MadFientist: Life is Too Short to Wait for Someday

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29:07What presents the bigger variable, the markets or a human life? Oh man, human life, which then factors into the markets because that's why they're so crazy. If it was a bunch of computers, trading stocks would probably be more orderly. But you throw in some humans and you get NFTs that go for$25 million. I don't even know what they were going for in 2021. But yeah, you get some crazy stuff when you throw humans in the mix. If you told me 15 years ago, if you told me what my post-fight lifestyle would look like, I'd say, you're absolutely nuts. There's no way. I have all the freedom in the world.

29:40And I'm sitting in the same house for most of the year and going to the gym and just cooking for myself. And when I could afford to eat out every day and go to Spain and France every weekend if I wanted to, yeah, I would have said you were crazy. But we grew up, we changed, priorities change. So it's impossible to predict what you're going to be like when you retire. So yeah, you can't fault the online calculators for not being super accurate when you don't even know what you want in your life. Having been out of the paid workforce for eight years now, other than the fact that your portfolio has continued to grow.

30:16What's been the biggest surprise? So the biggest surprise of reaching FI, this doesn't really have to do with the workforce, but the biggest surprise of reaching FI is not being prepared for money not being a motivating factor in my life anymore. Money has motivated pretty much most of my adult decisions up until reaching FI. And then when you don't need to earn any more money, it's not as motivating to do things that I would have maybe done in the past, not only done in the past, but also enjoyed. So I'm a naturally very lazy person and money motivated me to not be as lazy. And it's a good laziness.

30:56It's a productive laziness. That's why I went into computer science because I was like, well, I could just write an app and then that'll earn the money for me and that'll be fine. And that's effectively what ended up happening after whatever, a 20 year career. It's a productive laziness, but it's it's still like, I do need more external motivation than maybe some somebody that's just a natural go getter. And although I don't need to earn the money anymore, there's a lot of benefits from doing stuff that then earns money. The mad scientist, for example, I haven't been very productive on the mad scientist.

31:26And yes, that is maybe cause some revenue to decrease from mad scientist, but it's also maybe not let me meet people that I would have interviewed on the podcast, you know, five, 10 years ago. So now I don't have those relationships either. So that's been the biggest thing is not having that as a motivating factor in my life. Over the last year of spending more, now that it's sort of creeping back in, it's like, oh, spending money is fun. So maybe earning more money to just spend or to give away would be something that would be exciting. So it's sort of creeping back in as a motivation in my life, which is maybe going to make me more productive from a, I don't know, software sense or a mad scientist sense or a music sense or any of the hobbies that I like that could potentially earn some money.

32:12So that's it from that standpoint. From an actual workforce standpoint, there's not too much that surprised me because I definitely don't miss meetings. I definitely don't miss bosses. I must have been a terrible person to manage because I always feel like I know best and I argue my point and don't just accept do it this way. So I feel bad for all my old managers and stuff. So now I'm the boss and I'm just a very lenient boss that lets me not do much work. But yeah, there's really nothing that surprised me from that standpoint. That's all been pretty good. I still meet up with old colleagues from actually my first job.

32:49But yeah, no, I don't think I miss the office environment or the office camaraderie because I didn't really have that in later jobs. So it was my first job. I had a lot of good friends that I still keep in touch with, but I don't think there was anything too surprising from that. It's pretty good not having to go into an office and sit through a pointless meeting. So I'm happy with that. What does motivate you now? Oh, yeah. So the whole reason I wanted to reach financial independence was I wanted to achieve my lifelong childhood dream. Music has been the biggest thing in my life since I was a early preteen.

33:23Went to my first concert when I was, I think, 12 with my buddies, which had just happened to be Jeff Buckley open. I'm opening up for Julianne Hadfield. So So I can't believe I saw Jeff Buckley, which is wild. And then the second concert, I saw Oasis in a small club in Pittsburgh before, right when What's the Story Morning Glory came out. So anyway, music has been a huge, huge thing for my life ever since I was probably 10. So I always wanted to make my own music, but I always blamed my job on the fact that I wasn't able to. So the first four or five years of hostify life were soul destroying in the sense that everything I had blamed my job about wasn't actually my job's fault.

34:01It was my self-doubt and my lack of confidence and the fact that writing an album is incredibly hard, especially at the standard that I wanted to write it at. And it was only once the pandemic came around that we were trapped inside because Scotland was really locked down that I actually had no other excuses. So up until that point, I still found excuses, even though I left my job and didn't have my job as the primary excuse. I still had loads of other excuses. That was the biggest thing that I still wanted to check off my list. and I did it and I'm still so happy that I did it. And it just brings a smile to my face every time I think how much I had overcome to do it.

34:36Most people won't like it and it's not like going to be on the radio anytime soon, but it was, yeah, I just know what I went through to accomplish that. That was just like such a crazy experience and I want to see if I can do it again. So that motivates me and that still just comes from like childhood ambitions, I guess. And I actually just played a live show a couple of weeks ago. So that definitely motivated me because it was fun to play my songs live in front of an audience that had no idea what they were meant to sound like for the first time. So that was definitely motivating in the fact that I want to write more songs to play live.

35:09So I think that's going to be a big motivating factor in my life still, which is good because it's a hobby that I enjoy and it's fun. And then from a personal standpoint, I had my son. He's motivated me to keep super fit and healthy. And I'm an older dad, but I don't want to act like one when I'm around all the other dads in the playground and stuff. So that's a huge motivation to get fit and healthy and remain fit and healthy. And then, yeah, as far as like it all is intrinsic motivation at this stage, like I feel like I ticked off all the things like that I really wanted to do, like reach five.

35:44And I wanted to get a grad degree. And I did that when I was when I was still working and stuff like that. So yeah, it's just more, I don't know, I'm just motivated to be like a good friend and a good family member and try to have like really super fun experiences with my little immediate family here, but then also my further abroad family and I guess pursue hobbies for the love of them. So like maybe getting into coffee roasting because I'm super into coffee these days, just seeing where my interest leads. But yeah, it's all internal these days. And yeah, trying to add money as a driving force because I realized that that's a good motivating factor as well.

36:23What's interesting to me about your answer is that you've switched from an external motivation to internal motivation. So it sounds as though prior to reaching FI, money was the motivator. That's external. Oh, big time. And then when I just now when I asked you what your current motivations are, everything that you described was internal, right? Wanting to prove to yourself or demonstrate to yourself that you could write an album internal, wanting to be a fit dad for your son internal. Yeah. Everything that you've just said was internal or intrinsic motivation. Yeah, I think it feels good to do it that way.

37:00Because then, yeah, like I said, if I was motivated to, I don't know, reach some sort of download goals on the album or something, that's obviously I can't control it. But I just made it as good as I could. And I knew if I released it, it was going to be good enough that I thought I could release it. And that was really the goal. And yeah, I look back on that as one of my most proud accomplishments. Is it on Spotify? Can we link to it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, definitely. Please link to it. That's the only thing that I care about. But yeah, affordanything.com slash show notes. That's where we'll put the link.

37:30Oh, big time. Yeah, it's up there. And actually, I got to show you this because it's the most wild thing. I've been the Mad Scientist since 2012 and never really asked my audience for anything or I didn't have much to sell or anything like that. And when the album was coming out, I was like, all right, if you've ever wanted to say thanks to the mad scientist for all this free content over these last decade then just buy this album for me because like i don't care about vanity metrics for mad scientist but for music that could be the difference between like getting booked to play a show or not getting booked to play a show so anyway the audience was super kind and then i gotta show i just gotta show you this because it's not yet up on the wall because we're about to paint the studio but let me show you the coolest thing in my life.

38:18Whoa, what? Oh, thanks to the Mad Fientist readers and listeners. Wow. They made it to 39 on the top current album sales chart, which was wild. Okay. I was not expecting you to. Okay. Wow. It's so crazy. So hold on, I'll be right back. That is the most ridiculous thing that's ever happened in my life, but it was the most, one of the most exciting things. And yeah, like I said, I wasn't motivated by any external motivation, but that was a super cool external thing to have happened once I actually completed it. Wow. For the people who are listening via audio, tell us what we just saw. Yeah. So it was a billboard plaque.

38:57And thanks to all the Mad Fintest readers and listeners, it got to number 39 on the top current album sales chart. And it got to number 85 on the top album sales chart. So top current album sales are obviously just recently released things. top album sales are all albums. So my album and my album cover was right next to Nirvana, Nevermind. It was on the same chart as Prince, Purple Rain. It was the same chart as the White Album from The Beatles. I was on the same chart as all of these unbelievable, iconic albums. And I was number 85 on that chart, which is just mind blowing. growing up in the 90s.

39:36I was a huge Nirvana fan growing up. Nirvana, Nevermind was probably the most important album in my preteen and teenage years. And to be right next to it on the same chart is just unbelievable. I have a PDF that I printed out when it was up there and it's wild. Thank you to all the Medfineist readers and listeners. That was a wild week of excitement. Wow. Describe the moment when you logged on and saw that. So I was actually chatting with a Matt Fintus reader at the time, and he recorded it. So I got to watch my reaction. I looked a mess. I had been getting up to that point to release the album.

40:18I probably wasn't sleeping. I was getting everything ready to hit my release date and everything. so yeah i looked an absolute state but he recorded the whole thing so it was just like shock and yeah the most shock was when i saw the album cover right next to nirvana's album which was uh mind-blowing to me so yeah no it was wild wow so you never know what life in phyland life after retirement could hold it's so ridiculous because yeah you're like we're talking about intrinsic motivation you're doing these things because you want to do them so you're in this whole other league from what other people are doing.

40:55So if you have a ridiculous life or ridiculous goals, it can get as ridiculous looking as you want it to be. Because yeah, you don't really care about what happens externally because you've made the money you need to make. You don't have a boss. You don't have to answer anybody. Nobody's really in control of you. So yeah, when I was playing the show a couple of weeks ago, I'm a 41 year old man and And I was going up there with these light-up neon glasses on. And at first, I felt absolutely ridiculous. But then I was like, I am doing exactly what I want to do with my life right now. And yeah, people may look at it and be like, what is this guy doing?

41:31But who cares? I don't have to care anymore. I guess our buddy J.L. Collins, he likes to term it a few money. I know he didn't come up with that. And he says so himself. But he's popularized it within the FI community. and that's what it is. It is a few money. I don't have to answer to anyone. So yeah, postify life can look as ridiculous as you want it to look and it's more fun that way. Yeah. As I was about to go on stage for the show that I was telling you about, I was sort of like second guessing some of the wardrobe that I had brought because all the other acts that had gone on before me were really serious and a lot less crazy as that I was planning to be.

42:09And my wife was like, just go for it. And I was like, yeah, you're right. I'm just to go for it. And it was so much fun. So that's the joy of Postify life. You don't have a boss. You don't have anybody telling you what to do or what you can't do. And so yeah, live as ridiculous of a life as you want to. We started this conversation talking about index funds because all of this, your ability to retire from your job in 2016 and everything that has happened since was really built on the fact that you first and foremost built a really solid index fund portfolio. How do you resist the temptation to veer away from index funds?

42:48Because I think we all feel that temptation from time to time. That's where that 5%, I call it the fund portfolio comes into play. The 5 % anything goes? Yeah, less than 5%, anything goes. And I keep track of how much that is. And if I pick a winner and it goes up and I get over 5%, then I just sell some of that winner and bring it back down under 5%. So that gives me enough to play with and feel like I'm doing something. Thankfully, I didn't get into any of the crypto stuff. I would be sad if I had any of that at this stage, but I followed it. I read about it, but nothing seemed good enough to put any money towards at the time.

43:22So I'm thankful for that. But yeah, like I said, I just bought some long-term bonds because I think interest rates will potentially have already peaked. So they may be going down. So that may be a good bet. But again, it's all under 5 % of my total portfolio. So nothing's really going to move the needle, but it's fun to play with and it keeps that side of my brain that could potentially sabotage my long-term investing it keeps it happy enough that i don't do anything with the bulk of my money that's gonna affect anything majorly over the next you know 20 years that i wanted to be invested in all those same things and well actually potentially hopefully longer than that 60 60 plus years maybe we'll see what uh medical advancements we have over the next few decades as well, which is exciting to think about too.

44:07But that little 5 % is enough to keep me from doing anything stupid, but also keep me interested in researching things that I maybe wouldn't have researched. And so that's what I do. It's my fun portfolio. This year, give a gift that goes far beyond the moment, an Invest 529 account. Whether it's a child, grandchild, or someone just starting out, you're helping them safe for education that can open doors for a lifetime. Invest 529 is a tax-advantaged way to help save for college, trade school, or even apprenticeship programs. It's flexible, easy to start, and you can contribute any amount, big or small.

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46:55You're 41 and you just had your first child. How has that changed your outlook on both money and time? Oh man, I've never been so happy with my past decisions than I have been over the last 16 months. I can't imagine how normal working couples do it, let alone single parents that are working. It just blows my mind. So I've never been more grateful for my past financial decisions than I have been over the last 16 months. Obviously, time is more precious now. So I find myself wasting less of it, which is great. I'm really bad. Twitter's my vice. So I would read loads of Twitter stuff all day. And I don't want to do that anyway.

47:36So now I don't, because I don't have the time to do that. Because any Twitter reading I'm doing is time away from my son or time away from sleeping, which is just as important. So it's drastically changed that. But it's also changed my outlook on the future as well. It was maybe two years ago. And after the album had been released, after I'd ticked all these things off that I wanted to do, and I was like, I've seen the world. My wife and I, we've been to 50 plus countries and did that in our 20s and 30s and had a lot of fun. And I've done pretty much all the things I wanted to do. And this sounds morbid, but had I had a bad diagnosis at that stage or something, I would have been like, okay with it.

48:16I've done this. and I wasn't depressed or anything. I was just like content. I was like, I've done all these things. But ever since my son came around, I'm like, no, I want to see him do all these things now. So like, it's like a refreshed desire to like live until I'm on, I'm a hundred so that I can see him make the mistakes I made and visit the places I've visited and all that sort of stuff, which I think is a lot healthier. So I I'm, I'm happy with that, but I didn't think it was like an unhealthy outlook back then. I just felt pretty content. It's just drastically changed all of that. Like I said before, it makes me want to be healthier so that I'm not only around for a long time, but I'm also active and able to do things for a long time.

48:55And then financially, it hasn't made me much more conservative because I still really don't know how I feel about leaving behind a bunch of money and a bunch of assets because I don't want to rob him of the hustle of doing it himself and the joy of struggling, not struggling, but like being challenged and making your own way. So that's a whole other world that if you've interviewed anyone that knows about that world, you can send me links to those episodes because I haven't even started thinking about that yet. But yeah, it hasn't really changed anything money-wise, life outlook, time prioritization, all those sorts of things.

49:34Yeah. My life is completely different than it was 16 months ago. Warren Buffett, who's 93 years old, he, many decades ago, when he pledged to give away the bulk of his wealth, people asked him, wait a second, what about your kids? Don't you want to leave anything to them? And he had the, I thought, best response. He said, I want to give them enough that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing. Yes, that is the only quote that I have in my head when I think about this stuff. And that is my favorite quote about this whole idea. No, I completely agree. That is the best quote and strategy implementing it.

50:09It's going to be more of a struggle to get that balance right. But yeah, that's exactly my thoughts as well. And that's the problem with Fi. That is a big problem with Fi. I could do nothing. Right? Yeah, exactly. So exactly. All these people chasing FI just like me who were just racing to get there. And then I can do nothing. And that is not great. And that's why as I've been interviewed post-FI more so, it's like, realize the power you're getting along the way to FI because halfway to FI, you have the power to do anything pretty much. And that's maybe the sweet spot. So rather than race to the finish line, maybe just enjoy life in that sweet spot because you have the power to do anything, but you don't have the power to do nothing.

50:54Right, exactly. And the power to do nothing comes with its own set of challenges, because then you have to grapple with the side of you that kind of wants to do nothing. But doing nothing is really unhealthy. And now you have to fight that. Yeah, the freedom to do nothing is what I was talking about earlier, where money is no longer a motivating factor in your life. So it goes back to that. If you're halfway there, and you got this investment portfolio that's going to just keep growing, and you're still working at a job that you don't hate. And man, you maybe are in the sweet spot where you can do anything, but yeah, you can't do nothing, which is...

51:26Yeah, in some ways it is a little bit of a burden or it's an added responsibility. When you have the option to do nothing, then it's an additional responsibility to fight that urge. Yes, absolutely. So yeah, you have to have lots of other internal motivations, which again, if you've just been focusing on that number in the spreadsheet, you're not going to have that stuff. That's why you need to sort of build that stuff along the way. Right, exactly. I've heard, and I'm curious what you think about this. I have heard people make the case. I haven't heard this inside of the FI community. I've heard this in the general public.

52:02I've heard people make the case that a person ought to intentionally give themselves higher bills, higher fixed bills, like intentionally go out and get a big expensive car payment so that they have the drive to go out there and work. No pun intended with the car and the drive. Yeah, yeah. I would not suggest that because I think all of the joy and the fun that I'm having now is the fact that I know my fixed costs are so low and reasonable compared to my net worth that I can go crazy with discretionary one-off things. And that's really where the fun is. Like you get adapted to fix things. Whereas if you have some novelty in your life and you just get all these fun little things or fun it could be like one-off big things and i think that's where all the fun is so yeah so like saddling yourself with a huge car payment that's going to stress you out because it is fixed and they want their money that sounds like it removes some of the fun of that car because it adds the stress but if you have if you bought an old crappy car well if you're a car person you this doesn't apply but i'm not a car person so I bought a 2012 Honda Jazz, which is like the UK equivalent of a Honda Fit.

53:18I think we bought it in 2020. It costs like 3 ,000 pounds. And it's a car. It gives me just as much joy as any other car because they're all the same to me, which I know this because I've rented nice cars in the States for like a week or a month. And by the end of the week or the month, I'm like, yeah, this feels like the jazz. So having that as a low fixed cost means that we have all this money every month for these fun discretionary things. And now that we've bought a house, I've been spending that on like fun things like surround sound systems and TVs and things that I'm having a lot of fun with.

53:53But on other months when we aren't spending on things for the house, it's like we can go somewhere. We went to Rome for a week and just I ate like crazy and didn't care about anything, just was shoving so much good food in my face. And that's way more fun because it was a one-off and now I have these great one-off memories. So yeah, so I would definitely push back against that advice because yeah, you don't want to have something you have to pay. But these things are just as motivating to me as having a high fixed cost that I have to pay because I realized how much fun it's been and I want to keep doing those.

54:25So it is still giving me some of that money motivation back without the stress of having a bank breathing down my neck. Right. Okay. So if you do want money motivation, don't burden yourself with necessary fixed costs, but maybe increase that bucket list of discretionary one-offs. That's right. Yeah. Have a discretionary budget that's way too high for your liking, but it'll be super fun to fill up those expenses. We're coming to the end of our time. Is there anything that I haven't asked about? no it's always changing so it's all it's a huge adventure still which i wasn't expecting like i said maybe 40 maybe a few years ago i was into this like i don't know this glide path that was maybe a bit a bit of a funk but didn't feel like it and um but now yeah everything's changed again obviously with my son but then also with this newfound appreciation for actually using money rather than just stockpiling it and looking at it, which is what my entire life up to that point has been.

55:23So no, it's fun. There's so many unexpected things, but it's a wild adventure and I'm more grateful now than ever to be on it. Nice. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they want to learn more? Yeah, so madfindus.com is where all the financial stuff is. And then you're going to have that amazing link in your show notes to find all the music stuff, which is what I really care about. You can come to MedFiantist if you want, but yeah, go follow me on Spotify because that's what really matters in my life these days. But yeah, MedFiantist all on the internet, Twitter and Facebook and all that stuff, which I'm not on as much, but occasionally.

55:58And then, yeah, you can find links to the podcast and stuff from the website and all that thing. So it's all there. But yeah, go to that show notes and get that juicy music link and follow me on Spotify instead. Awesome. Well, it's always fun chatting. and it was great hanging out with you in person in Edinburgh a couple weeks ago. Oh, so good. Yeah, no, great to see you again and yeah, always a pleasure. Edinburgh, by the way, I have to give a shout out, is such an amazing city. Just I want to like promote Scotland for a moment. Scotland overall is such a gorgeous, gorgeous country and Edinburgh in particular is like the perfect size of city.

56:38Oh, it is. Absolutely. Yeah, we were lucky enough to live there for six years and it is, it feels like a village. It's beautiful, like a postcard, but then it has everything you want of a city. So I agree. It's probably one of my favorite cities in the world and definitely one of the most livable in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. And the Scottish Highlands, for taking long drives and being out in the countryside, the Scottish Highlands is just amazing. Yeah, that's where we are now. So we moved from the city to right on the edge of the Highlands. So I'm looking at some nice mountains and beautiful trees now.

57:11So yeah, priorities change when you have a little one. So no more going out and having beers and whiskeys and fancy dinners in Edinburgh. Now it's more just hanging out and having a nice place to look out the window while you're inside hanging out with the kids. So yeah, that's why we moved. But yeah, I agree. Scotland's a magical place and everything except the weather. It's amazing.

57:39Thank you, Mad Scientist. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? The first key takeaway evokes the law of accelerating returns. This was originally proposed by Ray Kurzweil in a 1999 book called The Age of Spiritual Machines, in which Kurzweil proposed that the rate of change of various evolutionary and iterative systems, including technology, is relatively stable until it hits an inflection point, at which point it becomes exponential. And we're seeing that now with machine learning and with the ubiquity of AI in everyday life. We'll talk more about this in greater depth in a future episode, but for today's key takeaways, Brandon, mad scientist, shares how he would go about integrating technology and approaching his work to optimize his success if he were starting today.

58:30If I was a younger person in my 20s, I would be trying to learn as much as I can about these tools and integrating them into my work, but I still write code for myself and I'm using ChatGPT to pretty much 10x my productivity. I think that experience is still going to be really important and becoming a really good coder is going to let you become a really good coder that's 10 times as fast and that's still valuable. So it's not like someone who has no coding experience couldn't just go to ChatGPT and write a really interesting app that people are going to pay for. And so that is the first key takeaway.

59:10Key takeaway number two. We often make these projections about retirement, but the reality is that reality does not conform to even the best laid plans. While it is imperative to plan for the future, we must be cognizant of the distinction between planning for the future and living in it. And too often, people, particularly people who are on fire for fire, people who are really charged up about FI, run the risk of deferring life rather than merely deferring the spending of money. Now, that is not to say that spending money and enjoying your life are in any way synonymous, but it does mean that we need to be wary about times that we let the tail wag the dog.

59:56Don't let the money tail wag the life dog. First and foremost, I would not put off life until you cross that line that's on whatever software you're using. That's what I did when I was pursuing Fi. I was like, yeah, whatever, I'll do this after Fi. I'll do this after Fi. It's a mistake to wait for that because if you think your life's going to be drastically different just after this number crosses an arbitrary number on the screen, it's going to be very difficult to start a brand new life from scratch. So I would say, yes, plan for these goals. The projections hopefully will be the worst case scenario, potentially.

1:00:35Start to live the life that you want to live once you reach those goals and just have confidence in yourself to know that even if things don't turn out as you expect them to, you're going to figure out a way to make it work. And hopefully it'll be on the upside, which more than likely, based on all the research of retirees and how much money they end up dying with, is the majority of the cases. Finally, key takeaway number three, the dark side of FI. So hitting financial independence is presented as the answer to many of life's problems. If you have a hectic life, if you have a job or a boss that is not ideal, financial independence is often painted as the great escape from many of those common but pervasive challenges.

1:01:21And so a lot of people are like, all right, I just want to hit FI as soon as possible without necessarily thinking about how life will look after and also without enjoying the present, which is all we are guaranteed. Not to sound cliche, but it's true. In this takeaway, in this third and final key takeaway, Brandon, the mad scientist, discusses one of the pitfalls to undertaking the FI journey with this very common mindset. And he talks about how to adapt your FI journey in order to avoid that pitfall. And that's the problem with FI. That is a big problem with FI. I could do nothing. That is not great.

1:01:59And that's why, as I've been interviewed post-Fi more so, it's like, realize the power you're getting along the way to Fi because halfway to Fi, you have the power to do anything pretty much. And that's maybe the sweet spot. So rather than race to the finish line, maybe just enjoy life in that sweet spot because you have the power to do anything, but you don't have the power to do nothing. So enjoy life in the sweet spot. Once you have built some wealth, you may not have reached financial independence yet, but once you have a good deal of financial stability, you're in a good spot, you're financially healthy, enjoy it.

1:02:38Now, again, I want to emphasize spending money and enjoying life are not necessarily synonymous. If you genuinely do not care about fancy cars or expensive restaurants, you're under no obligation to go burn a few Benjamins just because that's what other people with disposable income do. What it does mean is that as you are making decisions about where to work, where to live, whether or not to visit your grandma, even though that's going to be an expensive plane ticket, when you're making those choices, embrace the reality that you have money. You're in a healthy spot and it's okay to relax. You don't have to race to the finish line.

1:03:22I love what Brandon said about the beauty of that sweet spot being that you have the power to do anything, but you don't have the power to do nothing. And that's a nod to what Warren Buffett said about leaving a legacy, a financial legacy for his children. Many years ago, Warren Buffett announced that he was going to donate the bulk of his then $44 billion fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In fact, that announcement in 2006 precipitated Bill Gates announcing that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft so that he could focus full time on philanthropy and on running that foundation so that he could better allocate those funds.

1:04:05The foundation, the Gates Foundation, today has a budget of$63 billion. And it's actually timely that we're talking about it because just four days ago on Monday, Melinda Gates announced that she is stepping down as co-chair. In any event, the reason all of this came up is because at the time that Warren Buffett pledged away the bulk of his fortune, one of the frequent questions that he received from the public was, well, don't you want your kids to have that money? And what he said was, I want my kids to have enough that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing. And that is precisely what Brandon is talking about when he's talking about being in that sweet spot, which is the midpoint of a person's journey to financial independence.

1:04:53It's that point where you've paid off all high interest debt. You don't have credit card debt. You don't have any of the kinds of debt that's stressing you out. You have a solid emergency fund. You're maxing out your retirement accounts. Maybe you've grown some home equity. There's a very comfortable gap between what you earn and what you spend. And so you're in a really financially healthy place. Your net worth, minus any market-based hiccups, your net worth is just chugging along. It's growing every month. Your cash flow is good. Your net worth is growing. Life is good. That's the sweet spot.

1:05:35That's the spot where you have enough that you could do anything because you're not hampered or hamstrung by money stresses, right? you have enough that you could do anything, but not so much that you could do nothing. And not enough that you could do everything. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with The Madfiantist. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. Number one, follow us on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify. While you're there, I would absolutely love up to a five-star review and a sentence or two about what you enjoy about the show.

1:06:13I read every single review. I'd also love it if you came to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash afford anything. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel, hit that notification bell, leave a comment on one of our videos. I also live stream on YouTube from time to time. I've done three live streams in the last week. So if you want to scope out that bonus content, head to YouTube. So that's number one. Number two is, of course, subscribe to our show notes, which are no cost synopses. of every episode. You can access them by going to affordanything.com slash show notes. And number three, of course, share this with a friend or a family member or a neighbor or a coworker or anyone who you think could benefit from learning about financial literacy.

1:07:00Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I appreciate you being part of the community and I will meet you in the next episode.

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