Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai wishing you happy holidays. I'm actually sitting in the car right now recording this episode because both my daughter and son rebuffed me. I took them out to the playground and I wanted to play with them but my daughter didn't want to play see-saw and my son didn't want to ride a bike and so I told them okay if you don't want to play I'm gonna go record a podcast and make some lemonade and you guys can go play with mommy.

So in a very big way recording these episodes and writing on Financial Samurai has been a savior for me as I try to be a good stay-at-home father. It's been over five and a half years now and it's been very tough because both my wife and I stay at home and when you have two stay-at-home parents there's not much of an outlet so you need to create an outlet.

So Financial Samurai has been my outlet from fatherhood and I've discovered a new outlet from Financial Samurai because Financial Samurai can often take a lot of work, there's often a lot of criticism and sometimes there's just general lack of support. As a writer and as a podcaster now you just want to be heard, you just want to have some positive banter and to feel appreciated and sometimes that road is tough and so that outlet I've discovered from Financial Samurai and also parenthood is Pickleball.

Now obviously Pickleball is not really personal finance related but it is life related and a lot of my episodes and a lot of my writing talks about how to lead a happier more purposeful better life with the money we have. During the pandemic my outlet was tennis you know find some friends and we'd go to any public park we could find that was unlocked and that didn't have reservations and we'd play and we'd feel better mentally and physically.

However I overdid it I played over 29 official USTA tennis league matches in 2022 and as a result my right shoulder I think has a torn labrum or something it hurts I hurts a lot every time I serve and I hit high topspin forehands and then my hips my hips are popping a little bit and then my knees they've been they've been giving me issues for over a decade now but I've played through it and I haven't had all these physical problems in a while because I hadn't been playing so much but since 2022 when things started opening up and everybody became more social I started to play more tennis almost like a catch-up like a catch-up from not playing as much in 2020 and 2021 and it's kind of like the travel boom in 2022 everybody's catching up to travel like crazy because they didn't travel as often in the past two years.

So with my injuries I needed to find some other outlet and that outlet is pickleball because pickleball is about 20 to 30 percent of the impact tennis has on my body and I think most people's body so you can play two to three times longer to start before you start feeling those aches and pains or you can play the same amount of time as you play tennis if you play tennis and you'll feel 70 to 80 percent less aches and pains.

Another great reason why you should play pickleball is if you're looking for an activity to do with your partner, your friend, your loved one because my wife and I you know we love to do things together but we have different interests. She's musically talented I'm not really I play some guitar I play a lot of sports she doesn't you know we can go on hikes which is one of our favorite activities but we wanted to find new activities to do as we get older and with pickleball there is a low low hurdle to overcome to start playing.

You can start hitting the ball back and forth within five ten minutes and then within 30 minutes to an hour two hours tops you can get good enough to play regular games. However with tennis it's a much higher hurdle sport to overcome so if you have dissimilar levels it's not gonna be that fun for both parties.

And then when my father and mother finally visited for the first time in three years well I did see them a year ago because I flew to Hawaii to see them but I hadn't seen him in a year and I realized hmm at 77 years old and 75 years old they could sure use some more physical activity light impact low impact physical activity and they could sure use some more community and once I started playing pickleball I realized wow the game is so much better for your body on your body and the community aspect was wonderful wonderful wonderful there were plenty majority of people were over 60 years old and everybody was nice everybody was nice and the games were quick you just put your paddle down on a on a court and at most you wait 15 minutes and usually you wait under 10 minutes to start playing.

When we get older we get more lonely you heard about that in a previous episode and you read about that in a previous post and one day one day we might not have anybody as people die out or people have different lives to lead so that community aspect if you want to feel less lonely I think pickleball is it's been the most welcoming sports community I have ever been a part of and I've done tennis I've done soccer and I've done softball pickleball is by far the most welcoming sport I gotta be frank I think my fear of loneliness is getting to me which is why I've recorded this podcast previous podcast and written a post about loneliness I see my parents aging one day they won't have each other and I know it's gonna be the same thing for us and I know that our kids will want to play with their friends I mean already they don't want to play with me so I'm trying to find an outlet elsewhere and so you know holiday season can be really good or it can feel really lonely as this is the time where you really know who your friends and family are and if they're not around relative to other people sharing their family stories and travels and trips you're probably gonna feel a little bit down so I just wanted to share this episode to tell you how much pickleball has helped me get through the tough times the down moments I do believe there's a an important mental to physical connection to everything we do we just can't you know type on our computers for eight to ten hours a day I think we need balance and part of that balance is having physical exercise feeling the Sun on your face laughing with friends meeting new people exercising getting out there that has always made me feel happier and I know it'll make you feel happier as well one of the most important things any financial samurai should do is plan for the future pre-mortem planning plan 5 10 15 years out planning is free and as a 45 year old I know my life is half over now but I'm trying to plan for the future where I'll get slower I'll get more injured maybe I'll have different interests and maybe some people will come and go in my life so I'm trying to lock down that one stable thing that I could do that could bring me joy and that's pickleball planning ahead is something in 1999 I did to plan ahead to try to retire by 40 and starting financial samurai was planning ahead so I had something purposeful and meaningful to do after I retired from finance because I read everything I could about early retirement and I knew there were a lot of downsides including loneliness boredom lack of purpose and also a lack of identity all of us want to build more wealth we want to generate enough passive income so we can do what we want but even if we get to a level where we are absolutely free life is just not that fun if we don't have purpose if we don't have a goal we don't have meaning you know with pickleball it might sound silly everybody should find their own pickleball if pickleball is not for you but for me it gives me a purpose to stay in shape so I can be more competitive on the court I want to learn all about the strategies so fun learning about double strategies and single strategies I want to test out new equipment you know paddles are $60 to $250 I'm gonna work my way up and you know try them out it's gonna be so fun what I realize is that we should all try new things something awesome to do starting from the beginning is the most fun because you experience the most amount of progress you're the most passionate about something I remember playing golf when I was like a 25 handicapper going to a 10 handicapper was exhilarating but trying to break 10 handicap consistently was no fun anymore you know I had to get on the green and regulation to putt you know to try to get par and hit some occasional birdies and that was really really challenging and not as fun so go out there find something new to do that challenges you that makes you happy that gets you outside if it's not pickleball hopefully you can find something else because life is so much better when you have this great fun activity to look forward to thanks so much everyone for listening if you like this episode or any episodes I love a five-star positive review and also if you want to support my work you can check out by this not that at financial samurai comm forward slash BTN T and if you want to sign up for my free newsletter which talks about wealth building investments real estate life family planning and more you can go to financial samurai comm forward slash news talk to you later