Speaker 1: Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel, and today we're
Speaker 1: talking about a field guide to Wealth and Purpose in
Speaker 1: your twenties with Jack Reins. So there's a lot packed
Speaker 1: into your twenties, Jack, Right, you're getting an education, formal
Speaker 1: or otherwise. You're figuring out what you believe about work, money, relationships, success,
Speaker 1: and who you want to become. And that process doesn't
Speaker 1: stop when you hit thirty. But your twenties are especially formative,
Speaker 1: and there's no shortage of advice aimed at young adults.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's the commencement speeches, like some of them are tough
Speaker 1: to watch. There's the career gurus, there's the personal finance influencers.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I consider myself an influencer or not,
Speaker 1: but I guess maybe I am somehow. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the advice misses like the deeper question of what
Speaker 1: actually matters. And so in a world full of noise,
Speaker 1: it's just getting harder to separate wisdom from status signaling.
Speaker 1: That's why today I'm bringing Jack rains On. He's a
Speaker 1: young guy who young adult young man.
Speaker 2: I'm twenty nine, so I don't need to wear that.
Speaker 3: In New York, I get told that I'm a baby,
Speaker 3: and then Atlanta I get told that I'm totally washed,
Speaker 3: so like it's very geographic specific.
Speaker 1: And then how interesting how it happens. I was an
Speaker 1: intern at my first job, and they the nicknames I
Speaker 1: got like and I, and that stuck with me for
Speaker 1: a decade and a half of working there. I was like,
Speaker 1: they still think I'm the intern. I'm not. But dude,
Speaker 1: your new book is called Young Money. It's part memoir,
Speaker 1: part guidebook for the generation coming behind you. And I'm
Speaker 1: super excited to chat with you today, man, so thanks
Speaker 1: for joining me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, I'm excited to dig in. All right.
Speaker 1: First question I ask everybody is what's your spoige? What's
Speaker 1: your craft beer equivalent? What are you spending money on.
Speaker 1: I know you're not being a complete idiot, and you know,
Speaker 1: frittering away all the money that comes in, you're saving
Speaker 1: something for your future, But what are you splurging on
Speaker 1: in particular?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 1: Let's bring in a lot of joy.
Speaker 3: So excluding the the thing I'm actually splurging the most
Speaker 3: on is rent in New York. That's not because that's
Speaker 3: not because I have a penthouse apartment. It's because I
Speaker 3: have a studio in the center of Manhattan. But since
Speaker 3: I now have no roommates and an elevator and a
Speaker 3: door guy, actually like my rent is like it's it's
Speaker 3: a little over four thousand dollars a month for a studio.
Speaker 2: We were talking about this earlier.
Speaker 3: It's like the New York rental market is insane excluding
Speaker 3: necessities I.
Speaker 2: Need to survive.
Speaker 3: If you see in the background, I like build a
Speaker 3: bookshelf in my apartment. So it used to be a
Speaker 3: big Kindle guy because it's like ebook. It's like it's
Speaker 3: it's just easier to take with you. It takes up
Speaker 3: less space whatever. I have gone full circle and I'm
Speaker 3: so in on physical books.
Speaker 2: I guess, having now written one, it's about to come out.
Speaker 3: I've bought like fifty or sixty books in the last
Speaker 3: two months, and I'm probably only going to read maybe
Speaker 3: a third of them. But I'm trying to fill out
Speaker 3: the bookshelf. It does yeah, yeah, So the it's one
Speaker 3: of those like intellectual status signaling. I have a bookshelf,
Speaker 3: but the most recent splurge has one hundred percent ben like,
Speaker 3: let's fill out the shelf with physical bucks.
Speaker 2: Ken Will just doesn't look that cool.
Speaker 3: If I'm like having a zoom call in front of
Speaker 3: my coffee table over there, I want.
Speaker 2: A ton of books in the background. Yeah, so physical books.
Speaker 1: I like it. Okay, physical books and Manhattan rent, which
Speaker 1: is not cheap, but it's it's a choice, right, and
Speaker 1: it's a quality of lifestyle choice. And so much of
Speaker 1: what you're writing about in your new book is kind
Speaker 1: of how you think about that trade off between finances
Speaker 1: and quality of life in your twenties. And there is
Speaker 1: I think some advice that people have given throughout the
Speaker 1: years that could lead to a twenties where you're being
Speaker 1: super frugal and you're investing a lot for your future,
Speaker 1: but you're not necessarily living life to the fullest in
Speaker 1: your twenties. And you kind of argue for a blend,
Speaker 1: but you're talking more about really like living your twenties up.
Speaker 1: One of the I think the first line in your book,
Speaker 1: you write, everyone, every person should blow up their life
Speaker 1: at least once, And I'm curious to hear what you
Speaker 1: mean by that, because i will say I've seen some
Speaker 1: people blow up their lives spectacularly and it wasn't pretty,
Speaker 1: and they probably should have thought twice about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so so I would like to add one one qualifier.
Speaker 3: It's every young person should blow up the right at
Speaker 3: least once. The like the kind of the you know,
Speaker 3: there's like there's part of the book is like there's
Speaker 3: some financial advice, career advice, whatever, But the kind of
Speaker 3: underlying ethos is I think young people should be a
Speaker 3: lot more risk on and that that includes everything from
Speaker 3: like career paths, relationships, just like how you make choices,
Speaker 3: because I think it's you know, I think when people
Speaker 3: graduate from college, there's a lot of uncertainty. You don't
Speaker 3: know anything, you're at the bottom of the totem poll,
Speaker 3: and it's it's very easy to it's almost pattern match
Speaker 3: off of like what you have seen working with like
Speaker 3: people older than you for what career.
Speaker 2: Path you should do whatever.
Speaker 3: And I think it's really easy to misconstrue uncertainty for
Speaker 3: risk and you're just like full of like you don't
Speaker 3: actually you don't know anything when you're twenty two coming
Speaker 3: out of college.
Speaker 2: But you think you know a lot correct. Correct.
Speaker 3: So when I say that every young person should blow
Speaker 3: up their life at least once, a big part of
Speaker 3: that is, like I think when you're young, like basically
Speaker 3: forcing yourself to have a pretty diverse experience set and
Speaker 3: getting out of your.
Speaker 2: Comfort zone is valuable.
Speaker 3: For one, like it just gives you more comparison points
Speaker 3: of like like things you could be doing with your life,
Speaker 3: so you're not just in an echo chamber of like
Speaker 3: people you went to school with what you did with
Speaker 3: your first career. And two it's I actually think it's
Speaker 3: a legitimate skill knowing how to lean into discomfort and
Speaker 3: learn from it and come out on the other side
Speaker 3: of its stronger. So like it just makes you I
Speaker 3: think it makes you like anti fragile if you've gone
Speaker 3: through early in life, like just kind of throwing calls
Speaker 3: in the wind and doing something different. And to your
Speaker 3: point on people have blown up their lives and they
Speaker 3: probably shouldn't have the actual risk of, like I say,
Speaker 3: blowing up your life. I don't mean like developing like
Speaker 3: a like a crippling drug addiction or going deep into
Speaker 3: credit card debt, but like just kind of doing something
Speaker 3: totally different at twenty four.
Speaker 2: You just have time to recover. Nobody's gonna hold that.
Speaker 3: Against you when you're like twenty six that you took
Speaker 3: the random startup job instead of the steadier path of
Speaker 3: the consulting firm or.
Speaker 2: YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 3: Again's much harder to do that when you're thirty five
Speaker 3: than when you're twenty five. So the whole takeaway is, like,
Speaker 3: I don't think people time weight life decisions as much
Speaker 3: as they should, and like you can take bigger shots
Speaker 3: with like lower risk of loss in your twenties than
Speaker 3: you can later. Therefore, if you have those shots you
Speaker 3: want to take, you should totally do them when you're
Speaker 3: young to your point, so you don't blow up your
Speaker 3: life at like thirty five and end up divorced or
Speaker 3: unemployed or whatever that looks like for that person.
Speaker 1: I quit my first job after six months and to
Speaker 1: take a road trip around the country for three months.
Speaker 1: And it was like one of the best things I've
Speaker 1: ever done. And it didn't cost me very much money.
Speaker 1: I'd saved up a few thousand dollars and that was
Speaker 1: enough to kind of get me around the United States
Speaker 1: with like a giant Costco bag of rice and one
Speaker 1: of those camp stoves. And so yeah, did I eat well? No, like,
Speaker 1: but I did I see the whole country? I did,
Speaker 1: and it was interesting. Like a week or two after
Speaker 1: I left a lot of people where I was working,
Speaker 1: got let go anyway, and I was like, gosh, this
Speaker 1: just feels like confirmation that I made that I made
Speaker 1: the right move. But I'm curious to hear from you.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between like you only live once sort
Speaker 1: of mentality and the mistake you can make there or
Speaker 1: making what seems like an extreme but an intentional pivot.
Speaker 3: What you don't want to do is be impulsive, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I think there's a level of intentionality you need to have.
Speaker 3: Like my example of this, you did a road trip
Speaker 3: around the country. I bought one way take it to Barcelona.
Speaker 3: I've been working for a year and a half, but
Speaker 3: I was twenty four. I'd saved up a little bit
Speaker 3: of money, and I was like, I think it would
Speaker 3: be very cool to go see like a lot of
Speaker 3: the world that I haven't seen before. But the risk
Speaker 3: you run with that is, like you don't want to
Speaker 3: be the guy who spends like five years vagabonding and
Speaker 3: like never gets his stuff together and then he's just
Speaker 3: like thirty and it's kind of just been a nomad.
Speaker 3: Some people do want to do that, that's fine if
Speaker 3: you do, but like, I don't think that's for most people.
Speaker 3: For me, I had gotten in a business school. I
Speaker 3: knew I was going to go to grad school the
Speaker 3: following year, and it was like, Okay, I've kind of
Speaker 3: gotten this this finite window of like a d risk
Speaker 3: year at twenty four where my two options are kind
Speaker 3: of do another year in corporate finance, which is fine
Speaker 3: but not really that intellectually stimulating, or go have a
Speaker 3: lot of fun doing like crazy adventures knowing I'm going
Speaker 3: to business school and realistically like my career opportunities are
Speaker 3: going to be downstream of what I choose to do
Speaker 3: during and after graduate school. And that was the right move,
Speaker 3: but it was like there was a like finite window
Speaker 3: where I could do that and had to defind endpoint
Speaker 3: where it's like, Okay, you want to go take this shot,
Speaker 3: do it. And I've heard people say similar things about
Speaker 3: they have like a very like well off job and
Speaker 3: making five hundred thousand dollars more and they want to
Speaker 3: go join.
Speaker 2: A startup or try something new or whatever.
Speaker 3: If they have ample savings and they want to do that,
Speaker 3: it's go take that shot. For a budget out, are
Speaker 3: you willing to like take that pay cut or cut
Speaker 3: your savings for one year, two years, try the thing, and.
Speaker 2: If it doesn't work, like go back and do something else.
Speaker 3: But I just I think if you do the planning
Speaker 3: up front for this is the thing I want to do,
Speaker 3: and this is the window of opportunity to do it,
Speaker 3: it's totally fine. What you don't want to do is
Speaker 3: like fall into doing something that sounds fun and as
Speaker 3: impulsive and then two muth said, and you're like, this
Speaker 3: was a total mistake that I shouldn't have done. It's
Speaker 3: just having a level of intentionality that goes into the
Speaker 3: decision making that matters.
Speaker 1: I think what you're getting at two a little bit
Speaker 1: is that, like the stakes are just lower. Right when
Speaker 1: I've got three kids and I can't I guess I
Speaker 1: could quite my job and take them on a road
Speaker 1: trip around the country, But that's just different. Right then,
Speaker 1: I'm like talking about pulling them out of school, and
Speaker 1: I mean, there's like a million different logistics, but when
Speaker 1: you're in your early to mid twenties, there are very
Speaker 1: few logistics. And it's so it's kind of like, Okay, man,
Speaker 1: I could even like a get a part time job
Speaker 1: at a waffle house in a random town if I
Speaker 1: need it to like those. That's the kind of gumption
Speaker 1: you can exhibit.
Speaker 3: It's funny you mentioned that because my dad little when
Speaker 3: I i'd like, taught him about this whole I want
Speaker 3: to go to Europe and do this and do that.
Speaker 3: He was like his his line was he wanted to
Speaker 3: do a road trip around America like right after law school,
Speaker 3: either after underground after law school, but then didn't do
Speaker 3: it logistics, whatever life happened. Wish you would have done that.
Speaker 3: What he told me was like, you can go do
Speaker 3: whatever you want. He's like, I'm not gonna pay for it, though,
Speaker 3: and if you run out of money, you do, like
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to go work at like a waffle
Speaker 3: house or come work on the we have we have
Speaker 3: a farm, bat come come work.
Speaker 2: On the farm. Whatever.
Speaker 3: So that was in the back of my head, like
Speaker 3: I could always go be a waffle house cook.
Speaker 1: For just don't be a freeloader. It's basically what you're saying,
Speaker 1: like don't do it, but like don't don't expept me
Speaker 1: to like, uh, you know, Western Union need some money.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things to you you highlighted in the
Speaker 1: book you found like you were wasting time in your
Speaker 1: early career, is what you called it. How does someone
Speaker 1: know if they're if they're like putting in they got
Speaker 1: this job, they're putting in grunt work to eventually achieve
Speaker 1: something greater, versus what you kind of seem to allude
Speaker 1: to as being this like perpetual meaningless toil.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think when you're like very early your career, there's
Speaker 3: there's obviously like every single job has grunt work.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the one of the.
Speaker 3: Bigger disservices that like social media hustle culture has like
Speaker 3: told young people is that you should be passionate about
Speaker 3: your work and like that you can just give this
Speaker 3: completely misguided perception of I should be in love with
Speaker 3: every minute of what I do, and like every.
Speaker 2: Job has a level of just mundane iss to it
Speaker 2: that you can't avoid.
Speaker 1: Even the jobs you love, right, And I can attest
Speaker 1: to that. There's I love my job, and there are
Speaker 1: days where I'm like, I don't really want to go in. Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to Jack today, but maybe I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk to that other guy next week,
Speaker 1: you know, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, the the amount of is like admin work involved
Speaker 3: in any job just like sucks.
Speaker 2: There's no way around it doesn't matter what you do.
Speaker 2: That's a thing. The thing for me was.
Speaker 3: Like my again, like part of my issue was my
Speaker 3: first job is during COVID, which just sucked because it
Speaker 3: was like, look, I was not passionate about like corporate
Speaker 3: Finance FP and A.
Speaker 2: I did like the team I worked with a.
Speaker 3: Lot, but then when you're doing that remote over zoom,
Speaker 3: you just like that was a big part of the
Speaker 3: problem was being in the cycle like zoom calls this
Speaker 3: and that you're never seeing anybody. You don't really know
Speaker 3: if you're learning that much because you're just not in
Speaker 3: the mix of people. Like that's not a great feeling.
Speaker 3: But a big part of it was like that wasn't
Speaker 3: the world that I wanted to stay in. And I'd
Speaker 3: also gotten in a graduate school with a plan that
Speaker 3: I was going to like pivot and.
Speaker 2: Do something else after. So the trade for me was either.
Speaker 3: A keep doing this job for another year, that's not
Speaker 3: the thing I'm gonna want to do after grad school,
Speaker 3: or b both go have a lot of fun abroad,
Speaker 3: which was like objectively the right choice, but also like
Speaker 3: by quitting my job, I had a lot more bandwidth
Speaker 3: to pursue a bunch of other like side interest, Like
Speaker 3: I started writing a newsletter, I started working for a
Speaker 3: media startup, like I did a lot of different stuff
Speaker 3: during that period where it was if the thing I
Speaker 3: was doing wasn't what I want to do long term,
Speaker 3: and it also wasn't the thing that led to the
Speaker 3: thing I want to do long term, the correct move
Speaker 3: was just drop it and give myself the like mental
Speaker 3: and physical bandwidth to just like lore a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: And I think that, like, again, that's a much easier
Speaker 3: thing to do at twenty four than at like thirty two.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like you were experimenting, yes, and you're like,
Speaker 1: let me try this thing and see if I like it.
Speaker 1: And hey, actually, it turns out if I stick with
Speaker 1: this writing thing for a while, people are responding to it.
Speaker 1: I'm growing like maybe this is a part time maybe
Speaker 1: it becomes a full time thing. Maybe I write a book.
Speaker 1: And if you hadn't like stuck with those things and experimented,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have figured that out. And then talk to
Speaker 1: me too about one just trying things out, but like
Speaker 1: the relationships, what you learn about yourself and then the
Speaker 1: relationships you built while you were experimenting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's funny, Like I'd always liked writing
Speaker 3: growing up. When I was an undergrad, we had a
Speaker 3: I went to Mercery University.
Speaker 2: We were the Mercer Bears.
Speaker 3: We had like a finance and economics newsletter called the
Speaker 3: Bear Market. I wrote for that, like it was. This
Speaker 3: has always been a thing that I enjoyed. But when
Speaker 3: like I fly to Barcelona, I start writing a substack
Speaker 3: and I cover two things I'm writing about.
Speaker 2: I've always thought, like investing in financial markets are interesting.
Speaker 3: So I'm writing a like finance blog and I'm writing
Speaker 3: a travel blog twice a week, just like detailing all
Speaker 3: the dumb stuff I'm doing abroad, Who I.
Speaker 2: Met, who I went out with.
Speaker 3: My grandma thought I was going out way too much.
Speaker 3: She was probably right, but I was twenty four in Europe,
Speaker 3: so I didn't care. But the things that stuck out
Speaker 3: were one like how much fun I was having just
Speaker 3: like turning thoughts into stories basically, and then two like
Speaker 3: how you just never really know where there's like long
Speaker 3: tail connections are gonna come from from the internet.
Speaker 2: Who's reading your stuff?
Speaker 3: And I just met a lot of super interesting people
Speaker 3: downstream with my newsletter, and those connections continue to compound
Speaker 3: over time. It just gave me like firsthand exposure to
Speaker 3: how valuable like distribution is the connectivity of the Internet,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people like resonated with what I
Speaker 3: was saying, and I was like, okay, like all these
Speaker 3: human like all of my experiences and thoughts and like
Speaker 3: just all the musings I was putting on the Internet
Speaker 3: resonated with a lot of people, and it's like a
Speaker 3: lot of what I'm thinking about at the state in
Speaker 3: life is these are kind of universal human experiences and
Speaker 3: that like actually led to the book deal a few
Speaker 3: years later, but that was a big thing. And then
Speaker 3: also it was just like it was pretty refreshing to
Speaker 3: get out of my bubble both physically, like in other countries.
Speaker 2: I met a lot of people from like all.
Speaker 3: Over the US and all over the world where you're
Speaker 3: like sharing a buck bed in the hospital and this
Speaker 3: guy's from Berlin and now like we still chat.
Speaker 2: Once a month, but even like online.
Speaker 3: Through the newsletter, Twitter LinkedIn all this, like I just
Speaker 3: started chatting with a lot of people doing all sorts
Speaker 3: of random wacky stuff tech world, investing, world media, and
Speaker 3: It was just like, because for that year I wasn't
Speaker 3: on a normal work schedule in my office, I had
Speaker 3: way more time to just engage with different people doing stuff,
Speaker 3: and those relationships have compounded over time. We can get
Speaker 3: into this in a little bit, like I work for
Speaker 3: a venture capital fund.
Speaker 2: Now. Our whole game is.
Speaker 3: Like you try to find interesting people building interesting companies
Speaker 3: and give them money. Most of my network, which is
Speaker 3: very value well in this industry, is downstream of I've
Speaker 3: been writing a newsletter and yapping on the internet for
Speaker 3: a while, so there's been like so many compounding downstream
Speaker 3: effects that I just didn't see coming initially, and it's
Speaker 3: all because I had a year to explore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really want to dial in on kind of
Speaker 1: some of the advice you give around optimizing for money,
Speaker 1: like in your twenties and you say, you say, and
Speaker 1: I agree with this, that the worst mistake twenty somethings
Speaker 1: can make is to spend their first the first decade
Speaker 1: of adulthood optimizing for money.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of wisdom there and and
Speaker 1: just a lot like there's a lot of pressure, I
Speaker 1: think on young people to get started and like you've
Speaker 1: heard about compounding returns being the eighth wonder of the world.
Speaker 1: And you're like, man, I should have started when I
Speaker 1: was twelve. What what am I up to? Like I'm
Speaker 1: already behind the eight ball on this one. But also,
Speaker 1: like not thinking about money is not a great approach either,
Speaker 1: So how do you think about kind of splitting splitt
Speaker 1: in that baby?
Speaker 3: It's it's easy to fall on like the two extreme
Speaker 3: camps of like you should optimize for saving every dollar
Speaker 3: because everybody seemed the chart of like if you invest
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars at age twenty two, then by retirement
Speaker 3: it'll be worth like, however many hundreds of thousands, assuming
Speaker 3: like an eight or nine percent compounding return. Cool, Like
Speaker 3: everybody knows that, and I also know that, Like a
Speaker 3: lot of people have trouble actually like following that and
Speaker 3: putting any money back for retirement. My perspective on this is, like,
Speaker 3: career slope is so much more important than savings rate
Speaker 3: when you're early, where like if your first job you're
Speaker 3: making like fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year, even
Speaker 3: if you're having an aggressive savings rate, the maxim of
Speaker 3: money you're gonna put back realistically is like maybe fifteen
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, which isn't nothing, But the thing that matters
Speaker 3: way more is like how quickly can you like double
Speaker 3: and triple your income or put yourself in a position
Speaker 3: to get equity in businesses that are compounding that can
Speaker 3: have exits, Like anything that you can do that compounds
Speaker 3: your skill set or your network or puts you in
Speaker 3: positions for business ownership where you can just five or
Speaker 3: ten years down the road would have much higher income
Speaker 3: streams coming in where your savings rate can increase is
Speaker 3: way better, Like I it's much better to put back
Speaker 3: an additional one hundred thousand dollars at thirty two than
Speaker 3: like eight thousand dollars at twenty two. And a lot
Speaker 3: of times like over focusing on ooh, I need to
Speaker 3: like make sure I do a full like wroth Ira contribution,
Speaker 3: or like cut back on this or that like cuts
Speaker 3: into the mental bandwidth of thinking through the longer term opportunities.
Speaker 3: And just more specifically, there's like when you're twenty three,
Speaker 3: you're probably not making that much money.
Speaker 2: Even if you're in New.
Speaker 3: York and you're an investment banker, you might make one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But then if you're paying
Speaker 3: like three four thousand dollars a month, it's not like
Speaker 3: you're gonna be saving that much, right, and like a
Speaker 3: lot of that money's a bonus. But you're at a
Speaker 3: point in life where you're young, a lot of your
Speaker 3: friends are young. You want to go out, you want
Speaker 3: to do fun stuff.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be.
Speaker 3: Really annoyed if your like roth Ira contribution at twenty three,
Speaker 3: prevented you from having like a fun weekend trip with
Speaker 3: your friends, like out to the Hamptons. They're doing like
Speaker 3: whatever on paper, dumb financial decision that you know is
Speaker 3: going to be a lot of fun you'll be laughing
Speaker 3: about ten years later. Billtt I was gonna say, there's
Speaker 3: a term called like memory dividends that Bill Perkins wrote
Speaker 3: about in his book Die one zero, which I love.
Speaker 2: It's totally spot on.
Speaker 3: Like money, money does compound, but so do memories and
Speaker 3: life experiences, and you shouldn't over optimize for the former
Speaker 3: at the expense of the ladder.
Speaker 1: Is that like a do you think that boils down
Speaker 1: to an improper understanding of risk in your twenties to
Speaker 1: realize that you're maybe optimizing for maxing out your roth
Speaker 1: IRA at age twenty three means you're not optimizing for
Speaker 1: your ability to grow your network, grow your career. Like
Speaker 1: is that is that a trade off that people are making.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people have a bit of
Speaker 3: a scarcity mindset when it comes to money, where there's
Speaker 3: the Daniel Connoman, like the thinking fast and slow economists,
Speaker 3: he had the whole thing about like he proved in
Speaker 3: one of his studies that a loss like financial loss
Speaker 3: hurts twice as badly as a like the equivalent financial gain.
Speaker 2: Most people are.
Speaker 3: Wired like that where you don't want to lose money.
Speaker 3: You don't want to be in a spot of like
Speaker 3: not having enough Like I like, I get that, like
Speaker 3: being my first year living in New York, I wasn't
Speaker 3: making that much money and like I was basically living
Speaker 3: paycheck to paycheck while I'm in business school doing a
Speaker 3: lot of side stuff And it's not a it's not
Speaker 3: a great feeling. But yeah, I think I think people
Speaker 3: just like over optimize on that for me, just like
Speaker 3: loss aversion scarcity mindset, And what you also don't realize
Speaker 3: at like twenty five, for example, is that you don't
Speaker 3: really realize how I think it's tough for young people
Speaker 3: to really understand what I call the stage specificity of
Speaker 3: life and that there's like very finite windows for different
Speaker 3: opportunity sets as you get older, Like you have three kids,
Speaker 3: you know this, there's like there's stuff that you just
Speaker 3: like can't do now because you have a full family
Speaker 3: are taken care of, which is a great spot to be.
Speaker 2: And like, I don't have any kids, I.
Speaker 1: Couldn't be happier.
Speaker 3: But that road trip you took, you're probably glad you
Speaker 3: took that when you were twenty two twenty three ish,
Speaker 3: versus like, like that's a thing you're glad you did
Speaker 3: that you can't do now, and it's not that you
Speaker 3: would want to do it now, but as you're glad
Speaker 3: you did that at like an earlier stage in life.
Speaker 3: And I just think that, like it's very easy to
Speaker 3: continually push off interesting things like that that you would
Speaker 3: want to do for the sake of I need to
Speaker 3: like build up a higher level of stability, nest egg,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: But I'm also really glad Jack that I was really
Speaker 1: intentional with investing in those in those early and mid twenties,
Speaker 1: because they've set me up at this point where I
Speaker 1: have a lot of flexibility, a lot of choice about
Speaker 1: when I work, what I do for work. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: I the trips I want to take now? And here's
Speaker 1: here was like my one thought as I was reading
Speaker 1: your book, maybe the place Well, I don't even know
Speaker 1: if we disagree, but it was just in my experience.
Speaker 1: I was like, Dude, the great thing about your early
Speaker 1: to mid twenties is that you could do so much
Speaker 1: of that fun stuff and spend so little money doing it, Whereas,
Speaker 1: like now, my expectations a good trip are they're higher.
Speaker 1: Like you were talking about staying in a hostel when
Speaker 1: you're in Europe. That's the kind of stuff like maybe
Speaker 1: goat got you know, find the cheapest flight, even if
Speaker 1: it's to stop right instead of NonStop. Who cares about
Speaker 1: business class? Stay in the hostel, get the experience, but
Speaker 1: just don't feel like you have to you have to
Speaker 1: live it up like the influencers do, because you can
Speaker 1: have just as much fun, if not more, by by
Speaker 1: pulling it off on a shoe string budget.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I know, I totally agree with you on that.
Speaker 3: I mean, the kind of point that I'm hammering home
Speaker 3: is that you there's some sliding scale of like you're
Speaker 3: only going to earn so much money in those first like.
Speaker 2: Three four years of your career.
Speaker 3: Realistically, to your point, the amount of money it takes
Speaker 3: to have fun and have an enjoyable experience is also lower.
Speaker 3: But there's like only so much margin between like once
Speaker 3: you cover your living expenses, taxes, whatever, and like say
Speaker 3: you make your like roth contribution, Okay, there's like only
Speaker 3: so much money left over to put back toward additional
Speaker 3: investing that would also be spent on, like call it
Speaker 3: life experiences.
Speaker 2: And everything's subjective.
Speaker 3: It depends on the person, depends on like what city
Speaker 3: you're in, whatever, But you can it's kind of the
Speaker 3: like I think if like over indexing on the whole
Speaker 3: like fire mindset, the like like focusing on like financial
Speaker 3: freedom over everything is just like I think, it's a.
Speaker 2: Little bit of a thing.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit of a mental illness where it
Speaker 3: can lead people to just like depriving themselves of life experiences.
Speaker 3: Like I agree, like when you're young, you should not
Speaker 3: be like bawling out dropping like thousands and thousands of
Speaker 3: dollars on a trip you could probably do for a
Speaker 3: couple hundred bucks, but you shouldn't skip the trip entirely
Speaker 3: because you feel like you're violating some like financial code
Speaker 3: you set with yourself.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to dig more into some of
Speaker 1: the specifics of how you think about which priorities are
Speaker 1: which financial priorities make sense in your early twenties. And
Speaker 1: also I want to you called fire mental illness. Well,
Speaker 1: I gotta follow a question on that. We'll get to
Speaker 1: that right after this. How we're back still talking with
Speaker 1: Jack Rains. We're talking about wealth and purpose in your twenties,
Speaker 1: and okay, I want to talk about fire, Jack, But
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. We you know, commencement speech season was
Speaker 1: not that long ago. Did you hear any really awful
Speaker 1: advice aimed at young people? And you were just like,
Speaker 1: that is so often, Mark, that is so not what
Speaker 1: you know twenty or early twenty somethings need to hear.
Speaker 3: So it's not even like any one particular speech. But
Speaker 3: the thing that's like in vogue right now is like
Speaker 3: the whole. And this also like I live in San
Speaker 3: Francisco for a year, I'm still very much in the
Speaker 3: AI tech world, but the everybody's so worried about AI
Speaker 3: taking all the jobs and permanent underclass and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the I wouldn't even call it advice,
Speaker 3: But just like the idea that's being parroted a lot
Speaker 3: right now, especially in the tech bubbles, is just like
Speaker 3: everything is getting blown up.
Speaker 2: AI is going to displace jobs. I don't buy into
Speaker 2: that at all.
Speaker 3: I actually think like the worst take in general is
Speaker 3: having a pessimistic out look on like humanity, your career
Speaker 3: prospects or whatever because of this tech trend when in reality,
Speaker 3: like AI labs are really big and they need a
Speaker 3: certain narrative out there of like AI is going to
Speaker 3: eat everything to justify trillion dollar valuations for AI companies.
Speaker 3: But like the best thing a young Like should young
Speaker 3: people use AI tools, Yes, But like should you be
Speaker 3: pessimistic and have a doomer mindset no, Like there's there's
Speaker 3: never been a better time to be a young person,
Speaker 3: like experimenting with different stuff because the barrier to testing
Speaker 3: things out now between both like the internet being able
Speaker 3: to put your voice out there, but also just these
Speaker 3: AI tools are very.
Speaker 1: Cool, easier to start a business, correct, you know, correct,
Speaker 1: it's and that's the thing that we that that we miss.
Speaker 1: There's so much opportunity right now to start a business
Speaker 1: that it's I don't know of a time I've asked
Speaker 1: some some really smart business business owners, people who have
Speaker 1: started Fortune five hundred businesses about it would it be
Speaker 1: easier to start that business now than it was. It's
Speaker 1: all always yes now, Yes, now would be much easier.
Speaker 1: There's just so many tools at your disposal that didn't
Speaker 1: exist yeah, thirty forty years ago. So I tend to
Speaker 1: agree with you all right to go back rail on
Speaker 1: the fire movement. For me, I'm just curious. I think
Speaker 1: you said it was like a mental disease, and gosh fire,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's been so many pivots from the
Speaker 1: fire folks trying to make it sound not as extreme
Speaker 1: as it actually as it actually is. And I always
Speaker 1: thought the retire early thing was like pretty ridiculous because
Speaker 1: we're as humans like built to work, and let's actually
Speaker 1: maybe spend a little more time trying to find something
Speaker 1: that lights us up, even though, like we said, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be like walking into the office is
Speaker 1: not going to light you up every single day of
Speaker 1: your life. But what does the fire movement get wrong?
Speaker 1: And Why is that sort of like delayed gratification to
Speaker 1: the ultimate degree. Why is that so ridiculous?
Speaker 3: I just think that, like, if your relationship with your
Speaker 3: career is that you don't like this thing and you
Speaker 3: need to make enough money to escape it, then I
Speaker 3: think you're going to be sorely disappointed. Where two things happen.
Speaker 3: One if you again, this is for like people who
Speaker 3: like hyper hyper optimize. There's whole subreddits of people that
Speaker 3: are just like fire or bust, feel like hyper optimized.
Speaker 3: For that, Okay, you are gonna have to skip out
Speaker 3: on a lot of like life experiences when you're younger
Speaker 3: to like maximize savings rate one and then two once
Speaker 3: you finally, like say you hit fire at thirty eight, Like,
Speaker 3: two things happen where if you're like you no longer
Speaker 3: have an income stream, your ability to like maintain your
Speaker 3: lifestyle is somewhat dependent on market fluctuations, which like you
Speaker 3: don't have control over, and you're just gonna find yourself
Speaker 3: somewhat empty from like to your point, we're kind of
Speaker 3: wired to work. And something that people don't discuss enough
Speaker 3: is if you are in your peak earning years, like
Speaker 3: call it thirties and forties and everybody around you and
Speaker 3: your social group is working, like the other parents of
Speaker 3: your kids at school, You're going to be increasingly less
Speaker 3: able to relate to all the people around you and
Speaker 3: get alienated. Where where I fully get burning out and
Speaker 3: taking like a year long sabbatical like that can be
Speaker 3: a phenomenal move. But having this idea that like, the
Speaker 3: only point of working is to earn enough money to
Speaker 3: not work like it just alienates you from a lot
Speaker 3: of human experience, is both in your capital accumulation phase
Speaker 3: and in your retirement phase.
Speaker 2: Nobody else is retired.
Speaker 3: I think a much healthier move is just like, do
Speaker 3: something different for work, where again you don't have to
Speaker 3: love every day of everything you do, but like you
Speaker 3: can certainly find something tolerable or interesting to work on
Speaker 3: where you can, like the savings rate ideas of fire
Speaker 3: of like, contribute enough to be able to retire comfortably
Speaker 3: is very sound advice.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna act like that's wrong.
Speaker 3: It's the it's treating the accumulation of money as both
Speaker 3: the means and the ends instead of just the means
Speaker 3: is problematic.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes too, like at the beginning of your career,
Speaker 1: maybe I think of it as like working working more
Speaker 1: in those early years. Maybe it's starting to taper that
Speaker 1: off a little bit as you enter midlife so that
Speaker 1: you have a little bit more balanced and you have
Speaker 1: more time to if you have a family and kids,
Speaker 1: like you can like I'm coaching my girls cross country team.
Speaker 1: That requires some time, right, but it's like the best
Speaker 1: thing I'm doing right now, and I'm loving it. But
Speaker 1: like if I had some fifty hour work week job,
Speaker 1: I would I wouldn't be able to make that happen, right,
Speaker 1: And then I think, as my kids get older, I'm
Speaker 1: probably going to ramp up my work later on down
Speaker 1: the line, just because like I like it and I'll
Speaker 1: probably want to pour some more time into it. But
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things where if you
Speaker 1: develop enough money flexibility, then you can kind of like
Speaker 1: turn that dial up and down depending on kind of
Speaker 1: where things are at in your life. Instead of like
Speaker 1: this fire approach, which is like man, work as hard
Speaker 1: as you possibly can for ten twelve years and then
Speaker 1: don't work at all. That to me seems like not
Speaker 1: the best advice for most humans now.
Speaker 3: I mean, the only reason that like a move like
Speaker 3: that makes sense, I think is like if you're I
Speaker 3: don't know, if you're like if you're an entrepreneur who
Speaker 3: started a company, you raise outside money whatever, and you
Speaker 3: just kind of have this Okay, I'm just gonna have
Speaker 3: to spread this for like five to ten years and
Speaker 3: see what happens.
Speaker 2: Great, like like do that.
Speaker 3: But if you're I don't know, I just I think
Speaker 3: it's like I think it's a very tough game to
Speaker 3: play where it's one thing if like you are building
Speaker 3: me thing and like you own the equity and you're
Speaker 3: full in control of it, like it like this entire
Speaker 3: entity is like downstream of you as a person and
Speaker 3: you have to go all in on it for a
Speaker 3: short period of time. Fine, if you're like an employee
Speaker 3: at a job where you're just treating it like I
Speaker 3: just have to like trade money for time over and
Speaker 3: over again until I can get.
Speaker 2: Out of the game.
Speaker 3: You're a free agent, like you're allowed to just take
Speaker 3: other jobs that don't suck. Like there's like it is
Speaker 3: the labor market is an incredibly liquid thing. So I'm
Speaker 3: it's just I think it's I think it's the wrong
Speaker 3: solution to a legitimate problem and that people aren't happy
Speaker 3: with work. Don't just force yourself through that thing until
Speaker 3: we can leave it, Like your job doesn't have to suck.
Speaker 1: How did student loans impact how you think about your
Speaker 1: early twenties post graduation, because like some people have, I
Speaker 1: mean that's like that's like a little bit of a
Speaker 1: mortgage around your new for for so or at least
Speaker 1: like a car payment for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: No, it is, I mean my my my take on
Speaker 3: student loans in general, Like, look, I I was like
Speaker 3: like an undergrad. I had like academic scholarships and I
Speaker 3: played football, Like I I went undergrad for free and
Speaker 3: then for graduate school.
Speaker 2: I was fortunate.
Speaker 3: My parents had saved up money for college and I
Speaker 3: went to undergrad for free. So like college money can
Speaker 3: go to business school, but I still had to Like
Speaker 3: in grad school, I was working part time the whole time,
Speaker 3: like paying for all non tuition stuff. So I'm I
Speaker 3: kind of sit in a middle point of I was
Speaker 3: very fortunate, but also not detached from the reality that,
Speaker 3: like I have friends that took out like a lot
Speaker 3: of student debt to go to business school. My take
Speaker 3: in general is like if you're going to like if
Speaker 3: you can get into an IVY league, undergrad and you
Speaker 3: have to take out student debt for that. You should
Speaker 3: totally do that. It's like it's worth it, the network's
Speaker 3: worth the job opportunities are worth it. If like I
Speaker 3: went to I went to Mercer University, and I love
Speaker 3: my I love my university. It's it's the Harvard of
Speaker 3: making Georgia. A lot of people are saying Mercer was great.
Speaker 3: I would not have gone, like, I don't know what
Speaker 3: today's tuition is there, would say it's fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: a year. I just would not have gone two hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in a debt. You go to Mercer, don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think the roi's there on that. So on
Speaker 3: the student debt thing, one like, don't go to a
Speaker 3: school or enroll in a program where you aren't confident
Speaker 3: you'll make the money to pay it off. If you
Speaker 3: go to like Yale undergrad and you go like and
Speaker 3: you take out student loans for that, fine, Like you're
Speaker 3: realistically gonna have job opportunities to make hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars like pretty early in your twenties, and then
Speaker 3: you just have to budget accordingly. And that makes sense.
Speaker 3: The trap people fall Intoho is taking out loans for like,
Speaker 3: like if you go to a mid tier law school,
Speaker 3: now there's kind of a like an abundance of lawyers
Speaker 3: and the wages aren't great outside of like top law
Speaker 3: school graduates, but everybody's paying high tuition. So I think
Speaker 3: like having an honest conversation about will I be able
Speaker 3: to earn enough to pay this off?
Speaker 2: But we're so wired to like.
Speaker 3: Go to school and get degrees and price tag equals
Speaker 3: stige that I think a lot of.
Speaker 2: People don't do the math on that upfront.
Speaker 3: It's such a if the exit opportunities are right, it's fine.
Speaker 3: If they're not, you can really put yourself in a
Speaker 3: tough spot. So it's much easier to solve that upfront
Speaker 3: than deal with it after. But yeah, like if you
Speaker 3: have a bunch of debt, disregard everything I say about
Speaker 3: like spend money, have fun whatever, Like especially if it's
Speaker 3: like if the interest rate sucks, like pay off the debt,
Speaker 3: like that's that's kind of a non negotiable.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's when you're talking about going to school.
Speaker 1: I think some people are still living like it's nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five or two thousand and five. In terms of
Speaker 1: what a degree gets you and in terms of how
Speaker 1: much a degree costs, and the ROI factor on a
Speaker 1: college degree has changed significantly. And it's not that college
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense, you just it makes sense for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Still, I think you just have
Speaker 1: to be even more careful and cautious about where you
Speaker 1: go and how much you spend, because it's if you
Speaker 1: graduate with ten thousand dollars worth of debt versus ninety
Speaker 1: thousand dollars worth of debt, that makes a big difference
Speaker 1: in your future and the degree the school you got
Speaker 1: the degree from probably probably not always, but probably matters
Speaker 1: a lot less than you think. So I would take
Speaker 1: the Mercer degree, you know, with a ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: worth of dead then like the fancy or school with
Speaker 1: the one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Worth a dead Yep, yep, yep. Agreed.
Speaker 1: Okay, what about the habit of investing? How important is that?
Speaker 1: Because even if you're not doing it, like you've got
Speaker 1: your first your starting salaries thirty nine thousand dollars, you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot to contribute, but maybe I
Speaker 1: can at least get the four to one K match,
Speaker 1: and you know that's that's given me a fifty percent
Speaker 1: return on the first six percent of my paycheck that
Speaker 1: I put in there?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: How important is that one to get the match at
Speaker 1: least to not give that up? And then is there
Speaker 1: just value in investing something because you're developing a habit?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean on the on the match specifically, that
Speaker 3: was a thing that like I've I've always invested at
Speaker 3: least to get the company match because that's legitimately free
Speaker 3: money outside of like really extreme circumstances. If you have
Speaker 3: a four oh one K match, it's just stupid not
Speaker 3: to take that. You should and there is value on
Speaker 3: like investing to get the habit in. I mean, my
Speaker 3: general take on all of this is you should have
Speaker 3: an amount that like once that amount is removed from
Speaker 3: your bank account, you're still comfortable in making your bills
Speaker 3: and like having some money going into a checking account
Speaker 3: saving this account and like have like.
Speaker 2: A little bit of like a safety net.
Speaker 3: But you should just have it like auto deducted, like
Speaker 3: the It's it's so much easier to actually like start
Speaker 3: investing in compounding when it's automatically pulled out before it
Speaker 3: hits your account and like goes directly into like an
Speaker 3: index fund, versus if the full check is hitting your
Speaker 3: like Wells Fargo account every month, and then like you
Speaker 3: Jack Rayin's is like, oh now I need to put
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars into like.
Speaker 2: An index fund.
Speaker 3: Well, then it feels like you're like having to take
Speaker 3: money out of the pod. It is just a pure
Speaker 3: psychological thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but pay hoping out with Wells Fargo, Jack, we
Speaker 1: can remedy that if you're so.
Speaker 3: It's hilariously And I've had a Wells Fargo checking account
Speaker 3: since they sign me up my freshman year of college,
Speaker 3: and it's just like I use Mercury for like my
Speaker 3: business stuff, LLC all that, which is great.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm still a Wells Fargo guy.
Speaker 3: But if you want to like move into something else,
Speaker 3: whether it's whether it's whether it's a sponsor of the show,
Speaker 3: it's the bank you like more, I'm like, I'm very
Speaker 3: down in chat.
Speaker 1: Okay, uh okay, are you one of the other the
Speaker 1: other things I've felt reading your book, And I'm curious
Speaker 1: to hear your take on this. Are you throwing shade
Speaker 1: at just kind of normal life?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Because in my estimation, and I feel like this is
Speaker 1: different kind of what you're getting at too, with like
Speaker 1: the stages of life. Some of the greatest joys for
Speaker 1: me have come from being rooted deeply in a place
Speaker 1: right and having having kids and having growing a community
Speaker 1: and having deep relationships. And I think that that kind
Speaker 1: of maybe in the some of the lifestyle you're advising
Speaker 1: in the in the book, it it doesn't really point
Speaker 1: to that, and and it makes me think of a
Speaker 1: difference between type one and type two fun. And the
Speaker 1: type two fun is sometimes like doing hard stuff like
Speaker 1: people are like running a half marathon that sounds terrible
Speaker 1: and it's like kind of is, but it's kind of
Speaker 1: like one of the greatest things you could ever do. Also,
Speaker 1: there's something you learn about yourself in the process and
Speaker 1: that you whip your body into shape and it's pretty rad.
Speaker 1: So is talk to me about that maybe, And is
Speaker 1: it just like an agent stage thing and like, actually
Speaker 1: that's something that you really desire later on or is
Speaker 1: this and this is just kind of a or what
Speaker 1: role does that play in your twenties?
Speaker 3: No, I think it's I think it's very much agent stage,
Speaker 3: Like the I have probably been a fairly extreme example
Speaker 3: of like, look, I'm I'm from South Georgia.
Speaker 2: I'm from Tifton. I love it.
Speaker 3: I went to college and Making Georgia, and then I
Speaker 3: lived for a couple of years in Atlanta, Georgia, like
Speaker 3: I was. I was a resident of the state of
Speaker 3: Georgia until I was twenty five.
Speaker 1: And we miss you down here.
Speaker 3: Just I come back occasionally you and I can get
Speaker 3: waffle House again to get time I fly down. My
Speaker 3: take on all this is like it is such a
Speaker 3: like life stage.
Speaker 2: Like I do not I do love New York City.
Speaker 3: I mean on the like on the whole community aspect,
Speaker 3: if the if the financial has made sense, I would
Speaker 3: stay in Manhattan for like a very long time.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love everything about it. I realized my friends are
Speaker 3: here now aren't going to be here forever. And it's
Speaker 3: but that's also kind of part of it where I
Speaker 3: view it, like New York off a like life stage
Speaker 3: development cycle probably plays out three to four years behind Atlanta,
Speaker 3: which plays out two to three years behind like South Georgia,
Speaker 3: where like people in New York get married later like
Speaker 3: early maybe mid thirties.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: If you're on the spot where like you have a
Speaker 3: bunch of like random different stuff you want to try
Speaker 3: and do, which is like that's just how I was wired,
Speaker 3: especially when I was a little bit younger. You should
Speaker 3: go do that early, and just like you should just
Speaker 3: stack those experiences in your twenties.
Speaker 2: And that's that's kind of the point I'm.
Speaker 3: Getting at, where like like I would like to get married,
Speaker 3: have kids all that. Like I even compared to when
Speaker 3: I was twenty four, Like when I was twenty four,
Speaker 3: I wanted to like live in a hostel. I flew
Speaker 3: to Argentina with like like dude I'd met in Portugal
Speaker 3: and we lived down there for three months. It was
Speaker 3: just really unhinged stuff. It was super fun. I would
Speaker 3: hate doing that now. Like I still like to travel.
Speaker 3: I still like, you know, get like like go on
Speaker 3: vacation for like a week. It's awesome, but like I
Speaker 3: have very little desire to go like live in Australia
Speaker 3: for two months.
Speaker 2: Four years ago.
Speaker 3: I felt totally different about that, So like it's I
Speaker 3: kind of set it without saying it.
Speaker 2: But like most of the stuff that I am.
Speaker 3: Either explicitly or implicitly advising on, like go do all
Speaker 3: this differentiated, interesting, somewhat risky stuff is just because your
Speaker 3: appetite for that type of experience is going to realistically
Speaker 3: change a lot. Like, I think it's very normal humans
Speaker 3: to desire stability as you get older, and like the
Speaker 3: people in your peer group are also having more stable lives.
Speaker 3: You don't want to be the one guy who's just like,
Speaker 3: didn't seem to get his stuff together.
Speaker 1: But oh, Jack's at the casino again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just not that. It's like nobody wants to
Speaker 3: be that guy. Like you don't want to be the
Speaker 3: degenerate uncle when like your sister has kids or whatever,
Speaker 3: like that's that's not good.
Speaker 1: But I think that's like this this is one of
Speaker 1: the the reality that what we want changes as we
Speaker 1: get older is a crucial thing to recognize even in
Speaker 1: your twenties, and to realize that the things you want
Speaker 1: right now might not be the things you want down
Speaker 1: the road. And part of what you want to allow
Speaker 1: yourself is some future freedom and margin. And that is
Speaker 1: kind of when it comes to starting investing earlier, even
Speaker 1: if it's a little bit, whether it's building the habit
Speaker 1: and also building up just a little bit of cash
Speaker 1: reserve so that that snowball is starting to build. Like,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. People put a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: on themselves. They read about the fire movement and they
Speaker 1: feel like they've got to save and invest thirty forty
Speaker 1: percent of their salary starting at like twenty three. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: There's too much pressure to put on yourself. And ultimately, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got you can make up for some of that
Speaker 1: time down the road. But the truth is too that
Speaker 1: like a lot of people have they get into their
Speaker 1: their thirties, they get married, they have kids, they buy
Speaker 1: the house, and they're like, I have to work at
Speaker 1: this job. I don't like because I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about what future me was going to desire in my twenties,
Speaker 1: Like I wasn't even like cognizant that I would want
Speaker 1: different things.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, I mean I think the like the bigger
Speaker 3: through line beyond like oh you should do this job
Speaker 3: or take the shot, or like move here, move there
Speaker 3: or whatever is just being like everything in life is
Speaker 3: a matter of opportunity costs, and if you go to
Speaker 3: do thing in your twenties, that causes you to have
Speaker 3: a lower saving grade early and that's going to lost
Speaker 3: you some level of optionality in your thirties, assuming you
Speaker 3: don't take actions to like reaccelerate your income growth.
Speaker 2: At that point.
Speaker 3: And it's you just kind of have to be very
Speaker 3: aware of the trade offs you're making when you make them.
Speaker 2: And like the bet that I made at.
Speaker 3: Twenty four to twenty five is like I'm going to
Speaker 3: do one year of having a ton of fun, I'm
Speaker 3: going to go to business school for two years. So
Speaker 3: that was three years where I was. I was still
Speaker 3: making money in that window, but there was like an
Speaker 3: implicit pay cut compared to what I would have been
Speaker 3: making if I was fully employed the whole time, and
Speaker 3: then I will need to like make up four and
Speaker 3: compensate for that from call it twenty seven through thirty
Speaker 3: five or whatever, right, And I was okay with that trade.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I just turned twenty nine a couple
Speaker 3: of months ago. I'm like, I like my job. I
Speaker 3: have a good career right.
Speaker 2: Now, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: But the trade was like I'm doing this now and
Speaker 3: then like on the other side, I will probably have
Speaker 3: to like work a little bit harder in this like
Speaker 3: next window. And I was okay with that. If it's
Speaker 3: like go all in on the fun stuff in this
Speaker 3: period and like work hard in this period. Cool, That's
Speaker 3: how I'm gonna do it. But it was like it
Speaker 3: was like an intentional decision on my part, And I
Speaker 3: think the like being aware of the opportunity cost of
Speaker 3: the choices you're making and being like very intentional about
Speaker 3: how you're going about those decisions is kind of the
Speaker 3: most important.
Speaker 1: Thing one hundred percent. No, I think that's I think
Speaker 1: that's wise. Got a few more questions I want to
Speaker 1: get to with you, man, I include I just want
Speaker 1: to talk about like generational differences. As a I'm a millennial,
Speaker 1: you're I'm a grandpa millennial.
Speaker 2: In fact, I'm a wait, what is grandpa millennial?
Speaker 1: That means I'm like at the oldest edge of it.
Speaker 1: So I'm forty two, which and I think the oldest
Speaker 1: millennials are like forty four, So geriatric millennials. I think
Speaker 1: what we're termed as those last few years of it,
Speaker 1: so in your gen z. So we'll talk about kind
Speaker 1: of what that generational divide looks like and how we
Speaker 1: just think differently about money. Right after this, I we're
Speaker 1: back still talking with Jack. Raine's talking about wealth and purpose,
Speaker 1: in your twenties and just what it looks like to
Speaker 1: live a good life, and part of that is getting
Speaker 1: your finances in words, But my goodness, it's obviously so
Speaker 1: much more, so much more than that. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about just kind of generational differences for a second, Jack, Like,
Speaker 1: can you give me a peak behind a degenerational divide
Speaker 1: of how we think about money and freedom? Like what
Speaker 1: has changed on average in your opinion, how differently does
Speaker 1: gen Z like think about money and investing and life
Speaker 1: experiences compared to their parents and then compared to like
Speaker 1: millennials who are kind of somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3: So I think, I think one of the big chiefs,
Speaker 3: and I actually think like I'm very much in the
Speaker 3: camp of COVID was such a just like generational divide
Speaker 3: and a lot of stuff. I'm like the either ninety six,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six or nineteen ninety seven, it was coutar
Speaker 3: of the first year of the gen Z. I was
Speaker 3: born in ninety seven, so I'm like, I'm an elder
Speaker 3: gen Z and we're all coming up. I'm like late,
Speaker 3: Like the eldest gen Z is like twenty nine ish.
Speaker 3: That's all what I am. I graduated college December twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: COVID heads Like, right then, I'm in an office for
Speaker 3: a week and I'm fully remote because of COVID, and
Speaker 3: the world just goes crazy blah blah blah. So my enthire,
Speaker 3: like cohort of like peers, grew up in a world
Speaker 3: where work remote is like while not like fully remote
Speaker 3: isn't necessarily a thing for everybody, remote is a much
Speaker 3: more normalized thing.
Speaker 2: Job hopping is more normalized.
Speaker 3: Like I I honestly think the biggest difference is optionality
Speaker 3: is valued a much more of a premium for younger
Speaker 3: people than it used to be, where you won't to
Speaker 3: be able to like leave this job, leave that job quickly.
Speaker 2: It's not even just job stuff, Like.
Speaker 3: I think that, Like, like people talk about the total
Speaker 3: fertility rate going down, it's because like the simple cause
Speaker 3: is less people are getting married and they're getting married later.
Speaker 2: And that's a little bit this optionality thing too, Like.
Speaker 3: There's younger people just prioritize optionality more than older people.
Speaker 2: Whether that's good or there's like good.
Speaker 1: And bad parts pros and constantly.
Speaker 3: It's like on one hand, like everybody's a little bit
Speaker 3: more individualistic and that can be good. But on the
Speaker 3: other hand, like it's the whole value of optionality is
Speaker 3: like figure the figure out what's worth doubling down on
Speaker 3: and then doing that. So like I think it's fine
Speaker 3: and that people might have more autonomy and agency and
Speaker 3: making those decisions. But if like, on one hand, going
Speaker 3: all after like going all in on fire can be
Speaker 3: bad because you're mistaken the means with the end. People
Speaker 3: can do that with optionality too, Like New York is
Speaker 3: the biggest optionality city on the planet, so I see
Speaker 3: it firsthand. I'm somewhat of either indulgent or victim of it,
Speaker 3: depending on how you look at it.
Speaker 2: But that's I mean, I.
Speaker 3: Think that's kind of the biggest thing is like people
Speaker 3: will like hop from Like younger people are more inclined
Speaker 3: to hop from thing to thing quicker across like all
Speaker 3: aspects of life.
Speaker 1: What's lost in that in your opinion.
Speaker 2: Like roots and community. It's like if you know, like if.
Speaker 3: You delay getting married, or delay buying a home, or
Speaker 3: delay like sticking with a certain whether it's the same
Speaker 3: company or just a certain like career track, you just
Speaker 3: like you miss out on compounding. It's the same thing,
Speaker 3: is like just spending all your money versus putting it
Speaker 3: in the market. It compounds over time, and it might
Speaker 3: not be obvious for five years, but twenty years later
Speaker 3: you have something very cool. Like relationships are like that,
Speaker 3: whether it's a romantic, personal, professional, whatever. And I think,
Speaker 3: on one hand, it's a very bad mistake to like
Speaker 3: commit to the wrong thing too early, where you have
Speaker 3: like negative compounding is a thing too right, Like you know,
Speaker 3: whether you like live in a place you hate, double
Speaker 3: down on a career path, it seems like a dead end.
Speaker 3: Like I think a lot of people probably like marrying
Speaker 3: the high school or college girlfriend a boyfriend just from
Speaker 3: almost like a we've been together long enough and this
Speaker 3: is fine. But the flip side is if you just
Speaker 3: keep cutting cord on things before they start to stick,
Speaker 3: you just never hit that like level two and level
Speaker 3: three version of the thing.
Speaker 1: So which again, going back to that cross country thing,
Speaker 1: I've got. My girls are on the team, and they
Speaker 1: were like, Dad, don't make me run. This is terrible.
Speaker 1: I hate this, and then like like running for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks and then after the first practice they
Speaker 1: were like, hey, this is kind of fun. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like you think there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: truth that you got of all got to get over
Speaker 1: a hump to see whether or not you like something.
Speaker 1: And if you're if you're leaning to into the optionality,
Speaker 1: you're missing out on a chance to see if you
Speaker 1: like something.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: There's also there seems to be like a generational divide
Speaker 1: between how we think about the nine to five existence.
Speaker 1: And there have even been those like videos that have
Speaker 1: been widely mocked of. You know, let's say a young
Speaker 1: girl saying like, man, I don't have any time to
Speaker 1: do anything because I commute an hour, I commute an
Speaker 1: hour home, and I work eight hours. I can barely
Speaker 1: like put food on the table sort of thing, and
Speaker 1: and some of that's like ridiculous, But but like I
Speaker 1: don't know, how do how does what's the generational difference
Speaker 1: in how we think about kind of work and and
Speaker 1: even just like putting in an eight.
Speaker 3: Hour work, I mean, I think social media has just
Speaker 3: been like a total like desire. It's just like a
Speaker 3: cancer to like people's expectations of life, and that the
Speaker 3: the the.
Speaker 2: Truth of the matter is, there's actually never been a
Speaker 2: better time.
Speaker 3: To be alive for me, Just like you can argue that,
Speaker 3: oh no, like stuff's expensive, whatever the amount of just
Speaker 3: like human surplus or consumer surplus you get out of,
Speaker 3: like we have cheap cell phones, cheap internet, air conditioning,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. The normal base case of being alive
Speaker 3: now versus any point in history is very good.
Speaker 2: But the issue is.
Speaker 3: Like pre Internet, especially pre social media, you didn't really
Speaker 3: have that many people you were comparing your current existence to,
Speaker 3: so you were kind of compighaninst like people in your office,
Speaker 3: your hometown, your college, whatever, Versus now you can compighainst anybody,
Speaker 3: and everybody knows somebody who like they joined the.
Speaker 2: Right startup, or they bought the right stock, or.
Speaker 3: Like, everybody knows someone who, whether they got lucky or
Speaker 3: were skilled, is better off than them financially. And I
Speaker 3: think that that's actually the underlying issue is everybody, like
Speaker 3: everybody's like aperture of comparison is so broad and deep
Speaker 3: now that you feel like you're like, like there's people
Speaker 3: making hundreds of thousands of dollars feeling like they're totally
Speaker 3: falling behind because they're compying it somebody making three times
Speaker 3: as much as them, And it's like I think that's
Speaker 3: when to people like I feel like I'm trying to
Speaker 3: do all the right things and like I'm not getting
Speaker 3: what I want. It's, well, the thing that you're viewing
Speaker 3: is your base case of like what you should be
Speaker 3: getting out of life is actually like such a far
Speaker 3: right tail.
Speaker 2: But like we're all just kind of normalizing this thing.
Speaker 3: So I actually think it's like I think there's this
Speaker 3: like underlying anxiety that stems from people's like like internal
Speaker 3: comparison groups are just so far removed from reality. Like
Speaker 3: if you look at the like median household income and
Speaker 3: then like people are comparing to that whatever it is,
Speaker 3: like sixty thousand dollars fun meeting household income fifty thousand,
Speaker 3: something like that, but everybody's copying it something way higher
Speaker 3: than that. And the other thing is like.
Speaker 1: And no matter what you're into, someone's doing it better
Speaker 1: than than you are, right, Like the home Steading family
Speaker 1: even you follow on Instagram, Well, their chicken coop is
Speaker 1: like super sweet and they've got fifty chickens running around
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm into, But like, man, they're doing
Speaker 1: it better than I am. And look at me over here,
Speaker 1: just like schlipping it with my six chickens and my
Speaker 1: tiny coop in my backy.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You just anything you can compare yourself to, you're gonna
Speaker 1: find you're disappointed because someone's doing it better.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: At the end of the book, you say, am I
Speaker 1: having fun? Is the most important question to ask? Having
Speaker 1: like fun is a nuanced term, So I guess, like
Speaker 1: dig in on that for me a little bit, like
Speaker 1: am I having fun? Why is that the most important
Speaker 1: question to ask? And like what can we learn when
Speaker 1: we ask that question?
Speaker 3: So I think that like the fun, like anything else
Speaker 3: in life, is very stage specific, and like what I
Speaker 3: found is to be fun at twenty two, or like
Speaker 3: especially twenty one in college is like much everyone I
Speaker 3: find fun at twenty nine. I think the like experience
Speaker 3: of like having fun or getting like a sense of
Speaker 3: like enjoyment and actual joy out of like the thing
Speaker 3: you're doing with your life is a really good barometer.
Speaker 2: For if you're doing the right things.
Speaker 3: For example, the college version or like fresh out of
Speaker 3: school is probably much more thrill seeking than it is
Speaker 3: ten years later versus like, I'm much more motivated by
Speaker 3: like entrepreneurial endeavors and like interesting business and career opportunities
Speaker 3: now than like six seven years ago. And that's like
Speaker 3: I think I'm prioritizing because like making more money matters
Speaker 3: to me more now than it did back then, right,
Speaker 3: And like like having cool opportunities pop up for me
Speaker 3: is like that's like like an invigorating experience versus when
Speaker 3: I was an undergrad it was like, let's go to
Speaker 3: the bar and like I want to get like six
Speaker 3: beers and my like fraternity brothers or whatever.
Speaker 2: And that was awesome.
Speaker 3: And it's like I still like going out with my
Speaker 3: friends now, but you're not optimizing for that thing.
Speaker 2: Is like this is the thing that matters in the
Speaker 2: stage of life. And I think.
Speaker 3: The way that I've experienced it is like if you
Speaker 3: chase the thing that like used to be fun and
Speaker 3: find yourself getting more anxious or unsettled going after that
Speaker 3: thing now, it's a very good sign that like the
Speaker 3: thing you should be going after shifts where you just
Speaker 3: feel this like like when I say fun, it's almost
Speaker 3: this internal peace or alignment where like your goals and
Speaker 3: your actions and your desires are all very aligned, where
Speaker 3: you just feel unsettled if you're going after the wrong
Speaker 3: stuff and you feel like.
Speaker 2: You're having like a good time.
Speaker 3: Or like when I played football in college, a lot
Speaker 3: of it sucked, but I had a very like rewarding
Speaker 3: sense of exhaustion at the end of the day, or
Speaker 3: like at the end of the season because it was
Speaker 3: like fun.
Speaker 2: It was hard work, but it was fun work and
Speaker 2: it was the right work. Right. So I think that
Speaker 2: like we all.
Speaker 3: Have this like almost like under the surface, subconscious like
Speaker 3: right wrong sense of fun that should like I really
Speaker 3: do think that it's like having fun is a good
Speaker 3: north star for whether or not you're doing the things
Speaker 3: you should be doing at whatever stage of life you're in.
Speaker 1: There you go have fun. I like it fun. And
Speaker 1: you know what, we live in a in a culture
Speaker 1: sometimes where fun is looked down upon. Man, I think
Speaker 1: fun is like fun is where it's at, Like we
Speaker 1: should be having fun. Are you having fun? Is a
Speaker 1: great way to kind of end.
Speaker 2: Life's too short to not be having fun?
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I'm with you, dude. Love the book Where
Speaker 1: Where Can How the Money? Listeners find out more and
Speaker 1: purchase the book.
Speaker 3: Listen go free order your copy. It's called Young Money.
Speaker 3: A Field goide to wealth and Purpose in your twenties.
Speaker 3: You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever
Speaker 3: you buy books. If you like hearing me talk on
Speaker 3: a podcast. I am recording the audiobook too, so that
Speaker 3: will be available upon release. But yeah, it's Young Money
Speaker 3: Jack Ranes. Look it up anywhere you can buy books.
Speaker 3: Outside of that, you can follow me on Twitter. You
Speaker 3: can follow me on substack also Young Money by Jack
Speaker 3: Rains very easy to remember.
Speaker 2: LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm on basically every social media platform, but
Speaker 2: go well.
Speaker 1: Linked to the substack too, man, Like you've I've been
Speaker 1: been following your stuff since you've really launched the blog
Speaker 1: back in I don't know if they.
Speaker 2: Did, you're like day one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like twenty twenty one. So and that's again
Speaker 1: you talk about meeting interesting people through internet ventures, like
Speaker 1: that's that's how we That's how we met too. So
Speaker 1: appreciate your work, man, and thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me all right, man, what a good
Speaker 1: catchup combo with with Jack Reines and hey man, yeah,
Speaker 1: his his blog on substack. Young Money has been one
Speaker 1: of those I think guiding lights for a lot of
Speaker 1: people in their twenties when it comes to handling handling
Speaker 1: their finances and what does it look like to live
Speaker 1: intentionally care about your money, but also like live a
Speaker 1: life right. And that is why kind of when Jack
Speaker 1: talks about if you buy too heavily into the Fire movement,
Speaker 1: it's almost like some sort of mental disease, I think,
Speaker 1: is what he said. And I think there's a reality
Speaker 1: of that. Man, there's something that just knee jerk was
Speaker 1: so I was so averse to when it came to
Speaker 1: the Fire movement, and there's a lot of there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of pivots in the space, and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of people trying to make it sound more
Speaker 1: palatable and approachable and less extreme. Great well done, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that the movement has developed, but it's also like
Speaker 1: that sort of financial independence at any cost is is
Speaker 1: a turn off to a lot of people. And it
Speaker 1: also I think it tries to make it seem like
Speaker 1: these are dueling purposes that like enjoying those decades that
Speaker 1: matter that you know, your twenties and early thirties and
Speaker 1: actually being able to have financial freedom, those are not
Speaker 1: at odds. And I think that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that Jack is saying in this book and in this conversation.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that to me, the big
Speaker 1: takeaway here is that it's a legitimate skill to lead
Speaker 1: into discomfort. He said, don't be impulsive, be intentional, And
Speaker 1: I think intentional discomfort for the sake of experimenting and
Speaker 1: trying new things and seeing what you like and realizing
Speaker 1: through that, like in the network that you're making what
Speaker 1: it is you ultimately want to do well, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't get there right without taking some of those risks.
Speaker 1: And it's easier to take some of those risks in
Speaker 1: your twenties. And the book that Jack just wrote would
Speaker 1: not have happened had he not tried to start a blog.
Speaker 1: And guess what, the travel blog. I don't know how
Speaker 1: well that's doing. I don't even know if he's still
Speaker 1: doing it anymore. But the fact that he just wrote
Speaker 1: a bunch and met a lot of writers, met a
Speaker 1: lot of other people in the personal finance community led
Speaker 1: to the fact that he just got paid to write
Speaker 1: a book, which is cool, right, and he's doing other
Speaker 1: stuff too, But like this is I love how we
Speaker 1: said to be aware of the trade offs you're making,
Speaker 1: be wide open, have your eyes open about what it
Speaker 1: means to give up maybe a little bit of investing
Speaker 1: in your twenties for more flexibility and know that you
Speaker 1: have to You're going to have to increase your contributions
Speaker 1: in your early to mid thirties or something like that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, life is and this is not a one
Speaker 1: size fits all prescription from Jack or from me here either.
Speaker 1: Everybody what makes a fulfilling life? Like you get determined
Speaker 1: that for yourself. Part of what will lead to I
Speaker 1: think more happiness is not being stressed, not being freaked
Speaker 1: out about money and knowing how to handle it, whether
Speaker 1: your savings rate is eight percent or twenty percent at
Speaker 1: the age of twenty two, right or twenty four. But
Speaker 1: I think his book is at least kind of offer
Speaker 1: some helpful advice in wisdom from someone who has now
Speaker 1: reaching the end of their twenties. Hey, did I do
Speaker 1: it right? How do you think about money, living life
Speaker 1: while simultaneously caring about personal finance at the same time.
Speaker 1: So recommend his book. We'll link to it in the
Speaker 1: show notes that'll be up on the website at Howtomonday
Speaker 1: dot com. We'll see you back here on Friday with
Speaker 1: a fresh Friday flight. HTM is back in the saddle guys.
Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening, thank you for your
Speaker 1: time and attention. Until next time, Best friend out,