Hello, everybody. It's Sam from Financial Samurai. And today I have a special guest with me, Sydney, my wife, to talk about an interesting topic I think, and that's the importance of feeling consistently uncomfortable for financial freedom, personal growth, and personal development. So say hi. Hello, guys. And welcome to this episode of the Financial Samurai podcast where we have not been recording a lot lately because we've been too busy trying to enjoy life a little bit more.

So I don't know if you guys have noticed or have kept up with the news, but the state of Virginia is kind of blowing up. Racism and sexual assault allegations have befallen the governor of Virginia, the attorney general of Virginia, and the lieutenant governor of Virginia. And all this stuff just basically reminded me of all the racial and racist altercations I experienced growing up in Virginia for public high school and public university in the mid to late '90s.

Given all that's happened in Virginia on the most senior level of government, you know racism in Virginia wasn't unusual decades ago when I was going to school. It wasn't a constant ubiquity, but I did experience some type of racist encounter about every tenth time I went out of the house.

For example, here's a milder example. I remember I was waiting in line to go to the bathroom at a gas station off I-95 heading south. I was about to head down to the College of William & Mary. And a white guy behind me said, "Hey, don't you understand English?

What are you waiting for? The bathroom is open." And I was like, "What? What the hell?" So I turned around and I said, "Look, there's actually someone in there. They just didn't lock the door. Do you understand the English that's coming out of my mouth?" And he was taken aback.

He said, "Oh, okay, never mind." But I was ready to kick his ass and rumble. So the amazing thing about all these racial experiences is that it's all I ever knew since coming to America for high school. Before that I was living in Asia for 13 years in Zambia.

And yeah, there was like racism there and all that. But what I knew about America is just kind of what I knew. I came for ninth grade and I just thought it was pretty normal to be on the receiving end of racial slurs or racial innuendos every so often, right?

So I just endured and fought back as hard as I could each time. And yes, I got suspended a couple of times for fighting but it was worth it to defend my honor. Like all these altercations really I think built my character and my fierceness to what I am today.

So kids stopped messing around with me once they felt my fist of fury. And after I got a job in 1999 in New York City and again when I moved to San Francisco in 2001, I realized that being a minority in America felt so much more comfortable in a diverse city.

So my racial conflicts dropped from every 10th time I went outside in Manhattan to maybe every 25th time, right? And then in San Francisco, we've been here since 2001 and I can't remember my last racial conflict because we're a minority majority city. Do you experience any racism in San Francisco?

In San Francisco? No, I don't remember. I don't have any situation. So that's great and it's kind of like, "Oh, OK. Actually America is not like exactly how I experienced when I was growing up in Northern Virginia and then in Williamsburg for college." And so as always, I think it's important to look at the positive side of things.

And the positive side of racism I think is that it gave me extra strength I needed to endure those long work hours in banking for so many years, right? You remember when I first started banking in New York City, you were like my alarm clock. Yeah, you helped me try to wake up by 5 AM because the earliest I ever woke up before was like 7.30 to go to 8 AM class which I actually dropped.

And I think racism gave me tremendous motivation to prove that I could succeed in America. And look, it's harder in the workplace when so few management people look like you or want to mentor you. But I was always telling myself, "You know what? Screw that. I'm going to blaze my own trail.

I'm going to work extra hard. I'm going to be more energetic and entrepreneurial." So when I got promoted to VP at 27, it was one of the greatest feelings ever. It was like, "Ah, finally I got some power because nobody is going to mess with me now because in order to get promoted, you need to have a consensus driven committee to say, "Little Johnny or Little Jane or – not little, just like John or Jane.

We give him or her our blessing." If you don't have a consensus on the committee, you're not getting promoted. And obviously, everyone wants to get promoted because it looks good and you get paid more, right? So all my contemporary colleagues were still associates, one level down and would stay associates usually until the age of 30 to 32.

So despite being gone from the workforce since 2012, I still have the energy and motivation as I did when I was a teenager. I think you recognize that, right? For sure. For sure. OK. And I think it's like Iron Man's arc reactor if you ever watch Marvel comics and movies.

It's like pulsating in my chest. It's driving me to keep going no matter what thanks to all the hate I experienced growing up. And to be honest, it feels amazing to have all this energy. You know, like I don't know. You see the bad guy, he put his hand in the energy something, something and he's like, "Oh, I feel so much more powerful now." I don't know.

I just feel – I feel so blessed to have this energy and this has enabled both my wife and me to leave work behind at age 34. And it is this confidence that has fortified me to take bigger risks in my career, in my investments and in our online business.

And I think without this energy, I definitely wouldn't be able to regularly wake up by 5 AM, sometimes 4 AM for the past two years since the birth of our son to work on Financial Samurai, grow the traffic, grow the business and then basically try to be as good a father as possible for the rest of the day.

Now obviously, my wife has been critical and is the main caretaker for our son. But I don't think with all these things that happened to me when I was growing up, I would have been able to do this. I mean after you become financially independent and you leave work, what's the point of grinding so hard and so much?

I think you are motivated by things that you love and I know that writing is something that you truly love having seen you do it for so long and every time you finish writing a post or a newsletter, you're so excited and it's so fun to witness that and to see how great writing is as an outlet for you.

So I think that in itself does give you a lot of energy. Yeah, I mean I guess it's cool to come up with an idea, to write it out, edit it and press publish. It feels like a great sense of accomplishment. So I think bottom line is hardship makes us better appreciate the good times, right?

So I think instead of moving to Honolulu, Hawaii, you know it sounds great and all that. Why don't we just move to Virginia instead? I mean think about it, given how much racism and bullying has given me, I mean it's been so special. I think it's best for us to move back to Virginia and rejoin a 5.5% minority.

You know to survive in a less comfortable situation forces us to adapt. Learning things like self-defense, conflict resolution, self-deprecation and humor are all useful skills to learn and have in our adult lives. What wonderful skills to teach our son. Hawaii is obviously a wonderful, wonderful place but I think there's a chance it might be too comfortable there.

I think if you can survive in Hawaii, you can survive anywhere. And why do I say that? It's because if it's sunshine, 78 degrees, sunny, are you going to stay inside and study for three hours and work on your self-defense skills and communication skills and your math and all that stuff?

Or are you going to have the temptation to just get out of the house and play? I would think most people would just kick back, right? I think that's possible. The other way to look at it though is if you grow up in Hawaii, it's your home. It's what you're used to.

So it's not maybe the urge to go outside every single day isn't necessarily as high because that's what you're accustomed to. And we have relatives, younger relatives who have grown up in Hawaii and they've done very well in school. They've gotten straight A's and are doing well in their collegiate life.

So I think it's totally possible to grow up in an environment like Hawaii and still do very well. OK. I mean fair enough. But I think Virginia, what an amazing state. Strong economy, good people, southern charm and comfort. I think people are products of their time and I don't blame a minority of Virginians for thinking the racist things that they do about minorities.

It's just the way – if your dad and mom were kind of racist, you kind of like learn from them. And the history of Virginia, the Confederate capital, Jamestown and all that, is part of the culture and I think as times change, people will change. So I think in general I look back upon my eight years there with fondness.

The good definitely outweighed the bad and Virginia was my rite of passage into adulthood. It's just these recent racial incidents that involved a political lead that have really triggered a lot of forgotten memories. And there are a lot of benefits of Virginia, right? So one, even if we go to northern Virginia, which is the most expensive part of Virginia, it's still 50 percent cheaper in terms of housing than San Francisco.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of solid public schools, right? There's a lot of wealth around the D.C. area. Also parents, your mom is in Virginia. Your sister is in North Carolina. My sister is in New York. So we're much closer to family and that's a great thing. Further, by shunning a diverse environment like San Francisco or Honolulu for a more homogenous environment, our son will have a chance to experience more racial discrimination than if he were, you know, here, right?

So with each difficult encounter, his mother and I will mentor him by teaching him about hate and ignorance and perhaps with each encounter, our boy will develop also a chip on his shoulder to motivate himself to get ahead and prove his haters wrong. I think that's a really wonderful, wonderful attribute to have.

And I fear that if we shelter our son and our children too much, they'll grow up to be ignorant, unmotivated individuals who will whine at the slightest of inconveniences. So I think I've made my case for going to Virginia. And you know what? Uncomfortable situations. Uncomfortable situations make us grow up, right?

You know, I've got many examples. I'll just give a couple, right? Having to get in the office at 5.30 a.m., you know, that was brutal. But you know what? After 10 years, I no longer have an alarm clock because I naturally get up by 5 a.m. and I just get to work.

I just grind it out and therefore we have a pretty decent lifestyle. Being the new kid in school every two to four years, that was hard. But it forces me to be, you know, to introduce myself to new people, to get to know people, you know, just get out of my shell and get out of my comfort zone.

So I think, you know, at the end of the day, going to Virginia is a pretty obvious move. But you know, important geo-arbitrage moves need a consensus, right? Unless, you know, we want a divorce. So let's see what my wife has to say. She spent 20 years growing up in Charlottesville, Richmond, and Williamsburg, Virginia.

So she's even more of an expert on Virginia than me. We agree on a lot of things. This is not one of them. I have a very different view on going to Virginia and I've actually been quite stressed out since Sam came up with this, let's call it an idea.

Because I enjoyed my time in Virginia to, you know, to some extent, but I knew I wanted to get out of there as soon as I graduated. And that's what I did. I booked a one-way ticket to California and never looked back. I've been there, I've done that. I just, I don't miss the lifestyle there at all.

And I, you know, firmly agree with you that racism is terrible and that it does exist more in less diverse places. But you know what? It's everywhere. Even if we stay in San Francisco, move to Hawaii, there could be issues of racism that pop up. And I think intentionally exposing our son to unnecessary negativity and hatred just doesn't feel right to me.

I don't think that's good for him. And I think there's ways to teach him how to respect people of all sorts through other means, whether it's travel, which we want to do as he gets older, reading, volunteering, and having all kinds of open discussions wherever we live. And also, I don't think he needs to experience hardships like that on a regular basis in order to be a driven, hardworking individual.

I experienced racism growing up in Virginia, but that wasn't a motivator for me. If anything, it made me want to get away. I hear you. It's tough. You know, it's kind of fight or flight. And I've always had the let's fight mentality because, hey, if you beat me up, at least I'm going to get one good blow, and that's going to feel very, very satisfying.

I guess you've never had that kind of let's fight attitude. Right. I'm the exact opposite. I want to get away. You don't want to waste your time, you know, like spending energy on these losers, right? Yeah. And that's fair. But it's not like we're going to go to Virginia and go to the racist den.

You know, Virginia is a great state, like I said. It's just, you know, the experience of racism will happen more often than in Honolulu or in San Francisco because we'd be a 5.5 percent minority. It's not like every day he walks out, you know, someone's going to be racist to him.

It's just, you know, once every while, maybe every 10 percent or 5 percent of the time. So just that we have more teachable moments and more exposure to the real world. Perhaps. I think there's other things that we need to bring up, though, in terms of choosing to live in Virginia.

Having been there, I do not miss the weather. I know there are people who love the four seasons and love that, but it's not something I like. I don't like humid summers and freezing winters. I don't miss that. I like the weather in San Francisco and Hawaii so much more.

I think us as a family, we will be so much happier here in San Francisco and Hawaii. Sam, you love to be outdoors. Our son loves to be outdoors and go on walks. And I think, sure, you can do plenty of that in Virginia, but there's the whole winter and I just think we'll be happier as a family in Hawaii.

Don't you think you'd appreciate the six months that, you know, Virginia has great weather when you go through horrible, horrible weather? Yeah, but I've already experienced horrible weather for 20-some years. I don't need to do it again. I mean, I wrote a post about the West Coast and East Coast comparing and I was attacked for saying, you know, the weather is not as good on the East Coast.

So clearly with millions and tens of millions of people living on the East Coast, it must be decent weather because everybody's rational. Why would they suffer through terrible weather? There are people who love the East Coast and that's wonderful. That's where they want to live and that's good for them.

For us, we've always kind of been away from family and if we go to Hawaii, we're with your family. Yeah, but I don't want to be selfish and just be next to my family. Then we'll be so far away from your family on the East Coast. It's not something you should feel selfish about because it's a decision we're making as a family and I know that we would be much happier in Hawaii and I just can't move back to Virginia.

I can't do it. I can't do it, Sam. I can't do it. Oh, okay. Well, we want to hear from you guys because we really do have a big decision to make. You know, would you move to warm and sunny Honolulu where life is even more comfortable than it is in San Francisco?

You know, the majority of the Honolulu population will look like our boy, either Asian or multiracial and the Aloha spirit is amazing in Hawaii. He'll grow up in an environment that is much more chill because most people in Hawaii are working to live, not living to work. Or would you move to somewhere in Virginia where, you know, the weather is not great for six months of the year but it'll make you appreciate the other half of the year more.

Our boy will feel, you know, the discomfort of being a minority and as a result, he'll better learn how to deal with difficult situations like racism and bullying. And you know what? Racism again and bullying will occur everywhere in the country. I just think it might occur a little bit more in Virginia which could really build some of his confidence and character and give him a quicker taste of how cruel the world is, right?

You know, everything is so sheltered in middle school, high school, college. It's like such a joke how sheltered life is. You know, our neighbors, we have three immediate neighbors. Their house are nice and they all have adult sons, 27 to 30, maybe one or two years old, still living at home with their parents.

Like to me, that is like a travesty. It's a travesty that these parents have provided such an easy and good life for their kids that their sons are not motivated to become independent men and establish a family, a home, buy their own cars and feel the amazing glory of being independent launched individuals.

I agree with that in terms of it's sad that they haven't launched. However, we don't know what they were like as parents. We don't know what their upbringing was like. I do because I talked to them. I talked to the parents. Our immediate neighbor, you know, they have a $2.5 million house, his parents.

So like they bought a 13-unit building and he sold it recently for like, I don't know, 13-unit building. Let's say it's $500,000 per unit, which is really cheap. That's like $6.5 million. So you're the grandson. Hey, I got a $2.5 million house. My grandparents are $6.5 million. Why bother doing anything?

And you know, like, I don't know. It just seems so sad. It is sad. I don't know what to say. I think you and I as parents are going to be totally different from these people. We don't -- I don't know. I don't know. I think we are going to be those parents who want to give our son everything and we're going to shelter him and we're going to protect him.

And I feel like we're going to go overboard and then he's going to be like, "Well, mommy, daddy, the world is not like how I grew up and can you help me and can I live in one of your houses?" And I'm like, "No, son. Be a man. Do the right thing." I think we should give our son more credit.

Even though he's still very young, he definitely shows signs that he is a very determined boy. He is going to be focused like you. I can see that clear as day. He has that side of your personality. And he's going to have struggles no matter where we live and what we give to him.

He's going to experience struggles and we're going to help him get through that and we're going to do things like travel to show him other ways. All right. So I think in conclusion, I want to end this podcast by saying what a blessing it is to grow up as a minority in America.

We have different challenges. But man, we are given this opportunity and this fire to do something great. If all I experienced was love and acceptance, I'd probably still be working at my soul-sucking job wondering what else is there to do. What else is there in life? There would definitely be no financial samurai.

There would definitely be no early retirement. There would definitely be no opportunity for both of us to be stay-at-home parents. And I just want to highlight and just reiterate the importance of being consistently uncomfortable. If you think about our country, we have a health epidemic. Something like 60 plus percent of Americans are overweight and our health care costs are out of control.

We're subsidizing broken systems and people who are unhealthy, for example. And why is it? Why is it that we have such a health problem in the United States? And I think the reason is because life is too easy. Life is too abundant and comfortable in America. If you go to Asia or like a third world country, you don't have this epidemic health crisis.

Diet has a lot to do with it, too, but we won't get into all that. No, I'm just using this as an example. OK, why did I start Financial Samurai? I started Financial Samurai because the world was ending in 2009 and I was scared. And I had been thinking about starting Financial Samurai since 2006, but it was too easy.

2006, good bonus, good stock market. 2007, record bonus, record stock market. 2008, uh-oh, uh-oh. And then in 2009, oh my gosh, I just lost 35 to 40 percent of my net worth in like six to 10 months. That took 10 years building. I need to do something. I am so uncomfortable.

I need to get off my ass and start something so we have a contingency plan so I can do something new. And for you, I think something uncomfortable was you didn't get promoted that one year at work. And you finally said, you know what? Screw this. I'm going to get promoted and I'm going to leave with a severance, right?

Yeah, that's true. You were motivated. If it happened to me repeatedly, I probably would have maybe lost all my confidence. No, you would have quit and found another job. I said, screw you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think we're very lucky how everything has worked out. Yeah, we're lucky.

We're super lucky. And I think a lot of stuff is due to luck and that's why we should never take our luck for granted. And that's why we should continue to grind because one day our luck will run out. I always think to myself like, how did we get this lucky?

Yeah, I also think work while we are still healthy because, man, when we've been hit with the flu or whatever or I had surgery a couple of years ago, it's like when you go through some health difficulty, man, it just puts everything into perspective. Right. I mean, I was sick for three to four weeks at the beginning of this year and February comes, I'm finally okay.

And I'm like, you know what? Let's get it on. I'm going to publish three times a week. I'm going to publish a newsletter every single week. I'm going to produce while I'm still healthy because who knows how long that health will last. So I think in conclusion, we're going to go to Virginia.

Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. Clearly, there's a great opportunity for us. Save on housing, experience the real world. And thank you, everybody. Please pitch in and vote. Click on the post and vote Virginia or Hawaii. Hawaii, here we come. All right. Thanks, folks. Thanks, folks.