35:41.080 | We're here to fulfill your life, like you are solving the wrong problem.

00:35:45.560 | We're optimizing for the wrong problem.

00:35:47.840 | And culture has pretty much jammed that on everyone, right?

00:35:53.360 | Really hard, right?

00:35:54.680 | Really hard because there's this fear of not having money, right?

00:35:57.840 | You don't want to run out of money and fear of retirement, like there's this whole fear

00:36:01.080 | game with retirement, right?

00:36:03.240 | And the debt is so overwhelming that those who save, save too much.

00:36:07.960 | Like they just can never - people ask, why do old people keep growing their wealth while

00:36:13.840 | they're older?

00:36:14.840 | Because they can't spend it down.

00:36:16.240 | Life has passed them by.

00:36:17.240 | That's the cold hard truth, right?

00:36:18.960 | Like I'm really harsh about that.

00:36:20.240 | I'm like, they fucked it up.

00:36:23.520 | That's why they can't spend it down.

00:36:24.680 | They fucked it up and it's too late for them.

00:36:28.240 | And so, you know, my book, these algorithms, these mental models are to help you not fuck

00:36:34.840 | it up as much.

00:36:35.840 | We're all going to fuck it up a little bit, right?

00:36:37.120 | Like it can't be perfect, right?

00:36:38.360 | But it's like, let's not fuck it up.

00:36:40.920 | I worked with this woman whose job - you wrote a book - her job is to kind of help people

00:36:46.360 | take their outlook on life that might have some different unconventional contrarian thoughts

00:36:50.760 | and like really kind of boil it down to actual, some framework, some model.

00:36:55.760 | And we kind of arrived at like my nine principles of living an optimized life.

00:36:59.960 | And I'm not ready to share them all yet, but one of them was kind of questioning the outcome

00:37:03.840 | you actually want.

00:37:05.840 | And I want to bring it up because of what you just said earlier.

00:37:08.920 | I met someone who said, "Gosh, I need more money."

00:37:10.960 | Like, "Why do you need more money?"

00:37:11.960 | I said, "Well, I want to spend more time with my kids.

00:37:13.960 | And if I have more money, I'll be able to retire sooner and spend more time with my

00:37:16.800 | kids."

00:37:17.800 | And through this conversation, we were like, "Well, what if you had a different job that

00:37:21.520 | earned you a little less money, but gave you the freedom to work four days a week or something.

00:37:25.920 | And now you have a whole day that you could spend more time with your kids and you weren't

00:37:29.000 | grinding as hard."

00:37:30.000 | And they're like, "Well, then I wouldn't have any money."

00:37:31.440 | And I was like, "Well, you don't need the more money anymore because you don't need

00:37:34.160 | to retire early to spend your time with your kids at 50.

00:37:36.800 | You could start spending it now."

00:37:38.580 | And so this thing that I've really been processing is, and in product management, when we're

00:37:42.880 | building software and talking to customers, we always ask the five whys.

00:37:46.360 | So someone says, "Oh, I want this."

00:37:47.360 | And it's like, you've got to ask why five times before you actually understand what

00:37:50.320 | someone wants.

00:37:51.560 | So I'll challenge people thinking they want more money to go through that thought experiment

00:37:55.320 | themselves, being like, "Why do you want the more money?"

00:37:57.280 | And drill down.

00:37:58.800 | And then ask yourself, is there actually, once you get to that fifth why, a way you

00:38:02.360 | could achieve what you want that actually isn't about just accumulating more money?

00:38:06.560 | And I would argue that more often than not, the answer will be yes.

00:38:10.240 | - The book, "Your Money, Your Life" kind of hits on this concept of enough and what

00:38:14.780 | are you really solving for, right?

00:38:16.700 | Like, you're doing, like, spend more time with your kids, but making more money to save

00:38:21.800 | time with your kids.

00:38:22.800 | But if you make more money, are they really kids then?

00:38:24.820 | Do they want to spend time with you?

00:38:26.300 | You know, there's a lot of variables going on, right?

00:38:28.860 | But going through that thought experiment, I think you find out you actually get to pull

00:38:33.860 | out more from them.

00:38:34.860 | It's like, it's really about the status.

00:38:37.540 | It's really because you've been habituated to making more money.

00:38:40.740 | Really, you know, there may be this desire to spend more time with your kids, but it's

00:38:44.640 | not the real reason, right?

00:38:46.580 | There's other reasons, whether they be habit or some sort of goal, et cetera, that we got

00:38:52.460 | to address, we got to look at and be like, "Do those reasons serve you?"

00:38:56.420 | - And so what would you say to someone, let's say in their mid-30s, who's got a great job

00:39:01.980 | and looking to do something new and feeling like the only option is to go take that next

00:39:07.260 | level up job that's going to be higher pay and more responsibility and probably limit

00:39:11.940 | their ability to have the kinds of experiences they want because they're so engulfed in work,

00:39:18.340 | but they're stressed out because they feel like doing anything else would be a downgrade

00:39:22.340 | in their career.

00:39:23.340 | - Well, I would just talk to them.

00:39:24.540 | It's like, "What are we..."

00:39:25.540 | You know, the main thing is like, "What are we solving for?"

00:39:28.180 | And all of them, the first variable, the second variable, and the third variable, right?

00:39:31.260 | And like, how can we max them out, right?

00:39:32.780 | So like, they're like, "Oh, I want to actually spend time and have more fun and do X, Y,

00:39:36.340 | and Z."

00:39:37.340 | And I'd be like, "Whoa, okay.

00:39:39.020 | This is one of them.

00:39:40.700 | I want to be rich and I want to, you know, have..."

00:39:43.380 | You know what I mean?

00:39:44.380 | "I'm going to be my own insurance agent," right?

00:39:46.420 | I talk about that in the book, like people try and like make basically be their own insurance

00:39:51.180 | agent by saving enough money for every single calamity, right?

00:39:54.740 | That's their backup default skew.

00:39:56.060 | "Well, Jeff, what if this happens?

00:39:57.300 | What if that happens?"

00:39:58.300 | Right?

00:39:59.340 | So I try and find these things that they're actually solving for and then help them make

00:40:03.460 | the decision on what's the best decision for them, right?

00:40:07.260 | You know, we may come to the conclusion that taking on more responsibility now because

00:40:10.820 | the job pays so much damn money and then quitting in a year will actually lead to more fulfillment,

00:40:15.580 | more fun, and then I'll quit and I'll goof off and do whatever, right?

00:40:18.820 | The stock options are going to go into money and I'm going to make a zillion dollars and

00:40:22.060 | I'm going to have seven years of just bliss and goofing off as opposed to, you know, grinding

00:40:27.580 | it out five years in this lower paying job, et cetera, I'd have 100% of the time, right?

00:40:31.900 | But that's usually the rarity in these scenarios.

00:40:36.220 | And they never quit, right?

00:40:37.220 | Yeah.

00:40:38.220 | They never quit.

00:40:39.220 | I mean, it's like you don't have to quit your job.

00:40:41.560 | You just have to consume the fruits of your labor, right?

00:40:44.720 | Like you have to get everything.

00:40:46.560 | You have to find your balance, right?

00:40:48.220 | Like you can love what you do, but you should also be able to do what you love.

00:40:54.900 | You know what I mean?

00:40:56.340 | And those are, you know, those are things like, you know, a lot of people like they

00:40:59.280 | went to work because they wanted a house and they wanted to have kids and they wanted to

00:41:02.580 | travel and they wanted to ski and they want to start a rock band or some expensive hobby

00:41:08.020 | with telescopes or whatever it is, right?

00:41:10.740 | And you know, somewhere along the way, those things kind of fall to the wayside.

00:41:17.940 | They don't exist anymore and it's the money and whatever and we kind of instinctively

00:41:26.860 | attack some sort of reason, "Oh, the kids, I'm going to spend more time on my kids."

00:41:30.860 | I'm like, "Nah, no, you don't.

00:41:32.580 | That's not what you're solving for with this job, right?

00:41:34.780 | Or at least this equation doesn't compute, right?

00:41:37.940 | Like if they were my friends, like real close friends, I'm like, "No, you don't.

00:41:41.460 | You're bullshitting yourself, right?

00:41:43.460 | You can lie to me, but just don't lie to yourself, right?"

00:41:45.220 | And then we go through it.

00:41:47.020 | But you know, in a more gentle process, like let's just see if this formula computes.

00:41:52.780 | Let's put it up on the board.

00:41:55.380 | Let's map out the time, like get really detailed.

00:41:57.380 | Like, okay, how much more money are you going to get?

00:42:00.660 | When are you going to have the time?

00:42:01.660 | How much more spare time are you going to have?

00:42:03.500 | When does this happen?

00:42:04.500 | Is your kid still a kid?

00:42:05.500 | Do they still want to hang out with you?

00:42:06.500 | Okay, what's this other job?

00:42:08.180 | You know, no two-hour commute, that's two hours a day you can have your kids, right?

00:42:13.020 | Well, it seems like, you know, if we're solving for time with the kid, right?

00:42:17.980 | This job may be better than this job, right?

00:42:21.240 | Because the money you accumulate, you really don't have the time to spend it because you're

00:42:24.820 | working harder and you have more responsibilities and it's in the future and your kid's not

00:42:28.900 | a kid anymore, right?

00:42:30.720 | And they're gone, right?

00:42:31.720 | And so, you know, we might come to that conclusion depending on what we put on the board.

00:42:36.500 | So, like much like you do, like you're digging in, like if I switch this and I fly this plane

00:42:40.580 | and I do this on Tuesday, I get the most frequent flyer miles, right?

00:42:43.760 | Like you're optimizing for like the most miles, right?

00:42:47.180 | And I will look at a trip as like, yeah, miles is one of the things I'm optimizing for.

00:42:50.700 | But ultimately, I'm optimizing for the best fucking trip and the most memory dividends

00:42:54.980 | and the most fulfillment out of this trip.

00:42:57.020 | So that's number one priority and number two is the miles.

00:43:00.240 | I'm very grateful that we had children because it's forced my perspective to be, "Oh, before

00:43:06.280 | when I was younger, if I had to take three layovers to get to South Africa, I think when

00:43:09.980 | we went to South Africa for this trip around the world, we had like five layovers because

00:43:13.260 | we stopped one place, then we changed planes and the plane landed in Sudan, but we couldn't

00:43:16.980 | even get off the plane.

00:43:17.980 | So we just sat there until it took off again and all this stuff.

00:43:21.180 | Now I'm like, how can I get there with zero to one stop?

00:43:24.100 | Like, you know, if it's really far, one stop, if it's really close, zero stops and that's

00:43:28.980 | forced me to reprioritize what I want.

00:43:33.780 | But I want to talk about a few things.

00:43:35.580 | So how do we implement this?

00:43:37.720 | But maybe first, some of the common objections to changing this.

00:43:42.460 | So two things you talked about.

00:43:44.000 | One is preventing running out of money.

00:43:45.860 | I think everyone I know is like, "Oh, I want to make sure I have enough.

00:43:49.700 | What if I live to 110?

00:43:51.180 | What if health gets so great that I'm living forever?"

00:43:54.180 | What do you tell to people who are trying to optimize for every possible thing that

00:43:58.080 | could happen?

00:43:59.140 | How to just get either comfortable with the risk that they don't need it or you even mentioned

00:44:03.700 | the book, like, just get an annuity, like, what's the…

00:44:06.340 | Right, right.

00:44:07.340 | Yeah.

00:44:08.340 | I'm like, if you're worried about running out of money, get an annuity, right?

00:44:11.180 | Get the reverse of life insurance.

00:44:12.540 | Everybody gets life insurance, right?

00:44:13.540 | They're like, "I have life insurance if I die early, etc."

00:44:15.780 | Well, if you're worried about living too long, it's the exact opposite, they have an insurance

00:44:19.980 | product for that, right?

00:44:21.440 | Or they're worried about long-term, what if I need nurses or whatever, I'm like, long-term

00:44:26.260 | healthcare insurance is pretty cheap.

00:44:29.260 | It's actually very cheap, right?

00:44:32.500 | And because I think one of the reasons is when you need those nurses, you're on your

00:44:36.560 | way out.

00:44:37.560 | They're not going to be paying that long, you know?

00:44:40.600 | But it's pretty cheap, particularly if you get it while you're younger, right?

00:44:43.660 | 30s and 40s, it's actually trivial for people of the wealth category that you're talking

00:44:49.780 | about.

00:44:50.780 | So, I look at things that people are acting as an insurance agent inefficiently and I'm

00:44:57.220 | like, let's be more efficient on how we insure away these risks, right?

00:45:02.460 | And it might be an insurance product, etc.

00:45:04.540 | And some of the things that they're - let's say there's not an insurance product or whatever

00:45:08.100 | they're fear of, you know, I try and convert their fear of - you should fear wasting your

00:45:13.660 | life more than you fear running out of money, right?

00:45:17.100 | I try and redirect them to that, right?

00:45:19.540 | Like what are the things you want to have?

00:45:22.060 | What experience you want to have when this is your life, you will die, it doesn't go

00:45:26.700 | on forever, what is urgent to you?

00:45:30.020 | And what is urgent for each period?

00:45:32.260 | And so, when we have that conversation, you know, in my presence and their presence while

00:45:38.120 | I think about it, you're like, yeah, you're right.

00:45:40.220 | The key is to keep them on that, right?

00:45:42.380 | Because you have that conversation, they go back and they're right back on autopilot.

00:45:45.900 | Let's go running the wheel because it's fun to run the wheel, right?

00:45:48.920 | No cheese, no reward, no fulfilling life, just a battery, a robot, a cog in the wheel

00:45:55.260 | for the economic system.

00:45:58.600 | But you know, I implore them to stay focused on, always attach your efforts to what the

00:46:05.860 | goal, what the consumption is.

00:46:08.260 | That is how I get them on the goal and in every single objection, whether it's what

00:46:13.660 | if I live too long, what if I need long-term care insurance, etc.

00:46:19.580 | There is a way to minimize that risk or mitigate that risk more efficiently than the way they

00:46:23.900 | are doing it right now because honestly, they've just been doing it on autopilot.

00:46:27.100 | It's just a backstop reason to back up why they're doing it.

00:46:31.340 | You know how some behaviors, you'll just do them and then you'll throw a reason after

00:46:34.940 | the fact on why you're doing it and you're just doing it because it's on autopilot?

00:46:38.860 | That's a lot of those reasons.

00:46:39.860 | Well, I'm working real hard because of whatever, what if I get sick?

00:46:42.700 | Like, okay, when you get sick and $20,000 a night in the hospital bed, are you really

00:46:47.780 | the insurance agent?

00:46:48.780 | No, you're buying insurance for that, right?

00:46:50.380 | Like, let's really think this through.

00:46:52.100 | And so, when you're sitting across someone, sometimes it's a lot of chalkboard work.

00:46:57.780 | You know what I mean?

00:46:58.780 | It's a lot of going through it and that's why I tell people like you need to sit down

00:47:02.180 | and think about this honestly with yourself and work through these priorities and what

00:47:08.460 | are your fears and like, let's go one by one to try to mitigate them because if we're solving

00:47:13.660 | for the most fulfilling life, everything else is secondary and everything else needs to

00:47:17.740 | be solved.

00:47:18.740 | And you talk a lot about risk, but is it sometimes that that risk is really just fear?

00:47:24.580 | You said it, not me.

00:47:25.580 | No.

00:47:26.580 | I will say it too.

00:47:27.580 | Yeah, it's just fucking fear and a lot of it's fear of embarrassment, fear of running

00:47:33.500 | out of money, like that is like the worst thing for people, not because they can't go

00:47:38.380 | get some basic job and survive, just the embarrassment, the status, the ego attached to it, right?

00:47:46.500 | And I guess why, because like if you run out of money, right, or you were at high status

00:47:52.480 | and now you're working at McDonald's say, or whatever, and you get that shame and people

00:47:57.400 | mocking you, whatever.

00:47:58.920 | If you waste your life and die, nobody's mocking you.

00:48:01.340 | You can't know you're dead.

00:48:03.820 | You know?

00:48:04.820 | I mean, the people who are alive are like, "Wow, that fucking guy, what a clown, dude.

00:48:08.400 | That guy died with $4 billion.

00:48:10.860 | What a fucking idiot.

00:48:12.740 | Like he got completely habituated to be a cog in the fucking wheel.

00:48:20.640 | Great one, dude.

00:48:21.640 | You know what I mean?

00:48:22.720 | Thank you for your service.

00:48:24.000 | Thank you for putting out all this value, getting a fraction of yourself and never using

00:48:28.440 | it.

00:48:29.440 | And then donating 40% to the US Treasury.

00:48:31.520 | We fucking love that guy.

00:48:32.960 | You know what I mean?

00:48:34.320 | And so like that doesn't, they don't hear that, they're dead, right?

00:48:36.960 | But if you somehow go start some business and it fails, people are like, "I told you

00:48:41.400 | so.

00:48:42.400 | I knew it was going to happen.

00:48:43.400 | Shoulda, woulda, coulda."

00:48:44.400 | Right?

00:48:45.400 | And your ego can't handle that.

00:48:46.400 | So I always think it's fear.

00:48:48.460 | And the fear is not the actual bad thing.

00:48:51.480 | The fear is the ego associated with the failure.

00:48:54.080 | Yeah.

00:48:55.080 | We should almost, it would help if society put more of an emphasis on like, "Wow, you

00:49:00.040 | didn't go and spend your money.

00:49:02.440 | You didn't go on a trip this year?

00:49:03.600 | You didn't do anything?

00:49:05.920 | You did nothing this year?"

00:49:07.160 | Yeah.

00:49:08.160 | I did get close to one, I get who it was.

00:49:11.400 | I was just talking to them, but they said, I put it to the bunch of 20-year-olds or class

00:49:17.600 | or something.

00:49:18.600 | It's like, "Who would switch right now with Warren Buffett?"

00:49:22.840 | None of them, none of them.

00:49:27.080 | And they're like, "Well, he's got X billion dollars or whatever."

00:49:29.960 | And it's like, they're like, "I don't want to be rich, that rich and old.

00:49:34.280 | There's no amount of money you can give me to give up my life."

00:49:39.480 | And so a lot of people are kind of doing some version of this.

00:49:42.800 | I always tell people there's no amount of money you can pay me to do five years in Sing

00:49:46.560 | Sing.

00:49:47.560 | Maybe at 19 you could have done it, but right now, no amount of money.

00:49:53.000 | And some people are doing some sort of version of jail, giving up their life for this money.

00:49:58.600 | - Yeah, I liked how you reframed someone who wouldn't take the risk to move, to make more

00:50:05.760 | money to do something as like paying a fine, the cost, like they're paying to just sit

00:50:11.720 | still by not taking up an opportunity.

00:50:14.540 | And so I like these mindset shifts that you introduced in the book, which is just like,

00:50:18.600 | think about it this different way, and maybe that'll help you get over that hurdle.

00:50:22.920 | - Yeah, just quantify it.

00:50:24.640 | You may come to the same decision.

00:50:25.640 | Yes, I'm happy paying the fine sitting here.

00:50:27.800 | Right?

00:50:28.800 | Or you might be like, "That's ludicrous."

00:50:29.800 | Right?

00:50:30.800 | Like, I actually would get much more money and I would be able to spend more quality

00:50:34.560 | time with the people I love that I'm leaving, right, than I do right now.

00:50:39.000 | I've had this conversation with people like, "Oh, I don't want to leave New York because

00:50:41.560 | my mom's here and so-and-so's here, etc."

00:50:46.280 | I was like, "Okay, let's break this down.

00:50:47.720 | How many times do you see them a week, a month?

00:50:51.360 | Okay, write that down.

00:50:52.360 | How many hours?

00:50:53.360 | All right, whatever.

00:50:54.360 | And then, okay, what's the money difference?

00:50:56.320 | And then, what's a plane ticket back and forth?

00:50:58.720 | And then, you could probably take them on vacation and you spend more time.

00:51:02.200 | So, in theory, you can spend more time, more quality time, make more money, expand your

00:51:11.960 | contact network, etc with this move, even though you're saying you don't want to move

00:51:17.640 | because of the people that are here, right?

00:51:20.120 | And sometimes that formula doesn't work out, but at least you go through the exercise and

00:51:23.000 | then you know, you don't have this like future regret, right?

00:51:27.120 | Like you have this regret minimization like, "I made the right decision.

00:51:30.560 | I went through all the avenues, etc.

00:51:33.080 | I actually get more time with my family by staying here or I've made the right decision.

00:51:38.160 | I have more - I've actually expanded my network, have more money and actually spent more time

00:51:44.960 | with the people I love in a better way, in a better format, in a more fulfilling format."

00:51:50.560 | And so, that's a book, right?

00:51:53.040 | This is the mental model, right?

00:51:54.040 | Like, we're solving for net fulfillment.

00:51:55.440 | Well, I did an interview, episode 40 with Dan Pink, who wrote a book about regret.

00:52:00.360 | And he talked about like one of the big four regrets is a regret of boldness.

00:52:04.360 | And like people in their old age are like, "I just wish when I wanted to do this thing,

00:52:08.840 | I went and did it."

00:52:10.320 | And I almost feel like a default assumption should be instead of when you're thinking,

00:52:14.040 | "Should I move?

00:52:15.600 | Should I go on this adventure?

00:52:16.960 | Should I do this thing?"

00:52:18.040 | Just try to every time be like, "Should I not do it?"

00:52:20.800 | Try to always assume that you're going to do this bold thing and see if you could talk

00:52:25.560 | yourself out of it instead of talk yourself into it.

00:52:28.200 | It's like, it's not easy, but I would say when you're about to - if you're ever faced

00:52:32.840 | with this kind of tough, "Should I do this big thing?"

00:52:35.320 | Just try to say, "Okay, let's assume I do it.

00:52:37.200 | Why shouldn't I do it?"

00:52:38.200 | And I think that could help change that mindset because I think it's hard.

00:52:43.520 | One thing I did once and you did a similar one that I think was more extreme is I find

00:52:47.040 | that if you're ever worried about money, go find - go experience what it's like to make

00:52:52.600 | money doing something without a job.

00:52:54.960 | So for me, my wife was at Lyft and I was like, "I'm just going to sign up for a Lyft driver."

00:52:58.600 | I did it for two reasons.

00:52:59.800 | One, it was really rewarding to realize I can convert my time to money in a moment.

00:53:07.600 | If I don't have a job, if I don't have anything, I can still convert it to money.

00:53:10.360 | The second thing it was good was it just put probably too low, but it put a threshold on

00:53:14.440 | what my time is worth and it helped me realize that every hour I'm not driving my car around

00:53:19.400 | picking people up, I am spending money to not do that because I could be making money

00:53:24.840 | and that helped.

00:53:25.840 | Right.

00:53:26.840 | You went panhandling, right?

00:53:28.160 | Just to try to - a similar experience?

00:53:29.960 | Yeah.

00:53:30.960 | Yeah.

00:53:31.960 | I've done that.

00:53:32.960 | That was an exercise from an emotional intelligence class and I went panhandling.

00:53:35.560 | And it was really, really, really moving, enlightening, humbling, all these things at

00:53:40.240 | the same time.

00:53:41.240 | One, it was like, "Oh, I can survive.

00:53:44.000 | I can make $54,000 easy panhandling, right?"

00:53:47.480 | Was that the annualized?

00:53:49.240 | That was kind of the rate.

00:53:50.240 | That was the kind of annualized.

00:53:51.240 | I was running the rate.

00:53:52.240 | I was like, you know, and I didn't even really have a sign or anything.

00:53:54.680 | I just took my shirt out, put it in size out, rubbed it on the concrete, and then, you know,

00:54:02.480 | just had a cup, right, on a corner on an intersection.

00:54:05.240 | And I was like, "Well, if I was at a busier intersection," you know, I was like doing

00:54:09.080 | the calculations, et cetera.

00:54:10.440 | I was like, "I may be in a humbling situation, but I can make money just in a panhandling

00:54:20.480 | way."

00:54:21.480 | Right?

00:54:22.480 | And so, you know, it was also kind of freeing, right?

00:54:29.240 | But I've always had that risk mindset.

00:54:31.800 | Like I'll always be able to exchange hours of my life for money in order to eat, you

00:54:38.880 | know, shelter myself, right?

00:54:41.240 | And I don't mean like, "Hey, I'm living high on the hog."

00:54:43.200 | I mean like I can get like these cheap-ass apartments, right, these one-bedrooms, et

00:54:46.680 | cetera.

00:54:47.680 | I will always be able to do that.

00:54:50.640 | And so, it liberates me to go, "There's really not that much downside," right?

00:54:57.080 | It's an ego downside, right?

00:54:58.360 | It's a humbling downside, but there's really not much downside.

00:55:00.160 | I should be swinging for the motherfucking fences, right, even more so, right?

00:55:04.360 | Like I'm okay with it.

00:55:05.360 | Yeah.

00:55:06.360 | And the risk, you don't really need to insure yourself against the risk that you run out

00:55:08.860 | of money because you've now established that like just sitting on the ground can make you

00:55:13.440 | money.

00:55:14.440 | So, like you could do that when you're young, you could do that when you're old, like if

00:55:17.760 | you've established that you can, maybe you're comfortable not saving to insure against every

00:55:23.640 | possible risk.

00:55:25.400 | There's people out there who insure against these risks that you don't want to have, these

00:55:29.160 | bogeymen that do it for less of a cost of you wasting your life, right?

00:55:33.360 | Like they're more efficient.

00:55:34.360 | So, you got to think, any kind of waste in your time, whether you're exchanging your

00:55:38.780 | time for money or your money for time, any kind of waste leads to less fulfillment.

00:55:43.660 | And so, you really want to be like, "Hmm, am I the right person to insure myself against

00:55:48.340 | this calamity or should I pay an insurance agent, you know, whatever this fee is and

00:55:53.100 | that will be more efficient, result in net fulfillment for me?"

00:55:56.660 | You know, should I be - when I look at this activity or whatever, should I be exchanging

00:56:04.020 | hours of my life for money or should it be the other way around, right?

00:56:07.800 | What's an hour of my time worth at this level, at that level, etc?

00:56:11.920 | These are questions we ask ourselves all the time, right?

00:56:16.600 | We should be asking ourselves all the time, I say we ask ourselves all the time, right?

00:56:20.560 | Like, do I really - is that shirt really worth two hours of my time?

00:56:26.000 | Am I going to get two hours of fulfillment out of it?

00:56:28.040 | Does that really fulfill me?

00:56:29.040 | You know, that was the beauty of your money or your life is that it really connected me

00:56:32.200 | with my values.

00:56:33.200 | It really made me think of what I want out of life, what an hour of my time, you know,

00:56:40.740 | what I'm willing to give up an hour of my life for or not.

00:56:43.700 | And then also hit home that I really, really, really want a value of hour of my time to

00:56:49.820 | be extremely high, you know, I went the other way, right?

00:56:52.540 | So that I didn't have to worry about it.

00:56:54.460 | But even after like I'd not have to worry about it, now let's say I have all these resources

00:56:59.420 | called wealth, and I have my health, how am I going to allocate this over my life to get

00:57:04.140 | the maximum fulfillment?

00:57:05.140 | You know, that was the next step.

00:57:06.620 | I was like, great, now I'm rich, like now what do I do?

00:57:10.780 | Yeah.

00:57:11.780 | Right?

00:57:12.780 | Like, when should I spend it all?

00:57:13.780 | Perfect.

00:57:14.780 | You just teed up what I want to talk about, which is like implementing this, which I think,

00:57:18.140 | you know, I now have a lot of the mindset ideas and the frameworks on how to do this.

00:57:22.340 | And what I left with the book thinking and you, I was like, okay, how does someone figure

00:57:27.980 | out based on where I'm at today?

00:57:31.140 | Am I spending like, should I be spending more money?

00:57:33.820 | Should I be spending less money?

00:57:35.580 | Like, how do you answer that question?

00:57:39.020 | It's a tricky question.

00:57:40.020 | The first thing I ask is like, you know, the experience that we all want for us is survival,

00:57:45.940 | right?

00:57:46.940 | So have we survived for our survival?

00:57:48.840 | So I introduced that concept of like, okay, when you no longer can work or etc.

00:57:53.980 | Do you have enough to have the very basics, right?

00:57:57.620 | Like food, shelter, clothing, right?

00:58:00.700 | And depending on where you are, that's a different number.

00:58:02.740 | And then after that, like, how do I spend my money?

00:58:05.980 | I try and use health as a forcing function because it is, right?

00:58:10.920 | On the allocation of spending money, right?

00:58:13.900 | Like, I look at my parents, my ancestors, like we literally had to kidnap my mom to

00:58:19.940 | take her to Scotland for her 80th birthday, right?

00:58:24.460 | It was an ordeal.

00:58:25.460 | She had the time of her life, but it was like an ordeal to get it.

00:58:28.340 | We're like, you're coming, whatever, we're getting you out here.

00:58:31.900 | But what I realized is that my mom does not consume much money at all.

00:58:39.140 | My grandmother did not consume much money at all.

00:58:42.180 | My dad did not want to leave his apartment when coming at all and I'm realizing like

00:58:46.980 | the money, now, I always say I'm going to be different because I'm going to be in shape

00:58:50.100 | or whatever, but the reality is I'm going to be some version of that, right?

00:58:53.780 | And so, I'm like, the idea that I'm going to be, you know, having this Chronicle Cruise

00:59:01.500 | life at 77 to 86 is bullshit, right?

00:59:07.420 | I'm not going to be consuming that much.

00:59:08.740 | So I'm thinking, if I'm going to have parties, if I'm going to travel, if I'm going to hike

00:59:15.540 | these mountains, if I'm going to do these activities, if I'm going to even just go on

00:59:19.020 | a walk in the park and do a seven-mile hike with my kids, a free activity, those activities

00:59:27.380 | belong here and I need to consume them now, right?

00:59:31.180 | So even the free ones have to get bucketed and I always think about that aspect of it

00:59:37.020 | and because I'm like, how do I allocate my fund once my survival is covered, right?

00:59:44.440 | And so, there is no perfect answer, but I do look at that, hey, my net worth should

00:59:52.420 | be peaking between 45 and 55 and if I'm in the peak, how does this curve go down?

00:59:59.620 | And I try and match it for me.

01:00:01.260 | I've been talking to these like doctors like Peter Tia and Chris Renna, etc.

01:00:08.140 | And what I really want to know is like, what is the pace of my body deteriorating?

01:00:11.900 | What is the pace of my mind deteriorating?

01:00:13.860 | What is the pace of my lung capacity deteriorating?

01:00:16.740 | And then I know like, oh, you know, if you are this type of activity, your enjoyment

01:00:25.140 | of activity goes down linearly with this decline and your ability to do it completely cuts

01:00:31.660 | off once you reach this level, right?

01:00:35.420 | Like I read somewhere I was trying to do some research, I think it's like two watt hours

01:00:40.460 | per kilogram to climb a flight of stairs or something like that, like there's like formulas

01:00:44.580 | out there, right?

01:00:45.580 | Like I'm like, oh, okay.

01:00:46.580 | So, if you need to run and play soccer and jump and play basketball, you need X watt

01:00:50.220 | hours per kilogram of energy, muscle and what that converts to, right?

01:00:53.820 | And then we know how many watt hours per kilogram people have as they age.

01:01:00.060 | And I was like, wow, this would be great to figure out where my consumption is, right?

01:01:05.700 | And that's what I was trying to build with this model, right?

01:01:07.540 | Like you're like, you're an optimizer and build this model and I realized this is impossible.

01:01:11.540 | There's so many goddamn inputs, right?

01:01:14.740 | So, really it comes down to a mental model, right?

01:01:18.740 | Of each activity like, okay, here's the straight line to the grave of spending down all my

01:01:26.020 | money.

01:01:27.020 | Here's kind of the curve I think it should be to get to my survival number, etc.

01:01:32.020 | And then when I look at my time bucketing, wait a minute, I said I would be spending

01:01:38.540 | less but I like riding on trains and that doesn't take any energy, but it costs a lot

01:01:42.220 | of money.

01:01:43.220 | So, let's change the spending in the curves like this, right?

01:01:45.220 | So, it's not going to necessarily always be this perfect log normal curve down to zero

01:01:49.740 | from your peak.

01:01:50.740 | It could be, no, but there's trains and I want to ride trains and then down, right?

01:01:55.100 | So, each person is different.

01:01:57.500 | It really takes a lot of thinking, a lot of off autopilot because you have to know what

01:02:02.100 | you want, right?

01:02:03.100 | You have to have an idea at least, 70% of what you want, right?

01:02:07.260 | A lot of it's going to be discovery, hot luck and then you have to think about the whens,

01:02:13.660 | right?

01:02:14.660 | You have to be honest with yourself, right?

01:02:16.380 | A lot of people are like, "Oh, I'm in better shape than I was when I was 30 and 50".

01:02:20.900 | I'm like, well, that means you were just really out of shape at 30, you know what I mean?

01:02:26.220 | And so, that's it.

01:02:28.680 | And I know that's not like the answer people want to hear.

01:02:30.880 | They're like, "I want the spreadsheet and the formula and the detailed thing and I want

01:02:33.780 | to be told", right?

01:02:35.020 | And I present like kind of the macro top line, you know, your net fulfillment is an operation

01:02:45.140 | of your wealth, health and time.

01:02:46.580 | And I leave it to the crowd to go and be like, "I built this kick-ass spreadsheet".

01:02:50.380 | - So, let me throw out my version, which is not yet a spreadsheet, but you had this formula

01:02:56.060 | where you're like, okay, your survival threshold is how much it's going to cost you to live

01:03:01.460 | one year times the number of years left to live and then deduct 70% because that money

01:03:06.800 | will grow and you can withdraw from it.

01:03:09.620 | So, what I'm doing in my head is, okay, assuming you find employment that, you know, assuming

01:03:16.700 | you can make money, right?

01:03:17.940 | At some point, you'll stop being able to make money and then you'll live for some number

01:03:21.620 | of years.

01:03:22.620 | Let's call that number 20.

01:03:23.620 | Okay, so you can live for 20 years.

01:03:26.620 | How much does it cost you to live in one year, you know?

01:03:30.560 | And this is not, I think everyone always estimates the highest amount it could ever cost you

01:03:35.340 | and I'm going to use your standpoint of like, actually estimate low.

01:03:39.860 | Many people end up saving more than they think and spending less, so it doesn't make sense

01:03:43.580 | to go to the extremes.

01:03:44.820 | So, let's say for the sake of math, you need $50,000, you know, to live in your old age

01:03:52.940 | for 20 years times 0.7, you know, that's $700,000, which might seem like a lot, but if you have

01:04:00.980 | your whole life to save that $700,000 and let it grow and compound, you know, I guess

01:04:05.860 | that would be a number that once you've saved an amount of money that by the time you're,

01:04:11.820 | let's call it 65, you will have that, then you could stop saving effectively.

01:04:17.560 | I didn't even include social security and all these other things.

01:04:20.220 | - Right, but it's not necessarily you can stop saving.

01:04:22.900 | You can stop saving for survival.

01:04:25.020 | Now it's right, maybe you want to go on some big expensive trip when you're 75.

01:04:29.860 | - Sure.

01:04:30.860 | - Right?

01:04:31.860 | - Okay, okay.

01:04:32.860 | - Now we can start talking about our enjoyment, right?

01:04:33.860 | The things that fulfill us besides surviving, right?

01:04:37.500 | You can talk about thriving, right?

01:04:39.100 | We can solve for thriving.

01:04:40.300 | - Yeah, so you could decide I want to equally distribute my enjoyment of life over my life

01:04:47.980 | and then your goal is as long as you're putting aside enough to get to 70,000 by the time

01:04:54.540 | you're 65 or 700,000 by the time you're 65, well then every year you could just spend

01:05:01.100 | all the excess on enjoyment and you'd be fine.

01:05:04.640 | What that wouldn't let you do is maybe you want to take this crazy giant adventure when

01:05:09.380 | you're 45 or 50, you might want to save for that, but it made me think that if you've

01:05:14.000 | already saved enough that 30, 40 years from now it'll grow to be enough to kind of survive

01:05:21.140 | in retirement, all of the excess you can kind of maybe even think of as a separate bucket

01:05:26.860 | of all this excess is for enjoying life.

01:05:29.700 | How do I want to distribute it?

01:05:31.020 | And separate your savings that's for living in retirement in a home, being able to feed

01:05:37.660 | yourself, there's that money.

01:05:40.060 | And I think maybe one thing that I've never really thought of until I'm speaking it out

01:05:44.160 | loud right now is could we separate the accounting so that my net worth, it's like in my mind

01:05:50.420 | I'm saving one amount of money that's savings for the future, but if we separated it out

01:05:54.980 | and said, okay, well here's how much you've saved and let's set that aside because you

01:05:58.960 | need it to live.

01:06:00.140 | Now the rest is all money you can spend however you want and you need to make sure that that

01:06:05.340 | balance also goes to zero.

01:06:07.000 | The other one's probably going to go to zero because you're going to spend it in retirement,

01:06:09.540 | but that one needs to go to zero.

01:06:11.140 | Correct.

01:06:12.140 | I mean, that's what I do in the book.

01:06:13.140 | If separating it out makes it easier for you to like figure out what experiences do I bring

01:06:19.020 | forward or which money do I bring forward and spend now and what do I push back in terms

01:06:23.580 | of just the fun bucket, right?

01:06:24.900 | My life is covered.

01:06:25.900 | Let's just say you had the best pension ever, right?

01:06:29.060 | Now it's just like, where do I spend the money, right?

01:06:32.880 | So like you've covered your pension, that covers your survival, now it's like what fulfills

01:06:38.100 | you and when's the best time to consume those experiences that fulfill you.

01:06:43.980 | And it's probably not when you're retired.

01:06:47.500 | For 99.999, many nines of people, it's absolutely not and particularly for Americans because

01:06:56.900 | we don't have the health for the activity.

01:07:00.820 | I went to the Japanese, I would say the curves are distinctly different in Japan than they

01:07:05.820 | are in America because when you go to Japan, you'll see 80s and 90s shopping, hanging out,

01:07:10.860 | cleaning, doing whatever, like having this very active life, hiking, doing whatever,

01:07:15.420 | all kinds of consumption, right?

01:07:17.420 | They're like, yeah, well, I'm going to travel.

01:07:18.420 | I'm going to go to Australia and they'll be like, whoa, wait, you're 85 traveling by yourself

01:07:22.380 | on Australia?

01:07:23.380 | You know, like they can actually consume it for most American, no shot.

01:07:28.900 | I've seen it.

01:07:29.900 | I've seen people come, so many people die on cruise ships, getting out and trying to

01:07:34.900 | go swimming on the warm water, having heart attacks and stuff like that.

01:07:38.460 | It's amazing when you watch it in real life, like if you just observe it, you know, and

01:07:43.500 | I'm not saying I was out there with a lab coat watching people, etc.

01:07:46.860 | But I've seen so many, you know, senior geared entertainment activities where it's really

01:07:54.180 | not that active.

01:07:55.180 | I love this idea of kind of creating a bucket that is your pension and then the rest you

01:07:59.740 | decide how you spend over your life.

01:08:02.100 | And if that number is not decreasing, it sounds like by the time you're 55 that the non-pension

01:08:06.860 | side of it, you're probably doing something wrong or you figured out how to live much

01:08:11.140 | longer than I'm aware is possible.

01:08:13.580 | You either have kind of like a abnormal time bucket where there's some sort of activity

01:08:20.100 | in the future that costs a lot of money and that can happen, right?

01:08:23.340 | You can be like, I really love super yacht cruises and this is what I'm saving for.

01:08:28.380 | And that's really going to fill me the most, right?

01:08:31.340 | I don't really care about anything.

01:08:32.340 | I really want to just play chess because my mental acuity is really stronger now.

01:08:37.100 | And you're going to be better at chess now and I want to win tournaments.

01:08:39.460 | I just want to play chess tournaments.

01:08:40.900 | And then I want to go on yacht trips later, right?

01:08:42.820 | And so you can be like, okay, maybe you're not consuming the most money now.

01:08:45.180 | But by and large, you know, the rule is it's now or it's a mistake.

01:08:50.980 | You're completely fucking it up.

01:08:52.260 | You're doing life wrong.

01:08:53.260 | And it's not just that it's now, it's that now benefits you.

01:08:57.220 | I want to recap what we talked about earlier, it's like doing it now will also benefit you

01:09:01.620 | later.

01:09:02.620 | So you kind of get...

01:09:03.620 | Yeah, it benefits your future self because your future self reaps the memory dividends,

01:09:06.260 | right?

01:09:07.260 | Like constantly reaps the memory dividends, the things you did in high school, the things

01:09:09.940 | you did in college, the trips you had, the honeymoon you had, the adventure you took,

01:09:14.660 | the business you started and failed, the business you started and succeeded, like all those

01:09:20.540 | things right now, you are reaping the dividends right now.

01:09:25.860 | And as I'm talking, there's probably people in the audience, "Yeah, I remember that, remember

01:09:29.740 | that."

01:09:30.740 | They're like filled, right?

01:09:31.740 | They were getting the same endorphins, et cetera, a piece of that fulfillment as actually

01:09:40.260 | doing the activity.

01:09:43.740 | My favorite thing on this is the Coke Pepsi experiment.

01:09:47.500 | Do you know about this one?

01:09:48.500 | The blind taste test?

01:09:49.500 | I think it was written about.

01:09:50.500 | Yeah, yeah.

01:09:52.500 | Pepsi tends to win in a blind taste test, but Coke destroys them.

01:09:56.140 | And it's because when you consume a Coke, you consume not only the Coke, but all the

01:10:00.220 | memories and the advertising associated with it, right?

01:10:03.060 | Because it was more advertised and they've done this with FMRI.

01:10:07.380 | And so, you literally consume the experiences when you have a Coke, your prior experiences.

01:10:14.420 | You literally are getting memory dividends from the commercial and the advertising and

01:10:17.660 | to feel good and to have a Coke and a smile and all that stuff.

01:10:20.740 | And years and years of that in your brain is unlocked when you consume a Coke and you

01:10:24.900 | know it's a Coke, right?

01:10:26.700 | And so, same thing happens with every activity you have, is you access and actually relive

01:10:33.760 | every single experience that you have when you recall.

01:10:37.020 | And so, I always say maximize positive life experiences.

01:10:39.820 | I think one of your memory dividend enhancements was reunions with the people you enjoyed the

01:10:44.740 | memories with.

01:10:46.460 | And it's funny, because I went on this crazy trip to Australia once, where we basically

01:10:52.060 | had a bunch of money that we were like, had to spend in seven days.

01:10:55.340 | And so, it was just kind of a wild, fun time.

01:10:57.260 | And every time I hang out with my friend who we went on this trip with, it's not 100% that

01:11:03.700 | we're there, but it's not 100% that we're there, but it's not zero.

01:11:10.380 | And so, I encourage people, I feel like we have a society where there were lots of family

01:11:14.820 | reunions and I feel like because families are way more distributed, that kind of goes

01:11:18.460 | down.

01:11:19.460 | And my wife and I have been talking about whether we have like, I don't know what you

01:11:23.180 | call this, but we have a second wedding where you just invite all of your best friends that

01:11:26.740 | you throw.

01:11:27.740 | It's like what you did for your birthday.

01:11:28.740 | It's like invite all the people you care about on some regular cadence, get to really relive

01:11:33.020 | those memories.

01:11:34.020 | And you get all this value and you don't even have to do the things again.

01:11:38.500 | Yeah.

01:11:39.500 | I was just joking recently.

01:11:41.020 | These dates on the calendars, these events are just excuses for us to throw parties and

01:11:44.220 | see each other.

01:11:45.220 | You know what I mean?

01:11:47.420 | And somebody also just said to me, work is something we do so we have an excuse to hang

01:11:52.580 | out with each other.

01:11:54.280 | I thought that was pretty powerful and that's true to a certain extent, right?

01:11:57.860 | That's the people that I love my job, right?

01:11:59.780 | Well, you really love the people.

01:12:01.020 | Yeah.

01:12:02.020 | I think that's a lot why people I know in the last few years being home and not seeing

01:12:05.580 | them, they're like, "I hate my job."

01:12:07.020 | It's like, well, maybe you don't hate your job.

01:12:08.980 | Maybe it's just the thing that you thought you loved was your job and you actually just

01:12:12.180 | love the people you're around all the time.

01:12:14.100 | And if you're not around them or you're just only seeing them on a screen or something

01:12:17.300 | and you don't have that social stuff, it feels different.

01:12:20.060 | I encourage people to deconstruct what is it about the job you love and has the job

01:12:25.460 | replaced other muscles?

01:12:27.560 | Have you atrophied your social muscle to go meet people and hang out and have dinner and

01:12:32.060 | go to lunch with people because work is the only place that you did these things, right?

01:12:37.580 | And so the thing you loved was, "Oh, wow.

01:12:40.780 | I let work consume everything.

01:12:42.940 | I don't take vacations.

01:12:44.220 | I don't do walks in parks.

01:12:45.420 | I'm not really to the extent that I would like to do and I've let work take it all over.

01:12:49.500 | It's where - it's how I met my spouse or my significant other.

01:12:53.260 | It's where I go figure out to go eat.

01:12:54.900 | It's where most of my dinner is going out on a town or business dinners or whatever.

01:12:58.780 | Where I go to lunch is usually close to work, etc.

01:13:02.300 | And those things are enjoyable, but it's not the work.

01:13:07.380 | I like going to lunch with people.

01:13:08.980 | I like camaraderie.

01:13:09.980 | I like seeing these people.

01:13:11.700 | I like going to fancy dinners and stuff like that, right?

01:13:14.420 | And so, when people retire or quit these jobs or get sitting remote, they're like, "Fuck,

01:13:21.140 | I don't know what to do with myself."

01:13:22.460 | And I'm like, it's because you've atrophied all these other muscles and you put all your

01:13:28.460 | time into habituating yourself and to being very good at this thing and this thing has

01:13:34.260 | been your whole life, your whole world.

01:13:37.220 | But it doesn't mean that that's the optimal place for you to build social relationships,

01:13:40.860 | to find a mate, to pick dinner spots, to pick lunch spot, right?

01:13:45.460 | Yeah.

01:13:46.460 | It's just become the convenient place because we've...

01:13:48.580 | It just became the default autopilot thing to do, right?

01:13:53.300 | I've spent a bunch of time talking to people in the financial independence movement.

01:13:57.620 | People who are like, "Let's save all the money we can.

01:13:59.820 | Let's spend nothing so that we can be financially free."

01:14:03.020 | Some want to retire early.

01:14:04.180 | Some just want independence.

01:14:05.700 | What's your take on buy or fire?

01:14:08.460 | I have a couple of takes.

01:14:09.740 | One thing, I like it because one thing - the things I like about it and the things I absolutely

01:14:14.580 | hate, the thing I like about it is the fire movement forces you to be aware of the concept

01:14:20.940 | of enough.

01:14:22.580 | It forces you to get on autopilot, what things are important to me, what am I consuming because

01:14:28.220 | I really enjoy it and fulfills me and what am I consuming just because to consume it,

01:14:32.580 | right?

01:14:33.580 | Like advertising and I'm on some sort of consumption autopilot, right?

01:14:36.820 | It really gets them to think about their lives into totality and what the things that they

01:14:42.500 | really want to be doing.

01:14:43.500 | Like, "I really want to do this for the rest of my life.

01:14:45.100 | I really want to do this for my life."

01:14:46.260 | And they use fire as a tool to get that.

01:14:49.980 | Things I hate about fire.

01:14:51.780 | One is they all follow this model of, "I'm going to work, work, work.

01:14:57.180 | I'm going to save up this money and I'm going to live off the interest."

01:15:01.380 | And I'm like, "What about the fucking principal?"

01:15:03.860 | You know what I mean?

01:15:04.860 | Like you got to spend down the principal, right?

01:15:07.140 | Just mathematically, you gave up hours.

01:15:09.700 | It's all about not giving your life away to money but having an enjoyable life.

01:15:14.980 | But like you're giving your life away to money that you're never going to spend down.

01:15:18.380 | So it's like they need to readjust their formulas to include spending down the principal, okay?

01:15:24.780 | At the extreme, these guys are doing a version of autopilot and making a fatal error of not

01:15:34.860 | paying attention to time bucketing and the power of memory dividends.

01:15:38.700 | They're basically doing a version of, "I'm going to go to jail for 7 years or 10 years

01:15:44.420 | in order to be free and have a great life from 40 on," or whatever their retirement

01:15:51.380 | age is on.

01:15:52.380 | Or going back to my original statement, there's no amount of money you can pay me to do five

01:15:55.700 | years in Sing Sing, right?

01:15:57.100 | Well, these guys are doing 10, 12-year stints in Sing Sing, right?

01:16:01.140 | And there are certain activities, certain expenditures that you should be having that

01:16:05.620 | only fit in that 30 to 45 bucket or 45 to that bucket and they're giving that up unconsciously

01:16:17.540 | for some future Shangri-La, right?

01:16:20.580 | And then they get to the future Shangri-La, and I'm not saying it's not great, but like,

01:16:23.900 | "Fuck, I really regret not doing X, Y, and Z," or, "I should have done this when grandmother

01:16:29.580 | was alive," you know what I mean?

01:16:30.820 | Or, "I should have done this when my kids were young and we should have went to Disney

01:16:33.640 | World instead of saving money to go on an extra trip now," right?

01:16:38.700 | So I think at the extreme, FIRE is another version of autopilot.

01:16:46.660 | It's not really correctly solving for net fulfillment and there needs to be some adjustments.

01:16:54.680 | - Yeah, somewhere in the middle between FIRE, but the FIRE autopilot and like the standard

01:16:59.700 | American autopilot is probably optimal, but...

01:17:02.860 | - Yeah, it's definitely great.

01:17:05.380 | It's just like, okay, you guys are, you know, these are people who like, they got the spreadsheet,

01:17:09.300 | they're in touch with what they want, they know the concept enough.

01:17:11.540 | And I'm like, "Guys, why are you not spending down a principle?

01:17:13.980 | Like this is craziness," you know what I mean?

01:17:16.820 | You're trying to get the most out of life, but you exchange 10 years of your life for

01:17:21.860 | something that you're never going to consume, right?

01:17:23.780 | You're just going to consume the dribs and drabs of it.

01:17:26.660 | - I guess it's not the 4%.

01:17:27.660 | - Right?

01:17:28.660 | And then you're completely...

01:17:29.660 | - Is that like the 2% rule, maybe?

01:17:30.660 | I'm making it up.

01:17:31.660 | If you could live off the interest at 4% forever, what would you need to just not spend at all?

01:17:38.140 | - And I'm like, what I tell these people is that basically you're overworking.

01:17:43.300 | You're giving up an extra two or three years of your life because you're not including

01:17:48.080 | spending down the principle, right?

01:17:50.500 | They're overshooting.

01:17:51.740 | And then the main thing is as though that autopilot really leads to future regret with

01:17:59.340 | certain experiences if they're not really conscious about what experiences belong when.

01:18:04.500 | - Yeah, you didn't mention one criticism that I have, which is it assumes often, at least

01:18:09.980 | with the retire early side, that once you stop working, you don't make money.

01:18:15.080 | And I think most people, I'm sure there are exceptions, but most people can't just do

01:18:20.660 | nothing for 50 years, especially when those years are in your 30s and 40s and 50s and

01:18:27.860 | 60s.

01:18:28.860 | So I think if you assume you're not going to work at all, then you need so much money.

01:18:34.780 | But if you assume maybe you could work some, then it changes the calculus wildly.

01:18:40.020 | Like you go from needing millions and millions of dollars to maybe even hundreds of thousands

01:18:44.260 | of dollars.

01:18:45.260 | - The sledgehammer of fire is, in our culture, it's probably more needed than not the sledgehammer

01:18:52.900 | of fire, right?

01:18:55.300 | Because we have so many people just needlessly attached to things that don't serve them,

01:19:01.580 | that they don't even really want, right?

01:19:04.540 | But there's plenty of criticism of fire's autopilot and that sledgehammer and that kind

01:19:11.460 | of militant, I'm going to save for this and whatever.

01:19:15.540 | And there's these assumptions in there that are not true.

01:19:20.580 | You pointed out that, yeah, you're probably going to work or have a side hustle or sell

01:19:24.700 | your art that you're going to make or whatever, there'll be some form of income that you could

01:19:28.660 | have or you will have, right?

01:19:31.260 | Not everybody, right?

01:19:32.260 | Because not me, I'm going backpacking and I'm not making a dime, okay, you're that guy.

01:19:37.980 | But like, there is a version of autopilot and fire and it's dangerous, right?

01:19:43.860 | Because I'm talking about wasting your life, right?

01:19:49.580 | And when you say I'm going to grind, not consume, not go anywhere for 10 years, I'm like, that's

01:19:55.300 | a lot of fucking life or 15 years to be giving away.

01:20:00.940 | That's extremely dangerous, right?

01:20:02.900 | Like extremely, extremely, extremely dangerous in the net fulfillment game, right?

01:20:07.340 | In the not waste your life game.

01:20:08.900 | - Yeah, I'm much more comfortable with if there was a way to reframe it as like, you

01:20:15.060 | need this much money to experiment with financial independence for a period of time, which is

01:20:20.940 | like maybe change your job to a job that pays less, that gives you the time you want.

01:20:25.140 | But that number is so much smaller that you don't need to save it by giving up everything.

01:20:30.740 | So I'm going to challenge anyone in the audience and email me, you all, you know, just Chris

01:20:34.980 | at All The Hacks.

01:20:35.980 | If anyone wants to try to like build a model or a framework or something to try to create

01:20:40.540 | this middle ground, I want to see it, I want to get in the spreadsheet, I want to build

01:20:44.660 | the model with you and see if we can do it.

01:20:47.140 | - You have to take an individualistic approach though.

01:20:49.180 | The problem was like building a spreadsheet for just the masses is that everyone is different

01:20:55.660 | and everybody has different things that fulfill them, which means they're always going to

01:21:00.340 | have different spend curves, right, and different needs, right?

01:21:03.420 | And you'd be like, yeah, the thing you want, you really need to just bust your ass for

01:21:07.280 | two years and, you know, get it, right?

01:21:09.700 | Like, 'cause there's this step function and cost, right?

01:21:13.240 | Like the only thing I want is a trip to Mars and that ticket costs $225,000, well, okay,

01:21:18.020 | there's no half going to Mars, right?

01:21:19.620 | Like you have to get the $225,000 or whatever the price is, I'm making that up.

01:21:25.500 | But if it's like, I like roller skating and I like hanging out with my kids and I like

01:21:29.620 | whatever, and then it's like, you know, there's some middle ground, right?

01:21:31.520 | You can still roller skate, right?

01:21:33.020 | Let's go roller skating now, you don't have to save up all the money to go roller skating

01:21:35.700 | 10 years from now, right?

01:21:36.700 | As a matter of fact, daughter's probably not going to go roller skating with you 10 years

01:21:40.060 | from now, she's got to have her own life and her own thing.

01:21:41.980 | So, let's optimize, right, for that thing that fulfills you.

01:21:45.420 | And so, you know, you can build a model spreadsheet for like kind of like the average person,

01:21:49.980 | which there's no such thing as the average person, but it's very like, this is me, right?

01:21:56.380 | I've built out this spreadsheet, and I think the beauty of that spreadsheet that somebody

01:22:01.780 | builds out is not the actual formulas that I'll be able to copy and paste to my life,

01:22:06.500 | but the methodology of their thinking, right?

01:22:11.240 | It's the model that is the most powerful thing, right?

01:22:14.100 | You want the method of thinking, like, how do I think about this problem, right?

01:22:18.460 | What variables do I consider?

01:22:20.820 | - I think the thing we might be able to build pretty easily, so in the Wealthfront app,

01:22:25.220 | there's this idea of an FU number, and we call it the Financial Utopia number, just

01:22:29.020 | 'cause I think we don't want to give it the full term, but the idea is once you have this

01:22:32.580 | amount of money, you could stop working.

01:22:35.600 | And the number that I want to build a simple calculator for is kind of like the pension

01:22:39.980 | number where it's like, once you've started saving X, you've solved for the money you

01:22:46.660 | need to live in retirement.

01:22:50.200 | It's not about stopping working, it's about starting to realize you now have crossed over

01:22:55.120 | a threshold of being on track to pay for life in retirement, basic needs, that you're now

01:23:00.860 | at a point where you can start to allocate your excess.

01:23:03.940 | You could allocate it now, you could allocate it in the future, but I imagine that for many

01:23:07.700 | people, getting to the point that they're, like, maybe just maxing out their 401(k) gets

01:23:13.700 | them to that point.

01:23:14.780 | Like if you max out your 401(k) for your whole life, and I haven't done the math, but maybe

01:23:18.540 | you have solved for retirement basic needs, and now you're at a point that you can figure

01:23:26.180 | out what to do with all of your excess each month.

01:23:28.060 | Sure, you could save it so you can spend it in your 50s, you can spend it in your 30s,

01:23:31.060 | you could spend it in your 70s, but at least coming up with a framework to help people

01:23:35.180 | understand because in the Wealthfront app, we say, "Okay, this is your financial utopia

01:23:39.180 | number, your FU number."

01:23:41.300 | But it might be $5 million because if you're 30, it's the amount of money you need today

01:23:45.660 | to never work again and keep spending what you spend today.

01:23:49.420 | But I don't know if that's helpful.

01:23:50.420 | I think it'd be more helpful to have a number that is, "Here is how much money you need

01:23:56.100 | to have saved to have retirement solved, and now all the excess that you save each month,

01:24:01.380 | you could spend."

01:24:02.380 | That simple thing might be universal.

01:24:04.140 | Obviously, it would need variables of how much you need to spend in retirement.

01:24:07.980 | We can make some assumptions.

01:24:08.980 | I think it helps get the concept across.

01:24:11.340 | I would say that it's not optimal, the front load, you're saving for retirement, and then

01:24:17.780 | go say, "The rest of the money I make is for goofing off and allocating it."

01:24:21.660 | There's a split because there's still the situation.

01:24:25.500 | I think getting the concept across and people freeing their mind and like, "Holy shit, this

01:24:29.140 | money is for fun.

01:24:31.060 | And when do I want to have fun?

01:24:32.060 | And I'm going to allocate the fun at the right times in my life."

01:24:34.860 | I think that really is powerful getting that message across.

01:24:38.980 | What I would say is that you don't work two years for retirement and then start spending

01:24:45.100 | fun.

01:24:46.100 | You work some for retirement and some goes to fun, some goes to fun, and it gets there

01:24:48.860 | at a certain point, particularly because of time bucketing and the fact that certain experiences

01:24:54.380 | belong then.

01:24:55.380 | And if you take that money and if you don't have that experience in this time period,

01:25:00.900 | you never have that experience.

01:25:03.620 | And that leads to future regret and less fulfillment.

01:25:07.220 | And so, it is not optimal to front load retirement.

01:25:12.220 | It may solve some sort of fear in you, right?

01:25:14.560 | But to get the concept across, I think most of your audience is like, they really have

01:25:18.020 | retirement covered.

01:25:19.020 | They really have their survival number covered, right?

01:25:21.860 | So if they could separate that out, maybe some of the young people don't, but if you

01:25:25.700 | could separate that out and think, "Okay, I'm putting this into a retirement bucket.

01:25:28.820 | I'm on track to hit retirement.

01:25:30.580 | How do I spend my fun money and how do I allocate that throughout my life?"

01:25:34.540 | I think it's better than nothing, right?

01:25:36.580 | Because it's mainly getting that concept across, right?

01:25:38.860 | It's the way of thinking.

01:25:40.340 | I wanted to sink in and a lot of people - the reason why we go over objections or the reason

01:25:45.060 | why I wrote the book, I wrote the book not as like some sort of economics book or physics

01:25:51.380 | book or calculus book, right?

01:25:53.040 | The reason why the book has stories in it is because you have to get past people's habits

01:25:57.260 | and egos, right?

01:25:59.620 | There's a reason why the book starts off with a death, a premature death.

01:26:03.540 | It's because immediately your ego disappears and you think, "Yeah, I'm going to die.

01:26:07.780 | How am I going to allocate the hours of my life?

01:26:09.860 | How am I going to spend the money?"

01:26:11.100 | Even though my life is longer and this guy's with two years, we have the same problem,

01:26:15.420 | right?

01:26:16.500 | And the reason why we go over objections is to get it in a way to get past your ego, the

01:26:20.620 | habits that you form so that you actually execute on these ideas, build on these ideas

01:26:26.220 | to have a more fulfilling life, right?

01:26:28.540 | Like I'm out here, you probably heard me say it, I'm out here trying to save people's lives

01:26:33.380 | and a lot of times people are like, "What the fuck are you talking about Perkins, save

01:26:37.260 | people's lives?

01:26:38.260 | You wrote a goddamn book about you know, optimizing and net fulfillment."

01:26:42.300 | And I use this example of - listen, when you pull somebody drowning in a pool, they're

01:26:49.700 | drowning and you pull them out, give them a mouth-to-mouth and get the water out or

01:26:53.620 | whatever and they're like, "Oh my God, you saved my life."

01:26:57.340 | I'm like, "Guess what?

01:26:58.740 | They're still going to fucking die.

01:27:00.460 | They're just not going to die that day.

01:27:02.740 | They're still going to die, 100%.

01:27:05.940 | So, what have you given them?

01:27:08.380 | You've given them more choices, more time, more experience, more I love you's, more going

01:27:14.500 | to the opera, more hanging out with their grandmother.

01:27:17.340 | You've given them more of their life, right?

01:27:20.740 | More experience to have and then they ultimately die.

01:27:23.100 | And so, with this book, when I get you to optimize for net fulfillment, I'm giving you

01:27:29.420 | more choices, more trips with grandma, more going to the opera, more charities, more ski

01:27:35.140 | trips.

01:27:36.140 | It's the same thing.

01:27:37.140 | It's the same thing.

01:27:38.760 | And so, in my mind, I'm just going to go with that.

01:27:41.260 | So, I'm like a fanatic when it comes to this because I truly believe that when you optimize

01:27:48.300 | your life that much, just the same way you optimize by saving, you get more trips and

01:27:52.460 | more life, that I'm saving people's lives.

01:27:56.240 | - I've started putting some of this into place.

01:27:58.320 | My wife and I actually had a conversation about money and we were like...

01:28:02.220 | My wife was like, "Oh, we should try to hit this goal."

01:28:04.520 | And then I was like, "No, no, no.

01:28:05.520 | I've been reading this book.

01:28:07.580 | Why are we even trying to hit a higher goal?

01:28:09.100 | What is it even for?"

01:28:10.420 | And now we're like, "No, no, no.

01:28:11.420 | We actually have a new net worth goal and it's down."

01:28:13.700 | You know?

01:28:14.700 | - Yeah.

01:28:15.700 | Yeah.

01:28:16.700 | It might be.

01:28:18.380 | That's it.

01:28:19.380 | - And so, that conversation is a great one to have because she might go...

01:28:22.300 | She might pull something out because, "This is the trip I want to go on."

01:28:26.100 | You know what I mean?

01:28:27.100 | And it's like this big expensive thing or, "I want to fly around in a G650," or whatever

01:28:31.320 | it is, right?

01:28:32.320 | And you'd be like, "Okay.

01:28:33.320 | At least we've attached what we're working for."

01:28:36.660 | Right?

01:28:37.660 | A lot of people forget what they're working for, right?

01:28:42.860 | And if you ask them, they'll just regurgitate the autopilot answer, right?

01:28:49.580 | To get more money to the thing or whatever because it's like, "No, no.

01:28:53.660 | Stop, stop, stop.

01:28:55.100 | You're going to work and they're going to give you money.

01:28:57.140 | What's the money for?

01:28:58.140 | Like, why do you need more money?

01:29:00.460 | What do you have?

01:29:01.620 | What can you not afford that you need to work for in order to consume?"

01:29:07.340 | And then we have a real conversation.

01:29:08.460 | - Yeah.

01:29:09.460 | And I think she would be the first to admit that in her mind, she was just on this path

01:29:14.020 | of accumulate, accumulate, and just she hadn't taken the pause to think about it.

01:29:17.900 | And then when we did, it clicked and the conversation was totally different.

01:29:22.740 | And I still think we need to figure out what we want to do with money and savings and spending

01:29:26.640 | and when we want to do it.

01:29:28.340 | But I think we've both now been like, "We're off the, let's just rack up money."

01:29:34.180 | That is no longer a goal.

01:29:35.540 | So thank you.

01:29:36.620 | - Yeah.

01:29:37.620 | And I want to hit a point because a lot of people are probably thinking, "Well, there's

01:29:39.780 | nothing I want to do."

01:29:40.780 | Right?

01:29:41.780 | Like they're listening to this and they're, "I don't want to do anything else."

01:29:45.060 | And the reason why you don't want to do anything else is because you've been a rat on a wheel.

01:29:49.500 | You haven't been exercising those muscles.

01:29:52.340 | You don't know how to play anymore.

01:29:53.940 | You forgot.

01:29:55.020 | You do want anything.

01:29:56.020 | They're just buried so deep under all these routines you built to acquiring money and

01:30:01.180 | those muscles are so atrophied.

01:30:03.200 | It's like you've never, you haven't gone to the gym for five years.

01:30:05.540 | You come in and you try and lift 225 pounds, right?

01:30:08.140 | Like it's not happening, right?

01:30:09.580 | Like you need to build up into it.

01:30:10.900 | You need to start small and be like, "Okay, let me think about these things I want to

01:30:15.100 | do.

01:30:16.100 | Do I really like that?

01:30:17.100 | Let me just go out and discover."

01:30:18.220 | Because life is discovery.

01:30:19.220 | You don't necessarily know everything you want to do.

01:30:21.060 | You have to go out and be exposed to it, but you have only been exposed to work and making

01:30:24.780 | more money and climbing the career ladder and doing more deals and solving this puzzle

01:30:29.780 | that you've been solving that you've been addicted for.

01:30:31.980 | And you haven't been working on the, "What fulfills me?

01:30:34.620 | What trips do I like?

01:30:35.660 | What experience do I have?

01:30:36.940 | How would I spend money if I had it?"

01:30:38.500 | You don't even think about those things, right?

01:30:41.260 | And so, it takes time.

01:30:43.260 | Don't be discouraged, right?

01:30:45.820 | Like you're not going to like just show up in the gym once and get in shape overnight.

01:30:51.780 | You're not going to just quit your job and know exactly what you want to do overnight.

01:30:55.100 | You have to build yourself back up.

01:30:57.980 | You have to get back in touch.

01:30:59.900 | If I quit completely doing trading, I would, I too, and I think about this all the time,

01:31:05.700 | I would say, "Wow, I've got a lot of time.

01:31:06.700 | I don't know what to do."

01:31:07.700 | You know what I mean?

01:31:08.700 | Like, whatever.

01:31:09.700 | And you get this panic, "Oh, oh, I got to go back to work."

01:31:13.700 | Right?

01:31:14.700 | Like, you know what I mean?

01:31:15.700 | Like you just got thrown into the water and you forgot how to swim, right?

01:31:18.220 | Like, you're like, "Calm down.

01:31:19.220 | Calm down.

01:31:20.220 | Float for a little bit.

01:31:21.220 | Do a little strill.

01:31:22.300 | You'll get there."

01:31:23.420 | And then you'll have the more fulfilling life, right?

01:31:25.900 | - Awesome.

01:31:26.900 | Okay.

01:31:27.900 | Let's do a couple random things totally separate that I think maybe tie in, maybe don't, before

01:31:32.820 | we wrap.

01:31:33.820 | One, I want to just get your take, you know, you're an optimizer, you wrote a book about

01:31:37.380 | optimizing, me too.

01:31:39.460 | Talk me through a few things that I just need someone like you to tell me why I'm being

01:31:43.340 | crazy.

01:31:44.340 | So I think one of the challenges I have with both money and, you know, you made a joke

01:31:49.580 | about a person that's accumulated millions of miles, that's me.

01:31:52.980 | And one of my challenges with using money, miles, currency, anything, is that I'm aware

01:31:58.780 | of how much more optimal it could be used, right?

01:32:02.140 | I know that if I really find the right trip, you know, 500,000 miles will take the whole

01:32:07.380 | family around the world.

01:32:08.900 | But if I book it today for the thing I want, it's a million and I struggle.

01:32:12.860 | Or, you know, we were talking about the holidays this year, we're like, "We have time off.

01:32:16.940 | We don't have plans, but wow, it's four times more expensive to go on any vacation, you

01:32:21.860 | know, at the end of December than it is in January."

01:32:24.540 | We don't have the time off in January, so we're not actually going to do that.

01:32:29.180 | But in my mind, it's like punt, you know, because it's an inoptimal use of that money.

01:32:35.040 | My main thing for you is you're solving for max flyer miles and you're not solving for

01:32:40.300 | max fulfillment, right?

01:32:42.420 | And so what you don't realize is that max fulfillment for you costs this much and that's

01:32:48.140 | just the cost, right?

01:32:50.940 | So there's a time period where it belongs and this is the optimal time for it to happen

01:32:55.380 | and this is the purchase price.

01:32:56.780 | And you're like, "But I can do the trip at a suboptimal time at less fulfillment for

01:33:01.140 | 500,000 miles."

01:33:02.140 | And I'm like, "You can do that, but realize that you're solving for spending less miles

01:33:07.880 | and not solving for max fulfillment, right?"

01:33:11.520 | And so if you're the type of guy that when you look back on your deathbed, you'll be

01:33:14.860 | like, "Wow, I saved all these goddamn miles," as opposed to, you know, "Holy shit, I fucked

01:33:20.380 | up my fulfillment in this period, in this time period when my kids were this age, when

01:33:24.340 | it was time for me to doing this and it misallocated my time," then go ahead, go ahead and solve

01:33:28.620 | for miles.

01:33:29.620 | - Or money in that case also, right?

01:33:31.660 | - Yeah, yeah, money, miles, whatever, whatever it is you're solving for, you're optimizing

01:33:35.260 | for miles.

01:33:36.260 | And I'm like, "Listen, fulfillment first, miles second."

01:33:42.060 | So there's gonna be some blend, but the maximum fulfillment is what we're solving for.

01:33:46.860 | And so, sometimes you're gonna have to vaporize the miles because that's what it costs.

01:33:51.700 | And lo and behold, the airlines know this.

01:33:55.900 | They know that like in Western culture, these holidays, this is when people want to fulfill

01:34:01.100 | their lives, et cetera, so we get to charge more for fulfillment.

01:34:05.260 | And when kids are like in finals, et cetera, we're like, there's no family trips, et cetera,

01:34:09.780 | so we can charge less, right?

01:34:11.100 | Like they know this, right?

01:34:12.860 | And this is the cost of fulfillment, like everything costs, right?

01:34:17.620 | And you're like, "No, no, no, no, I want to just have the lowest cost."

01:34:20.660 | And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, I want to have the highest fulfillment."

01:34:23.940 | So if you get back on, "I'm solving for max fulfillment with my family," I think you'll

01:34:30.820 | become less detached on the value of the conversion of the points.

01:34:35.180 | - Or I think the answer, maybe the answer is, and I'm trying to tweak it a little bit,

01:34:39.780 | which is sit down and say, "Look, we have two choices.

01:34:43.300 | And in the next X hours, days, whatever, we're going to pick one.

01:34:46.980 | Either we actually do commit and we go book the trip in January when it's better," right?

01:34:52.420 | I'm not saying punt years.

01:34:53.740 | I'm saying either you say, "Look, we're just going to find a way to make it work at a lower

01:34:56.940 | price or we're just going to pay the price to go when it's convenient, but not let ourselves

01:35:03.480 | escape the decision."

01:35:05.180 | I think that's the thing.

01:35:06.700 | It's like you either pay up because you want the fulfillment or you adjust life to make

01:35:10.820 | it work at a better price, as long as you don't not take the experience.

01:35:15.340 | - To me, it's like, trip here, trip here, trip here, trip here, trip here.

01:35:19.500 | What is the most fulfilling?

01:35:21.140 | Is it worth it?

01:35:22.140 | What gives me the net fulfillment, right?

01:35:24.180 | And it might be not the January, it might be trip here and another trip and two trips.

01:35:30.100 | And since they're in the same time bucket, that's actually more fulfillment, right?

01:35:34.620 | Two different environments, etc.

01:35:36.060 | I mean, there's going to be a lot of variables like we'd get off the chalkboard, I'd go over

01:35:39.260 | with you and I'm like, "All right, you're really going to take two trips?"

01:35:41.260 | "Yeah, I'm really going to take two trips."

01:35:42.620 | And that's a million miles for two trips, but it's not over Christmas.

01:35:46.200 | How do you feel about the fulfillment score?

01:35:48.060 | Let's put a fulfillment score on each trip, okay?

01:35:49.740 | It seems to add up more than the trip over Christmas.

01:35:51.700 | Are we sure about that?

01:35:52.860 | Yeah, we're sure about that.

01:35:54.180 | We're not sure about that.

01:35:55.780 | We'd go through this whole exercise with your wife and talk about it and then we'd come

01:36:02.020 | to a decision, right?

01:36:03.500 | And then we would make the right decision knowing that we solve for net fulfillment,

01:36:08.580 | not miles, right?

01:36:10.140 | The miles was an input, right?

01:36:13.020 | Just like wealth, health, and time, right?

01:36:14.580 | So miles is kind of in the wealth bucket, right?

01:36:17.300 | That was an input to solve for net fulfillment.

01:36:19.900 | And we slid it back and forth in time like, "All right, two trips, two trips, not Christmas

01:36:24.540 | actually is better.

01:36:26.300 | We'll hang out at home and play board games and then go on two trips."

01:36:29.900 | I look forward to sending you a note saying, "We took the trip."

01:36:33.620 | Or the two trips.

01:36:34.620 | Or the three trips.

01:36:35.620 | Or the two trips.

01:36:36.620 | Right?

01:36:37.620 | Whatever it works out to be.

01:36:38.620 | Or a trip and a half, right?

01:36:39.620 | I don't know.

01:36:40.620 | Or a trip plus an upgrade.

01:36:41.620 | These are the things that I don't have the right answer because the inputs matter most,

01:36:46.080 | but the mental model is there, right?

01:36:47.660 | You're thinking about it.

01:36:48.900 | The other thing I want to touch on is health.

01:36:50.800 | So it seems like one of the biggest opportunities to unlock a lot of this equation is to be

01:36:57.340 | healthier and live longer.

01:36:58.460 | You talked about how in Japan, people are kind of just as a society, that.

01:37:02.580 | I know you've spent a lot of time with some of these great doctors.

01:37:06.020 | Are there things that someone listening who doesn't get a chance to talk to Peter or Tia

01:37:10.580 | or something on a regular basis, is there stuff you've learned, whether it's tests

01:37:15.660 | to consider doing now or ways you've changed your diet or your health that people could

01:37:22.220 | do to kind of improve or extend the time that they can do more active things and I guess

01:37:28.100 | live longer?

01:37:29.100 | I think I pay a lot for the last 15%, right?

01:37:32.340 | Like 85%, even the fanciest doctors, it's all low-hanging fruit, right?

01:37:36.700 | And the lowest hanging fruit is like, "Hey, do an activity that makes you sweat for four

01:37:42.740 | hours a week, maintain your weight, try not to consume added sugar, reduce all your sugars

01:37:50.020 | in your sugar intake, no alcohol, don't smoke."

01:37:54.300 | So, super low-hanging fruit about like not being overweight, staying in shape, not consuming

01:38:02.140 | added sugars, like sugar is the worst and exercise, like even if it's hiking, like hiking

01:38:08.420 | or walking is, you know, walking three miles a day or whatever, like or three miles four

01:38:15.380 | times a week, right?

01:38:16.820 | Or something like that, that's like, you know, amazing low-hanging fruit to make your current

01:38:27.100 | future experience - your current experience is better and your future experience is better,

01:38:32.100 | right?

01:38:33.100 | Because activity by health is the fulfillment and if your health is shitty, not only do

01:38:38.700 | you - either you don't get to do the activity or the activity is not as enjoyable, right?

01:38:42.100 | So, you don't get as - you know, if I go - I used to walk around like seven to 12 miles

01:38:47.580 | around Paris when I was there with a backpack on, right?

01:38:50.820 | Now, I can maybe do six or five before I'm like, "My knees kind of hurt, I don't like

01:38:56.180 | it anymore", right?

01:38:57.180 | So, I got more of Paris on a trip for the same dollar than I do now, right?

01:39:04.180 | And the more in shape I am, the less overweight I am, the less weight I'm carrying and force

01:39:08.420 | I'm hitting into my knees, the more enjoyable every single activity is, right?

01:39:11.600 | And so, I would argue and say to people like, that low-hanging fruit has such a huge yield

01:39:18.380 | on your fulfillment, you know, whether you're going to be able to enjoy playing with your

01:39:23.260 | kids or relatives or be around or even enjoy getting on a plane, etc. later on in life

01:39:29.280 | is highly correlated and highly dependent on the state of your health right now.

01:39:37.060 | I can't emphasize it enough and I'm not a health book, right?

01:39:39.620 | It's not a health book.

01:39:40.620 | I'm like, "Listen, there are tons of books, podcasts, motivational speakers, etc. on like

01:39:48.560 | how to be healthy".

01:39:49.940 | And I just say, "This vertical is uber important, make sure you address it, try and do activities

01:39:56.180 | that fulfill you irrespective of the health benefits".

01:39:59.860 | And one of the ones I found is hiking.

01:40:02.780 | Like going hiking with a friend, I get a great experience talking with them, seeing nature,

01:40:08.340 | discovering what's around me and it's also has these health benefits, cardio benefits,

01:40:13.060 | strength, legs, etc. that make future experiences better, right?

01:40:17.500 | So I get a double whammy, right?

01:40:20.580 | A double whammy, you know, not overeating, not doing X, Y, and Z.

01:40:25.580 | And a lot of, you know, I say it's habit forming.

01:40:28.340 | Try and develop the habits that lead you to the goal, you know, because your motivation

01:40:31.840 | goes up and down, right?

01:40:32.980 | So develop these habits, you know, like get rid of the snacks, make them move far away,

01:40:39.260 | don't even buy them.

01:40:40.260 | Then you can't get to them.

01:40:41.260 | - Oh yeah, you said, if you're looking at a cookie, just be like, "Is this cookie worth

01:40:45.120 | an hour on the treadmill?"

01:40:46.440 | And then...

01:40:47.440 | - That's the way I do it.

01:40:48.440 | I convert all these things into like time, right?

01:40:51.860 | So resources that I'm fighting for, which I think at the end of the day, everybody's

01:40:55.060 | fighting, right?

01:40:56.060 | They want free time.

01:40:57.060 | They want time to do what they want.

01:40:58.060 | They want more time on the planet.

01:40:59.620 | If I'm trying to maintain my health and my health is very important to, you know, my

01:41:03.100 | weight is very important to my future enjoyment, my knees, et cetera, like, "Is that cookie

01:41:08.300 | worth an hour on the treadmill?"

01:41:09.860 | Sometimes a cookie is actually worth an hour on a treadmill.

01:41:13.100 | If it's a nice, good chocolate chip cookie, I will be like, "I will go on the treadmill

01:41:16.300 | for these cookies."

01:41:17.300 | You know?

01:41:18.300 | And sometimes it's not.

01:41:19.300 | - But what if I push you since you said you'd answer anything, like to peel back some of

01:41:22.860 | that 15% that you've learned that I might not know?

01:41:26.820 | - I think diagnostics is the key, right?

01:41:30.180 | Like, you know, many diseases, ailments and their progression are thwarted if you find

01:41:39.420 | them earlier enough, right?

01:41:41.160 | Some of the cancers that are like always fatal, if they had a test for it and they found it

01:41:44.460 | early, you'd survive, right?

01:41:49.980 | Heart diagnostics, MRI diagnostics.

01:41:51.580 | So I think a lot of the wealthier people, you know, somebody once said to me, "You should

01:41:56.020 | be spending 10% of your income on your health."

01:42:00.500 | I was like, "That's fucking crazy.

01:42:02.940 | You know, I have a pretty high income or whatever."

01:42:04.660 | And I was like...

01:42:05.660 | And I thought about it and I was like, "No, and that includes like diet, you know, whether

01:42:10.020 | I buy prepackaged meals or have a chef, that includes doctors, diagnosis, et cetera, health

01:42:15.620 | plans."

01:42:16.620 | And I was like, "It's actually low.

01:42:19.160 | It's actually low.

01:42:20.160 | It's so important."

01:42:22.120 | A lot of the, you know, the secret sauce of these doctors is, you know, every quarter

01:42:29.540 | they come in and they draw like 32, 36 vials of blood, right?

01:42:33.240 | And it's like, "This is your mineral absorption.

01:42:35.140 | This is so-and-so.

01:42:36.140 | This is what your thyroid is doing and this is whatever and here's all the metrics and

01:42:40.600 | you're kind of out over here.

01:42:41.880 | Like you need to do Edware and here's your cholesterol."

01:42:44.600 | And these things, that preventative, you know, ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,

01:42:51.600 | that is the key, right?

01:42:53.360 | And the prescription of like, "You need to be doing more cardio or you need to do this

01:42:56.640 | or you should be avoiding these foods because they inflame you," right?

01:43:00.440 | And inflammation is death, right?

01:43:02.040 | And so diagnostics, diagnostics, diagnostics, diagnostics.

01:43:05.560 | - Yeah, one of the companies that I partner with on the show is called Inside Tracker

01:43:10.440 | and they do like a 43 biomarker paired with genetic testing to kind of give you an analysis

01:43:16.760 | of both like different biomarkers and what that means, what your optimal range is adjusted

01:43:21.200 | for your genetics and like what your inner age is, which is like looking at all the biomarkers

01:43:26.000 | of where you should be, are you like ahead or behind?

01:43:28.840 | So that's one thing that's a little more accessible.

01:43:31.640 | I know there's some GRAIL tests for early cancer detection.

01:43:34.720 | I know there's PRENUVO, which is like the full body MRI.

01:43:39.760 | So I'm actually, you know what, I'll punt on pushing on the 15% and I'm just gonna go

01:43:43.160 | find a doctor who I've met and we're gonna go deeper on this.

01:43:49.180 | So...

01:43:50.180 | - Yeah, you do the MRI, you look at your telomeres, they're like, "Oh, you can do a hyperbaric

01:43:54.640 | chamber."

01:43:55.640 | Like one of the things you can do that is out of Israeli studies, I'll go into one of

01:44:00.240 | the cutting edge but pain in the ass things, okay, that I actually stopped doing.

01:44:07.200 | You can go to hyperbaric chamber for two hours and in theory, it lengthens your telomeres,

01:44:12.720 | it makes you younger at the cellular level.

01:44:15.320 | Which means in theory, you know, you're gonna live longer 'cause your organs are not gonna

01:44:18.000 | break down at the time they're gonna break down, you can get some extension on telomeres.

01:44:22.760 | And it has all these other therapeutic supposed properties.

01:44:26.320 | So I'd have to go drive an hour to the hyperbaric chamber, I was gonna run the same experiment

01:44:32.240 | that the Israelis did, so you have to do X months of hyperbaric chambers, right?

01:44:37.600 | Like whatever it is, it's a lot.

01:44:40.120 | But the place I had to go to was an hour away, I had to dive, you know, you go dive down,

01:44:47.880 | you dive to pressure, so it takes a while to get to pressure, then you stay at pressure

01:44:51.200 | for an hour or whatever the timeframe is and then you have to come out and then I gotta

01:44:54.720 | drive an hour back.

01:44:56.640 | And I was like, "Okay, I'm going to get X benefit and live longer this timeframe but

01:45:02.720 | I'm wasting three to four hours a day, you know, traveling to this hyperbaric chamber

01:45:09.760 | back and forth."

01:45:10.760 | And I was just like, "Nope, not worth it.

01:45:13.680 | I'll die earlier."

01:45:14.680 | You know what I mean?

01:45:15.680 | Like, you know what I mean?

01:45:16.680 | I'll die a year earlier or whatever it is but like, you know, I mean, like this time

01:45:20.320 | is too valuable to me right now in this time bucket.

01:45:22.520 | So that's one, hyperbaric chambers.

01:45:24.840 | You know, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you.

01:45:26.800 | - Awesome.

01:45:27.800 | - No, it's not, I mean, if I had a hyperbaric chamber in my house and I could just like

01:45:30.880 | do it when I sleep, I'd be like, I would 100% do it.

01:45:34.300 | Like take a nap, you know, I like to sleep, rest is important, do my hyperbaric chamber,

01:45:39.600 | get out, et cetera.

01:45:40.600 | But that commute to the facility was just absolutely crushing.

01:45:44.280 | - I feel that way about cold plunge and sauna to the extent that it's like, I should just

01:45:49.320 | get one and put it outside.

01:45:50.920 | - The sauna, there's data on the health benefits.

01:45:54.520 | The cold, the studies aren't there.

01:45:56.240 | There may be benefits and people are raving about the benefits, but the research isn't

01:46:00.280 | there.

01:46:01.280 | So a sauna is definitely, confers health benefits, longevity, less chance of a heart attack,

01:46:07.400 | yada, yada, yada, yada.

01:46:08.400 | The sauna's a hack.

01:46:09.400 | You know, there's all these like other hacks, you know what I mean, that are out there.

01:46:15.280 | - That's the show.

01:46:16.280 | So I'm gonna totally hack the sauna, hyperbaric chamber might not be worth it, but it's out

01:46:22.120 | there.

01:46:23.120 | - Full diagnostics, MRIs, full diagnostics, MRIs, those 3D colon scanners, where they

01:46:32.840 | actually like scan your whole body.

01:46:35.840 | There's great latest and greatest imaging technology, et cetera, where, you know, they're

01:46:41.480 | gonna scan you and be like, oh, you got too much visceral fat.

01:46:43.920 | You got this.

01:46:44.920 | I can tell.

01:46:45.920 | Like, I remember when I went there and they were like, oh, I can tell.

01:46:46.920 | I was like, do you smoke?

01:46:47.920 | And I was like, no, he's like, yeah, I can tell when I look at your liver, I can tell

01:46:51.360 | what you do.

01:46:52.360 | So they can tell my habits based on looking at my insides.

01:46:57.360 | And I was like, okay.

01:47:00.120 | - I just wrote a newsletter about FSAs and HSAs.

01:47:03.120 | So a lot of these health things are, one cool hack to compound it is you can put pre-tax

01:47:08.320 | money in from your employer and then use that for some of these health things that aren't

01:47:12.200 | covered by insurance.

01:47:13.200 | So we've done that for LASIK, for IVF, for blood tests, all that kind of stuff.

01:47:20.600 | But the last thing I want to jump on is every time I talk to someone, I try to pick one

01:47:25.880 | place or I let them pick a place that they're pretty familiar with in the world and tell

01:47:30.680 | people that are headed there how to have a great day there, whether it's doing, drinking,

01:47:35.040 | dining, anything.

01:47:36.800 | So pick a place.

01:47:37.800 | - I'm gonna pick St. Barts.

01:47:39.560 | One, get prepared to spend money.

01:47:41.440 | It's not a cheap island.

01:47:42.680 | You can do it cheap.

01:47:43.680 | I'm sure you'll hack away and find the great Airbnb on a discount on a so-and-so or be

01:47:48.040 | a room reviewer or something like that, that gets you down there cheap.

01:47:50.840 | But let's say you get down there, right?

01:47:53.400 | St. Barts is what I think the perfect match of beauty and environment and commerce and

01:48:00.160 | fun, okay?

01:48:02.220 | So I would recommend either staying on Flaman's Beach, Flaman, you don't pronounce it, yes,

01:48:10.640 | or Grand Cul-de-Sac, like Barthélemy, or at Eden Rock.

01:48:15.560 | The main thing is the food.

01:48:16.860 | So you want to go get yourself a little moke car or something that's a convertible when

01:48:23.420 | you rent a car and make sure you drive around the island.

01:48:27.100 | It's not that far to drive around the island.

01:48:28.760 | You can drive a little bit and check out little areas.

01:48:31.400 | You want to go to visit all the beaches.

01:48:34.900 | I think Governor Beach is probably the best beach in the world or one of the best beaches

01:48:41.580 | in the world, but I also enjoy St. Lene Beach, Grand Cul-de-Sac, all these places.

01:48:46.740 | Eating along the beach and just checking the vibe and hanging out is amazing.

01:48:50.580 | There's also a place called - what used to be called - at Shell Beach, there's a restaurant

01:48:57.540 | there.

01:48:58.540 | You definitely want to have lunch there.

01:48:59.540 | There's Le Tamaran, which is like kind of in this garden at night, you definitely want

01:49:02.900 | to eat there.

01:49:03.900 | I would say more for dinner than lunch.

01:49:09.620 | There's always going to be a party somewhere, someplace, right?

01:49:13.660 | So in Gustavia, walking around and shopping, there's Nikki Beach, there's the hotels, there's

01:49:22.900 | kite surfing, there's lounging.

01:49:26.880 | I would say definitely visit the other hotels and have lunch on the beach, right?

01:49:31.500 | That's good places and then go check out the little shops.

01:49:36.580 | That is it.

01:49:37.580 | I think a lot of it is vibing and hiking and driving around and just finding little places

01:49:45.460 | and enjoying the nicest of the French culture, right?

01:49:49.720 | Because the French are known for being rude, but in St. Barts, it's the nicest of the French,

01:49:53.820 | right?

01:49:54.820 | Like you really have to - it's competitive to come work there and come be there, right?

01:50:00.260 | So you don't get the rude French, you get the nice French, right?

01:50:04.380 | And you get French cuisine, which is amazing.

01:50:08.780 | It's very good.

01:50:09.780 | And you get a beautiful island and crystal blue water, crystal clear water and great

01:50:15.420 | beaches and windsurfing and paddle surfing and swimming with turtles and things like

01:50:20.380 | that.

01:50:21.380 | And then you get to drive this island that has different climates where it has a dry

01:50:23.900 | side and a wet side.

01:50:28.220 | And there's all kinds of little experiences you can have in the island life way.

01:50:33.300 | I'm ready to go.

01:50:35.480 | So it's developed enough, but not overdeveloped.

01:50:38.620 | That's what I would say.

01:50:39.620 | Yeah.

01:50:40.620 | And that's the beauty of St. Barts and it's clean and it's safe.

01:50:43.500 | Sounds fantastic.

01:50:44.500 | The biggest drawback to St. Barts is it's expensive.

01:50:47.420 | Well, every time there's a time for expensive trips, save for it, but spend the money on

01:50:52.420 | the trip.

01:50:53.420 | Don't die with it.

01:50:54.420 | Yeah, that's my takeaway.

01:50:56.100 | Any parting advice or places people should head to check you out where you're working

01:50:59.460 | online?

01:51:00.460 | Anything?

01:51:01.460 | Online.

01:51:02.460 | I mean, wow.

01:51:03.460 | I'm on Instagram.

01:51:04.460 | You know, I use Instagram and Instagram stories as kind of like my own life diary.

01:51:08.420 | Like this whole going back to that hack, like how can you use the memory dividend?

01:51:12.660 | I use my stories as my memory.

01:51:14.940 | They save to my phone and then get backed up to Google Cloud.

01:51:17.620 | And then I can, you know, it will show like on this day and I'll have all these little

01:51:21.500 | snippets and videos of like what happened on this trip or what I did.

01:51:25.040 | So I am Bill Perkins on Instagram.

01:51:27.080 | You can follow me.

01:51:29.320 | Sometimes it's just me and my cat or doing nothing exciting, but sometimes it's exciting.

01:51:34.240 | If you want hot takes or chaos, you can follow me on Twitter @bp22 on Twitter.

01:51:39.380 | I don't recommend it.

01:51:40.380 | You know, sometimes it's markets.

01:51:42.940 | Sometimes it's finance advice.

01:51:44.520 | Sometimes it's hot political takes.

01:51:46.940 | I'm a libertarian.

01:51:47.940 | So, you know, everybody hates me left, the right, the, you know, sometimes it's just

01:51:55.140 | goofing off, but, you know, if you're in for the chaos, you can follow me on Twitter at

01:51:59.580 | BP 22.

01:52:00.700 | And I, it's a format that I like where I can actually interact with people, you know, enough,

01:52:05.420 | you know, talk to them, et cetera.

01:52:06.540 | So I think that's, it's a, it's a, I love Twitter too much.

01:52:12.540 | And I think that's basically it.

01:52:13.660 | I think LinkedIn is kind of, I really don't use LinkedIn that much.

01:52:16.260 | I mean, I, we have company accounts, zero book.com you didn't mention, which I want

01:52:20.640 | to talk about book.

01:52:21.640 | We were talking books.

01:52:22.640 | I mean, yeah, we're all where books are sold everywhere.

01:52:26.720 | It's on audio book and you can listen to it.

01:52:29.100 | You can read it everywhere.

01:52:30.100 | Direct zero book.com.

01:52:31.100 | You can go there.

01:52:32.100 | It'll, it'll list like, you know, the languages that it's sold.

01:52:35.540 | So it's in Spanish, it's in Polish, it's in Chinese, it's in German.

01:52:40.480 | What else is it in?

01:52:41.480 | It's in Japanese.

01:52:42.480 | And actually it's the book is most successful in Japan.

01:52:47.240 | It is like, it's, it's in, it's in the top 10 in three categories.

01:52:51.360 | It's been number one off and on in principles and ethics, which I don't know why I'm in

01:52:56.000 | that category, but I am.

01:52:59.000 | And it's like the number, I think right now it's the number 510 book in all of Japan Amazon,

01:53:04.600 | which if you think about how many damn books are, it's kind of incredible.

01:53:08.160 | And it has like a book also, which is probably, I assume, yeah, it's a foreign book and I

01:53:11.560 | wrote the book.

01:53:12.560 | But I think, you know, like Japanese culture, it's so counter to their culture.

01:53:18.720 | It's such a wake up call and it applies, right?

01:53:20.760 | Like I don't, a lot of the pushback I would have here is like, oh, there's so many people

01:53:26.080 | that don't have money and don't have to save, you know, they haven't even gotten their survival

01:53:29.120 | number yet.

01:53:30.120 | They need to read building wealth books, right?

01:53:32.120 | But in Japan, savings is a disease of it, right?

01:53:36.480 | And so I'm like, Hey, you guys have a disease and here's the cure for fulfilling life.

01:53:40.760 | The purpose is not to save, save, save, and then pass to another generation.

01:53:43.400 | Then they save, save, save.

01:53:44.400 | And then they pass to another generation.

01:53:45.400 | I'm like, what generation actually has fun?

01:53:47.080 | You know what I mean?

01:53:48.880 | So I think they get more value and more controversy with respect to the way they're living their

01:53:55.480 | lives now.

01:53:56.760 | But everywhere, the book is everywhere.

01:53:59.120 | That's what I mean to say.

01:54:01.400 | I have the book.

01:54:02.400 | I recommend the book.

01:54:03.600 | It's had a huge impact on me.

01:54:05.040 | Thanks for writing it.

01:54:06.080 | Thank you for being here.

01:54:09.260 | I'm glad to be here.

01:54:10.720 | for hearing me blather. I'm always down to blather again if you want.

Die With Zero: Net Fulfillment Over Net Worth | All The Hacks Podcast