Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai, and I just want to say thank you to the 2,000 plus of you for pre-ordering a hard copy of my book, "Buy This, Not That, How to Spend Your Way "to Wealth and Freedom." I truly believe my book will be the best or one of the best personal finance books out there.

I spent two years writing, editing, rewriting the book over and over again to make it as applicable as possible and to help as many people as possible get their finances right. In addition, over 90 million readers have come to Financial Samurai since I started the site in 2009. And as a result, I've heard many, many different perspectives that have really elucidated my blind spots and perhaps many of yours as well.

I truly believe the best way to learn is to look at different perspectives, to listen to other people, and then build upon some of the positives from their viewpoints into your own so you can make better choices going forward. It's hard to believe, but I've spent over 30 years working in finance, studying finance, and writing about finance.

So in essence, finance is in my blood and this is the book I've always wanted to write to help readers everywhere live better lives on their terms. Money is too important to be left up to pontification. As a result, everything I've written in the book is based on firsthand experience.

This way, I can share with you the good and the bad to help you make better decisions. The secret to stop saying, "Well, if I knew then what I know now," is to simply learn from someone who has been through what you will go through or what you may go through.

Preparation is so important if you wanna get your finances right and if you wanna get your life right. Here's the thing. Once you get your money right, you can start better focusing on things that really matter to you. After all, money is only a means to an end. And for those of you who treat money as the end all be all, I hope my book will help change your philosophy.

Once you achieve a certain level of financial independence where your passive income covers your living expenses, the world really opens up. I believe the ultimate goal is to move money into the background so you can stop obsessing over it, worrying about it, fretting over it, and start focusing on doing the things that matter.

I show you how in the first half of my book with actionable advice under a logical framework. I help you move forward with confidence. And let's talk about the word confidence for a bit. Some of us have more confidence and more courage than others. And that's fine. The more education you have, the more knowledge you have, and the more experience you have, the more confident and courageous you will be.

So this is one of the reasons why Buy This, Not That is so important. Because after reading the book, I truly believe your confidence and courage will go up so that you can approach life in a more fulfilling way. In the second half of my book, I talk about many of life's biggest dilemmas and how to approach them using my 70/30 decision-making framework.

In other words, if you believe there's a 70% probability or greater you will make the correct decision, go for it. At the same time, have the awareness of knowing you may get things wrong 30% of the time. Unless the outcome is death or financial ruin, you'll be able to learn from your mistakes, recover, and make better choices over time.

And if you've been with Financial Samar for a while, you have heard many of my failures and many of my mistakes. After every single failure, it stings, it hurts. Why did they reject me? What's wrong with me? But I turn it around to say, well, the reason why they rejected me was because I was insufficient in these areas.

Let me improve upon them. The reason why they said no was because I didn't have the proper framework or the idea or the charisma or the courage. Whatever the rejection may be, we can learn from them because rejection and failure are the best teachers. And this is what I've incorporated in "By This, Not That." One of my core messages is for readers to think in probabilities, not absolutes.

If you think in absolutes, you will likely miss out on a lot of great opportunities because you'll feel you need 100% certainty before moving forward. Think back to the time, let's say, maybe you were in high school, or maybe it's even middle school. You liked that girl or that boy, but you weren't 100% sure.

Therefore, you didn't ask them out. And then 10 years later, you run into them on the street, and then you just confess your love. Who cares? You're an adult now, right? You don't have any fear. And then they suddenly tell you, you know what? I really liked you too.

I really liked you. Why didn't you ask me out? Both parties were stuck with uncertainty. So I say, 70% chance or greater, just go for it. With the expectation, you'll be rejected. You'll be wrong 30% of the time. But who cares? Because you'll learn from it. And every single time you get rejected, you gain a little bit more courage.

With my 70/30 decision-making framework, I tackle some of these dilemmas. For example, pay for private school or public school, join a startup or work for an established company, start a lifestyle business or go for the grand slam, job hop or stay a loyal soldier, live in an expensive coastal city or move to a low-cost area, invest in real estate or stocks, whether you should marry or just cohabitate.

Should you marry for love or marry for money? Should you have children early or late? Should you seek fame to boost your wealth or stay low-key and peaceful? And so many more topics that you and your friends can talk about, discuss over a drink or a meal, and argue your own viewpoint and discuss mine as well.

Again, money is just one part of the equation. It's how we use our money to make better choices that matters most. If you've read Financial Samurai or listened to this podcast over the years, you'll notice that I don't incessantly talk about financial independence or early retirement. And the reason is, is because I'm busy living my life, even though financial independence is what I achieved back in 2012 when I was 34.

It was a simple life back then, and it's a little bit more complicated now because I'm a father of two young children. So I'm spending a lot of time taking care of them, trying to help them with their emotional and physical development, and just trying to be present. And so as a result, I'll talk about fatherhood.

And maybe another day, I'll talk about the Federal Reserve hiking rates by 50 basis points. Whatever the case may be, life goes on after you've achieved financial independence. And so it's all about the journey, the journey to financial independence and post financial independence, and what you're using your money to do with your life.

Now, obviously, the more money you have, the more options you have, and that's up to all of us. And this is why I've decided to dedicate a good portion of the book by trying to figure out what are the real life scenarios that we'll face and how money is involved in these scenarios.

Now, let me share five reasons why I wrote "Buy This, Not That," and in the end, I'll also share some bonus gifts that I'll provide for you if you order more than one copy. So one, the book had to be written. One of the reasons why I started Financial Samurai in 2009 is because I noticed there weren't any personal finance bloggers with finance backgrounds.

It was strange to me. So therefore, I thought, well, it'd be a good idea to fill this obvious hole. I thought about money a little bit differently, and I wanted to bring my expertise and perspectives to the world. When I was approached by portfolio Penguin Random House with the book idea, I noticed there also weren't many nonfiction finance books that were written by people with finance backgrounds.

I thought it was really strange, so I said, well, I figured I might as well fill the hole again. After being able to escape corporate America at 34 and live the life I've wanted and I want for the past 10 years, I just had to write a book that could help people potentially do something similar.

In my mind, once you see how something is done, it's much easier to believe a similar path is possible for you. It's kind of like when Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile in 1954 at the age of 25. Before then, nobody thought breaking the four minute mile was possible.

But after he did so, many other runners followed suit. All right, the second reason why I wrote Buy This, Not That, there's a whole world of consumers out there who love to read books and not blogs. Therefore, it was only logical to write Buy This, Not That to try to reach them.

Before you start writing a book, you want to think about impact and how it will help others. So in my mind, creating maximum impact in an affordable way is important. I could create $2,000 plus e-courses like some of my peers do, and I would probably make a lot of money.

However, I felt packing in all the information in a book that cost $27 or less was a more accessible solution. One of the reasons why I continue to write three times a week on Financial Samurai plus a weekly newsletter is because I want to write for free and help as many people as possible think about different perspectives, get their finances right, feel more confident in living their lives.

I know that once I started getting my finances right, whether it's through investing, budgeting, saving, asset allocation, I could move forward more. I could buy a house. I could feel more confident starting a family. All these things matter. And if it's free or if it's low cost, it can help more people.

If you look at the average net worth, the average median household income, I believe the world needs more financial education. A personal finance course should be mandatory in high school or college. But it is curiously still not. I live in this bubble where I studied economics in college, got my MBA, worked in investment banking for 13 years, and I've written over 2,500 personal finance articles since 2009.

I'm like hooked. This is just a part of me. And if I don't write for a couple days, I start getting a little bit jittery. Now, the things that seem obvious to me or others with finance backgrounds don't seem as obvious to those without financial backgrounds. Therefore, my goal is to bring more financial education to those who seek to grow their wealth in a risk-appropriate way.

And I think it's our duty to share what we know. Sharing is how we can all learn, and sharing is about giving back. One of the things I noticed after I reached 40-- I'm 45 now-- is that the desire to share the knowledge grows. And I think one of the reasons why is because your skill set actually slowly begins to diminish from your 20s and 30s.

Think about as an athlete. The reason why a lot of tennis players retire in their 30s is because they just can't compete anymore. And the mind, thankfully, lasts a much longer time. But you want to preserve that knowledge. And the more you share, actually, the better you feel, because you know that other people are being helped.

All right, the third reason why I decided to write the book-- I want to narrow the growing inequality gap. Since the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, the rich have gotten extraordinarily rich compared to the middle class. Meanwhile, the top 0.1% have blown past the top 1% as well.

In the book, I want to bring their secrets and their ways of investing and thinking to the public in order to help more people build wealth. And while I was writing the book, I also had an epiphany as to why so many personal finance authors write mainly only about saving money, budgeting, and index funds-- all very important topics, but they've been talked about over and over again.

And I just didn't understand why not write more interesting and potentially lucrative topics. After all, you can only save so much, but income and investment returns are unlimited. So after over a year of writing and rewriting my book, I finally understood why. Without a finance background, writing about anything else is way more difficult.

And it was very difficult for me to try to distill these ideas and concepts that I've been practicing and that I have learned in finance to be understandable and helpful to readers. So my hope is that with the knowledge you'll gain from reading Buy This, Not That, you will build way more wealth in your lifetime than you thought possible.

And if this happens, your standard of living will go up, and the growing inequality gap will ultimately narrow. Now, I can't pretend to imagine this book and Financial Samurai will reach the whole world. Of course it's not. It's just a small, small, tiny sub-segment of the internet and for the book-reading population.

But if you get your hands on this book, and if you read my writing, I am certain that you're going to build more wealth and have more confidence to live your life the way you want going forward. All right, the fourth reason, new perspectives with more representation. As an Asian person who lived in Asia for 13 years, I used to be part of the majority.

That's all I knew. And then when I came to Virginia for high school and college at the age of 14, I became part of a minority that made up only 6% of the US population. The juxtaposition was eye-opening. I could see both sides. And it was really, really, really interesting.

At times, it was hard to fit in for me in Virginia. I got into fist fights. I was suspended once and felt like I often had to battle to be given an equal opportunity to participate. Although some of the experiences were really harsh, they also gave me tremendous motivation to try harder and not be beholden to anyone for the rest of my life.

By high school, I clearly realized the world isn't fair and never will be fair. Therefore, instead of complaining, whining, I accepted the way things were and focused on what I could control. And I bring this fighter's mindset to the book to give you the motivation to push on through no matter who you are or how difficult your struggles.

This is my favorite Chinese proverb of all time. If the direction is correct, sooner or later, you will get there. We know people are biased towards people who think, look, and talk like them. It's why podcast interviewees, award winners, bestsellers, and families who attend elite schools tend to be quite homogenous.

Let's just be frank. But that's just the way it is. But in my mind, I thought it would be nice to change things up a little bit and provide new perspectives. And maybe there will be more love and understanding for Asian folks in America if they read a good book by an Asian person who helps them.

And maybe, perhaps, a kid who seldom sees anybody who looks like them will be inspired to write their own book or do something out of the ordinary. I personally have this dream one day that my son and daughter will bring my book to show and tell class one day and say, this is what my daddy does.

In addition, a large percentage of every country's population lives in more expensive urban cities because historically, that's where the jobs were. In America, about 45% of the US population lives on the coasts. And high cost of living areas present some unique challenges which I address in the book. With how bifurcated America is, I'm hoping to create an understanding bridge between those who live on the expensive coasts and those who live inland.

There's no right or wrong way. But there are interesting and new ways in terms of how to live your life and build wealth. Ultimately, we all have the same goals of supporting our country and doing more of what we want. I'm convinced most conflict in this world is due to a lack of understanding of other people and their personal situations.

So let's spend more time getting to know each other and less time judging people for their choices. And now to my final reason why I wrote by this, not that. Steady your navigation through bad times. As someone who has worked in finance since 1999, I've gone through the euphoria and despair of the first dot-com bubble.

I know so many paper millionaires who lost it all. Then I went through the investment mania of 2000 and the devastation a few years later with a significant amount of capital. I lost about 35% of my net worth in six months. However, after each collapse, I've learned how to strengthen my finances so that no matter what happens, I'll most likely be OK.

And I want to share with you what I've learned to help more people survive downturns without too much harm. Reading by this, not that will help armor your finances and provide security for your household. For so long, it's only been good times, right? Since 2009, July, when I started the site, that was the bottom of the market.

And it's just been up, up, up, and up. And you may have read only perspectives of people who've only experienced good times since 2009. So in other words, maybe people 40 and under. This can be very, very dangerous. Bad times will eventually come, which is when you'll need financial guidance the most.

And it's really hard to understand your true risk tolerance and how bad things can get if you don't go through a prolonged bear market yourself. Now, although many of us went through the March 2020 crash and it was quite violent, it was also a quick, quick rebound. So by this, not that will help navigate you through stormy waters so that no matter how wretched the economy, you will not drown but thrive.

On my long journey, I've encountered many people who've gone bankrupt and who've had to start over. And it is very, very devastating, especially if you have a family. And my goal for by this, not that is to help you be OK and to give you that courage to live the life that you want.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode. And thanks again if you pre-ordered a hard copy of By This, Not That-- How to Spend Your Way to Wealth and Freedom. For those of you who order two or more hard copies, I'm going to send you a book plate just to fill out the form with your contact information.

For those of you who order five or more copies, I'll send you a couple of book plates and the latest edition of How to Engineer Your Layoff-- Make a Small Fortune by Saying Goodbye. It's in its fifth edition, and it has helped thousands and thousands of people leave jobs with money in their pocket.

And finally, for those of you who order 10 or more hard copies, I've got a special gift for you. It'll be a signed copy by yours truly, plus a signature stamp that only 100 of you will receive. They're going to be numbered 1 out of 100, 2 out of 100, and so forth.

And if you're a collector like I am-- I've been a collector since I was a kid-- you might really enjoy this. I'll send it to you in a hermetically sealed plastic bag for you to keep as a collector's item. And who knows? Maybe in 10, 20 years, it might be worth a lot more.

Take care, everyone. I'm having so much fun recording these episodes, writing these posts, and pre-marketing. Maybe I'll see some of you around the Bay Area, Honolulu, or New York City.