Hey guys, it's Sam from Financial Samurai. I haven't been recording much recently because I got sick again. And when you're sick, you can't really speak, as you can hear somewhat of a raspy voice right now. But it's also been a really tough week with Kobe Bryant surprisingly passing away and his daughter.

I mean, it was just so, so devastating. I heard about the news after I just played tennis Sunday morning with a buddy of mine. And I was at the Xfinity Comcast place returning just my cable box. And I just saw the news and I thought it was a hoax.

And everybody said, "Nope, it wasn't a hoax." And it was just so, so devastating because not only was he a great player and a good citizen for America, but his daughter and it's just the family and the people he leaves behind. He had a daughter in 2019. I had a daughter in 2019.

And I just cannot imagine not being with them right now. And I was really surprised by how much his death affected me. I woke up that Sunday morning at around 6 a.m. And I didn't go to bed really until about 4 a.m. the next morning. Maybe it was 5 a.m.

I just thought to myself, "What if I passed out and I never woke up again?" And so it's been really tough. I probably cried five or six times on Sunday, another five or six times on Monday, and another five or six times on Tuesday. But then finally on Wednesday, I stopped crying.

That pain that had been hurting so much is still there, but I've stopped crying. And I've wondered about this for a while. I haven't felt this type of grief in a long time since my grandmother passed away years ago. And I'm kind of bracing myself for this type of grief because my parents are still alive.

My in-laws are still alive. My sister is still alive. My relatives are still alive. Yet every day we get older. And so I just want to encourage everyone to just appreciate every single moment, to drop the grudges that you have with your friends or your colleagues or your relatives, to tell each other how much you care for them, how much you love them, how much you appreciate them.

I really don't think we tell people how much we appreciate them enough. I think we kind of take people for granted. And we take them for granted, and then one day they're not here with us. And so tonight or tomorrow, every day that you can, tell someone how much you appreciate them.

Tell them about the specific things that you really, really admire about them, that you love about them. I think it's going to go a long way. And please hug your friends and your family tighter every day. I feel so blessed to have my family, and I also feel the weight, the weight on my shoulders of having to take care of my family.

And so this fear, this pressure keeps me going. It keeps me going every single day because I cannot fail my family. And I think these type of incidences where someone famous or someone you admire passes away really puts things in perspective. And it really makes me think about what is the purpose of my life, how I want to be remembered by if I were to suddenly go.

And I thought about it every single day for the past week. And I think the bottom line is that I'm doing what I really, really love to do. Back when I worked in finance, I remember one of the CEOs of a company we were taking public said, "Sam, you know you have a BS job, right?" And at the time I was thinking, "Well, gee, buddy, that's not really nice to say." But I thought about it and I was thinking, "Well, I'm here trying to help Asian companies go public in the United States or in Asia.

I'm trying to connect capital to help fund their dreams and grow businesses. I don't think that's that bad." But I started feeling a little bit empty inside after about 10 years. After 10 years of doing something, just a job, I think any kind of job or most jobs, you kind of get bored and you kind of want to do something else.

And so when I discovered online writing and more specifically talking about personal finance and living life and going through all of these mysterious things in life, figuring things out, I really loved it. And I hope you guys can tell that I really love to write about personal finance, life, happiness, family and so forth.

I've been doing this since 2009 and I hope to do it for a very long time until my kids hopefully grow up and see what their dad does. And maybe they want to learn something about writing and communications and marketing and so forth. And so how do I want to be remembered?

I just want to be remembered as a good father, someone who tried really, really hard and tried to exceed expectations based on the talents that were given to me. And I want to be remembered as someone who tried every day to help someone figure out how to lead a better financial life.

Because I think if we lead better financial lives, we can live happier lives. We can become more confident and we can take care of our family more and we can do the things we really, really want to do. It is true that life goes by quicker as we age because we have less years left.

Let's say we were all blessed to live to 100. The first year of your life is 1/100th of your life. But if you're 50, the 51st year of your life is 1/50th of your life. So it's literally twice as valuable, the time is twice as fast that's passing by.

Let's try to wake up every morning and count our blessings and highlight the things that we are grateful for. And then before we go to bed, let's count our blessings again and think about all the things we've accomplished. I think it will be absolutely wonderful if we can appreciate every single day and not waste a single moment.

And frankly, I need to focus more on recording some podcasts. Because one of the key reasons why I want to record a podcast is so that if I were to die an untimely death, my children, my two and a half year old and my six week old, can listen to their old man and hear his voice and know, you know, what are some of the things that their dad liked to talk about or felt about and just, you just never know.

And so I write and I will record for as long as I can. Thanks so much everyone. I've been up to actually a lot of things. Again, I had a cold for a couple weeks again. There should be a lot of things coming up, so stick around. Keep on reading, keep on sharing, keep on listening.

I appreciate your support and I'll see you guys around.