Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My guest today is Jason Vita. Jason, I'm holding in my hands your book called You Only Live Once, The Roadmap to Financial Wellness and a Purposeful Life.

So if your subtitle and the slogan of my show are that similar, we're going to have a good interview today. Welcome. Hi, Josh. Thank you so much for having me on instead of beer. So we're going to talk about your book, but I'd first like to kick it off.

Tell us a little bit about your story, especially as it relates to money. Where did you start and what's been your path up to now in some of your ventures currently? Yeah, I think the most interesting part for many people is that I started my relationship with money, with working, cleaning toilets, serving drinks, and found myself four years later in the boardroom making a six-figure salary, moving from New Jersey where I was raised to living out in Palo Alto, California.

Okay, so I'm going to stop you there because that sounds interesting. That's good marketing speak, but I want to know more specifics. What type of work were you doing when you started? Yeah, so I started as a bartender. I started as a bartender in Newark International Airport. Okay. I mean, it all really started because of the fact that I never had the conversation about money with my parents.

I think for most people, it's so much easier for my parents to talk about the birds and the bees, talk about politics and religion than it was to talk about money. But they were forced to talk about money when I was 17. When they sat me down and said, "Jason, we can't afford to send you to school," that to me was really devastating because I did all the right things.

I worked really hard. I played sports. I was class president, honor society, what have you. But my parents, like many others that I've met, they made enough to disqualify me for financial aid but didn't have the resources or the means to send me to school. And by school, you mean college?

To college, correct. And so when all my friends were going to their freshman year, I had to start working. And so at 18, that's how I found myself bartending, to raise enough money, to save enough money to attend the first year's college. Is it legal for a bartender to be 18 years old while serving alcohol?

In New Jersey, yes, as long as there's no money exchanged. So I was working at first class lounges in Newark International Airport. So you can imagine, I grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is the fourth largest city. It's an inner city. And so you can imagine, here I am in the first class lounge serving people like business people, those who can afford to spend $5,000, $10,000 on a seat to fly anywhere around the world.

But then, like, no, we're struggling to find $5,000 to send me to college. So that was one of the eye-opening experiences of how little I really had and how much others did. And so that reinforced kind of this mentality of not having the means and wanting to make money.

But that pretty much led to me spending everything I earned just to tell others, hey, I'm not that poor. I'm not that struggling with money. And so every chance I got to spend cash, I did. So you didn't go to school then. You continued working and then you got another job in California.

What actually happened that took you across the country? Yeah. So eventually when I did get to school, I went to Rutgers University. I was going for finance. So I thought that everyone I was seeing was in business. And the way for me to become successful and to make money, I needed to be in business.

And so I found myself in the business school studying finance. And there's no way that I could go from serving drinks as a bartender to making the money that I saw people were making that were entering the first and business class lounges. And so I said, well, I need to get into banking.

And I started my banking career as a teller. And I worked really hard and tried to learn as much as I could. And that got me the opportunity to grow. So in a very short period of time, I was being promoted very quickly. And so my income was rising.

So I was making at the time minimum wage, and in Jersey, it was around $7. And then I had the opportunity to, from going as a teller, I became a customer service rep and a customer service reps and assistant branch manager, all within a very short time frame. And I've always had this philosophy, which started in going to the public school system, that I wanted to learn as much as I could.

And I wanted to pick the brains of some of the-- and I look back now, it's like some of the smartest people, which ended up having to be either my work colleague or my supervisor, manager, and things like that. And they would just ingrain certain skills that enabled me to be able to perform a job level that was higher than what I was being paid for.

And that also exposed me to a network that enabled me to get promoted. And I mean, my story goes all around the place. But eventually, I found the credit union world. I went in as-- in the branches in the credit union. And I wanted to get into marketing. I always had this creative streak about me.

And eventually, four years from starting in the banking industry as a teller, I found myself in the boardroom for a credit union out in Silicon Valley. - How much were you earning in that job in Silicon Valley? - I was earning $100,000 when I started in 2009. - So to go from $7 an hour to $100,000, I mean, that goes from, what, $15,000 a year to $100,000, pretty fantastic, man.

That's quite a story and an achievement in and of itself to do that in four years. - Yeah, thank you. So when I go and I sit back and I can spend hours and days talking about the processes and the nuances of going from being a teller to sitting in the boardroom in four years, it did take a lot of work.

And then as I mentioned, it had a lot to do with just increasing my value for the time that I was spending at work and also the network of people that I was meeting. And interesting enough, early on in life, I learned the power of the people who you surround yourself with.

And so I wasn't one of those worker bees that was saying, "It's not my job. I'm not getting paid for it." It's like, "Well, maybe it's something that I can learn and will make me more valuable." And so that in a sense, when I think about growing up with not having the luxuries of life, that that was really a really good thing for me to have.

- I always love the aphorism, "If you do more than what you're paid to do, the day is gonna come eventually when you're paid more for what you do." But you've gotta always start that process. You can't expect to be paid more because compensation always comes after work is done.

You gotta sow the seeds first. So you're at this credit union in California. What next? - Yeah, so I was in the credit union in California and I was there as VP of Marketing and Business Development. So I was in charge of growing the credit union. And the credit union had this field of membership all across the United States and they're pretty stagnant for some time.

And it just says a really interesting side note, when I was up for the job for this VP position, I was up against two other individuals who had more experience, who had fancier degrees. And I remember going and presenting and talking about my idea to help grow awareness for the credit union and help grow its membership.

It was all focused on education. It was all focused on helping people like me when I saw myself in the mirror knowing that I had the resources and the means and that this financial institution can help those like me who weren't educated and/or had access to other types of products.

And so I was hired and I remember my CEO telling me, eventually we became friends, that they chose passion over experience. And when I was in front of the board of directors and the other executives, they saw this unpolished but very passionate kid, and they put that in air quotes, that had this big, bold idea to revolutionize how they were marketing and growing the credit union.

And so that's how I was selected to be part of the executive team. And I had the go-ahead to really do something really radical, which was to talk about basic personal finance. And when you think about this, at the height of the Great Recession, that's in 2009, 2010, when I joined that credit union out in Menlo Park, California, everyone was still talking about retirement.

Everyone was still talking about investing and the future. And I knew from my personal experiences and the experiences of those that I became friends with and the jobs that I had, that we were struggling day to day. And we were struggling with basic personal finance, with basic fundamentals about banking, budgeting, credit reports, credit scores.

And I really wanted to go back to that, to the basics. And with that, we were extremely successful in getting our sponsor. The credit union wasn't open to everyone. You had to work for a specific company, this particular credit union I worked for. And at the time, it was Tyco, ADT, TE.

And so they realized that there was a benefit to this financial information that we were sharing, the seminar that I created, all around financial motivation, all around really basic information. And it became the most widely requested seminar series of this Fortune 500 company all across the country. And everyone was downfounded.

They hire and they pay so much money to get the big guys to come in and talk about the 401(k)s and et cetera. And those things were important. But I knew that if you were struggling to pay your rent or that car payment or that credit card or debt collectors are calling you, chances are there's no way that you can pay towards your retirement into that 401(k) plan.

There's no way that you are performing at 100% at the workplace because you're thinking about your finances. And so we grew very quickly in the three and a half years that I was at the credit union. So you're looking at when I joined, it was a $65 million asset credit union.

I left. It was at $110 million in assets. And because of the successes that we've had in a very short period of time, the board of directors and my CEO sat me down and said, Jason, we'd like to select you as the successor CEO of the credit union. And we'd like to put you into the path of replacing my CEO when she would retire in a few years.

And that gave me pause. How old were you for that conversation? I was 28. Had you ever finished your college degree? Yes. I finished my college degree before I got out to California. So at that point, I was like, this is it. I made it. I got the American dream of making six figures and living in a really beautiful place and getting this fancy title.

But then I just kind of looked around the stuff that I was surrounded with. And at that point, living out in California, I was away from my family. I was away from my friends. They're all back in Jersey. And so I just looked around and I said, wow, is this what I worked for?

All this stuff that filled my apartment in Palo Alto, California. And so you're looking and thinking about that I came from Elizabeth. Now I'm living in Palo Alto, California. Before I graduated high school, I lived in seven different houses. My parents, my family, we moved around a lot. We were a big family.

They had five kids and they're hardworking. They made sure that everything was paid for. So we never had to worry about money and they never had to talk to us about money. And but I didn't have all the luxury stuff. I instead of getting Nike's, we got the I think it was like I don't even know if they make it like the Spalding's.

There is these shoes that they could get for like fifteen dollars, these sneakers. And I'll get the hand-me-downs from my brother. And now I'm in Palo Alto. I'm in this apartment that's too expensive. I think it was 16, a little over sixteen hundred dollars for a 700 square foot apartment in San Francisco, the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area.

So quite expensive and at a walk in closet with with tags with their clothes, I mean, clothes with their tags still on them, gadgets and things that I didn't use. And I had two cars, a motorcycle, a pedal bike. So what have you? And and I would travel. I would travel and have those experiences.

And at the end, I just said, OK, well, if I had to reassess the direction of my life and my content and not being and being away from family for three and a half years and my friends and Jersey and now being this having this offer laid out to me, I wasn't quite sure if that was the you know, the path that I wanted to continue on.

And that's when I did the complete opposite. I resigned instead. So that was dumb. Tell us more. So it's interesting. So it was I just remember the look on the faces of these of the executives and as well as the board of directors saying, you know, you're in this upward career trajectory.

This is it. And and then I knew just something was missing and I wasn't quite sure what that what that missing part was. And I was equating success with all the things that I was purchasing and the fancy title. And and so so eventually, when I had that moment where I had this opportunity that I've wanted for a very long time and I looked at my bank account, I looked at the things around me and I was like, wow, this is a reflective of success.

I thought that. Right. And so I was saving. I was saving my 401k plan. I was saving I was buying, you know, the stock options for our parent company, T connectivity. So I was doing all these really good things for my future. But when you looked at my bank account, you'd see every payday, the funds that were there went went to bills.

And and I spent everything else on things just to keep me satisfied. And in the book, I I would say that I was I continue to mindlessly consume and obsessively complain about my situation. And and I remember having this conversation with my VP of finance and saying, I think I just need to make more money.

And and so I was one of those individuals, whether through luck or whether through circumstance, I was every time I asked for a raise, I would get it and then some. And so even before I decided to to quit officially or resign my position, my my the executive team, the CEO and the board of directors offered to provide me down payment assistance to buy a home.

And and I looked at this then. Right. It's like these are the golden handcuffs that people are talking about and they want to keep me here. And I wasn't necessarily sure if this is what I want to continue on. And I thought I was at that moment. And I think for many of us, right, when we're in our mid to late 20s, we're still trying to discover who we are.

Many people are successful and they're in that career. They're in that financial situation that they are extremely happy with. And others and many others that I've met is that we're still trying to define our life. We're still trying to define our purpose, the meaning. And I thought that purpose and meaning all equated to the size of the income that I was making or that I was hitting these just financial milestones in terms of contributing to my 401k, contributing to different different things to set my life and be able to live my life the way I wanted to live it when I was 70 years old.

And all those thoughts all culminated to to the moment where I said I quit and quitting landed me the opportunity to free myself from any work obligations. And in 2012, I found myself backpacking around the world. I went to 20 countries in 12 months, Southeast Asia, Central America, Western Europe.

And then I started having these conversations with people who were telling me I was lucky that I was American and individuals. And it didn't matter what part of the country, what part of the world I was going to, whether it was Southeast Asia or in Belize or in Portugal, they were saying, you're so lucky it's the land of opportunity.

I remember I was having this conversation with this guy in a village in Dala, Myanmar. And he said to me, you know, are the streets paved with gold? And and I thought he was joking. And the look in his eyes and and at that time in 2012, Myanmar, which is this country sandwiched by I think it's Bangladesh and Thailand, just opened up.

They had a military junta that had been in control and they closed the country to the world. And in 2012, they just started allowing Americans and those who are holding American passports to enter more freely. And so I was one of the very few to get there. And when people would look at you and and they know you're different and they know that you're coming from the United States, they're just bombarding me with questions about opportunity, about the American dream.

I mean, not in those contexts, but all around those subject matter. And here I was thinking to myself, these people believe that we have tremendous opportunity in the United States, that people are are able to just quit their jobs and backpack around the world that I did. And there is a point where all these conversations culminated to to me going to another part of the country in Myanmar called Bagan.

And I and it's a picture that has become really synonymous with my brand and my image. I'm sitting on this eighth century temple staring out of five thousand temples, pagodas, stupas on the horizon. And it was that moment where I said to myself, I'm living my dreams. And where was everyone else?

And through that, that aha moment, I I took that through all the other countries I went through for that year and the other conversations that impacted me. And I said, how did this guy who grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that everything stacked up against him, that had this horrible relationship with money that was doing some of the right things, but not all the right things?

How did I get from that point to to saying no to the traditional path, to being able to say no to a higher paying position, fancier title and just go backpacking around the world without any plans of what's next when I came back? And I realized that was just it was financial knowledge.

It was. And I like to say that knowledge is power, but financial knowledge is life changing. And being exposed in the banking industry, being exposed to experts, certified financial planners, financial advisors and having conversations with people when that opening up their accounts or on taking their deposits or or what have you in the branch.

I was having these conversations with people who are handling their money very well and those who are struggling. And I could see people driving in with their fancy Mercedes Benz or or Range Rovers. And I would look in their bank account when they're making their deposit or opening up their checking account.

And I'll notice that there were no savings whatsoever or that they paid multiple numbers of of non-sufficient fund fees. And and so it was that. And so through that process, when I got back in 2013, I wanted to understand what got me from where I was to where I am today.

And and again, it had a lot to do with just beginning to understand money, beginning to understand my relationship with money and addressing these money beliefs that stemmed from my relationship with money. You feel a little guilty while traveling, because obviously when you travel extensively, you see people who, as you say, they say that the roads are paved with gold in America.

And here you are walking away from from all that to come and to to depending on how I frame the question, to gawk at them or to experience their lifestyle. Did you feel a little guilty about walking away? You know, I did. And so something that that that I don't share as as often and I probably should.

So when I left in in January, I think it's it was the 11th of 2012 to my first country, I went to the Philippines. I went to I flew into Manila and the Philippines. It's a third world country. It's a country that is growing, but it's a third world country.

And I remember walking around and I'm part Filipino. And and I saw people struggling and they were having, you know, when there is poverty in the US, but you haven't seen poverty until you've seen third world poverty and people living in slums or living on top of each other.

They're living by the riverbanks in these shanty like homes. And it was really jarring for me. And and so I remember I was flying from Manila in the Philippines to another island, Cebu, and I went and I bought I purchased my ticket and I'm in the plane and I'm sitting down just staring out through the window.

And all these thoughts, these emotions are rushing into my body. And I've just been away. I've been out of the US for two weeks. I was holding the handrails right there. So I'm holding them really tightly and I have my eyes closed and I'm thinking about, you know, all the all the images, the conversations that I was just having in that short two week time frame in the Philippines.

And I remember closing my eyes and I was having a nervous breakdown and I go, God, did I make the right decision? And and so at that point, I realized I was like, you know, did I make that right decision? And I decided when I landed and I went backpacking in Cebu, I was doing all the normal taking photos and going around being a tourist.

And as I was in Cebu, all of a sudden I see hordes of people running and screaming and I didn't know what was happening. And and I took a step back going, oh, my God, this is a riot. And, you know, coming from Jersey, coming from the things that I've seen, I'm like, OK, this must be a riot.

And so I stand back and I let these people pass. And all of a sudden, motorcycles and cars are zipping, rushing by. And I'm there with my camera going, I don't know what's going on until someone stopped and said to me and looked at me and said, run tidal wave.

And at that point I go, I start running and I'm looking behind me thinking like, you know, all these people that are running behind me, you know, where's the wave coming from? And then I'm in an island, you know. So where is this wave and where am I supposed to go to?

It was complete mayhem and chaos. And at that point, like I switched the camera on and I and I covered kind of the last moments of it where I said, maybe this is it. And and then I mean, obviously, I'm safe. I'm here talking to you. But I was in my hotel room and I would still feel the aftershock.

So there was an earthquake that happened in a neighboring island. And because of what happened in Thailand and Indonesia with the tsunami, the swelling of the ocean for a bit caused a panic throughout kind of like the islands in the middle part of the Philippines. And so people started text messaging and and saying that there was a tidal wave that was coming.

And then all of a sudden I had all these images of what that could look like. And I thought, OK, well, I left this comfy job. I'm having this nervous breakdown because I left a six figure salary and people are struggling. And here I am, like exploring without a care in the world.

And then now I'm going to die in a tsunami here in Cebu. And everything with everything ended up being being fine. And I got some some fame because I went and I posted this video on YouTube and the National News saw the video. And then all of a sudden they plastered my face on TV.

And so on the news, people they had American caught in tsunami. And so I had my little bout of my five minutes or 15 minutes of fame in the Philippines. But it was that moment when I closed my eyes. And this was probably after midnight in the hotel room.

And I remember going, OK, God, I I said I wanted an adventure. I didn't want the traditional path. And that was quite an answer to to that question. And from that point on, I said, I'm going to, you know, throw my plans across. And that's how I ended up, you know, backpacking through through 20 countries in that 12 month time frame.

And allow myself to open up and come to terms with the mindset that I had and the steps that I took to get me from again, from where I was, where I am today. So I want to get to the content of your book and what you actually teach.

So just to summarize, you went on that trip, came back to the US, I guess, took a little bit of time to figure some things out, started working on some of your personal finance projects. And then recently you've finished a 50 state tour this past summer of teaching seminars on financial wellness.

And then you've just recently published the book, You Only Live Once. Is that a reasonably correct, concise summary of the last few years since your trip? That's absolutely it. That's what has transpired in the last three years. OK, so you based upon your experience, which you charted out, which in many ways, don't be offended.

I think it's the perfect stereotypical millennial experience. And I want to explore it because we are compatriots in terms of being of similar age. How old are you currently, Jason? 33. OK, so you're two years older than I am. But this is kind of the experience that many of our generation faces.

And this is something that the reason I ask you about if you're guilty and the reason I'm asking you some of these probing questions is you and I might understand this, and perhaps many of our younger listeners will. But there are many people who hear this angst that you described, living in California, working, being in line with a CEO, who hear this kind of personal turmoil, angst, and just say, what's wrong with you?

Why do you not take advantage of this? You can go visit your family, and you can set up a nice life. So I want to explore the emotions of this a little bit and also explore your advice for others. So you've spoken with a lot of people all around the world, and you put a lot of research into your book.

What is different about you and our generation that makes you approach money this way as compared to perhaps your parents or grandparents who would have been content to say, I've got a great opportunity here at this credit union, I'm going to keep on working and doing good work here?

I think we are a generation that was raised to believe that anything and everything was possible. That if we wanted something, we had to work really hard, and we can achieve it. We can achieve our dreams. We are the first generation to say, if you have a dream, you can live it.

You can have it. And our parents, the baby boomers, worked really, really hard to enable us to be able to live our dreams. And maybe they had to, and I have these conversations with baby boomers, who say, yes, I sacrificed really hard. I worked tons of hours. I stayed at one or two jobs in my lifetime so I could provide food on the table.

I could make sure that my kids went to college so they can live their dream life. And what's really interesting, when you talk about that point of contention, is that, yeah, I'll hear some baby boomers saying, yes, you're an entitled generation. You're a generation that, like you, here you are, Jason.

You graduated and you went to, you had this fancy job, and you're making money, more money than what others would make. And you turned it all around and said, forget this. I'm going to go backpacking around the world. And that really boils down to the values that our parents, my parents, instilled in me.

My parents worked really hard, and they wanted to make sure that I had the opportunity to be able to enjoy life. So they spent their time working to give their kids a better life. And so that value system, all relating to time. And my parents worked all the time.

And so, and like my brothers and sisters and I, we had to take care of ourselves. But it really had to do with this value of time, this belief that we can achieve and we can live the life of our dreams sooner rather than later. These are things that we were taught by our parents, the baby boomers.

And so when I hear this point of contention between baby boomers and millennials, Gen Y, I like to say that we are the product of our parents' hopes and dreams. So our parents had these hopes, they had these dreams, and they instilled them into us. And they created us.

And so we are an entitled generation in the sense that we were told that if we go to college, we'll get a great job and we'll be able to afford a house and start a family. And then for many of us, we were raised in what, two, like the internet bust in the early 2000s, and then the housing crisis in our formative years after college.

And so all of a sudden we start saying, wait a minute, like this traditional path that they went on doesn't really align with the values that they taught us. And so for many of us, that's how we were stressing and using our hard-earned dollars on experiences than things. How does this approach financial planning?

How does this change financial planning? And let me give a little bit more background to the question. You, in your work in the credit union, you had some exposure to traditional financial planning. And now in your work of You Only Live Once and the work that you've done of laying out how to approach financial planning, you've talked more, you're incorporating some of the more non-traditional aspects.

And even in your own story, you were putting money into a 401k, but then you quit your job to travel the world. So obviously you need money for that. Now you're trying to put together this career that's different. Now you've put together this career that is different than what it was previously.

So I find that in the world of financial planning, there's a real disconnect in the ability for, say millennials with the life attitude that you just described, and financial advisors who are trained to serve a baby boomer generation. I find there's a real disconnect of their ability to communicate with one another.

So how does this type of approach, this You Only Live Once approach affect financial planning? How do you incorporate this desire to live now, do it now, while also recognizing the value of saving and investing over a lifetime? Yeah. So I first, I'm sure as people are listening, and I get this a lot too, it's like, why did I title it You Only Live Once?

That comes from our generation's use of YOLO, right? We shortened it up, used the acronym YOLO, and that was associated with mindless spending sprees that was associated with just kind of living for the moment without a care to the future. And as we get older, so we're no longer 21 and careless, and many of us can still be careless in our 30s, we're really understanding the term YOLO as it relates to what it stood for, You Only Live Once, and that yes, we can make unwise financial decisions for the moment that can curtail our ability to enjoy future moments.

So You Only Live Once is an understanding, it's awareness that through sound financial decision making, you can have a lifetime of moments that are positive. So it's not about saying, okay, well, I need to buy that expensive luxury car that I can't afford, but YOLO, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves six months later struggling to make the car payment or the insurance payment, because to me, that's not living this one lifetime and things like that.

So I really wanted to stress that it wasn't about this consumption and this spur of the moment decision making, that it's true awareness that you have this one lifetime here on this planet, and you have the opportunity to make sound financial decisions that can enable you to enjoy a lifetime.

And so that has truly resonated. It has resonated across generations. I mean, I have traditionalists that attend the sessions as well as baby boomers who said, I wish I knew this 30, 40 years ago, because this aligns with my values today, that there's a balance. There's a balance of saving for the future and also enjoying some of the things that you enjoy, whether it is luxury goods or it is experiences.

And I found that speaking with financial advisors and experts who serve the baby boomer generation, they're still looking at this tried and true method, right? This method of, okay, you're buying a home, you need to send these kids to school, you will be retiring at the age of 70.

So there are all these benchmarks. And then I see speaking with those who are retired and follow this traditional financial planning, they get sick because one, there is no purpose to their life for one, so they become ill and they end up passing a few years after retirement. I had one individual share that with me that happened to their spouse.

And so what I've noticed, and there's a growing shift of advisors and CFPs that are catering to our generation and generation Z and even generation X, that we can do sound financial planning, we can contribute to our retirement at the same time, be able to enjoy the things that, you know, in our lives that make our life worth living, that we can look back and say, yes, that was a great lifetime of moments.

And it really starts with the vision for life. And when I've sat down with traditional financial advisors, they'll talk to me specifically about my financial goals. And we rarely had a conversation about how those financial goals relate to the vision of the life that I wanted to live. And I've noticed that I was always pushed to, okay, what's the vision for your retirement?

So here I am in my 20s being told, how do you envision your retirement? What do you hope to be doing when you're 70, when you're unable to walk or you're having pains and things like that? And I said, this just doesn't resonate. It's like, how am I supposed to think about something 40, 50 years into the future?

But that's what all the conversations were being steered at was something down at 70. And now I was following this traditional path. And when I shared my story, things weren't working out the way that I'd envisioned in some aspects. And I realized that's like, okay, there has to be some type of middle ground.

There has to be a way for us to allocate our time and resources on the things that matter, on the things that I value today. But also to the point where I'm saving for the future. And I think of retirement quite differently, and I've noticed, than the majority of people that I do meet out on the road, that retirement is the state in which you are physically unable to exchange your time for a paycheck or for money.

So I meet people who are 70, 80, they're still working, they're still chugging along, and they want to work because, yeah, they get some additional cash and they don't necessarily need to because they have a great nest egg, but they do it for social reasons. They do it because they want to use their time as opposed to just sitting around.

And then so I knew that there's that middle ground. And looking back again, in my experience, looking back on the things that I purchased and how do they represent my values in terms of the time spent here in this world, I realized that I was like, oh, wait, wait a minute.

I can spend on the things that matter and I can plan for the future to the point where if I'm physically unable to exchange my time for a paycheck, that I have enough to pay for my living expenses. I have enough to continue to enjoy life. And that was again, was like one of that aha moment.

And I thought I was alone in this. And the more that I speak, the more I got into personal finance blogging. And that's what I started doing in 2013, just kind of sharing this. And the community started growing and I started meeting you and others like you that had this different idea that we can spend our money on things that we enjoy.

But we have to be really clear. We have to understand the value in which they contribute to our life. And so that moment, that's how I've been living my life in some degree and just more so in the past few years. I want to ask you one more question on this mindset.

I want to transition to actually some of the specifics, things that you've done and the strategies you've employed to make this work for yourself. As a listener of my show who is very financially knowledgeable, has a young family and has money in a retirement account, but in considering the age of their children, they're considering pulling out of the workforce for a year and traveling with their family and their children around the country on an RV trip.

It was a long held dream, long held goal. But in order to finance it, they'd need to choose to withdraw money from their 401k early. I don't care about the financial cost. This listener is very aware of the costs of penalties and taxes, et cetera. What I care about is, so I'm not asking you to comment on the advisability of such an action.

What I care about is the challenge of prioritizing now versus later. If you were given a scenario like I've just described, how would you advise somebody to consider the advisability of pursuing a short term goal versus a long term goal, given that there are costs and benefits to both?

Absolutely. I mean, we can go and do an analysis and I tend to state to people when they're deciding whether or not to leave a job, and then for this instance, leave for a year and go cross country to outweigh the financial cost, the pros and the cons, to outweigh the experiences and what you hope to.

And I think at this point, there are ways for you to plan the finances for this year, as opposed to just kind of going blindly. And so for me to kind of give you my strategy and how I left my senior executive job and was able to travel for a year without thoughts to finances, and I still had expenses very minimally.

That was one. If you have this idea, this thought you want to go away for a year is to start saving to cover the basic living expenses. So that is definitely a strategy that does work. And so it's not about saving tons of money, it's saving the amount that you need just to cover the basics.

And that could be maybe you still have some student loan debt that you need to pay. Maybe there are some credit card debt that needs to be paid, etc. You have your cell phone bill. So you need to know and calculate how much those things are and be able to project, okay, this is the amount that I need in order for me to cover whatever those basic living expenses are.

So housing, food, etc. And the wonderful thing about that, it's not about, you're not looking at income, you're looking at expenses. And so you have the ability to start cutting things that are eating at your income or your ability to put money into an account that you can use for the entire year.

And so for me, I looked at, I was saving for a down payment in a home. And then when I realized I wanted to go backpacking around the world instead, I used the money that I was saving for this down payment on a home and I paid off the rest of my debt.

I mean, I was still carrying student loan debt. I had a bit of credit card debt. And so I used that down payment to pay off the rest of that debt. And I looked at my expenses. At that point, I let go of, you know, I didn't have my apartment.

I sold a majority of my things, I think 99% of my things, the cars. And so I had the most minimal expenses that you could have on a monthly basis. And that allowed me to backpack around the world for an entire year at $10,000. And so I look at this as you don't want to stress yourself with leaving the workforce, going on this cross country adventure, and then coming back and going, "What the heck did I just do?" Now I'm stressed because you're not going to look back.

And I think of success as the ability to look back in time through whatever you've gone through and say, "Today, I am happy. I am content. I'm in a good place today," regardless of the things that happened. And now if you're coming back from this cross country trip and you've placed yourself in a financial situation, all this uncertainty, this debt, you're not going to be able to look at the experience fondly.

You're not going to be able to have the experiences that you want. And so I really encourage people to think about the various options that they have before leaving a job and then going out traveling the world if the company offers a sabbatical. If not and you do decide to leave, you do some planning.

And that kind of goes back to financial wellness. It's the vision, getting clarity of your values, and financial planning. That's a really key component, making sure that those expenses are paid up. But that's one way. So there are some traditional aspects to kind of doing the non-traditional path. And again, all aimed at being able to enjoy your short-term goals at the same time, not fearing what the future has in store.

Jason, you left the job that had a lot of career promise. How do you support yourself financially now since coming back from your trip? So as I mentioned, I did some wise financial decision making. I'd always contributed. And so let me take a step back. When I was younger, when I was 21 and I joined the workforce, someone sat me down.

She was a financial advisor. And she said, Jason, whatever you do, just keep contributing 10% into your 401(k) because I don't care. And she says, I don't care what you do with your money. Just do that. And then for some reason, it was the first financial advice that I ever got from at that point someone that I knew was an expert and had all these certifications and licenses.

And so I followed that and I contributed 10% of my 401(k) and then I dabbled in the stock market and just kind of playing around saying, OK, well, that's interesting. And so I do have investments that I've held on to through the years that are paying off. And in addition, I am a freelance writer.

So there are moments where I get an opportunity to write. I've also become a consultant and I address millennial issues in the workplace and also how to speak our language, specifically with fintech companies or financial technology companies, financial services such as credit unions and community banks. Like how do you talk to us in a way that you know you understand our value system, you understand how we do prioritize experience over things and how we want to live for the moment but also plan for the future and how we don't want to be sold products and we want to be aligned with brands that understand, again, our values.

And so that's how I'm able to support myself through some blogging, through some consultations and speaking gigs across the country. Have you ever wondered if you made the right decision? I can tell you right now, as I mentioned, success is looking back and saying, wow, through all that stuff, I'm content.

And there hasn't been a moment in the past three years that I've questioned my decision in leaving. And that's because it has been a roller coaster ride. And I've realized at this point when we when we incorporate sound financial decision making with a very clear focus and purpose, I don't have time to go, wow, maybe I should be back in corporate.

But I do want to say I went back to during my road trip across the country where we drove 18000 miles and had 54 events. I was back in the Bay Area in San Francisco and I had three events all across the Bay. And I remember I was in San Jose, California, and I wanted to check the the condo that I wanted to purchase back then in 2011.

It was a two bedroom condo at these towers at the new building in downtown San Jose. And it was going for four hundred thousand dollars back in 2011. Right. And so I went and I look at what the two bedroom condos going for close to one point to five million dollars.

So when you're talking about thinking, thinking about, well, maybe did I make the right decision at that point? I just laugh because in a very short period of time, you're looking at that the value of that condo. If I had purchased it back in 2011 would be three times as much then.

But again, at that point, I wouldn't have had this clarity of thought. I wouldn't have been clear in terms of money mindset and I wouldn't have been able to truly understand my relationship with money, to craft a life of financial well-being and a purposeful one. Final question is always would you even have sold at that point in time because or would you have would you have jumped ship?

It is definitely a matter of intelligent timing, but sometimes it's easier to jump a little early than a little bit late because you're less you're less committed. I know when I left when I left my and closed my financial planning business to pursue radical personal finance, there were many factors involved.

But one that I did seriously consider was the fact that although it was a very expensive decision for me to leave, I walked away from a lot of of future income that I had already earned in various deferred compensation arrangements. But I looked at it and said, "If it's this hard now, in five years when the numbers are triple, it's going to be a lot harder.

And will I really walk away at that point in the future?" Now I think anybody, if you count the cost and you decide that you want to make a change, you'll make a change no matter what. But golden handcuffs are very real and you get used to certain things.

And so I think it's worth factoring that in to your decision criteria. Last question I want to bring to you Jason here is you just finished this trip that you briefly said, 18,000 miles, 54 stops doing financial wellness seminars. How long were you on the road for that trip?

A hundred and seven days. So what's interesting to me about this is it's a good way of showing how when you have an area of interest and an area of focus, you can incorporate work and fun. So you had a 107 day road trip. I'm sure a lot of parts of it were difficult and were work, but it was also fun, wasn't it?

Absolutely. I got to hike, I got to explore, and I got to eat at really fancy places that you'd see on TV. And so it was a lot of fun. And exactly what you said, I'm at the stage in my life where I'm very fortunate through a lot of hard work and timing and new networks and connections that I'm able to incorporate the things that I enjoy.

So I'm passionate about personal finance. I'm passionate about helping others. I'm passionate and love traveling and having new experiences. That's what I wanted to do when I decided to leave corporate and start backpacking around the world. And here I am. And I look at myself and I'm in the mirror and I say, "Jason, is this real life?" Because I now have this opportunity to incorporate all these things that I enjoy into something that generates income and serves my purpose.

So how did you, what were the financial arrangements for a trip like this? I assume you had a couple sponsors and you were doing some work with a client and then also, I think it tied in with your book. But my impression is that you made money on this road trip.

Is that right? Correct. So I had sponsors who purchased copies of the books and also sponsors who paid me to go speak in front of an audience to share the exact parts of the story that I just shared with your listeners. And so the majority of my sponsors throughout the country were credit unions.

And I also work with USAA. They sponsored three of my stops. But you're looking at 30 stops across the country were sponsored by local credit unions. And also work with some FinTech folks and nonprofit organizations and city organizations, all excited about trying to figure out what makes us tick?

Why are we so focused on experiences and not just things? And what is this YOLO mentality all about? So yeah, the generosity of sponsors that align with my vision as well as the mission of the road trip helped make this possible. And part of that too was to ensure that the cost was covered.

It's a really expensive endeavor to spend 107 days on the road as well as host events. So not only did we just show up in a couple of places, we hosted events, we found the venue. We did the food and things like that. But also at the point to knowing that what was the value with the time that we spent on the road as well as the potential for profit to continue the conversation going forward.

It is just a cool example though of how many things can be done where when you get free of some constraints, you can substitute ways to earn income and do something that you care about and there are plenty of ways in today's world to integrate this with sponsors, etc.

and really make it happen. Jason, thanks for coming on and sharing your story. Tell us about your website. Tell us about the book and any actions that you'd like my audience to take as a result of this interview, please. Awesome. Thank you so much, Josh, for having me on.

I truly enjoy this. For those of you who want to learn more, you can visit jasonvita.com. Just some personal thoughts that I share on my personal website. I also do have a Q&A platform about 65,000 millennials sharing financial information, asking questions and that's frugal.com. That's with a P-H-R-O-O-G-A-L.com. Play on the word frugal.

And you want to learn more about the Road to Financial Wellness, that's roadtofinancialwellness.com to learn more about the road as well as about the book and the possibility and they'll make that announcement here for Road Trip 3.0. I was just going to say, what's next? Possibility, it sounds like.

Well, awesome, man. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Radical Personal Finance. If you're interested in building financial freedom for yourself and your family, please subscribe to the podcast with our free mobile app so you don't miss a single episode. Just search the App Store on your mobile device for Radical Personal Finance and download our free app, which also contains an archive of every past episode of the show.

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