Hello, everybody. It's Sam from the Financial Samurai Podcast where I try to help you achieve financial freedom sooner rather than later. Today I have a special guest with me, Andre Nader, who I interviewed a year ago after he left Metta. And so I wanted to talk to him about life after Metta, what he's been doing with his newsletter, his thoughts on semi-retirement, FIRE, as well as how it's like having a wife who works in tech and who makes a lot of money.

So welcome to the show again, Andre. Thank you so much, Sam, for having me back. So what's been going on since a year, since we last spoke? Yeah, we're coming pretty close to exactly a year since we last talked. And a lot has changed over that year. We spoke literally while I was on my severance after being laid off from Metta, being laid off in May of 2023 and then having the severance through the summer.

And I was still trying to get my bearings. I had been at Facebook Metta for nine plus years, in tech for 15 years, working continuously, had always had a job since I was 16. So when we talked, that was the first time ever in the last 15, 20 years that I had time to do what I wanted, or even just like just had time period.

And it definitely wasn't just what I wanted. I'm married, I have a six-year-old daughter, the restrictions on my time are obviously capped on both ends. But the last year has been really interesting and a good reflection on how I think about FIRE and it's kind of changed my mindset a little bit.

And I'm looking forward to chatting more about all that. Tell me about the severance package because one of my roles if you're planning on retiring early is to try to negotiate a severance package because if you're planning on quitting anyway, there's no downside to trying to negotiate a severance package.

So you got a severance package. Could you refresh the rough details if you're allowed and how that made you feel during your transition to no longer working? Yeah. No, the severance package was very generous. I think the benefit that I had was I was, I don't know if it's a benefit, Metta went through three plus rounds of layoffs.

So I was in one of the final rounds. What that afforded me was having a very clear picture of what the severance offers were looking like. At that point, they were very cookie cutter standard. You knew exactly what you were going to be getting. There wasn't really too much room for negotiation unless you had some kind of extenuating circumstances.

So the general package was one, being in California, we had the 60 days from the layoff period just by nature of like the Warren Act in terms of the amount of notice that they must give you before they do a mass layoff. So what they do is say that you're laid off in the end of May, but they still keep you on payroll just like you're getting a normal paycheck for the next 60 days.

So that's all even before the normal severance. And then on top of that, they were giving I think around three additional months of full salary plus six months of health insurance and then two weeks for every year that you worked there. So I was there for nine years. So ended up being like a fairly substantial amount.

For the entire year, I made probably like 80%, 85% of my total comp that I would have gotten anyway if I worked the entire year. And I only worked through May. So it ended up being a fairly, like you were saying, if you're going to fire, like doing a severance type fire, working your package, I didn't intentionally do this, but it ended up being a fairly good way to exit, if you will.

And the health insurance was a big piece too. And what did you do with the money? Honestly, I treated it just like a normal salary that I was getting. I didn't do anything differently. So for me, it's always been very cookie cutter. I'm a bogglehead by heart, index funds, put it in to max out all my retirement accounts.

But by May, I'd already maxed out all of those. So it was just really beefing up my taxable savings, which again, like all within like Fidelity, Vanguard, the standard VTI, VOO, also beefing up my emergency fund. So I think that was the big change too, is I had been a dual income household, which meant that I had a little bit of security from if I lost my job, my wife still had her job.

So we didn't need to have, say like a year of savings. My emergency fund was probably around six months of our essential expenses. But now after being laid off, one of the things I used the money for was, hey, now we're a single income household. It's fine if I lose my job.

We had always been very disciplined around keeping our expenses within one of our salaries. So we had no issue maintaining our current lifestyle. But if she lost her job as well, that might change. So I increased my emergency fund up to 12 months and just had additional like cash buffer just in case, because I think the future at that time was less than certain.

Right, right, right. And so what do you think your after tax savings rate fell to once you lost or once you left Meta? Yeah, the after tax savings rate, still north of 40 plus percent, still able to max out all of my wife's retirement accounts, including the mega backdoor after tax.

So we're talking about contributing that $69,000 there plus backdoor Roths, which is 7k per person plus more in addition to that. Wow. 40% still. Yeah. So still, again, within San Francisco, we had always kept our expenses within reason. And then the honest truth is that our tax salaries, me at Meta and then her at Uber, had just continued to grow over that time period, over the, like she has been at Uber for almost a decade as well.

So we have two, not executive level, but like senior level employees at big tech earning a good living and keeping our expenses in check, like our largest expenses, rent being in San Francisco, and then childcare followed by groceries. So within reason, keeping those within check had allowed us to continue to save and be prepared for a situation like this where we dropped to an income, because ultimately my goal was to fire relatively soon.

So this was kind of going according to plan, if you will, just not the original plan that I had neatly mapped out. So tell me this. So just for a listener's perspective, can you give an idea of the total compensation range that your wife earns? Yeah. I think one of the largest pieces, and again, this is a roundabout answer, one of the largest pieces of compensation within big tech is coming from equity, particularly as you get more senior.

And if you look at Uber's stock price over the past two years, it's ended up doing exceptionally well, like finally. They IPO'd at $40, then it kind of floundered for the last couple of years. But then this past year, they hit highs of $80, and now settling in like the $60 to $70 range.

So easily like getting into the mid six figures ranges, which is not, again, like, and both of us were in those similar bands. And does every year a tech worker get new RSUs topped up every single year, or is it at every four years or whatever chunk? Yeah. That's a really good question.

I think that's where it's important to understand the compensation philosophies for every tech company. Each one is very different. Meta, for example, every year, you'll get a new annual stock refresher that vests over four years. And that refresher is entirely formulaic. And it's not based at all on how much equity you already have, versus Uber and Amazon and many other companies, they have what's called a target compensation model, where the amount of refreshers that you get kind of looks back at how much equity you already have, to kind of make sure that you're getting paid at least a certain amount of total compensation.

So with Uber stock price increasing significantly, that refreshers in many cases were less than they had been in the past, because they were really trying to keep people within these target bands. So that's where it's like, it can be very different, like being at Meta, where the stock prices is all your past equity has also drastically increased, but you're still getting those refreshers at the same net dollar value, versus Uber, if the stock does well, then your future refreshers won't be as high.

Okay. Well, let me ask you this. So one of the things that I try to tell readers is go try to make a lot of money to realize making a lot of money via W2 income is not the dream or amazing thing that you think it is, because it takes a lot of stress, a lot of work, just a lot of dedication.

And so I'm going to guess that your wife makes between 400 to $600,000, and you made something similar, given that's what you just said. So now that you've gone from, let's say, 800,000 to 400,000, how does that feel? Because I feel that once you make like 400,000, I mean, life is good.

Once you make over like 250,000 combined household income, life is pretty good. So to strive for way above that, I don't think is worth it after so many years. I mean, definitely try it for as long as possible. But afterwards, it's like, "Eh." So how does it feel now, your lifestyle and overall unit going from 800 to $400,000?

Honestly, very little difference in our life at all. We've changed nothing. We're actually now looking at renting a new place that's closer to my daughter's school where we can just walk to school, and looking at almost doubling the amount we're paying in rent. So we're increasing our expenses as we're kind of going in and cutting our overall salaries in half.

So I think, again, the amount that you make once you hit a certain point, it just becomes decoupled from your needs in many cases. If you're, again, you can always spend as much as you want. But I've kind of found we've kind of like capped out around, like right now, been pretty consistent around like $140,000 in spend per year, much of that being housing and childcare.

And then when my daughter left her private preschool and joined school, the amount that you save ends up just shifting to other places. And we kind of generally stay within that $140,000 per year. And one of my goals this year was to actively spend more, because I felt like we weren't spending enough on things like family vacations, wanting to invest more into being where we living in a place that we enjoy spending time in, because we do spend a lot of time at home, and being able to do things like walk to school and just valuing those types of things over continuing to save.

Again, 15 years in tech, dual income, the amount that we need to save to hit our goals, it just becomes diminished, particularly in how the market has done over the past decade. So let me ask you this, because I'm looking at a household as a unit, right? Not as an individual.

So I see one parent who's working, making good money, another parent who has way more freedom, who can do more childcare and pursue his entrepreneurial endeavors, for example. To me, I see that as a healthier balance versus two parents grinding away in tech or consulting or finance. But that's just my opinion.

I'm just stepping back and saying, "Okay, both of you guys don't have to suffer. If only one of you have to, quote, 'suffer by working' and the other has the freedom, that sounds better. What are your thoughts on giving up this substantial amount of money, let's say, again, $400,000 to $600,000 to be a stay-at-home parent?

Do you think it's worth it? And if not, why not? I'll actually flip a little bit of what you said. I think being a primary caregiver and primary stay-at-home parent is way harder than working in big tech for me personally. I found it definitely rewarding and I value the time that I'm spending with my daughter a lot, but it is way harder.

The time that you spend at work is a little bit more predictable. You can control it a little bit more. You can take breaks when you want to. That's not the case when you're dealing with your child. You don't get to dictate your breaks. You're not in control of your time as much.

And that's something that I didn't fully appreciate until getting laid off and then taking on that primary caregiver responsibility and really kind of like leaning in a little bit more on, "Hey, I don't want to jump back into the W-2 grind. I want to take some time off." And with that comes the expectation of taking on more of the household duties, childcare, and just the general household management pieces of it.

And from a pure, I don't know, yeah, I think that these more challenging than anticipated I think is the answer. Yeah. I totally feel you. I wrote a post called something like, "Looking forward to going back to work as a vacation from being a stay-at-home father." And so is your daughter in school full-time now?

Yeah. She's in kindergarten at the end of the year. Okay. So this is something that I've been thinking about because my daughter is not in school full-time. She'll start full-time school September 2024. And then I'll have two children who are in school full-time for 40 plus hours a week.

And I feel that there's going to be this void to fill. And so I feel that the responsible thing as a parent is to actually do some work, some meaningful work that can generate some income and buffer our finances and pay for crazy college education and all that stuff.

How do you spend that time now that you don't have work and your daughter's in school for seven, eight hours a day? Yeah. I actually think this is the best time to fire in terms of when your child is growing up. Early childhood is the hardest thing ever, particularly zero to when you get to full-time school.

It's just extremely challenging. But once you get to school, like you said, you have a good 40-hour chunk where they're at school and you have time to do things. Yes, there's a significant amount of time with things like grocery shopping, laundry, and all of those other miscellaneous household activities.

But there is also still a lot more time. And in terms of responsibility, honestly, because our finances are in a place where we're not needing my salary to hit our goals and live the life that we're wanting, it's been much more in terms of how do I want to spend my time in a way that's fulfilling and that I'm getting value?

Because that's the one thing I didn't realize as much is how much purpose that you get from your nine-to-five job and just how much the built-in reputation that you have just from I work at Meta. And when I'm talking to other parents, like, "What do you do?" Like, "Oh, I work at Meta." They just have an instant answer to things, an instant level of credibility.

And once that's removed, it's just a different dynamic. And needing to figure that piece out a little bit more has been one that I didn't fully value. So then now when I'm spending my time, I'm doing things like I write my newsletter, Fangfire, which is all around helping tech workers do exactly what I do, like position themselves where they have the optionality in their lives for being able to be financially independent and maybe retire early.

And that's one of the things that I found is like, "Hey, it's fulfilling." But honestly, I'm not spending as much time as I thought I would be doing those things. I'm also spending time going within San Francisco, going onto the different piers around the city and going fishing, but there's only so much time you can really go and do those things.

So I think whether it's responsible or not, a lot of it has just been kind of trying to find purpose and like the meaning of life in the absence of forced work and just kind of like reflecting on a lot of the opportunities that I've had in my life that kind of like put me in this weird position.

So a lot of my view is around making sure that I'm not doing anything that's sacrificing the potential for my daughter to be in that same potential position in her future. Because a lot of it is, there is like some level of guilt like, "Hey, maybe I should be working.

Maybe I should be saving more money or being able to put her in, like throw more money at raising a child type things." Like you can spend as much as you want on summer camps and tutors and external activities and all of those things. But right now, I think we're in like a happy medium.

Yeah, it's interesting because I came up with this concept called the provider's clock. And it's kind of like the biological clock for men where I feel like men are hardwired to provide some more than others. And so when I had my children, I felt, "Uh-oh, I better start saving and investing more." Even though I had all these calculations in place that said we would be okay.

And the same thing happened when our daughter was born in the end of 2019. And so I feel that if my kids are going to go to school, well, they're going to an independent Mandarin Immersion School that costs a lot of money. I feel my provider's clock is ticking louder.

I'm thinking, "God, I got to do something in terms of consulting or something to provide more income." Because I can't play pickleball or tennis all day, and I can't meditate all day or write all day, my fingers will fall off. So I need to do something to generate that income.

So do you have... How much of that urge in you as a man, as a father, is there to try to go back to work and make money again, or a lot more money? I think there's less of a desire to make a lot of money again, just because there's not as much of a need.

Right now, I had opportunities immediately after leaving Meta to just jump right back into tech, probably making 500K without too much trouble. That is something that was a huge opportunity that I could have had multiple different places, whether it's both within Feng as well as within the startup world.

Obviously, the startup world, the compensation upfront isn't as high as within Feng. But it just wasn't as appealing to me. It was one where it wouldn't incrementally change my life or my family's life taking on that job again. And I think I'm in a unique position in my life right now where I don't need to rush back in and take on a role like that again.

Even if it's like, I can decouple the earning money piece from the equation and really kind of think about, is this how I want to be spending my time? And then again, now I'm doing some of these newsletter things and financial coaching. But if I was focused on finances and earning money, I'd be doing things much more in a different way.

It would be much easier just to go back into tech by far than trying to do my own solo thing. And really it's just around, I don't need to be focused on money and it kind of skews and changes the way that you prioritize things. So how important is having a wife who works in Feng who makes a lot of money impacting this decision?

So in other words, if she lost her job, who is the one who is going to actually want to go back to work? Or how would you feel? Yeah, no, that's a good question. I think if she lost her job, honestly, I think it would be mostly fine. I think we've modeled things out where we can fire, but maybe not fire in San Francisco.

I think that's where there's some potential compromises. We're getting close to fire territory, but fire in San Francisco, I think is in a different ballpark overall, just due to the cost of living and rent and housing overall. And what did you say that number was in your newsletter that you think is the fire number in San Francisco?

I think right now, the fire number for me and my household of spending 140K, but then also factoring in college and health insurance, I think it was getting around 5.6 million would be like, "Hey, we have health insurance paid for on the marketplace, ignoring subsidies, and we're paying for four years of in-state tuition at Berkeley plus room and board." That 5.6 will get us there.

But that doesn't seem like buying a house. It doesn't assume a lot of the types of things that we may want if we were to really be focused on it even more. But I think if we both lost our jobs and had to go back to work, I think we'd figure it out together.

I think the biggest thing in terms of marriage, it's a partnership and needing to figure things out. I would have no problem if my family needed it, going back and getting a job. That's the number one thing. I always make sure that the things that I'm doing are not sacrificing for my family.

Because I think that's one of my central tenets is all around having my family have financial stability is really important because it's something like me growing up, I had extreme fluctuations in wealth that I personally is one of the things that really influenced my own fire path and my own desire to have my family not deal with that.

So I think if the stability piece was ever at risk, then I'd roll up my sleeves and jump back into tech, no problem. Yeah. Let me perhaps paint a scenario and give you some anxiety. And let me know if there is anxiety if I ask you this question or paint a scenario.

So right now you rent in San Francisco and you send your daughter to public school. What if I were to say, you know, your wife comes home and says, "It's actually my dream, Andre, to own a single family house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms in this neighborhood for 3.5 million dollars." And also, you know what, this public school, she doesn't seem to be really getting enriched as much as I'd like.

Her friends, she's not making friends that I want her to have or whatever it is. And I would like to send her to a private K-8 school. Let's say it's like San Francisco Day School or something and it costs $50,000 a year. So in other words, your wife wants this and you're thinking to yourself, "Well, okay.

Well, one of the best things we can give our children is the best education possible. Not money, but the best education possible." How would you think about that scenario? Because this is a scenario that many couples in FANG or in finance or in tech who make six figures a year think about.

They think about their houses and their children and also cars and all that. How do you think about that? Yeah. I think if I ever needed to sacrifice for my daughter's future, like I would never make that trade off and always want to make sure that she's set up for success.

So for me, what that involves is knowing that I'm going to need to be flexible with my decisions. So right now, the reason we stayed in San Francisco was because we got into a public school in an area that we were happy with. We're in a great Spanish immersion program that just happens to be down the street from us in a neighborhood that we were wanting to be closer to.

So I feel like I could see myself now through fifth grade within that place. But the reality of public schools in San Francisco is that there's a lot of unknowns and the variability in schools is pretty high. So I think as we're going into things like sixth grade and middle school, if it ends up being where we don't get into a school or the schools are underperforming or San Francisco unifies school districts, makes decisions that we don't fully agree with, then I would wholesale be changing our decisions, whether that's private or leaving for another city in the peninsula or leaving the Bay Area.

Because again, my goal is all around just making sure that she's set up to be successful and doing it in a way. It's interesting. That's my view there. Because again, the other position could have been, I think, the direction that you're going in is I'll go back to work, I'll jump back into tech, I'll earn my big salary again and just pay the private school costs and pay for that $3.5 million house.

For some reason, I think for me, my default is I would love to be in an area where there's strong public schools and by nature of fire and not being tied down to the Bay Area, I would be able to shift gears and relocate and have that flexibility in mind to be able to do that without needing to increase expenses in the Bay Area.

Because it's already hard enough, as is in the Bay Area, adding in all these other costs, it's one of those ones where you start asking the decision of like, why are we here? Why not anywhere else? I love the Bay Area. That's the reason I've been here a decade.

Even though I planned on leaving every three years, I said I was leaving. But then now, 10 years in, I'm not leaving anytime soon. Well, that's the thing. I feel that you've been here 10 years, you've been saying you're going to leave every three years. I think with an 85% probability, you're going to stay here until your daughter graduates high school.

And then the funny thing is, I mean, it's not funny, like getting into any UC school nowadays, I mean, I went to Cal for business school, is like impossible. And so, but the thing is, you could get into one of maybe like a second tier private school, because you know, the acceptance rates are lower, and you can pay more money.

So I would also not bake in being able to get into UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego, nothing. And you'd have to go the expensive private university route. Have you modeled that into your future cash flow? I haven't modeled in, I used UC Berkeley as just like one of the more expensive UCs, especially in terms of most of it's on the room and board side, and the private school, but nobody gets into Berkeley anymore.

It's like, you can't you can't use that as the baseline, a school with a 5% acceptance rate as the baseline, but the baseline is just in terms of the expenses like every other like it's in line with other other UCs. And I think like I went to a public university, my wife went to a public university.

And I think that clearly biases us like we both went to like, public schools in Texas growing up and then public universities in Texas. And just seeing how like, yes, going to the the top tier universities has a clear advantage over everything else, but that doesn't entirely determine your outcome in life.

So I think for us, there has that has that like, inherent edge in terms of like, you know, like, you can like 95% of it is what you put into it. And the other 5% is the opportunities that you're put into place to kind of take advantage of. Right.

Well, I'm really glad you said that you did have a job opportunity that paid you 500 grand and you basically said no, to do your own thing. So that that's actually, you know, the proof, the test, really, when you're presented with the opportunity, and you actually turn it down, that can show that you are comfortable with your finances.

The other test of fire is when you don't have a working wife making big bucks. I think many people would agree with that. And that's the funny phenomenon in the fire community. There are actually many male bloggers or podcasters who say they're financially independent and retired early, but then they have working wives making big bucks.

They don't acknowledge them. I listened to a podcast the entire episode and the guy was talking about how he was having a great life and he's being a dad, but no acknowledgment whatsoever of his partner. Why do you think that is? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think there's a lot of like male ego that goes into place.

That's one thing I've thought about a lot where when I decided I didn't want to go back to work anymore, did I feel comfortable saying I was fired? And I thought there was a lot of like hubris in that, like I could never imagine a woman deciding to stop working and being the primary caregiver ever saying she was retired.

There's that built-in bias just around like, "Oh, she's stopping working to be a stay-at-home mom." And for a male in the fire community, I think it's just easier to say, "Oh, I'm retiring early even though my wife is working and she's the one that's paying all the bills." So I consider myself like semi-retired and there's like a heavy emphasis on semi and really just a primary caregiver who has a lot of flexibility with his time, particularly because my daughter is in school most of the day.

So I'm able to make decisions where the financial piece isn't there. But I can only say that because I have a working wife and I've had a working partner throughout our entire adult lives and I wouldn't be where I was or where I am right now or in the position I am if that wasn't true.

So I owe a significant amount to that partnership because again, it's much harder doing it solo and if you have a partner, especially within tech where you're both earning high salaries, like it's just much easier, particularly when much of that time was dual income without any kids living in a one bedroom within San Francisco, the savings racks up pretty quickly.

So then when you do have kids, then all of a sudden you can kind of like balance things a little bit more. But it's one where there's just so much like ego on the male side where it's just easy to say like, "Hey, I'm retired now even though my wife is still the one paying the bills." What about from your wife's point of view, do you think there could be any such thing as resentment from your wife that you have so much free time while she's working?

Because obviously work is not all raindrop and gummies all the day, there's like meetings and banging your head and trying to do this and it's the stress. How does she feel about it? Yeah, I think she's been very supportive. I think that we did have a lot of conversations around what it looks like and our approach has kind of evolved over the past year that I've now kind of officially gone semi-retired.

Initially, I think I treated it and treated my responsibilities at house and in the household the same as if I was working. I thought I was a 50/50 parent taking on half of the responsibilities. I would always do pick up and drop off already. I would always make dinners.

And I thought that was 50%. I think the reality was that it wasn't even close to 50%. I think in my mind, I thought I was an equal partner. But having even more for childcare, for all household responsibilities and all those pieces, but by now being in this position where like, "Oh, I'm the primary caregiver now," she made it clear to like, "Okay, if that's the case, then you also need to step up on the household pieces." And I think it took us a while to find the right balance and rhythm and it's one that we're continuously working on because it's new for us.

We've been together for 15 years, married for 12. And we've always been in this shared responsibility dynamic where we're both working and we both have limited time to take care of everything else. So it was kind of like in survival mode, if you will, on the other things. But then now, the dynamic shifted.

I have time and there's not an excuse for the laundry to be piled up. There's an excuse for the birthday parties not to be planned and the summer vacations and the camps. And I just had no idea of how much time all these small little things take. I had to infiltrate the mom groups on Facebook to figure out when summer camps are.

There's like a cabal of Bay Area mom groups where they have secret spreadsheets and war rooms around every single week of the summer when all the best summer camps are. And it's impossible to find unless you're in these mom groups and they're open and willing to allow males in, but you have to physically search for the mom group pieces.

So I think it's one where the dynamic has changed and I've had to take on more responsibilities that I thought I was already doing, frankly. I thought I was already doing a lot, but it was very clear that I wasn't. And we, over time, got to a better place.

Not there yet. My wife heard this. She'd be like, "Hey, you still haven't done X, Y, and Z yet." But it's one where the working on, and I think the biggest thing is acknowledging it. And there's a really good card game we played. It's called Fair Play. And it physically has cards of every single responsibility that you typically have in a house.

And you deal the cards around who's going to take ownership over each of those things. And we had done it while we were working. And then once I stopped working, we had to redo it. And now because I had so much more time, more of the cards fell in my lap.

I think that was the clear outcome from just having more time doing available to me. Yeah. Marriage is a work in progress. And there's no such thing as 50/50. So, if you're seeking for 50/50, I think you're going to be severely disappointed. If you're the stronger person, it's actually up to you to lift the baggage into the upper container of the airplane.

It's not 50/50. So, stop thinking 50/50, I think. For those of you in partnerships and marriages. As we conclude this episode, I'm curious to know what's next. Because to me, there's a lot of FOMO in the San Francisco Bay Area and big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle.

Here there's tech and AI FOMO. And you came out of tech, right? So, at least you're still hedged with your wife in tech. She's going to benefit with Uber stock doing well. But now there's AI mania. Do you feel that FOMO? Like the itch to get back at all into the field?

I think there's definitely some FOMO, particularly as I left, then Facebook stocks literally skyrocketed to all-time highs immediately afterwards. But there's the FOMO of looking at those spreadsheets that I had around what my total compensation would be this year if I still had all the equity that I had.

But then I have to fight it and be like, "Hey, my life wouldn't be any different." I hit my goals and continuously ground myself and like, "Hey, what are my actual goals in life and what do I want to achieve and do I need to be working to do that?" But I think the FOMO is there.

I think that's the reality of it, particularly now within the, "Are we heading into a new world with AI? Is the stock market going to continue to grow in the same rate that it has in the past? Should I be taking advantage of this golden opportunity and try getting into AI and leaning in and doing that?" I'm in San Francisco, I'm in the mecca of AI, am I making a mistake by sitting it out?

And that's what I think about and I'm trying to stay close to all of those things. I think that's one of the things where through my newsletter, it's all around helping big tech workers be successful financially. So that forces me to kind of stay plugged in. So I think as things kind of shift, I'm still plugged in on developments and still plugged in on the dynamics at each of the big tech companies.

And I think if, again, I can always go back to work. I think particularly now, again, I'm one year out, so it's still fresh. I think as it gets closer to being five years out, I think then when it starts getting harder. I think two, three years out, actually.

Yeah. I'm in that Goldilocks zone where the option of going back would be relatively easy. I think it gets exponentially harder from there. But as of right now, as of hitting that one year milestone, I'm still very content, again, with the hedge that my wife is still in tech and still benefiting from that.

One of the things I think about is, because I can't get a job in tech, I don't have any tech skills or nothing. The way I've thought about it since coming to San Francisco in 2001 is to go long real estate because every single tech worker, AI, whatever, needs a place.

And by far, the number one thing that people with large financial windfalls do is they buy a home regardless if the math makes sense or not. And so what you've seen in the Bay Area and other international cities like New York City, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, is that the math seldom makes sense from a cash flow perspective, but it tends to make sense if you see capital appreciation.

So I know you're renting and you are very pro-renting and I think you have a frugal mindset to you, but if you plan to be here for 5, 10 years, which I think with 85% probability you will be here for actually 10 years, I would say rerun the numbers and get long real estate because that capital appreciation potential will way outweigh the savings you have from renting.

So what are your thoughts on that? No, I've read a lot of the calculations. I mean like have no problem renting and always run the numbers, but I think you bring up a good point. Those numbers are only as good as the assumptions that you put into it. And a lot of times you bake in fairly conservative appreciation numbers on the value of the houses.

And if the value of the house increases higher than like, say 3%, then all of a sudden buying becomes much more lucrative. And it's always been one where like, hey, in that like 7 to 10 year timeframe, most of the time there's that break even point. Right now it's pushing higher than that into like the 10 year plus, but again, all of that assumes that the capital appreciation is in that 3% range.

If it starts pushing into the 5% plus, which I think historically for a single family home in San Francisco, isn't unrealistic, then buying can start making a lot more sense. For me, my biggest concern is making a large outsized mistake. And it's a lot of like risk minimization. And for me, only now I can be certain, like ish, that I'll be in San Francisco for five years.

And I think other people are more certain than I am in my propensity of actually staying. But before we got into the kindergarten, it was always like, maybe we leave before kindergarten. Maybe we leave now before middle school. Who knows whether we actually... If we don't leave, and we stay in a place long term, then I think buying can make sense.

I'm not inherently against buying. And this year, one of the things I'm doing is spending significantly more on my rent. And I think we're just about to lock down a two-year lease that's like much more expensive. And it's for a single family home, again, walking distance to my daughter's school.

And I think that will be kind of like a litmus test in terms of like, "Hey, let's see how we like the single family home life in San Francisco." Yes, we're renting. Yes, it's not the exact same thing as ownership. Yes, we're not gonna take advantage of a lot of the flexibility and benefits that come from actually owning.

But I think it will be kind of like testing the waters in terms of, is that the life that we actually want? And do we want to have that longer term? And then it's around figuring out how to make it work. So I have no problem renting. But as soon as I'm convinced that I'll be somewhere for 10 years, or like, again, I will buy again.

Like I owned a house when I used to live in Austin before moving to San Francisco. I have nothing against homeownership. It's just the numbers have always been so challenging in San Francisco to make it a easy decision. It's never been an easy decision in the Bay Area. It's always one where the numbers get kind of fuzzy.

And the amount a mortgage costs versus rent costs in the short term. If you don't assume appreciation, it's just hard to pencil it out. With appreciation again, it changes. But again, that's where I have always leaned on like, let me just rent and I'm disciplined enough to invest the difference.

I think that's the big thing. Right. Which is very important. Which is the most important thing for all these calculators. It assumes you're investing the difference. And if that's not the case, then the forced savings of a mortgage might be more beneficial than most people realize. Yeah. All right.

Well, it sounds like you got a lot of things to think about. Congrats on the new rental house. And I'm looking forward to seeing what's next. If listeners want to subscribe to your Fang Fire newsletter, how do they find you? It'll be in the show. You can find me at FangFire.com.

That's F-A-N-G Fire dot com. And that will redirect you over to my newsletter on Substack. And that's where you'll find me writing probably like twice a month on all things tech and fire. All right. Twice a month. That's pretty good. It's a pretty lax. What about once a week?

So that was one of the things. I thought I was going to be writing a significant amount more. But I really found that cadence there. It's like, I feel good around twice a month and continuing that up. I think once a week, it turned into the same kind of grind and dread that I had from working and it kind of changed the dynamic a little bit.

No, I hear you. I got to think about that too. I might go on a summer schedule and maybe publish twice a week with actually a newsletter instead of three times a week and a newsletter. I don't want to feel that grind. Too old. Yeah. It's just finding the right balance.

I think that's the big thing. I would say for me that more than twice a month ended up just being work. I probably should be doing more and be more consistent. I think that's the one thing that if I really wanted to make this a business and a career, but I don't have that pressure to.

So I think that's one of the things that let me be a little bit more lax in terms of how often I write, how often I publish and how much time I put into it. Yeah. All right, Andre. We'll chat again. Great having you on. It was a pleasure, Stan.

Thanks again. Thanks. Take care. All right, everyone. If you enjoyed this podcast, I'd love a share, subscribe and a positive review. It helps keep me going. Every single episode takes hours and hours to produce. And if you want to keep in touch, check out the Financial Samurai newsletter at financialsamurai.com/news.

Talk to you all later. Bye. (explosion)