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Download the Ralphs app now to save big on your next purchase. Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. Must have a digital account to redeem offers? Restrictions may apply. See site for details. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. This is a special edition of the show recorded in advance while I'm traveling for two weeks here in the month of September.

If this is your first time listening to the show, feel free to listen to today's show. I'm glad to have you here. I'd encourage you also to check out the archives and also check out the shows that are starting after October so that you can see the more normal flow of the show.

But today's show is going to be essentially a short audio essay, short monologue on some ideas that I think would be helpful, that are helpful to me and I hope might be helpful to you. Today I would like to share with you a couple of ideas about hobbies. One of the things that I learned, I'll tell a short story, which is where this thought really came from, and I've proved it out with other research that I've done, but I had, when I was working as a financial planner, I had a really unique experience.

I was a brand new financial planner, I think my second or third year in the business, and completely wet behind the ears, didn't know what I was doing, was working very well-meaning and well-intentioned, but I didn't know what I was doing. And I was sitting and talking with a prospective client.

And this prospective client was working for a business. He was the manager of some department. And he agreed to meet with me and we had one meeting and then we had another meeting. And the second meeting we were going over some of his assets and he kept listing more things off, kind of off the top of his head, but he wasn't really sure exactly where everything was and what all he had.

And I had had him do some homework and bring actual statements, and he didn't open his mail, he didn't look at his statements to some of you. You're shaking your head and you're saying, "How could this be possible? I promise it's more people than you might think." But he never looked at anything.

He just didn't bother. And as we're totaling things up, we get to the end of the total as we're constructing a balance sheet for him, and I find out that we discovered together that he's a millionaire. And he was genuinely surprised and genuinely shocked that he was a millionaire.

He had no idea that he was a millionaire. And again, some of you are hearing this and saying, "How is that possible?" So many people have a goal of becoming a millionaire. Here's someone who's a millionaire who simply doesn't have the goal. And he was really surprised, pleasantly. I mean, he knew that he had money, he just never worried about money and he didn't pay too much attention to stuff.

He just kind of let stuff flow over time. So as I got to know him more and more, I started to see some themes in his life that really stood out to me. And these are themes that I have seen confirmed in academic literature and also just an experience in many ways.

And Tom Stanley would be proud that one of the themes was that he had a modest home, just a modest middle-class house. Tom Stanley talks a lot about that as being a major predictor of wealth because with the housing development that you live in, there are associated lifestyle costs with that house that have to be accounted for.

And it kind of drives everything else. But he lived in a modest house, not cheap, certainly not cheap. Again, I live in South Florida, so I guess there's not really anything that's cheap, but not cheap, but also not expensive, just kind of mainstream, middle-class. And he drove some older cars, but he was not particularly frugal with cars.

I think he and his wife each drove, I can't remember at this point, it was either Honda or a Toyota sedan of some kind. But I think they bought their cars new. It was not really a big deal, but they kept them for a while. They just weren't really car people.

But as I dug out, what stood out to me about this person's experience was that this person, I found out, that their favorite hobby was mountain biking. And we live in Florida, and there's not a lot of great mountain biking hills around, but he still enjoyed mountain biking. And what his idea of a good time was to take the weekend off and drive up north somewhere and go mountain biking.

And it really struck me that this was the person's primary hobby. Now, he had a good income, not a phenomenal income. He wasn't making a half a million bucks. I think he was six figures, but not multiple six figures. I don't remember right now. But just simply had a good income, moderate expenses, just kind of spent on what he wanted to spend money on.

But his hobby was mountain biking. And as I talked to him, I just found out he really loved it. He really loved to go and travel, and they really loved to go to these tournaments and these races and take his bike and be involved in the community. And it just struck me that the value of having a relatively inexpensive hobby.

Now, I'm not an expert in mountain biking. I'm sure you could spend lots and lots of money at mountain biking, but as with any hobby and any sport, but he didn't spend a lot of money on it. And you compare it just the built-in costs to many things. There is a much less of a built-in cost of mountain biking than many other things.

So I like to ride motorcycles when I have the opportunity. There's a big difference between buying an entry-level Harley for what, I don't know what they go for, 17, 20,000 bucks, probably 20 plus thousand bucks, even for an entry-level Harley. And by the time you get one of the fancy ones, you're at 25, 30 grand easy.

So there's a big difference between buying a $20,000 motorcycle versus a really nice $2,000 mountain bike. And I'm sure there's ones that are 10,000, but again, we're out of my area of expertise. But I was struck by just how this guy had just kind of accidentally stumbled into wealth because he had a moderate lifestyle.

And it made me think about how can I proactively choose my hobbies that will serve all of my best interests. There are a lot of ancillary benefits from mountain biking that he didn't really even talk about. For example, I would guess that Harley riders on average tend to be more overweight than mountain bike enthusiasts on average.

Probably exceptions, but I bet that if I did some research that I could probably prove that one. You prove me if I'm wrong, but that just one seems intuitive to me. Well, I would also bet that if you actually study the lifespan, that extra level of weight would probably lead to extra levels of length of life, excuse me, extra lifespan.

And I just thought, what a neat ancillary benefit. Here, this guy has more money and he has more health and he has a longer lifespan. He has greater enjoyment of his current health and a longer anticipated lifespan just simply because he chose to get interested in mountain biking versus getting interested in Harley riding.

Huh. Now, if you take this idea and you compound it, you can find an amazing ripple effect in every area. Example, I think as I remember, he either had a sedan or he had one of those small hatchback cars, like these crossover things, like the Toyota Matrix type of thing, like a Pontiac vibe, Toyota Matrix type of vehicle.

I don't remember specifically, so I'm going with an impression here, not a specific fact. So forgive me if I'm wrong. I mean, none of you know who I'm talking about, but I just have this impression that he had that kind of car. If this man were a Harley rider and he wanted to go and pursue a, go on a motorcycle ride, and if he wasn't, if he weren't going to ride the motorcycle there, then, which many Harley riders don't, many Harley riders do, and I shouldn't, I'm not mad at Harley riders.

I like riding Harleys. They're fun, man. If you've never, if you've never pulled out on the highway on a Harley, on a big one, and pulled on the on-ramp and nailed the throttle on a Harley with a good set of pipes, oh, that is an experience. I love doing that.

I love doing it. I've done it lots of times. I will do it many more times. So I am not bashing Harleys. I think everybody ought to do that before they die. That is a fun, a fun thing to do. So Harley riders, I'm not mad at you. Just simply making an observation here.

I'm one of you. I don't own one, but I like to rent one, or I like to buy, I like to borrow one anytime I have the chance. By the way, put that on your bucket list. Go and ride a Harley across, across a state or across a country.

Especially in America, where you have these big, long, flat roads that are built for Harleys, or Harleys are built for them. I would encourage you that you would enjoy that. All right, rabbit trail aside. So if you compare the cost of him going to his mountain biking events, all he does with the mountain bike event is just toss a bike rack on the back of the car and drive there.

He gets the same fuel mileage without it. He doesn't have to buy a bigger vehicle or an extra vehicle or anything like that. But if you drive a Harley, you got to have a pickup truck, which is going to cost him more than the car to get there. You got to have a trailer, maybe, if your car doesn't have a, if you don't have a pickup truck.

So you have to buy now an extra thing to sit around. And if you have to buy a trailer, you got to buy an extra trailer that has to be tagged. And maybe in some states insured, I don't know, in my state, it doesn't have to be. But so you got all these extra costs associated with it.

And now you've got the Harley, you have to insure the thing, it's 20 grand. You just got a lot of extra costs, you got to change oil, etc. And so whether you look at it with financial costs that just ripples on and on and on and on and on, by choosing to ride Harleys versus mountain bikes, the health costs, the society costs, just every aspect of it.

There's so many ways that these hobbies can continue on. Then I think about compounding that with other areas of life. So what about with kids? Well, it's a lot easier, probably, to get out with your kids on a mountain bike trail than it is on a motorcycle. Now, I think I would be one who would be willing to ride motorcycle with kids, some people that freaks them out.

But I've seen plenty of kids all around the world riding, you know, their whole life on motorcycles, and some of them wind up dead, but, you know, it can be done safely. I, it's no big deal for me. But if you just compare the group togetherness time of the family bike ride, or with your spouse, there's a big difference between that versus going off on your Harley.

So I don't want to pick too much on Harley riders. I just want to say, consider carefully how you can get maximum benefit out of a hobby. I really feel and believe that the appetites that we feed are the things that we wind up being interested in. It's really the case.

The appetites that we feed are the things that we wind up being interested in. There is no genetic predisposition of one sport versus another. Why does one male in, I'm going to use some stereotypes here, but why does one, what would be some good male, some good stereotypes, why does one male white country boy in rural Florida wind up wanting to drive a large lifted four-wheel drive pickup truck?

Whereas a white Hispanic male in Miami wants to drive a, what are those things called? The low rider cruiser things that they put, they lower the things down and put the shiny paint on them. Whereas one black male in downtown, any city, West Ball, Miami or whatever, wants to drive one of those cars with a new Cadillac or a Cadillac Escalade with 24-inch rims on them.

Whereas one Asian male wants to drive the important tuner scene, I think is what they call that, a souped up Honda Accord racing car with white, small carbon fiber wheels or something like that. Now, I've just probably made everyone upset and made some massive stereotypes, but those, I should throw in another, why does one other person want to drive a Ferrari?

All of these things are appetites that are built in, whether that's through external culture, external forces or internal forces. These people are not genetically different, really. Race has nothing to do with it. It's environment. The guy out in the country, the country boy from Central Florida doesn't care that much about the low rider classic, low rider pickup truck with the, what are the things that make it go up and down?

I don't remember. It's so cool when you see them. Hydraulics, where they make the cars jump up and down. If you've never seen that, that's so fun to see at a car show. Why does the country boy not care about that? It wouldn't fit in with his culture. Now, why does the Ferrari, the BMW crowd, why would they not want to drive a pickup truck?

Doesn't fit in with the culture. So, everywhere you have this culture and people, you choose what you're into. I'm a guy, I like cars. I've always been interested. But what I learned is that over the years, as I fed that desire and fed that appetite in myself, I used to read magazines on four-wheel drive, four-wheel drive magazines, and I just was obsessed with big trucks.

And I just fed this appetite, fed this appetite, fed this appetite, fed this appetite. And as I fed that appetite in myself, it just grew and grew and grew and grew and grew until it became a lust. And then once it becomes a lust, then it's hard to get away from.

Well, there are some spiritual components to that issue. And for me, a lot of that was, there was some spiritual release that happened in my heart and I just didn't see any point in most of it anymore. But I've also learned to starve some of the appetites. So, I've learned to starve appetites that don't serve me.

So, I live in boating country where if you're going to go boating, I mean, you got to buy a big boat, you got to go fishing. I don't have any interest in feeding that appetite. It would be a foolish appetite for me to feed at this point in time.

If I were to feed that appetite, I could be galling to boats, I could get into interested in all of those things, and it would just suck money out of my life and it would suck time out of my life. Or golfing, I live in golf country as well.

I've hit a golf ball a few times. I get why people like it, but I'm not going to feed that appetite. Because a golf outing, that takes you away from your family for six hours at a time, eats up tons of money. Now, can it be useful? All of these hobbies can be useful.

Can you go golfing and do lots of business deals on the golf course? Of course you can. That's what it's known for. That's why half the people that do it, do it probably. And then you find this satisfaction of hitting that little ball and just knocking it across the way.

That's intensely satisfying. But if I'm going to be thoughtful about feeding these appetites and these habits, it's going to be a lot better for me just to consider it in advance and consider what my options are. And I think there'll be much better results accompanying that. There's a time and a place, I think, for most hobbies.

Boating can be a wonderful way to build family memories. If you have a ski boat out on the lake and that's just the way that your family bonds together, that's great. Do it with purpose. But don't just feed the appetite and let the appetite control you. So to wrap up here, my encouragement is consider the hobbies that you have and the things that you're interested in.

And then consider the fact that it's likely that most of those things are built into you by your parents, by your surroundings, or by the appetites that you've chosen to feed. I'm not into football, but then again, my parents weren't into football, so I didn't have a desire to please my dad.

I don't have memories of sitting down and watching football with my dad and that being an invaluable part of my life. If that is for you, cool. That's cool. That's fine. But that's probably what's building the appetite for football in your son rather than anything inherently good or bad about football.

I'm not mad at football. Just another example that came to me. Consider carefully the hobbies that you choose, and consider if they're going to serve your goals in every area. Are they going to serve your financial goals or are they going to be a massive sink of money? If there's something you're really interested in, is there a way that you can adjust that interest?

Can you adjust from the thrill of the two wheels on the open road on the big motorcycle to the thrill of the two wheels on the narrow single track trail on the dirt bike and get that same thrill with a little bit more well-rounded way? And then can you choose hobbies that are going to allow you to experience multiple benefits?

Can you choose hobbies that you can be with a good friend? Can you choose hobbies that you can be with your family, with your children, with your spouse? Can you choose hobbies that are going to enhance your health? Can you choose hobbies that...you get the point. Hope this concept was interesting to you.

I find it to be a compelling one for me that I think a lot about. Haven't read much about this anywhere or really ever heard anybody talked about it, but I'd encourage you to just consider it. If you have good examples of things that you've chosen because of this concept for yourself or for other people, I'd be thrilled to hear about them.

Come by the show notes for today's show and let me know. In the meantime, be back with you soon. Talk to you tomorrow. With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.

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