Vicki Robin: Financial Independence After 70 [GREATEST HITS WEEK]

0:00Welcome to episode five out of five in our special five-part series that we are airing in anticipation of episode 500. Every day for five days, we run one of five episodes that we originally aired during the earliest days of the Afford Anything podcast, either 2016 or 2017. Back in those early days, you might not have heard these interviews. And so we're running this special five-part series in the lead up to and anticipation of episode 500. We're going to celebrate episode 500, that milestone on 4-24-24, April 24th, 2024. As part of a retrospective, as part of a lead up to that, we are sharing the special five-part series.

0:50And today's episode is the interview with Vicki Robin, the co-author of Your Money or Your Life, which is one of the most influential books in the world of financial independence. Now, Vicki Robin and her late co-author, Joe Dominguez, united over a definition of financial independence that expanded beyond simply paying your bills through savings and investments. They saw financial independence, FI, as a lifestyle that exists in multiple dimensions, your financial intelligence, your financial integrity, your financial independence, and your financial interdependence. They originally published a book about this called Your Money or Your Life.

1:37They wrote this in 1992. And in that book, they outlined the financial independence philosophy. That book went on to become a mega bestseller. It sold more than 1 million copies. It spent more than five years on the Business Week bestseller list. And Oprah Winfrey said, quote, this is a wonderful book. It can really change your life. Vicki and Joe then devoted the next five years to spreading the message of financial independence. And they did that for five years from 1992 to 1997. Unfortunately, Joe passed away in 1997. Vicki continued spreading the message for an additional five years from 1997 to 2002, at which point, unfortunately, her cancer diagnosis at that time caused her to take a step back.

2:30But today, Vicki is healthy and continues to spread the message of financial independence. With that said, here is Vicki Robin, the author of Your Money or Your Life.

2:48Hey, Vicki. Hi. Hi. How are you? I'm fabulous. Thank you. Nice. Okay, so actually the first question that I wanted to ask, so you and I met, just for the sake of everyone who's listening, we met in Ecuador. We had an awesome breakfast together. So since I kind of know you, the first thing I wanted to ask is how is your cat? Oh, well, my beautiful dear cat Lucy died. And she died three weeks ago in my arms. And I hospiced her. I mean, I knew she was in decline. And it suddenly occurred to me, I kept thinking, oh, she's an animal. She knows how to do this. But it occurred to me, I might have to help her.

3:28And that was like, haha. So, of course, the first thing I do is I put it out on Facebook, you know, guys, what do I do here? And I got like volumes of response. And two friends who are animal communicators volunteered to talk to her and find out what she wanted. It was amazing. And so what she wanted was she wanted to do this with me by herself. so that gave me confidence in and also the other thing that happened is I got this message on a Wednesday or Thursday and every vet on Whidbey Island who could have put her down was on vacation so there's nobody on Whidbey Island who could do it and so I took total care of her down to the very last breath oh it was so it was so profound it was the it was the most relational thing I've ever done.

4:22And somebody gave me a booklet about animals dying, about hospicing your animal, which is, you know, most people don't think they can do that. And one of the things they said, and I think it applies to humans as well, they said, do the grieving before she dies. Do the grieving with her because she's grieving too. You know, she was grieving, leaving this very cool life, you know, where she was the queen of my heart. and because of that I feel so at peace and then I went on a wild hunt for a new cat because I'm I'm not going to live without a cat without a pal in my house and he just came yesterday his owner delivered him to my house drove two hours came on Whidbey Island delivered him and now my animal communicator friends are saying just talk to the cat and find out what the cat's name is.

5:16And I think, I can't do that. But I think his name is Sam. Really? And he's hiding. Anyway, so that's the story of my darling cat. And that whole process, when you are willing to bond, you have to be willing to grieve. So anyway, thank you for asking about my cat, first of all, because it puts me in a sweet, sweet space. Wow. Thank you for telling me about that. That's beautiful. It's a story of passing that's somehow very hopeful. Yeah, because look, I mean, I'm 72. I'm going on 73, right? And, you know, I'm of an age where people die. You know, it's not a tragedy. It just sort of happens. I'm of the age where you start to read obituaries to see if you're still alive in the morning.

6:09You know, and I could last till I'm 90, but I could go any minute. And it's a different feeling from being in the middle of your life. It's a different feeling. And actually, with regards to money, because this is what we're talking about. I mean, this, this part of your life, it's really difficult for financial planning. Because you don't know if you're going to live 20 years, 10 years, one year, you don't know. And suddenly the enough that was sort of a pattern of existence, you know, you're loping along, it's just the right amount. You start to wonder, well, I have enough money to be myself, but do I have enough money to be disabled?

6:51Do I have enough money for that part of my life? And I refuse to default to the insurance industry. I refuse to pay like some godly, ungodly amount every month so that I can be warehoused in a place that just is simply depressing because everybody is, everybody's old, you know, and, and, you know, people you befriend could, you know, literally they could die tomorrow. And they're not people, you know, it's like surrendering your cat to a shelter, you know, suddenly the cat's not at home with all the familiar things, just a little prison. So I just didn't want to do it. So I've really focused. And if you want to talk about that.

7:31Yeah, I do. I do. Tell me about how you're working through that and how do you approach it? Well, first of all, I recognized I was going through bag lady fear. You know, I recognized I was getting terrified and I hadn't been terrified about money in my whole adult life. And it was this fact that, you know, when I thought ahead to when I was 80 was really old now, it doesn't look as old to me. But, you know, when I was like 90, when I looked ahead, I had no idea how to take care of myself at that time. Actually, a friend of mine talked to me when I was 60 and she said, well, you know, between 60 and 80, we're going to be OK.

8:10But after 80, I was like, what? I hadn't thought about it. And so she induced this fear. And I actually convened a group of friends to talk about it. It was very interesting. We met every few weeks or maybe a month and talked about it. And during that time, one of the people in the group, their daughter almost died. You know, so it was really, really worked on it. And I finally admitted, I said, I'm just so scared. I mean, like if my money disappears and I'm not well, I don't know how to manage this. And this woman looked at me and she said, Vicki, if your money disappears, everybody's money will disappear.

8:51here and we're going to figure it out together.

8:56So the first thing is I am not alone. And when I, when you think I am not alone, you actually, in not an instrumental way, but in an emotional and spiritual way, you go like, okay, who are my people? You know? And so there's a habit in the FI community of separation. There's like, I'm going to get FI and then I'm going to travel I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. And we don't think about community as wealth. We don't think about community as what will actually see us through, you know, some modicum of money, but a lot of community. Another thing that happened a year ago, I had a hip replacement.

9:39And as I came up to it, I have a lot of friends, but I didn't know if they were like, they'll show up for me when I'm like strapped to a bed for a couple of weeks. One of my friends said, don't worry, I'll organize it for you. So she organized morning, noon and night people to come over and make food, you know, like do my laundry and stuff like that. And it was like, and I have people not even signing up for the list, but saying, oh, you're having a hair replacement. I want to help. Wow. You have great friends. Yeah. And so it's because I've settled in a place and I've made myself useful in this place.

10:20I treat this place like my place. It's not just a place. It's not like I bought a house somewhere and I use the community. I shop at the store and I do this and I do that. No, no, no. This is my relational field. But that surgery tested it. And it was really, you know, stress test actually worked. And not only that, you know, everybody's so busy, but when they came over to feed me and stuff like that, we would sit and we'd have these long conversations. And so it was actually a time of deeper bonding. And now it's like, Oh, Hey, I want to go help somebody because everybody's zipping around this world.

10:59And so if they need something, if I can help them out, then I might get to settle in, you know? So I've been talking a lot. And in the new year, money, your life, I talk about community as currency. I talk about the ABCs of wealth, you know, that actually we think of wealth as money, but the A is your abilities, the things you can do for yourself, you can do for other people, and you could do for money if you needed to. It's your competencies. It's your, you know, grounded, practical relationship with the world. When we're so focused on our jobs, we become habituated to spending money for everything from house cleaners to handymen to yard workers to accountants to I mean we just outsource so much of our lives to other people because we really don't have the time or the interest to learn new things but for me on the FI path the financial independence path one of the cool things that happens is that people start to realize I could pay somebody$45 to come over and replace a faucet washer.

12:08I could spend 10 cents at the hardware store, learn, you know, like watch a YouTube video and do it myself and then do it for other people. And, you know, eventually if I have to make some money, I can, I can do it. I mean, I just wrote to one guy I met at one of the Chautauquas who was impressively brilliant about tax planning. I mean, in his presence, I felt like, oh, God, I should be doing some of this. Yeah. And he's like selling this and buying that and, you know, and working the margins and stuff like that. And he's wondering, like, can I a lot of people wonder, when can I pull the trigger?

12:46You know, when can I get FI? And I told him, dude, you have a brilliant skill. I've never met anybody who's as good as you are. Don't worry, because that's going to be in demand. So that A is abilities, you become a more vigorous human being. B is belonging, you know, that's the people who will show up when you have your hip replacement. Those are the people who claim you as their own, you know, and and for some people who have really great families, that's your family. But for me, whose family is down to a nubbin, you know, I just really don't have many people who are in my family, blood family, and they all live elsewhere.

13:30My friends are my family. And the friends who show up, those are really my family. So it's that showing up for one another, you know, and belonging is so important. A sense of belonging is so important with tribal people. And I think some of our nervousness in this world is that many people don't have anybody to talk to. You know, many people don't have anybody who would claim them as their own. And then the C is for community. And it's the place you live on earth. We have in our community, we have something called hearts and hammers, where once a year, there's big workday, like 400 people show up for this workday.

14:07So people apply, you know, if you're older, and you can't fix your rotting porch, or you can't like, retrieve your house from the blackberries, a team will come to your house on that workday and do it for you. So that's, that's a homegrown mutual aid. They don't have to be your belonging people. They just, you know, because you're here. And also there's the other part of community is I include the natural world. Can you forage? What's the soil like? What's going to happen in climate change? you know is your house going to disappear as the tides come in higher and higher so that's what i mean by community is currency and so that's been a big lesson for me in aging people talk about aging in place when you're based on money then that doesn't actually make any sense but you're based in community as as currency then that makes a lot of sense you know you can be instrumental about it.

15:12And you can offer service to a lot of people who are younger than you just like, okay, they're gonna be there for me. And I'm, you know, I'm building an intergenerational family here. How do digital or online communities fit in with this? Well, I mean, they can't wipe your butt, you know, they can't come and cook you food. But they can. I mean, some people abhor Facebook, but I've arranged my Facebook. So there's only people, I have a subgroup that are only people who I want to follow or who respond to my posts with, you know, sweet little kisses or whatever. So I am like with my cat, I could say, I don't understand how to do this.

15:56How do I do this? And suddenly all sorts of people show up, they show up on Facebook, they show up at my house, they grieve. I think it's possible to strengthen your community in this way. One of the people who helped me out when Lucy was dying, she was telling me while she was over here that she had a challenge. She had a living space challenge. And I said, oh, I have a motorhome. If you need to live in my motorhome, you could live in my motorhome during your transition time. she just contacted me and said she might need it and I said of course you know it's like I have an asset that I can actually provide for her because she provided for me so I think there it's this blend of online you know and at a distance and then how those friendships that form online like you don't know I didn't even know so and so and so and so and so and so actually tracked my life actually cared about me.

16:58So you start to learn who cares about you. So I think in terms of a knowledge base, support, when you're making a decision or you're grieving, or you have a curiosity about something and you put it out and people can respond to it. What do you think of this, Paula? You know, community is something that I've been thinking about a lot more. Community, belonging and emotional support is something that I've been thinking about a lot more in the past six months or so. And all of that is really a subset of being the most mentally and emotionally healthy person that you can be. Because I think there's a lot of attention that's given to physical health.

17:43There's broadly a large awareness about physical health. There's really less of one about what creates emotional and mental health in a person. And having a strong sense of community, having a strong sense of mission and purpose and contribution, those are really key. Well, you're a poster child for that. I mean, you know, your podcast, you have a large audience who is being served by your writing, your inquiry, your knowledge. and it must be very rewarding to have people write in and say the changes that they made because they heard something from you or they read something from you. It's got to be, you know, it's officially called the helper's high.

18:34I mean, there's scientific studies about the helper's high that actually you get happier when you're helping. Yeah, I got a message on Instagram the other day. A lot of people will write to me and tell me about financial improvements that they've made. But this one stood out to me because it wasn't specifically about financial improvements. It was from someone who had just lost her significant other. And she said that I really helped her through that. And we had never communicated before. She only has experienced me through my public-facing works. It was our first direct one-to-one communication.

19:12and to hear that I had played a role in her life at a time period like that, it goes back to emotional support, which lately I've started to come to consider as one of the most important things. Previously, I suppose I had thought, take care of these other things so that then you have the time to work on your emotional self. And now I kind of feel the opposite. Now I feel like work on your emotional self so that you can bring that strength into everything else that you do in your life. Right. Also, I mean, this is one of the lessons of aging is your need of others goes up. And if you are addicted to being the helper, then it's very hard.

19:58And most people I know, it's very hard to ask for help. Maybe from an expert, maybe from a therapist, you know, I mean, there are people who are professionals that you might turn to. But to ask for help from friends is a big challenge. And you have to remember that when you helped somebody, you got the helper's high. So that when you ask for help, you're actually giving somebody an opportunity to contribute to you. You're sort of softening that boundary of, I've got it handled. I can do everything. I'm superwoman. You're softening that boundary that people bounce off of. They want to get closer to you, but they can't get through that independence, self-reliance.

20:48But when you need others, then you open that boundary. And that's what I did last year. And it was just stunning. And it didn't diminish me. It just brought in more friends. So it's just interesting to think about the whole flow of giving and receiving. If you're only the giver, then you're actually infantilizing the receiver. Like, I've got something that they want. So, you know, you're starting to render that person not capable. But when you are in a flow of giving and receiving, that's actually love. You know, and we experience it. We hope to experience it with our mates. But, you know, it was like the formation of community.

21:34A lot of it, people in my community who really become community heroes and heroines, you know, the community points to these people as this is an example of who we are. They're people who have both given and received. So, I mean, that's the thing I think about also. I mean, I realized a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I gave a little talk at a conference. And because I'm getting more honest every day, I tell people like, look, you know, I am not an expert in finances. I'm an expert in resources, the flow of resources. That is love, that's money, that's help, that's underutilized resources and unmet needs.

22:21I'm making markets all the time, Making markets is incredibly human. Financial systems are sort of an add-on to humanity, but humanity has always come to the marketplace for that kind of exchange. And the marketplace itself becomes a community. It becomes where you show up, you gossip, you see your friends. Yeah. And so I love that. I love connecting underutilized resources and unmet needs. I love doing that. And actually how I stay FI is because I do that all the time. Like my house, when I bought my house, I had sold a house that I co-owned with other people in Seattle. And suddenly I had a lot of money in my bank account.

23:07and it started to create some pressure on me like what am I going to do with this because I I wasn't like super eager to just you know squirrel it away and I realized oh I have enough I could buy a house in the community I live in so I found the house I lived in live in now of what I call a plain brown people box you know it's a split entry house there's a million of these houses in the United States we all know them you know you go up a half a flight of stairs and there's the great room and then there's the three little bedrooms and downstairs is a garage and a family room. And I looked at this thing.

23:42I thought that is like way too much space for me. So I had this thought. I said, this place, if I get it, has to be a site of production, not a site of consumption. Yes. You said that in your book, that exact line. I remember that line because it was so I highlighted it. It was such a beautiful line. Yeah. So the family room became a mother-in-law apartment. And then a couple of years ago, the garage became another one. So I turned this house into a triplex. And of course, the guest rooms was an Airbnb. So suddenly this house is a third of my income. And it's all because resourcefulness is really, I think that's the most admirable thing is somebody who is not the most, but I mean, I think that's a piece of what this ABCs of wealth is.

24:28It's the kind of recognizing that this thing isn't only something you're going to buy, use up and throw away. It's not something that's going to pass through your life. It's going to be a resource. You're going to be in relationship with it and it's going to serve you while you're serving it. This whole idea of giving and receiving, you know, and this idea of mutuality and reciprocity, that's way more important to me than even if I, when I'm in that flow with people, that makes all the difference. That's joy because the world becomes an object that you consume in a consumer society. What else would be on your tombstone?

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