608 | Die With Zero, Revisited

Summary

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ChooseFI Podcast | Episode 608: “Die With Zero, Revisited” (July 20, 2026)

Hosts: Brad Barrett & Chris Hutchins
Main Theme: Reflecting on the transformative lessons from Bill Perkins’ book Die With Zero, four years after Chris’s original interview. Exploring how the FI (Financial Independence) mindset can evolve to prioritize time, fulfillment, and intentional spending—moving beyond endless optimization and net worth accumulation.

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Episode Overview

Jonathan and Brad (with guest Chris Hutchins from All the Hacks) revisit the core ideas of Die With Zero—a book that shook up their thinking about money, time, life stages, and fulfillment. Nearly four years after Chris first spoke to author Bill Perkins, both hosts reflect on how the book (and the original interview) has influenced them and the broader FI community. They dig into their evolving attitudes about frugality, travel, the “optimization trap,” and most importantly, how to make the most of life’s fleeting seasons.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Paradigm Shift: Living for “Net Fulfillment”

• Both hosts agree Die With Zero remains “paradigm shifting.” The notion isn’t literally dying with nothing, but shifting from maximizing net worth to maximizing “net fulfillment”—the sum total of meaningful experiences over a lifetime. ([03:06], Brad)

  "What are you optimizing for? ... Time is everything."
  —Brad ([03:45])

• Chris describes the recurring internal battle: is accumulating more (money, points, optimization wins) actually adding value once you’re on solid financial footing? ([04:52], Chris)

2. The Challenge of Frugality's "Superpower"

• Brad admits he would now be “less overt” about extreme frugality as a superpower, saying it’s invaluable on the way to FI but can become a liability if it’s never recalibrated. ([07:46], Brad)

  "Frugality is a superpower at times. And then it becomes a liability at times."
  —Brad ([08:39])

• Discussion of “the skill of spending” (a nod to Mr. Money Mustache): Early FI requires laser focus, but eventually, true mastery means learning how to spend joyfully and intentionally.
• Chris acknowledges he still struggles to spend extravagantly even when he can afford it, especially if there’s a cheaper or “better” points outcome possible ([10:04], Chris).

3. Seasons of Life, Memory Dividends & Time Bucketing

• Brad highlights “seasons of life” and “time bucketing” as the biggest lessons—from making the most of fleeting windows (like trips with kids before they leave home) to planning for experiences aligned with your life stage. ([03:06]–[14:06], Brad)

  "Once [my daughter] goes to college, who knows how many more rollercoaster trips… Seasons run out, and sometimes you don't realize when they run out."
  —Brad ([14:06])

• Both emphasize the "memory dividend"—the compounding value of shared adventures and why investing in experience (even at higher cost) is often worth it.

4. The Optimizer’s Dilemma: Satisfaction vs. Maximization

• Chris wrestles with “maximizer” vs “satisficer” mindsets.

  "You are the epitome of a maximizer... the satisficer finds something that reaches that threshold of requirements and then they just, they book it or they purchase it."
  —Brad ([19:10])

• Does more planning and optimizing really produce more happiness, or just more stress and lost spontaneity?
• Amy (Chris’s wife) points out that anticipation is part of the experience—a reminder that over-delaying or over-analyzing can rob you of joy. ([16:12]–[19:03], Chris)

5. Time, Health, and Filling the Void

• Chris realizes the challenge isn’t just lack of free time—he tends to fill any free moment with “work” (passion projects, etc.).

• Both discuss the importance of intentionally prioritizing health in your 40s/50s as a gift to your future self ([22:52], Chris & Brad).

• Brad suggests reframing “work”—projects you’d do even for $0 are passion, not obligation.

  "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... That's just passion led."
  —Brad ([35:10])

6. Rethinking the “Safe Withdrawal Rate” & Spending Anxiety

• Chris unpacks the 4% rule, annuities, and withdrawal safety (96% chance of maintaining principal after 30 years at 4% withdrawal). He calls out the FI community’s tendency to stack ultra-conservative assumptions—working longer or spending less than needed ([36:14]–[42:13]).

  "If you have enough money that you could live off 3% of it, you could probably buy an annuity that will cover you and your spouse for the rest of your life."
  —Chris ([36:14]) "It's just layer upon layer upon layer of conservatism... we're just craving that safety."
  —Brad ([40:47])

• Chris and Brad argue for considering alternative hedges—being willing to downsize, move, or adapt if needed rather than preemptively sacrificing years of prime living just for peace of mind ([47:47]–[49:18]).

7. Automation, Minimalism & The Essence of Happiness

• Both hosts muse on decluttering not just physical possessions but psychological “scorecards.”

  "There is no thing that makes me happy. Happiness is an internal state."
  —Brad ([51:50])

• Using the “would I rebuy this?” test for all possessions and spending.

8. Calls to Action: Community, Experiences, and Doing the Work

• Chris is inspired to actually plan and host a big family “summer camp” with friends—a memory dividend, not just a second wedding ([55:16]–[59:20]).
• Brad resolves to create a time buckets/life experiences list, not just optimize for the perfect “average Tuesday.”
• Both highlight the value of building local community—hosting pizza nights, impromptu calls, and forging real-life bonds especially in the absence of a work “office” ([64:56]–[66:33]).
• Reiterating the need to “do the work” of reflection; you can’t maximize fulfillment unless you know what fulfillment means for you.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Time and Optimization:

  “Time is it. Time is everything... seasons run out and sometimes you don’t realize when they run out…”
  —Brad ([03:45])

• On Frugality vs. Spending:

  "Frugality is a superpower at times. And then it becomes a liability at times."
  —Brad ([08:39])

• On Booking Travel/Spending:

  “I have not lived up to the expectations of that episode and relistening to it ... was a real reminder of what I’m doing wrong and what I can do better… Once I pull the trigger, it doesn’t bother me…”
  —Chris ([16:12]–[19:04])

• On What Are You Optimizing For?:

  "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."
  —Brad ([20:49])

• On Loss Aversion:

  "It's hard to give up money or income you already have. ...I've learned the ability to not chase more money. I haven't learned the ability yet to let go of income you already have."
  —Chris ([39:08])

• On Fear and Fulfillment:

  "You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money."
  —Bill Perkins via Brad ([50:18])

• On Community:

  “Community is important. Friendship's important. These random one off conversations, they're fun. And sometimes hard in our little suburban islands unto ourselves. ...anything you can do to kind of lower the barrier to actually having in real life connection is wonderful.”
  —Brad ([65:25])

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Notable Timestamps

• [03:06]—Discussion begins on time bucketing & seasons of life
• [07:46]—Skill of spending vs. frugality as you transition on the FI path
• [10:04]—Chris’s struggle to “spend for convenience” vs. hunt for deals
• [16:12]—Amy’s insight: Anticipation is part of the experience
• [22:52]—Creativity, workaholism, filling all your time
• [29:23]—Time constraints, binary trade-offs, letting go of “superhuman” expectations
• [36:14]—Withdrawal rates, annuities, confronting FI fear
• [47:47]—Rethinking “failure” scenarios; practical vs. theoretical hedges
• [50:18]—Perkins’ “fear wasting your life” quote
• [53:09]—Minimalism: “one suitcase, laptop, and Dropbox password”
• [55:16]—Action step: planning a “summer camp” for friends and family
• [61:39]—The importance of relaxation and “doing nothing” sometimes
• [64:56]—Building new community: “pizza night” and local connections

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Actionable Takeaways & Future Intentions

• Book the Trip, Stop Over-Optimizing: Take action, even if it means paying “full price” for an experience you’ll value.
• Chart Your “Time Buckets”: Proactively list major adventures or milestones for the next decades—and act before the window closes.
• Community Is Core: If you lack workplace ties or are in a transition, intentionally create opportunities for new friendships and shared experiences.
• Redefine Enough: Revisit your withdrawal assumptions; hedge with adaptive strategies, not endless accumulation.
• Regular Reflection: Build in periodic checkpoints to revisit your values, goals, and the “why” behind your optimization.

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Final Reflections

This episode is a masterclass on evolving your approach to FI once you reach (or get close to) your goals. Brad and Chris challenge listeners to examine what they’re truly optimizing for, question assumptions about risk and safety, and remember that the “net fulfillment” of experiences, relationships, and health will always outshine a bloated account balance. The hosts call themselves—and listeners—to keep doing the inner work, build community, and act before the best seasons slip away.

Quote to Remember:

"You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money."
—Bill Perkins (via Brad, [50:18])

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For more on Financial Independence, visit ChooseFI.com and consider connecting with a local ChooseFI group ([72:40]). For travel, optimization, and life hacks, check out All the Hacks with Chris Hutchins.

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to Choose a Vi. Today on the show, we have a fun one. We have my good friend Chris Hutchins from the all the Hacks podcast, and we are discussing one of our favorite topics. So it's the book die with zero. Chris came out with an episode in December of 2022 on his podcast with Bill Perkins, the author of this book. And I listened to that episode no fewer than three times in literally that week. I texted Chris, I said this. This is incredible. It's a paradigm shifting book. For me, it's a paradigm shifting concept. Not the actual Die with Zero. Nobody wants to Die with Zero dollars, but the rethink on so many aspects of life. I think this book is revolutionary. And Chris and I got together and wanted to go back over the book, go back over that episode, and see what our takeaways are. Nearly four years later. It's a little bit different in that Chris and I are each putting the episode on our feed so you'll hear that he kind of introduces it. Even though it's an episode of Choose a Vi, you are really going to enjoy this episode. And with that, welcome to truezephi. Before we get started, I keep this podcast entirely ad free for two reasons. First, this is a FI podcast and I don't want to promote products that I don't want you to buy in the first place. And second, I really like the clean listening experience of a show where you don't have to fast forward ads to keep it ad free. All I ask of you as a listener is the next time you open a travel rewards credit card, go to choosefi.com cards. And with that onto the show.

[B]

Today I wanted to sit down and talk about Bill Perkins book Die with Zero and the interview I had with him and all that impact. I had a conversation with my friend Brad, who is joining me today because he similarly had a really, really strong feeling about this episode and had a big impact on his life. 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. We've been, what would it look like to come back and reflect on it? So, Brad, thanks for joining me.

[A]

Yeah, Chris, this should be fun. You know, this episode had a huge impact on me. I just couldn't shut up about your episode and about his book. And, yeah, I must have talked about it on my show a dozen times. I feel like not to be egotistical, but I think I kind of spread that far and wide in the FI community. And it really took hold. I mean, I think people started thinking differently a little bit at the margins. 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.

[B]

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 zero, 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, you know, 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.

[A]

Yeah, 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. Right. Like those of the many things that Perkins talks about that really hit home for me. I think a lot of us in the FI community talk about optimizing all the time. I mean, you're the prototypical example, obviously. It's ultimately like, what are you optimizing for? I know Bill ragged on you a little bit, maybe with the credit card miles. And he talked about the Chuck E. Cheese tokens. 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. I mean, time is it. Time is everything. My daughter just graduated high school. She's going to William Mary in a couple months. And again, you talk about seasons of life. Combining this with Tim Urban's the Tail End article, which I think is brilliant on Wait, but why 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 it's fun in the fight 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, yeah, if there's been a lasting change for me, that is absolutely the one. Yeah.

[B]

And on the rare chance someone listening isn't familiar with Brad's work, he's been running the Choose a Fi podcast for the longest time. And fi being financial independence, you know, that topic you've covered for years. What I thought about when I re listened to the episode was two things. One, and by the way, the reason I re listened to it was a couple, 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. Right. I was willing to consider cutting half of my income from my business to get back hours a week, that there were better ways to buy back those hours for, like, know, a tiny fraction of the cost. And it was one of these, you know, Chris goes down an optimization journey that doesn't make sense. And I was like, what. 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. 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. This moment when we listened to it, and I sat down with my wife, and 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, what are we doing? You know, like, what. 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. 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? Right. 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. 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, you know, like, 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.

[A]

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. 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. Our friend Pete, Mr. Money Mustache, talks about the skill of spending, and 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 five, 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 you just said something to the effect of, you're now spending in ways that you might not have. And I know in that episode with Perkins, you talk 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, 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.

[B]

I think that I've gotten better at part of spending. 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, you know, 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. And you could use the 4% rule, which I want to get back, 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, you know, aren't crazy expensive, right? Like, oh, we really, you know, 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, you know, 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 considered that in that bucket. Things like going out to dinner and, you know, ordering whatever I wanted and not being too worried about, like, ooh, did I. Was that appetizer more expensive where I still struggle tremendously is when I feel like I'm paying for something, that there's a reasonable way to get it for a better deal. And that's where it's so hard. So you know, we're, we're planning this trip in as little as I guess technically we have a bunch of flights booked over a window of time as soon as a few days from now recording. So, so I could even be on this trip by the time this comes out. I know what kinds of deals we can find with hotels. Right. Like I just know from points and miles and you know, finding deals what, what can be possible, but I'm not finding them on this trip. And it is, I think I've gotten so accustomed to what it costs 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. Like can I afford to spend fourteen hundred dollars a night for, 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 could be, you know, 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, 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. 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, you know, spend that mental overhead on it. And that's just hard.

[A]

Yeah, I get that. I had a recent experience with this, not quite as significant, but yours is a little more writ large. 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 roller coaster trip, actually. So we went to six amusement parks in six days. And it was crazy, 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. As I got into it, I'm like, all right, look, like, this is actually a Perkins thing. This is a Seasons of life. And once she goes to college, who knows how many more times she's going to want to go on a roller coaster trip with her dad. And I also found because. 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. And 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 maybe, and I'm not saying that's going to work necessarily for you. 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. Everything good in life has a little bit of difficulty. You've never actually done something that was super easy. You're like, oh, look at how proud of myself I am. This was. Look, this is wonderful. I'm like, no, it was easy. You know, this is hard for you. You, especially you. More than just about anybody on earth, 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.

[B]

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. Call it tomorrow. Okay. Just. Cause, you know, the holiday. We're recording this on the third. We've got the family. But 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, I don't have that week or month or year of 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. 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. 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. Right? Like, I. I expected, oh, we're planning this last minute. We want to go somewhere, like, just to do nothing and relax because 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 can go to French Polynesia. 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 gonna go? So one of the flights leaves so soon that, you know, we have a connection to get on it. And I booked all these with points, so they're refundable. But 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, you know, 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, 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 like, 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 going to 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, you, like, you never think about it?

[A]

No, you don't think.

[B]

It's like. I mean, some people might, but I don't. And that's a really good feeling to not have to think about it.

[A]

Yeah, I like that. And it's so interesting, right, because this comes back to, what are you actually optimizing for? That's such a fun question. Just to, like, organize. I don't know. It's like this organizing question for me in my brain is like, what are you optimizing for? And now naturally, you are like, in the maximizer versus satisficer. Like, you are the epitome of a maximizer. Like, it, 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. I can only imagine your head exploding at, like, the Cheesecake Factory or something. You know, hopefully you're not. You're not eating there too often these days. 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 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, I mean, that wouldn't be so bad. And my first thought is, do you really need to fly to French Polynesia? So that's where my brain goes. But of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't go there. You shouldn't go to Hawaii or shouldn't go to Paris or wherever. 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.

[B]

Yes. And that is something. 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 can do. But, you know, 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 started to map out, 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 bags so we can, like, plan our next year? And so it's forcing us to really be like, what do we care about? And I think what we really care about is 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, you know, 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. 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 wanted to show you this app I built. 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, can I get that Android app built before the end of today so I can send it to you? Could I even build it?

[A]

I love how the day is being built. Probably while we're talking.

[B]

No, it's already live. 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 form. 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. That is completely wrong. I mean, sorry, 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, and this is where I'm really processing what Bill Perkins talked about, which is, you know, what's this the season of life for? Right now I have like competing things. It's like, now is the season of life to get your health in order. 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, of like being able to do stuff. It might not be five or ten years alive, but, you know, 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. 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. I don't know the answer yet, but. And I don't. I was talking to you and I feel like you've solved this. It's like, how do you, how do you let go when there's a million things you'd want to spend your time doing?

[A]

Yeah. At first it comes back to your definition of work. You know, you said, I'm working, I'm. 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 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 going to be called Health Decoder. And we're trying to build something that finds the signal and the noise in all of these var. Various things. So like, I'm thinking exactly on health too. It's like this is the time because yeah, I mean you gave that range of spectrum and. But I mean, I see parent, 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, we're not getting any younger. Luckily we're both pretty fit for age. But man, if you slack that for 10 years, it gets a whole lot harder. 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. So I mean, I think we do need to cut ourselves some slack. But it comes down to, it's like, again, what are you optimizing for? Perkins talks about fulfillment being these one off spikes of fulfillment. I've reoriented that. Not that I don't like trips. Like, I just went to Japan for three weeks and saw Eddie Vedder in concert a couple times and Hiked the Kumano Kodo and did all these just incredible things. Those will have those memory dividends that Perkins talks about. And it was a wonderful three weeks. But ultimately what I'm optimizing for is like the best Tuesday I can get. And what that's a proxy for, it's cutesy. Like, I'm calling it the Tuesday project, but it's just, it's the same as Thursday or Saturday or Sunday, whatever. What do you actually want your life to be? What does 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. Even though I live in America and this is a car centric society, we're at the point where 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. 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, better weather, all of these little micro things. 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. 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. Okay, does that mean every day of my life is going to 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 for miles without being bounded by some major road or something like that. Because I'm, 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, this Tuesday project. And so it's like baseline fulfillment. I guess my question to you. Well, a, I'm curious, of course, what you think about that, but 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, do you think? And it's, it's binary. I know I'm setting it up in an arbitrary binary way.

[B]

No, no, 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? Like, why can't I have 50 great Tuesdays and the two week vacation? And I think I've 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 someone I got to 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. Right. 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 gonna spend 3,000 on me, well then that's opening the door to $9,000, which I don't need to do. And it cost me nothing. 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. Cause I don't care. Or I'll let it go because I didn't even pay for it in the first place. Who cares? I just start going down this path of, okay, well, what was the best way to do it? And, and Amy and I were talking and she's like, why this thing is consuming, you know, 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 there 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. Know, to your point, it's like the trip has to sound fun to want to invest the, 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. And like, 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. 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, 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, you know, and Amy and I have these discussions where it's like, what do we want? Do we want the free time or do we want the kid? Like, you have to actually sit down and decide. And so I think with. Absent the process of thinking through it, which I think, you know, 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, well, you. 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 that's what I. I think my reality is. I. I've got to come to terms with the fact that there's just less time now. And I think I struggle with what to do in that scenario because, you know, I think the other challenge is because the wide stretch of what is work, you know, like, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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. 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

[A]

progress, but I still think that's okay. I don't have an issue with that because I. 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. You know, you would be doing that. 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, you need to give me advice. Yeah. I mean, you do. You need to release that because that's not a negative. That's just who you are and that's what lights you up. The whole point of living is to find the things that light us up. 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. I think you beat yourself up too much about optimizing.

[B]

I don't think so.

[A]

I don't think you take it a little too far sometimes, Chris. You're really good at it and you love it.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

You figured that out when you were probably a teenager. Don't run away from that. Run away from where this takes over your life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

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. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. 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. 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 know, you're chasing the more money, but for why. Right. It's like, what. What is the goal? You know, I think about taking a month off. I think on one hand it's not really about the income, but. But I think it's about the. Well. Well, 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. 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, you know, 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 because I was 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 Carson, 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 by an annuity. And 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%. 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. The 3% rule is the floor. Because you could buy an annuity, it might be even 3.1%. 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 $1 million to live on, you know, your $40,000 a year, or 10 million for 400,000, at what. What percent of the time, after 30 years, do you still have the million or the 10 million?

[A]

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

[B]

It's about 96% of the time. 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 Chalky Boarding all of that out. And I actually had a lot of fun in a cloud session here because I. I hooked up my spending from copilot money with an mvp. I hooked up kubera with their mvp. 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 got to give yourself some grace here, like, quit worrying about these little things and be willing to take an experiment. And, you know, you taking a month off doesn't mean your income's gone forever. And, you know, 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, you know, I've learned the ability to not chase more money. I haven't learned the ability yet to let go of income. You already have. Okay, I dropped a lot there. So react to any and all of it first.

[A]

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. You're halfway there. So that's something. But, 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, hey, I'm going. 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.

[B]

And that's like the most conservative crazy, you know, like, if you use the 3% rule, I assume 99% of the time you would never Touch your principal?

[A]

Never.

[B]

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.

[A]

Which is insane.

[B]

Even crazier.

[A]

Yeah, it's insane. So we've just set 30.

[B]

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

[A]

Yeah, 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 in that, like, we're trying to get to a baseline where we have options. 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.

[B]

That doesn't help you unless you add, like, this extreme goal to build a thing and do it. But, but, but I, 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 go in, you know, be a thing.

[A]

Right, right. And the money's going to compound anyway. Like, so why not in this crazy instance, like, you want to put your name on a. Or you want to build a hospital. Okay, well, maybe you. If you know the, 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 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 give the money away now, start building plans, work on it. That would be a whole lot more fun. Another example is, and Bill's talked about, I don't know that he necessarily talked about it in your episode, but 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, like 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, right? Again, it's seasons of life. And when can this money be useful? I think this can reorient a lot of ways that you think about, about life and spending and time and just all the important stuff. Chris.

[B]

So funny enough, before you go, I got an email from someone about that exact topic, which was, I listened to the episode. I was thinking about leaving money to my kids. They've got good jobs, 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, they really wish that they could send their kids to 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, 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, 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, you got these classes they wanted, like after school, are they going to do gymnastics? Do they want to do karate? Do they want to 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 fun emails. He's like, whatever you do, don't let your child ever ice 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. And like, you know, it was like a, a joking thing. It wasn't like, never take your kid ice skating, but it was just a highlight of like, wow, I thought, I thought this is where we're at now. It feels like every year there, 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, you were talking to me the other day. The house you have now, you know, 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, you know, 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.

[A]

Totally. 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, 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 to model that at a 2% withdrawal rate or even a 3% withdrawal rate based on your current expenses is utterly preposterous.

[B]

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, 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, you know, if 96% of the time you never even touch your, you know, your principal, you know, 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 up for the 4% by saying in that rare, rare, rare scenario, and by the way, that's not spending any principle. So 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, 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. And I think 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.

[A]

Yeah, it's massive.

[B]

So I don't know. That's something I've been thinking about lately is 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. You know, like, 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 hang out and drink coffee and like, walk around a garden. And I think if she never went on another international trip again, she'd be totally fine. Yeah, 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, you know, 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, it seems like I could tell you that I'm not going to want to do that in 30 or 40 years. I probably will, right?

[A]

And she's not settling. That sounds like a wonderful life. 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 want to 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. It goes back to the Perkins quote. 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, you can say, all right, look, I know the numbers. I know this is. 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 in your case, you're talking about, like, we could move. It's like in case of emergency, break glass, right? Like, we can move. Or one of us could go back to work. Like, yes, of course, of course 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. 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. That sounds pretty good. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to just have in your back pocket just to lower that stress. And, and we talked about this on the phone, and I have 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. I've really come to the conclusion that, like, there is nothing. So I literally mean no thing. There is no thing that makes me happy. It's. Happiness is an internal state. And 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 have to climb Kilimanjaro or Fuji or something. Like, not that there's anything wrong with that. I suspect I'll do both of those things, and that's wonderful. But I'm at the point where I need a small little apartment, one suitcase of clothes I can move into. 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.

[B]

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

[A]

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

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that is. I mean, 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, you know, like, 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. That was really interesting. And I've been thinking about that a lot. It's like, what is all this stuff? You know, like, why do we have it?

[A]

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, and I'm not trying to say I'm some like, wonderful paragon of virtue here with. Not that there's anything virtuous about being minimalist, but 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, this brand would be better. I'm getting with you, obviously. But I love my Bose noise canceling headphones. I would buy. If those broke tomorrow, I would buy another pair of. There were plenty of things that I would buy. Again, it's not to say don't own anything, but it's what would you. Again, Kevin's example with the fire is obviously the extreme example, but again, as a thought exercise that could happen. I've actually used those words like in my own walking through this. 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. What are you optimizing for, Chris? I think that's the question we need to ask ourselves. And this is the work, this is the thought exercise.

[B]

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 you know how much credit that would be. My answer to someone that needed to replace their Bose headphones is go, go get a Dell, an amex Business Platinum, get a huge sign up bonus. Use the Dell credits to buy the headphones.

[A]

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

[B]

Like use Rakuten and go get your 10x points. Like, I'm not going to ever stop doing those things. But I'm with you and that work is something I want to spend a lot of time on. I'm curious, 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. I have some friends who weren't at our wedding and 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. 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, the great people in your life and do something that said a friend of mine is getting married and you know, he, this is his second wedding and I'm just like, wow, 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. I kind of want to do like a summer camp for all of the friends, their kids. Like, you know, I, I was. Remember my wife and I watched this show, Marvelous Ms. Maisel. Okay. 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. 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 places, houses and like hire people to make, you know, 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 it to go. 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 you know, if they, 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. 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 so I was like, I want, and I don't even think it would be that expensive because 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 and 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. Amy and I have said we want to do that. I realize these are a little bit in conflict. Like go live in another country for the summer and host this summer camp. You know, that might be in conflict. But those two things are, are like things that I think right now is a, 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. But, but 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, and what you'll do differently.

[A]

I want to Just touch on yours real quick. I love that concept of the summer camp. It's funny because we both grew up on the east coast. There was a place in Pennsylvania, I think it was called Woodlock Pines. My family went there. It was similar to that. There were all these fun games and just different Olympics and all you can eat restaurants. It was this great little camp thing. 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.

[B]

I remember we did talent shows, all that stuff.

[A]

It was awesome. That was the coolest thing. And even a couple years back, so I was part of a mastermind, but it was really an inner work kind of men's group. One of the guys has this amazing, amazing place in New Jersey. He invited all 20 odd of us there and we had a weekend where we played games. We had different teams and we had. Yeah, there were different sporting events. We all cooked dinners together. It was amazing. 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 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 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 that's something I do that often. I don't know. I don't know why, because like, you know, I have those couple of things like climbing Fuji and whatnot, but I really don't take a step back and broadly think about. 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 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.

[B]

I think that's what this trip hopefully will be. You know, my wife and I were talking with another, I think it was another couple, and we talked about how we've 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 it's nice to have nothing to do. Now, that doesn't mean we sit in bed all day. Like, we might go paddleboarding, we might go on a hike, but it is not go, go, go, go, go. And because we've been a couple times, it's not do stuff for the sake of doing stuff. You know, if you watch a video and in a lot of places like French Polynesia that are like, 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. I just want to go snorkel out the beach, out the door of the overwater bungalow. Like something. I want to just relax. I want to go, it's July. I want to go watch the World cup and have no distractions, you know, like, they, I, I do have this, like, slight thing of like, wouldn't it be kind of cool to be in French Polynesia if France is in the final? Like, that'd be fun. You're not, you don't have to go all the way to France where it's, you know, an oven in Europe right now, which would also be fun. So my three takeaways, and there's probably a lot more as I continue processing, is like, one, I gotta get this trip booked and I gotta 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. So like, 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, is we're going to 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 night, 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 in just start inviting like open invitation to all these people. We're meeting kids mostly. When I say people are meeting, it's like all of our kids, friends, parents, right. 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, you know, that kind of stuff. So that's like something that we want to kick off.

[A]

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

[B]

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

[A]

They actually really help.

[B]

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. Like, I, 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. 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 fun.

[A]

It is kind of fun. Yeah. I love that. I think name tags are essential. So that, that's really great. I, I've always wanted to do that. Where. All right, here's an open invite. It's hard to plan sometimes, which is why I, I Actually, like, you just impromptu called me the other day and I'm like, this is awesome. And 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. Years ago, I almost wanted to have this 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. It's so hard sometimes to organize plans. People, really, they thrive off. We thrive off getting together with other people. 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 having in real life connection is wonderful. So it sounds like you have a lot more plan than I do. But like the impromptu phone call, this will maybe spur me on to do something like that.

[B]

Well, I think I'm new to the kids in school thing, unlike you, you know, you 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. Building an iOS app is something like, completely unnecessary. And I'm like, so excited about building it, even if I never 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. The most ridiculous thing is I was sitting there like, hand drawing SVGs in figma to make sure that the icons were great for an app that 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 like 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, like 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, you know, 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 good kick in the pants. 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 the optimizing. If I'm not optimizing for net worth and I am optimizing for net fulfillment, you got to 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 maximizing your net fulfillment if you don't know what the experiences you want to have are. Agreed.

[A]

Something you said in there, you have to do the work. I think you always have to do the work. A lot of us are, to quote my kids, like NPCs in life, 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. It's part of it. You can't just sleepwalk through life. You absolutely cannot. So hopefully this is a call to action for both of us and for everybody listening. I think, I think people are going to enjoy this and take a lot out of it. Chris, I definitely want to hear your updates and I'll do likewise.

[B]

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. To loop back to it.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

But I find that 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 since the beginning. And maybe they have better memory than. 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. You know, 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. So, you know, one solution is, you know, by a couple weeks, one solution might be, you know, go, go pull out a few more of these greatest hits. And I'm trying. 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.

[A]

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, I listened to her episode from 2017, and yeah, it was really interesting. 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. And yeah, going back to. Again, what you said an hour ago is all right, well, maybe that's a way that you can get that month, quote unquote, off, but still provide amazing value to your community. Is you hand curating four episodes that are just amazing and are as timeless today as they were then. I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. Certainly, I think they get a lot of value and sometimes it's easy to get caught up and this is myopic for us, but hopefully this is a larger issue that people could take away from. Is again with your newsletter and my newsletter. Yeah, there are going to be a couple of people who are like, oh, I really love getting that newsletter on Saturday in your case or Tuesday in mine. But at the end of the day, when it shows up five weeks later, they're happy, they're enjoying it, and nobody's mad at you that, oh, Chris talks about optimizing and making a better life, and he took a month off to have a better life. Grumble grumble, grumble. Is that the person you want in your community? No, of course not. So tell him you know where to tell them to go to. Yeah.

[B]

Brad, this has been fun. 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. Yeah.

[A]

And talk about in real life. We just wanted to mention, if you're in the financial independence community, you're interested. We have 300 choose if I local groups in 300 cities across the world, including the Bay area, of course. Choose.com local. And this is what it's all about, is finding these communities. What's great is you and I jumping on a call and an episode like this happens. And we talked years ago about doing, like, little roundup episodes or, like, little random shows a la Tim and Kevin. And that's the fun about life, is serendipity. So hopefully this spurs us on to do another one not too long from that.

[B]

That sounds great.