Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about the quiet quitting phenomenon It's all over the news It's all over social media The idea behind quiet quitting is to do no more than what's asked of you at work and then check out Once you're out of the office, there's no more responding to work emails slack Nothing a quiet quitter does not go above and beyond the call of duty.

That sounds kind of bad But is it really you work 100% for 100% pay seems pretty fair to me so these quiet quitters have been able to create a strong boundary between work and personal life over the past two and a half years since the beginning of 2020 a Lot of the work and personal life boundaries have blurred because we're working from home Which means we're probably working more often.

No commute do some work No, you know boondoggling at the water cooler do some more work check emails at 9 p.m. 10 p.m That's all work and so eventually after a long enough period of time we burn out and when we burn out we push back and we try to Think about better ways to do things now initially when I heard the term quiet quitting I thought to myself come on now That's just that's just another younger generation talking about wanting to do less and living a better balanced lifestyle and Since I grinded hard when I was in my 20s and 30s that just sounds ridiculous to be a quiet quitter, right?

But now that I'm a parent I'm kind of going full circle and I'm thinking about my children and how they're gonna compete in this really really competitive world So I've decided to take the positive of quiet quitting and look at the positive and say look Quiet quitting is great to lower your anxiety about your own work Trying to get ahead and also if you're a parent to help lower your anxiety for your child's future So let me tell you a story about when I was growing up when I started working in finance in 1999 I regularly worked between 60 to 70 hours a week It was basically 12 to 14 hour days and also 6 to 8 hours on the weekends There were no set hours folks instead.

We worked every day and every evening because the work was never finished Once 7 p.m. Rolled around in New York City my colleagues in Hong Kong Taiwan and Singapore Started to trickle in at around 7 a.m. Their time Oftentimes I had to be online until 9 p.m. Ensuring my requests were Executed before I went to bed.

Just imagine if you had a client request from a big fund manager in New York City and He wanted to know more about Hong Kong property So you go and contact the assistant or the research analyst about Hong Kong property to try to get some information Just imagine if you wake up the next day and you don't get any of that information You're gonna look like a fool or just incompetent in front of your client and you're not gonna do well So there's this constant anxiety and I knew it most the people in the international equities department We're always on and always trying to get information and data to help our clients hmm, so maybe the experience that millions of knowledge workers have experienced since 2020 is What I've been experiencing are what I had experienced for 13 years working in international equities and finance So I couldn't last folks, which is why I think the quiet quitting movement could be really good for all workers The main reason why I did more than the minimum was because I knew it just was just too brutal To get in at 5 30 a.m.

And leave after 7 p.m. For decades Therefore I logically worked the maximum number of hours I could bear while trying to get paid and promoted quicker I figured if I averaged 65 hours a week for 20 years That would be like a 40 hour a week person working for 33 years It's not quite the same math obviously, but that's how I thought you work hard It compressed the amount of work to get paid and promoted quicker so I could leave sooner I Was I would say unlucky not to have landed a relatively low stress nine-to-five job that it enabled Workers to quiet quit for 30 to 40 years Look online look on tik-tok.

It's pretty hilarious and pretty creative of these people who profile their days, you know coming into work Socializing eating vegan panna cotta. Yeah for free. Not bad for folks who work at LinkedIn and It sounds great and it's smart right? It's obviously Sensationalized as a creator you want to make things look better than it really is but the point is if you have the confidence and the ability to Highlight that you're working one to two hours a day while you're just socializing and fraternizing with friends online and not fearing getting laid off That shows the power of what your work-life balance is It shows that you actually really do have a pretty good work-life balance I know if I posted a video of how I was only working a couple hours a week at Goldman Sachs or Credit Suisse I would probably be set aside by my HR manager and maybe fired if I did it a second or third time, right?

But things have changed and I think the dynamic of the work environment has changed and maybe our managers are younger now And they also want more work-life balance hence quiet quitting and at the same time I was also lucky to have gotten a job that had a strong correlation with performance and reward For at least the first 10 years the harder I worked the better I did with my clients the more I got paid and the quicker I got promoted and this broke down after the global financial crisis in 2008 to 2009 and then for several years after you know The companies a lot of companies in finance were hemorrhaging money We were struggling so we needed to build back our balance sheets and therefore the pay wasn't that great and so naturally workers got less motivated including myself and I wanted to do something new as Result by shutting the quiet quitting movement in my 20s and 30s I was able to break free from the corporate grind for good at age 34 and try to figure out What I wanted to do with the rest of my life and we know this term ikigai It's a Japanese concept meaning a reason for being and it's about finding what you love What the world needs?

What you can be paid for and what you are good at so everybody spend time thinking about your ikigai What you love I love to write. I like to speak sometimes, but I love to write and connect with other people What the world needs I think the world needs more financial education better personal financial education Now ask yourself what you can be paid for Based on doing what you love and what the world needs I'm lucky because financial samurai generates advertising revenue or some companies want to sponsor Financial samurais newsletter or a post that's pretty cool Especially when I can find products that I really believe in and that I use and then finally What you are good at this takes time to get better but over time I've discovered I am good at writing making people think and Sharing stories and good education.

So if you find four of these things You're gonna find ikigai and if you find ikigai You will feel less burned out and feel more purposeful every single day It's the reason why I've been able to publish three times a week since July 2009 It's not easy folks writing 1,000 to 4,000 word articles three times a week plus a weekly newsletter But I love it and it helps people and there's an income component and I'm good at it So find your ikigai now, let's go back to quiet quitting again There are two main ways to get ahead.

The first way to get ahead is to work harder than most people Eventually, you hope your results will bring you the rewards you think you deserve Going this path is for someone who strongly believes in meritocracy and a lot of corporations. They talk about meritocracy However, as we all know the best or the hardest working people don't always rise to the top due to nepotism Advertisement bad luck and systemic issues.

That's just the way the world is folks The second way to get ahead is to convince other people to try less hard than you Encouraging a movement for quiet quitters who do the minimum on the job relieves the stress of the average worker and by definition Most people are average 70 to 80 percent of people are on the average part of the curve the bell curve For example, maybe the average worker works only eight point five hours a day when they are only required to work eight hours a day Right, that's above and beyond what is required technically But they feel bad because they know they can do so much more they can work probably ten hours a day But you know what eight and a half so long as they're averaged above average, they're okay But if more colleagues start checking out after seven and a half eight hours, then the average person will now outperform Without having to change their ways and if you're feeling burned out That's pretty great.

If the collective can lower that bar The main reason why so many of us experience burnout is that there's this arms race for ever-increasing Desire for corporations to sell more widgets and make more and more and more money Capitalism is great for achieving improvements in technology safety health food and education However, there comes a point where there is enough enough is enough But there is never enough in a capitalistic society.

We've got shareholders to report to board members employees to feed and This is the cycle of life. So we have to figure out how to break that cycle and accept enough Because besides feeling permanently on call other reasons for burnout include feeling like your work has no impact, right?

No matter what you do, it's the broken steering Well, you can't steer the car the way that you want to go and you don't believe the company's mission I mean if you are working at a sugary drink company I mean, do you really believe in the mission of pumping 200 calories worth of and 16 tablespoons of sugar in each can of You know soda.

I don't I don't think that's that's the not the mission that you probably believe in But you do it because you need the money most of us work because we need the money and that is acceptable But eventually you're gonna get to a point where you have enough money where you can do other things for less pay Or maybe retire early or just at least take a break and so that is that gray area where hopefully we all eventually come to where we Reconsider what we want to do with our lives how we want to make money and what kind of impact we want to leave in This world so that is eeky guy again now quiet quitting I think is really good for working parents as well I would say if there's one demographic group that has suffered the most amount of anxiety and worry during the pandemic It's parents of young children and that's me So I'm selfishly talking about how I've been experiencing a lot of work stress and anxiety since 2020 Just trying to be real with you all because when you're a new parent Everything is new and when you have a helpless person depending on you, you don't want to mess that up You definitely don't want them to get hurt or God forbid die on you.

That's the worst nightmare and so for parents just struggling to balance work and To balance child care and love it's been really difficult. And so quiet quitting Enables parents to think about the future and maybe a less stressful way Because if you realize how brutally competitive the world is you also realize how much you have to do as a parent to prepare your children To compete survive and hopefully thrive in the future.

The world is just getting smaller. Thanks to technology better economic international cooperation and Companies are going to where labor costs are the lowest and the most efficient, right? So if you don't have that knowledge and that skill To compete in a developed country like America then life is going to be much more difficult so with quiet quitting if we can lower the bar and have people not grind as Hard or at least keep the bar in place This provides more hope for parents and their children I have a three-pronged plan to help my children and this includes step one Providing supplemental homeschooling because we have more time I can homeschool them in English Mandarin math science writing speaking entrepreneurship marketing investing real estate stocks and overall personal finance Something that is missing in schools step two is keeping financial samurai going for a while You know a small business to provide real-time real-world education is quite impactful That's something that I wish I had when I was growing up and I finally got when I went to business school part-time at Berkeley I was working in finance and I was studying finance.

So all that I was learning was really really helpful That was the most accelerated time of learning in my opinion when I could do and learn at the same time And then three build a rental property portfolio, which I've already built But I might want to accumulate more over time and real estate is about security.

It's about stability. It's about income the portfolio can be managed by them if they need work and The portfolio can provide shelter if they need a place to stay if they can't get a job that pays enough So the irony of doing these three things is that it helps lower my parental anxiety because it gives me hope that they're not gonna fall through the cracks and Just end up doing nothing with their lives because we're gonna be involved right taking action feels good Because you feel that you're improving your situation Maybe you're not but at least you're taking action to hopefully change the course of the future for the better Now if quiet quitting takes off no longer will parents have to worry about the children Getting straight A's or not getting straight A's and if they get a B in a subject your kid doesn't like it's okay Don't have to stress out.

It's fine and no longer will kids have to pursue endless Curricular activities and sports and music and arts to the point where they're falling asleep in class the next day They don't need to cure cancer as a teenager anymore. I mean that's gone I mean, hopefully teenagers will cure cancer but having to cure cancer to get into a good school No longer required and come on now these good schools that talk about trying to educate the world while keeping the admissions rate The same and keeping the number of spots the same even though they've expanded That's pretty hypocritical folks.

Come on now and the reason why schools do that is because they are Also in the arms race for status and prestige Right, it just never ever ends until we make it end and we decide what's enough for parents We no longer have to spend as much on expensive music and sports lessons bribing college officials, you know that all goes away all that money can thus be saved and Go towards our own Retirements now in addition.

Thanks to quiet quitting parents won't feel a need to spend a fortune on college or college at all The reason why many elite colleges are winning is because they know many parents are willing to pay anything for their children's education the less Important a college education is for getting a job The lower the price of college tuition should be but it's not happening that way even though there's the internet Podcasts blogs and everything and it's because of this Heightened anxiety by parents to just spend anything because they don't want to screw things up for their kids But if you read by this not that my book you will hopefully see through the absurdity of paying any amount for college Instead the chapter on education provides a really great framework for how much you should comfortably spend based on your household income and based on the logic of the importance of education how you can attain education and the jobs you can attain with that education as well in conclusion as a parent and as someone who is observing what's going on in society with work and Life, I hope the quiet quitting movement grows I hope it gets to the managers who also probably want to get but also probably feel crushed by this Blurring of boundaries between work and personal life and if more workers can sustain a longer career 20 30 40 years and not just peace out and see you later Like I did after 13 years that actually might be good for corporate profits that might be good for our country Just accept that everything is rational though folks So if you want to partake in the quiet quitting movement, you've got to be okay with the results Whether it's good times or bad times your promotion and pay please be congruent with your actions and your beliefs about what you deserve and then if you don't want to Participate in the quiet quitting movement and you want to grind ahead further you can use this opportunity to get further ahead Make more money get paid and leave work altogether sooner if you want There's two sides to this situation and I think there are great benefits to both I'd love to hear your thoughts about the quiet quitting movement in the post leave a comment or shoot me an email I think it's gonna be an interesting time for the next two years or longer And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd appreciate a positive review It keeps me motivated and going and also shout out to new retirement for creating a wonderful retirement planner from the ground up They've come a long way over the past couple years since I last reviewed them and they've got some great new features to help you Plan for a better future.

Thanks so much everyone