Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about why the pandemic is the best time to work and also how rankings for public schools public universities Will continue to go higher and probably outrank many of the classic elite private institutions over time And in this episode I have with me a special guest Sydney my wife say hello So first of all, I just want to talk about work because it seems like A lot of my friends at least from the softball league are having a really great time During the pandemic because they get to work from home like one guy.

He's taken four Vacations or trips. He recently was in New York City for a week and he said oh, yeah I went to go see my parents and I was able to quote work and then oftentimes on Facebook He's talking about watching games and Giants games on you know, one o'clock to four o'clock and I'm thinking myself Man, I want an employer who's gonna pay me multiple six figures to go watch a Giants game I mean, maybe it's not a Giants game But maybe I'll go play tennis and take a nap and if I can make big bucks Why not?

So what are your thoughts on that? My first question to you is does this friend of yours have young children? Oh Yeah, well, he doesn't have young children. He works at Facebook Well thing is like other friends who work at ones at Wells Fargo One I don't know what he does, but they seem to be having really flexible Lifestyles, but again, they don't have children Yeah That's the first thing that popped into my head because I think all of us parents during the pandemic with young children Felt much differently about balancing work and child care because the pandemic changed Everything with preschools closing down and schools closing down and obviously a lot has reopened Since then but as a parent it pandemic has been hard.

No, you know what? You're right. It's like double duty all day every day, especially if you have a day job You're working your day job at home there's very little boundaries between home life and work life and you've got to take care of your children who are always happy to see you usually or sometimes they're screaming and If you're creative and you're trying to do art or write or sing or do a podcast Doing a lot of things things is it's almost impossible We both had experiences where we've been sitting at our laptop and la la la la la here comes our son You know one on the days where he's not in preschool, which just started a couple weeks ago, you know, and he's like That's really cute and fun, you know the first couple times but then he keeps checking back in As the minutes tick by our patient starts to go down and there's a point where it's like, okay I just gotta escape.

I need to escape or work when he's sleeping because this isn't working Right, right. I mean so many times you and I have probably rewritten a sentence many many times because of interruptions and we can't record this podcast if he's at home because he's gonna come find us in the house and Unfortunately, unfortunately, we don't live in a mega mansion So we don't have the left wing and the right wing and the north wing to hide and oh Right Okay, so maybe working during the pandemic with kids is not the easiest thing.

However However, the great thing now is that he is back in preschool So we decided to pull our son from preschool in March 2020 when the lockdowns began And we decided you know what? He's only three years old once four years old once Let's just use this time and make some lemonade and spend as much time with him and homeschool him as much as possible since then so he just started preschool August 25th 2021 and So far he's been having a pretty good time.

He's adjusted well So do you feel like you have more time to do more things? Yeah, it's funny it's just change takes a while to get used to and now that he's in school My my schedule is shifted. So I'm using more time to spend with our daughter one-on-one because When he wasn't in school, it was a lot of them Simultaneously, and so I didn't have as much time with her alone and I'm taking advantage of that now And I think she really likes it as well.

So I Do have more time to myself when she's taking her nap in the middle of the day, which is nice So that's been that's been helpful Okay. Well, that's really great that you're able to spend more one-on-one time with our daughter So am I and so what about work productivity?

I Still find that I do my best work at night when the kids are asleep Sometimes if you've gone to bed early, I'm the only one awake in the house That's when I do my best work and I think you're the exact opposite you do your best work Early in the morning when all the rest of us are asleep or busy So I do definitely use that time and I also get a I get more time during the day when he's in school as well, but ultimately my best productivity is late So early exact opposite.

Yeah, I believe conquer the morning conquer the day you do something productive and awesome work Whatever it is, then you can feel guilt-free for the rest of the day. Do you not believe in that philosophy? I think that's a great philosophy. I'm just not a morning person. And so I start my My brain just isn't as clear in the morning.

I'm busy getting him ready for school Our daughter wants all a lot of attention in the morning. And then at the end of the day, I'm tired, but If I can do something productive I can go to sleep easier All right, because I don't go to bed thinking I still wish I did this.

I wish I did that I'll be like, okay. I am exhausted as heck, but I was able to Get this one thing done or these two things done now. I can really go to sleep and by that time I am Exhausted so my head hits the pillow and I'm out That's actually a good way to look at it to you go to sleep satisfied that you accomplished the things you wanted to accomplish, right?

so I want to go back to the idea that during a pandemic is the best time for knowledge workers people who can work from home to work and one of the Big benefits I think is the greater ability to side hustle when I was working in banking You know, I started financial summary in 2009 during the bottom of the financial crisis But I didn't report to my firm that I was doing this because I was thinking well This is my freedom of speech freedom of creativity.

I'm gonna go do whatever I want But really if you have any kind of outside interest at work Or from work you need to report that and if you're making any money You should report it as well, and you definitely don't want any conflicts of interest. So I think it's pretty cool that Employees can work from home You know their employer doesn't really know what they're doing all day which is why so many of my friends are going to ball games and taking naps and running errands and You can work on your side hustle, which they have no way of tracking and you can make some money and there's even a story Where employees some of them are taking two jobs at once?

Do you read that? I mean, it's like yeah, that's a no-brainer if you have the energy and time to do it I mean, maybe you will run afoul of the law I don't know and in one firm if they find out they'll fire you but that's the risk and if you can make double the money and the reason why you can make double the money is probably because They're not working as much as they were At their jobs or they can do things more efficiently right more efficiently there they don't have to commute anymore So they have that time save that they can put towards something more productive and I also would say Some industries are super strict on What you can and can't do outside of work like finance, right industries that have a lot of compliance and Restrictions I will say though if you do want to do a side hustle that involves being on a computer I highly recommend using a Personal computer that is not tied into your works network Because there are a lot of companies out there that are logging what you're doing online So if you're gonna side hustle keep it on a separate device.

Yeah smart separate phone separate laptop That that's actually a no-brainer because I remember when I was in finance They were tracking everything, you know They had keywords they had like a software where they had keywords where if you typed an email and that keyword pop out They would review it.

Yeah, there's a lot of technology out there that corporations are utilizing and they may not tell you you may have No idea until you get caught. So just be aware that there is a lot of tech out there for tracking and If you want to do something During your scheduled work hours.

That's not for work. Just do it on a separate device Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I was on a podcast recently called paychecks and balances a friend rich I had been on his podcast. I think three or four years ago talking about One of the posts I wrote called scraping by on five hundred thousand dollars a year why some households have a difficult time escaping the rat race and the reality is I thought rich the host of the podcast was a full-time podcaster and blogger and He had a guest on named Roger Who I thought was a full-time, you know financial planner because he wrote a book and he also has a podcast and blog as well But it turns out both rich and Roger work at Google and they've worked at Google for seven to nine years respectively And I was thinking myself Wow you work at Google.

So you got the best benefits You know, it's considered one of the best companies you're making multiple six figures and all this time. I thought They were just full-time solopreneurs so what I'm trying to say is it's possible to do both to have the comfort of a steady paycheck and the comfort of health care benefits or subsidies and 401k matching and so forth and that's something we don't have We have no safety net and we haven't had this safety net and since you left your day job in 2015 So without this safety net Frankly, I have felt a lot more pressure, especially since our kids were born in 2017 and 2019 To provide an income to manage our investments to make sure they don't blow up and we lose 30% in one month Like we did, you know in March 2020 There's been a lot more pressure on me To make sure things will be okay, right more people are depending on me Yeah, and so I was wondering since I believe one of the best times to go to work is during a pandemic What are your thoughts about you going back to work?

What I mean, I mean You are working you are working for sure. I'm working hard. We have very different roles I will flat-out say that we have very different roles very different skill sets and I think we're we're doing a pretty good job utilizing our individual strengths, and I think that's what Everyone should try to whether you're in a relationship or not Utilize your strengths because you're gonna have way more productivity, right?

So are you saying that? You don't want to go to a full-time job Even though it's much more flexible now. It's just not worth it for me in my current state of mind, I don't feel like I can handle it because I Already have enough guilt as a mom.

I feel like I'm not doing enough for our kids and I'm I Don't want to say struggling, but I'm I'm busy working on back-end stuff for for the blog for you know, the administrative stuff and I have I feel like I have a full plate and I'm I will say I am trying to be more involved in writing I've got stuff in the queue that Interesting stuff that I've been researching and learning about as well as sharing my own experiences.

I have some upcoming articles on Ambulance surprise bills and how the whole EMS system is way more complicated and broken than I ever Understood before this whole experience happened. So I feel like Right, so one of the things you know, you know, I wrote I wrote about this before as a father as a new father was I'm thinking about taking a vacation from parenthood by going back to work so I think there's a chance that you might feel less stressed if you go back to work full-time because You're away from home at least mentally because you're focused on work and you're making a steady paycheck and we've got you know Subsidized health care and benefits and so forth and that guilt and that stress of the homework Would be greatly reduced.

What are your thoughts about that? I Know myself pretty well, and I don't see that happening. I just see my my mental health Further and feeling more chaotic more disorganized More I feel like my mental Explode Because a lot of the work that I'm doing can't just go away right it has to keep going There's there's just all these tasks that I need to do on the back end and Maintain it's just an ongoing thing, which is fine And I love doing it and I also love having the time to do more writing and editing being more involved in that as well and I I just know Yeah Maybe it's the grass is greener on the other side syndrome that I'm feeling right now when I see friends just Really flexible work hours side hustling and you have to remind yourself if those people If they don't it's a very different right, okay, so I got it I know what the solution is When both our children are in school full-time You'll go back to work full-time Okay, I might go back to work full-time because oh here's one of the things that I'm really Surprised about ever since our son started going to preschool.

So I got a drive, you know during rush hour 830 A.m. I got to send him to school. So that takes Up to 20 minutes to get to school and then I got a park and I gotta walk him and give him a hug and All that because I love that but the driving I don't like It's crazy in San Francisco and I feel like now that I'm commuting during rush hour I feel like I'm mentally going back to work and the commute itself is the worst thing Was the worst thing I hated about work just commuting.

It just it's terrible, right? and then so I go there and then I come back home and Then around 3 or 5 I go there not as much traffic. So it's only taking 15 minutes You know, I park we go walk around and then I come back home So that in total is about an hour and 20 minutes Now the other day I decided to go play tennis with a friend of mine at 4 45 p.m So I went to school dropped him off came back.

I went to school pick him up came back You know just hung out for like 20 minutes and then I went back out to go play tennis Which is like a 16 17 minute drive So in other words, I was almost on the road for two hours the other day And I was thinking of myself.

This is so inefficient. Like this is the inefficiency that I Long to escape that I've appreciated since 2012. And so if I took a full-time job I could You know drop them off by 9 a.m And then continue on for another 5 to 7 minutes to downtown office You know just twiddle my thumbs at the water cooler make some money tell people what to do and then leave at around 215 310 pick them up and then come back.

It would just feel much more efficient Perhaps perhaps it just depends What happens during those work hours and what happens outside of that day that still involves work, right? Because I know a lot of times You might have to do work for that job at home You know, it's just hard to say it just depends on the jobs demands but so one of the psychological benefits of Generating enough passive income to pay for our living expenses is that you don't you're not all in on work Right that that promotion you didn't get or that pay raise you didn't get Doesn't crush you as much if you've already if you're already financially stable so my thought process and I and I felt that when I did some consulting back in 2014 2015 is that You know what annoying co-workers are annoying, but I don't really care I'm not competing with them to you know, climb the ladder or whatever Just give me something interesting to do have fun people to talk to make some money and then pick up our son and then go Home, so do you think I would enjoy that?

I think you I could see you enjoying that for a few months and then I could see it getting old and frustrating because Jobs come with stress Dealing with people is often Frustrating right? Okay. Well in conclusion, it looks like I am unable to convince you to go back to work This is like the fifth year in a row running.

I Sorry, you are But I'm talking. No, no, you are working very hard but I'm talking about traditional work where you bring home the bacon and You know, let me Relax a little more Okay, so I failed in that however, I am working more on our business Okay good and new ways with with producing more articles Which you got you readers will and we're doing this podcast, which is which is great.

Yeah, okay So but anyway, I failed that tradition Convincing you to traditionally go back to work. I Have also kind of failed in convincing myself now is the ideal time to go back to work But I'd love to hear from all of you guys, especially with People with kids who are back in school Do you find it better because the comments in my post a lot of people said oh, it's so much easier now better I only work three to four hours a day Whereas in the past I had to travel a lot and work ten hours a day so I'd love to hear from all of you about work during the pandemic and what am I missing and Maybe what are you missing?

Thanks so much. And if you enjoyed this podcast love a positive five-star review leave a comment We'll read them all and it drives us to keep on recording. Thanks everybody. Take care