Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about why bad things stay bad for so long. Well, the other night I had drinks with an old friend. She told me her husband had struck her to the ground during some petty argument about coming home late from work.

She showed me a snapshot on her phone of the bruises she sustained on her arm during the altercation. The black and blue was obvious. There was no doubt about it. Instead of being shocked at what she told me, I started feeling angry. 90% of my anger was directed towards him.

But then the remaining 10% was frustration towards her for not reporting him or just leaving him. You see, this was not the first time my friend said her husband was violent towards her. This was the third time in one year. And who knows how many other times they fought without her telling me.

And when I asked her why not just get a divorce after seven years of marriage, this is what she told me. "Sam, I can't get a divorce because of the social stigma surrounding a divorce. I'm already 37 years old and we're trying to have a baby. Do you really expect me to start over?

My family and friends wouldn't understand. Although we've got into many fights before, he's also been quite caring and a good man. He has a stable job, makes good money, and we live in an overall comfortable lifestyle. I'm also not willing to throw away this relationship. I think we can make things work." I was just sad.

Sad to hear her response because I can never stick around in an abusive marriage. Just like I would never stick around in a bad job situation. After all, I'm the one who negotiated an exit within six months after I decided I had enough of work BS. My friend has a great job making over $160,000 a year and she would do just fine leaving her husband and living by herself in the Bay Area as she gathers her life up and starts over.

She'd also receive some additional financial assets in a divorce. But I'm not in her shoes and I have a different type of personality. It's easy for me to tell her to get a divorce because I'm not the one getting it. I'm just afraid she'll be stuck with him for the rest of her life because she fears how society will judge her more than she cares about her happiness.

I feel strongly she will look back on her life and regret not having made the decision to leave him. Sticking up for yourself can be scary. Change is extremely stressful. These are the risks we all must take to get out of bad situations. And it's so sad that the fear of society's disapproval has kept her in a bad situation for so long.

I've encouraged her to at least go to a marriage counselor because spousal abuse is absolutely unacceptable. But she hasn't, they haven't, and I'm just gonna keep on pushing. Because at the end of the day I care about her and I care about her well-being and this has got to stop.

And let me tell you a personal story. About eight months ago a new podcaster reached out to see if I wanted to be on his show focusing on financial independence. I politely declined because I didn't know him or the show well at the time. Just for reference, someone reaches out to me about twice every two weeks or three weeks to do a verbal or written interview.

Many are new podcasters that haven't been around very long and to manage my inbound requests I have a general rule that the podcaster or blogger be at least one year old before I say yes. Over the past ten years since 2009 I've noticed many folks have good intentions, they start something but then they kind of disappear after six months to a year for whatever reason.

So I'm just trying to be efficient and protect my time. Several months later the new podcaster again asked if I wanted to join his show to discuss retiring early in a high-cost area of the country. I declined again because I had other priorities and I've talked about this topic well enough.

I like going on podcasts where finance isn't the main topic because I'm trying to get out of the echo chamber here. And then several months later he asked me again whether he can host me on his show, this time on the topic of racism, probably because he had seen my post on the importance of feeling consistently uncomfortable for personal and financial growth.

The post was about my experience facing racism and bullying in Virginia as a high schooler and college student and I was wondering with my wife whether maybe we should go back to Virginia. Not only can we save like 30 to 40 percent on living expenses, but we can subject our son to a more harsher reality of life growing up as a minority in America.

And the conclusion for that post is we're probably not going to go to Virginia because we're comfortable here in San Francisco and we're probably gonna go to Honolulu, but it was a thought process to think about how, you know, being uncomfortable and facing adversity helps grow you as a person.

So given he wanted to talk about racism and I had a lot of experience about that and I feel passionate about fighting against racism and fighting for equality, I said sure, let's have a conversation and then maybe the conversation can foster more discussion, more understanding and more harmony in society.

Further, the podcaster was white, his co-host is white, his audience is mostly white and his guests are mostly white. So I thought hey as a minority living in a high-cost area of the country, this could be good so we can talk a little bit more and have more understanding.

So we had a great conversation about an hour, talked about my experience growing up, how to deal with racism, how to go forward and the podcast was set to be published and then he, a week before publishing, contacted me and said hey, I need you to apologize to this person.

And I was like which person and he said the person that was basically bullying you online and saying bad things. And I'm thinking to myself, you mean the internet troll that has been trolling my Facebook page and Financial Samurai for months and saying bad things? Absolutely not. I'm definitely not gonna apologize for standing up for myself and writing a post about dealing with internet trolls and so forth.

Given the size of Financial Samurai, the site and its corresponding social media channels consistently get racial slurs hurled my way. It's pretty sad, but it's constant and it's consistent. I'm also often told how to think and what to do by other people who are mostly not like me and whether it's the internet retirement police or trolls in general, there has been a non-stop parade of haters since I started the site in 2009.

If you're not a minority, it's hard to imagine what it's like going through constant racial badgering everywhere you go. I'm talking at work, on a bus, at a baseball game, at a pit stop, on vacation and online. Just believe me when I say that it is constant and we just learn how to deal with it by either paying it no heed or by eventually fighting back.

And yeah, it is sad and annoying, but when my son was born in 2017, something changed in me. No longer was I willing to accept online bullying and racial slurs because I don't want my son growing up in this type of environment. The papa bear in me came out and I needed to stand up to the stuff like I did in school.

So the end result was that the podcaster who repeatedly asked me to come on to his show decided not to run the podcast on my experience dealing with racism because he disapproved of me standing up against an internet troll who was hurling insults my way. As he was a relatively new podcaster, he was too afraid of getting bullied himself and judged by others in the community who disapproved of me standing up for myself and for my family.

He felt that if he published our interview, he would lose some of his audience and therefore lose potential revenue and growth. And I totally get it. As a creator, growth of an audience and the money that goes with it are the two things you want the most, especially as a podcaster and a blogger and so forth.

A lot of people also have the need to feel universally loved, which is something I don't have. But this is when I realized why bad things stay bad for so long. Too many people are too afraid to stand up for themselves and to stand up for others who stand up for themselves out of fear of being persecuted by the very people who bully others.

The end result is a show that turns into an echo chamber of ideas and opinions because everybody looks and thinks alike. And I hope to goodness that Financial Samurai never becomes an echo chamber where I'm not accepting of different perspectives and opinions. If you can speak your mind in a civil way and explain your background on why you think the way you do, I'm all for it.

I want you to write a guest post. I want you to comment and tell me why your way of thinking is probably better. This is the only way we're going to learn. Look at what's going on in the NBA right now. As soon as Houston Rockets general manager Darryl Morey tweeted, "Fight for freedom.

Stand with Hong Kong," the lucrative relationship between the NBA and China began to disintegrate. Given the China market is worth roughly 4 billion to the NBA or about 1 billion a year, it was fascinating to see how some owners, coaches, players, and the commissioner either said nothing or threw Darryl under the bus or groveled for forgiveness.

If you care about your reputation and want money, sending one-liners on social media about a controversial topic is probably not the best idea. Wait until you are truly free. But are we ever? There's always two sides to every conflict. Of course, everybody is going to be pro-freedom. But to think the Chinese people are tyrants and don't want freedom and prosperity themselves would be naive.

Please differentiate between a country's citizens and its government. Just like, look, President Trump is our president and I would say half the nation disagrees with him. So you're not going to paint all Americans as Trump supporters, right? You've got to look at people individually, understand their story, their backgrounds, their beliefs, talk to people individually and hear them out before generalizing and stereotyping people and countries for that matter.

It is sad that we cannot all get along. But it's also naive to think that complete harmony is possible in our messy, messy world. We are imperfect beings. We have insecurities. We have frustrations, worries, desires and hopes for our children and for ourselves. These feelings manifest themselves in good and sometimes very, very bad ways.

Things stay bad for a very long time because we do not have the courage to stand up for ourselves. We stay at jobs we hate because we depend on the income and the health insurance, which has now gotten to absurd, absurd levels. We hide in herds because we're too afraid to stand up for ourselves or voice our true opinions.

As a result, we create echo chambers. And when this happens, I'm always reminded by a quote by Martin Niemöller, who was a German Protestant who spent seven years in Nazi concentration camps for opposing the religious policies of Hitler. He said, "First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." The only way we can stop bad things from continuing to happen for so long is to take a stand, to have the courage to stand up and say something.

My hope is that all of you take a stand, have a heart-to-heart with your transgressor and forgive if they've truly apologized for their actions. By taking a stand, you are helping to break the cycle. At some point, you will realize you're no longer doing it for yourself, but for your children's future.

Here are some thoughts on how you gain the courage to speak up. One, the first is getting your finances in order to eventually achieve financial independence. Once you're no longer beholden to money, you can speak more freely. Trust me on this. Two, listen to both sides of a conflict and understand what is going on.

Don't just throw out zingers there and say this or that without fully understanding why there's a conflict because there's always two sides to a conflict. Three, present your opinion after thorough research on the matter in a civil manner to maximize the potential for the other side to listen. I don't think we're listening enough.

The more we can listen, the more we'll understand and the more we can create some harmony. This way, if you are civil in your delivery, you're also going to be able to minimize any backlash that you're going to receive and you will get backlash. Trust me on that too.

And then finally, there's a great book that I just read. It's called The Courage to be Disliked. It's an international bestseller. It's by the authors Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It's a great easy read. It's about a young person talking to a philosopher and the young person has some problems in his life and he's trying to overcome them and the philosopher teaches him how to overcome these hurdles and achieve his dreams.

So those are my tips. Keep fighting on and if you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and share and I'll see you guys around in the comments and the message boards. Take care.