Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai. And with me today I have my wife, Sydney, and we're going to talk about the loneliness epidemic and some surprising solutions that I thought about that I didn't really realize until now. So, Sydney, how are you doing? And do you feel lonely or not?

I'm doing great. I don't feel lonely lately, which is good. How about you? I don't feel lonely because I'm playing a lot of pickleball, I'm playing tennis, and we have our children to keep us busy 24/7 if we want. But they seem to be latching onto you more as the mama, especially since they're sick.

And so it might be a little overwhelming. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I was kind of laughing when I read your article because for me sometimes it feels like the opposite. I feel like I have so much time devoted to other people that I don't have enough time to myself to just kind of decompress and self-care.

I am not upset with that because it is what it is. Being a mom can be tough, but it's also rewarding to be able to help the kids and help you and just keep on going. Yes, indeed. So let me ask you this something. Back in 2012, do you remember when I first left the industry, the finance industry, how many times I said I was bored?

Yeah, it was a lot to take because it was just so different from how you were when you were working. It was a big lifestyle adjustment for you. It was hard because I was still working at the time, so my schedule was limited when all of a sudden you had so much flexibility in your day-to-day and I still had to go to work and stick to my regular schedule.

So yeah, it was a huge adjustment for you. I remember when I left, I would still wake up by 6 a.m. every morning and even though you had to go to work, what time were you waking up? I am not a natural morning person, so I would stretch it as late as I possibly could and still make it in the door on time.

So what time was that? I don't even remember. I'm guessing I was probably waking up around 7, 7.30. No way! I think you were waking up more like 8 and getting to work at 9.30. 2012, I was still full-time. I didn't have the flexibility of consulting hours, so I'm pretty sure I had to be in by 8.

Really? Maybe this is a revisionist history. I remember waking up and... You were always awake first. I don't deny that. Yeah, but I remember waking up first and then after an hour of writing or commenting or doing something... Yeah, so 6 to 7, that would be your hour if I'm waking up at 7.

I remember working for an hour and then checking in and you'd still be sleeping. I'd be like, "La la la la la." I'd be twiddling my thumbs. I felt lonely. I was like, "I want you to wake up to spend time with me." I know. We've always had opposite schedules.

So when you were going to bed at, I don't know, 10.30 to be able to wake up at 6, I was staying up until typically 12.30 to 1 a.m., sometimes 1.30. And so I've just always been a night owl. I've never been a natural morning person like you. So I guess the good thing about that is from an efficiency perspective, I could do a lot of work in the morning and then once I go to sleep, you can do a lot of work at night.

And so if we're running a business or we're parents, we have more coverage and more productivity and health. Yeah. When our kids were babies in the very early months, we definitely utilized that in terms of getting through the night. We each had our night shift. If you remember those days when we didn't have an extra adult around to help us, we had to have our shifts.

And so you'd take the first night shift and then I'd get us through the rest of the night. Right. So one of the bummers about the pandemic, besides not being able to see our loved ones as often, is the rise of loneliness. In my post in the show notes, you'll see this chart from the Washington Post and the American Time Use Survey by the BLS.

And it shows since 2013, Americans 15 and older are spending nine hours more alone a week today. Americans also spending four to five hours less time a week with friends and companions. And then there's this other chart from the Financial Times. And it says that male and female Americans ages 15 to 33 are spending about 100 more minutes alone.

That's 50% more alone time a day compared to in 2011. And loneliness really starts to tick up between the ages of 38 to 40 and doesn't stop until we die. And then finally, more women start spending time alone after age 60. And I understand the last bullet point because women have longer life expectancies than men.

So if their partners die, they spend more time alone. What's also interesting though, is why? Why is there a huge uptick in loneliness starting around age 38 to 40? I'm 45, you're 42. And I don't think we're very lonely. I feel like we're often overwhelmed in parenthood. So the data does make me feel sad about the loneliness situation.

Because people who are lonely are just, I mean, like life is not as fun or as interesting without someone to spend time with. Yeah, it's totally true. I know my mom and my dad are divorced. You know, they each live alone. And you know, there's times that my mom has told me, you know, you don't get it.

You know, you don't know what it's like to live alone. And I feel for her. You know, there's thousands of people out there who live alone. And that's not easy. I would have a very hard time with that if I was by myself all the time. Maybe not thousands, maybe millions.

Yeah, probably. But even as an introvert, I think you have a greater capacity to be alone and be okay with being alone than I do. Yes, I agree with that. However, I think there's a difference between being completely alone and having someone that you live with, but not socializing outside of your home.

Right. Oh, I just realized something. So one of our issues is that since I left work in 2012, and you left in 2015, we're always at home, you more than me. So that's the funny thing. There's like this whole joke where like, I don't know, in Japan and Japanese culture, the wife will say don't come back until you go out for dinner and drinks and get the business done.

And then in American culture, you know, guys will sometimes joke and say, wow, my wife wants me out of the house as much as possible. And she can't stand me being retired. And what are your thoughts on that? There definitely needs to be a healthy balance. And the pandemic made that really hard when we were all stuck inside.

And we couldn't even go to parks at one point. It was it was crazy. So now that we have our freedom back, it's just about finding the right balance the right mix. How about finding a bigger home like a mega mansion? Well, I don't think that will help in terms of I don't know, when you have kids are going to find you no matter where you are, whether you're in, you know, 100 square feet or, you know, 10,000 square feet, they will, they will find.

Okay. So let's talk about the solutions to loneliness. There's several solutions that I came up with. The one surprising solution is to have children later. You know, as an older parent, one of my greatest regrets was focusing too much on making money and my career. However, I've come to realize we older parents can actually spend way more time with our children than if we had children earlier, because we had children earlier, we'd be working all day.

And they'd be in daycare. Right, right. And we couldn't homeschool our son for 18 months as we did during the pandemic. Well, not as well. And the second realization I have as a writer, and as an older dad is that since 2017, there's almost never been a moment of loneliness.

I do feel lonely when our kids would rebuff me and my affection when I wanted to play with them. That was pretty hard. But I would say all of my free time can be sucked up by our children. If I wanted it to be. Yeah, I do feel that we have been fortunate that, you know, we've been able to stick together and have, you know, had the kids through the entire pandemic, our daughter was born right before it started.

You know, to have our family unit together has been very, very helpful in terms of us not having to struggle with loneliness that much. Right. So one of the things that I was wondering was why is loneliness? Why does that curve really shoot up after age 40? And I realized why that is.

So let's say you have your first child at 25. They will be potentially out of the house by the time you turn 43. But it's not like, you know, your kids through 18 are going to want to spend time with you. It's like something around age 12, 13, where they would rather spend time with their friends, right?

So you take five years off of that, and bam, that is the reason why there's more loneliness because the kids are out of the house or wanting to spend more time with their friends once you're 38 to 40 years old. And so the solution, the solution to less loneliness after 40 is to simply have your first child later.

So if you have your first child at age 35, so first, you're you're working hard, you're socializing, you're dating, you're meeting people and networking through your age 35, you're pretty, I would say less lonely. And then once you have a kid at 35, the earliest they'll be out of the house will be when you turn 53.

And maybe the earliest you'll start feeling lonely because your kids don't want to spend time with you is age 48 to 50. That makes a lot of sense. What else are you thinking? Oh, well, I'm also thinking, but don't wait too long to have children because there are significant risks after about the age of 35.

What else am I thinking? Hmm. Oh, yes. Solution to loneliness number two, retire later. So I have postulated that the ideal age to retire is not before 40. It's closer around 45, the age I am right now. And I first came up with this thesis five years ago at age 40, saying, look, I would kind of regret it leaving at 34, 35, because I left a lot of money on the table.

I didn't make as many connections as I could have. Maybe I could have relocated to another office and had a lot more fun and be wealthier. Right. That's one of my regrets. But five years later, I still think 45 is like the optimal age, because it gives you 20 plus years to save and invest aggressively.

It gives you a lot of experience and wisdom. And at 45, I think a lot of us want to take things down a notch and spend more time doing other things. So when I left work in 2012 at age 34, I felt lonely a lot because not many people could come out to play.

And people were just working and doing bigger and better things. I had to fight FOMO. I had to really try to make an effort to get people to meet me for lunch. And what ended up happening was I just started hanging out with more traditional retirees like my friend Richard.

He's 67 now, but we would start hanging out and he was like 57 and I was 34. So there's a huge age difference. And that's why if you retire at 45, there will be more people your age with similar interests that you can hang out with. So when you retired at 35, did you feel lonely?

Did you feel it was difficult to, you know, make friends and hang out with people your similar age? I don't have any vivid memories of being lonely. I just remember being able to breathe again because prior to when I left, I was just going through so much stress. And so I used that time initially to just kind of take a breather.

And then I got busy with freelancing and we also had the luxury to finally travel, you know, with the freedom of no strict schedules and we didn't have kids at the time. So we filled up our days with a lot of traveling and you and I spent a lot of time together just going out on hikes and things like that.

So I don't remember being lonely because the days went really fast back then. That's fascinating. That's fascinating that you don't feel a moment of loneliness. Whereas when I first left, I did. And I guess when you left, it's because you had me. I had you but we also have personality differences, right?

You're definitely more social than I am. So I didn't have a significant change in my lifestyle minus, you know, not having my day job. Right. That's right. It's very interesting. I'm just gonna chalk it up to me always being there for you in your time of need. You were.

Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. So solution to loneliness number three, find an in-person hobby. This is not surprising at all, but it is absolutely one of the best ways to combat loneliness. For example, I've played league tennis my entire life since I was 12, 13 years. Great way to work on something like a skill, a tennis skill.

And then you join a team, you battle it out, you trade messages in terms of strategy and what other people are doing. So to me, it was so much fun. And now we're doing pickleball. And I brought you in and it seems like you've been able to meet some fun people as well.

I have. And I've had the most fun with a group of retired school teachers. They're just so happy and they're always having so much fun out there. So yeah, you do tend to connect with older people when you have more free time during the weekday as an early retiree.

And I think it's been great. It's been great to expand my network. Yeah, the one thing that I recommend not focusing on is online relationships. You know, it's better than nothing. But I think an online friendship is equal to no more than 5% of an offline friendship. So you could have 20 online friendships, but that maybe is equal to one good offline real relationship.

There's really no substitute for in person relationships. All right, fourth solution to loneliness. Frankly, I think you got to add more value. The more value you add to society, the more people may want to spend time with you. You'll be invited to more parties, gatherings, events. And then from there, you'll grow your network and potentially find more companions with shared interests.

What do you think? I think I agree with all of that. I shared a story in the post about playing pickleball with a woman named Shannon. Just random mom has a 13 year old daughter. And she's great player. And it was the first time we met and she asked what I did.

And I told her I'm an author. And she asked about the title of my book. And I mentioned by this not that. And then she immediately said, I know that book. Other parents at my daughter's school were mentioning it. And I said, really? Are you sure you know my book?

It's not called something else? Are you getting confused? He said, Oh, yeah, yeah, I know that book. Because it talks about education, marriage and divorce. And I was like, wow, that's a small world. And I'm always surprised when someone in the real world says they've heard of financial samurai or my book, because it's just it's kind of I separate the two.

And so what I realized from that incidence is that the more value you can add, the more people will want to spend time with you. Shannon invited me over to his parents gathering to see if we can do like a book talk. And you know, I was flattered. I said, Oh, let me think about I'll get back to you because it takes a lot of effort.

But again, if our daughter wants to go to Shannon's daughter's school one day, and if I did this book talk, and I met the administrators and 20 parents, surely something positive could come out of that. And I want to conclude by talking about the final solution to loneliness. You know, there are other solutions, volunteering, going to church, going to meetups.

But the final solution really is to make a bigger effort. We know the data on how much more lonely we are, we can be more intentional to counteract the loneliness as a result. For example, since the start of the pandemic, we are spending at least three more hours a week by ourselves.

If we have a problem with this, then we can intentionally plan for three more hours with friends and companions a week. You can maybe go on a couple lunches, you can reach out to your friends for a hike, or you can go to a sporting event, or we can do date nights, we really need to do more date nights.

Yeah, it definitely takes making an effort. I totally agree with that one. You know, we went to a holiday party recently, which was really fun. And then a friend of mine reached out to me a couple weeks ago to arrange a coffee. And if you don't make the effort, then the opportunities just don't arise.

So I really agree with that one. Yeah. And if you start telling people, you know, you're too busy, people are going to eventually end up stop asking you. Right, or they'll just go ask someone else. So as excited as I was that my friend asked me out to coffee, now it's my turn to find a time to get that on the schedule with her.

Get it on the schedule, reciprocate, take action. You know, recently, I was super impressed with a fellow parent who met me and my son at a San Francisco playground at 2.45pm. His son and my son, they used to go to preschool, really good friends. But he and his son were in the East Bay an hour away, and they've been out and about since 9am.

And I didn't know that at all. He was just like, during the text message, he was like, "Oh, yeah, we'll try to make it. We'll keep you updated." But what turns out happening was that he got on the BART subway system, rode his bike to the playground, like 10 minutes from the subway system, and met up.

This was after like being out for six hours. That's a long time with a four-year-old. Yeah, with a four, four and a half-year-old. I was like, "Damn, that is huge effort. Props to you. I'm going to make it up to you. We're going to do something fun together." We had some great conversations about being a dad and work-life balance.

And the thing is, he made an effort also because his wife was on a business trip. So like anything, good things take a lot of effort. So I don't believe that if we're lonely, we're always going to be lonely or feel lonely. We need to make an effort. And one of the comments, actually, several commenters mentioned something very interesting, and I didn't really think about it.

These commenters believe that there is a correlation with emotional intelligence and loneliness. And it sounds a little harsh, but the commenters were saying, "The lower your emotional intelligence, the higher your loneliness." What are your thoughts? I could understand that. I could see that. Because it does take effort to be thoughtful, to reach out, to gift, to invite, and to plan.

Yeah, and friendships are built on trust as well. And if you suffer from a lack of emotional intelligence, you're probably going to have difficulties in building trust with someone and vice versa. So I think that's a valid point. Right. Well, in conclusion, I do believe the loneliness epidemic should worry us all, especially those of us who have kids.

Loneliness can lead to anger, hate, attacks, depression. If you look at the mass shootings and the profiles of the people who conducted these atrocities, it seems like they were lonely. Like nobody paid enough attention to them. Nobody gave them enough love. And as a parent now, I feel really disheartened by that.

And it makes me really want to spend more time with my children and to try to be more empathetic. So hopefully we can all be more patient and loving to one another. We never know what's going on behind closed doors. Life is difficult. The pandemic has made life difficult for so many and we need to have more kindness and empathy.

I know firsthand experience, it can be very hard when people are attacking you. This is one of the downsides of running Financial Samurai and recording this podcast. No matter how much you don't want to offend anybody, someone seems to always be offended. And a lot of times there is a projection of the way the person feels because there's something going on.

And in the past, I would be much more defensive, much more combative. But now as a father, I just try to think about what is going on and to either show kindness or just move on. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love a positive five star review. You want to keep in touch, subscribe to our newsletter with over 55,000 subscribers at financialsamurai.com/news.

And if you want to buy our book, Buy This, Not That, you can go to financialsamurai.com/news. Thanks so much, everyone. Thank you. And we'll talk to you all later. Thanks for watching.