Health Diagnostics and Final Thoughts

Do you ever get so caught up optimizing a trip, whether it's flights, points, the hotels that you might actually forget to optimize for the experience you want to have I struggle with this all the time, and I've been trying to figure out the right way to get past it And then I realized I've actually had a conversation this topic that really, really helped. So I went back and rel listened to it and it was so good that when I finished it, I actually wanted to start it over and listen to it again It's my conversation with Bill Perkins who wrote Die with Zero It's the most popular episode ever I've done for good reason, and it's because it's about actually using your money, time and health to get the most out of life instead of being focused on endlessly accumulating We get into why you should focus on net fulfillment over net worth, memory dividends and how the right experiences can pay you back for life, and why some of the things you might be pushing off till retirement might be things you can never truly enjoy. And then thanks to a suggestion from my friend Hirsch, in two weeks, I'm going to do a follow up episode where I'm going to share my new takeaways, how my thinking has changed, and what I'm actually going to be doing differently thanks to this episode Even if you've heard it, I promise it's worth a rel listen, though Bill does use some strong language, so this is not a great one to listen to with the kids around I'm Chris Hutchins, and if you want to keep upgrading your money points in life, click follow or subscribe You've obviously been very skilled and fortunate at building wealth. I just want to make sure I understand who this is for and does it actually apply to people with just a modest income or who haven't built wealth yet So the book is a bunch of mental models, and it's a counter factactual regret minimization algorithm That's solving for net fulfillment A lot of people have algorithms for building wealth, it's solving for building wealth. I'm solving for net fulfillment And so what variables are the inputs? yourour wealth, your health, and your time Even though people may have more wealth or better health or more time Those variables still you can use formulaically with these mental models. to maximize your net fulfillment I wouldn't say this book isn't for unhealthy fat people They can still get value out of this to maximize their own net fulfillment. And the same thing for people with not that much money, right? Like obviously a person who's Osaving by millions is formulaically getting more value in terms of the amount of waste that they're wasting by dying with a bunch of money in the bank, but everybody still gets value relative to them to get more out of this one ride called life And how do you define net fulfillment So I basically say that The some of your experiences, your choices, Every moment in your life, when you make a decision, those choices That is what constitutes your life. And the sum of all those decisions and experiences that you consume will determine whether you've had a full life or a fulfilling life or not so fulfilling life relative to the best life you can possibly have And so I define net fulfillment as your choices i e your experiences. And when I use experiences, I mean it in the broadest sense of the word. I don't necessarily mean always taking a trip. It could be walking with a grandmother, it could be donating to a charity. It's just every single choice that you make. I actually want to talk about a few common misconceptions because I feel like Some of them came up a little bit late in the book. So I feel like this is important. So one I'll share and I'll ask if there are others is around retirement. and it was that The amount you actually need a retirement is often lower than people think, and it's no surprise that also people increase their assets in retirement, notot all of them, but a good number of them And so something that was helpful for me to realize is if we're all thinking, oh, I should save all this money because I'm going to need it, because I'm going to be spending, well, it turns out you probably will spend less based on actual studies, not just your opinion. And you might actually make more in retirement. Are there other things that might be common misconceptions people have that understanding might make this whole conversation easier Yeah, adjacent to what you're saying about spending. The data is kind of overwhelming that people spend less, Even adjusting for healthcare costs, right? Like peopleople like what about healthcare and rise in healthcare? Their bodies, the deterioration The change in their attitudes, etcetera, their ability to do or enjoy certain activities Probably all of us have a relative that like doesn't like to fly. You could take them somewhere, but they're like, I don't want to sit on the plane for three hours because it hurts my back or my knees or something to that effect. There's probably people my age or younger or forties used to be athletic and like could not go play a pickup game of flag football right now. W wouldn't be as enjoyable. The misconception that's out there is people think their lives are going to be like a carnival commercial When they retire and it cannot be further from the truth. And having lived in the Virgin Islands where these cruise lines all park up, like we'd have three, four to seven ships during high season coming in and The main activity is going into the shops. Right? Not these athletic activities to buy something Not for themselves, but for their granddaughters or a relatative, et ccetera. Like they' actually looking for ways to consume the money that they have because they cannot consume it into the experiences that they thought they would You talk about the declining utility of money with age. You have all this money and you say, Oh, I'm going gonna punt on this awesome amazing trip ttill I'm retired and I can take time off work and then you're like, I don't know. Do I really want to go walk around Japan nonstop? I say this because I took my family, my sister, her husband, my parents to Japan And the degree to which we wanted the kids to go explore was just not the degree to which my parents were willing to go And I don't know if they would have thought that was the case twenty years ago But there were things they had to miss out on because they're just older and they couldn't keep up Yeah, I think a lot of people have the model in their head that their ability to convert money into experiences Like your body is static. It will remain the same. They kind of divorce this idea that, wow, my mental acuity is going to decline, my lung capacity is declineed. My bone density is going decline. My muscle mass is going to decline about one percent a year. age like thirty five. And so They don't put all these facts together in that hey This is obviating either my desire or ability to actually enjoy these activities. And so you have a prime example of walking around Japan in Tokyo. and so they delayed that trip or that gratification. Let's just assume they did to a point where There really wasn't any gratification Tokyo was less valuable a trip to them I think there were things where we came home and we were like, oh, you missed this thing. And I think they were like, we're okay because if we had pushed ourselves, it would have been a mess. But And we had a great trip. L I think they had a great trip. But I think that five, ten years ago, They would have gotten to do twenty percent more and it would have been a better trip Correct, correct. You do the best for what you have. There's no sense in crying over spilt milk or what they did or didn't do. But you can easily look at the scenario and say that was not the optimal time for them to take that trip in the totality of the arc of their lives. We don't get to play a S game and Mart Di Carlo our lives to be like, well, let me do this trip here and that, whatever. But what I try to do with this book is get people to think about How do I optimize for net fulfillment? Where do experiences belong? firstirst, what experiences do I want, right And then Very importantly Where do those experiences belong Where does the trip to Japan belong? Where does going to the opera belong? Where does hiking this mountain belong? When does the ski trip belong? And that matters. It may matter more than the what. I'll give an example that You basically put on a banger of a fiftieth birthday party, but you decided to just do it when you were forty five because it would be a better experience. To me, that was a big moment where it was like, o, you always think let's do this thing at this milestone in life and you werere just like Let's just do it earlier so that I get more out of it. Yeah, ye. There's other smaller examples. I was in an island and guys were going to go wakeboarding. You may have heard me say this and I was like now, I' just gonna chill here, relax, et ccetera. And I have a degenerative cartilage in L three, L four And so My wakeboarding days are limited. And if I was going to go wightboarding It's not five years from now And then I was like, okay, when is the next time I'm going to be on an island where it's warm and there's actually a wakeboard and a wakeboard boat with these friends, et cetera to go wakeboarding that I physically can do it. And I quickly came to the conclusion Never. It's now or never. This is the last weightboarding chance I'm probably going to have for the rest of my life And so I quickly said I can lounge on the beach and relax until my eighties. I can't go wakeboarding. so now is the time to go wakeboardingort. I got on the boat and said I'm just going to go do this and that was my last wake booarding ro. I have a similar experience, but it wasn't my last. I had always, as a kid been a skateboarder, snowboer, and I' always wanted to go wakeboarding. And for some reason, just the opportunity never arose. And finally, I was like, you know what? I'm not getting to the point that I couldn't wakeboard in five years, but like I'm getting the point that I want to try to do craz stuff a wakeboard, I probably should do it now. Yeah and then we rented a boat My brother in law I went out and literally the boat was like defective and could not go fast enough to do anything. So I still need to get that checked off my list because we basically were just like trolling around on this boat and we got a refund, which was cool I still haven't took that one off. And you talk about trying to bucket these things. So you have all these ideas in life Your theory is instead of saying, make this big list, you could have a bucket list, but you kind of have this anti bucket list. So why is bucketing things so different than a bucket list? And why is the distinction important I like to go backwards to either zero and infinity to try and get a concept across. So let's just go back to just before you were born, you're in heaven the universe, the Matrix, creators, whatever your thing is. And then God says to you, What experiences do you want to have on your journey on planet Earth. You have eighty six years, seventy nine years, whatever it is. What experiences do you want to have? And you go to the hall of experiences,, which is really the hall of choices, right? And You're like, I want to go skateboarding this many times. I want to go traveling. I want to have kids. I want to get a degree. I want to say I love you this many times. Every single thing can think of. I'm gonna to don any charities, I whatever You throw it into your Infinite bucket of experiences. It's not infinite because you're human, et cetera. God goes great You can have all those experiences. There's only one problem. You have to get the order right. The guy who puts the like, I want to go hella skiing and puts it in the eighty to eighty five bucket. probably doesn't get to go hellis skiing because our decisions are dynamic, our body has a health curve, utility curve, and certain things belong in certain areas. I picked like kind of these cartoon exaggerated examples of the why The timing matters. what experiences belong when But there's tons of them. People have kids and they're like, oh, I'm gonna hang out with my kids when they're thirteen or fourteen more. We're going to go this. I'm going to wait for this and your kids don't want to know you when they're thirteen or fourteen or they don't want to do the same activities when you're younger And people are very acutely aware of how they spend time with their kids and what activities they can do with their kids at certain periods in their life and certain seasons of life. But that applies to everyone in every relationship, even business, your health, spiritual, et cetera. And not only are these there limits, there's your attitude changes, certain experiences are orthogonal to other experiences. My flag football days are done, man. I'm not trying to pull a hamstring, twist a knee, et cetera. because of my body The recovery time Not that I can't do it, not that it wouldn't be fun while I'm doing it, but it would be less enjoyable afterwards. And it wouldn't mean it as enjoyable Let's say in my twenties or thirties, like, hey let's go play football after work Now I would never say that now, right? L N, ever, right? So if I had in my bucket of experiences That had to happen in the twenty to thirty three bucket. This episode is brought to you by Haven Sauna is one of the things I look forward to most at the end of the day. It helps me wind down, I sleep better, and the longevity data is real But the habit isn't the hard part. 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Again, that's all thehacks dot com slash GLT We haven't talked about memory dividends, but I think it's interesting because Just because you did that in your thirties It doesn't mean you don't get value out of it in your forties or your fifties or sixties. And it's just something I'd never seen or heard or thought about, which was you could stack these memories throughout the rest of your life if you actually do them and enjoy them and document them, maybe to enhance it Yeah, the purpose of money is to fulfill your life, right? It's for your consumption, right? You want to use all your resources that you have, your wealth and health and time to get the maximum fulfillment So let's just go with that I always ask people this, what are you saving for They'll give me some abstract, like retire. I'm like, no, no, like house, home, whatever. Okaykay, I want to survive. I'll give you survival Once your survival is covered What are you saving for? I want to know exactly in your mind, what are you saving for? Sometimes people will give me like a very definitive answer of like, I want to take this trip. I want to go to the opera, I want to be able to take a cruise Every single year of my life from sixty six to the degrave or whatever it is, But a lot of times it's in abstract land It's just this autopilot answer and When you saave money It's attached to some future consumption or experience And that experience is going to give you some sort of fulfillment or joy When you consume an experience you have joy from that experience, but also when you recall that experience And revisit that experience, you get joy from it pays a dividend what I call the memory dividend Anybody who's had a first kiss, hit a game winning home run They've told that story over and over again. And when they tell that story and they recall that story, they get a sense of fulfillment from it experience that original experience is paying a dividend and also creating a new memory. as I discuss with you, hey, my backpacking trip or my trip to Asia, etcera. And that adds up to our fulfillment Now you can do it the other way around. You could say, well Here is the original experience and here are the dividends and here's the total fulfillment there. Or I could put the money in this investment, it will pay dividends, I'll have more money, and I'll buy more experiences in the future And we have to weigh these two things out to optimize it. Is it better to take One ski trip now with my friends and buddies or two ski trips Ten years from now. R Because the money's for consumption, we're going to use it all. So the question is When is the best time to allocate and which provides the total return on fulfillment. What gets me the highest fulfillment? Depending on who you are, what your age is and the things you like Going through that mental exercise may produce different results. Me, at fifty three, a lot of the times, the answer is not two trips ten years from now. It's the activity now plus the dividends will surely exceed. two of the activity later in life You can just calculate what that return is. Is it as simple as there you have kind of a rule of thumb where it's like For however many years in the future this thing will be a memory. is worth, I don't know ten percent more every year. Is there some simple math? I would put it to you and your followers and be like, hey, we're going to run a calculator and you can put in your health degradation, all these formulas and we'll give you a better idea of what it's going to be Wor you later in life versus now, but for me, I just deeply think about it. I sit down and like Right boarding There is no future wakeboarding, right? It might have been two wakeboarding trips later, spend the money, be with your friends, et cetera. But generally as you get older, I think the answer is like when you're twenty, twenty two, maybe two ski trips, two and a half ski trips at thirty is a much better deal. You're more mature, you'll have your stuff together, other things' been going on, I'll have some friends, it'll be bigger and better. I can afford the upgrade, whatever. Maybe it's a better trip For me at fifty three, Two ski trips is not the anser I went on this trip, my wife and I and I hadn't read your book, so somehow had this spark of let's quit our jobs and let's spend all our savings, and let's backpack around the world for seven months. And we did this in our twenties I am one hundred percent certain that the money that we spent wouldn't even buy one trip around the world for two months. Now that we have a different lifestyle, we have kids and all this stuff. So I think it's especially interesting for someone in their twenties or early thirties fororegoing that trip now isn't going to let your money grow to be two trips because I'm almost certain that by the time that money is enough for the two trips, The cost of a trip is going to be twice or three times as much. It might not even be enough to go on one. You're including also the economic inflation of the trip, alsoso the fact that you become more bougie as you get older. Like it's hard to do the youth hostile backpacking thing as you get older. That's not even a physical thing. That's like your attitude changes. You realize that certain activities going back to this time bucketing belong in your twenties and they don't transfer well See your thirties Now you may be able to do them, but it's just not as enjoyable or it'll cost infinite more money or whatever it is and that twenty's activity Not only do you get to enjoy it more, but you get to enjoy the discussion, the memories, the conversation. It's the thing that makes you interesting. Like when I sit down and talk with somebody at a dinner, I just met them I'd say eighty percent of the conversation is What have they done? What experiences have they have? What were their learnings? What has been their journey? And maybe twenty percent is what they're going to do or what's going on currently, et cetera. And that is what drives your fulfillment when you're meeting somebody, makes you an interesting character. And so Getting the order right and figuring out, hey, is it worth it to delay or not is a very personal thing And it's very dependent on which activities or things fulfill you. But it's definitely the thought process that you want to go through Yeah, I mean, my takeaway so far is Don't necessarily focus on accumulating money to all extent because you can use that money earlier to create experiences that provide value the rest of your life If the purpose is, I'm want to get the max value, and I say the max value is fulfillment You got to change your optimization algorithm in your head optimized for fulfillment A lot of people keep optimizing for money And I'm like, listen, okay, why don't you optimize for the most money at eighty six And they obviously will go, no, that's dumb. Well, the same thing thing is true at eighty five or eighty four or eighty three or any year. we should be optimizing for fulfillment Money is just a tool for your fulfillment You are not a tool to make money And a lot of people operating in the latter, not the former I want to come back to identifying that, but there's a couple of things on bucketing experiences and memorying them. So we had a wedding as many people do and we paid for a photographer, videographer, although Many people that have listened know that we negotiated to pay for the videographer by swapping frequent flyer miles instead of dollars because we wanted to get a deal. But looking back, that video has not been seen by millions of people. It's friends and family and we've watched it every few years But I think it's really reinforced the memory of the wedding and the photos do the same. I'm curious if there are any other tactics that can enhance the dividends that our memories pay so that we can get more value of them after we have them I think technology is doing something when Full Google phhotos or iPhones will do this. They'll be on this date and then photos will pop up. of what happens. and then You get joy out of that and it sparks a conversation and you get fulfillment from an experience that you had and the recall of it. So it's triggering and tapping in to your memory dividend to your memories to provide you value. One of the gifts my fiance at the time gave me was a box and had photos and memories and little comments on what it was. And I was like, this is the best gift. Close to zero cost of any kind of purchase, et cetera, paper, cards, some photos printed out, et cetera. and her perspective. But It was amazing on how much joy it was and really I was just mining the prior experience and experienced itiv If somebody comes up with another tool or another idea, another method I'm open to it. I really want to mine the memory dividend and get the most out of my investments. and my investments are I invest in experiences. Beause that's what fulfs me. Just like Warren Buffett says, when do you start investing? early. now, now now in order to get the maximum What I call memory dividend, maximum return. In some ways, everyone says compound interest is so important. You should invest as early as you can to have the most money possible. You're saying I have the same principle. It's just I'm not optimizing for money. so invest, invest, invest as early as possible in the kinds of experiences that will maximize your fulfillment of life I agree. When people are focused on returns and compound interest, etcera They're optimizing for maximum money That's a vertical your wealth, getting your wealth up. And there's lots of books and lots of tools, tricks, hacks on how to get the most out of every dollar you spend, how to make the most money, et cetera I'm at a top level optimization I'm at a much higher optimization on like yourour life fulfillment, your net fulfillment And the memory dividend is a huge calculation in and I really encourage people to invest in making those memory divnds or at least think about that when you're deciding whether to delay gratification or actually have gratification now. One thing that's helped me in this is If you think about the marginal dollar that you're saving, and so often I hear people, this is probably people with a little more money, but they're like, oh, well, I should save more money. And I'm like, well, why? And they're like, well, then I'll have more money And I get higher net worth. And I say, what's that next marginal dollar going to do for you Because people always say, well, if I save an extra a thousand dollars a month, that's my kids college. And it's like Well, do you already have your kids college safe? Because if so then what's that extra dollar doing? And with that extra dollar actually be better spent today Going back to I try and get people to map their money to what the consumption is A lot of people saving, they're like, Oh I'm saving, I'm working. I'm like listen, it'skay to save. Just tell me What the party is, And when's the party? Just tell me when the party is. I'm okay with it. You know what I mean? Like you get some thinking, like, well, sixty five, No, that's not really when I have the party. Wait, what kind of party do you want to have? What are the things I really want to do? becausecause What happens is I believe is people get habituated They get really good at optimizing. for money making money doing deals, whatever it is they are, programmers, et cetera. and they keep piling it. Much like a rat in a wheel with a cheese experiment. Pretty soon you could just show them the wheel and not give them the cheese. There's no reward. And so people are in default mode network accumulating wealth making money, earning money, optimizing money. I read the book on how to save on this. I got eighteen million fleaker Flyower miles. I discounted that at All these Chucky cheese tokens I got and then they die with a bunch of Chucky cheese tokens and never really go to Chucky cheese And I'm like, when you going to Chucky Cheese? You know? You've been running his rat wheel Right? You got all these tickets, everything, but what are we buying here? What are we saving for? And I think People become detached from what their original dream was. what they really wanted to do. such that the game and the puzzle solved peopleome addicted to the puzzle. of saving more money As opposed to being addicted to the puzzle of how do I fulfill my life What luck thing am I going to do? How do I expose myself to other things? What choices should I be making today? What experiences do I want in this time period of my life and the next time period of life? And how do those fit together They're more focused on a different puzzle. When it comes to these bucketing experiences, is there a number of years that you say, Well, try to bucket them in tranches of five years or years how do you think about that? so people can actually go home and be like, let's start doing this today. I try and do five years. Like when I got to my sixty five, I broke it out sixty five to seventy five It gets wider. And obviously, the further you go in future, the less your visibility, right? Like the less your visibility, even for yourself. Like, okay, yeah, fifty three to fifty eight, this is what I want to do. I want to do this. I want to take a train. I'm to go to my daughter's graduation. I want to stay healthy. I want to go on a trip. I want to go to Tokyo again. I have all those things kind of down, right? And then The next five years, it gets harder. I kind of think I want to be doing this, right? They're a little bit more thematic And then sixty five, seventy five, seventy five to the grave. It gets even more thematic, but I can tell you that When I look at those choices when I try and time bucket my life, I can see the level of activity going down. I see it harder for me to spend money.s Visit grandchildren Hang out with daughters read the books I haven't read. It's not like Go raging, stay up till seven AM in a club in Tokyo, travel here, swim there. If you could perfectly lay out the experiences you wanted to have, which you can't. You would see this natural curve in the cost of those experiences this natural consumption pattern And then you start to say, well, I don't want to give up hours in my life for a bunch of Chucky cheese tokens that I'm not going to use So I'm going to go to Chck of C cheese, and then you start the layout. Well, I'm probably going to go to Chuck of Cheese a lot here I play the Wackamo game that costs a lot. I do whatever. and the other time I'm just gonna sit around and eat pizza And then you have this nice beautiful curve on consonsuming and spending your money down to zero as you have the most fulfilling Chucky cheheese experience. Basically the most fulfilling life. Are there any experiences that maybe you regret not doing more of younger or things that people mist see in their twenties and thirties should maybe prioritize more? Yeah, I think it's very personal and it has to do with like travel, that kind of backpacking experience, that kind of gap year thing that people do I just really didn't take advantage of that time period I was so focused on trying to get headad and make money and not taking breaks and was on this autopilot of like, must succeed and not saying that wasn't a great focus and didn't help me get to here, but The success I want is the most fulfilling life And I gave up things that would have been extremely fulfilling not only then, but now as I look back on my life And that's going to be different for everybody. Gt to be like, I w In' to go play this chess tournament. It can be anything. I knew at an early age that travel and meeting new cultures and doing adventurous things really fulfills me. I really enjoy that And I did not take advantage of those opportunities that I had. I didn't really think about the context. I'm like, you know what I can go to a club in Manhattan any day I can hang out in this weekend any day. Like why don't I get the super saavor ticket Go here for the weekend, come back, et cetera. That type of thing This episode is brought to you by Copilot Money I've tried basically every personal finance app out there to track spending, not just looked at them. I mean fully onboarded my accounts and gave them a real shot and I keep coming back to coopilot money For me, it's just the best one out there Copilot money connects all your accounts and gives you a clear picture of where your money's going spepending my category, cash flow, subscriptions all in one place with beautiful design and the best AI powered categorization I've seen Honestly, having that picture has led to some real conversations with my wife about how we actually want to spend our money And those decisions wouldn't have been possible without a clear understanding of where money is going. that from C pil of money. 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Since then, Delete Me has been continuously finding and removing my personal information from those websites and just as importantly, keeping it from quietly popping back up I've now signed up my entire family and it's one of these things that I just don't have to think about anymore So if you want to be more organized and saf for this year, you've got to check out Delete Me. It's simple, it runs in the background and it actually reduces risk. All the hacks dot com slash delete mee and get twenty percent off a plan for you or your whole family. Again, that's all the haacks dot com slash deelete me I was really lucky because I got laid off in two thousand eight And so I didn't have a job. And my wife was working at a company that she just absolutely hated and didn't want to stay in that field And so we kind of got forced in this situation where she was like, well, I'm going to quit my job and I don't know what's next. And I already didn't have a job. So we ended up taking this trip for I don't know seven months backpacking just as you describe. But I think it would have been so much harder had at least one of us not been forced out of a job and kind of pushed into this And so what I'm curious to get your take on is The culture of work in America at least, and probably many other countries makes it so hard to be like, Let's take a year off. now I'm thinking in thirties and forties. back so I'm not grinding so hard or my wife's thinking in her career, she's like, oh, wow. if I ever got another job, like it's got to level it up, got to level it up, whereas usually leveling it up is more responsibility and more time How can people in the work environment we've created in this country still live to these ideals and not get caught in that hamster wheel. Wow. It's really tough to escape your culture It's extremely tough. Culture changes slowly Regards to work and optimizing for Not being afraid of running out of money and status and having more and more money, it's really hard to step back and go, wait, does this serve me Does this serve my one and only life that I have? Is this really going to fulfill me Or have I become a robot hamster in a wheel? grinding and puzzle addicted to solving this puzzle called more money, more status, more fame, etceter. I call that autopilot. I say, we're always on autopilot. I'm on autopilot just as much as the next person and we have to snap out of it and be like really fulfills me. What do I really want out of life What do I really want out of life out of these next five years We're so trained, like I want the promotion and I want the thing. why do you want the promotion Because the promotion, the thing and gonna I have more money. Well why do you want the more money? The more money is better, the thing. It's all the way down. It's so inculcated into us about success success is more money and it's the abstract that we lose the final connection that money is an abstract. It's a tool. It's like a hammer and a saw. Builders don't want hammers and saws because they love hammers and saws. They want hammers and saws to build houses. That is the goal They're not like, must accumulate more hammers and toalls, more hammers and tows right, right? This is how people are. They're like, we must accumulate more money to more money to more money. Money And I'm like, no life motherfucker We're here to fulfill your life. You are solving the wrong problem optimizing for the wrong problem And culture has Pretty much jam that on everyone Really hard because there's this fear of not having money You don't want to run out of money in fear of retirement. There's this whole fear game with retirement People ask, why do old people keep growing their wealth while they're older and And I'm just like they can't spend it down Life has passed them by. That's the cold hard truth. I'm really harsh about that. I'm like, they fucked it up. That's why they can't spein it down. They fucked it up and it's too late for them My book These algorithms, these mental models are to help you notot fuck it up as much. We're all gonna to fuck it up a little bit. Like he can't be perfect, but it's like It's not fuck it up. I worked with this woman whose job is to kind of help people take their outlook on life that might have some different unconventional contrarian thoughts and really boil it down to some frameworks a model. And we kind of arrived at like my nine principles of living an optimized life, and I'm not ready to share them all yet, but one of them was questioning the outcome you actually want And I want to bring it up because of what you just said earlier I met someone who said, goosh I need more money. And I was like, Wh why do you need more money? And they said, I want to spend more time with my kids. And if I have more money, I'll be able to retire sooner and spend more time with my kids. And through this conversation, we were like, what if you had a different job that earned you a little less money, but gave you the freedom to work four days a week. And now you have a whole day that you could spend more time with your kids and you weren't grinding as hard. And they're like, well, then I wouldn't have any money. And I was like, you don't need the more money anymore because you don't need to retire early to spend your time with your kids at fifty. You could start spending it now And in product management when we're building software and talking to customers, we always ask the five Ys. So someone says, Ohh, I want this. And it's like you gott to ask why five times before you actually understand what someone wants So I'll challenge people thinking they want more money to go through that thought experiment themselves of being like, why do you want the more money and drill down And then ask yourself, is there actually once you get to that fifth Y, a way you could achieve what you want? actually isn't about just accumulating more money. And I would argue that more often than not, the answer will be yes Yeah, the book yourour money or life kind of hits on this concept of enough And what are you really solving for? You're doing like spend more time with your kids but making more money, save time with your kids. But if you make more money, are they really kids then? do they want to spend time with you? There's a lot of variables going on, but going through that thought experiment, you actually get to pull out more from them. They're like It's really about the status It's really because you've been habituated into making more money. There may be this desire to spend more time with your kids, but It's not the real reason other reasons, whether they be habit or some sort of goal, et cetera, that we got to address, we got to look at and be like, do those reasons serve you? What would you say to someone, let's say in their mid thirties who's got a great job and looking to do something new And feeling like the only option is to go take that next level up job that's going to be higher pay and more responsibility and probably limit their ability to have the kinds of experiences they want because they're so engulfed in work But they're stressed out because they feel like Doing anything else would be a downgrade in their career How would you talk them through that? The main thing is what are we solving for? And all of them, the first variable, the second variable, and the third variable? And Like how can we max them out? They're like, oh, I want to actually spend time and have more fun and do , Y, and Z, and I'd be like, well, okay, this is one of them. So I'm gonna to be my own insurance agent. I talk about that in a book. people try basically be their own insurance agent by saving enough money for every single calamity. That's a back of default skew. Well, just what if this happens? What if that happens? I try and find these things that they're actually solving for. And then help them make the decision on what's the best decision for them We may come to the conclusion that Taking on more responsibility now because the job pays so much damn money and in quitting in a year will actually to more fulfillment and more fun and then I'll quit and I'll goof off and do whatever. The stock options are going to go into the money and I'm going to make a zillion dollars and I'm going to have seven years of just bliss and goofing off as opposed to grinding it out five years in this lower paying job, etcetera. I'd have one hundred percent of time. But that's usually the rarity in these scenarios. And they never quit. Yeah they never quit.'s like You don't have to quit your job. You just have to consume the fruits of your labor. You have to get everything. You have to find your balance. You can love what you do you should also be able to Do what you love A lot of people went to work because they wanted the house and they wanted to have kids and they wanted to travel and they wanted to ski and they want to start a rock band or some expensive hobby with telescopes or whatever it is. And somewhere along the way Those things kind of fall to the wayside They don't exist anymore And it's the money and whatever and we kind of instinctively attack some sort of reason. Oh, the kids I wantan to spend time my kids I'm like No, no, you don't. That's not what you' solbving for with this job. or at least This equation doesn't compute If they were my friends, like real close friends I'm like, no, you don't. You'll bushitting yourself You can lie to me, but just don't lie to yourself. And then we go through it In a more gentle proroachcess, let's just see if this formula computes. Let's put it up on the board. Let's map out the time getet really detailed Like, okay, how much more money you're going to get When are you going to have the time? How much more spare time you going to have? When does this happen? Is your kids still a kid? Do they still want to hang out with you? Okay, what's this other job? No two hour commute That's two hours a day. You can have your kids. Well, it seems like We're solving for time with the kid This job may be better then this job Because the money you accumulate, you really don't have the time to spend it because you're working harder and you have more responsibilities and it's in the future and your kid's not a kid anymore And they're gone. We might come to that conclusion depending on what we put on the board So much like you do, like you're digging in like if I switch this and I fly this plane and I do this on Tuesday, I get the most frequent flyer miles. You're optimizing for the most miles. I would look at a trip as like, yeah, miles is one of the things I'm optimizing for, but ultimately I'm optimizing for the best fucking trip and the most memory dividends and the most fulfilling out of this trip So that's number one priority and number two is the miles I think when we went to South Africa for this trip around the world, we had like five layovers because we stopped one place, then we changed planes and the plane landed in Sudan, but we couldn't even get off the plane. so we just sat there until it took off again. All this stuff. now Now I'm like, how can I get there with zero to one stop If it's really far, one stop, if it's really close, zero stops. and that's forced me to reprioritize what I want I want to talk about a few things. How do we implement this? but maybe first, Some of the common objections to changing this. So two things you talked about. One is preventing running out of money. I think everyone I know is like, o, I want to make sure I have enough. What if I live to one hundred and ten? What if health gets so great that I'm living forever? What do you tell to people who are trying to optimize for every possible thing that could happen how to just get either comfortable with the risk that they don't need it or You've even mentioned the book, like just get annuity. If you're worried about running out of money, get an annuity. Get the reverse of life insurance. Everybody gets life insurance, right? They're like, I life insurance if I die early, et cetera. If you're worried about living too long, it's the exact opposite. They have an insurance product for that. Or they're worri about what if I nurses or whatever I'm like Long term health carere insurance is pretty cheap It's actually very cheap because I think one of the reasons is when you need those nurses, you're on your way out. They're not going to be paying that long. But it's pretty cheap, particularly if you get it while you're younger, thirties and forties, it's actually for people of the wealth category that you're talking about I look at things that People are acting as an insurance agent inefficiently, and I'm like, let's be more efficient on how we insure away these risks. And it might be an insurance product, et cetera. And some of the things that let's say there's not an insurance product or whatever they fear of might try and convert their fear of You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money. I try and redirect them to that. What are the things you want to have? What experience you want to have when This is your life You will die. It doesn't go on forever What is urgent to you And what is urgent for each period? When we have that conversation, in my presence And their presence while they think about it, you're like, yeah you're The key is to keep them on that. Because you have that conversation, they go back and they're right back on the auto pilot Let's go running the wheel because it's fun to running the wheel. No cheese, no reward No fulfilling life, just a battery, a robot, a cog and a wheel for the economic system I implore them to stay focused on Always attach your effort to what the goal, what the consumption is. So that is how I get them on the goal. And every single objection, whether it's what if I live too long What if I need long term care insurance, etcetera There is a way to minimize that risk or mitigate that risk more efficiently than the way they are doing it right now. because honestly, they've just been doing it on autopilot. It's just a backstop reason to back up why they're doing it. You know how some behaviors youll just do them and then you'll throw a reason after the fact on why you're doing it you're just doing it because'ss an autopilot. That's a lot of those reasons. Well, I'm working really hard because of what if I get sick? Okay, when you get sick and it's twenty thousand dollars a night in the hospital bed are you really the insurance agent? No, you're buying insurance for that. Let's really think this through. When you're sitting across someone, Sometimes it's a lot of chalboard work. You know what I mean? It's a lot of going through it. and that's why I tell people like you need to sit down and think about this honestly with yourself and work through these priorities and what are your fear is? Let's go one by one to try to mitigate them because If we're solving for the most fulfilling life, Everything else is secondary and everything else needs to be solved We want to consume as much as possible in the right times And you talk a lot about risk Is it sometimes that risk is really just fear Yeah, it's just king fear And a lot of it's fear of embarrassment feear of running out of money that is like the worst thing for people, notot because they can't go get some basic job and survive justust the embarrassment, the status, the ego attached to it. And I guess why? Because like If you run out of money or you were at high status and now you're working at McDonald's say or whatever, and you get that shame and people mocking you, whatever. If you waste your life and die, nobody's mocking you. You can't know, you're dead The people were alive' like, wow Fucking guy, what a clown dude. The guy died with four billion dollars. What a fucking idiot he got completely habituated to be a cog in the fucking wheel Great one, dude. You know what I mean Thank you for your service. Thank you for putting out all this value, getting a fraction of yourself and never using it and then donating forty percent to the US treasury. We fucking love that guy. They don't hear that. They're dead. but if you somehow Go start some business and it fails. people like, I told you show. I knew it was going to happen S shouldould have would have could have and your ego can't handle it So I always think it's thear Fear is not The actual bad thing The fear is the ego associated with the failure. It would help if society put more of an emphasis on like, wow you didn't go and spend your money. You didn't go on a trip this year. You did nothing this year? Yeah, somebody had said put it to a bunch of twenty year old or a class or something is like Who would switch right now with Warren Buffet None of them, none of them. they're like Well, he's got X billion dollars or whatever. I don't w to be that rich and old. There's no amount of money you can give me to give up my life. So a lot of people are doing some version of this. I always tell people, there's no amount of money you can pay me do five years in SXinsng Maybe at nineteen you could have done But right now No amount of money And some people are doing some sort of version of jail giving up their life for this money. I li like how you reframed someone who wouldn't take the risk to move to make more money, to do something as like they're paying to just sit still by not taking up an opportunity I like these mindset shifts that you introduce in the book, which is just like think about it this different way. And maybe that'll help you get over that hurdle. Yeah, just quantify. And you may come to the same decision. Yes, I'm happy paying the fine sitting here. you might be like, that's ludicrous. I actually would get much more money and I would be able to spend more quality time with the people I love that I'm leaving than I do right now. I've had this conversation with people they like oh, I don't want tonaave New York because My mom's here and so so's here et cetera. I was like, okay, let's break this down How many times do you see them A week. I'm off. okay. Let's write that down. How all right, whatever. And then okay, what's the money difference? And then What's a plane ticket back and forth? And then you could probably take them on vacation and you spend more time. So In theory, you can spend more time quualality time and make more money exppand your contact network, etcer. with this move evenven though you're saying you don't want to move because of the people that are here And sometimes that formula doesn't work out, but at least you go through the exercise and then you know You don't have this future regret, like you have this regret minimization. you'd be like, I made the right decision I went through all the avenues, et cetera I actually get more time with my family by staying here or I've made the right decision I actually Exanded my network. have more money and actually spend more time with the people I love in a better way, in a better format in a more fulfilling format Yeah. And so that's a book. This is the mental model. 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They're all brands I love and use, so please consider supporting those who support us I didn' an interview episode forty with Dan Pink who wrote a book about regret And he talked about like one of the big four regrets is a regret of boldness. and people in their old age are like, I just wish when I wanted to do this thing, I went and did it And I almost feel like a default assumption should be instead of when you're thinking, should I move? Should I go on this adventure? Sh I do this thing? just Try to every time be like, should I not do it? Try to always assume that you're going to do this bold thing and see if you could talk yourself out of it instead of talk yourself into it It's not easy, but if you're ever faced with this kind of tough Should I do this big thing? Just try to say, Okaykay, let's assume I do it Why shouldn't I do it? And I think that could help change that mindset because I think It's hard. One thing I did once and you did a similar one that I think was more extreme I find that if you're ever worried about money Go experience what it's like to make money doing something without a job. So for me, my wife was at Lift and I was like, I'm just gonna to sign up for a lift driver. I did it for two reasons. One, it was really rewarding to realize I can convert My time to money in a moment. If I don't have a job, if I don't have anything, I could still convert it to money. The second thing it was good was it just put probably too low, but it put a threshold on what my time is worth and it helped me realize that like every hour I'm not driving my car around picking people up I am spending money to not do that becausecause I could be making money. You went panhandling just to try to a similar experence I've done that. That was an exercise from an emotional intelligence class. went panhandling and it was really, really, really moving enlightenning, humbling, all these things at the same time. One, it was like or I can survive Like I can make fifty four thousand dollars easy panhandling That was the kind of annualized. I was running the raate and I didn't even really have a sign or anything. I just took my shirt out, put it insides out, rubbed it on the concrete, and then just had a cup on a corner, on an intersection. And I was like, well, if I was at a busier intersection with you know, I was like doing the calculations, et cetera. But I was like, I may be in a humbling situation But I can make money just in a panhandling way. It was also kind of free But I've always had that risk mindset, like always be able to exchange hours of my life for money in order to eat, shelter myself And I don't mean like, hey, I'm living on high on the hog. I mean like I can get like these cheap ass apartments, these one bedrooms, etcetera. I will always be able to do that. So it liberates me to go, there's really not that much downside. It's an ego downside. It's a humbling downside, but there's really not much downside. I should be swinging for the motherfucking fences, even more so Like, I'm okay with it. you don't really need to insure yourself against the risk that you run out of money because You've now established that like just sitting on the ground can make you money You can do that when you're young, you can do that when you're old. If you've established that you can Maybe you're comfortable not saving to insure against every possible risk There's people out there who insure against these risks that you don't want tona, these boogeymen that do it for less of a cost of you wasting your life. Like they're more efficient. So you got to think, any kind of waste in your time whether you're exchanging your time for money or your money for time. it kind of waste leads to less fulfillment. And so you really want to be like, am I the right person to insure myself against this calamity or should I pay insurance agent whatever this fee is and that will be more efficient result in net fulfillment for me When I look at this activity or whatever, should I be exchanging hours in my life for money or should it be the other way around What's an hour of my time worth? at this level at that level, etcera. These are questions we should be asking ourselves all the time. Is that shirt really worth two hours of my time? Am I going to get two hours of fulfillment out of it? Does that really fulfill me That was the beauty of your money or your life is that it really connected me with what my values. It really made me think what I want out of life what I'm willing to give up an hour in my life for or not and then also hit home that I really want a value of hour in my time to be extremely high. if I went the other way so that I didn't have to worry about it But even after like, I'd not have to worry about it, now let's say I have all these resources called wealth and I have my health How am I gonna allocate this over my life to get the max fulfillment That was the next step. I was like, Great Now I'm rich. now what do I do When should I spend it all You just teed up what I want to talk about is like implementing this. I now have a lot of the mindset ideas and the frameworks on how to do this. And what I left with the book thinking, I was like, okay How does someone figure out Based on where I'm at today, should I be spending more money? Should I be spend less money How do you answer that question? Yeah, it's a tricky question. The first thing I ask is the experience that we all want for us is survival So have we survived for our survival So I introduced that concept of like, okay, when you no longer can work or et cetera Do you have enough to had the very basics, like food shelter, clothing And depending on where you are, that's a different number. And then after that, like How do I spend my money? I try and use health as a forcing function because it is Right on the allocation of spending money. I look at my parents, my ancestors, We literally had to kidnap my mom take her to Scotland for her eightieth birthday It was an ordeal. She had the time of her life, but it was like an ordeal together. We're like, you're coming whatever We're getting you out here. But what I realize is that My mom does not consume much money at all My grandmother did not consume much money at all My dad did not want to leave his apartment when it comes to all. Now I always say, I'm going to be different because I'm going to be in shape or whatever. But the reality is I'm going to be some version of that. I'm like the idea that I'm going to be having this Chronicle cruises life at seventy seven to eighty six is bullshit I'm not going to be consuming that much. So I'm thinking, if I'm going to have parties, if I'm going to travel, if I'm going to hike these mountains, if I'm going to do these activities, if I'm going to even just go on a walk in a park and do a seven My' hike. My kids, a free activity Those activities belong here. And I need to consume them now So even the free ones have to get bucketed. And I always think about that aspect of it because I'm like, how do I allocate my fund once my survival is covered? So there' no Perfect answer, but I do look at that, hey My net wororth should be peaking between forty five and fifty five. and if I'm in the peak How does this curve go down? And I try and match it for me, I've been talking to these doctors And what I really want to know is, what is the pace of my body deteriorating? What is the pace of my mind deteriorating? What is the pace of my lung capacity deteriorating And then I know like If you are this type of activity Your enjoyment opportivity goes down linearly, with this decline And your ability to do it completely cuts off once you reach this level, right? Like I've read somewhere I was trying to do some research I think it's like two watt hours per kilogram to climb a flight of stairs or something like that. There's like formulas out there. I'm like, okay. So if you need to run and play soccer and jump and play basketball, you need X watt hours per kilogram of energy your muscle and then what that converts to. And then we know how many What hours per gilogram people have as they age, and I was like, wow, this would be great to figure out where my consumption is And that's what I was trying to build with this model. Like you're an optimizer and build this model. and I realize This is impossible. There's so many goddamn inputs. So Really it comes down to a mental model of each activity like, okay Here's a straight line to the grave of spending down all my money. Here's kind of the curve I think it should be to get to my survival number, et cetera And then when I look at my time bucketing, Wait a minute I said I would be spending less, but I like riding on trains and that doesn't take any energy, but it costs a lot of money. So let's change the spending in the curves like this. So it's not going to necessarily always be this perfect log normal curve down to zero from your peak. It could be No, but there's trains and I want to ride trains and then down. Each person is different It really takes a lot of thinking on a lot of off autopilot because you have to know what you want. You have to have an idea at least, seventy percent of what you want. A lot of it's going to be discovery And then you have to think about the ws You have to be honest with yourself. A lot of people are like, o, I'm in better shape than I was when I was thirty and you're fifty. I'm like, well, that means you were just really out of shape at thirty. And so That's it. And I know that's not like the answer people want to hear. They're like, I want the spreadsheet and the formula and the detail thing and I want to be told. I present like kind of the macro line. Your net fulfillment is an operation of your wealth health and time. And I leave it to the crowd to go and be like, I built this kick ass spreadsheet. So let me throw out my version, which is not yet a spreadsheet. but you have this formula where you're like, okay, your survival threshold is how much it's going to cost you to live one year times the number of years left to live And then deduct seventy percent because that money will grow and you can withdraw from it What I'm doing in my head is, okay, assuming you can make money. At some point, you'll stop being able to make money and then you'll live for some number of years. Let's call that number Okay, so you can live for twenty years. How much does it cost you to live in one year I think everyone always estimates the highest amount it could ever cost you. and I'm going to use your standpoint of like actually estimate low because many people end up saving more than they think and spending less. So it doesn't make sense to go to the extremes. So let's say for the sake of math, you need fifty thousand dollars to live in your old age for twenty years timimes point seven That's seven hundred thousand dollars, which might seem like a lot, but if you have your whole life to save that seven hundred thousand dollars and let it grow and compound, I guess that would be a number that once you've saved an amount of money that by the time you're, let's call it sixty five You will have that then you could stop saving effectively I didn't even include social seecurity and all these other things. But it's not necessarily you can stop saving for survival Now it's maybe you want to go on some big expensive trip when you're seventy five Now we can start talking about our enjoyment, the things that fulfill us besides surviving. We can solve for thriving So you could decide I want to equally distribute my enjoyment of life over my life. And then your goal is As long as you're putting aside enough to get to seven hundred thousand by the time you sube. Well then Every year, you could just spend all the excess on enjoyment. And you'd be fine What that wouldn't let you do is maybe you want to take this crazy giant adventure when you're forty five or fifty, You might want to save for that But it made me think that if you've already saved enough thirty forty years from now. it'll grow to be enough to survive in retirement. All of the excess you can maybe even think of as a separate bucket for enjoying life. How do I want to distribute it? And separate your savings that's for living in retirement in a home being able to feed yourself. There's that money. And I think maybe one thing that I've never really thought of until I'm speaking it out loud right now is in my mind, I'm saving one amount of money that's savings for the future But if we separated it out and said Okay, well, here's how much you've saved and like let's set that aside because you need it to live. Now the rest is all money you can spend however you want. And you need to make sure that balance also goes to zero. Like the other one's probably going to zero because you're going to spend it in retirement, but that one needs to go to zero Correct. And that's what I do in a book if separating it out makes it easier for you to figure out What experiences do I bring forward or what money do I bring forward and spend now And what do I push back in terms of just the fun bucket? My life is covered. Let's just say you had the best pension ever. Now it's just like, we, where do I spend the money? Yeah. So like you've covered your pension that covers your survival. Now it's like what fulfills you and when's the best time to consume those experiences that fulfill you. And it's probably not. When you're retired For ninety nine point nine nine nine, many nines of people. It's absol fucolutely not. Yeah. and particularly for Americans because We don't have the health for the activity. If I went to the Japanese, I would say the curves are istinctly different in Japan than they are in America Because when you go to Japan you'll see eighties, ninetyll shopping, hanging out, cleaning, doing whatever, like having this very act of life hiking, doing whatever, all kinds of consumption. They're like, yeah, well I'm going to travel. I'm going to go to Australia and they'd be like, whoa, wait, what? you're eighty five, traveling by yourself going to Australia. They can actually consume it for Most America, no shot. I've seen it. So many people die on cruise ships. gettingetting out and trying to go swimming on the warm water. having heart attacks and stuff like that. It's amazing when you watch it in real life, Like if you just observe it. I'm not saying I was out there with a lab coat watching people, etcetera. but I've seen so many senior geared. entertainment activities where It's really not that active I love this idea Creating a bucket that is your pension and then the rest, you decide how you spend over your life And if that number is not decreasing, it sounds like by the time you're fifty five, non pension side of it, you're probably doing something wrong Or you've figured out how to live much longer than I'm aware is possible. You either have kind of like a abnormal time bucket where there's some sort of activity in the future that costs a lot of money, that can happen. You can be like, I really love super yacht cruises This is what I'm saving for and that's really going to fulfill me the most. I don't really care about anything. I really want to just play chess because my mental acuity is really stronger now And you're going to be better at chess now and I want to win tournaments and I just want to play chess tournaments. And then I want to go on yacht trips later. And so you can be like, okay, maybe you're not consuming the most money now. By and large The rule is It's now or it's a mistake. You're completely fucking it up. You're doing life wrong. And it's not just that it's now. it's that now benefits youater. I want to recap what we talked about earlier.'s like doing it now will also benefit you later. Yeah, it benefits your future self because your future self reaps the memory dividends, Things you did in high school, the things you did in college, the trips you had, the honeymoon you had. The adventure you took, the business you You started and failed, the bit business you started and succeeded. All those things right now, you are reaping the dividends Right now. And as I'm talking, there's probably people in the audience. Oh yeah, I remember that, Rember that. They they're like filled, right? They were getting the same endorphins, etceta, a piece of that fulfillment as actually doing the activity My favorite thing on this is the Cke Pepsi experiment that Pepsi tends to win in a blind taste test, but people, you know, Coke destroys him and it's because When you consume a Cke, you consume not only the Cke, but all the memories and the advertiseming associated with it because it was more advertised and they've done this with FMRI So You literally consume The experiences When you have a Coke, your prior experiences, you literally are getting memory dividends from the commercial and the advertising and they feel good and have a Coke and a smile All that stuff, the years and years of that in your brain. is unlocked when you consumeer Coke and you know it's a coke Same thing happens withate every se activity you have is like access and Partially relive every single experience that you have when you recall And so I always say maximize positive life experiences. I think one of your Memmory dividend enhancements was like reunions with the people you enjoyed the memories with And it's funny because I went on this crazy trip to Australia once where We basically had a bunch of money that we had to spend in seven days. And so it was just kind of a wild, fun time. And every time I hang out with my friend who we went on this trip with, it's not one hundred percent that we were there, but it's not zero. I feel like we have a society where there are lots of family reunions because families are way more distributed. that kind of goes down. And my wife and I have been talking about whether we have like I don't know, what do you call this? Like we have a second wedding where you just invite all of your best friends. It's like what you did for your birthday. invite all the people you care about on some regular cadence, get to really relive those memories and get all this value and you don't even have to do the things again It's not a cultural thing to have friends reunions, but I think we should I was just joking recently like these dates on the calendars, these events are just excuses for us to throw parties and see each other. And somebody also just said to me, workork is something we do so we have an excuse to hang out with each other. I thought that was pretty powerful and that's true to a certain extent. That's the people I love my job. Well, you really love the people I think that's a lot why people I know in the last few years being home and not seeing them, they're like, I hate my job. It's like, well, maybe you don't hate your job. Maybe it's just the thing that you thought you loved was your job. and you actually just love the people you're around all the time. And if you're not around them or you're just only seeing them on a screen or something and you don't have that social stuff feels different. Yeah. I encourage people to deconstruct what is it about the job you love? Has a job replaced other muscles? Have you atrophied your social muscle to go meet people and hang out and have dinner and go go to lunch with people because work is the only place that you did these things And so the thing he loved was Oh wow. I let work. consume everything. likeike I don't take vacations, I don't do walks in parks. I'm not really to the extent that I would like to do, and I've let work take it all over. It's how I met my spouse or my significant other. It's where I go figure out to go eat. It's where most of my dinner is going out on a town or business dinners or whatever, where I go to lunch is Usually close to work, et cetera. And Those things are enjoyable. It's not the work. it's I like going to lunch with people. I like camaraderie. I like seeing these people. I like going to fancy dinners and stuff like that. When people retire or quit these jobs or get sitt in remote, they're like I don't know what to do it myself and I'm like, it's because you've atrophied all these other muscles and you put all your time into habituating yourself and to being very good at this thing and this thing has been your whole life, your whole world. But it doesn't mean that's the optimal place for you to build social relationships to find a mate pick dinner spots. I've spent a bunch of time talking to people in the financial independence movement, peopleeople who are let's save all the money we can, let's spend nothing so that we can be financially free someome want to retire early, some just want independence. What's your take on FIire I have a couple tipakes. The things I like about it and the things I absolutely hate. The thing I like about it is The fire movement forces you to be aware of the concept of enough It forces you to get on autopilot. what things are important to me What am I consuming because I really enjoy it and fulfills me and what am I consuming just to consume it? Like advertising and I'm on some sort of consumption autopilot. It really gets them to think about their lives into totality and what the things that they really want to be doing. likeike I really want to do this for the rest of my life. I really want to do this for my life. and they use fire as a tool to get that things I hate about Fire. One is they all follow this model of I'm going to work work work, I'm going to save up this money and I'm going to live off the interest And I'm like, what about the fucking principle You got to spend down the principle. It's all about not giving your life away to money but having an enjoyable life, but like you're giving your life away to money that you're never going to spend down. So they need to readjust their formulas to include spending down the principle. Okaykay? Two, at the extreme, these guys are doing a version of autopilot and making a fatal error of not paying attention to time bucketing and the power of memory dividends They are basically doing a version of I'm going to go to jail for seven years or ten years In order to be free and have a great life from forty on or whatever their retirement age is going back to my original statement, there's no amount of money you can pay me to do five years in Sinnsnc. Well these guys are doing ten, twelve year stints in Sing Seng Right? And there are certain activities certain expenditures that you should be having that only fit in that thirty to forty five bucket re giving that up unconsciously for some future Senerlla And then they get to the future Shank rel a lot. and I'm not saying it's not great, but they're like fuck, I really regret notot doing X, Y, Z. or I should have done this when grandmother was alive. Now I should have done this when my kids were young and we should have went to Disney World instead of saving money to go on an extra trip now. At the extreme, Fire is another version of autopilot It's not really correctly solving for net fulfillment and there needs to be some adjustments Yeah, somewhere in the middle between the Fire autopilot and the standard American autopilot is probably optimal. It's definitely great. It's just like, okay, these are people who like they got the spreadsheet, they're in touch with what they want. they know the concept ofough. And I'm like, guys, why are you not spending on a principle? This is craziness. You're trying to get the most out of life, but you exchange ten years of your life for something that you're never going consume You're just going to consume the dribs and dbs of it. Is that like the two percent rule, maybe? I'm making it up, but it's like if you could live off the interest at four percent forever What would you need to just not You like to spend it all. What I tell these people is that basically you're overworking You're giving up an extra two or three years of your life because you not including spending down the principle. We're overshooting. The main thing is though, That autopilot really leads to future regret. with certain experiences if they're not really conscious about what experiences belong one You didn't mention one criticism that I have, which is It assumes often, at least with the retire early side, that once you stop working, you don't make money. And I think most people, I'm sure there are exceptions, but most people can't just do nothing. for fifty years, especially when those years are in your thirties and forties and fifties and sixties. So I think if you assume you're not going to work at all, then you need so much money. But if you assume maybe you could work some thenen it changes the calculus wildly. Like you go from needing millions and millions of dollars to maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, the sledgehammer of fire in our culture probably more needed than not the sledgehammer of fire because we have so many people just needlessly attached to things that don't serve them that they don't even really want But there's plenty of criticism of FIR' autopilot and that sledgehammer and that kind of militant. I'm going to say for this and whatever. There's these assumptions in there. that are not true. You pointed out that, yeah, you're probably going to work or have a side hustle or sell your art that you're going to make or whatever. There'll be some form of income that you could have or you will have. Not everybody somebody be like notot me, I'm going backpacking and I'm not making a dime. Okaykay, you're that guy. There is a version of autopilot in Fire and it's dangerous because I'm talking about wasting your life. And when you say I'm going to grind, not consume, not go anywhere for ten years. I'm like, that's a lot of fucking life Yeah for fifteen years to be giving away. That's extremely dangerous in the net fulfillment game in the not waster life game I wrote the book Not as like some sort of economics book or physics book or calculus book. The reason why the book has stories in it is because you have to get past people's habits and egos. There's a reason why the book starts out with a death. premature death. It's because immediately your ego disappears and you think, yeah, I'm going to die. How am I going to allocate the hours of my life? How am I going to spend the money? E though my life is longer and this guy' was two years, we have the same problem You probably heard me said, I'm out here trying to save people's lives And a lot of times people like How are you talking about Perk and save people's lives? You wrote a goddamn book about optimizing a net fulfillment. and I use this example of Listen, when you Pull somebody drowning in a pool they're drowning and you pull them out. You give them outth to mouth and get the water out or whatever and You' like, Oh my God, you saved my life I'm like, guess what They're still going to fucking die They're just not going to die that day They're still going to die one hundred percent So what have you given them You've given them What choices? what time M experience, more I love you We're going to the opera or hang out with a grandmother. You're giving them more of their life, more experience to have than then they ultimately die And so with this book When I get you to optimize for net fulfillment, I'm giving you more choices, more trips for grandma We're going to the opera. More charities, more ski trips It's the same thing It's the same thing In my mind. I'm just going to go with that. So I'm like a fanatic when it comes to this Because I truly believe that when you optimize your life that much, just the same way you optimize by saving, you get more trips and more life that I'm saving people's lives I've started putting some of this into place. My wife and I actually had a conversation about money. My wife was like, oh, we should try to hit this goal. And then I was like, no, no, no. I've been reading this book Why are we even trying to hit a higher goal? What is it even for And now we're like, no, we actually have a new net worth going. it's down Yeah. it might be. That conversation is a great one to have because she might pull something out because This is the trip I want to go on and it's like this big expensive thing or I want to fly around in a G six hundred fifty or whatever it is and you be like, okay, at least we've attached What we're working for A lot of people forget they're working for If you ask them, they'll just regurgitate the autopilot answer to get more money to the thing or whatever because it's like, no, stop, stop, stop. You're going to work and they're going to give you money. What's the money for? Why do you need more money? What can you not afford? that you need to work for in order to consume. And then we have a real conversation She would be the first to admit she was just on this path of accumulated accumulating. She hadn't taken the pause to think about it. And then when we did clicked and the conversation was totally different. I still think we need to figure out what we want to do with money and savings and spending and when we want to do it. I think we've both now been like off the let's just rack up money. L that is no longer a goal. So thank you. Yeah, I'm going to hit a point because a lot of people are probably thinking, well, there's nothing I want to do. They're listening to this and know, I don't want tona do anything else. And the reason why you don't want to do anything else is because you've been a rat on a wheel. You haven't been exercising those muscles You don't know how to play anymore You forgot. You do want things. They're just buried so deep under all these routines you built to acquiring money. and those muscles are so atrophied. It's like you haven't gone to the gym for five years. you come in and you try and lift you one under twenty five pounds It's not happening. You need to build up into it. You need to start small and be like, okay, let me think about these things I want to do. Do I really like that? Let me just go out and discover because life is discovery. You don't necessarily know everything you want to do. You have to go out and be exposed to it. But you have only been exposed to work and making more money and climbing the career ladder and doing more deals and solving this puzzle that you've been solving that you've been addicted for. And you haven't been working on the what fulfills me? What trips do I like? What experience do I have? How would I spend money if I had it? You don't even think about those things And so it takes time. don't be discouraged You're not going to like just show up in the gym once and get in shape overnight. You're not going to just quit your job and know exactly what you want to do overnight. You have to Build yourself back up. You have to get back in touch People are not in touch, they're out of shape and they're like, we got him. He's gonna to work to the death. He's gonna produce a lot of value for us. and we got them good boys. We don't have to train a new employee. We don't have to do anything. We got this Mother Farker to the grave. line and Sninker habituated completely in default mode network to the day dies we got them Don't be that guy, donon't be that girl. And don't get discouraged. If I quit completely doing trading and I think about this all I would Time I don't know what to do. And you get in this panic. Oh, I gott toa go back to work. You just got thrown into the water and you forgot how to swim. You're like, look, I'm downfoat for a little bit Do a little stroke, you'll get there And then you'll have the more fulfilling life. Awesome. And a couple random things totally separate that I think maybe tie in, maybe don't before we wrap. So One, I want to just get your take. You're an optimizer. You wrote a book about optimizing. mee too Talk me through a few things that I just need someone like you to tell me why I'm being crazy. I think one of the challenges I have with both money and you made a joke about a person that's accumulated millions of miles, that's me. And one of my challenges with using money, miles, currency, anything is that I'm aware of how much more optimal it could be used. I know that if I really find the right trip, five hundred thousand miles will take the whole family around the world, But if I book it today for the thing I want, it's a million and I struggle Or we were talking about the holidays this year. We're like, we have time off. We don't have plans, but wow, it's four times more expensive to go on any vacation at the end of December than it is in January. We don't have the time off in January. so we're not actually going to do that In my mind, it's like punt because it's an inopptimal use of that money. My main thing for you is you're solving for max flyer miles and you're not solving for max fulfillment. Yeah. And so What you don't realize is that max fulfillment for you costs this much and that's just the cost So There's a time period where it belongs and this is the optimal time for it to happen and this is the purase price. And you're like, But I can do the trip at a subopptimal time at less fulfillment for five hundred thousand miles I'm like You can do that, but realize that you're solving for spending less miles and not solving for max fulfillment And so if you're the type of guy that when you look back on your death bed, you'd be like, wow, I saved all these goddamn miles as opposed to Holy shit, I fucked up my fulfillment in this time period when my kids were this age. When it was time for me to doing this and I misallocated my time, then go ahead and solve for miles O orr money in that case, also. Yeah money, miles, whatever it is you're solving for. You're optimizing for miles. And I'm like, listen, fulfillment first, miles second So There's going to be some blend, but the maximum fulfillment is what we're solving for. And so Sometimes you're going to have to vaporize the miles because that's what it costs and they Lo and behold The airlines know this. They know that like In Western culture, these holidays, this is when people want to fulfill their lives, et ccetera. So we get to charge more for fulfillment. And when kids are like in finals, et cetera, there's no family trips, et cetera. so we can charge less. They know this. This is the cost of fulfillment. like everything costs. And you're like No, no, no, no, I want to just have the lowest cost. And I'm like, no, I want to have the highest fulfillment So if you get back on I'm solving from max fulfillment went my family I think you'll become less detached on the value of the conversion of the points. Maybe the answer is Sit down and say, look, we have two choices and in the next , hours, days, whatever, we're going to pick one Either we actually do commit and we go book the trip in January when it's better. I'm not saying punt years. I'm saying either you say, look, we're just going to find a way to make it work at a lower price or we're just going pay the price to go when it's convenient but not let ourselves escape the decision. I think that's the thing. It's like you either pay up because you want the fulfillment Or you adjust life to make it work at a better price as long as you don't not take the experience To me, it's like T pe, tri peer,p,,, peer. What is the most fulfilling? Is it worth it What is gives me the net fulfillment? it might be not the January. It might be trip here and another trip and two trips and since they're in the same time bucket That's actually more fulfillment. two different environments, et cetera. There's going to be a lot of variles like we' get off the chalkboard, I' go over with you and I'm like, all right, you really gonna take two trips? Yeah, I'm really gonna to take two trips That's a million miles for two trips, but it's not over Christmas How do you feel about the fulfillment score? Let's put a fulfillment score on each trip. Okay, it seems to add up more than the trip over Christmas. Are we sure about that? Yeah, we're sure about that. We're not sure about that. We'd go through this whole exercise with your wife and talk about it and then we'd come to a decision. then We would make the right decision knowing that we solve for net fulfillment, not miles Miles was an input, just like wealth health and time, right? So Miles is kind of in the wealth bucket. That was an input solve for net fulfillment. And we slid it back and forth in time like, all right, two trips Two trips not Christmas actually is better We'll hang out at home and play board games and then go on two trips. I look forward to sending you a note saying We took the trip. Or the two trips or the three trips. trip Whatever it works out to be or a trip in half or a trip plus an upgrade. These are the things that I don't have the right answer because the inputs matter at most, but like the metha model is there. Like you're thinking about it The other thing I want to touch on is health. So it seems like One of the biggest opportunities to unlock a lot of this equation is to be healthier or live longer. You talked about how in Japan, people are just as a society that I know you've spent a lot of time with some of these great doctors Are there things that someone listening who doesn't get a chance to talk to Peter Aa or something on a regular basis. Is there stuff you've learned, whether it's test to consider doing now or ways you've changed your diet or your health. that people could do to improve or extend the time that they can do more active things and I guess live longer or Yeah. I think I pay a lot for the last fifteen percent. likeike eighty five percent, even the fanciest doctors, it's all low hanging fruit. And the lowest hanging fruit is like, hey Do an activity that makes you sweat for four hours a week. Maintain your weight Don consume added sugar, reduce all your sugars in your sugar intake, No alcohol, donon't smoke. the super low hanging fruit about not being overweight Staying in shape, not consuming added sugars, like sugar is the worst and exercise like even if it's hiking walking three miles a day or three miles Four times a week or something like that That's amazing low hanging fruit to make your current experiences better and your future experience is better because activity by health is the fulfillment. and if your health is shitty, either you don't get to do the activity or the activity is not as enjoyable. I used to walk like seven to twelve miles around Paris when I was there. just what a back Mack and maybe do six or five before I'm like My knee's got hurt, I don't like it anymore. So I got more of Paris on a trip for the same dollar than I do now And the more in shape I am, the less overweight I am, the less weight I'm carrying and force I'm hitting into my knees, the more enjoyable every single activity is. And so I would argue and say to people like That low hanging fruit has such a huge yield on your fulfillment Whether you're going to be able to enjoy playing with your kids or relatives or be around or even enjoy getting on a plane, et cetera later on in life is highly correlated and highly dependent on the state of your health right now I can't emphasize it enough. It's not a health book. I'm like, listen, there are tons of books. podcast. motivational speakers, et cetera on like How to be healthy. And I just say this vertical is Uber important Make sure you're addressed it. try and do activities that fulfill you irrespective of the health benefits. and one of the ones I found is hiking. Like going hiking with a friend, I get a great experience talking with them, seeing nature discovering what's around me And it also has these health benefits, cardio benefits, strength, legs, et cetera, that make future experiences better, right So I get a double whammy. Yeah Overeating, not doing X, Y and Z. tryry and develop the habits that lead you to the goal. Because your motivation goes up and down. So develop these habits. Get rid of the snacks, makeake them move far away. Don't even buy them Th you can't get to him. You said If you're looking at a cookie, just be like, is this cookie worth an hour on the treadmill? That's the way I do it. I convert all these things into like time. It the resources that I'm fighting for, which I think at the end of the day, everybody's fighting for. They want free time. They want time to do what they want. They want more time on the planet. And so if I'm trying to maintain my health and my weight is very important to my future enjoyment, my knees, et cetera Is that cookie worth an hour on the treadmill? Sometimes a cookie is actually worth an hour on a treadmill. If it's a nice good chocolate chip cookie, I will go on the treadmill for these cookies. And sometimes it's But what if I push you since you said you'd answer anything? like to peel back some of that fifteen percent? that you've learned that I might not know. I think diagnostics is the key. Many diseases, ailments and their progression are thwarted if you find them earlier enough Some of the cancers that are like always fatal if they had a test for it and they found it early Youd survive Heart diagnostics, MRIagnis. If someomebody wantce said to me, you should be spending ten percent of your income on your health. I was like, that' crazy. I have a pretty high income. I thought about it and I was like No that includes like diet Whether I buy prepackaged meals or have a chef, that includes doctors, diagnoses, et cetera health plans. and I was like It's actually low It's actually low. It's so important. And so A lot of the secret sauce of these doctors is it come in and they draw like thirty two, thirty six vials of blood. This is your mineral absorption. This is so and so. This is what your thyroid is doing and this is whatever. and here's all the metrics and you're kind of out over here, like you need to do Ewere. here's your cholesterol. and these things preventive ounce french is worth a pound of cure, that is the key. Yeah. And the prescription of like You need to be doing more cardio, you need to do this, or you should be avoiding these foods because they inflame you and inflammation is death. So nostics, Diagnostics. Like one of the things you can do to that is out as Israeli studies, I'll go into one of the cutting edge, but painty ass things, okay that I actually stopped doing You can go to hyperbaric chamber for two hours and in theory, it lengthens your teelmres it makes younger at the cellular level. whichich means in theory, you know, you're going tove longer because your organs are not going to break down at the time they're going to break down. You're going to get some extension on your telomeereres. And it has all these other therapeutic supposed properties So I'd have to go Drive an hour. to the hyperbarric chamber. I was going to run the same experiment that the Israelis did. So you have to do Months of hyperbaric chambers, whatever it is, it's a lot. But The place I had to go to was an hour away You go dive down, you dive to pressure. So it takes a while to get to pressure. Then you stay at pressure for an hour or whatever the time frrame is, and then you have to come out And then I got to drive an hour backath. Yeah. And I was like, Okay I'm going to get X benefit and live longer this time frrame, but I'm wasting three to four hours a day traveling to this hyperbaric chamber back and forth. and I was just like, nope, not worth it. I'll die earlier. You know what I mean? I'll die a year earlier or whatever it is. timeime is too valuable to me right now in this time bucket. So that's one, hyperbaric chambers. Yeah. I feel that way about plunge and sauna to the extent that it's like, I should just get one and put it outside. The sauna, there's data on the health benefits. Yeah. The cold the studies aren't there. There may be benefits and people are raving about the benefits. The research isn't there. As sauna is definitely confers health benefits, longevity, less chance of a heart attack, Yada yada, yadda, yada The sauna' a hack. There's all these like other hacks that are out. That's the show. So I'm going to totally hack the sauna. Hyperbaric chamber might not be worth it, but it's out there, full diagnostics, MRIs, those three D colon scanners where they actually scan your whole body. There's latest and greatest imaging technology, etcetera where You know they're gonna scan you and be like, oh, you too much visceral fat, you got this. I remember when I went there and they were like do you smoke? I was like, No, he was like, yeah, I can tell when I look at your liver I can tell what you do. They can tell my habits based on looking at my insides And I was like, okay, I like this. Any partying advice or places people should head to check you out where you're working online? anything? I'm on Instagram. If I use Instagram and Instagram stories as kind of like my own life diarary, going back to that hack, how can you use the memory divmon and use my stories as my memory dmon? They save to my phone and get backed up to Google Cloud and then you know, it We'll show like on this day and I'll have all these little snippets and videos of like what happened on this trip or what I did So I am Bill Perkins on Instagram. You can follow me. sometometimes it's just me and my cat doing nothing exciting and sometimes it's exciting If you want hot takes or chaos, you can follow me on Twitter at BP twenty two on Twitter. I don't recommend it, you know? Sometimes it's markets, sometimes it's finance advice, sometometimes it's It's hot political takes. I'm a libertarian, so everybody hates me. Sometimes it's just goofing off. It's a format that I like where I can actually interact with people enough. talk to them, et cetera. So I love Twitter. But diewzerobook. comot Oh diw withzZero book. We're all where books are sold everywhere. It's on audio book. You can listen to it, you can read it everywhere, diwzerobook dot com you can go there it'll list the languages that it's sold. so it's in Spanish, it's in Polish, it's in Chinese It's in German It's in Japanese and actually the book is most successful in Japan The book is everywhere. That's what I mean to say. I have the book. I recommend the book. It's had a huge impact on me. Thanks for writing it. Thank you for being here I'm glad to be here. Thanks for hearing me blather. I'm always down the blather again if you want. Okay, I really hope you enjoyed listening to this as much as I did. I'm really excited to go deeper on why I relistened to it in the first place, what new takeaways I had how it's actually changing my life and a lot more. So stay tuned for that in a couple weeks. Until then, email is podcast at all thehacks. com That is it for this week. I will see you next week