Putting Die With Zero Into Practice with Brad Barrett

Summary

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All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life

Episode: "Putting Die With Zero Into Practice with Brad Barrett"

Host: Chris Hutchins | Guest: Brad Barrett

Original Air Date: July 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Chris Hutchins invites Brad Barrett (host of Choose FI) to reflect on the practical application of Bill Perkins’ "Die With Zero" philosophy, nearly four years after their original discussions about the book. The conversation dives deep into finding the right balance between optimizing for the future and living fully in the present, with particular emphasis on seasons of life, the “skill of spending,” and conscious trade-offs between saving, working, and optimizing daily fulfillment. The two long-time financial independence advocates share personal anecdotes, recent behavioral changes, and ongoing challenges with embracing "Die With Zero" principles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge of Living 'Die With Zero' (00:00–05:35)

• Initial Dilemma: Chris opens by questioning whether it's better to optimize for sporadic unforgettable trips or make every day—“even a random Tuesday”—feel perfect.
• Bill Perkins’ Impact: Both Chris and Brad agree the core concepts from "Die With Zero" (especially time-bucketing and seasons of life) have maintained their impact over the years.
• Quote:
  “Those seasons run out and sometimes you don’t realize when they run out. And you need to be cognizant of that… what are you optimizing for?” —Brad Barrett (03:30)

2. Optimization vs. Fulfillment (05:35–09:05)

• Internal Struggles: Chris recounts re-listening to his Bill Perkins conversation multiple times, questioning whether he’s really putting those lessons into action.
• Introspection: Discussion on whether additional savings or accumulation are worth the time and energy trade-offs, especially with young children.
• Intentional Spending: Both acknowledge they’ve improved at spending, but sometimes “optimization for optimization’s sake” gets in the way.
• Quote:
  “Are we really planning for the trip, or are we planning for the best use of miles?” —Chris Hutchins (07:00)

3. The Evolving Spectrum of Frugality (09:05–12:48)

• Frugality as Superpower—And Liability: Brad describes frugality as essential early on, but cautions that for many in the FI community, the skill may become a liability if it prevents enjoyment or fulfillment.
• Practical Application: Chris shares his incremental progress—making easier spending decisions on home upgrades and eating out—but admits paralyzing indecision over “rack rate” luxury travel due to old optimization habits.
• Quote:
  “Frugality is a superpower at times, and then it becomes a liability at times.” —Brad Barrett (07:45)

4. Psychological Barriers to Spending and Enjoyment (15:05–21:23)

• Letting Go: Brad tells a story about a costly yet memorable roller-coaster trip with his daughter—struggling with the price up front, but experiencing no regret afterward.

• Amy’s Perspective: Chris shares how his wife, Amy, values anticipation as part of the trip experience, driving home how indecision can “rob” part of the fun.

• Maximizing vs. Satisficing: The conversation returns to what they’re really optimizing for and the value of “satisficing”—finding a good-enough option and moving on.

• Quote:
  “Knowing the trip is coming and knowing what it is is a part of the excitement… If you don’t tell me until we get on the plane, you kind of rob part of the trip.” —Amy (as relayed by Chris, ~17:07)

• Practical tip: Consider booking refundable travel (even at a premium) to relieve decision stress and allow for more spontaneous, less fraught experiences.

5. Time, Health, and Seasonality (21:23–29:35)

• Recognizing Seasons: The hosts discuss how demands and priorities shift—school schedules, kids’ ages, health, and career phases all shape what’s possible and desirable.
• Filling Time: Chris realizes that even when he gains “free time,” he reflexively fills it with projects or work—prompting questions about how to truly make space for what matters (health, family, rest).
• Quote:
  “Now is the season of life to get your health in order. Because… the activity spectrum of what a 70 to 80 year-old person can do is wide. And I don’t want to be on one end of that spectrum.” —Chris Hutchins (24:00)

6. The “Tuesday Project” — Optimizing Daily Life (29:35–32:07)

• Baseline Fulfillment: Brad introduces his idea of "The Tuesday Project"—focusing on engineering an ideal average day (walkability, health, community, environment) rather than aiming for isolated bursts of fulfillment from vacations.
• Lessons from Travel: He shares how trips can inform what he truly values on a daily basis, like walking more or enjoying the outdoors.

7. Trade-Offs, Scarcity, and Multiplicity of Choices (32:07–38:13)

• The Pain of Opportunity Cost: Chris laments how the sheer number of options in life (trips, projects, parental involvement, career) means he simply can’t do it all—and that’s a reality he must accept.
• Quote:
  “I try to do all of them, and it’s easier for me when the trade-offs are binary… you just can’t do all those things.” —Chris Hutchins (32:45)
• Importance of “Chalkboarding it out”: Systematically listing and prioritizing goals and experiences, as Perkins recommends, enables conscious choices instead of knee-jerk optimization.

8. Letting Go of Income, Setting Boundaries, and Redefining “Enough” (38:13–45:05)

• Loss Aversion: Chris discusses how it’s emotionally easier to forego earning more money than to let go of existing sources of income—even when it’s abundant.
• The Over-Conservative FI Mindset: Both highlight the tendency in the FI community to plan for extreme safety, sometimes to their own detriment.
• Quote:
  “What are you saving for?... Having $20 million when you die doesn’t matter.” —Brad Barrett (44:00)

9. Rethinking Legacy, Giving, and Future Spending (45:05–56:18)

• Giving While Living: The hosts explore the idea that giving to others—whether children or causes—earlier creates more impact and fulfillment than leaving a large sum at death.
• Changing Expenses Through Life: They discuss how kids’ costs soar, but remind listeners that these are “seasons” and eventual spending will decrease—so modeling a retirement plan on peak spending is illogical.
• Quote:
  “You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money.” —Bill Perkins, as recalled by Brad (53:30)
• Minimalism Insight: Brad shares his journey towards letting go of material possessions, noting the internal happiness and freedom found in reducing attachment to things.

10. Action Steps: What Will You Actually Do Differently? (57:41–66:24)

• Personal Commitments:
  • Chris: Wants to organize a “family summer camp,” and try living abroad for a summer while his kids are young—embracing the fleeting nature of this season.
  • Brad: Plans to create intentional time buckets and actually dream bigger about one-off major life experiences, rather than solely focusing on improving the “average day.”
• Building Community: Both discuss the importance of fostering local friendships and community, especially in the absence of an office environment. Chris plans to host regular pizza nights to integrate with his kids’ school community.
• Quote:
  “If I’m not optimizing for net worth and am optimizing for net fulfillment, you gotta do the work to figure out what that means for you.” —Chris Hutchins (69:00)

11. Final Reflections — The Work Never Ends (70:19–72:56)

• Revisiting Old Wisdom: Both hosts remark on how revisiting past episodes or life lessons with new context can provide fresh insights and impetus for positive change.
• The Ongoing Process: Living the “Die with Zero” philosophy isn’t a one-time decision but requires continual recalibration as new seasons and challenges arise.
• Quote:
  “You have to do the work. You can’t just sleepwalk through life.” —Brad Barrett (70:19)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What are you optimizing for?” (Recurring, numerous timestamps): This question serves as a north star throughout the discussion, prompting both honest self-audits and practical adjustments.
• “Frugality is a superpower at times, and then it becomes a liability at times.” —Brad Barrett (07:45)
• “You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money.” —Bill Perkins, as referenced by Brad (53:30)
• “I think you beat yourself up too much about optimizing. You really do. You take it a little too far sometimes, Chris. But you’re really good at it and you love it.” —Brad Barrett (38:10)
• “If you don’t take the time to think about what [fulfillment] is for you, then you can’t possibly live a life maximizing your net fulfillment.” —Chris Hutchins (69:40)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00–05:35 — Introduction to topic, reflections on Bill Perkins’ impact
• 09:05–12:48 — Frugality and the evolving skill of spending
• 15:05–19:54 — Story: Cost of memorable family travel vs. psychological barriers
• 23:14–29:35 — Filling free time and the realization that endless work isn’t necessary (health, family focus)
• 31:51–38:13 — Binary trade-offs and the challenge of limited time/focus
• 40:23–45:18 — Withdrawal rates, annuities, and the conservative nature of FI planning
• 50:18–53:01 — Changing life costs & modeling wisely
• 57:41–66:24 — Concrete commitments for change: summer camp, time buckets, local community building
• 69:00–70:19 — Net worth vs. net fulfillment: doing “the work”

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Takeaways for Listeners

• You can't optimize your way into a meaningful life without active, ongoing reflection and periodic course correction.
• Intentionally create time for experiences and relationships that matter most—especially when life’s seasons change quickly.
• Redefine your own “enough”—for some, it’s about travel or peak moments, for others, it’s perfect Tuesdays with family and friends.
• Building fulfillment requires conscious trade-offs, periodic self-audits, and, sometimes, learning to let go—of optimization, of extra savings, of material things, or even old ideas.

Action Step:
Ask yourself, “What am I optimizing for right now?” and consider whether your actions align with that answer. Don’t be afraid to try Bill Perkins’ “time bucketing” exercise or start a regular community-building habit, no matter how small.

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For More

• Brad Barrett: ChooseFI podcast & newsletter (choosefi.com)
• Chris Hutchins: All the Hacks podcast & newsletter (allthehacks.com)
• Bill Perkins: Die With Zero book and interview (recommend listening to the prior episode referenced)

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Transcript

[Chris]

Would you rather have one unforgettable trip each year or build a life where even a random Tuesday feels almost perfect? My first instinct was why not both? But I'm starting to think that instinct is the problem. Because everything I care about is competing for the same few hours each day. So today my friend Brad Barrett and I are trying to figure out what this season of Life is actually for and what has to give to make room for it. That question has been stuck in my head since I re listened to my conversation with Bill Perkins about Die with Zero because. Because I realized agreeing with his ideas was a lot easier than actually living them. So if you haven't heard that episode, go back two weeks and re listen to it. And if you enjoy this episode and you want to keep upgrading your money points and life, click follow or subscribe.

[Brad Barrett]

So today I wanted to sit down and talk about this episode I released two weeks ago about Bill Perkins book Die with Zero and the interview I had with him and all that impact. And as I thought about that, I had a conversation with my friend Brad, who is joining me today because he similarly had a. A really, really strong feeling about this episode and had a big impact on his life. And so I thought, since we both had that opinion and we've both been in this space for a while and we've been thinking about it for years, what would it look like to come back and reflect on it? So, Brad, thanks for joining me.

[Chris]

Yeah, Chris, this should be fun. You know, this episode had a huge impact on me. I. When I heard it. So it was December of 22, right?

[Brad Barrett]

Yeah, so almost four years, which is crazy.

[Chris]

That is absolutely mind boggling. I just couldn't shut up about your episode and about his book and yeah, I must have talked about it on a dozen times. Not to be egotistical, but I think I kind of spread that far and wide in the fi community and, and it really took hold. I mean, I think people started thinking differently a little bit at the margins. Right. And I think that's ultimately what a great idea is. It challenges you to think a little bit differently. So it's funny, this episode, I feel like we have so much to talk about. It's almost. It's going to be hard to organize our thoughts. I think that's the biggest challenge.

[Brad Barrett]

Yeah. So I put a lot of stuff in here for anyone listening who randomly hasn't listened to an interview with Bill Perkins or read his book Die With. Two weeks ago, I released the episode on my feed. It's episode 285, you can go have a listen. And it was a re release of the episode from many years ago. But I would love to just start this off by asking you four years later, how do you feel like you're sitting with the same episode, because I know you re listened to it also. And then I can share my thoughts as well.

[Chris]

It absolutely still resonates with me. I think there were again with paradigm shifting. It still feels as fresh. And I think to me, the biggest thing that I took away then and even now is just is seasons of life and time bucketing. Those of the many things that Perkins talks about that really hit home for me. And I think a lot of us in the FI community talk about optimizing all the time. I mean, you're the prototypical example, obviously, but it's also me like, what are you optimizing for? Bill Ragged on you a little bit, maybe with the credit card miles. And he talked about the Chuck E. Cheese tokens. Right. And it's fun to accumulate and that feels like winning and playing a game. But I think if we're real honest with ourselves, we get 80 years on this planet, 90 years if we're lucky. And I don't know about you, Chris, but I'm actually turning 47 in a couple days from when we record this. So I'm way more than halfway, or about halfway, let's say. Hopefully, if all goes well, time is it. Time is everything. And also, again, not to date myself further, but my daughter just graduated high school. She's going to William Mary in a couple months. And again, you talk about seasons of life and combining this with Tim Urban's the Tail End article, which I think is brilliant on Wait, but why? And you realize, like, man, time is running out. And you have to really, really be intentional about the time you spend, the people that you spend it with, and how fleeting that is. And I think, again, it's fun in the FI community to optimize for money, but, man, those seasons run out and sometimes you don't realize when they run out. And you need to be cognizant of that. So if there's been a lasting change for me, that is absolutely the one.

[Brad Barrett]

And on the rare chance someone listening isn't familiar with Brad's work, he's been running the Choose Fi podcast for the longest time and FI being financial independence. So that topic you've covered for years. What I thought about when I re listened to the episode was two things. And by the way, the reason I re listened to it was Maybe a month ago, by the time this comes out, I had done this episode where I was kind of analyzing some of the decisions I was making and how they were completely irrational. I was willing to consider cutting half of my income from my business to get back, you know, hours a week, that there were better ways to buy back those hours for, like, you know, a tiny fraction of the cost. And it was one of these, Chris goes down an optimization journey that doesn't make sense. And I was like, what is happening? And so I was like, you know what? As I'm planning these upcoming trips, I need to do a better job. And I was just kind of thinking, like, gosh, this feels like someone's given me the advice that I was doing this wrong. Where was that? And I went back. I was like, oh, it was this conversation with Bill Perkins almost four years ago. And I re listened to it. And I've since re listened to it three times in the last week. So it's very fresh in my mind. But the idea was, am I really living up to what that episode kicked into me? Because I remember there was this moment when we listened to it, and I sat down with my wife and know we were on that treadmill thinking, goal is more money, More money. Grow your net worth. Grow your net worth. And right after that, we were like,

[Chris]

what are we doing?

[Brad Barrett]

You know, like, what is really the goal here is the goal. More accumulation at the expense of time. And, you know, he brought up in the episode, there are times where maybe accumulating more and spending less is the right move. But we were asking ourselves with two young kids, is this that time? Is this the time to be giving up a lot of your free time or not? And I think the answer was no. What are we doing? And we were in a fortunate place that we'd saved enough that we could have these conversations. But I think at every level of savings, there's a question of, is the marginal dollar that you're spending or saving? Is that marginal dollar better spent doing the opposite? Right? If you're saving 10% of your income, would you be better off saving 8 and spending the extra 2, or would you be better off saving 12, you know, and spending 2% less? You've got to ask those questions. And I think in some ways we've gotten better. Right? In some ways, I see myself spending money in ways that we wouldn't have been able to do four years ago, and I'm happy about that. And then in other ways, I find myself playing this optimization game where I'm wondering, am I really planning for the trip or am I really planning for, like, the best use of miles? And I think this comes from this inherent optimizer mentality, but also frugality mentality. And I've heard you say that intentional frugality is a superpower. I'm curious if you still think that.

[Chris]

I do, but I probably wouldn't be quite as overt about it now. I think being on the path to financial independence and saving money and living below your means, certainly at first on the path to FI is absolutely essential. I think it gives you freedom and options that you just simply. You wouldn't have if you're living paycheck to paycheck. So I think, without question, saving money is essential. But, yeah, is being frugal a superpower? I think just like anything, Chris, it's a spectrum, right? So our friend Pete, Mr. Money Mustache, talks about the skill of spending. I think this is a spectrum also. It's when you're at the beginning on your path to fi, that skill of spending is, okay, I need to be more intentional. I need to be optimized. I need to figure out little ways to win that you love you and I love, but you more so than me. But then I think as you get down further down the path to fi, when you reach financial independence, when you realize you're not only not going to die with zero, you're probably going to die with many, many millions of extra dollars, you realize, all right, look, what's actually fleeting is my time. And at that point, it's the skill of spending needs to switch to actually spending, being good at spending. And I think for people like us, that's maybe the more difficult side. Whereas I think for a lot of people just generally, but certainly in the FI community, people who aren't as naturally frugal, the skill of spending on the front side is a little harder. So I think frugality is a superpower at times, and then it becomes a liability at times. And, yeah, I mean, I know you just said something to the effect of, like, you're now spending in ways that you might not have. And I know in that episode with Perkins, you talked about, like, kind of jokingly, like, you're going to send him the note, I took the trip. And now naturally, you take lots of trips, so maybe that might not be the perfect example. But I'm curious, is there something that you could send Bill now in July of 2026, like, hey, I did this that I wouldn't have done, like, a prototypical Example that maybe you spend money or you and Amy spend money on that. You wouldn't have had you not have that conversation with him in 22.

[Brad Barrett]

I've gotten better at part of spending, so there's kind of a few aspects when I think about this. It's like, if you take the time to figure out how much you spend each year, which is helpful, and you know how much money you've saved and you know how much money you earn, you can kind of do some very basic calculations. And now, you know, you could probably throw it all into your favorite AI tool of choice and make these calculations way more accurate. But you can kind of get a sense of, am I on track? And you could use the 4% rule, which I want to come back to, but you can figure out, are you on track? And if you are, then there's this question of, like, well, I guess if I'm on track and I'm on track to have more than I need, I could probably spend a little bit more. And so I think I've gotten good at spending more. When things aren't crazy expensive, right? Like, oh, we really destroyed. We made this terrible decision to get these white couches, and we had young kids, and they just. They're like half white, half brown couches. You know, we've got a dog, kids. It was terrible choice. And so Amy was like, I really want to redo this room. And it's like, I struggle with spending thousands of dollars on furniture, but we're not talking tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? Like, it's. And that was way easier than I anticipated it being. And that's not going to make Bill proud. It'd probably make Bill laugh that I even like that. I consider that in that bucket, things like going out to dinner and ordering whatever I wanted and not being too worried about, like, was that appetizer more expensive? Where I still struggle tremendously is when I feel like I'm paying for something, there's a reasonable way to get it for a better deal. And that's where it's. So we're planning this trip in as little as, I guess, technically. We have a bunch of flights booked for over a window of time as soon as a few days from now, recording. So I could even be on this trip by the time this comes out. And I know what kinds of deals we can find with hotels, right? Like, I just know from points and miles and finding deals what can be possible, but I'm not finding them on this trip. I think I've gotten So accustomed to what it costs to, to go on a nice high end luxury trip when you're not paying the marketed rates, that when I see the marketed rates, it's mind boggling how much travel costs right now. And I'm really struggling. Can I afford to spend fourteen hundred dollars a night for, you know, a really nice resort room on an island somewhere? Yes. Do I know that if I like played the cards right and timed it better, it could be like $500 effectively in points also? Yes. And so like, what do I do in that scenario? It's like I know that my financial situation and my life outlook will probably not be any worse off if 1 in 10 of the trips we take actually costs the rack rate. But man, I'm really struggling to the point that like we have not committed to a trip that we could be flying on in as soon as four days. So I think there are things that he would probably be very disappointed by and they almost all come down to me just struggling to accept the evolution of sticker price. You know, like, I imagine there must be people who grew up and they're like, I remember when this thing cost X and now it's 5x and it just makes it hard to stomach. And I think for things that I don't feel that way about, like if we were buying a new car, I've kind of accepted that there's not really a way to get a better deal. Like, you know, you could buy a used car, but like the market of car prices is pretty efficient and I don't really have a problem. Real estate don't have a problem. Like, the problems come from areas where spending the money feels like the thing you're buying is like a slight amount of convenience because you don't have to spend the mental overhead on it. And that's just hard. This episode is brought to you by Gelt.

[Chris]

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[Brad Barrett]

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[Chris]

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I'm curious. So I had a recent experience with this. Not quite as significant, but yours is a little more writ large. But I wound up taking my daughter, who I just mentioned just graduated from high school and had her 18th birthday. I took her down to Florida for a a roller coaster trip actually. So we went to like six amusement parks in six days and it was crazy. But on the front side I'm like, as the costs were adding up to six amusement parks and going back and forth from Orlando to Tampa and the flights down there, I'm like, oh man, this is like a roller coaster trip and it's going to cost three or four grand. Like this is kind of crazy. But as I got into it, I'm like, all right, look like this again. This is actually a Perkins thing. This is a Seasons of Life. And once she goes to college, who knows how many more time she's going to want to go on a roller coaster trip with her dad. I also found cuz, and I'm curious if you've experienced this is. I had this annoyance and consternation before I bought. I, like, I was grumbling internally, like, I can't believe it's this much, yada, yada yada. But then once I clicked purchase and it was done, I didn't have that issue anymore. I actually went into my credit card. I basically, like, paid it off in a day because obviously I had the money. This is not an actual money issue. This is a psychological issue. And then I didn't see it on my credit card bill anymore. And it was just done and we had a great trip and I never thought about the cost again, so. And I'm not saying that's gonna work necessarily for you, but, like, I don't know, I would use this as like a. Like a fun little experiment for you, knowing that it's difficult precisely because it's difficult. This is not the perfect case study for this, but, like, everything good in life has a little bit of difficulty, right? Like, you've never actually done something that was super easy. And you're like, oh, look at how proud of myself I am. Look, this is wonderful. I'm like, no, it was easy. You're not proud of yourself. Like, you know, this is hard for you. You especially you. More than just about anybody on earth. Like, this could be the perfect time to just say, like, let's just book the darn trip. Let's me and Amy sit down and you two just say, like, what is the actual trip we want, irrespective of price, and just book the damn thing within a couple hours.

[Brad Barrett]

Amy sat me down and actually pointed something out to me yesterday which will likely lead me to the decision. You just decided by the end of the. Let's call it tomorrow, just because, you know, the holiday. We're recording this on the third. We've got the family. She said, you know what? For me, and this isn't necessarily true for me as much as her, but she's like, knowing the trip is coming and knowing what it is is, like, a part of the excitement. It's a part of the experience. And if you don't tell me where we're going until we get on the plane, then, like, I don't have that week of, or month or year of, like, being excited, looking forward to it, and you kind of like, rob part of the trip. And so we actually have two sets of dates booked, and I'm tempted to be like, cancel the first one so that there's more time until we go lock in that we're going these second dates. And, like, we've got till the end of the day to figure out what the best option is. And we'll just do the best option. And like, I know it's gonna be a great trip. And I think the fact that there are so many choices is one of the challenges I expected. Oh, we're planning this last minute. We want to go somewhere, like, just to do nothing and relax. Cause life's feeling stressful. Maybe we won't have a lot of options. And then I start looking. I'm like, well, we can go to Fiji. We could go to an island in Europe. It's like everything seemed to be open in a world where it usually is hard to find flights everywhere. You know, we've lived in San Francisco, and I feel like I'm regularly monitoring these flights to Fiji because it's like one of the places I've never been. There's direct flights and it's just like almost every day in the summer opened up over the last week and it's like, gosh, where are we going to go? One of the flights leave so soon that, you know, we have a connection to get on it. And I booked all these with points, so they're refundable. We were sitting at dinner yesterday and I got an email. It's like, you've been upgraded. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, we are close enough to departure on this trip that, like, I got the flight to LA upgraded, but we still don't know if we're even going or where we'd stay if we do go. So this is something where I have not lived up to the expectations of that episode. And re listening to it a couple times was like a real reminder of what I'm doing wrong and what I can do better. And I've got a whole bunch of thoughts on how to make that happen. And some of it's fighting the psychological, and some of it is exactly what you said. I have the same thing. Once I pull the trigger, it doesn't bother me. And so I have a friend, and that's actually both of our friend Noah. And he is fantastic. He's like, I either buy it with cash or points, and it's always refundable because it makes it easier to pull the trigger at the beginning. So it's like, oh, you know what? If I'm gonna take this trip even if I can't buy it with points, I'll just pay the extra 10%. So it's refundable because it lets me book it at the first moment. And once it's booked, like, you never think about it. I mean, some people might, but I don't. And that's a really good feeling to not have to think about it.

[Chris]

Yeah, I like that. And it's so interesting, right, because this comes back to, what are you actually optimizing for? And I think that that's such a fun question just to, like, I don't know. It's like this organizing question for me in my brain. It's like, what are you optimizing for? And in the maximizer versus Satisficer, like, you are the epitome of a maximizer. It tears you up to think, like, what are the alternatives? Right? Like, you need to seek out every alternative that's the maximizer. Whereas the satisficer finds something that reaches that threshold of requirements, and then they just. They book it or they purchase it. Like, an example of that would be looking at a menu at a restaurant, right? Like, I can only imagine your head exploding at, like, the Cheesecake Factory or something. You know, hopefully you're not eating there too often these days, but there are 700 options, and they're all good. And how am I going to look at every single one of these? Whereas, like, a satisficer would just say, okay, I found the first thing and I booked it and I bought it or I ordered it in that case, right? And it's funny because when you're talking about this trip that you and Amy are taking, it's, what are you optimizing for? You're actually optimizing for just some relaxation time away from work and away from the kids, I imagine. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you could book a room at a Holiday Inn with a pool, and if it's just the two of you and you're away from your kids and work, that wouldn't be so bad. So that's where my brain goes. But of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't go to Hawaii or shouldn't go to Paris or wherever. But it's like, what is the actual essence of what we're trying to do? Which is a really interesting way to look at a lot of decisions in life, I feel.

[Brad Barrett]

It's funny. That's like, what we were like, let's talk about that on this trip and not have anything going on to really kind of lay it out. Because I think when we look at the years ahead. It's like, these are the years. Like, you're on the other end of it. Your daughter's off to college. We're at the just starting school. And the one thing that I'm liking about the school calendar, and I know a lot of people hate this because it means that travel is more expensive, but the one thing that's nice is when you have a school holiday calendar, you're, like, forced to plan because you don't get to choose when you take vacations. Like, they happen in the summer or they happen over the holiday breaks, or you pull your kid out of school, which you do. But that is something where it's really forced us to look far out in advance. We bought this thing called the big ass calendar. We put it on the wall. It's like, you know, four feet wide by three feet. And we actually talked about, like, should we bring this? Like, if we go on this trip, should we, like, roll it up and put it in our bag so we can, like, plan our next year? It's forcing us to really be like, what do we care about? And I think what we really care about is, like, creating experiences with our kids and just enjoying time together while they want to hang out with us, while we enjoy them. And one of the biggest challenges with all of this, and this is a little bit of a pivot, but the episode a month ago was all about how to think about buying some free time, because I find that I am constantly working. But I realized the other day that two things are true. One, it's not the time, right? Like, that's what I thought it was. I thought the challenge was, I don't have any free time, and I want more free time. And so what could I do to get more free time? The challenge is that I'm just wired to fill free time with things. You know, we were talking before this call. I was like, oh, I. I wanted to show you this app I built, and you're on Android. And So I'm on iOS, so I didn't build the app on Android. And I was like, you know what? Like, can I get that Android app built before the end of today so I can send it to you? Could I even build it?

[Chris]

I love how the APK is being built probably while we're talking, but no, it's already live.

[Brad Barrett]

I have the Android simulator popped up on the screen. So since we've started recording this call, I now have an Android app to share with you in, like, a beta format, but it made Me feel like, gosh, I had thought months ago that all these AI tools, it's like, oh, you can outsource so many things. Yes, you can. That is completely true. But now it just gives me all these abilities. Like, two years ago I never would have filled my time building an iOS app or now an Android app. Like, it would have been crazy. Now I feel like all the creativity that runs through my brain fills every waking moment. And there's these competing priorities that are really hard. And this is where I'm really processing what Bill Perkins talked about, which is, what's this the season of life for? And right now I have like competing things. It's like, now is the season of life to get your health in order. Right? Like, because I'm watching my parents generation and even my parents specifically. It's like the difference between being very, very fit and healthy in your 40s and 50s is the difference potentially between five or 10 years of like being able to do stuff. It might not be five or ten years alive, but I look at a lot of the parents generation of my peers. Some of them are playing tennis and some of them couldn't run if they had to. And some of them, like, the activity spectrum of what a 70 to 80 year old person can do is wide. And I don't want to be on one end of that spectrum. And so, okay, so now the season should be my health, the season should be my kids. Given our financial situation, the season doesn't need to be endless work. But for some reason, even if I don't have work, I just fill it with work because I'm excited. And balancing three or four things that I'm excited to do is very hard for me. And I don't know the answer yet, but I was talking to you and I feel like you've solved this. It's like, how do you let go when there's a million things you'd want to spend your time doing?

[Chris]

Yeah, solve might be a bit of an exaggeration, although I appreciate, I appreciate the compliment, but I think at first it comes back to your definition of work. You know, you said, I'm working, I'm filling all this time with work. But I mean, you would be doing this stuff anyway, even if there's $0 potentially. So, like, I think it might be a reframe on the definition first off, to give yourself a little bit of slack there, just to be a little kinder to yourself first off, because you're a guy who's interested in things. I am too. Aaron. And I are building a health app that I think can be something real significant. It's not live yet, but it's. It's going to be called Health Decoder. And we're trying to, to build something that actually like that finds the signal and the noise in all of these various things. So I'm thinking exactly on health too. It's like this is the time because yeah, I mean you gave that range of spectrum. But I mean I see my parents and my dad certainly, like he's at the point where he can't really move very well. I mean, getting up and down off the floor, something that's just like a general human thing. Like there are a lot of people at our parents age who just who can't do the basics of life. And you're right, like we're not getting any younger. Luckily we're both pretty fit for our age. But man, if you slack that for 10 years, it gets a whole lot harder. So yeah, I mean there have to be priorities, clearly. I think by no definition is the goal to sit around and do nothing. That's not the goal of AI and having it do all these things for you or reaching FI and having money and not having to quote unquote work. This is not like a strawman thing. You could weren't saying that. But like it never has been and it never will be. Sitting around and doing nothing. That is not a life well lived for me or anybody I know. Certainly you, obviously. So, I mean, I think we do need to cut ourselves some slack. But I think it also, it comes down to, it's like, again, what are you optimizing for? Right. So Perkins talks about fulfillment being like these one off spikes of fulfillment. I've reoriented that. Not that I don't like trips like we talked at length about. I just went to Japan for three weeks and saw Eddie Vedder in concert a couple times and hiked the Kuma and did all these just incredible things. And those will have those memory dividends that Perkins talks about clearly. And it was a wonderful three weeks. But ultimately what I'm optimizing for is the best Tuesday I can get a year from now or five years from now. And what that's a proxy for. It's cutesy. I'm calling it the Tuesday project. It's just this cutesy little thing. It's the same as Thursday or Saturday or Sunday, whatever. But what do you actually want your life to be and what is a great day where the environment is all set up for it? To be fantastic. So that could come down to weather. It could come down to, for me, it's walkability. So everybody's gonna have a different definition, of course, but, like, for me, it's absolutely walkability. I, even though I live in America and this is a car centric society, we're at the point where we both kept track of this. Aaron and I each separately drove under 500 miles each over the last four months. So we're talking a thousand miles combined over four months. And that's like, there's probably like one or two larger trips in there. So we're like, you could round to zero, essentially. So not having a car would be great. Being able to walk to grocery stores, like think Europe or something like that. Walk to a grocery store, walk to a gym, have friends around. Again, better weather. Like, all of these little micro things, like being outside. Like, I'm finding all of these aspects of my life that, like, oh, when I go on a trip, I learn it's not just, oh, I went to Japan, it's, I learned that again, going back to your health. Like, my HRV and my resting heart rate were dramatically better. Like 10 to 15 plus percent better on days when I was outside and walking 20,000 steps a day, I'm like, okay, does that mean every day of my life is gonna be 20,000 steps? No, of course not. But that's something to remember. Like, my body really thrives on sun and movement. All right, store that away. I really like being able to walk and walk for miles without being bounded by some major road or something like that. And because I'm getting really, like, micro here, obviously, but, like, you have to get micro because it's not like, hey, someday I want to move to Lisbon or someday I want to move to Tokyo. It's no, I want that micro little area. Like, I'm going to spend weeks probably going from Airbnb to Airbnb to find that little neighborhood that I love. And I think, like, that's what I'm envisioning as this Tuesday project. And so it's like baseline fulfillment.

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If you had a choice between like an unbelievable two week vacation every year or really micro optimizing where like every single Tuesday was, I don't know, 20% better, what do you think would actually produce more lasting happiness over a decade?

[Brad Barrett]

I think you posing that question highlights one of the challenges, which is I hear you say that and I'm like why do I have to choose? Why can't I have 50 great Tuesdays and the two week vacation? And I think probably am in a situation where I'm starting to realize that the constraints of time, especially with kids, and the demands of life lead you to just not being Able to do everything you want to do. And I know that sounds kind of ridiculous, but my wife and I were talking about, I have this stupid travel credit, and I don't want to get into the nuance of how I came across. Basically assume this. I got a free $3,000 United Credit, but the constraints are I have to use it before the end of the year, and it can only be used for me. I can't use it to book multiple people. So the idea of using it to take a trip with the family inherently means, like, well, if I'm going to spend 3,000 on me, well, then that. That's opening the door to $9,000, which I don't need to do. And it cost me nothing. And so I know a lot of people that are like, you know what? I'll just use it for the next trip and I'll just upgrade myself and, like, I'll pay a ridiculous amount that I don't really care about because I don't care, or I'll let. I didn't even pay for it in the first place. Who cares? And I just start going down this path of, okay, well, what was the best way to do it? And Amy and I were talking and she's like, this thing is consuming in a way that, like, you got this free thing, and somehow the free thing is, like, stressing you out. And we talked about, well, gosh, when we were younger, go find somebody who wants to go to London for the weekend. You know, like, you just have the time that you can use things like that in easy ways. And now it's like going to London for the weekend doesn't even sound fun. You know, to your point, it's like, the trip has to sound fun to want to invest the energy to take it. And so I think the thing I'm struggling to accept is that there's a million things I want to do and you just can't do all of them. I think I try to do all of them, and it's easier for me when the trade offs are binary. It's like, well, if you're going on a trip and you're struggling to pick between two hotels, you're not going to stay at both of them. So it's like, even though that might be hard, you know, there's not a lot of remorse. Whereas if you're like, well, I want to build an app for this project I'm working on, and I want to go spend three hours a day after camp with my kids and I want to go work out. There's just not enough time. You just can't do all those things. And Amy and I are both wired in a way that makes that really hard because we don't like sacrificing. And so Amy spends a tremendous amount of time, like, trying to make sure that all the food the girls eat and the food we eat at home is, like, really fresh and healthy. And one time I was like, you know what? I took, like, peanut butter and jelly in a brown bag to school. And I feel like the quality of kids meals for lunches has really elevated. If one day a week we let that drop and that bought back an hour of prep time or we ordered food one night, and Amy and I have these discussions where it's like, what do we want? Do we want the free time? Like, you have to actually sit down and decide. And so I think with. Absent the process of thinking through it, I think Bill Perkins talks about, like, you got to chalkboard it out. It's like you end up just grasping at whatever's right in front of you. And then, you know, Amy, the other day I was working on this app, and she's like, I know you really are excited about this app, but you were so focused on it, you weren't really around for something related to the family. And I was like, you know what? You're right. Like, I didn't think about it in advance. And so I think I just need to cut things from all the stuff I want to do, because I think that frees up time, and that will likely lead me to a little bit more satisfaction. That's what I think my reality is. I. I've got to come to terms with the fact that there's just less time now. I think the other challenge is because the wide stretch of what is work, if I'm building an app on the side to manage credit card points, like, in my brain, that's work. So, like, all of a sudden, work is expanding to fill everything, but that's just a hobby, you know, like, it just happens to be related to what I'm doing. And then I think I probably would benefit from some period of time off, not to travel, but to just not have the kind of week to week responsibilities. I feel very fortunate, as I'm sure you do, that we get to do what we do for a living. But it's like every Friday night, I put together a newsletter to go out Saturday morning, and every Tuesday, I'm finalizing a podcast to go out Wednesday, and it feels like there aren't a Lot of breaks to even think about other things. Not because there's not time on Monday and Thursday, that kind of thing, but just when there's constantly a thing, a deadline every three or four days, it's tough. And so I haven't really given myself ever the permission to be like, let's just not think about those things for a month. Can I just not release podcasts in August? And in my mind, I think, well, if I don't release podcasts in August, everyone that listens to the podcast is gonna, like, give up, forget about us, never come back. And, like. Like, that's our income, and that'll be gone forever. And, like, you know, I can't do that. I do like having a thing every week, you know, like, I kind of am. Like, it feels like it forces you to produce something every week. I like that. But I think if I took a month off, it wouldn't be the end of the world, and I think it would just give me a little time to prioritize life. I don't know. I keep telling myself that maybe I would just spend that whole month building another app and, like, not make any

[Chris]

progress, but I still think that's okay. I don't have an issue with that. Because, honestly, if all the hacks didn't exist, if your website didn't exist, you would still be building that and you would still be sending it. Instead of to tens or hundreds of thousands of people, you'd be sending it to your dozens of friends, right? Like, you know, you would be doing that. So, like, that's just passion led. Like, I don't have an issue with that. I think you need. I don't know, not to give you advice, but, like.

[Brad Barrett]

No, give me advice.

[Chris]

Yeah. I mean, you do. You need to release that because that's not, like, that's not a negative. That's just who you are, and that's what lights you up. Like, the whole point of living is to find the things that light us up at the end of the day. That's what Perkins is talking about. That's what we're talking about on our shows. That's why we're spending this time. It's like, what lights you up. And, like, I think you beat yourself up too much about optimizing. I really do. I think you take it a little too far sometimes, Chris. But, like, I think you're really good at it and you love it.

[Brad Barrett]

That's great.

[Chris]

You figured that out when you were probably a teenager. Don't run away from that. Like, yeah, Run away from where this takes over your life. You know that you're out of balance sometimes. That's just the nature of who you are. But don't run away from optimizing. You love that stuff.

[Brad Barrett]

I think it comes down to setting boundaries to make sure the other things that you want don't get consumed by this other thing that's a little compulsive. Like, it feels like you could wrap yourself around a trip plan for way longer than you need to, or at least I could. And then I think the other thing is, I am curious how you feel about this. This is another little bit of a detour here. So if you have something else, feel free to go there first. But I think one of the big changes that Bill talked about in that episode was you're chasing the more money, but for why, right? You're like, what? What is the goal? And you know, I think about taking a month off. And I think on one hand, it's not really about the income. It's not about taking one month off. It's like, what happens with that one month? What does that lead to in the long run? Is that the erasure of all income forever? And I think rationally that's a ridiculous thing to say. I think we've both seen that in our free time in our lives, when we stop doing one income producing thing, another thing, like, we end up finding another thing. So that's not it. And then the other is just kind of like being honest about the numbers that exist about where we're at with our current savings. Because I think when I was listening to Bill critique the financial independence movement, his biggest critique was like, people just save so much so that they can live off their interest, such that they end up with all this extra money and they kind of were too hard on themselves for saving. And so I quickly ran some numbers last night in anticipation of this conversation, and I did a little bit of research, not to go into the level of detail that you and I have, when we've talked to Carsten, who runs this blog, Early Retirement now, he was on my show in episode 189. I'm sure he's been on your show without even asking multiple times. And, you know, we dug into that 4% rule. Bill was like, look, if you're really worried about running out of money, buy an annuity. So for fun, I was like, well, what percent rule would an annuity be? And the short answer is it looks like it'd be about 3%.

[Chris]

Okay?

[Brad Barrett]

So if you have enough money that you could live off 3% of it. You know, you could buy an annuity that will cover you and your spouse for the rest of your life if you're worried about the market. So, like, nobody should be running forecasts with the 2% rule because, like, the 3% rule is the floor because you could buy an annuity, it might be even 3.1%. So, you know, that was interesting. The second was maybe, you know, this. But what percent of the time does someone living off the 4% rule end up 30 years later with no drawdown on their principal? Meaning if you saved up a million dollars to live on, you know, your $40,000 a year or 10 million for 400,000, what percent of the time, after 30 years, do you still have the million or the 10 million?

[Chris]

Yeah, it's massively significant. I know Nick Magi has talked about this on both of our shows.

[Brad Barrett]

I suspect it's 96% of the time. Oh, my. And so I'm just laughing, like, how conservative the 4% rule is. And I know it's like a scary thing, but if you look at how much you've saved, should it be the 5% rule, should it be the 6% rule? But I think as you start to look at some of this stuff and you start to factor in your ability to earn, and then you factor in how much little you save in retirement, I think sometimes chalkboarding all of that out. And I actually had a lot of fun in a Claude session here because I hooked up up my spending from copilot money with an mcp. I hooked up Kubera with their mcp so it could actually pull in my spending data. It could pull in my, you know, savings data, and it could, like, kind of model some stuff out in a fun way that was really true to how I think about things. You know, it was like, you got to give yourself some grace here, like, quit worrying about these little things and like, be willing to take an experiment. And you taking a month off doesn't mean your income's gone forever. And there's a million things you could do. And so I think I have to be willing to experiment more. But it's hard to let go of things that you have more than to forego opportunities for more. You know, like, it was easy for me to turn down opportunities that would generate more money. It's hard to give up money or income that you already have. And I think that's one thing I've been learning that I've learned the ability to not chase more money. I haven't learned the ability yet to, to let go of income. You already have. I dropped a lot there. So react to any and all of it.

[Chris]

I mean, first, that's a step in the right direction. I suspect there was a time in your life where chasing income was a big part. I'm putting words in your mouth, but so you're halfway there. That's something. But I think, yeah, I mean, loss aversion as it is, and humans, and especially a lot of people in the FI community craving safety. I think it's why we all have these ridiculous conservative plans, right? It's like, okay, I know I probably can do 4 or 5% withdrawal, but. Oh, I'm only going to say, like you said, two or three. But I'm also going to factor in that the market's only going to grow at 5% and Social Security is going to be $0. It's like layer upon layer upon layer of conservatism. And it's like we're just craving that safety. And yeah, I mean, hopefully people can take a deep breath when they hear, okay, well, what you just said was 3%, you can get an annuity. So that means at Most you need 33 times your annual expenses. And then you're set.

[Brad Barrett]

If you use the 3% rule, I assume 99% of the time, you would never touch your principal. So, like, in my mind, it's like the 3% rule is crazy, right? But I have seen people try to model numbers lower than that, which is like, which I can say even crazier.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's insane.

[Brad Barrett]

I say this as someone who has done that, like, who has in the past wanted to get more conservative than that. So, like, if you're listening to this being like, why, why is he calling me? I'm calling myself crazy or at former self.

[Chris]

And I think it does come back to that question of what are you saving for? And it's funny because, yeah, as you led into this whole multiple areas here, like, that was the next question I was going to ask you is, or talk about is that what are you saving for? And I think, yeah, I mean, Perkins, of course he has some criticisms of the FI community, but most of them are good natured in the sense that, like, I think he understands us at our essence and that like, we're trying to get to a baseline where we have options. And there's nobody that can tell me that that's a bad idea. I think clearly pursuing FI and getting to a point of financial independence only gives you options. It Only gives you freedom and autonomy. Like, these are universal benefits and truths. So I have no issue with that. I think where a lot of people in the FI community go wrong, and this is, I think Bill's critique as well, is it's hard to stop. Sometimes it becomes a scorecard or it just becomes an identity of I'm a saver. And I think that's where. When you're not looking at your life, when you're not looking at net fulfillment, as he talks about, you can lose track of what actually matters. Because having $20 million when you die doesn't matter.

[Brad Barrett]

That doesn't help you unless you add, like, this extreme goal to build a thing. But I think Bill would argue, if that's your goal, spend that 20 million before you die so that you can start to see it be a thing, right?

[Chris]

And the money's going to compound anyway. Like, so why not in this crazy instance, like, you want to build a hospital, right?

[Brad Barrett]

Like.

[Chris]

Like, okay, well, if you know the money is going to double every eight or nine years and you're 16 years away, you could still give that amount of money and you just knowing that it'll double to the amount that or quadruple. In that case, 16 years hence, wouldn't that be cool to help as opposed to when you're dead? I know, I know this is kind of a weird example, but, like, give the money away now, start building plans, work on it. Like, that would be a whole lot more fun. It's also like, another example is. And Bill's talked about this. I don't know that he necessarily talked about it in your episode, but, like, when we think about giving money to our kids, like, oh, my kids are going to inherit money when I die. Well, at that point, hopefully, especially if I live to 90 or 100, my kids are going to be 70. They don't need my damn money at that point. That doesn't make any sense. Are they going to need it when they're 25 or 30? A whole lot more than when they're 70. So maybe reorient that type of thing too. Again, it's seasons of life. And when can this money be useful? So I think this really can reorient a lot of ways that you think about life and spending and time and just all the important stuff.

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[Brad Barrett]

Thank you for being here today. You can find all the links, promo codes and discounts from all our [e-mail] deals. They're all brands I love and use, so please consider supporting those who support us.

[Chris]

Us.

[Brad Barrett]

Funny enough, I, I got an email from someone about that exact topic, which was I listened to the episode, this was in the last day or two and I was thinking about leaving money to my kids and they've got good jobs, like they don't need the money now. So it kind of feels weird. And one thing I brought up, which I said, look, your kids have a good job, they've got good savings, they don't need the money now. But you never know what might be holding them back, right? Maybe they really wish that they could send their kids to this, this special private school, but it feels a little bit of a stretch. Maybe they really want to move and they're stressed out because they locked in this low interest rate mortgage and like it's really challenged them. There might be things that someone who is, you know, objectively well off is still hesitating on that that could have an impact. And he was like, wow, you know, like I didn't really thought about it like that. And that was one thought. The other funny thing, as I talk about kids, you know, I feel like when I listened to this episode and did it almost four years ago, it was like I felt really good about not chasing more money, like turning off the net worth goal. And then kids got a little older. I'm like, wow, you got summer camp after school Are they gonna do gymnastics? Do they wanna do karate? Do they wanna do art? Like, and all of a sudden I'm like, they just keep getting more and more expensive. Like, it's just unbelievable. And then there's this one listener who sends me these funny emails. He's like, whatever you do, don't let your child ever ice cold skate because my daughter went ice skating. And now you wouldn't want to believe how much money I'm spending traveling around the world, going to ice skating competitions. It was like a joking thing. It wasn't like, never take your kid ice skating. But it was just a highlight of like, wow, I thought this is where we're at now. It feels like every year there's these more expenses and more expenses. And so I feel like on one hand that's a thing, on the other hand you kind of recalibrate. And you really have to realize that as you're learning right now, a lot of those things at a certain point are going to go away. You were talking to me the other day, the house you have now to handle, your entire family now, you don't need that. Like a lot of the stuff you don't need, you're certainly probably not going to be. Maybe through the college years there's expenses, but maybe after that there's a lot less expenses. And so I had used to build my models on like, how are we doing on the amount of money we're spending each year? And then it felt at first harder because the amount of money spending was going up. But you have to recalibrate for the amount of spending, you know, in 17 years going way drastically down totally.

[Chris]

And not to mention where you live in particular. And I'm not saying you have to move or will move or even think about moving, but you live in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country and world and you have two young kids, you are at the absolute high of where you're going to spend money. So again, going back to the modeling, to model that at a 2% withdrawal rate or even a 3% withdrawal rate based on your current expenses is utterly preposterous.

[Brad Barrett]

I completely agree. And something we talked about was you could model it and be like, I want to be conservative. And it's like, what are you hedging against? So we're hedging against the risk that we run out of money where we are. Well, what's better to hedge against that risk by working harder or not spending or something, or accepting that in the circumstance that, that if 96% of the time, you never even touch your principal. For the 4%, do we want to hedge for the 4% by saving more and spending less and working longer, or do we want to hedge for the 4% by saying in that rare, rare, rare scenario, and by the way, that's not spending any principal. It's probably like the 2% that you'll actually run out of money. In that rare scenario, couldn't the hedge, instead of be work longer, spend less, save more, Couldn't it be. In that scenario, we'll move. In that scenario, we'll cut back. In that scenario, one of us goes and gets a job that we weren't planning on.

[Chris]

On.

[Brad Barrett]

Because it's so unlikely to happen, it's probably better to hedge in a different way. And so we don't want to leave the Bay Area, but I'd rather plan on leaving the Bay area in the 1% of the cases where planning around a 5% rule might, like, drastically be an issue than have to plan around a 3% rule, which kind of wildly. I know it sounds silly being like 3 or 5, but the difference between 3 and 5% is a very big difference.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's massive. Massive.

[Brad Barrett]

I don't know that that's something I've been thinking about lately is just kind of, how do you want to hedge that risk? Like, what's the hedge? And the hedge is that we'll just do less and we'll change things. Because, honestly, you know, I'm looking at my parents also and, like, what they want to do in their life from 70s to hopefully, you know, 90s, isn't that expensive. I think my mom's dream would be to live in a retirement community with a bunch of other people and, like, play bridge in canasta and, like, hang out and, like, drink coffee and, like, walk around a garden. And, like, I think if she never went on another international trip again, she'd be totally fine. I don't think she would care. I don't think that's a priority for her, which means inherently that her life could be way less expensive than I'm probably budgeting. Mine will be then. And I think we all say, well, you know, we'll be different. But Bill kind of pointed out, like, seems like we probably won't, like, see, it seems like I could tell you that. That I'm not gonna wanna do that in 30 or 40 years. I probably will.

[Chris]

And she's not settling right. Like, let's be clear. Like, that sounds like a wonderful life. It really does. And that kind of goes back to my. Like, life is not about. To me at least it's not about just these one off trips. It's about organizing a life that you wanna live every day. And now, like you said very aptly earlier, it's not binary. It's not one or the other. You can have both. But, like, it goes back to the Perkins quote, right? Like, you should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money. I think ultimately it comes down to a lot of us are seeking safety. But just hearing that quote, like, you can say, all right, look, I know the numbers. I have some fear in the back of my mind. But what I know for certain is every day I'm running out of time. So that's like a metaphysical certainty. You are running out of time. Like, to not enjoy that time. It makes no sense to me. It makes no sense. And like, in your case, you're talking about, like, it's like in case of emergency, break glass, right? Like, we could move or one of us could go back to work. Yes, of course, of course. Like, you're not going to run off a cliff like a lemming down to $0 in net worth. You're just not. There's no world where that's going to happen. It's just. It isn't. But it gets to like, okay, maybe again, knowing that we're seeking psychological safety, maybe having that plan for moving to wherever is just nice to have in the back of your mind, because, again, it lowers that ambient stress of what if, what if, what if, what's going to happen? What if some terrible thing happens? Okay, well, you have the $50,000 a year plan then that sounds pretty good. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to just have in your back pocket again, just to kind of lower that stress. And we talked about this on the phone, and I've really gotten to the point where I'm just kind of getting rid of everything. And it's not like some weird minimalism kick. It's just more like I'm just trying to get to the essence of what my life is. And I've really come to the conclusion that there is nothing. So I literally mean no thing. There is no thing that makes me happy. Happiness is an internal state. Not to get all deep on you, but it's an internal state for me. And that's why, again, I'm trying to optimize for my everyday, for my environment, for just what do I want around me? Who are the people that I want around Me on every single day. Not I'm organizing my life just to climb Kilimanjaro or Fuji or something. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I suspect I'll do both of those things, and that's wonderful. But at its essence, I'm at the point where I need a small little apartment, one suitcase of clothes. If I moved into a furnished apartment anywhere in the world, I had my suitcase of clothes, a passport, a credit card, my bit warden password, and my Dropbox password. Chris, I'm pretty much set.

[Brad Barrett]

I know. You said that. And I was like, I can't believe you don't include a computer on that list. Like, my brain can't comprehend, but I'm jealous that you don't.

[Chris]

I don't need it. I'll buy a 400 computer. Like, I have my stupid 400 computer here.

[Brad Barrett]

When my friend Kevin lost his house in the fires in la, it was really interesting to just hear him be like, gosh, I really didn't need all that stuff. Not that he didn't like it, not that his new house doesn't have some of the same stuff, but his attachment to the stuff is so much lower. And so that was really interesting. And I've been thinking about that a

[Chris]

lot and would you rebuy it? Would you rebuy it? I think that that to me is like, is a fun thought experiment going through. And like, I'm not trying to say on some, like, wonderful paragon of virtue here with. Not that there's anything virtuous about being minimalist, but, like, there are things that I would rebuy. Like, I love my Bose noise canceling headphones, and I'm sure you probably have some maximizer way to. Oh, well, this brand would be better. I'm getting with you, obviously. But like, I love my Bose noise canceling headphones. I would. If those broke tomorrow, I would buy another pair. There are plenty of things that I would buy. Again, it's not to say don't own anything, but it's. Again, yeah, Kevin's example with the fire is obviously the extreme example, but. But again, as a thought exercise that could happen. I've actually used those words like in my own walking through this condo that I'm renting. If I had a fire, what would I actually miss? And I'm at the point where there's virtually nothing. I have one box of keepsakes for my entire life, basically. I could probably digitize most of it if I even cared to. And that's kind of interesting. Again, what are you optimizing for Chris, right? Like, that's, that's the question we need to ask ourselves. And I know I keep using this phrase, but like, this is the work, this is the thought exercise.

[Brad Barrett]

Yeah, it's tough. I will say just since I can't not say it. If you did have to rebuy your Bose headphones, you can buy them at Dell and all these Amex Business Platinum cards have Dell credits. So that would be my answer to someone that needed to replace their Bose headphones is go get a Amex Business Platinum, get a huge signup bonus, use the Dell credits to buy the headphones.

[Chris]

I'll get a credit from either you or Noah.

[Brad Barrett]

Yeah, yeah, like, but use Rakuten and go get your 10x point. Feel like I'm not going to ever stop doing those things. Things. But I'm with you and that work is something I want to spend a lot of time on. I'm curious as kind of part of wrapping this up is what things do you think you are going to do differently having re listened to this episode? Because I know I did a lot of things differently when I first heard it. I identified some things that I want to change and then some things just clicked like a light. I'll give one example. There was one thing when I re listened to this episode that I was like, I have a mission for this year. And I was talking about how I have some friends who weren't at our wedding. They're like now some of my closest friends. And it's like, it's such a bummer because, you know, the memory dividends from our wedding are high. And I assume that's probably true for many people. And I hate that there are just like certain people that, yes, I'm sure I could AI superimpose them into my wedding video now, but they weren't there there. And I had said, you know, I kind of always wanted to do like a reunion ish thing where it's like basically bring together all of the great people in your life and do something that said. A friend of mine is getting married and this is his second wedding. And I'm just like, it is a lot to bring people together for an adults only thing. And it's halfway around the country, but there are a bunch of people that I want to spend time with. And so my goal and I haven't even brought this up with Amy, so I need to make sure she's on board. But I kind of want to do like a summer camp for all of the friends their Kids remember my wife and I watched this show, Marvelous Ms. Maisel. And in it they go to this like, summer camp for families kind of thing. And I think when I was growing up, the church we went to had something like this, but like, I don't know of that now. And I want to create it. Like, I want to find a place where we can get a bunch of houses and like hire people to make fun activities so that kids can do stuff. Like, it's basically like, I want to go to summer camp for families, but, like, I want to be the orchestrator because I don't want to go find, you know, a church that does this and join them. Like, I want to be able to invite all the people I know and everyone can have a plus one family. So it's like a set of things. And I'm going to this conference all. It's like bringing together interesting people. But I was like, that's awesome. But it would be also awesome to bring together interesting people and their wives and husbands and kids and like, you know, maybe dogs and, you know, go out and do something. And I don't even think it would be that expensive because I think people would want this. So that is something that it would just like clicked where it's like, you know what? I don't want to have a second wedding reception. You know, that's not what I want. What I want is next summer, 2027. I want to pick a week and I want to find a place and invite a bunch of people and have it be this awesome family summer camp style thing. That's what I want to do. If you asked me when is the season of life to do it while all of us have these young kids and they can run around like, now's the season of life to do it. And maybe it comes together 2027, maybe it comes together 2028, I don't really know, but that is one thing. And then this woman I know who has been talking about how she takes her family and they go live somewhere else in the summer and the kids go to camps there or they go to classes. And this year she's in San Sebastian. And I was like, amy and I have said, we want to do that. That's another one I want to do. I realize these are a little bit in conflict. Like, go live in another country for the summer and host this summer camp camp. That might be in conflict. But those two things are things that I think right now is a seasonal time in life to do. And they take some thought, you can't just like last minute plan those things. And so I want to start putting those things in motion. That's not all, but I'm going to throw it back to you. Are there things that re listening to this kind of pushed you to challenge what you're doing and what you'll do differently?

[Chris]

Without a doubt. But I want to just touch on, on yours real quick. I, I love, I love that concept of the, the summer camp. It's funny because we both grew up on the east coast. Place in Pennsylvania, I think it was called Woodlock Pines and my family went there. It was, it was similar to that. There were like all these fun games and just different like Olympics and all you can eat restaurants. It was just like, it was this great little camp thing. And like when you said that, it just brought me right back to it. And it was like, talk about memory dividends. That was a big thing for our family. It was super cool.

[Brad Barrett]

We did talent shows like all that stuff.

[Chris]

That was the coolest thing. And it's funny because even in a couple years back, so I was part of a mastermind, but it was really a inner work kind of men's group. And one of the guys has this amazing, amazing place in New Jersey and he invited all 20 odd of us there and we had a weekend where we just like, we played games, we had different teams, we all cooked dinners together. It was amazing and like, it's funny how those things really stick out. So yeah, I love that. Just the concept of play and getting people together. So anyway, I fully endorse your idea. I love that and I would love to hear the update if that actually happens next year. For me, the episode was a reminder that I think I've been pretty good at following through on a lot of the concepts. But there are times where I'm like, where I listen to something, I'm like, oh, I'm definitely going to do that. In this case, it was his concept of time buckets and coming up with like an actual list. I know I've talked this whole episode about optimizing more for an average day than for like those one off events, but I think it would be fun to really dream about those one off events because I don't think think that's something I do that often. I don't know. I don't know why, because I have those couple of things like climbing Fuji and whatnot, but I really don't take a step back and broadly think about like, all right, look, I've got probably 40 years left if I'm lucky, what are the things that I absolutely want to do in those years and what are the times or time periods that I can do them in? So I hope. I can't promise, but I hope that this is a call to action for me to actually sit down and brainstorm that list, because I think it would be valuable. I thought it was. I thought it would have been valuable in December of 22 when I heard your episode. And of course it's almost four years later and I haven't done it. So, yeah, maybe this is the kick in the pants that I need.

[Brad Barrett]

I think that's what this trip hopefully will be. My wife and I were talking with another, I think it was another couple and we talked about, you know, how we'd been to Bora Bora before, and they're like, well, what do you do there? And we're like, nothing. They're like, oh, I don't know if that'd be fun. And I was like, yeah, for us, sometimes times it's nice to have nothing to do. Now that doesn't mean we sit in bed all day. Like, we might go paddle boarding, we might go on a hike. But, you know, it is not go, go, go, go, go. And it's not do stuff for the sake of doing stuff. You know, if you watch a video on YouTube, it's like, top 10 things to do. It's like, well, you could go shop for pearls in the market. It's like nine out of the ten things they suggest. I'm like, I don't want to do those things. My three takeaways, and there's probably a lot more as I continue processing, is like one, I got to get this trip booked and I got to stop messing around, use the trip to actually plan out what we want to do and like lay the groundwork for this one thing that I really want to do, which is this kind of summer camp thing, which is kind of themed with the broader thing that maybe you've experienced, maybe your walking community has changed, is that when you don't go to the office every day, it's like if you look at all your closest friends, most of them I've made either through like communities of shared interest or work. And I've been fortunate to go to a handful of like, points and miles related events, which practically I'm going to because that's my new office, if you will. Because I don't have an office. I think I want to do something to better build a community where I am, because I don't have work for it. And so this is as simple as one thing we kind of committed to already. So I can't let the episode take credit for it is we're gonna kick off a Nick Gray style four hour cocktail party theme. Which episode I did. You can go search for Nick Gray or cocktail party, but we're gonna do just like pizza night. You know, we do this all the time. Friday night is always pizza and movie night. We're gonna do pizza night and maybe we'll do it on a weekend where there's a. You could start a little earlier but. And just start inviting like open invitation to all these people we're meeting. Keep kids mostly. When I say people we're meeting. It's like all of our kids, friends, parents, and start to build the community of people that are probably going to be our friends because we don't have the work friends. And so it's going to be the school and parent friends. And I want to build that and find the right people. And so we're just going to start doing this kind of regular, you know, bring whatever ingredients you want, get a bunch of dough and sauce and like we have a little pizza oven and we'll just like kids can run around the backyard, that kind of stuff. So that's like something that we want to kick kickoff.

[Chris]

I love that Nick would want me to ask, are you gonna have the name tags in the Icebreakers?

[Brad Barrett]

I'm not opposed to having the name tags in the Icebreakers at all.

[Chris]

They actually really help.

[Brad Barrett]

I am a huge fan of like. Like, I'm going to this conference and they're like, let's get a directory and send it to people. I don't know why certain events make it so hard to figure out who other people are. And so, yeah, for sure we'll have name tags, Icebreakers. It depends. Like, if it's all a bunch of kids that are in the same class and everyone already knows each other, maybe not. But also it's kind of of fun.

[Chris]

It is kind of fun. Yeah. I love that. I think name tags are essential. So that's really great. I've always wanted to do that. Where. Yeah, it's just. All right, here's an open invite. I even thought about this years ago. Like, it's hard to plan sometimes. Which is why I actually, like, you just impromptu called me the other day and I'm like, this is awesome. And I actually, it spurred me on. I happened to be in the car and I made a couple other just random impromptu phone calls. And they're fun sometimes. So like years ago I almost wanted to have this like text list when my kids were younger. Like, hey, we're going up to the elementary school to go play in the playground. If anybody's free, just come and join us. We'll be there for the next two hours. And it's like, it's so hard sometimes to organize plans and like, people really, we thrive off getting together with other people. Like, community is important. Friendship's important. These random one off conversations, they're fun. And it's sometimes hard in our little suburban islands unto ourselves. I love that idea, Chris. I think anything you can do to kind of lower the barrier, to actually have it in real life connection is wonderful. So it sounds like you have a lot more plan than I do. But yeah, hopefully, like the impromptu phone call, this will maybe spur me on to. To do something like that.

[Brad Barrett]

Well, I think I'm new to the kids in school thing, unlike you. So like, after years you've probably built up your network of friends through your kids, parent, that kind of thing. But I was like, we moved to a new place in the middle of COVID with kids that aren't in school. And like, yes, it's been five years and we've met lots of people, but I don't think we've built that kind of community that I want. And so when I heard Bill just talking about things, I was like, that's what I want to do. Like, that's what we need to prioritize now, where we find the time. That's what I need to work on. Like, what I need to work on is what am I willing to say no to? And that's hard because when I get excited about a thing in a way that's probably a superpower and kryptonite, I can't stop. Like, building an iOS app is something like, completely unnecessary. And I'm like, so excited about building it, even if I never shift shipped it. You know, it's not about the end result. It's that I'm just so excited about the learning and the process and the tweaking and, you know, I'm like designing icons. Like, the most ridiculous thing is I was sitting there like hand drawing SVGs in figma to like, make sure that the icons were great for an app that, like, I might not even ship to that many people for a tab on the app that might not exist, you know, like, because I might change it. And I just, I get so enthralled and wrapped up into it. But I'm not 20 or 30 anymore where I can stay up and pull all nighters if I'm excited about something and no repercussions and like so I, I need to figure out that balance of you just don't have all the time and where does it come from? I don't know. But if you let your health slip now, you're certainly trading future time. And so some of the things that I think short term get sacrificed are sometimes actually not what you want if you think about them, whether it's family or health or that kind of stuff. So it was really another kick in the pants. I think I probably have regressed 10% in the like net worth tracking from where I was post episode. But that one I feel like I'm still pretty good at. But if I'm not optimizing for net worth and I am optimizing for net fulfillment, you gotta do the work to figure out what that means for you. Right. I think Bill defined net fulfillment as the sum of all your experiences in life relative to what the ideal set of experiences is. And if you don't take the time to think about what that is for you, then you can't possibly live a life life maximizing your debt fulfillment if you don't know what the experiences you want to have are.

[Chris]

Agreed, Agreed. And I think something you said embedded in there, you have to do the work. I think you always have to do the work. Right. I think that's a lot of us are, to quote my kids, like NPCs in life, like the non player characters. But I don't think a lot of people listening to this show are or my show. And you have to do the work that's part of it. You can't just sleepwalk through life. You absolutely cannot. So hopefully this is a call, call to action for both of us and for everybody listening. I think people are going to enjoy this and take a lot out of it. So Chris, I definitely want to hear your updates and I'll do likewise.

[Brad Barrett]

And yeah, I'm going to try to remember to, to follow up on this. I'll maybe take less than three and a half years to loop back to it. But I find that in the spirit of like the combo of trying to buy back some time and reflect on stuff, I've been thinking, you know, gosh, I've been re listening to old episodes, you know, it's been weird. Like I know that there are some people who have listened the beginning and maybe they have better memory than I do and maybe they put those episodes into action better than I did. And so maybe when we pull an episode out of the archive, it's not as powerful to them, but I'm like, gosh, I've been thinking about some of these topics, knowing that I've covered them. Going back and listening to them has been really valuable because sometimes, as crazy as it sounds, you know, in the middle of the conversation as the host, I don't take it all away as well as I do if I come back to it or if I sit on it and come back to it sometimes. So one solution might be go pull out a few more of these greatest hits. And I'm not doing this every week. That's not the end goal. But I think trying to leverage some of the knowledge I already have from work I've already done has been really valuable.

[Chris]

Yeah, I agree. It's funny because I'm actually interviewing somebody who I haven't talked to in almost nine years in about 35 minutes here, so. And I listened to her episode from 2017, and other than one thing I said about my life, that's not true anymore. I could just hit upload on that tomorrow, and it would be as valuable of an episode as I've done in five years because it was a fantastic episode. I suspect you have a lot of those. I have a lot of those, yeah.

[Brad Barrett]

So that's the plan. Brad, this has been fun. I'm really glad. I was gonna do this as a solo episode, and then we had our random conversation. I was like, gosh, you've been thinking about this. I've been thinking about out this. I'm really excited. Thanks for joining me. For people that aren't familiar with choose fi. Choose fi.com. you got the newsletter, you've got the podcast. Definitely check it out. For anyone here that isn't hearing this on your feed, you can go to allthehacks.com and find what I'm up to. My newsletter and show this has been fun.

[Chris]

This has been a blast, as always. Hopefully this spurs us on to do another one not too long from now.

[Brad Barrett]

That sounds great. That is all I've got this week. Thanks for joining. I'll see everybody next week.