[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to a thousand natural shocks about with any podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Gabe S. Dunn and on the show today we have Rose Hahn who is the author of Add is Zero. [SPEAKER_01]: We talk a lot about a more traditional financial stuff that the show kind of used to be more about but by the end of the episode there's a real character arc. [SPEAKER_01]: Also Rose has a dog who makes some noise and a mom that she's with that makes some noise, which is classic.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, anyway, please enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The lighter lights are bad at cheating men Is it because you when they got you to believe in Someone finger-held to their forehead And then hell you trapped any cover All the sales came Let's fight back in Have you talked about class in the mass Because of the disaster But the fashion is not spank Add to the box It's a thousand natural shocks A bad with money podcast [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to a thousand natural shocks, a bad with money podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Gabe Dunn, and with me today we have Rose Han, do you want to tell my audience who you are and what you do? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well thanks for having me on Gabe. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm a personal finance educator and YouTuber, and I also just wrote the brand new book at a zero, a step-by-step guide to financial freedom and getting to your first million.
[SPEAKER_02]: And honestly, I'm just a normal person [SPEAKER_02]: completely fucked up with her money shit and i don't know if it's okay to curse i feel like this is one podcast where that's totally okay and that's definitely my vibe but yes i long story sure i ended up a hundred thousand dollars in debt after having done all the right things going to college working really hard and i was living paycheck to paycheck despite having a six figure income
[SPEAKER_02]: And my life is so different from the vision of freedom that I always envisioned for myself. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's when I kind of rewound and sought out the actual financial education that we should have gotten but never got.
[SPEAKER_02]: And long story short, seven years later, after sort of figuring all the secrets that are gate kept by the rich, all the stuff that we should have learned about money, I became a self-made millionaire by 32 and now passing on the knowledge to everyone else who wants to create financial freedom. [SPEAKER_01]: Where did the 100k of debt come from? [SPEAKER_02]: Most of it was from student loans.
[SPEAKER_02]: I come from a really traditional Korean family and education was very important. [SPEAKER_02]: And they said, just go get a degree. [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be worth it no matter what. [SPEAKER_02]: So every semester, I found myself signing these huge promissory notes for like $20, $30,000. [SPEAKER_02]: And at the time, you know, at 1819, I didn't register to me what that meant for my life later on. [SPEAKER_02]: I was just told that it would all work itself out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then on top of that, there was around five roughly average $5,000 of revolving credit card debt that just never seemed to go away. [SPEAKER_02]: I would pay it off, it would come back, pay it off, come back. [SPEAKER_02]: So that was mostly student loans and credit cards. [SPEAKER_02]: Where were you living? [SPEAKER_02]: New York City, expensive city. [SPEAKER_01]: Had you gone to school there? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I went to NYU, also very expensive school.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's also a city where it's easy to kind of sucked up into the whole keeping up with the Joneses. [SPEAKER_02]: I was definitely keeping up with parents, but appearances. [SPEAKER_02]: I was living in the nice Manhattan, high rise. [SPEAKER_02]: I was hanging out and partying at the hottest places, dressed and looked apart. [SPEAKER_02]: And there was definitely a lot of that pressure. [SPEAKER_02]: That probably influenced the credit card debt, especially.
[SPEAKER_02]: So a big part of me digging out of that was moving to, yeah, moving to a cheaper city where you could feel less pressure to keep up with the Joneses. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's really interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: Where did you move? [SPEAKER_02]: I moved to Denver, Colorado, that was for a period and it was for a relationship, so I was there for about four years.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it wasn't intentional, I didn't go there to save money, but I found that all of a sudden I was spending a lot less money and it was easier to say no, because, well, you know what? [SPEAKER_02]: Now that re-winding and thinking back, [SPEAKER_02]: I think a big part of getting into that and not being able to get out of it and overspending is social pressures.
[SPEAKER_02]: So keeping up with the Joneses is one thing, but if you have friends who live a certain lifestyle and you hanging out with them involves spending [SPEAKER_02]: amounts certain amounts of money and it's just part of your fine groups life then it's that that also makes it kind of hard to break out of the overspending. [SPEAKER_02]: So a big part of me digging out of the debt was having the courage to start setting financial boundaries and telling my friends about my debt.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a lot of shame, I didn't tell people, I thought it was this thing that I couldn't talk about. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, little did I know that most everyone walking around has some amount of debt, whether it's a car loan or credit cards, so we don't need to be ashamed, first of all. [SPEAKER_02]: And second of all, [SPEAKER_02]: If you don't talk about it, it just feels even more overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I carried interest only debt and didn't do anything about it and didn't even know what my balances were for a good four or five years. [SPEAKER_02]: Never talked about it. [SPEAKER_02]: And so one of the moves to start digging out of that was being honest with my friends saying, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: you want me to go to this bougie dinner this weekend, as usual, another boozy brunch.
[SPEAKER_02]: And listen, I'm, I have some financial goals that are really important to me right now. [SPEAKER_02]: I really want to pay off my student loans. [SPEAKER_02]: So, would it be okay with you if we do something else? [SPEAKER_02]: Or if I just see you next week instead? [SPEAKER_02]: And it sounds really simple, but the first time I said that to a friend, it felt like a very empowering step.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, wow, I'm finally speaking of for myself and telling people what's going on for me. [SPEAKER_01]: Was that less of the culture in Denver? [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to say it was less of the culture. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the city itself is much more down to earth. [SPEAKER_02]: People there are like about rock climbing and nature. [SPEAKER_02]: New York City, New York is New York. [SPEAKER_02]: Empire's state of mind, bottles and bottles.
[SPEAKER_02]: At least back then, it was still all about bottles and bottles. [SPEAKER_02]: The red velvet robe at meat packing district, seeing and being seen. [SPEAKER_02]: I think the culture has shifted a bit, but it's always been very much about what you do, who you know, and how successful you are. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, what did you agree? [SPEAKER_02]: Where do you live?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I lived in New York for a little bit and it was, I mean, it's funny because I always say, oh, I didn't like New York. [SPEAKER_01]: I had a bad time. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think I would have had a bad time in any city at that time because I didn't have any money. [SPEAKER_01]: So I always blamed it on New York and perhaps, like, I think that is true now looking back. [SPEAKER_01]: But I would always be like, oh, you were just broke. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's two New Yorks.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like a New York for rich people on in New York for everyone else. [SPEAKER_02]: That's true. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's definitely easier to live here with you. [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of money. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm in LA now and I've been thinking a lot about moving and a lot about the stuff that I chased when I was younger like you were saying and the the striving to
[SPEAKER_01]: prove something because of the background that I come from, you know, in New York case, you were talking a bit about like coming from a Korean American background versus like I was coming from sort of a more low-income background and it's this idea that you don't talk about it because you just have to show the shiny part. [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think the friends that you keep will have a very big influence, not that New York City itself was the problem, but also the people that I hung out with in New York, because you can very much find down to earth friends who are really driven to reach financial freedom and pay off debt and save money and [SPEAKER_02]: They work on those things together.
[SPEAKER_02]: You could very much find that in New York City, but I was breaking out of the whole kind of golden handcuffs corporate employee world. [SPEAKER_02]: I went to a fancy school. [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone there was gunning for a high-paying fancy Wall Street job and then go to private equity and Harvard MBA and move up the corporate ladder and make all this money.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the thing to do was go to fancy dinners, you know, and do all those status symbol, like summer in the Hamptons, that type of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was also the social circle I was in, but I think my life would have, my trajectory would have been very different if I'd met friends who, for example, [SPEAKER_02]: were like, I don't know, the kind of people who would go fly to Omaha for Warren Buffett's annual shareholder meeting, and they'll talk about how to save money and start businesses that they can build wealth and buy a house in their 20s. [SPEAKER_02]: That would have been a completely different trajectory for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's very much about the company you keep to. [SPEAKER_01]: I could not think of anything worse than going to the Warren Buffett.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, not that that's what I would have wanted to do, but you know, [SPEAKER_01]: uh... i wanted to talk about the golden handcuffs of a good job one of the things i found interesting in your bio was the uh... your high-paying job might be why you're broke and are those are maybe two different things but can you talk a bit about the idea of the golden handcuffs yes golden handcuffs
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the majority of people, especially the ones who go to good schools and get these high-paying jobs, were only going after one kind of income, which I talk about in my book. [SPEAKER_02]: There's actually three kinds of income. [SPEAKER_02]: Employee income, business income, investment income.
[SPEAKER_02]: Employee income is the paycheck where you make a good salary and we all are pretty good at getting that if we have [SPEAKER_02]: But the kinds that provide the most financial freedom are business income and investment income. [SPEAKER_02]: Because there's two factors. [SPEAKER_02]: There is tax efficiency, and there is time freedom. [SPEAKER_02]: Business income and investment income rank way better than employee income on both counts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Time freedom, if you have a team, if you've got investments, you don't have to show up or do anything. [SPEAKER_02]: You've got money coming in. [SPEAKER_02]: Whereas employee income, you stop showing up, you stop trading your time, you don't get paid. [SPEAKER_02]: Then on the tax efficiency swept from, especially in a city like New York City, where taxes are through the roof. [SPEAKER_02]: There's the employee income is the highest taxed.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's nowhere to really shelter that income. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no loopholes. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no favorable. [SPEAKER_02]: rules for tax treatment of employee income, whereas business income, there's a lot of ways to essentially deduct your lifestyle expenses from your business income and then you pay taxes on what's left. [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, you have to do all this legally, but that's why Warren Buffett pays lower tax rate than his secretary.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, income is like a dollar or something. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and maybe in dollar terms he pays more in taxes than a secretary, but purse on in percentage terms he pays less because of this and investment income forget about it there are ways to pay zero percent in some tax brackets dividends and capital gains on investments are zero percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: And think about that, it's really the rich people who have investments and they're the ones paying a lot of the time is paying zero percent on their income because most of their income comes from investment income or business income. [SPEAKER_02]: So when I started realizing all of this, like digging into what is the financial education that I'm missing out here because I did everything I was supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I even got a finance degree and worked on Wall Street, but I'm still broke. [SPEAKER_02]: So when I started digging into what does it really take, it just blew my mind that we're all going into huge amounts of debt to learn how to make employee income. [SPEAKER_02]: And nowadays with AI going on, I don't even know of colleges. [SPEAKER_02]: It's even less necessary or relevant than before. [SPEAKER_02]: So going into debt makes even more, sorry, even less sense than when I did it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's just wild to me that we're all getting into debt and paying so much money to to learn how to make this income that is the worst and provides no freedom. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why most of us find us in this golden handcuff situation. [SPEAKER_02]: So we do all these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: but then we're running the hamster wheel of going to work and climbing the ladder and making money, but then it's going up the door and there's no tax efficiency, there's no time freedom, so we're never really getting ahead. [SPEAKER_02]: And then we can't get out of it either, because also a lot of our identity gets wrapped up in the career too, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so interesting to hear about that that's the employee income is the worst type of income, but that's the one that most [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder too about the idea of college in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think sometimes going back, it would have been more effective to go to some sort of technical school, or now looking at, [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to bash academia, but looking back at what kind of skills I have, it is as we approach the impending apocalypse. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, well, I should have learned about like water filtration or something like how to how to fix a pipe or something like that. [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, how to grow food? [SPEAKER_02]: Dumb thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I think more practical. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, or roof, I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: Are you talking about the AI apocalypse or something else?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the general apocalypse, but the AI apocalypse is, I'm always sort of of two minds about it, because it's similar to how I feel about some other stuff that's painted as, um, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's it's a negative in the sense that it's bad for the environment where pushed so we're leftists and progressives are pushed against using it. [SPEAKER_01]: But in some ways, that's only, that's going to mean that only our enemies have access to it or the ability to use it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes a little bit similarly about guns where I'm like, I understand we need gun control, but also the only people who are not going to have guns are the people who I want to have guns. [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it is the element of [SPEAKER_01]: that we are pushed away from something that may end up being the only means of making money or automating, figuring out investments or the best way to use our money at a, I guess, fear and principle.
[SPEAKER_02]: And AI is an interesting topic because you know how during COVID the gap between rich and poor got much bigger or just overall not just COVID it's it's been happening but COVID accelerated that because the the stock market went up by so much because government started handing out money and there was all this cash in the system and it all had to go somewhere. [SPEAKER_02]: so people who own stocks, which are generally the people who are already rich, they just got even richer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now with AI that's happening also because the people who own the AI companies, they are or even like AI stocks are just, again, stock markets. [SPEAKER_02]: Stock market is people is the rich people, and people who are [SPEAKER_02]: like more lower income, they're not keeping up with the the learning curve either. [SPEAKER_02]: They're not learning the skills of AI.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's just going to get all the all the inequalities are going to get faster and bigger, you know, it's just being accelerated. [SPEAKER_02]: So, and of course, the first skills to be replaced, the first jobs to be replaced are the lower income easier ones, like the blue color jobs, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So, I'm easier. [SPEAKER_01]: They are called, it's like a middle. [SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of writers are going to get replaced or it's the stuff that is.
[SPEAKER_01]: largely consider un-skilled labor that we're about to find out that it actually is skilled. [SPEAKER_01]: But it's going to be entry-level stuff, I think. [SPEAKER_01]: And then maybe more of the middle stuff, and then you're right, like the bigger, more rich person jobs are not really at risk. [SPEAKER_01]: Although I'm concerned because I like I'm thinking like, what does a CEO do? [SPEAKER_01]: like they're mostly just the face of the company as far as I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe they'll have some sort of AI CEO. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, eventually AI is coming for all of all of us, all of our job. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think anyone's going to be immune. [SPEAKER_02]: So I've gone through this thought process a lot of, okay, I'm teaching about money and financial freedom, but what? [SPEAKER_02]: How does AR change everything? [SPEAKER_02]: And I've done this thought experiment all the way through to the end.
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the end of the day, what matters, what money is even for is so that we can live, right, to buy us the resources that allow us to survive, to get us food, water, shelter, [SPEAKER_02]: So at the end of the day money itself doesn't matter, it's the thing that it gets us that matters. [SPEAKER_02]: And if these systems break down, like we get 99% employment and, you know, AI just completely turns the world upside down.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have this apocalypse that you speak of. [SPEAKER_02]: whether it's caused by AI or something else. [SPEAKER_02]: At the end of the day, it's interesting how even though we worry so much about money on a daily basis, none of that is going to matter. [SPEAKER_02]: We're just going to be like, where are we going to get clean water? [SPEAKER_02]: Where can we get food and grow food and have a safe place to shelter ourselves?
[SPEAKER_02]: And who are you going to be surviving with? [SPEAKER_02]: Who is in your tribe that you can trust?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've thought this through a lot, and it's really interesting to think, oh, at the end of the day, a financial capital, like in our very capitalistic materialistic world, we worry about it so much, it's what everyone worries about and we compare ourselves to people with more, and then we feel bad if we don't have enough, and all those things, but at the end of the day, if you have people that love you that you can count on, no matter what,
[SPEAKER_02]: and you have access to clean water and food, then we really don't need anything else. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so yeah, I just thought I would point that out because I do feel like there's so many people suffering mental health, you know, money's financial strain is the number one cause of mental health issues. [SPEAKER_02]: But at the end of the day, money doesn't matter as much as the real thing. [SPEAKER_01]: well it won't maybe in the future when true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah right now it still does. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah I mean it is interesting the concept of money focusing where you're like okay money like in the end let's say I I pop lips. [SPEAKER_01]: stuff isn't going to matter. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm coming to a weird buy nothing place where I'm like, I don't think any of this, I almost am like, I want to unburden all the things that I own and be like, maybe I don't need all these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's just going to be, I don't know, maybe some sort of barter economy or for like skills and abilities and, you know, the [SPEAKER_01]: The monetary stuff will be to get you to certain places, but even then, I'm a little bit like, okay, so then what's the end of the thought experiment? [SPEAKER_01]: Credit card debt doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_01]: And so, what are we doing that for? [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what are we paying any of this off for?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes people think with student loans, they're like, who cares? [SPEAKER_02]: that's a really interesting thought experiment. [SPEAKER_02]: Definitely one that I've entertained when I was six figures in debt and I was like is this ever going to go away? [SPEAKER_02]: And I entertained it. [SPEAKER_02]: What if I don't do anything about it? [SPEAKER_02]: And I've realized, well, that's probably going to limit me for my life. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just going to deal with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't want anyone to bet on that either because it could take 10 years, 20 years, or it could never happen. [SPEAKER_02]: This apocalypse that we speak of. [SPEAKER_02]: So we don't want to live our lives counting on that. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, if say our systems collapsed, the US dollar collapsed, companies collapse, like if city bank goes bankrupt, then the debt that you owe them also gets wiped out too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it depends on how the bankruptcy proceedings go and whatnot, but, and you know, somebody else might buy that debt, but it's probably something is gonna, [SPEAKER_02]: something is going to change with that. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it will get wiped out. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, a good chance of the happening. [SPEAKER_02]: And then maybe we'll all go to cryptocurrency as our new financial system.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not like credit card debt will all of a sudden now be the same debt that you had will now be denominated in Bitcoin by somebody else. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just the completely new system. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is an interesting thought experiment, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, also, you know, it comes down to that debate that happens a lot with financial professionals, which is, do you pay off that 100k or do you just start investing everything?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know? [SPEAKER_02]: Mmm. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if you are, if you, [SPEAKER_02]: if you expect some sort of financial reset to happen or just regardless. [SPEAKER_01]: No, just in general, if you have a hundred K in debt, what like isn't, you know, there's a two schools of thought. [SPEAKER_01]: One is you got to pay it off and the other is, we'll just keep getting that a hundred K and then put keep investing that and don't even worry about the student loans.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so what I did when I was digging myself out of debt and became us in seven figures by in my 30s is I followed a very specific set sequence of steps. [SPEAKER_02]: So, [SPEAKER_02]: First, I made sure I didn't have credit card debt, and I made sure I got out of the credit card cycle by creating a little bit of cash cushion. [SPEAKER_02]: So I always say start with $2,000 of cash cushion in your bank account at all times.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that will get you out of the, I painted off, now I'm putting it back on my card, paid off, putting it back on my card. [SPEAKER_02]: And it'll, for a lot of people, that's the first time I'll ever have that much money to their name. [SPEAKER_02]: permanently, you know, like, when I was living paycheck to paycheck, even though my biweekly paycheck was around 1900 every two weeks, I never had more than that in my checking account because I was just living paycheck to paycheck.
[SPEAKER_02]: So having that [SPEAKER_02]: permanent watermark of I've always got $2,000 to my name no matter what that's a huge motivational boost too it's not just financially sound so start with that then pay off credit card debt because that's double digit interest you're never gonna get ahead doing investing or anything paying double digits on your debt so pay that off then
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a few other things I'd like you to do first, which is if you have 401k employer match, go and get that, max that out, because it's free money, and then you can start building a nest egg, but very little of your own effort because you're getting all this free money from your employer. [SPEAKER_02]: I remember when I started doing that, I looked in my account. [SPEAKER_02]: two years later, and I had a close to $20,000 in my 401k.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of that came from my employer's free match. [SPEAKER_02]: Then after that, I want people to create an emergency fund that would cover you for at least six months of expenses. [SPEAKER_02]: put that in a high-ill savings account separate from your checking account and that cushion is there for you no matter what and this isn't all just good financial tips but it's to make you feel confident and reset your relationship with money too to go from someone who
[SPEAKER_02]: feels like they never have enough, they never have options, they're at the mercy of their boss, they're paycheck to paycheck, they're just like living on the edge to someone who has some breathing room and some fuck you money, you know, like your boss treats you like crap. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I've got six months even that's enough time for me to find something else. [SPEAKER_02]: So, I'm out of here. [SPEAKER_02]: Like you can do that when you have, you have cash cushion.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from there, [SPEAKER_02]: investing and and even so just investing in certain accounts a Roth IRA is a great place to start because you just max it out a year every year. [SPEAKER_02]: It's the limit is 7,000 a year.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just max that out and you don't have to do much, put it in a low-cost S&B 500 index fund, maybe an international fund and a bond index fund or two, and in 30 years you will, if you've been maxing it out every year, you will have seven figures in there. [SPEAKER_02]: The stock market will have done 80% of the heavy lifting for you, you know? [SPEAKER_02]: So you don't have to do much to build wealth over the long term.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then while you're back seeing out your Roth IRA every year, you can also try to increase your income and put all that extra towards whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: that other debt you may have. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you just follow this, I call it my financial waterfall. [SPEAKER_02]: I talk about this in my book, a lot. [SPEAKER_02]: I just follow this financial waterfall of steps. [SPEAKER_02]: Book is all of your efforts on one goal at a time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Move on to the next step in the waterfall once you've knocked out the first one and then you move down and down and down and down. [SPEAKER_02]: And pretty soon you'll be covering a lot of ground in the financial waterfall. [SPEAKER_02]: How do you deal with stepbacks if it's not linear? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's definitely never linear. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, there were some years where I paid off good chunks off my student loans.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then when I went on this journey to transition from employee to entrepreneurship, I went on this kind of four or five year meandering journey of piecing together side gigs and not being able to put as much towards my investments or student loans as I did when I had. [SPEAKER_02]: a single income. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's okay to go through seasons, maybe someone in your family gets sick or you can't work as much or whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's definitely going to be seasons where you're not covering as much ground, but it's really looking at this like a marathon. [SPEAKER_02]: Especially if you have a lot of debt, it's a marathon, not a sprint. [SPEAKER_02]: So you have to be okay with fluctuations in different seasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think going back to the future and you talking about support systems, I think a lot of this is only possible if you have really good support systems from family and friends in place. [SPEAKER_01]: And you can really be honest and really help each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even, you know, someone to walk your dog or being available, you know, there's this whole thing about how people wanna be in community but they don't wanna be in convenience, [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the only ways I could see towards what you're talking about, your waterfall is to have people around who you can be inconvenienced by and who can be inconvenienced you. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like this, none of this is a solo sport.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, when I look back on the things that really, really helped me the most, I remember, first of all, telling my friends that I wanted to pay off debt, and that I was really important to me. [SPEAKER_02]: one big first step. [SPEAKER_02]: Another was finding people that would support me. [SPEAKER_02]: So when I moved to Denver, I didn't have any friends and I thought I'm going to make new friends and I want to find the right friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I started a meetup, just meetup.com. [SPEAKER_02]: I called it wealthy women. [SPEAKER_02]: I got a free room in a co-working basement of a co-working space. [SPEAKER_02]: And I started giving these talks about money and investing. [SPEAKER_02]: And I basically had my friends, my new friends, come to me. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, 15 women showed up at that first meetup. [SPEAKER_02]: And two of them became my best friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: That later came to my wedding and all these things. [SPEAKER_02]: And we would talk about money all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: And they had debt investments, whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: We all had similar goals. [SPEAKER_02]: That's also when I got my entrepreneurial [SPEAKER_02]: Like so many important seeds that later blossomed into my financial success were planted during that time because of those relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true about curating people with similar mindsets and interests and also being willing to, when you say, you know, I'm dealing with debt. [SPEAKER_01]: being willing to, you know, I have friends who I had an issue with an electricity bill and one of my friends who has more more money than me gave me a loan to pay it off.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's like, there's something weird about people with money or on these journeys where [SPEAKER_01]: They start hoarding or they don't want to even like when they get to that what finishing their goals. [SPEAKER_01]: Then they they start being still, you know, obviously there's PTSD and trauma associated with having that much debt or needing to buckle down on that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then people are like, well, I don't necessarily want to share or like, you know, help each other in a certain way. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of times if you come up from that. [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes people have the mindset of, I don't want to help, but I'm seeing more and more people saying, it's just money if they come from like a background or they have money sharing knowledge and also being like, yeah, whatever, here's on your box.
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like you, you've had experiences with some people who are very stingy with their money, but they haven't plenty of it. [SPEAKER_01]: They get to a certain level and they're very stingy because they're afraid. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and there's like this fear of reciprocal, like, well, if I do this for you, how do I know you're going to do this for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've seen that change, at least to me on a local level where people are like, oh, it's, you know, I'll get, don't, I'm not going to Venmo you for the two dollars for this coffee. [SPEAKER_01]: When that used to be, I mean, when I was in my late 20s, early 30s, that was like so huge.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, yeah, I remember joking with my childhood best friend we've been friends for like over 20 years and we used to go on these trips in college to like Costa Rica and Peru and these keep Latin American countries and if I bought her a bus ticket that's like five pesos in the local currency that's like 50 cents, but we would. [SPEAKER_02]: we would keep count account and be like, hey, you owe me those five pesos with an I covered your lunch house, 13 pesos.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now fast forward 20 years later, we're all doing much better financially. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, oh yeah, $50. [SPEAKER_02]: I got this lunch, whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: And we would joke about how when we used to count for every single peso. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think, but going back to what you were saying earlier about people being stingy with their money, people like that really give money a bad rap.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why people have this association [SPEAKER_02]: Rich people are greedy and they're for I shouldn't allow myself to become wealthy because money makes you greedy and I don't want to be like that person But one thing that I've learned is money just makes you more of who you are and Money is a very neutral energy It's it doesn't make the person the person makes the person money just amplifies it
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I became wealthy, I've always been a very generous person before I couldn't be as generous because I didn't have much money and I was in debt and didn't even have any surplus for myself. [SPEAKER_02]: But once I became wealthier, like one of the first things that I did when I paid off all my debt and started having all this surplus cash is help out my parents.
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom had a knee surgery that she needed to wanted to get, and it would have relieved her of a lot of pain, but her insurance wouldn't cover it. [SPEAKER_02]: So I paid for it in cash. [SPEAKER_02]: And whenever anyone in my life could use some help, you know, I'm happy to help them out and don't expect anything to return. [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously I still have my financial boundaries. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not just giving money out left and right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's for relationships that really matter where I feel like they've been there for me or they will be there for me. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is not just, you also need to have like a healthy relationship with yourself and your money too, right? [SPEAKER_02]: This is not like co-dependency here, but yeah, that's something that I've really learned is it just amplifies more of who you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's that, the saying that the Bible verse, money is the root of all evil, which people conveniently miss quote, because it's actually the love of money is the root of all evil. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the love of money at the cost of everything else. [SPEAKER_02]: That I agree, then you have no soul. [SPEAKER_02]: You have completely missed a point of everything, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the whole point of money, like we said earlier, is to get you the things that really matter in life, which is resources, time with your loved ones, [SPEAKER_02]: at the end of the day, that's what matters. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was just watching this movie The Good Nurse, which is like on it was on Netflix. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was from a while ago. [SPEAKER_01]: I'd never heard anything of it. [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, I clicked it because of Jessica Chessane.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the part of it is that she's like working so hard as a nurse and some of the storyline is that like her kids never see her because she works overnight. [SPEAKER_01]: And so like a big part of it is that she's very ill. [SPEAKER_01]: and she can't stop working because she's really sick. [SPEAKER_01]: And she needs the health insurance, but she also can't see her kids and her she's like a ticking time bomb like she could die at any time, but she's not spending time with her kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, this is so indicative of how much privilege there is just to do the things that [SPEAKER_01]: that you're saying are, you know, that everyone kind of knows is spending time with the people you love and being able to, when you look back on your life, not say, oh, all I did was work. [SPEAKER_01]: And all I did was make, you know, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, make your whole identity, what you do for work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you, let's say, don't need to work that much or you are interested. [SPEAKER_01]: You have the golden handcuffs and you're interested in not. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure for you there's prestige in for you and for your family to say, oh, I work on Wall Street. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, in this culture, we over-identify with what we do, how much we have, we're very fixated on that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why we have these Forbes, for just billionaires in the world lists, like we're very fascinated by people who have these outward external measures of success. [SPEAKER_02]: And I even found myself getting sucked into that, too, like once I hit my first million, [SPEAKER_02]: than I ever dreamed I would get. [SPEAKER_02]: I found myself because I was in kind of new circles of people who also were very successful and had money.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now I'm like, oh well, I guess I should be aiming for my next million or now 10 million. [SPEAKER_02]: You know? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And I did do something to that. [SPEAKER_01]: And what becomes enough is like boat money. [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, whoa, my everyone I know has a boat. [SPEAKER_01]: I [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, someone with a private jet could look at the, the guy next to him with a nice or private jet and feel like, well, shit, my private jet sucks. [SPEAKER_02]: It's you're always comparing yourself and then you when you keep rising, you have like higher circles to compare yourself against. [SPEAKER_02]: So something that really helps me is that has helped me in recent years is, it's always good to hang out with people at different levels.
[SPEAKER_02]: because you need peers to support and encourage you, then people who are at a higher level than you, both in terms of success and wealth and everything, so you can aspire to that. [SPEAKER_02]: And then people who are where you used to be, so you can remember and be humbled and just stay grounded too, and not get sucked up into the craziness of fame and get sucked into that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I pride myself, I live in LA, actually, I move there last year, and I really love the community that I've built. [SPEAKER_02]: It's people of all kinds of socioeconomic difference, different professions and industries, and I feel like that's what really helps me. [SPEAKER_02]: Look, and your closest friends, your family. [SPEAKER_02]: They really keep you grounded, too. [SPEAKER_02]: I remember my best friend, she always keeps me in chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: She'll be my best-year leader. [SPEAKER_02]: I was on NBC News the other day, and she was like, oh my god, I'm so proud of you, and she'll be the first to congratulate me and send me flowers. [SPEAKER_02]: But then she'll make jokes. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, if you're so famous, why are we still pink for our food? [SPEAKER_02]: Like, we got a rush, and she's like, I guess you're not that famous, and she'll make jokes to just keep me in chat, and it's the best.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my friends has like a million and like is very very obsessed with investing and I'm always kind of being like hey just you know you say all this stuff about well through distribution and about progressive ideas at what point do you think you're going to just start giving. [SPEAKER_01]: Like at what point is the money going to catch up to what you're saying, just FYI, because you can start, you know, saying all of these like leftist ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I know, like I think like, yeah, there's I was like, I just want to clock that I'm keeping an eye on. [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, so at what point do you think I definitely agree billionaires? [SPEAKER_02]: They have way more money than they will ever need in their lifetime. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like what number do you feel like it's almost unfair to just keep hoarding that? [SPEAKER_01]: Girl, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like the person who's like everyone in the activist circle's passes around the same five dollars. [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's also so interesting with [SPEAKER_01]: Like I see the housing market in LA and it's and it's like a million isn't what it used to be it's still huge it's still a lot I would I don't know I'm crazy like the idea that like someone would have $400,000 like that's nuts, but [SPEAKER_01]: For some people that number is like, you have $30,000, that's crazy. [SPEAKER_01]: And so it fluctuates for me based on my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when I lived in New York, if I had 50 bucks, I was like, uh, great. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm settled for the next, uh, like, 24 hours. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or, or week, I'm settled for the next, like, week. [SPEAKER_01]: If I've paid rent, I got 50 bucks per day, or I would be figuring out how to get another 50 bucks, uh, [SPEAKER_01]: it like fluctuates, I think like at other times in my life, I would say, oh, 125,000 dollars isn't that much.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now I'm like, no, no, that's a lot. [SPEAKER_01]: So it kind of just changes based on my own position and then what I'm thinking politically. [SPEAKER_01]: And so like a lot of stuff, I grapple with leaving LA because a lot of stuff that, you know, I think I got warped, right? [SPEAKER_01]: We're [SPEAKER_01]: A million dollar movie is considered micro budget, like incredibly low budget, very low budget.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have friends who are not in the industry, who I was like, oh, like a million is like really low budget for a movie. [SPEAKER_01]: And I remember one of them was like, what are you paying for? [SPEAKER_01]: What is that? [SPEAKER_01]: What is that, a million dollars for a movie? [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, do you know how much a Marvel film costs? [SPEAKER_01]: it wasn't, um, fathomable to this person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, and I think I now feel that way too politically, where I'm like, I see in my community how much even $5,000 would do. [SPEAKER_01]: And so it becomes hard for me to [SPEAKER_01]: to consider at least people who are not involved or have friends of different socioeconomic statuses or aren't looking into or thinking about what their city could use and need or what their community could use and need.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you might think someone, the Royal you, might think, oh, what's $5,000 gonna do? [SPEAKER_01]: But if they talked to people on the ground, they could find out. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what could $5,000 do in your community right now? [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people who are activists are not being paid for their work. [SPEAKER_01]: Their stuff is a full-time job. [SPEAKER_01]: They're buying materials to make signs.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are printing out a lot of cards that are like, know your rights or they're printing out. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's incredible how little [SPEAKER_01]: the mayor and city council is aware of what's going on in the city. [SPEAKER_01]: So at one point, we had to print out a bunch of color photographs of what the police and I started doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we had to go and hand them to city council or to the mayor's deputy to be like, I know you're not going to watch the videos. [SPEAKER_01]: I know you don't give a shit, but here's the pictures. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, a lot of it is travel, a lot of it is this is not our full-time jobs.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know one of my friends who's, who's one of the most involved activists, he hasn't had an income and so he's dedicated a lot of time to, to all of this, but it doesn't leave a lot of time to work. [SPEAKER_01]: And part of what these people want to do is to overwhelm us. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you become very overwhelmed and you're like, oh, fuck, I have to pay rent. [SPEAKER_01]: that's like a big problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can help like donations wise too, but a lot of it is like getting pizza for people or we go down to downtown LA and there's like groups that will give out hygiene products or we'll give out water or um
[SPEAKER_01]: medical supplies, which is stuff that our government should be paying for and they just don't it's like people it's like just people I see around doing it and in a big activist way but I think there's a lot of cleanup efforts that could be, could be done groups that go down to the beach and do it or you know and need supplies. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think there's groups more so than then I would [SPEAKER_01]: You could you could ask any sort of progressive group.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think this should go towards? [SPEAKER_01]: And they have lots of awesome idea. [SPEAKER_01]: So that I I'm not even thinking of. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think about the billionaire is who actually give a lot back? [SPEAKER_02]: Like Ray Dalio, if they thought this foundation gates weren't buffet, they entered the giving pledge. [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think about that? [SPEAKER_01]: I get it. [SPEAKER_01]: I think they could give away way more.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Warren Buffett's thing about how I'm going to give away everything when I die. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, you could do it now. [SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't can do it now. [SPEAKER_01]: There's no reason for anyone to be a billionaire. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, and also sometimes these foundations are ways to their kid runs it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a way to give their kid money or the, I think there's a lot of Christian nationalist values and a lot of power and control that they want over where the money goes. [SPEAKER_01]: They want it to go to a certain group that they deem worthy and I think that [SPEAKER_01]: that allows them to have control that taxes don't, which part of me, like, of course, I mean, I don't want my taxes going to war, but they, that's not largely there.
[SPEAKER_01]: moral and political standing. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not that they want to be exempt from paying for genocides and wars. [SPEAKER_01]: It's that they want to be exempt from having to pay for liberal or socialist issues. [SPEAKER_01]: They want the money to go towards what they want it to go towards, which [SPEAKER_01]: could be a mega church could be it seems to be a little bit more. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they could give more and it also seems to be a little bit about control. [SPEAKER_01]: If you have a foundation and your foundation does X line Z, that's fine. [SPEAKER_01]: It has your name on it, but there's probably exists four or five other existing groups that have been around for years and years and years and no more about that issue than you ever could. [SPEAKER_01]: Why not fund them? [SPEAKER_01]: it's because of control.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there is wanting to show off that you're doing something great without having to do the work of working with people that might have ideas that you don't agree with. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think? [SPEAKER_02]: I've thought about this a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's great that billionaires, they got to where they are, yes, a lot of privilege for sure, but they definitely, they build something of value, like Gates built Microsoft, Bezos built Amazon, that's also why they're billionaires.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if they all circulated that money differently, like it wasn't all just about self-serving, but circulating and helping other people, if we all live that way, [SPEAKER_02]: If people who had surplus to circulate, circulated it, then none of us would ever have to go without.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that is one of the things that I hate about capitalism, and it's very broken and needs to change, and I think we're [SPEAKER_02]: It's high time for a huge massive reset because capitalism isn't working for a lot of people, but yeah, I mean, I'm grateful for capitalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is allowed me to build, you know, my family, my Korean immigrant family came to the states like, we were able to do it because it's America, because capitalism, but yeah, but when it doesn't work for a lot of people and we're kind of getting there, it's because people don't, they [SPEAKER_02]: They benefit and then they don't re-circulate that benefit back to people who could use it, you know? [SPEAKER_02]: So that's like the missing link.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we all had this duty of if you make over a certain amount of money, I guess what Billion would be a great threshold, feel like those people could easily do that. [SPEAKER_02]: Then you have to circulate that money back in certain ways. [SPEAKER_02]: then maybe we wouldn't have all these issues. [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not a politician. [SPEAKER_01]: That's what's so crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I had, but it's not that people who say, oh, if I had a billion dollars, I would redistribute it and give a lot of it away. [SPEAKER_01]: That get to that point. [SPEAKER_01]: It's usually the people who don't have that ethical framework. [SPEAKER_01]: So someone like me would never reach that. [SPEAKER_01]: Because I would be deeply uncomfortable. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you would never even go for that amount of money. [SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, it's not of interest to me. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think I would, before I got to that place, I would be giving stuff away in large chunks. [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, yeah, or I would be advocating to pay more taxes, although I understand under, under like a administration that just sort of wants to keep bombing everything that it is, [SPEAKER_01]: I understand the conscious objectives from the tax, from paying taxes, but they do it by never making enough money to pay taxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought when I first heard about that group, I was like, wow, they're not paying taxes because they don't believe in, you know, war and stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I was like, oh, they don't believe in war, but also the only way to do that is to stay under the threshold in your daily life. [SPEAKER_01]: So I was like, oh, I see. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm interested in all of those kind of anarchist ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very interested too. [SPEAKER_02]: And like leftist writers, higher taxes, lower taxes. [SPEAKER_02]: Nobody has a good answer, right? [SPEAKER_02]: But one thing that I've been exploring one idea I've been exploring is what if we all just leaned more on each other. [SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of times we have to pay money to. [SPEAKER_02]: to get things done like we need to pay an Uber to get somewhere or a babysitter for someone to watch our kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: But back in the day, we didn't have that. [SPEAKER_02]: We just lived in tribes and villages and we all all served a purpose and we all helped each other. [SPEAKER_02]: And if we kind of go back to that more basic model of living where we lean on each other, we don't need a lot of things that the capitalist system makes us depend on, like have needing money to get basic goods and services.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or what if you have a village where you've got [SPEAKER_02]: A farmer guy who really understands the earth and can't throw the food and then someone else who understands animals and someone else who knows how to make clothes and then you actually don't need money. [SPEAKER_02]: You're like living off a social capital instead of financial capital. [SPEAKER_02]: That's one way to bypass all the crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Never goes anywhere tax discussions and left and right and political discussions. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's something I've been exploring. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: Because the idea of each according to his ability and each according to his need. [SPEAKER_01]: It's part of it. [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_01]: That is a bit of a decentralized socialist anarchist idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I talked about this in an episode right before those groups are leaning towards we need we don't need just activists we need doctors we need people with money to fun stuff we need like you said like someone back and grow food we need lawyers we need but within these spaces. [SPEAKER_01]: And some of it is if people have money that's their position to to that's what they do in the group.
[SPEAKER_02]: mm-hmm yeah yeah maybe that will be maybe that will be me maybe I can yeah well little mini projects in my my community you heard it here first [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Definitely. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, looking to like, what are the, what are the, the local groups in L.A. [SPEAKER_01]: Or do it? [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's all these immigrant law groups are like cheerlea or cheerlea. [SPEAKER_01]: I think they go by immigrant defense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, a lot of these groups are, uh, you know, always kind of on bail funds. [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of protestors get arrested or people who tried to block ice vans and stuff get arrested. [SPEAKER_01]: They need bail. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that. [SPEAKER_02]: very cool. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, where can people find you and your book? [SPEAKER_02]: You can get my book at a zero anywhere books are sold.
[SPEAKER_02]: Amazon is probably the best place or you can go to add a zero.com where you'll get some extra bonuses if you buy it through there and I'm at its Rose Han on all socials but I'm best on YouTube and Instagram. [SPEAKER_01]: and Indie bound. [SPEAKER_01]: And if you want it for free, you should download Libby because they'll have it at the library too, which I love. [SPEAKER_01]: And if there's enough of a backlog at the library, people go, wow, this book is a hot ticket.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, yeah, it's totally forgot. [SPEAKER_02]: Libby is the audio book out, so you can get it for free. [SPEAKER_01]: You can also read on Libby, though, I'm like, who wants to read on their phone? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: Some people. [SPEAKER_01]: That sounds painful. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was a really cool chat. [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me on.