Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Bill Perkins. He's a hedge fund manager, high stakes poker player, film producer, and an author. What if the true path to financial fulfillment doesn't lie in saving every penny, but rather in spending it as effectively as you can? Delayed gratification in the extreme... results in no gratification. And Bill's book, Die With Zero, is one of the best financial philosophies that I've ever come across.
Expect to learn how to maximize your existence for positive life experiences, why you should give your kids their inheritance when they're 30, the most common errors people make about money, why it's so hard for some of us to spend, the brilliant concept of consumption smoothing, what sigma-mode grindsetters are getting wrong about work-life balance, how to plan your life in terms of seasons, and much more.
I love this. Bill's insights are phenomenal. If you are somebody like me who feels guilty when you spend money, who struggles to do it, perhaps you have come from a working class background and now earn a bit more money than you're used to and you have absolutely no idea.
what you're supposed to do with your life, this is the conversation for you. I very much appreciate Bill's approach. He's very systematized, very rigorous, very thoughtful. Yeah, this can make a massive difference to your quality of life and make you feel a lot less guilty. I think as well. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... Bill Perkins.
You said that you wrote this book to save people's lives. What do you mean? Well, the first life I wanted to save was my own. I have a deep fear of wasting my life, you know, and I was thinking about this. earlier in life like kind of what does it all mean type conversations that people have and i was broke i was trying to work my way up in wall street commodities training and
You know, there's a lot of frustration trying to obtain wealth and get there. And I was like, well, what does all mean? What is going to get me, right? What is the extra money going to get me? And I was thinking about, well, I don't want to be rich when I'm old because what am I going to do with money when I'm old, right? My life will have passed me by. And what's the money for? What am I going to buy at different stages in my life? And what are the things that I really want?
And, you know, I was young. So like when you're young, you just think, I just want a bunch of women and a guitar and a fast car and, you know, whatever it is, right? All the dumb things that young people think, right? I was kind of on this different advertised autopilot. I really didn't want to waste my life. I didn't want to go to work and bust my butt and deal with the abuse as clerks deal with trying to get rich for nothing, right?
to have a picket fence and a car and a bigger car and drive my kids to school in a bigger car, right? So... And I also didn't want to go to work for money that I was never going to spend. I didn't want to have unused Chuck E. Cheese tokens. I use Chuck E. Cheese, but I realize that internationally people are like, what the hell is he talking about, Chuck E. Cheese tokens?
I guess a lot of people know what skee-ball is when they give you the tickets and you go get the prize, right? You don't want to be playing skee-ball, get like, I don't know, a million tickets and just walk out. Right. And that that was kind of the idea of like working for money that I never would spend or never use. And so I was like, I don't want to waste my life. I don't want to waste my life.
What does that mean? How do I optimize my life? How do I get the most out of my life? If I'm going to spend all my money, when? How does that curve work? So I looked at life as kind of like this optimization program. Um, and I tried to distill the variables and the variables were your wealth, your health and your time. And I was like, I want to get the absolute most out of this life. Absolute most. And so.
And that's the save my life. And so I know that's a long answer. Maybe we should chop that up a little bit. But I'm going to tell you, you know, something I usually tell people at the end is that if you save somebody who's drowning.
Right. Let's say you walk by and they're drowning and you go in and you do the mouth to mouth and they cough up the water dramatically. And you're like, oh, my God, you saved my life. And I go, guess what? They're still going to fucking die. They're just not going to die that day.
So what did you really do for them? You gave them more I love yous, more walks in the park, more trips, more experiences, basically. And so you've optimized their life for more experiences by pulling them out of the water that day.
And so when I write a book about optimizing your life, like not wasting your time, being deliberate with your money and getting the most out of it, I feel like I'm doing the same thing to a certain extent. I'm giving you more I love you, more walks in the park, more fulfillment. Right. Just as you gave that person the opportunity for more fulfillment when you pulled them out of the water. And so I wrote the book to save my life so that I don't drown in the bullshit. Right. And then hopefully.
You read the book, you apply the principles, and you don't drown in the bullshit and you get more life. I have to say, man, I think that it will be a seminal read. as as it continues to grow i know it already has been super successful but for me it was it was very um Very impactful to see something that looks like life design with the finances side with this almost sort of...
stoic memento mori, you know, meditate on death thing that you've got that's going on. I really genuinely think that it's been one of the most impactful things that I've read. I go through an awful lot of books. So personal applicability, it's been very, very important. So you've done amazing work with it. So you should be very proud of it. I appreciate that. When you're going with like this, you know, I'll say it this way, this counterfactual regret minimization algorithm solving for net.
net fulfillment right people like what the fuck you know i mean like these are the algorithms that like chess computers use right it's just what if scenario analysis to and a chess computer is solving for mate Right. And a lot of people run their lives on account of factual regret minimization, solving for the highest net worth. Right. And I'm like, no, let's run the algorithm solving for net fulfillment.
Because that's the purpose of life, right? So everybody agrees with me. Like, okay, good. What resources do we have? Well, we're going to use your wealth, your health, and your time. How does that apply? You know, I could do it. And I can, you know, there was a lot of debate about. How do you sync this message into people, right? Like people don't want to look at a bunch of spreadsheets, right?
apply it in a visceral way? How did he get the concept in a visceral way? And that's why the book opens with my friend's death, right? Because death has a way of waking people up. Tell us that story. So my friend, Aaron Brodson, um her husband um he he just all of a sudden got diagnosed with cancer right out of nowhere she calls me up
She knows I do a lot of archaic research in medical and donate medical. I went deep dive into MS and had a study actually published on the cover of Journal of Nature. You only see Small Ventures USA as funding, but I was... getting the scientists and hiring them and getting the lab and the gene sequencing machine, whatever. So I do the deep dive and then I, and the deep dive, like I'm some sort of medical professional. I did the deep dive as in, I did enough research to know this is it.
Right. This is over. You know, I said, hey, you need to take time off, spend time with each other, go with the kids, etc. She was already on on that plan. But, you know, I was there to assist. Right. Like whatever you need, um, do we, uh, you know, go enjoy the last, last time together.
And it's hard to say that without saying that, right? Like, you have no hope, right? Obviously, you're always out for hope. And they're doing experimental research. And he eventually was on the East Coast and, you know, as frail as could be. Right. Died. She violated. She was going to violate a promise she made to him, John, by by letting the kids see him before he died.
So he was going to go. She calls me up and she's like, I got to let the kids see him before he dies. I told him he didn't want the kids to see him this way, but told him not. I got her a plane, got him on the plane. With, you know, all the contraptions and he died in the air and they had to land. And so that's that story. Right. But, you know, the point of that story is, is that that's everybody's story.
It's just, we just have an elongated timeframe. You know, John had a month. You have, I don't know. I look at mine, you got 4,000 weeks, 2,000 weeks, you know, whatever it is. Right. And so the question is, is with that. vacation that we have here on earth right we have we have a vacation and it's going to end what do we want to do with our time here what do we want our story to be right so he was an unfortunate but to provide a clarity on what they wanted to do each day. Right. And.
We have that same unfortunate thing, but it's so far away. We're not really paying attention to our death. We're not remembering death. We're acting like this vacation never ends, right? And we're living on autopilot, which autopilot is great. It helps you drive home without thinking too much. It helps you do your job and get good at your job and skills. But it also puts you in this path to survive, not thrive.
This kind of, hey, you're going to die. Hey, this vacation is going to end. It's kind of like slap across the face, wake up is I think everybody needs. And that's why I started with death because people. connect with dying it wakes them up they're like oh shit you know i gotta take my life seriously like what i'm gonna do what if i was gonna die in a month okay i'm not gonna die in a month but i'm gonna die probably in 30 years 36 years what am i gonna do like 20 40 like you're open to a message
Right. You're most open to change a message, some sort of epiphany when death is on the line. It's a profound story and creating that sense of urgency around your time on. This planet is finite. Yeah. You know, you don't know how finite, but it's finite. And you have these nine principles that you run through that I want to go through with you today. The first one is maximize positive life experiences. Right.
You know, it's kind of like, how do I have this broad definition of what is the purpose of your life, right? When I say experience, I really mean your choices, right? Like you make a choice. I have a choice. I can wake up. I can come on this podcast. I can drink water. I can drink a sugary drink, et cetera. And those choices drive our fulfillment.
And they're different for each person. Somebody may be like, I'm maximally fulfilled playing a game of chess. Somebody's like, it's swimming. For me, it's travel. For me, it's doing charity work. I make no judgment about what that is. But what I say is that life is the sum of your choices. Life is the sum of your experiences. Life is the sum of your positive experiences. And so if you're trying to get the most out of this life, let's make the high score.
positive life experiences so let's maximize those right so now we have a metric that all of us can think about something we're optimizing right we're optimizing for right and so we we have this kind of um It's a variable, right? And that variable means different things to different people, right? And different mixes, right? But we know we're solving for that, right? And if everybody kind of gets on board, like I agree, right?
I'd have it and be like, no, that's not what I want. I'd say, well, experience can be anything. It can be charitable. It can be hedonistic, right? For some of my friends, it's as many girls as they can get. And for some of my friends, it's as many lives they can impact and change in a positive direction.
Right. I cast no judgment. I just say, hey, what you're solving for, this is how we get the maximum. You say most people fear running out of money. What you should really fear is wasting your life. Yeah. And I think that that. blend between if what we want is positive life experiences and the things that we need in order to be able to get that are wealth, health, and time.
working out the trade, working out the appropriate trade between those two and where you can give it up and where you're refusing to give it up is one of the... I guess big takeaways for me, and I think a lot of people that are listening will be part of this cohort of, I don't know, like guilty savers, I would call them. Yeah. A lot of it's conditioning. And there's some sort of...
pride. I remember when I was like, just on the fire movement, I read the book, Your Money or Your Life. And I was like, so proud of myself saving, you know, and it was kind of this like smugness about it, like, even though you got a million. But yeah, I know how to say, you know, I know how to get a coupon to the train and do X, Y and Z. And I did this and I'm just happy because I am so right in my my judicious saving, you know, and.
And, you know, I got called a fucking idiot and kind of woke up to that by my boss at the time. But, you know, generally in this book, like, you'll find other people, like, they'll sacrifice all of the variables for their health. Well, they'll sacrifice all other variables, you know, for their money or all for their time. And I'm going to take these three variables and we're solving for maximum fulfillment. So we will burn money.
for fulfillment. We'll even burn some health for fulfillment, right? And we will burn time for fulfillment, right? And so, and depending on who you are, that's going to be, you know, that mix and what you do and what activities fulfill you, that's going to be an individual decision. But the formula still remains the same.
What if somebody says, and I was asked this question yesterday, what do you want in life? And when they're asked that question, they find it very hard to answer. That is the biggest... trick or the biggest requirement that's kind of not there in the book, right? We discuss it. You have to get off autopilot. You have to understand what fulfills you and what you want, right? And a lot of people...
myself included, because I wrote the book to save my own life. So don't think that I'm the Dalai Lama of like... net fulfillment and i got it all figured out right i i had this i wrote this book to slap my own face to get off autopilot but a lot of times like i have to get off autopilot on the sentence like what really Do I enjoy? What really fulfills me? What would I really rather be doing now? What is just autopilot marketing inertia in my life?
And if there is inertia in my life that I identify, do I want to keep some of that inertia? Because it's okay. It's good. It's fulfilling. But I need to dial it back. And what is that ratio? That's the first step. What have you come to believe about that? I come to believe a lot of the things that I enjoy now, even things that fulfill me, has been marketing and culture. And culture is a form of marketing, right?
Things my parents wanted and they wanted for me and they enjoyed and foods they ate and foods they fed me as a kid, which then I come to love. You know, I always tell people the reason why you don't eat fried crickets is because you weren't raised in China. But if you were in China, you'd be like, I really want to fry cricket on a stick right now. A lot of your food choices are just cultural.
programming and some of the programming is good it's fulfilling like this is great programming i love the programming and there can be wisdom in programming yes yeah yeah it's not like you know these humans were just you know randomly picking up things but they were making do with the resources they had and they ate the foods that were around them and and that's how their palate was formed or that maybe that was wise maybe it was unwise right um and you know you have to sit back
And think about these things with your prefrontal cortex, not be on autopilot, right? And go, is this a good thing? Is this good for me? Do I really like it? Is it good for the environment? Is it healthy? You know, all these other things, right? It's a lot of energy. Right. And I'm just talking about food choices. Never mind. Like, do I really want to go live in Norway? Is it too cold?
Why don't I like the cold? You know what I mean? Like these are a lot of questions, right? And so that's the most difficult thing. But these are some things that we have to be prodding ourselves and asking ourselves, right? Is this what I really, really, really want? You know, people wake up, you know, usually after some traumatic event, I got fired or somebody died or my dad died or something like, I don't even know why I'm doing this.
I don't even really like this. You know, why am I here? You know, and they're there. They have this crisis because something snapped them off autopilot and they've they've looked at their cells and they look and they realize. How they're living is not what fulfills them and it's not even how they want to be fulfilling. It's just how the autopilot of their life has taken off. Why is life energy important?
It's life energy is the, you know, the definition of life energy is really kind of like the time you have, right? The hours you have as a human being, as a functional human being, right? And so... It's the only resource you really have. And when it's gone, it's gone. That is it, right? Your money can go and we can still use the principles and die with zero to achieve fulfillment, right? Because then it becomes a life ordering problem.
Do I visit my grandmother and go walk with my grandmother or do I play cards with the boys? And the optimization program would say, well, I can play cards with the boys for the next 10 years. Grandma's probably got two. So it's probably time to do grandma stuff now and play cards with the boys later, right? I tell people, like, it's not in the book. Life is like Tetris. Everybody, you know the game Tetris?
You know, I use the example, let's say you're in heaven and you're about to be born and God's like, here's the infinite bucket of experiences. Choose what you would like on your adventure. And you're like, okay.
The sex thing seems interested. 10,000, maybe 15,000 times. Okay, I want to ride a bike. I want to get a job. I want to get graduated. I think I want to get married and have kids here. I want to marry and have kids. I want to be strip clubs. That's interesting. I'll throw in a couple of those. You know, biking.
want to get an award and you know you just whatever i'm just making these things up right play baseball god goes all right you can have them all the only one thing only one thing only one condition you got to get the order right right and so the people that like do the marriage thing and have kids and then put the strip club afterwards don't kind of get the high score right because it interferes with it these are dynamic decisions right or they put the
So hella skiing Mount Kilimanjaro at 86 is kind of in the wrong spot, right? Like they don't get fulfillment for it and they can't do it, right? They waited too long. They should put that there and then this there, right? They didn't get the order, right? And so... That's true for everyone, right? We have a lot of the order. There are certain places in certain time periods of our life where things are more optimal to happen.
And if you don't put them in that time period, yes, maybe you can do them in another time period in your life, but it might be suboptimal and cause problems for other things around you. Or you might not be able to do them at all. Right? The last day of my wakeboarding was four years ago. The speed of the board and the collisions are too bad for my back now. I can wake surf. I picked up wake surfing. But wakeboarding days are gone.
Going tackle, playing tackle football 20 years ago. So had you have never decided to go wakeboarding four years ago, your last time of wakeboarding would have been five years ago. More. Further. Further. 70 years. As a matter of fact, it was a conscious decision on the beach. My friends were like, we're going to go wakeboarding. I'm like, I'm kind of hanging out. It's nice. And I thought about it. I was like, if I don't go wakeboarding now.
When is the next time I'm going to have an opportunity to go wakeboarding and will I be able to? And I was like, this may very well be the last wakeboarding trip, last wakeboarding opportunity. And so I took it and I went. I jumped awake. I even landed jumping awake. Fuck yeah. That was it, right? I went out on high, right? I do that every time. Every time I go out wakesurfing, I always have to finish on a good one. Yeah, yeah. Which is rare for me because I didn't learn surfing. Okay, so.
I guess one of the core resources that we're going to talk about today is money. As somebody that has spent his entire life either investing with it or betting it against other people, what do you think most people misunderstand about money? and what it's for yeah i think um i know i like to talk by analogies but i think most people misunderstand that money is just a tool you know people ask does money make you happy and i'm like well
Do hammers and saws build houses? You know, like they they can build houses, but you need to know how to build a house. Right. You use those tools to build your house. And a lot of people think. The purpose is just to keep acquiring hammers and saws. They're like, look at all these hammers and saws I have. Oh, I got some nails and a nail gun and a so-and-so. And they keep acquiring all the equipment.
To build a house, right? Like different shiny forms of it. I got these Swiss blades too and whatever. And they have a pile of fucking equipment to build a house. They don't build the house, right? And in this analogy, the house is happiness. So you need to know how to use those tools in order to build a house. So there's a lot of people, you shower on them with money, and you think, okay, it's fulfillment, it's happiness. Go be happy. And they fuck it up.
Because they don't know how to use the tool, right? They don't respect the tool. They don't understand the power of the tool. They don't know how to, that this tool is for your fulfillment, right? This is what you're supposed to do is build a house with it, not collect hammers and saws.
Why do you think it is? And again, this is speaking to a very particular cohort of people. There are people out there who have less disposable income than they would like. And there are people out there who have lots of disposable income and don't seem to be able to stop spending it. This conversation isn't for either of those pairs of people, really. Why is it that we find it so hard to spend money? I think there's...
You know, I think one of the best arguments I've heard is that people have this kind of hedonic value, ego value associated with the number that they don't lose attachment with, right? It makes them feel good that they have this many zeros in the bank account. Right. It's just like watching a show to them. And, you know, my argument is that. If you take a rat and you can train it to run in a wheel for cheese, right? You've seen these experiments, right? Runs in a wheel for cheese.
Eventually, you could just show them the wheel and never give them the cheese. They'll just run. And that's kind of what I think a lot of work and the money, right? In the beginning, when you were young. and you were close to fun and you went outdoors and you played and you interacted with people etc the money was like to go to the event to the college to visit your friends to go to the concert right it was a it was the tool you needed
To get beers, whatever, for your friends. Then you went to work and it was like to pay your bills and need more or whatever. And it's like this safety blanket and I need it for this. And you keep doing that.
And then eventually, we just take the reward away. The abstraction of money takes you away from what it was for, right? So, at first, it was just like... instant like the money goes in it turns into a beer you're hanging with your friends you're having fun i need more of this stuff to get this activity we're going to spring break we're going here we're traveling whatever and then you're just accumulating it for future trips
I know it will do the thing, right? This abstraction, these power units, right? These tools. I guess I'm going to build a house. I need more sauce, more sauce, more nails, more paneling, more whatever. You just keep doing it and you never, you just...
Don't build the house, right? Like then you're like, all right, I built a small, tiny house. But hey, maybe I'll build 10 more houses. I can build 30 more houses, 40 more houses, thousands of houses, right? And you never really use it. You never really attach. this abstraction to what it was for to fulfill you to get the stuff that that drives your fulfillment i realized this yesterday over lunch with this friend of mine that i've just been introduced to and he had a very um
interesting perspective on wealth generally. And I realized that there is shit tons of advice online about how to become rich and almost no advice online about how to be rich. That accumulating wealth is taught. But enjoying wealth is not. Yeah. Yeah. And I have friends in different areas that, like, I'm going to get lambasted. We always say rich guys are the dumbest. Because at the end of the day.
They found a thing in a niche and they've unlocked the key, right? Like who, it's like slaying the dragon, getting the treasure. They go through all this stuff and just treasure. We're just going to sit around and shine and take pictures of it. And that's it. You know, like that, that, that treasures will go out, get the girl, build a house, build a life. You know what I mean? Not to splash around in it.
Scrooge McDuck style. And I think it's just conditioning and training. And you've got to think, like, people who are successful have gotten really focused and really trained on doing something very well. And sometimes they do this for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. So all those other muscles, I'm going to call them muscles like the go socialize with your neighbor muscle, the go travel and explore muscle, the...
the discovery muscle, all those atrophy. And the only muscle they've been building is, I know how to conquer this vertical. Right. I've conquered podcasting. I've conquered gym shorts. Right. I've conquered real estate or whatever. And they just keep going and going. And they're absolute fucking beasts. But they now have forgot about life.
These guys don't know how to say hi to their neighbors or invite somebody to dinner. They don't know how to pick a restaurant that it's not close to where they work. They don't know how to meet people. That's not a work function or a conference.
They don't know, you know, to travel? Is it a business meeting? They don't even know how to think of ideas. Like, wait, this is painful for me. It hurts. It hurts. Like, you know when you go to the gym and you haven't worked out well and it hurts? That's what it is for people like, oh, take a month off. They're like... I don't know what to do. And that's a natural. I tell people, it's like, relax, relax. It's a natural. It's relaxed. It's your first time.
back into humanity, you know? It's your first time into, you know, being you, you know? You let that person die 20 years ago, 10 years ago, right? And so, I think that... That habituation and that focus takes away from the rest of their corpus, right? The rest of their body. I'm talking about their holistic body, right?
And so that atrophy is real and it takes a while to build it back up. And it's painful, right? Like when you see people on New Year's come in to the gym, they're not bullshitting. They really want to do it. Right? They got the motivation. They want to do it. It's just fucking painful.
Whereas for you, you go back in the gym, this is my routine, buddy. Here we go. I'm used to the pain. I'm used to the feeling, like the gains, et cetera. They don't see the gains. They just feel frustration, sweat, and pain. They're like, this shit sucks. And that's what it's like for, like, successful rich people. When it's like, okay, let's go be human. It hurts.
The next principle is invest in experiences early. And one of my favorite quotes from the book, delaying gratification in the extreme means no gratification. Yeah. You know, when they talk about investing, they talk about the power of compound interest, right? And, you know, if you put the money in the bank... 10 years, you're going to have, you know, let's say double your money, $20,000, right? And okay, now you have $20,000 and that's meant for you to do something with, right?
Maybe some of it's paid bills, but some of it's ski trips or travel or birthday presents or charity or whatever it is of the numerous things you can do with the money. People – and that's okay if you feel like – Not having those experiences now is worth more experiences later in your life, right? But there's a...
And that's what the interest does, right? It pays out and then you're able to have more experiences. And in theory, you'll have more fulfillment later in life, right? By saving those experience dollars and letting them grow. But there's... Also something interesting, fun, and wonderful about experiences, and I call it the memory dividend. You don't just get pleasure from when you have the experience, right?
Going to go fishing with the fellas. And it's great. You went fishing. But you also have a positive experience. When you recall that fishing experience, it's great hanging with my friends. We caught up. I caught the fish. There was one big one that got away. Of course, there's the big one got away story. You'll probably tell the big one got away story.
A thousand times, right? Never met a fisherman without a big one that got away story, right? And so, and over those years, that is going to provide you little pieces of fulfillment as well. And that's called the memory dividend. So the same way you get. interest in the bank that's paid quarterly, right? You get a memory dividend that provides you fulfillment each time you recall and discuss that story. And it compounds, right? Like you might go out to dinner with someone new.
And they're fishermen or they're okay hearing your fish story. And you tell the story and you guys bond over the story. And, you know, this is the fishing hole, et cetera. And that creates a new experience that will then also have its own. memory dividends associated with it. And so, you know, Warren Buffett famously says, you know, when it comes to investing, start early, start early, start early to take advantage of the compounding interest of money.
Right. The money compounding over time. And I say the same thing with experiences. Start early, start early, start early to take advantage of the compounding memory dividend. And it's also a tool to help you decide. Where should I save this money and have two ski trips 10 years from now? Or should I take one ski trip now and have all the associated memory dividends? And will that be a more fulfilling?
Do the two strategies of market investment and memory investment not conflict with each other, though? The power of compounding is such a powerful tool financially. that pushing for experiences early can curtail great gains financially down the line? Is that not an issue? Yeah, it could be. I mean, it depends on the interest rate, right? And what experience we're talking about and how powerful. Like, I wouldn't miss my, like... daughter's wedding right for for for
five other people's weddings down the road. That's a fantastic return, right? Five weddings to one in 10 years, you know? So like, it depends on the experience. How, how, how, what is it? You're replaceable. You know. Compounding. And also, it depends on your age, right? Like I talk about, you know, your personal interest rate. I'm 80. Let's say I'm 80.
And you're like, hey, I can put this money in the bank and it's this fantastic return. And you take it out 10 years from now and you'll be able to do all this stuff. And I'm just like, eat a bag of. You know what I mean? Like no shot, no fucking way. You know, the discount rate on my time, my own interest rate.
The discount rate on me delaying gratification is going to infinity, right? Like the day before you die, your interest rate is infinity, right? There's no delaying gratification. The next step is to grave. Right. So you're not like that. There is no day after tomorrow. Right. So you're going to spend all your resources, everything you got. You're going to lay it on the field right now, this day. Right. And so.
If you just run like kind of this iteration, okay, well, one day before I die, two days before I die, three days before you die. So you can clearly see that, you know. There is this push-pull between, yes, I want certain things. I should delay gratification. I need to delay gratification for survival because that's ultimate, right? I don't want to die. But after that, it's where do I sprinkle the activities and where do they belong?
And there are certain activities now that I would pay an inordinate sum of money to get certain experiences that I gave up when I was saving. that I turned down for when I was saving, when I was in my 20s. What, like? My friend borrowed money from a loan shark. I talk about that. Jason Ruffo, and he went backpacking through Europe in his 20s. And I would be like,
How many millions would I pay to have taken that trip right now to go back in time? Even if people say, well, it's easy because you have millions right now. I would just say I would. There's a significant percentage of my net worth that would be outsized that I give up to go back.
not make that. And be in the pocket of a loan shark. Yeah. Be in the pocket of a loan shark, pay the exorbitant interest rate, work my butt off or whatever, so that I would have all those memory difference and that experience.
And those friends and that meeting and that adventure that belonged in that time period in my life. And it's not, you know, I don't have like a deliberate answer. Like, yes, you should do this. People are like, well, should I do this? I'm like, this is for you to decide. This is a framework for you to think about it.
Another interesting reality, I suppose, about Warren Buffett is that even though he's a super billionaire, very few people, if given the choice, would swap places with him. Well, why? Because he's... doesn't have as much time as you do to spend that money. So it's not about the money. It's not about the money. It can't be about the money. Because if it was just about the money, you would exchange places with the super rich guy regardless of his age.
We got on board in the beginning of the book. It's like, life is about fulfillment. It's not about the money. The money is a tool to drive fulfillment, right? Yes, we'll take more money, right? And we'll convert that into more fulfillment. But we're all about fulfillment. And if we're talking about...
Warren Buffett, he's got X years left. Doesn't look like that much. He doesn't have that many more opportunities to fulfill himself, right? If you got put into the body of Warren Buffett. Whereas you, the listener now, healthy. wise, doing all the cold plunges and whatever you're doing, right? Lifting weights, making sure you have enough muscle mass. You have many, many, many more opportunities for fulfillment and you're going to have a high, high fulfillment score.
You'll take, I think a lot of people like I'll take $0 and being, being Warren Buffett, which is, which is the truth. Right. I have a friend, Alex, who said, uh, I know for a fact that all of the wealth I'll accumulate between now and in 20 years time, in 20 years time, I would give to be right back in this place with this health and this body and all of the time that's left ahead of me, which means that right now.
is more important than all of the wealth I will generate over the next two decades of my life. Right. He could take that now to the memory dividend and experiences and be like, all right, well, what experiences? belong right now that you can't have in 20 years because what he's basically saying is that in 20 years time okay there are certain activities certain experiences my attitude will change my aptitude will change my lung capacity will change
There are certain activities that belong right now that I need to be doing right now. So you should take that line of thinking to like, okay, what do I do right now? These next two years, this next year, this next month. What am I on autopilot? Like, what am I missing? Let me get out my sheet, okay? Trips, entertainment, love life, family, whatever. He can categorize them any kind of way and be like, okay.
Zero to three years from now, what belongs right now? Because I already have the concept in my head that I'm going to be dying to be back here. So if I can't come back, I need to make sure I get everything out of this time period. that I possibly can. Die with zero. Aim to die with zero. Yeah, this is one of the axioms of the book. It just goes, it's kind of logical that if you're expending hours of your life...
That you can be doing anything, right? You could be backpacking, panhandling through Europe. You can be a volunteer. You can do whatever. But if you're spending hours of your life for money, right? That then converts into experiences that you may have, right? Travel, charity, whatever. If you go to work. And exchange hours of your life for money that you never use. You're de facto wasting your life. Right? You're not going to go spend hours and hours rolling a skee-ball.
I mean, you might do it. There's some fun in the ski balls, but you're not doing it to accumulate tickets. Like, I got to get these tickets. I got to get these tickets and then not go get the silly prize, right? Use all your tickets. No cash value on the way out, right? Chuck E. Cheese tokens I like to use, but not that many Chuck E. Cheeses in the world. So a rational person would be like, okay, the hours of my life that I exchange, that I give up, the only thing that I have.
In exchange for money, I will use all that resource so that I not waste my life. Right? It's just suboptimal. Consumption smoothing is a term that I'd never heard of before. and it seems like something that should be taught to 10 year olds to me. Yeah. For the people that aren't familiar with it, what's consumption to me? Well, it's, you know, um, There is the current you. For a lot of people, there's a current poor you, young you.
Right. That you're young and you're poor and you're future richer. You're right. You're going to make more money. You're going to get successful. You're going to have a promotion, etc. And, you know, when I was younger, I kind of had it backwards for some time. And then I went crazy and went the other way. But I was like making no money, driving a limo at night and saving.
money just saving like i have a thousand dollars i have x y and z and i had this miracle savings that i had saved up and what i was really doing was i was borrowing from my future i was borrowing from my poorer self to give to my future richer self. So Bill Perkins now is looking at Bill Perkins 21 and be like, you freaking idiot. I don't care about a thousand dollars.
I don't even recognize it. You know what I mean? Like somebody, you know, it's like it means nothing. Like you should have went out on that date or you should have went out on that trip or you should have went to Florida or, you know, backpacking. for at least a week or whatever. You should have been having an adventure. And I would have those memories.
And I'd be telling interesting stories on this podcast. Except now I'm an uninteresting guy telling boring stories because you, young Bill Perkins. I've got $1,000. Yeah, I tried to save $1,000. I'm fucking pissed at that guy. I'm so pissed. And so consumption smoothing allows you to borrow from your richer self to finance your poorer self and vice versa. Should someone tactically get into the mode of applying consumption smoothing? I always advise like...
You're getting into financial planning, right? And you should have a financial planner or at least have a spreadsheet or at least go through it, right? But you're going to think about where is the area going to consume the most? And have the most experiences in your life? And where do they fit? And, you know, one of the things people do is like the oversight for retirement, right? They're like, I'm going to need all this money for retirement. And I mean.
i'm sure everybody's like well this exception they'll put out the exception case but by and large the data is just overwhelming old people don't spend money their net worth just keeps growing Right. They just don't even adjusting for health care costs and health care and yada yada. Right. First of all, there's insurance products, et cetera. But even without insurance products and all that, that net worth just keeps growing.
I get asked, why does that happen? I was like, because they can't spend the money. They can not. Their aptitude has changed. They don't like doing the same things. Their bodies have changed. They have the inability to do the thing. Even if they can, it's not enjoyable. Their joints hurt. Their back hurts. Renting a Ferrari to go to skydiving when you're 45 versus renting a Ferrari to go to skydiving when you're 75.
Two very different experiences. Yeah. Even things that you like to do. Like I mentioned Greg Whaley in the book. You know, a friend of mine that likes to go skiing. And, you know. He used to ski, go skiing, and he'd have seven runs or eight runs a day. That was two or three. He'd start to bother him, right? It doesn't mean that he loves skiing. He's just not getting as much use of that ski trip. So that turns into less.
passes on the mountain so he'll spend less money skiing so a lot of people think their lives when they retire is going to look like a carnival commercial right it just looks like It's freaking chaos, right? Like they're going down slides, they're eating, there's photos, they're running around, they're traveling, whatever. And a lot of it's like sitting around talking with your friends and visiting grandparents.
your grandchildren in this case. All very inexpensive. Yeah, inexpensive, low dollar amounts, like I don't want to be bothered, I want to sit and watch reruns of Jeopardy, like leave me alone type things, right? The other super interesting thing that I found when looking or thinking about consumption smoothing is most people's earning capacity is going to steadily increase and sometimes rapidly increase over the next two, three, four decades of their life.
Everybody that's listening to this will probably be earning way more money in 10 years time than they are right now. Right. And way more money in 20 years time than they are right now. You probably have a lot of hustle bros and hustle girls out there like just grinding it out, making just going to be printing presses for their whole life. But their capacity to spend that money.
And even their aptitude or a willingness to go and consume that money is going to go down over time. It's so bizarre. I really think that the consumption smoothing... element of this realizing that your earning potential is going to increase and that you can We spoke before we started about the fact that your identity lags reality by one to two years. I think that your spending habits lag your current net worth by maybe even longer than that.
spending frugally because that feels like the good thing to do because maybe you came from a working class background because generally having a safety net makes you feel good so you spend frugally based on where you're earning. And on top of that, where you see yourself as earning is lagging behind. And then on top of all of that, if you apply consumption smoothing, you should actually be projecting out ahead where you're spending.
practices are at to think, okay, well, let's say that in five years time, I'm going to be, you know, I'm earning 30% more per year, let's say. Well, I mean, if I... run that forward. I've actually got way more disposable income, and yet there are all of these different layers that we have that protect us from getting anywhere close to enjoying the money that we earn. If you go out and talk to financial planners, wealth managers, etc.,
And you look at the data, like people way, way overestimate how much they're going to be spending in retirement, what they're going to be doing. It's just, it's just amazing. And I think it's fear-based. you know a lot of it's fear-based like China uncertainty yeah a lot of uncertainty but the data is just overwhelming they can't spend it what about the people that say that they love working
It's okay to work. I always say, keep working. Just make sure you don't waste your life and you utilize the fruits of your labor. That balance. And I always get the heroin addict argument. I don't have a problem with heroin. You got a problem with my heroin. You know what I mean? Like, I love work. You know, I'm just like, okay, listen, out of the almost near infinite things you can be doing with your time here on the planet, activities, choices, experiences.
You think your happenstance just serendipitously hit number one at the right ratio? So you hit the right thing at the right frequency. I just don't believe it. What do you think about the sort of Sigma grind mindset trend that we're seeing at the moment? We've got a number of different iterations, but the one that I'm thinking about is this kind of monk mode, guys in their 20s, get your head down, reject family life, reject, you know.
distractions, any kind of hedonism, really, broadly, a lot of adventures as well. Accumulate wealth as much as you can. Yeah, I know exactly. It sounds like a version of fire. And, you know, I like fire because the... Fire is financial independence, retire early for people who don't know that. And that's a whole like reject materialism, you know, get in touch with enough. What's enough for you? Save.
receive as much as you can and then retire and live life. And I'm like, you know, my biggest problem with that is it's fucking go to jail for money. That is another version of go to jail for fucking money. Right. And so for me, there are people out there who like you can pay him $5 million to do a 10 year stint in Sing Sing. I'm not one of them. But Sing Sing. It's a prison. Okay. Broadway State Prison, whatever. You know, Rikers. Rikers is not, you know, open. But like...
I'm not, you know, the guys who go to prison for 10 years, wrongly accused for 15 years or 20 years when they come out, they're not, well, thank God I got wrongly accused because now I got $7 million. That's never their story. Right. They're still crying in tears and happy their freedom. It helps. Yes. But they would gladly give you that money back and get that that time back. And so, you know, this.
Reject friends, reject family, reject all hedonism, reject that. And then there's some promised land later in the future, some version of let's go to jail for a certain amount of time, and then we're going to get a reward. Yes, I believe in delayed gratification. And yes, I do believe in, you know, some work, but I think those schemes are way out of balance, way out of whack. The problem that we have is we know that delayed gratification is a useful skill.
for people to have, you know, to be able to put off eating the cookie, succumbing to the distraction in order to be able to focus on the thing that you're doing now. It feels to me... Maybe like delayed gratification in the micro is useful and delayed gratification in the macro gets significantly less useful. Yeah.
I think like you have to look at your life as a complete system from cradle to grave and then you break it down, right? Like the 20-year-old single you is going to die and you'll get married and whatever. father with young children. I was actually growing and getting stronger and now I'm in decline, right?
That there's all different phases of your life, your first job, you, your so-and-so, your first business, et cetera, right? And those periods, they die. They go away. Single you will go away. And there are things that single you. are to do and only meant for single you, right? And so, yes, delayed gratification is great, but if you look at the totality of the system, if you delay things that belong in single you to later, it means you're never going to have them.
And so that's okay if you've decided and you're consciously saying to yourself, I'm never going to experience this in my life. This is not going to be part of my story, right? I don't want these things. I don't want that adventure. I don't want that ride. But what I find is a lot of people just adopt these kind of like programs or algorithms, go on autopilot without thinking of the total system of their life.
Right. And what belongs where. So another example might be you go to work the season abroad. Somewhere people in the UK often go to Ibiza or Mallorca or somewhere like that. And they go and work as a club rep or whatever else drug dealer. And it would be like deciding that you were going to go out there and.
spend all of your time outside of whatever job it was that you were doing in the apartment that you were staying in. Yeah. Because this is how I'm going to optimize this particular period. It means that I get to. save more my sleep's going to be better so you know the uh wealth the health and the time yeah uh and you go well i mean why have you bothered to go and work abroad if that's the plan that you're going to follow
Why even bother going and working abroad at all? Because you could earn this money some other way. Correct. And what you're saying to yourself is during this period, I probably don't intend on coming back to Ibiza and doing another summer in Ibiza. All of my memories.
will be of me going to work, coming back to the apartment, going to work, coming back to the apartment. And I can't go back and undo that. And what's most likely is that I'm not going to be here in Ibiza in the future, so I can't redo it. So this is my experience. Right. So if it is to be, it is in this time period and this is going to be your experience. And so, you know, you have to think of the total system.
Right. People are getting on autopilot and myopic about the totality of life and what experiences belong in each season of their life. And so. You know, going back to earlier when we said, you know, life is like Tetris, you got to get the order right, right? You don't want to be 40, 50 and go, fuck, fuck that up.
What an idiot. Like, I missed out. Better go back to Ibiza and try and do the season. Yeah, no, no, you're married, you got four kids, and, you know, your principles and your obligations and everything prevent you from, you know, raving with glow sticks and Ibiza, right? And doing whatever you do late at night, right? And your obligations, your character, everything has changed. And you knew it was going to change because this is who you aspired to be.
Had you been off autopilot and thought about it, you'd be like, you know what? Tonight's the night. Right. And future you is going. Yes, buddy. Tonight's the night. You know, future years, tonight's the night. Trust me. You know, because it ain't happening now. You know, it's all diapers and whatever. It's joy. Not a lot of fun, but a lot of joy, you know, with the kids. You know, you had the fun.
That's the fun bucket. This is the joy bucket. I wonder how many people struggle and have serious regret as they get later in life from not optimizing their adventure and their fun.
earlier in life um i i i you know i don't i don't have the data to to show it but i have a lot of anecdotes that i think that is the case i think a lot of people go bananas right like a lot of people didn't do certain things at a certain time, and then they're trying to cram it into a period that doesn't really work, and it creates conflict.
Right? Either internally or even externally with partners, spouse, friends, work, etc. Right? And they're out of balance. Right? The total system of your life, the total timeline of your life is out of balance. So they have like FOMO of a period. They can't get back and you're trying to recreate something in a time bucket. It doesn't work, right? And so...
I think we see a lot of that. I don't have a whole chart data social experiment, but I see it a lot. I see it a lot. One of the saddest things is to see... somebody who never grows up right that continues to try and uh live a season of their life that's kind of gone right and there's something that feels kind of and like destitute and sad about that, that look, there are all of these other things waiting for you out there. There are all of these other experiences and yet the...
the peak of your life is getting a bag in with the boys on a weekend and, you know, getting into a fight outside of a kebab shop at three in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. Is it not time to grow up yet? But there is also a challenge to the people who never go through.
whatever period of whatever type of fun it is that they want. Because that also... resurges and comes back around in later life i would think it would be almost certain yeah i tell people like listen you have now and going forward and so what's done is done you have your memories your your experiences your mistakes your scars and
You have your resources. Let's optimize. What do you want in these next, let's break it down, next three years? Next three to five years? What experiences belong here? What choices? What trips? What I love use? What charitable deeds? Let's just go down whatever the list. What health goals? What belongs here? How does that fit into the next period?
Let's look at the next period. Let's look at the next period. And then once we get them all lined out, right, we're like, this one belongs here and this one belongs here. And now we can optimize and we have a little bit more, we have a more fulfilling life on a go forward basis. But we can't optimize the past, right? So let's. Let's accept it. Enjoy it. Let's go optimal right now. Let's get present. Let's get off autopilot.
And I'm really talking to myself. You know what I mean? Because that's me. Like, all right, what do you really want? What does this summer look like? Okay, you really want to spend time with your kids. What tricks, what methods are you going to employ to hang out with them?
But you're not feeling annoying to them. You got one summer left. You got one this. How many times are you going to have a good talk with them? How can you do it before they're off in the wild doing their own thing? It's go time. How are we going to do this?
You know, what resources are you going to bring to bear to this problem? You know, so once you get to the point, like you read the book, you apply the principles and you get there, right? Like it's like top level E equals MC squared or whatever. Now you're like application layer. Like, I want to apply it to my life. So then you bring in other things like, okay, these experiences I want in my life, anything worth having is worth working for. What resources do I bring to bear?
And so I treat each period like this is it. This period dies. So this is it. Whatever is unique to this period, do not fuck it up. Do you have, your next principle is use all available planning tools. Yeah. What have you accumulated after having written this book, after having created a philosophy when it comes to? trying to get tactical and create frameworks with this? What have you started to rely on? Do you have an assistant? Do you have somebody that helps you to do this?
So life manager. Oh my gosh. This is going to be like probably the most obnoxious part of the interview or most, I don't know, ostentatious. So I have assistants. I have a boutique travel firm. I have. You know, I have meetings about ideation, about things to do, because there's the things I want to do. And these are the things that I've been culturally trained to do or or people I interact with. Right. That.
I'm going to do that thing. Right. But it's still kind of like comes within this bubble of my universe. And I need some random stuff that I would normally not do to expand my life, to not have just a cookie cutter life. Because one of the things I don't want to have is. cookie cutter life. Okay. That's fulfilling to me not to have a cookie cutter life. And so there's a lot of, you know, there's assistance to remove the minutia of my life.
Right. So that I can do the things I want to do, but they're also there to curate experiences for me. And then there's this boutique trap. Travel is one of the things that fulfill me. I think it's one of the things you spend money on that make you richer. Right. So it's ideation. meetings, constant planning about when you can do this, who can come along, what's this next trip, when you're going to do the Japan train thing. I learned I love training at it randomly. I thought I would hate it.
I was like, I don't want to go sit on a train with a bunch of old people on the Orient Express. You've got to wear a suit. I hate wearing suits when you go into the bar car. I was just like, this is going to be the worst trip of my life. But you know what? I'm going to do it just because. It's the Orient Express.
People do it. And I can't just do the things that I normally do or else I'm just cookie cutter. Was this a suggestion of one of your ideations? Yeah, ideations. So I go on this thing. I get two extra. I bring my friend Cooper. I'm like, let's go on this train. And he's like, I can only come for this small portion of it. Right. I got it. I fucking loved it. I love it. I hate to admit it. I loved it. It was so peaceful.
There were views you can see that you can't see by car because there's no road. You can't fly low and see it. There's towns. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. You can read. You can relax. I met all kinds of interesting people in the car. I didn't know there was a training society. There's trains all over. They go through all kinds of places. I was just like, I absolutely loved it. And I was like, this is something I can do till I'm 90.
You know, like I can do this for the rest of my life. And I was all excited when I first got off where we're like, we're going to take the train up to the Machu Picchu. And there's this other one that goes through the desert and you can go across Russia. I can't go across Russia now, but you know, like in the Japan train and, and we were actually.
planning a trip. And we're like, okay, we're going to do this summer, we're going to do this. And we thought about it. We're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. You can ride a train at 86, but can you go walk around the city streets and climb the steps of Italy at 86 and get around? Maybe, maybe not. So let's push training. Not that we're going to do none of it, right? But we're going to do less of that now and more of that later, right? That's kind of die with zero thinking, right? That's me.
Hey, don't go on autopilot just because you have dopamine hit going on a train, right? It's great, but let's be thoughtful about each time period of your life. Yeah, so autopilot rears its head. All the time. All the time. All the time. It's great. Autopilot's great. I do so many things. Driving. You found something that you love. Brilliant. Yeah, yeah. Go do it. Rinse. Repeat. Exactly. You just keep going, you know.
It relieves the strain on your prefrontal cortex. But if you want to thrive and you want to optimize, you've got to use the prefrontal cortex a lot. We got to hire people. I was going to say, I imagine that the outsourcing makes that an awful lot easier. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the, the, the dickish thing. Like I have, like I, I ship a lot of money into other people.
to help optimize life and think about these things and, and, and arrange and, and what's going to go on and think about, okay, you've got this summer and we do, and there's tons of planning that they do. None of which you do. Do you know Rob Dyrdek, the guy that founded DC Shoes? No, I do not. Very rich, very, like... Cool, interesting guy. He tracks every second of his life. He was on the show a couple of weeks ago. Tracks every second of his life, and he has an entire life design team.
that basically does the same thing. Uh, Brian Johnson, the guy that the longevity dude, that's trying to live to 120. Right. Uh, you know, he sold his, uh, a ton of companies for God knows how much money. Uh, and he now has it. full-time team of cutting-edge longevity researchers that basically just give him every single supplement and take the biomarkers and do the things that he needs to do. And my point being that you can think that you're being as obnoxious as you want, but...
There are levels, you know, everyone's got their own obnoxious version of whatever it is. You know, you're optimizing for life design. Rob's optimizing for tracking his time. Brian's optimizing for his longevity, whatever it is. For me, it's all fulfillment, right? It's like... you know it's all it's all fulfillment it's like what is going to be the most fulfilling ride i can possibly have when it comes to dying with zero you know wealth understood time understood health presumably
Given that health is one of the three core components of what we're talking about today, spending money on things that improve your health and fitness should be a place. It's a no-brainer. It's it's and there's simple things that like particularly people that have have money, lots of disposable income, you know, talking like having a chef. I was like, it's not only is it like convenient and it tastes good. Like you have this, a chef in your house.
Right. Whip up anything you want. But they talk to the trainer. They get the macros right, the protein, whatever. And it's just auto done for you. Right. So it falls in a health bucket. Right. It's easier for me not to become a fat slob because. I don't think about food. It's just there.
You know, I came down here. They gave me a bag. He's like, here's your lunch and here's your snack. Here's your vegetarian protein shake and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And, you know, I asked people like, well, what are you eating? I'm like, I don't know, chef. What am I eating? 40, 40, 20. You know what I mean? Like, that's what you're on right now. How many calories? It's just how many calories, right? Like, and I'm just dialed, right? So that's like, that's going to help me not have like...
a shittier life or less experience points doing an activity down in life. And then you have your trainers and et cetera. And then your checkups and your diagnostics. And you can keep going on with the health. I've looked at some of these guys and I'm like, Yeah, but I did this hyperbaric chamber thing because it was like, oh, it can lengthen your telomeres and has this health benefit. And I'm like, look, if I can't die and it's quackery, it's okay.
Right. It's like if there's asymmetric upside. And so I was going to redo this Israeli study of going into this hyperbaric chamber. Right. All these biomarkers are better after doing it, right? But you have to go into the hypergenic chamber, like, I don't know, consistently for like months. And this place was like a 45-minute drive away. Takes like X time dive to...
to dive down to depth, to bring you to pressure. And then you're there for an hour and then you got to come out, right? And then I got to get home. And I did the math and I was like, it's not worth it. It's like five hours a day or something. Yeah. It was like four or five hours of like nonproductive time, things I could be doing other thing in order to get like maybe a year or two or three. I'm just dicey now. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. That's not more fulfilling. That's less net fulfillment points, right? At a very healthy point in my life, right? So it was like, I'd rather die sooner, right? Okay, so if die with zero, how do you work out when you're going to die? So I... I look at actuarial tables. There's even fancier tasks that look at your methylation of your cells, telomeres, etc. But you can get a pretty accurate...
And you can continually update this, right? It's like if you're 86 and you're not like, oh, it said I was going to die at 86 February 2nd and I'm still dead, you know? No, you're like, that continually gets updated, right? So that kind of... You know, it's not like a static, this whole methodology, this whole thought process, right? This whole way of thinking is a continually updating model. We're constantly, okay, when's my death date? I'm alive today.
Basically pushes you further in the future, et cetera. And just the probabilities is how much money I have. I just discovered I like training. That gets dumped into the model, gets run around in its proper time bucket of when I should be doing training and activities, et cetera.
It's just a way of thinking about your life and running this routine constantly. But it is good to have an estimate of when you're going to die, right? It's good to have an estimate of what are going to be the 10 last years of your life. right and what do those 10 years look like right how in shape are you right how much have you been doing things that like peter atia says have you wrapped enough muscle around yourself with your vo2 right have you been
Thinking about these things. Are you able to walk and pick up a small child in your last 10 years? Yes, no. That's going to change a lot of things where you're going to live. Because you want to hang out with your grandchildren, right?
It's a pain in the ass. Like every parent knows this and then they all do the same thing. Oh, it's such a pain in the ass to go visit grandma. We got to go all the way across town or we got to go to another state and we got to know whatever, blah, blah, blah. Right? and you know my mom moved to virginia right and we're in texas and the sister is in new jersey and whatever and she complains about like how we don't see her and come to her right
And it's hard on her to travel, right? Like to drive. And it was like, this is a calculation. You know, maybe staying in Jersey City, you know, obviously everybody's got to choose how they live and die. And she chose that path, but it comes connected with, it's a dynamic decision that affects other things in your life.
You know, your health in your last decade of your life is going to determine whether or not you're pretty much cool getting on a plane and traveling by yourself to go visit your grandkids. you know, spoil them and ruin, ruin your kids. Right. Like, fuck dad, why'd you give them all the candy? You know, like when you get your kids back, right. For, for, for being shits. Right. Uh, or, or not like it's a pain in the ass and I need.
I need help and a guardian or whatever. So I have to wait for them to come to me. And they have busy lives in their own lives, right? So all these things matter. They matter a lot. And I think as humans, I always say we don't net present value well. We're not good with future value and net present value. We're very good with the immediate like, oh, tiger, run, or bear, run, or salty thing, or sweet thing, eat, you know, that type of thing. Not really good at like, hmm, if I eat this sweet thing.
Every day, it's an extra 250, 300 calories. So in years, that's two years, 40 extra pounds of weight. You know what I mean? Like we don't do that, right? We just do the thing, right? And we don't think. But yeah, if I'm out of shape and I can't walk and I can't pick up a small child, based on where I am right now, that's very likely going to happen. It's absolutely a certainty for a lot of people.
Therefore, I need to live close to my grandkids if I want to see them, you know, that type of thing. So I better plan on retiring near them or seeing them less or whatever. What are some of the other planning tools that people should be aware of? Well, actual tables, when you're going to die, any kind of calendaring. I like, you know, on my phone, I have my countdown clock when I'm going to die. Right. It's just kind of this like totally not morbid.
It's been known when you know the vacation is going to end, you take the trip more seriously. Like if you woke up in Paris and you're like, this is great. Like I'm in Paris. And you didn't know it was going to end in a week. You'd be like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to sleep in today, whatever. If you're feeling weak, you're running around like a madman, soaking it up as much as you can. Just to interject that, this is why...
short trips, like aggressively short trips, 36 hours, 48 hours in a particular location, I think is an undervalued way to do travel. I managed to do... I think it was like eight different things in 24 hours in Miami. It was 24 hours from the plane landing to the plane taking off. I did so much stuff. Met up with...
Tons of different people. I played pickleball. I met the head of legal for Yeezy at some backyard barbecue. I gave a talk at a conference. I did like this and this and this thing. And it was... I wasn't being driven around. I didn't have like a fancy team that was helping. It was Ubers. Uber and a very aggressive Mexican lady who...
beat a ton of traffic to get me back in time for the plane, I probably shouldn't have been able to fit number eight in. But my point being, when, like, Parkinson's Law just... fist fucks everything else, right? Work expands to fill the time given for it. And your lackadaisicalness about how hurried you're going to be to get things done will also fill the...
expand to fill the time that you believe that you've got for it. Yeah. So the fact that you knew you only had 24 hours drove that activity. I wonder if I stretched it out, would you even have done it?
I would have probably done no more things in more time. Yeah. You know, loafing, there's something loafing, there's something soaking up the atmosphere. But I'm just saying like with life, I'm trying to create a sense of urgency. Right. And then there's other things like daughter's graduation. She's gone. That's it. i'm like she's out of the house like oh my gosh like we constantly talk like
This might be the last summer because next summer she might want to go with friends or something like that. We're constantly... That's something that's really interesting. And I've heard you talk about it and other parents as well say similar things. Sam Harris talks about why...
this might be the last time that you ever bounce your daughter on your knee. Right. And it was a really profound story. How did you, when your kids were growing up, how did you really... sort of sink into that sense of urgency during a time when you're sleepless and it's difficult and there's dirty nappies and all the rest of it i'm gonna be honest like i i've fucked it up many times
I messed it up many times. I did not have the sense of urgency. I did not. You think they're going to be these little sweet things that are going to want to hang around you and you're going to be God to them forever. And it's not true. And there, you know, there is a couple more stories I wish I read, you know.
There's a couple more times I just hung out, not done the business thing or the travel thing or whatever, the other thing, right? And I got the order wrong. So I'm hyper-conscious of like, let's get the order right now. What's the order that you should, you know, for the... parents or fledgling parents that are listening, what's the period that you need to prioritize with your kids? I think you need to really prioritize the period that they want to be with you. And that's usually 12, sub 12.
right because at 14 you're uncool at 13 you're uncool you know it's it starts every parent knows it starts like you know it starts drifting and maybe a little bit earlier whatever but like through 10 it's like Where you want to go, they want to go. Where we're going to be. This is what we're going to do. They're more amenable, et cetera. And then it's like, nah.
One morning you wake up and you're the lamest person in the world. You don't know anything, Dad. You don't know anything. You may have money, but you don't know nothing, Dad. that's dumb you're so you're so strange i am strange it's so absurd but it's so annoying you're so annoying you know it's just like it's going to happen right and you just enjoy it you just deal with it you roll with it right but you you're still like
You go from like, wow, how do I get time to myself, right, with little kids, right, babies, et cetera, like I have no time. And parents are like, I need rest or we don't have sex anymore or whatever it is, to you're begging to spend time with your kids. I don't know if you've ever been in a social situation where you wanted to hang out with a group, but they don't want you. That's your kids.
Like, for a lot of parents, maybe some parents are, God bless them, you know, what's your secrets? But, like, for a lot of it's like, oh, man, I can't hang out with the cool kids. I can't, whatever. So, you know, my hack around that was...
late after my daughter was like oh i need to be the uber driver like i get to talk to them when i'm driving them in the car they need me to drive them to their friend's house or to go to the thing wow so that's my that's my hack right i'm like majority of time that i'm going to spend with them actually
The most time I'm going to spend with them is when I'm driving them around Houston. And Houston's like one of those seas where you got to drive freaking everywhere, right? So that's my hack. Like, okay, I eventually went from... you know, fighting about who's driving the kids to, I will wake up, I will fly in from another city to drive them. Right. Like I will, it means that you get to spend time with them. Exactly.
Because I try and think forward. I'm like, what does doing my best mean now? What is doing my best in this area? Like when my, when I'm not on autopilot and my prefrontal cortex is working and I'm on the subject, what does that mean? And then I came up with it. Like driving is one of them. It's a smart solution, man. Yes. And you know, there's others, but.
That's my own personal bullshit that people probably don't want to hear. So next principle is don't live life on autopilot. It's something that you've mentioned an awful lot today. What do you think is the typical approach that people on autopilot use to plan their life? Culture. Dreams of dead people. Which is what culture is, right? Dreams of dead people. People before you. Around you. Right? Other people's dreams. This is what you should do.
This is how you should get married. The movies say you should fall in love this way. This is you have X, Y, and Z. You find it in all kinds of ways, right? Like, I find people, like, our friends, and I saw somebody recently posted on the internet, like, oh, I'm... I'm having trouble meeting somebody, like finding a significant other. And I'm one of those, like, if it's worth having, it's worth working for, right? So what resources can we bring the bear?
And so I'm like, all right, how much time are you spending on this? How many people are you meeting? Let's get the spreadsheets out. What network? What persons? Who's your personal network? Who are your friends intraday? How many dates are you going on? Whatever. What are your criteria? And have you set out your criteria?
the whole thing and they're just kind of i was hoping i bump into an elevator like the movie i saw and then i fall and i say the right movie line and we fall in love you know whatever some stupid like that and and it's not like they're actually thinking that but it's buried in their subconscious right And they're on autopilot. They're on cultural autopilot, like thinking like, oh, this is how it's going to be. And so that's why I think a lot of people, you know, propinquity is who they marry.
somebody at work, somebody on the way to work, et cetera, where I'm just like, wow, we live in a world where You can meet anybody from anywhere and travel. Your range is, you know, there's all these tools you can have to meet people and all these apps and services, et cetera. And you have a much bigger filter and you can be much.
more deliberate. You can be much more vulnerable and you can get out there and, you know, so I think people are on autopilot in some of the most important areas of their lives. Well, like, well, one is dating. Who are you going to marry? I can't think of a more important decision. When are they going to have kids? Right? Oh, we just got a break.
Not really planning it. And it's not like it's like unplanned pregnancy, like when you see a doctor type of thing. But just like, is this the best year? Or is this the best year? Right? Right? Just kind of come what may. Does this fit into like your doctorate dissertation or whatever, you know, things like that, right? Where they're going to work.
well, I grew up here in Jersey City and there's a newspaper ad and these people are hiring and these people are hiring. This is kind of where I should work. It's like, no, maybe I should work here. Maybe I should work in California. And a lot of that's fear-based, right? Like a lot of people. I think one of the most restrictive things people do to themselves out of fear in autopilot is not move within the country. Especially in America. You guys are...
a continent in a country. Yeah. It's crazy. We have a work permit. You'd know the language. You have the currency, your bank account works. And, and like, there'll be the most amazing job and opportunity or whatever. And. They won't move because somebody lives here. And I've had this conversation with someone. I was like, well, how many times do you actually see this relative? I want to know in days. How often?
You know what I mean? Quantify. I was like, how much is the plane ticket? How much more salary? You know what I mean? Like when you actually spend more quality time with them, if it wasn't just like an hour drive or whatever, but you came a week. Would they prefer to see you in California than in fucking New Jersey? Exactly. And you can bring them out there.
Could you put that time in on a trip and take them other places? Can you rearrange the social thing? So there's a lot of just, this is the way it is, and I'm going to live here, and I don't feel comfortable without really thinking it through. So family, work, location of where people live. Yeah. Also, just even ideas of like...
Who says I love you first, et cetera. Like everything is just this cultural programming with food you eat, what you like. Dude, intentionality and the lack thereof has been the most common trend.
that I've seen with people who do and do not have high agency, who do and do not make appropriate changes in their life, that do and do not seem to live a life that's more fulfilling or less fulfilling. And I remember, so I ran... nightclubs for a very long time in the uk and i'm in this city which has got about a million people in so it's not that much smaller than austin and you know
Success in a lot of the ways I think that the world would tell a guy in his 20s that he's supposed to have success with the status and money and women and whatnot. But I used to go outside in the house, my first house that I bought. It was a backyard. And I would open the door before I went to bed, and I'd do this every night. I used to do it every night for months and months and months. And I'd look up at the stars, and I remember thinking, I wish I could be anywhere else but here.
and i was like fuck like how have i got myself to the stage where i love this life and what i've built in terms of a business but i know that it's not right And yet I was so terrified of making some sort of a change because look at why I would be giving up. What if I fall flat on my face? What if I look stupid? What if I have to come back with my tail between my legs? That probably the latter part I say is what stops.
most people it's not really what they're giving up on the money or whatever they can rebuild it or it's not you know they can go go figure it out right it's the judgment of their peers or themselves one of the peers is themselves right you're going like you fucking idiot you gave up the thing and it didn't work out right but a lot of is the judgment of your peers your friends like etc and so a lot of people don't take the chance don't take the risk and i you know i'm a
maximum risk, take as much risk as you possibly can stand and then add a little bit more, you know, especially when you're young. Plan in terms of seasons. We've spoken about this before, the Tetris. Yeah. The whole, the whole idea is like, you know, you, we all think that we have, we're all going to die, but we also have all these mini deaths, right? These, these, these seasons of our lives, like the single you.
The parent of a young child, the first job, the unemployed you, the first job you, the first business you, right? The empty nester you, right? The retiree you, right? There's all these seasons in your life. And so... When you think about your life in seasons, if how they fit together and how we optimize each period, then you're going to have a much more overall, better optimization for your entire life, right? You're not going to be like, holy shit.
The young kid season, I fucking missed out on 50 more stories I should have read. I don't have that. I don't have that bond. It's not like I'm going to be able to pop my 13-year-old or 16-year-old on my knee.
Let me tell you, and Pooh said, you know what I mean? Like, it's just not happening, right? Like, it's over. You don't get that back. And the young business you, the young you that, like, has a chance to start a business, right? You don't have all these other obligations that... maybe stop you from taking those risks because it's a pooled risk now like you know i you know i took flying lessons i used to go flying i used to ride a motorcycle and it's you know um my
College girlfriend's mother was a nurse. She's like, you're an idiot. You're writing a kidney donor machine. That's what we call them. But at that age, I could take that risk. It's only reckless for you. It's only reckless for me. Right. And then, you know, it's taking flying lessons. And general aviation is about, a lot of people don't realize this, before you get to professional, there's just general aviation. And those stats are just about a motorcycle.
fuck I've got I'm literally in talks to get my first set of flying lessons and now you've put the shits up but do you have kids no okay so go ahead kill yourself go fly away no I literally almost killed myself one time too what happened um so I was at Sugar Land Airport doing touch and goes, flying around. And there's a wire at the end that you have to clear.
It's not a problem at all, except on Cessna 172Rs, a lot of times the wheels shake in the front. If somebody landed it before, if you touch the landing, they give a little shake and a shimmy. It squawked. It's not that big of a deal, but it can become an issue. So I landed on one of the touching goes, doing flaps up, whatever, full power. But the plane is shimmying like crazy. And I'm like, you know, trying to get it done.
moving down the runway at the same time. So I have to make a decision. Do I bail at sea? Okay. Or do I try and gun it and clear this telephone war? And like some neuron fired out, bail. So I freaking bail, ripping, you know, like just kind of like, and I come to the instructor and I was like, yeah, I decided to bail. She's like, yeah, you made the right decision. And I was just like, fuck, I was a second away from making the wrong decision.
Like there is a very, very close door and like Bill go, I can fucking do this. You know what I mean? Like. And the next thing you know. Gets decapitated by a telephone wire. What happened is it clips the wire and the plane crashes. And these things are like, you know, aluminum foil. It's an engine in your chest and you're dead.
Right. Like you're just these are not Teslas or, you know, there's no crash test dummies and in Cessna 172 hours. It crashes. You're gone. Right. And so in that matter, you know, you're cartwheeling or whatever. So. I thought about that. And when I remember when Pregnant with Scott, I was like, that's it. I used to read the accident reports and I was like, oh, you know, it's always pilot error.
Pilot error, pilot error. Even when it's the plane, it's like pilot error, right? And I thought, I used to think, oh, I would never do that. And then I thought about it. I'm like, no, I am the guy who would do that. Who am I kidding? I am that guy.
And I was like, I don't have the right to take the risk. And that was it. That was the end of my learning how to fly. Flying Korea over before it began. I mean, if I had gotten to IFR and a professional, you know, then it would have been like, you know, jet travel, whatever. Oh, so what you're saying is.
Get your pilot's license early. Get to the point where you're a professional. But if you're just tooling around in a 172R and you're a private pilot doing the G8, that's motorcycle riders. And the stats are very similar to a motorcycle riding. For fuck's sake. Well, I hope that my mom is not listening to this one. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry, mom. Sorry, mom. That's okay. Know when to stop. Know when to stop. We're talking about the...
balance, I suppose, between people's health, wealth, and time. Some people say that they like to work. Some people are given a sense of meaning by work, which I think is a little bit different. They're given a sense of purpose. But knowing when you should stop working, saving. Yeah. It's a difficult decision. These are difficult decisions. And usually when I talk to friends, right, like it's always a battle. It's an argument.
Right. Like I actually had a conversation. A guy asked me to come. He wanted to ask my advice on something. Gave him the advice and he just wanted to argue with me about being right. And I'm like, I can't. You know what I mean? Like I can't. I can't tell you that, you know, if you're on heroin and you want to give me the heroin argument, like I can't tell you you're wrong.
right? Like this fulfills you. You're saying it's the most fulfilling thing. All I can do is point to some stats, give a little bit of logic about like all the choices, what's the odds that you pick the right one. And, and that. it's unlikely that there's not more fulfilling things for you to try if you just exercise those muscles, right? But I generally tell my friends, like, listen, work till the day you die. Just make sure you enjoy the ride as well.
Don't let it consume you. So, hey, if you want to be the casual, occasional opium user, okay. You know what I mean? If it's not affecting the rest of your life, right? It's not an addiction. But when I look at the totality of some people's lives, I'm like, this looks just like an addiction. It's compulsive work. Well, it consumes the rest of your life. It fucks up. If it's fucking with your ski trips and you're hanging out with your friends and you have to travel.
And you have more money than you need. Exactly. And whatever. And well, there's no reason, right? We're just talking about entertainment dollars, right? We already got survival mode covered, right? We've covered that number. So now we're talking about what's going on here. Right now it's interfering with the rest of your life. Okay. So how do you know when to stop? Um, this is individual for every person. Right. And so for me, I'll just speak for me is when it interferes with my life.
So technology has been great that it hasn't interfered enough with my life. And it still affords me things that I... want that I cannot have that as opposed to a penis so like I like to attach for me I like to attach what am I working for because in theory right if I went through the exercise in heaven with God And I had all my experiences and we had a nice little spreadsheet and we attached all the dollars to them. I know exactly when to stop working and investing. Exactly. I'm like, I got it.
That's the number. It's covered. It's exactly the number. I have enough and I have my concept of enough. Right. I have everything. I'm going to get it. Blah, blah, blah. Right. All the experiences are going to happen and I'm going to hit the grave. Right. For me. It's what is it that I don't have now and cannot afford how through the arc of my life that I want, right? And it's one thing.
That's it. And it's to the point. It used to be two things. I actually thought I wanted this plane with a bigger range and all this other kind of stuff. And I charted it. And I was like, I will not work. I will not waste hours of my life of this experience. It's not worth it. And I dropped it off the list. And it felt really good because I was close.
getting really close. I was like, this is great. It felt great to shed that obligation. Like I am not wasting hours of my life for this thing. And I was like, whatever money that was going to go to this thing, it's now going to bigger parties and other things. charity and here you go and that type of stuff right and so that would that felt really good what's the one thing that's left uh yeah that's it
Like if you're like, hey, here's your golden ticket to a yacht, like a Willy Wonka style, you know? And you don't have to pay the mate. It's not the CapEx, it's the OpEx on yachts. Because I can do that for the rest of my life. And I really enjoy it. It's a floating thing. It's very ostentatious and bullshit to say, but it's like that thing I really love. Like, I like travel. I'm bougie. It's pretty amazing. But even then, I'm like, you know.
There are other things I can do besides yachting, and I probably would only do it X months a year. And maybe I can cut that back and find another activity. Mouthy Coast is nice, though. It's fucking amazing. And have you ever gone on a side? I did Serbia and all that area. Like it's Adriatic. I mean, it's just, it's just amazing. So what you're looking at is a projection forward. What is it that I want to do?
what do i need to have in order to be able to do the things that i want to do right how far off that am i yes and and the cost right like it doesn't it's not if i was out there digging ditches and it was very painful Right. And very taxing on my time, the cost of earning the money, the money and the time, the time. Yes. So if I had to like, Oh, I have to go do a nine to five and it's eight hours or whatever, but I don't work a nine to five. I trade commodities. It's hyper leveraged.
Right. There is some mental stress. There's a lot of people, you know, that are dependent, et cetera. But the yield on my time. is pretty fantastic, right? But you could imagine another universe in which the price that you paid or the cost, as you said, in terms of your sanity, if you were wired slightly differently, would be so extreme.
That it may not be worth it. No, I could definitely see it not be worth it, right? There's sometimes like, I trade commodities, it's crazy. There's a lot of stress. You know, it's not stressful for me because I'm just always like... I was going to say you must be built for it if that's the case. I think all traders are. All good traders that last, they are. Because it selects out of the pool. Yes. Because most people...
I've been told need five to seven positive events to make up for one negative event. The best traders are 60-40, if that, right? So that means they have... you know, the best in the world, which I'm not the best in the world, but like the best, best, best, best in the world are having like four bad days for every six. And if they need one to seven.
The emotional math doesn't work out. So there are people who are very smart who come in, right? With six through 40, but then the emotional math catches up to them. They go crazy and they lose money and they're out of the game. Right. Or it's just not worth it. They're addicted to drugs or some other outlet to fix this emotional math that doesn't work, right? Like, I have lots of shitty days. Today was a very shitty day, right? And I'm like, okay, so be it.
You know what I mean? It bees like that sometime. Like I don't, I don't, because I'll be optimizing fulfillment at every wealth level, it doesn't really bother me. I'm really happy to be alive and I think everything else is gravy. fuck yeah so give money to kids and charity early yes so this is this it's a lot of people so like some people might like be too scared to implement die with zero they they might still argue about them
principle, but one thing that hits a lot of people is, you know, that the same laws of physics that govern my body, right? The fact that most of us reach mental maturity at 28. physical peak maturity at 33, and then we're in plateau and decline. Every human, right? There might be some wild exceptions, right? So if you're at the bestest, bestest, bestest shape of your life at 33, you'll never be in better shape.
Technology, not listening. And then their ability to enjoy experiences, certain experiences, will decline as they age. They have that same lifespan, arc of lifespan, deterioration, etc. And they also get the memory dividend.
Using the memory data and investing early. And so if you live to like 86 or 90 and you die and then you give your money, kids, you know, people say, I'm working for my kids. What about their inheritance? I'm like, well, what about your fucking kids? You want to give money to a six-year-old?
56? Like, eat a bag of dicks. Sorry, am I supposed to say this on this podcast? Like, what the fuck are you talking about? That's not thinking about your kids, right? We want to have maximum impact, maximum experience, right? So they want to go... Hello skiing. They want to enjoy it. They want to take their kids on vacation.
There are all kinds of experiences they want to have. Also remembering consumption smoothing. Correct. The dollar amount will be more valuable the earlier you give it to them. Correct. So it's really about what is the most fulfilling... time to give them the money and sorry and you being able to enjoy the reflective glow of the money that you've given to your kids
While you can still do a thing. I agree. That's more of a selfish way of doing it, but that is part of it, right? Like you get the, you get the only child. Exactly. But it's, it's part of it, right? It's part of the decision process. But if we're just. focused on the children you know we want to have maximum impact maximum fulfillment their ability to have the most fulfilling life possible and it's not giving them a bunch of money when they're 60 not kids they might not even be alive yep okay
Some kids do pre-decease their parents, unfortunately. So if we're really thinking about our kids, right? Like if an inheritance is to impact them in a positive way and to give them... the most fulfilling life and for them to have positive life experiences. We'd have considered the memory dividend, right? Having an event happen at 30 is a lot more dividends than an event at 60, right? We got to think about their health.
and their ability to do certain activities or their aptitude or willingness, right? They don't want to go to a Broadway show at 60. I got to sit. It's too long. It hurts my corns, whatever. I don't want to be in New York. The noise, it bothers me, right? I just want to hang out and garden. When I'm 60, right? You have to think about the arc of their life and things they want to do. And so the idea that you're delaying gratification for your kids.
That will lead to a lot of no gratification. The impact of that gift, even if it's a lower amount, between in their 30s, you know, 28 to 30. I recommend between 25 and no later than 33. Right. Depending on how mature they are, et cetera. And people are like, well, I have a kid. He's not mature. I'm like, listen, they are who they are now.
No amount. You know what I mean? An idiot 33-year-old is not going to be able to become a sage 45-year-old. Exactly. So let them have their life. You lived your life. You know, I spoke to a bunch of people in, you know.
They have these groups that are very wealthy. They meet. And I can only talk about what I talked about. But I was like, fuck you, dude. You lived your life. Let your kid live his life. You trying to control him from the grave? Is that what you're trying to do? You're trying to control him with money? Like, do you want to give them money and have that let them have their ride in their adventure or not? You know, not this. Oh, 90 and you're 62.
It's just the dumbest fucking thing in the world. It's not really thinking about your kids, right? It's just something that... culturally has happened the king died and this guy is the new king and whatever and then people started to have their own wealth and they started doing the same thing you know i died now all these lands are yours you know you know maybe i don't want to be a fucking farmer why charity early then
So charity, it's the same thing. I'm not going to save these starving kids now. I'm going to wait till I die. What is that? What is that? Like, is it some sort of tip on where you're out? Are you really thinking about the needs of humanity and the people that rode this planet with you? Is your ripple now? Or are you trying to save, like, people 2,000 years from the future now? Would your... judgment of this change if the ability of the money to compound, to accrue more volume? No. Why?
For me, if there was a fun, let's take an extreme example to make a point. If there was a fun to save the Jews getting out of the Holocaust, you're like, no, I can get a better return and I can save more people in 2020. Like, fuck you dude. Fuck you.
You know, like it's an extreme example. If we don't have that example, it doesn't exist. So, you know, and also the impacts on charitable giving, particularly in education, saving a life, a life compounds and does more wonders than any kind of investment you can do. So, I also think it's just arrogant that my return is going to be better than your life or these 10 lives or these 100 lives, right? Like, I just think it's an arrogant assumption and a false assumption, right? And like, I'm here.
riding this planet with these humans. And my ripple is now, right? I want to have an impact now. And that investment now has a... huge, huge, huge return that I don't get to see. I can't quantify it. There's not a bunch of statisticians. It has an impact, right? I'm not just giving money to feel good. I'm having an impact, but I'm not...
Nobody's giving me a bunch of numbers, et cetera. I just know that the impact on that life is huge right now. And so life is urgent. Life is now. Fuck yeah. Last one. Take big risks early, not later. Why? So I've debated this with friends, but the bottom line is, is that for most people, future you has other people and other obligations. And you cannot recover as quickly, right? Like I use the example, like a palma was like smoking weed and crack. And then, you know, he's president, right? Like.
It's hard to be smoking for weed and crack now and then, you know, later in life and be present. You can recover from so many things. You can fuck around for four years and then go to med school and become a brain surgeon, right? And you don't have kids, other obligations. a path that you've dug for yourself that's harder to get out. You can reorient yourself and you're a time billionaire. You have a billion seconds, right? So you have a lot of time to recover, reorient yourself.
and still have a very, very fulfilling life, the consequences of taking what seems like big risks are not as great because of your ability to heal and recover. It's the same thing physically, right? If I tear something, fuck, it's going to take a long time. 17-year-old tears something. My daughter, she got airlifted out of Aspen to Denver Children's. She got this infection. I don't know.
She was traveling and kids have porous bones. So it went to the back of her eye and it was going to go in her brain. They're like, your daughter has to go now. So they took her out of a small hospital in Aspen, whatever. She had two surgeries. I was bulging out. Her resting heart rate was 150, 500.
I'm panicking, right? So they do the surgery. She, you know, she's out of it. I thought this is the last time to see my daughter. A week later, she's like, can I go to camp? Can I go swimming? Like, what the fuck? You alien. What are you made of? Exactly. Rubber and magic. And when you have two kids, your first kid, you're like, oh my God, they have a fever. You're running to the hospital. You're yelling and screaming at each other. They drop and fall. You're like...
Flipping out of everything, right? By the second kid, you're like, roll them around. They'll be fine. They'll be fine. Right? They'll be fine. But if I felt like that or I get sick like that or if my resting heart rate is 155, you know? They're like calling the priest, right? Like calling the priest, right? And so...
This is like your time. The asymmetric aspect. Sorry about that. That is my six o'clock alarm. One of the technologies I use that reminds me and prompts me to connect with my wife. So you would usually.
Ring her, text her. Well, we'll be in each other's presence. We'll usually maybe do an hour. We'll try and get an hour in. We'll chat with each other. We'll drop everything and we'll connect. Or if we're busy or whatever, it's just like, hey, baby, I love you. Like, I love you too. What's going on? How's your day?
That's cool. So one of the technologies you use is, you know, in LLMs and everything, it's going to be greater. It's going to be great. Like, you're going to have, they're going to ingest Die With Zero. They're going to ingest a thousand questions from me.
Some of the other tools that other people have built on top of it, there's going to be LLM and you're just going to be able to ask it questions and it's going to be able to answer it like, should I do this or whatever? Well, according to the philosophy, according to the spreadsheet so-and-so built, according to your finances.
So I can't wait till that happens. Cause that's originally what I wanted. I didn't want a fucking book. You wanted auto die with zero. I wanted this app for me to tell me what to do. Like, you know, have a chef and they tell me what to eat. I wanted a thing like bill.
Go on a boat trip. After the boat trip, you're going to Vietnam. Camp this trail, hike here, stay in this hut. I know you don't like staying in huts, but you're going to love it. Based on your Hexaco personality profile. Exactly, exactly. And then just keep just... ideating and giving me the adventure. So then when I hit the grave, I have all these scars and I'm like, I use this fucking thing up. I had a great ride. But going back to this take risk early.
Right? Like, I can't jump the wakeboard wake right now. I can't do these things. And so, the asymmetry of the wrists, you know. starts to disappear right but early means now like what risk you can take now means early and sometimes everybody always thinks financial right always thinks financial i'm like tell the fucking girl you love her first bear your heart
Take the ride. It's probably going to get broken, but that's great. You'll learn from it. Sometimes it means that. Sometimes it means just make the move. What would you say to the people who...
feel like they want to maximize their life, but they are risk averse in life decisions and job changes and breaking up with partners that are not right for them in finances. What would you say to them? All right. I'm going to say something a little bit different. The first thing I would say is fuck the haters.
Because a lot of the times you don't do something, it's because you're afraid of being judged by other people. A lot of people can stand the financial risk or even like the emotional risk or whatever. They cannot stand the whispers and judgment of people saying, I told you so. A lot of people, I tell people this all the time, people like success, but they love a failure. And failure validates their own cowardice. So when you go out and you try the business and thing, and you fail, they're like,
I don't look like an idiot for not trying myself. See? Jim over here, he failed. So I don't have to try. That's why I can live this miserable job that I'm afraid to quit or whatever. If you go quit, you go fucking succeed. They're exposed. Their own cowardice is exposed, right? But I say just go live the adventure. I think we focus too much. I want a podcast.
And I respect all these podcasters out there getting ideas out to people, summarizing them, taking a long-ass blathering, boring guy like me, making it interesting and putting it out there for people. But I want the guys who tried and failed. I want the guys like, fuck, really? And then what happened? Oh, my God. Those are heroes, man. We always talk to the salmon who's upstream spawning.
but we need some of the salmon that like, fuck, I went the wrong way and I got eaten by a bear. Yeah. I mean, obviously you can't talk, but like, you know, like this is what happened when I tried, I tried this, right. You know, cause there's just learnings in that and there, and there's.
there's a good ride and there's a lot of people who have failed but like i wouldn't do anything different right maybe i'd tweak the thing or this didn't happen to the bad thing or i would have been nicer to the employee and he wouldn't quit or whatever but like there's learnings in that The selection effect of the people who have the most notoriety are the ones that are least familiar with failure, or at least least familiar with big failure, catastrophic failure, which...
creates a world of people who are successes and only successes talking and giving advice, which probably creates a culture downstream from that of people who are hypersensitized to failure. I've been busted twice after making it. You know what I mean? I've gotten divorced. Worst failure in my life, right? Like I've had some huge failures, you know, and some huge tries. And so I'm here on your podcast.
People are actually going to listen to me talk my bullshit. And, you know, to the person out there, you know, who's out there, who's on the edge or, you know, if they really think about it, like it's, it's a lot of it's. Your fear of being judged. And you judging yourself. Just do your best. That's all you can do. Get out there. Take life by the balls.
Don't live. If you like, there is some romanticism and I don't want to take away from it from the cookie cutter, simple life. There are some people out there who truly enjoy it. Like the tail end of my life. I would love to be a farmer. Just. The monotony of growing things and the intricacy, right? But right now, I'm... I want scars, man. I want the ride. I do not want the cookie cutter life. I don't want to waste this ride. And so for the person out there who's like cookie cutting it, but like.
really yearns to like strike out try anything move to the new city chase the girl say i love you first you know what i mean get in shape run the marathon whatever it is right like Don't waste your fucking life, dude. Don't do it. Don't let the fucking judgment of the haters make you waste your fucking life. I love it. Bill Perkins, ladies and gentlemen.
If people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do, where should they go? Oh, my God. My Twitter account is just like chaos, but at BP22. You know, you might follow me and then unfollow me because I'm hot take city. But that's where you can actually – I can actually increase my Dunbar number. You know what I mean? Like you have a certain limit of social interactions, but I can occasionally random and debate with you.
people on twitter i love to chop it up there it might be an addiction um i'm on instagram but it's really just kind of like a diary for me to have a memory dividend for my life so i video a lot of random shit or cool shit i'm doing highlight reel so that when i'm in my 80s i can be like That motherfucker was badass. This is great. Wow, this is great. Yeah, I remember that. Remember that? You know, the memory jars, right? And so I'm Bill Perkins on Instagram. I'm at BP22 on Twitter.
That's about it. I'm roaming and winging life just like the rest of you. Bill, I really appreciate you, man. I think your work's very much needed. It's a great counter to a lot of the conversations that we're hearing at the moment about... the sacrifice mentality, monk mode, people that are, how would you say, justifying their own risk aversion as nobility.
When it's not, it's fear. And I love the fact that there is someone saying swing for the fucking fences and just see how far you can go. Listen, if you want to be in monk mode, I'll hire you. I hire those people. it's like, like tiger mom people, right? Like whatever, like they raise the kids. I'm sorry. I know we're supposed to be wrapping this up, but you can edit it out. The, uh, the, um,
This whole idea, they're like, oh, my kid can do this. They raise these robots. And I'm like, they'll make great employees for my kids. Great fucking employees. Right? You just... took the soul out of these people and live in fear and then like they'll exchange their whole goddamn life for like what they consider a high salary and a little bit of prestige and a job and i'm like
I'll be the one sweating my fucking balls off, putting all my money on the line building up a firm, and your workers will be helping me get there as foot soldiers. And that's where they'll always be, as foot soldiers. And they can have their boring cookie-cutter life. So be careful what values you inculcate. Exactly. Exactly. And so these hustle bros about like, you know, I'm going to fucking do 10 years, 15 years in Sing Sing and then I'm going to be badass when I'm 35. I'm like, dude.
People in 35 really look back on their 20s. If you ever go hang out with people and you go to dinner, a lot of the conversation is about the past. Shit they've done. I actually had this plan that... Didn't complete because got divorced, but we were going to go live in a different city every summer. Because I was like, you know, maybe after 10 years of doing that, I'll be an interesting person. And people will talk to me and I can have a lot of stories to talk about.
Right. But this is almost the exact opposite. I'm going to go in fucking jail, become some sort of money-making robot. Try and become the most uninteresting person in the room. It's horrible. That's not what humans are. Humans are here to connect.
We're wired to connect and enjoy. We're wired to thrive. We're the only animal wired to thrive. Every other fucking animal is just trying to survive. Don't do that. I'm right. Bill Perkins, I appreciate you. Thank you for coming on, man. Thanks for having me. I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever.
read. These are the most life-changing reads that I've ever found, and there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them, and it's completely free, and you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com. slash books