our relationship with money, a talk with paula pant [video]

Religion, politics and money. But it is kind of true. It's like, if you want to start an argument, bring up one of those three things. Oh, there you go, now you have an argument.

Enjoy. But today we're going to talk about one of those three money, a topic that is very uncomfortable for me, but we're going to be talking to Ms. Paula Pant today.

Paula is a financial journalist in the brains behind Afford Anything. The Afford Anything blog, newsletter, podcast and online community are popular resources for practical advice and inspirational stories. All in the world of money, finances, investing, real estate, it's all happening. Paula's main goal is to empower everyone, everyone, no matter who you are, to sort of grab your finances by the reins, okay, and to master it.

And I think a lot of people, even myself included when I was younger, felt like, Oh, I will never make enough money, like I just it's. Especially if you didn't grow up with money, you know, you can fall into a trap of feeling like, well, I'll never make money. This is just it's just impossible. And the world of money and finances is so confusing, and it seems to be its whole own language at times.

And that doesn't make you feel any better either, right? But Paula is here to help us understand and to empower us. To not be afraid of money, to not be afraid of our finances, and to be smart, but to also enjoy life. You know, she's not gonna come on here and say, pinch all the pennies, she's here to say. Emma, if you want that Prada bag and it's really gonna make you happy, figure out how to get that Prada bag. You know what I mean?

Okay, let's bring in Paula, everybody.

Were you sort of financially savvy as a kid? Like, you know, those kids who are like, actually, I kind of did this. Like I used to sell things at school, like I'd sell little erasers that my mom would buy me.

But were you like that? Like, were you financially savvy as a kid? because that was the only example of me being financially savvy. I loved shopping, so, yeah, I maybe had a little entrepreneurial streak, but then I was addicted to shopping even when I was a kid.

What about you?

So sometimes you can do the right things for the wrong reason, right? So you can have these habits that appear as though they're really healthy, but they're coming from an unhealthy place. And that was me. When I was a kid, I was really, really anxious, just super anxious. And I, coming from a place of scarcity, believed that there would never be enough.

And so I clutched onto every penny I hoarded. Not because, oh, look at me, I'm a good saver, but because I was terrified that I would run out of money. So it was doing the right thing for the wrong reason. And when we get down to the root of money, right? A lot of people make the mistake of believing that money is tactical. Like, you know, you just do X, do y, do z, or hire it out, right?

People make that mistake all the time. The reality is, most people know the basics of what to do, but we get it in our own way. Because money truly is behavioral, it's all about unpacking that psychology. And at the root of it, everyone is either money anxious, money obsessed or money avoidant. Most things that people do. most behaviors boil down to one of those three things anxious, obsessed, avoidant.

And so I was like, Well, what, you know, I'm not good at any of that, what can I do? And I had this fear that I would never make money. And so through high school, through college, through my early 20s. Because of that fear and because of that lack of confidence. I clutched onto every penny. And it was only as I got older and actually started making good money that I realized, like, I have the ability to make money.

I have the capacity to make money the more I grew in confidence in knowing that. Even if I spend every dime that I make, that's fine. Because I'm able to go out and make more. As long as I'm healthy, right? As long as I have the health to work, I have the talent and the skill and the ability to make more. And the moment that I started believing that, I allowed myself to begin spending. And so if you look at my actual like dollars and cents, it looks as though my relationship with money, like, you know, it looks as though I've, quote-unquote, gotten worse with money.

But if you look at my personal like balance sheet, what you would see on the surface is that right now I'm spending a lot more. So it looks like I'm quote-unquote bad with it, when in reality I'm actually better with it now because it's coming from a healthier place.

Like, like.

If we were to take that to its logical extreme, we'd be Ebeneezer Scrooge, right? Ebeneezer Scrooge is the perfect example of a guy who lives in abject poverty, despite the fact that he is one of the wealthiest people in his neighborhood. Right? No one wants to be Ebeneezer Scrooge, and I think nobody would argue that Ebeneezer Scrooge is good with money. Then, on the flip side, you've got Montgomery Burns from the Simpsons, right? He has a lot of money.

He spends a lot of money, he lives in that big mansion, right? But he is obsessed with it. He's obsessed with making more. And he's obsessed with money for its own sake, right? And so he's also an example of someone who's not good with money.

He's successful at accumulating it, but he's not successful at translating his money into an expression of his values. To be good with money means that you are using money as a physical manifestation of your values, right? So whatever it is that you value, that you prioritize, maybe you prioritize travel and adventure right underneath. What is travel? Travel is a form of adventure and exploration.

So maybe what you the value that you have is adventure and exploration, and the expression of that value is through travel. That's how you use your money, in that particular case, to express those values. Maybe the value that you have is generosity, right? And so you spend your money supporting friends, supporting family. And that can. Sometimes, you know, you gotta be careful, because that might tip into, yeah, enabling, right?

So there's a whole lot there to do it well, but maybe that's how you express that value. But if you're just clutching onto money, if you're just not spending it, then you're divorcing yourself from the way that you can use your money to be an expression of your deepest priorities.

But you know what I mean? Like, if you're spending all your time making money and you make a lot of it, but you have no time to do anything else with it, then what's, I guess, the point? I mean, how do you think balance is best found in that way? Between, you know, sort of making enough money that you can survive comfortably. And then also spend on things kinda that are enjoyable for you, you know?

So I can exchange time for money, or I can exchange money for time. Exchanging time for money is having a job, exchanging money for time is hiring somebody to mow your lawn, right? And so within the scope of how much right now, at this current moment, how much abundance do I have in each of those categories? How abundant am I in time?

How abundant am I in money? You know, typically, where you are within that is going to determine. You know if you have a lot of time on your hands, but you don't have a lot of money, all right, then you're gonna be hustling a little bit. If you've got a lot of money, but you feel a little bit strapped for time, all right, it's time to start outsourcing a bit more, right? Hiring assistants, hiring help who can take some of the workload off your plate, right?

And so that exchange? If we look at the pool of like these are my limited resources, then it just becomes a question of how do I trade one limited resource for another? Because ultimately, it's a time and money balance, and that really, one of the best uses of money is to trade that money for time. Because ultimately, money is renewable, right? We can always make more, whereas time is non-renewable, and once it's gone, it's gone.

So time is far more valuable. You know, you talked about, there's this idea around work that people dislike their work and do it only for money, right? That can sometimes be like the knee-jerk reaction to the idea of work. But I know I listened to your interview with your mom. You and your mom are both workaholics, right? self-described workaholics, right? So, and I know that you're not doing that to put groceries on the table, right?

You're not doing that because you're stressed about the cost of bananas. You know, you love what you do, right? And you have been creating videos for years. And you do it because you love art, you love creation, you love video as an expression. So there's a certain thing that happens when your work, like your dad said, it hits that flow state, right?

And to the extent that you can, you can direct your energy towards doing work. That is not just like drudgery for the sake of earning a dollar. Sometimes there's an era in your life when you have to, of course, right? Like you do what you gotta do in that moment. But in terms of the long game, the big picture? If your work can be the type of thing where you are creating something of value that you are putting out into the world. The more you do that, the more richly you'll be rewarded.

And so I would go to these journalism conferences and everyone was like, the internet killed all the jobs, you know? Like people were so pessimistic. And then I would go to content creator conferences. And they were like, the internet created so many jobs.

Yeah, like, the gatekeepers have gone away and there are low barriers to entry to starting your own business. And so, you know, it used to be that if you wanted to start a business, you needed a brick and mortar retail location. Like, you needed a high cost of capital. And it was so shut out for most people.

Like, what? What came first? was your fascination around money? Did that come first? yeah? or was it your experience, you know, in the workforce? Was that what made you? yeah?

They bought their first car, they bought like a tiny little starter home. My dad didn't open his first retirement account until he was 50, 50. And so I watched them be very, very frugal out of necessity, just because they were getting a late start in life. You know, they. Like, when you earn in Nepalese rupees, it doesn't translate to anything when you translate that to U.s dollars.

But they were doing all of the right things, right, they were clipping coupons. We never went to restaurants, I think because I saw frugality, but I also saw its limitations, you know, like I saw that frugality would help you survive, you know, but it would keep you off the streets, but it would never help you get ahead.

And the way that I like to say that now is, you can't shrink your way to greatness. You know, frugality is, if you think of it as sports, frugality is playing defense, but entrepreneurship is playing offense, or investing is playing offense. Right? And in a good sports game, you've got to do both. But that understanding came later, it came. It started with me being in high school, realizing that my parents were doing all the right things and they were really frugal. But we still weren't really getting ahead.

And I also, I went to an all girls Catholic school and so I would see these other kids at school. And they were doing what I considered rich kid stuff, which, like, you know, like eating at Panera bread, I thought that was a rich kid thing to do. You know, I was like, I can't imagine having $14 to spend on a kale and strawberry salad. That was my definition at that time of what a rich person was.

But I saw these other kids at high school who had that kind of money and I was like, I don't, what is it that they're doing that we're not? And then I started reading books and I started learning about it, and I was like, Oh, okay, the difference is investing.

So I spent six weeks in Egypt, I spent about a month in Laos, I spent a month in Cambodia. I lived on a budget of around $1,000 a month, and I was able to do that first by being in countries like Laos and Cambodia, right?

Countries where the dollar goes a lot further. And second, I wasn't like traveling around, doing touristy things. I was like I'd go to one location so I was minimizing transit costs, and then I would just stay in that one location. In a guest house. Like eating the same food that locals eat, like just living like a local, you know?

And at that time, I was like reading books, I would write the occasional freelance article. But I was mostly just there to experience the culture and to have that adventure. And so many of my friends back at home said, Oh, I would love to do that. I would love to travel Southeast Asia, but I can't afford it. And I heard that over and over and over.

And I knew that these were friends who lived in apartments like luxury apartments with stainless steel appliances. Right? And they would go to the bars and spend $14 on a cocktail, right? Or there'd be a concert in town where, like, concert tickets were a hundred bucks and they would go. And so I saw them. They would spend their money in these ways, and then they would turn around and say, I'd love to travel, but I can't afford it.

And so here's the thing if you sit down and again remember how I said, money is an expression of your values. If you really ponder, like, what do I value? And you decide that wanting to maximize your life at home is what you value and you. So you make the conscious decision that the creature comforts of having a luxury apartment, having the $14 martini, having the hundred dollar concert ticket.

You decide that that is genuinely what you value, and you prioritize that above and beyond anything else, including travel. I applaud that, that's great because that is conscious, thoughtful, deliberate spending. But if that's the case, then the way to express.

That is not, I can't afford to travel. The way to express that is, I choose not to. It's not a priority. So what about your acronym fire?

Ah, yes.

So let's talk about both of those. So, first, the general online acronym of fire financial independence Retire early. Financial independence is the point at which you no longer have to trade time for money. So it's the point at which you have enough residual income, typically through investments that you have enough. So if you think about Taylor Swift, if she decided to stop working today, she could easily live for the rest of her life.

She doesn't have to go on the Heiress tour or put out a new album for the sake of putting groceries on the table. She's fine for the rest of her life. Warren Buffett Same thing. fine for the rest of his life. So a lot of these people, who we typically think of as quote unquote wealthy in a traditional sense, are financially independent. They're not working because they have to, they're working because they want to.

And so financial independence is anyone who has enough money to do that, right on a smaller scale. It's the person who works as a registered nurse but saves 30 of her income and invests it in index funds and does that for 15 years. And eventually, the money that she has built up in her portfolio is enough that it's pretty much gonna match what she was spending as a registered nurse. And so she's like, Cool, I've got enough, right? That's financial independence.

Now, the other side of the fire acronym retire early. I don't actually like those two being conflated into one thing. So a lot of people are drawn to the fire movement. Because they're like, Oh, once I have enough, I can retire. So that registered nurse, who maybe doesn't like her job is like, once I have enough money that it's matching what I make in my day-to-day life, I can then retire. But the problem is, when we conflate those ideas together, we end up with a bunch of problems. First of all, retirement is one of many options.

You could choose to retire, you could choose to change careers, you could choose to do, I mean, you could choose to do anything right. Why would you make one of the many possible choices? Why would you confuse that with the idea of having that freedom in the first place?

So it's like this idea that now you need to move to the Florida keys. Like the second, you know what? I mean, it's like, Yeah, exactly. So what about yours?

So I mentioned earlier, people tend to fall into one of three categories they're either anxious, they're avoidant, or they're obsessed. So if you're obsessed with money, we see these people who they blow it to show it right, and they're all flash no cash, and they really conflate their self-worth with their net worth. Money avoidant tend to be people who have really internalized the notion that rich people are greedy, or money corrupts, or the idea I'd rather be happy than rich. Like, as though they're mutually exclusive, as though you can't be both at the same time, right?

So they've really internalized these ideas and they've internalized this notion, like, look, if rich people are evil, well, I don't wanna be evil, so I'm just never gonna be rich, right? And by doing so, you sabotage your own success, even at a subconscious level. You hold yourself back. Because why would you ever want to be rich or successful or powerful if you deep down believe that rich, successful, powerful people are evil or bad or greedy? So people who have really internalized that those scripts tend to be money avoidant, and then you've got then people who are money anxious. And that can either be because you don't have enough, and so you're anxious about. As I described myself when I was younger. Or it could be because you have a lot. And so now you're worried that you're gonna lose it, you're worried it's gonna get stolen, you're worried that people are gonna use you for it.

So, either way, regardless of whether it's due to scarcity or due to abundance, you are living in the state of hypervigilance.

Or no, actually, that's not true. I was anxious as a kid and then I think now I'm avoidant, I just don't wanna see it, I wanna believe it. It's weird.

Like, that's not a thing, you know, because you, the two of you are dynamic and the two of you are always changing and so you constantly have to be working on your relationship. And the way that you do that, oftentimes, is just by observing what's coming up within you and then asking yourself, Wait a minute, let's unpack that, like, what's behind that? And so I think the relationship with money, a relationship that a person has with money is similar to that. In that you're never done having a healthy relationship with money, because your relationship with money is very much a reflection.

It's a projection of all of the gunk and the noise that is inside of you, right? Getting projected onto money. It's like your relationship with yourself. If you've got a really healthy relationship with yourself, that's likely gonna translate into a very, very healthy relationship with money. But if there are parts of yourself that are suffering from trauma, or from damage, or from just feelings of brokenness or insecurity, or inadequacy, that's gonna translate into your relationship with money.

Yes, we'll take these together, because when we talk, so, investing real estate entrepreneurship, right? As an entrepreneur, if you run your own business, you are investing money into that business. But you're doing so in a much more active way, right? As versus as an investor who's investing passively into things that you don't actually have any day-to-day involvement in.

If you buy a share of Coca-cola stock, right? if you don't work for the coca-cola company, you have no day-to-day involvement in it. You just bought some stock on the public market and that's that. Yep, so traditional public markets investing is very passive. Whereas if we go to the other side of I-er, right?

Entrepreneurship is very, very active. Owning real estate is sort of a hybrid between the two, so it's kind of fitting that the R falls into the middle. And so if you think of I-er, you can sort of see it as a spectrum of moving from passive to active, right? Where public markets, investing, buying stocks, buying bonds, things like that, that's the most passive.

Building your own business, that's the most active and that gradient in between.

That's how you move along the passive to active continuum.

If you were to be giving advice to the average person, what would that advice be?

Those are, if you want to, fine, if you don't, don't.

So you'll need, if you live in the U.S. a 401K or a 403B, or an IRA. You'll need some type of an account, or just a taxable brokerage account, right? But you need some type of an account where you can make investments in. You can buy into a broad market index fund, that's basically a big basket that tracks all of the publicly traded stocks get an account, buy a broad market index fund. Hold it for the next 40 years, and you'll keep contributing to it every month and you'll be golden. Wow.

Yeah, there it is. Yeah, it's very, very simple.

And that's kind of my fault, you know what I mean? I think a lot of young people, especially, are like, I'll figure that out later. But I do think that from everyone who has more life experience than me, the advice is to invest.

Because if you can scare people into thinking that it's complicated, then people are going to throw up their hands and be like, let me just pay you to handle it. So there's a whole financial industry out there that has a vested interest in making it feel scary and feel complicated. It's actually not so. First of all, I threw out a bunch of letters and numbers 401K, 403B, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Ira, right?

Those are all just different types of accounts, and what is an account? Think of when you go to the bar, right? When you go to the bar, there's a pint glass, which typically holds beer, there's a martini glass, which typically holds vodka.

There's a shot glass which might hold whiskey, it might hold tequila, it might hold gin. But just because a particular vessel is designed to have a particular substance in it, you don't have to put that substance in it. If you don't want to, you can take a champagne flute and put water in it or coffee, or you can put anything you want in a champagne flute. It's just that.

Because a champagne flute so often contains champagne, a lot of people will conflate the two. So when we talk about these various accounts, right? There's 401ks, 403bs, IRAs. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those accounts are just vessels, those accounts are just the glasses that hold the substance.

And then when we talk about various investments, right? we talk about stocks or bonds, or CDS or money market. Those are the substances that go inside of the vessels. So sometimes I'll hear people say I don't want to open a 401K because I don't trust the stock market. Well, a 401k is just an account.

The stock market, or stocks, are a particular type of substance. So you can open a 401K, you can open an account and you don't need to necessarily have stocks in there. I would recommend that you do, and we can talk about why later, but you don't necessarily have to have stocks in there if you don't want to. So that's the first thing to understand is just the distinction between the vessel, the pint glass and the beer that goes inside of it. So to invest first, just get a glass.

I don't even care which one, just to start.

And so the biggest one in the United States, the biggest one, is called the S&P 500.

And that is 500 companies, 500 of the biggest companies in the U.S. And so if all you do is get an S&P 500 index fund, right, get that, get a total bond market index fund boom, it's as simple as that.

There's also one that's called a total stock market index fund. Just get that right.

Is that sort of the vibe?

Now, sometimes you'll see headlines where so-and-so beat the they beat the total stock market for the last five years. Big, freaking whoop. Five years in the span of a human lifetime is a blink of an eye. Almost nobody can consistently, over 40 years or 50 years, reliably beat the index. And so your best bet is actually the simplest and laziest one, which is you just stick with. I mean, if you want to keep it really simple, just get two indexes.

Get a total stock market index. get a total bond market index, have a combination of both. Put them in one of the vessels. Ideally, you would put it in a tax-advantaged vessel, which is just a vessel that gives you a tax break, so put it in one of those vessels. And you're good. And the most important thing is just that you keep contributing regularly, so with every paycheck, just keep putting money in.

And so where most people go wrong is most people try to time the market. So they'll say, Oh.

This is happening, there's a recession going on, or I'm worried that there might be a recession coming up, there's a pandemic happening right now. People are looking around at all of these big geopolitical events. And they're trying to make guesses about what might happen in the future. And they're trying to time the market. That's a mistake.

Don't do any of that the people who are the most successful. Just routinely put in exactly the same amount of money with every single paycheck. And so imagine that you get paid once every two weeks, right? And we'll say, with every paycheck, you put in x amount of money. Maybe it's 100, maybe it's 500, maybe it's 1,000, whatever you can afford, right?

If you're putting in the same, we'll say just 500.

If you're putting in the same $500 per paycheck, then naturally, whenever the stock market is expensive, meaning when stocks are high, right? Naturally, that same $500 is going to buy fewer shares because stocks are expensive. And if you're putting in that same $500 every two weeks, every paycheck, then naturally, when stocks are low, that same $500 is going to buy more. So, by virtue of putting in the same fixed amount of money with every paycheck, you inherently automatically end up buying more stocks when they're cheap and fewer stocks when they're expensive.

So it's like, how do you get there?

Next month, do one more percent, so $60, right? And if you just continually do that, start with 1 and then increase by an additional 1 every month. And do that for somewhere between six to 12 months. By virtue of doing that, then, within six months to a year, you'll be saving between 6 to 12 of your income, right? But it's going to be gradual, right?

It's gonna start with 1 this month, and it's gonna be 2 next month, and it's gonna be 3 the month after that. And then the question is, all right, how do I either cut my expenses by $50 a month or how do I increase my income by $50 a month? Right? And so every month you're solving for that, but of course, in a given month, you're never gonna cut exactly 50 or earn exactly 50, right? But what that does is like if you stay on that trajectory. If your goal each month, well, say you make 5,000 a month, your goal each month is just to increase it by an extra 50 bucks a month.

Then even if one month it's 30 and the next month it's 70, and the next month it's 45. You're still kind of hugging to that 50 bucks a month, and you're still increasing over time.

It'll sort of give you a reason to do that that you wouldn't else otherwise. You know what I mean? What is your advice for? People who sort of maybe have a mentality where they're like, I can't, you know, like people who are like, I can't make money, like I don't attract money.

I don't make money, this is my life, there's no getting out of it, there's no turning it around, this is just my deck of cards.

What are your thoughts on that?

So where you locate the source of control, the source of power? If you locate that into the external world and you say the external world is broken, which it is, that's true. But if you put all of your. If you give that all of your power and you don't see the power inside of yourself, then you do end up stuck. But so what you need to do is change that story and flip that script. That's why financial psychology is the single most important, like your financial mindset is the single most important thing. Because when you flip that script and you put your locus of control internally and you say, you know what?

Yeah, it's true that the world is broken, and it's true that my childhood sucked. And it's true that, you know, like, X and Y and Z, those things are all true. We're not invalidating any of that. But I also have these advantages, I have this power.

Like, there are so many things that I can do all right. And like, once you flip the script and start telling yourself a more empowering story, then the question it changes from I can't? to How can I? And if every time you find yourself thinking, I can't, you flip that script and ask, How can I? You start seeing the world in different ways.

It is so hard because it's so easy to just sort of fall into this stereotypical routine.

Or young people might be like, I don't want to get married because everybody gets married and I'm not. You know, I'm not going to sort of succumb to the man, you know, like, there's this sort of desire to do that. Rebellion, I feel like my generation is definitely in a phase of rebellion.

Like, that's what I would say to people is like, it's hard. People say, follow your passion, but sometimes it's hard to know what you're passionate about.

They see the same people every day. Like, I guess my question is, is that realistic? like, is that a realistic goal for humanity? That everyone can find fulfillment in their job in one way or another?

Those jobs for me, they were never going to be my career, right? but those were jobs. Like, there's a distinction between a job that you do temporarily and when I say temporarily, it might be for a few years, but there's a distinction between a job that you do temporarily. For a brief era in your life.

Versus what you do long-term, right? So that's one difference. The other thing is there are a lot of people. So for me, I worked food service and I was like, this is not my path. There are a lot of people who go into food service and they're like, Wow, actually, I'm really into this.

And I think I want to go further in this and I think I'd like to. You know, I'm starting out as a bar back, but like, I would love to one day be a bartender and then eventually I would love to open my own bar. You know? Or I'm starting out just like as a food runner. But I would love to one day eventually become a sous chef and then maybe become a chef. Which, by the way, there's actually research. There's a book called The Millionaire Next door. The average millionaire in the United States, first of all, four out of five millionaires in the U.S. are first generation millionaires. So they did not come from, they did not come from money.

They are the first generation in their family to be millionaires, of the four out of five millionaires in the U.S. who fit that category. The bulk of them are not only are they entrepreneurs, but they're entrepreneurs in what are known as like, kind of boring professions. So janitorial services, right? Because there's not a lot of competition there, it's not glamorous.

And because of the fact that it's not glamorous, you can really grow something big.

What would be those three smaller topics?

People feel this pressure, like you said earlier, to you get the fancy car, you get the fancy home. You spend your money on appointments. Like, you get brows and lashes and nails, right? And you do it just because everybody else is and you feel like it's expected of you. But if you can shed that and really ask yourself, Do I care about my hair and my nails? And my? And maybe I know you? You came to the conclusion you do care about your nails, you don't care about your hair, right?

And they read car magazines and they, and that's their thing, and other people. It's like if you lived alone on a deserted island and nobody saw what you drove.

Two more, two more. Like, is it investing like? is it like the basics of investing? Or do you think that's something that kids can go and learn on their own? Like what else?

Is unpacking the money stories that you tell yourself? There's so many get-rich-quick schemes out there, like TikTok is the worst space to learn about money. Yeah, right, but like, why do people fall prey to get-rich-quick schemes?

It's because a lot of times that slow and steady, you know, gradual, incremental. Like just put money in with every paycheck and don't touch it. It feels so passive.

So, yeah, you can teach the tactics, but most people get in their own way and most people get in their own way. Because they have some type of a story that they're telling themselves. The story that they should be doing more, the story that they should be responding to broader economic news, the story that they should be trying to time the market. They have all of these myths and misconceptions, and those pull them off of that track and create all of this unnecessary complexity. And actually end up doing way more damage. Yeah.

It just doesn't even matter, yeah, and I do think it's true that you can easily go out and learn the technical side of things, like how things work. What do you recommend for young people who are coming into maybe a bit of their own money for the first time? Yeah.

What's your recommendation for young people on how to learn? Because I think there is something hard to grasp about money for some reason, like how these things work. It's all a whole new language.

I don't care about any.

Get the full employer match because that employer match is part of your page, it truly is yours. You're earning that money, and you're just if you're not getting the full employer match, you are not getting a portion of the money that you've earned in your job.

Like, you are entitled to that money that is part of your compensation, so you're just foregoing part of your compensation, foregoing part of your paycheck. By not getting that okay, so get the full employer match.

Number three, just stick with broad market index funds. So to keep it super simple, total stock market, total bond market, right, get just those two. Your age minus 10 is the percentage that you put in the total bond market, and the rest you put in the total stock market. There it is.

Yeah, and then just put money in from your paycheck every single month, so it's super simple.

Like you do have to, you can't run away from it. I've been known to run away from it. Yeah, like, I, yeah.

I don't want to know like I wouldn't recommend that, like I don't recommend that, you know what I mean, I don't think that's good.

I don't like the disconnect I have in a way, but for some reason for me, mentally, I feel mentally healthier. Not seeing it and not knowing what's happening and knowing that I'm living far below my means, so that I don't have to look ever again, you know, right? But that's not, I don't know, but I don't know if that's healthy, necessarily.

Because it's like, I should just be involved. But there's something in me where I'm like, I don't want to see, I don't want to know.

You can't do both. Is there an element of you that, like, if you saw how richly you were getting rewarded for the work that you do? Do you think that it would take away from?

I'm like, fuck.

I think I have a really hard time with that.

Naturally, enjoy the attention.

Ultimately, I don't, I could go without it, I could go without being a public figure. And I actually have moments all the time where I'm like, I kind of wish I went and did something else that wasn't in the public eye, but maybe gave me the same fulfillment as.

What I do now, it's very like, I definitely have my fair share of existential crisis, crises, but I do think that that's also inevitable. Like, I bet I don't, but it's like, But here I am.

And it is great in a lot of ways. So, you know, and I think fixing that relationship with whether it's me being in the public eye or, you know, the money of it all. Like, I think fixing that would allow me to just sit in it and maybe even enjoy it. But I have yet to crack that code.

And so I. My guess is that the moment that you'll start to actually pay attention to your money is when you make peace with the fact that you're in the public eye.

I almost don't really believe that, maybe.

My financial success is, I'm like, this is gonna go away because I know I can't handle being in the public eye for much longer. Like, does that make sense? So it's like, I think that could be what it is. It's like, I'm not even gonna look because this is not gonna last, because I'm gonna be. I am not strong enough to be here.

Like, I will eventually crumble, but also no, I won't. Like. A lot of it is all like subconscious sort of little chatter that if I were to truly address, I'm like, No, I've made it this far. I'm gonna be fine, you know? So it's interesting.

It's very rare these days that, you know, with my podcast. And with all these things, that I realize something new about myself that I've never even touched on in that I have never like. And so what a treat I like, because I really, I'm not avoidant with almost anything in my life except for that.