608 | Die With Zero, Revisited

23:09Chris Hutchins:oh, you can outsource so many things. That is completely wrong. I mean, sorry. Yes, you can. That is completely true. But now it just gives me all these abilities. Like two years ago, I never would have filled my time building an iOS app or now an Android app. Like it would have been crazy. Now I feel like all the creativity that runs through my brain fills every waking moment. And there's these competing priorities that are really hard. And this is where I'm really processing what Bill Perkins talked about, which is, you know, what's this the season of life for? Right now, I have like competing things.

23:46Chris Hutchins:It's like now is the season of life to get your health in order because I'm watching my parents' generation and even my parents specifically. It's like the difference between being very, very fit and healthy in your 40s and 50s is the difference potentially between five or 10 years of like being able to do stuff. It might not be five or 10 years alive, but, you know, I look at a lot of the parents' generation of my peers. Some of them are playing tennis and some of them couldn't run if they had to. And some of them, like the activity spectrum of what a 70 to 80 year old person can do is wide. And I don't wanna be on one end of that spectrum.

24:26Chris Hutchins:Okay, so now the season should be my health. The season should be my kids. Given our financial situation, the season doesn't need to be endless work. But for some reason, even if I don't have work, I just fill it with work because I'm excited. And balancing three or four things that I'm excited to do is very hard for me. I don't know the answer yet, but I was talking to you and I feel like you've solved this. It's like, how do you let go when there's a million things you'd want to spend your time doing? Yeah. At first, it comes back to your definition of work. You said, I'm working. I'm filling all this time with work.

25:03But I mean, you would be doing this stuff anyway, even if there's zero dollars potentially. So I think it might be a reframe on the definition, first off, to give yourself a little bit of slack there just to be a little kinder to yourself first off because you're a guy who's interested in things i am too this aaron and i are building a health app that i think can be something real significant where uh it's it's not live yet but it's uh it's gonna be called health decoder and we're trying to to build something that finds the signal in the noise in all of these various things so like i'm thinking exactly on health too it's like this is the time because yeah, I mean, you gave that range of spectrum.

25:42And, but I mean, I see my parents and my dad, certainly like he's at the point where he can't really move very well. I mean, getting up and down off the floor, something that's just like a general human thing. Like there are a lot of people at our parents' age who just, who can't do the basics of life. And you're right, we're not getting any younger. Luckily, we're both pretty fit for our age. But man, if you slack on that for 10 years, it gets a whole lot harder. by no definition is the goal to sit around and do nothing. That's not the goal of AI and having it do all these things for you or reaching FI and having money and not having to quote unquote work.

26:20So, I mean, I think we do need to cut ourselves some slack, but it comes down to, it's like, again, what are you optimizing for? Perkins talks about fulfillment being like these one-off spikes of fulfillment. I've reoriented that. Not that I don't like trips. I just went to Japan for three weeks and saw Eddie Vedder in concert a couple of times and hiked the Kumano Kodo and did all these just incredible things. Those will have those memory dividends that Perkins talks about. And it was a wonderful three weeks. But ultimately, what I'm optimizing for is the best Tuesday I can get. And what that's a proxy for, it's cutesy.

26:59I'm calling at the Tuesday project. It's just the same as Thursday or Saturday or Sunday, whatever. What do you actually want your life to be? What is a great day where the environment is all set up for it to be fantastic? That could come down to weather. It could come down to, for me, it's walkability. Everybody's going to have a different definition, of course, but for me, it's absolutely walkability. Even though I live in America and this is a car-centric society, we're at the point where Aaron and I each separately drove under 500 miles each over the last four months. So we're talking 1 ,000 miles combined over four months.

27:35And there's probably one or two larger trips in there. So you could round to zero, essentially. Not having a car would be great. Being able to walk to grocery stores. Think Europe or something like that. Walk to a grocery store, walk to a gym, have friends around, better weather. all of these little micro things. I'm finding all of these aspects of my life that like, oh, when I go on a trip, I learn, it's not just, oh, I went to Japan. It's, I learned that, again, going back to your health, my HRV and my resting heart rate were dramatically better, like 10 to 15 plus percent better on days when I was outside and walking 20 ,000 steps a day.

28:14Okay. Does that mean every day of my life is going to be 20 ,000 steps? No, of course not. but that's something to remember like my body really thrives on sun and movement all right store that away i really like being able to walk for miles without being bounded by some major road or something like that because i'm getting really like micro here obviously but like you have to get micro because it's not like hey someday i want to move to lisbon or someday i want to move to tokyo it's no i want that micro little area like i'm going to spend weeks probably probably going from Airbnb to Airbnb to find that little neighborhood that I love.

28:53And I think that's what I'm envisioning as this Tuesday project. And so it's like baseline fulfillment. I guess my question to you, well, A, I'm curious, of course, what you think about that, but if you had a choice between an unbelievable two-week vacation every year or really micro-optimizing where every single Tuesday was, I don't know, 20 % better, what do you think would actually produce more lasting happiness over a decade? Do you think, and it's binary. I know I'm setting it up in an arbitrary binary way. No, no, no. I think you posing that question highlights one of the challenges, which is I hear you say that.

29:29And I'm like, why do I have to choose? Why can't I have 50 great Tuesdays and the two week vacation? And I think I've probably am in a situation where I'm starting to realize that the constraints of time, especially with kids and the demands of life lead you to just not being able to do everything you want to do and I know that sounds kind of ridiculous but my wife and I were talking about I have this stupid travel credit and I don't want to get into the nuance of how I came across

30:01Chris Hutchins:basically someone I gotta assume this I got a free three thousand dollar united credit but the The constraints are I have to use it before the end of the year and it can only be used for me. Right. I can't use it to book multiple people. So the idea of using it to take a trip with the family inherently means like, well, if I'm going to spend$3 ,000 on me, well, then that's opening the door to$9 ,000, which I don't need to do. And it costs me nothing. I know a lot of people that are like, you know what? I'll just use it for the next trip and I'll just upgrade myself and like I'll pay a ridiculous amount that I don't really care about because I don't care.

30:37Chris Hutchins:or I'll let it go because I didn't even pay for it in the first place. Who cares? I just start going down this path of, okay, well, what was the best way to do it? And Amy and I were talking and she's like, why this thing is consuming, you know, in a way that like you got this free thing and somehow the free thing is like stressing you out. And we talked about, well, gosh, when we were younger, go find somebody who wants to go to London for the weekend. You know, like there, you just have the time that you can use things like that in easy ways. And now it's like going to London for the weekend doesn't even sound fun.

31:08You know, to your point, it's like the trip has to sound fun to want to invest the energy to take it.

31:14Chris Hutchins:And so I think the thing I'm struggling to accept is that there's a million things I want to do and you just can't do all of them. I think I try to do all of them. And it's easier for me when the trade-offs are binary. It's like, well, if you're going on a trip and you're struggling to pick between two hotels, you're not gonna stay at both of them. So it's like, even though that might be hard, there's not a lot of remorse. Whereas if you're like, well, I wanna build an app for this project I'm working on, and I wanna go spend three hours a day after camp with my kids, and I wanna go work out. There's just not enough time.

31:51Chris Hutchins:You just can't do all those things. And Amy and I are both wired in a way that makes that really hard because we don't like sacrificing. And so Amy spends a tremendous amount of time like trying to make sure that all the food the girls eat and the food we eat at home is like really fresh and healthy. And one time I was like, you know what? I took like peanut butter and jelly in a brown bag to school. And I feel like the quality of kids meals for lunches has really elevated if one day a week we let that drop and that bought back an hour of prep time or we ordered food one night, you know. And Amy and I have these discussions where it's like, what do we want?

32:28Chris Hutchins:Do we want the free time or do we want the kid? Like you have to actually sit down and decide. And so I think with absent the process of thinking through it, which I think, you know, I think Bill Perkins talks about, you got to chalkboard it out. It's like you end up just grasping at whatever's right in front of you. And then, you know, Amy, the other day I was working on this app and she's like, well, I know you really are excited about this app, but you were so focused on it. You weren't really around for something related to the family. And I I was like, you know what, you're right. Like I didn't think about it in advance.

32:59And so I think I just need to cut things from all the stuff I wanna do because I think that frees up time and that will likely lead me to a little bit more satisfaction. That's what I think my reality is. I've got to come to terms with the fact that there's just less time now. And I think I struggle with what to do in that scenario because I think the other challenge is because the wide stretch of what is work,

33:26Chris Hutchins:You know, like if I'm building an app on the side to manage credit card points, like in my brain, that's work. So like all of a sudden work is expanding to fill everything. But that's just a hobby. You know, like it just happens to be related to what I'm doing. and then I think I probably would benefit from some period of time off, not to travel, but to just not have the kind of week-to-week responsibilities. You know, I feel very fortunate, as I'm sure you do, that we get to do what we do for a living, but it's like every Friday night, I put together a newsletter to go out Saturday morning and every Tuesday, I'm finalizing a podcast to go out Wednesday and it feels like there aren't a lot of breaks to even think about other things, not because there's not time on Monday and Thursday, that kind of thing, but just when there's constantly a thing, a deadline every three or four days, it's tough.

34:26And so I haven't really given myself ever the permission to be like, let's just not think about those things for a month.

34:33Chris Hutchins:Can I just not release podcasts in August? And in my mind, I think, well, if I don't release podcasts in August, everyone that listens to the podcast is going to like give up, forget about us, never come back. That's our income and that'll be gone forever. And like, you know, I can't do that. I do like having a thing every week. You know, like I kind of am like, it feels like it forces you to produce something every week. I like that. But I think if I took a month off, it wouldn't be the end of the world. And I think it would just give me a little time to prioritize life. I don't know. I keep telling myself that maybe I would just spend that whole month building another app and like not make any progress.

35:11But I still think that's okay. I don't have an issue with that because if all the hacks didn't exist, if your website didn't exist, you would still be building that and you would still be sending it instead of to tens or hundreds of thousands of people, you'd be sending it to your dozens of friends. You know, you would be doing that. That's just passion led. Like, I don't have an issue with that. I think you need, I don't know, not to give you advice, but like you need to release that. I mean, you do. You need to release that because that's not a negative. That's just who you are and that's what lights you up.

35:39The whole point of living is to find the things that light us up. That's what Perkins is talking about. That's what we're talking about on our shows. That's why we're spending this time. It's like, what lights you up? I think you beat yourself up too much about optimizing. I don't disagree. I think you take it a little too far sometimes, Chris. You're really good at it and you love it. That's great. You figured that out when you're probably a teenager. Don't run away from that. Run away from where this takes over your life. Yeah. You know that you're out of balance sometimes. That's just the nature of who you are.

36:11But don't run away from optimizing. You love that stuff. Yeah, I think it comes down to setting boundaries to make sure the other things that you want don't get consumed by this other thing that's a little compulsive. Yeah. Like it feels like you could wrap yourself around a trip plan for way longer than you need to, or at least I could. And then I think the other thing is, I am curious how you feel about this. This is another little bit of a detour here. So if you have something else, feel free to go there first. But I think one of the big changes that Bill talked about in that episode was, you know, you're chasing the more money, but for why, right?

36:49It's like, what is the goal? You know, I think about taking a month off. I think on one hand, it's not really about the income, but I think it's about the, well, it's not about taking one month off. It's like, what happens with that one month? What does that lead to in the long run? Is that the erasure of all income forever? And I think rationally, that's a ridiculous thing to say. I think we've both seen that in our free time, in our lives, when we stop doing one income producing thing, another thing, like we end up finding another thing. So that's not it. And then the other is just kind of like being honest about the numbers that exist, about where we're at with our current savings.

37:30Because I think, you know when I was listening to Bill critique the financial independence movement his biggest critique was like people just save so much so that they can live off their interest such that they end up with all this extra money and they kind of were too hard on themselves for saving and so I quickly ran some numbers last night because I was in anticipation of this conversation and I did a little bit of research not to go into the level of detail that you and I have when we've talked to Carson, who runs this blog, Early Retirement Now. He was on my show in episode 189. I'm sure he's been on your show without even asking multiple times.

38:08And we dug into that 4 % rule. Bill was like, look, if you're really worried about running out of money, buy an annuity. And so for fun, I was like, well, what percent rule would an annuity be? And the short answer

38:19Chris Hutchins:is it looks like it'd be about 3%. So if you have enough money that you could live off 3 % of it, you could buy an annuity that will cover you and your spouse for the rest of your life if you're worried about the market. So like nobody should be running forecasts with the 2 % rule because like the 3 % rule is the floor because you could buy an annuity. It might be even 3.1%. That was interesting. The second was, maybe you know this, but what percent of the time does someone living off the 4 % rule end up 30 years later with no drawdown on their principal? Meaning if you saved up a million dollars to live on your$40 ,000 a year or$10 million for$400 ,000, at what percent of the time, after 30 years, do you still have the million or the$10 million?

39:08Yeah, it's massively significant. Nick Majulia has talked about this on both of our shows. It's about 96 % of the time.

39:15Chris Hutchins:And so I'm just laughing at how conservative the 4 % rule is. And I know it's a scary thing. But if you look at how much you've saved, should it be the 5 % rule? Should it be the 6 % rule? But I think as you start to look at some of this stuff and you start to factor in your ability to earn and then you factor in how much little you save in retirement, I think sometimes chalkboarding all of that out. and I actually had a lot of fun in a Claude session here because I hooked up my spending from co-pilot money with an MCP. I hooked up Kubera with their MCP so it could actually pull in my spending data.

39:51It could pull in my savings data

39:53Chris Hutchins:and it could like kind of model some stuff out in a fun way that was really true to how I think about things. You got to give yourself some grace here. Like quit worrying about these little things and be willing to take an experiment. And, you know, you taking a month off doesn't mean your income's gone forever. And, you know, there's a million things you could do. And so I think I have to be willing to experiment more. But it's hard to let go of things that you have more than to forego opportunities for more. You know, like it was easy for me to turn down opportunities that would generate more money.

40:27It's hard to give up money or income that you already have. And I think that's one thing I've been learning that, you know, I've learned the ability to not chase more money. I haven't learned the ability yet to let go of income you already have. Okay. I dropped a lot there. So react to any and all of it. First, that's a step in the right direction. I suspect there was a time in your life where chasing income was a big part. I'm putting words in your mouth. You're halfway there. So that's something. But yeah, I mean, loss aversion as it is and humans and especially a lot of people in the fight community craving safety.

41:04I think it's why we all have these ridiculous conservative plans, right? It's like, hey, I'm going OK. I know I probably can do four or five percent withdrawal, but oh, I'm only going to say, like you said, two or three. But I'm also going to factor in that the market's only going to grow at five percent and Social Security is going to be zero dollars. It's like layer upon layer upon layer of conservatism. And it's like, we're just craving that safety. And yeah, I mean, hopefully people can take a deep breath when they hear, okay, well, what you just said was 3%, you can get an annuity. So that means at most you need 33 times your annual expenses and then you're set.

41:45And that's like the most conservative, you know, like if you use the 3 % rule, I assume 99 % of the time you would never touch your principal. Never. In my mind, it's like the 3 % rule is crazy. but I have seen people try to model numbers lower than that which is like which is insane even crazier yeah it's insane so we've just said 33 I say this as someone who has done that like who has in the past wanted to get more conservative than that if you're listening to this being like why is he calling me I'm calling myself crazy or at least my former self yeah Perkins of course he has some criticisms of the fight community but most of them are good-natured in the sense that I think he understands us at our essence in that we're trying to get to a baseline where we have options.

42:30There's nobody that can tell me that that's a bad idea. I think clearly pursuing FI and getting to a point of financial independence only gives you options. It only gives you freedom and autonomy. These are universal benefits and truths. So I have no issue with that. I think where a lot of people in the FI community go wrong, and this is, I think, Bill's critique as well, is it's hard to stop sometimes. It becomes a scorecard or it just becomes an identity of I'm a saver. And I think that's where, when you're not looking at your life, when you're not looking at net fulfillment, as he talks about, you can lose track of what actually matters because having$20 million when you die doesn't matter.

43:11That doesn't help you.

43:12Chris Hutchins:Unless you add like this extreme goal to build a thing and do it. But I think Bill would argue if that's your goal, spend that 20 million before you die so that you can start to see it go, you know, be a thing. Right. Right. And the money is going to come on anyway. Like, so why not in this crazy instance? Like you want to put your name on or you want to build a hospital. OK, well, maybe you if you know the money is going to double every eight or nine years and you're 16 years away, you could still give that amount of money. and you just knowing that it'll double to the amount that quadruple in that case, 16 years hence, wouldn't that be cool to help as opposed to when you're dead?

43:52I know this is kind of a weird example, but give the money away now, start building plans, work on it. That would be a whole lot more fun. Another example is, and Bill's talked to us, I don't know that he necessarily talked about it in your episode, but when we think about giving money to our kids, like, oh, my kids are going to inherit money when I die. Well, at that point, hopefully, especially if I live to 90 or a hundred, my kids are going to be 70. Like they don't need my damn money at that point. That doesn't make any sense. Are they going to need it when they're 25 or 30, a whole lot more than when they're 70.

44:25So maybe reorient that type of thing too, right? Again, it's seasons of life. And when can this money be useful? I think this can reorient a lot of ways that you think about about life and spending and time and just all the important stuff, Chris. So funny enough, before you go, I got an email from someone about that exact topic, which was, I listened to the episode.

44:49Chris Hutchins:I was thinking about leaving money to my kids. They've got good jobs. They don't need the money now. So it kind of feels weird. And one thing I brought up, which I said, look, your kids have a good job. They've got good savings. They don't need the money now, but you never know what might be holding them back, right? Maybe they really wish that they could send their kids to this special private school, but it feels a little bit of a stretch. Maybe they really want to move and they're stressed out because they locked in this low interest rate mortgage and it's really challenged them. There might be things that someone who is objectively well off is still hesitating on that that could have an impact.

45:29Chris Hutchins:And he was like, wow, I hadn't really thought about it like that. And that was one thought. But the other funny thing, as I talk about kids, you know, I feel like when I listened to this episode and did it almost four years ago, it was like, I felt really good about not chasing more money, like turning off the net worth goal. And then kids got a little older. I'm like, wow, you got summer camp. You got these classes they wanted, like the after school. Are they going to do gymnastics? Do they want to do karate? Do they want to do art? And all of a sudden, I'm like, they just keep getting more and more expensive.

46:03Like, it's just unbelievable. And then there's this one listener who sends me these funny emails.

46:08Chris Hutchins:He's like, whatever you do, don't let your child ever ice skate because my daughter went ice skating. And now you wouldn't want to believe how much money I'm spending traveling around the world going to ice skating competitions. And like, you know, it was like a joking thing. It wasn't like never take your kid ice skating. But it was just a highlight of like, wow, I thought I thought this is where we're at. Now it feels like every year there's these more expenses and more expenses. And so I feel like on one hand, that's a thing. On the other hand, you kind of recalibrate and you really have to realize that as you're learning right now, a lot of those things at a certain point are going to go away.

46:49Chris Hutchins:You were talking to me the other day, the house you have now, you know, to handle your entire family now, you don't need that. like a lot of the stuff you don't need. You're certainly probably not gonna be, you know, maybe through the college years, there's expenses, but maybe after that, there's a lot less expenses. And so I had used to build my models on like, how are we doing on the amount of money we're spending each year? And then it felt at first harder because the amount of money spending was going up, but you have to recalibrate for the amount of spending, you know, in 17 years going way drastically down.

47:24Totally. Absolutely. And not to mention where you live in particular, and I'm not saying you have to move or will move or even think about moving, but you live in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country and world, and you have two young kids. You are at the absolute high of where you're going to spend money. So to model that at a 2 % withdrawal rate or even a 3 % withdrawal rate based on your current expenses is utterly preposterous.

47:47Chris Hutchins:I completely agree. And something we talked about was you could model it and be like, I want to be conservative. And it's like, what are you hedging against? So we're hedging against the risk that we run out of money where we are. Well, what's better? To hedge against that risk by working harder or not spending or something? or accepting that in the circumstance that that, you know, if 96 % of the time you never even touch your, you know, your principal, you know, for the 4%, do we want to hedge for the 4 % by saving more and spending less and working longer? Or do we want to hedge for the 4 % by saying in that rare, rare, rare scenario?

48:26Chris Hutchins:And by the way, that's not spending any principal. So it's probably like the 2 % that you'll actually run out of money. In that rare scenario, couldn't the hedge instead of be work longer, spend less, save more, couldn't it be in that scenario, we'll move? In that scenario, we'll cut back. In that scenario, one of us goes and gets a job that we weren't planning on. And I think because it's so unlikely to happen, it's probably better to hedge in a different way. And so we don't want to leave the Bay Area. But I'd rather plan on leaving the Bay Area in the 1 % of the cases where planning around a 5 % rule might like drastically be an issue, then have to plan around a 3 % rule, which kind of wildly, I know it sounds silly being like three or five, but the difference between three and 5 % is a very big difference.

49:19Yeah, it's massive. So I don't know. That's something I've been thinking about lately is how do you want to hedge that risk? Like what's the hedge? And the hedge is that we'll just do less and we'll change things because honestly,

49:30Chris Hutchins:you know, I'm looking at my parents also and like what they want to do in their life from 70s to hopefully, you know, 90s isn't that expensive. You know, like I think my mom's dream would be to live in a retirement community with a bunch of other people and like play bridge and canasta and hang out and drink coffee and like walk around a garden. And I think if she never went on another international trip again, she'd be totally fine. I don't think she would care. I don't think that's a priority for her, which means inherently that her life could be way less expensive than, you know, I'm probably budgeting mine will be then.

50:05And I think we all say, well, you know, we'll be different. But Bill kind of pointed out, like, seems like we probably won't. Like, it seems like I can tell you that I'm not going to want to do that in 30 or 40 years. I probably will. Right. And she's not settling. That sounds like a wonderful life. Life is not about, to me at least. It's not about just these one-off trips. It's about organizing a life that you want to live every day. And now, like you said very aptly earlier, it's not binary. It's not one or the other. You can have both. It goes back to the Perkins quote. You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money.

50:44I think ultimately it comes down to a lot of us are seeking safety. But just hearing that quote, you can say, all right, look, I know the numbers. I know this is, I have some, some fear in the back of my mind, but what I know for certain is every day I'm running out of time. So that's like a metaphysical certainty. You are running out of time. Like to not enjoy that time. It makes no sense to me. It makes no sense. And in your case, you're talking about like, we could move. It's like a, in case of emergency break glass, right? Like we can move or one of us could go back to work. Like, yes, of course.

51:21Of course. You're not going to run off a cliff like a lemming down to$0 in net worth. You're just not. There's no world where that's going to happen. It just, it isn't. Again, knowing that we're seeking psychological safety, maybe having that plan for moving to wherever is just nice to have in the back of your mind. Because again, it lowers that ambient stress of what if, what if, what if, what's going to happen? What if some terrible thing happens? Okay, well, you have the$50 ,000 a year plan. That sounds pretty good. that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to just have in your back pocket, just to lower that stress.

51:56And we talked about this on the phone. And I've really gotten to the point where I'm just kind of getting rid of everything. And it's not like some weird minimalism kick. It's just more like, I'm just trying to get to the essence of what my life is. I've really come to the conclusion that there is nothing. So I literally mean no thing. There is no thing that makes me happy. Happiness is an internal state and not to get all deep on you, but it's an internal state for me. And that's why, again, I'm trying to optimize for my everyday, for my environment, for just what do I want around me? Who are the people that I want around me on every single day?

52:37Not I'm organizing my life just to climb Kilimanjaro or Fuji or something. Like not that there's anything wrong with that. I suspect I'll do both of those things. And that's wonderful. But I'm at the point where I need a small little apartment, one suitcase of clothes. I can move into if I move into a furnished apartment anywhere in the world. I had my suitcase of clothes, a passport, a credit card, my Bitwarden password and my Dropbox password. Because I'm pretty much set. I know you said that. And I was like, I can't believe you don't include a computer on that list. like my brain can't comprehend, but I'm jealous that you don't.

53:16But I don't need it. I know. I buy a$400 computer like I have my stupid$400 computer here. Yeah, yeah. That is, I mean, when my friend Kevin lost his house in the fires in LA, it was really interesting to just hear him be like, gosh, I really didn't need all that stuff. You know, like, not that he didn't like it. Not that his new house doesn't have some of the same stuff, but his attachment to the stuff is so much lower. That was really interesting. and I've been thinking about that a lot. It's like, what is all this stuff? You know, like, why do we have it? Would you rebuy it? Would you rebuy it?

53:51I think that to me is like, is a fun thought experiment going through. And like, and I'm not trying to say I'm some like wonderful paragon of virtue here with, not that there's anything virtuous about being minimalist, but there were things that I would rebuy. Like, I love my Bose noise canceling headphones. And I'm sure you probably have some maximizer way to, oh, well, this brand would be better. I'm kidding with you, obviously. but I love my Bose noise-canceling headphones. If those broke tomorrow, I would buy another pair. There were plenty of things that I would buy again. It's not to say don't own anything, but it's, what would you, again, Kevin's example with the fire is obviously the extreme example, but again, as a thought exercise, that could happen.

54:27I've actually used those words in my own walking through this condo that I'm renting. If I had a fire, what would I actually miss? And I'm at the point where there's virtually nothing. I have one box of keepsakes for my entire life, basically. I could probably digitize most of it if I even cared to. What are you optimizing for, Chris? I think that's the question we need to ask ourselves. And this is the work. This is the thought exercise. I will say, just since I can't not say it, if you did have to rebuy your Bose headphones, you can buy them at Dell. And all these Amex business platinum cards have Dell credits.

55:02So, you know, that would be my answer to someone that needed to replace their Bose headphones is go get an Amex business platinum, get a huge signup bonus, use the Dell credits to buy the headphones. I'll get a credit from either you or Noah. Yeah, yeah. Like, but use Rakuten and go get your 10x points. So like, I'm not going to ever stop doing those things. But I'm with you. And that work is something I want to spend a lot of time on. I'm curious, what things do you think you are going to do differently having re-listened to this episode? Because I know I did a lot of things differently when I first heard it.

55:37I identified some things that I want to change and then some things just clicked like a light. I'll give one example. There was one thing when I re-listened to this episode that I was like, I have a mission for this year. I have some friends who weren't at our wedding and they're like, now some of my closest friends.

56:01Chris Hutchins:And it's like, you know, it's such a bummer because, you know, the memory dividends from our wedding are high. And I assume that's probably true for many people. And I hate that there are just like certain people that, yes, I'm sure I could AI superimpose them into my wedding video now, but they weren't there. And I had said, you know, I kind of always wanted to do like a reunion-ish thing where it's like basically bring together all of the great people in your life and do something. That said, a friend of mine is getting married and, you know, he this is his second wedding. And I'm just like, wow, it is a lot to bring people together for an adults only thing.

56:36And it's halfway around the country. But there are a bunch of people that I want to spend time with. And so my goal, and I haven't even brought this up with Amy, so I need to make sure she's on board. I kind of want to do like a summer camp for all of the friends, their kids. Like, you know, I remember my wife and I watched this show, Marvelous Miss Maisel. and in it they go to this like summer camp for families kind of thing and and i think when i was

57:04Chris Hutchins:growing up the church we went to had something like this i don't know of that now and i want to create it like i want to find a place where we can get a bunch of places houses and like hire people to make you know fun activities so that kids can do stuff like it's basically like i want to go to summer camp for families but like i want to be the orchestrator because i don't want I don't want to go find a church that does this and join them. I want to be able to invite all the people I know. Everyone can have a plus one family. So it's like a set of things. I'm going to this conference. It's like bringing together interesting people.

57:41Chris Hutchins:That's awesome. But it would be also awesome to bring together interesting people and their wives and husbands and kids and maybe dogs and go out and do something. And I don't even think it would be that expensive because people would want this. So that is something that it would just like clicked where it's like, you know what? I don't want to have a second wedding reception. You know, that's not what I want. What I want is next summer, 2027. I want to pick a week and I want to find a place and invite a bunch of people and have it be this awesome family summer camp style thing. That's what I want to do.

58:18Chris Hutchins:If you ask me, when is the season of life to do it? Well, all of us have these young kids and they can run around. and like now's the season of life to do it. And maybe it comes together 2027, maybe it comes together 2028. I don't really know, but that is one thing. And then this woman I know who has been talking about how she takes her family and they go live somewhere else in the summer and the kids go to camps there or they go to classes. And this year she's in San Sebastian. Amy and I have said, we want to do that. I realized these are a little bit in conflict, like go live in another country for the summer and host this summer camp, you know, that might be in conflict.

58:55But those two things are like things that I think right now is a seasonal time in life to do. And they take some thought, you can't just like last minute plan those things. And so I want to start putting those things in motion. But that's not all, but I'm going to throw it back to you. Are there things that re listening to this kind of pushed you to challenge what you're doing and what you'll do differently. I want to just touch on yours or cook. I love that concept of the summer camp. It's funny because we both grew up on the East Coast. There was a place in Pennsylvania, I think it was called Woodlock Pines.

59:30And my family went there. It was similar to that. There were like all these fun games and just different Olympics and all you can eat restaurants. It was this great little camp thing. When you said that, it just brought me right back to it. And it was like, talk about memory dividends. That was a big thing for our family.

59:45Chris Hutchins:I remember we did talent shows, like all that stuff. It was awesome. That was the coolest thing. And even a couple of years back, so I was part of a mastermind. It was really an inner work kind of men's group. One of the guys has this amazing, amazing place in New Jersey. He invited all 20 out of us there. And we had a weekend where we played games. We had different teams and we had, yeah, there were different sporting events. We all cooked dinners together. It was just, it was amazing. It's funny how those things really stick out. So yeah, I love that. Just the concept of play and getting people together.

1:00:19So anyway, I fully endorse your idea. I love that. And I would love to hear the update if that actually happens next year. For me, the episode was a reminder that I think I've been pretty good at following through on a lot of the concepts, but there are times where I listen to something, I'm like, oh, I'm definitely going to do that. In this case, it was his concept of time buckets and coming up with like an actual list. I know I've talked this whole episode about optimizing more for an average day than for like those one-off events. But I think it would be fun to really dream about those one-off events because I don't think that's something I do that often.

1:00:58I don't know. I don't know why. Cause like, you know, I have those couple of things like climbing Fuji and whatnot, but I really don't take a step back and broadly think about, all right, look, I've got probably 40 years left if I'm lucky. What are the things that I absolutely want to do in those years? And what are the times or time periods that I can do them in? So I hope, I can't promise, but I hope that this is a call to action for me to actually sit down and brainstorm that list. Because I think it would be valuable. I thought it would have been valuable in December of 22 when I heard your episode.

1:01:33And of course, it's almost four years later and I haven't done it. So yeah, maybe this is the kick in the pants that I need. I think that's what this trip hopefully will be. You know, my wife and I were talking with another, I think it was another couple, and we talked about how we'd been to Bora Bora before. And they're like, well, what do you do there? And we're like, nothing. They're like, oh, I don't know if that'd be fun. And I was like, yeah, for us, sometimes it's nice to have nothing to do. Now, that doesn't mean we sit in bed all day. Like we might go paddle boarding, we might go on a hike, but it is not go, go, go, go, go.

1:02:05And because we've been a couple of times, it's not do stuff for the sake of doing stuff. You know, if you watch a video in a lot of places like French Polynesia that are like on YouTube, it's like top 10 things to do. It's like, well, you could go shop for pearls in the market.

1:02:20Chris Hutchins:It's like nine out of the 10 things they suggest. I'm like, I don't want to do those things. I just want to go snorkel out the beach, out the door of the overwater bungalow, like something. I want to just relax. I want to go, it's July. I want to go watch the World Cup and have no distractions, you know? Like I do have this like slight thing of like, wouldn't it be kind of cool to be in French Polynesia if France is in the final? Like that'd be fun. You don't have to go all the way to France where it's, you know, an oven in Europe right now, which would also be fun. So my three takeaways, and there's probably a lot more as I continue processing, it's like one, I got to go to this trip book, then I got to stop messing around.

1:02:58Use the trip to actually plan out what we want to do and like lay the groundwork for this one thing that I really want to do, which is this kind of summer camp thing, which is kind of themed with the broader thing that maybe you've experienced, maybe your walking community has

1:03:15Chris Hutchins:changed, is that when you don't go to the office every day, it's like if you look at all your closest friends, most of them I've made either through like communities of shared interest or work. And I've been fortunate to go to a handful of like points and miles related events, which practically I'm going to because that's my new office, if you will, because I don't have an office. So like, I think I want to do something to better build a community where I am because I don't have work for it. And so this is as simple as one thing we kind of committed to already. so I can't let the episode take credit for it, is we're going to kick off a Nick Gray style four hour cocktail party theme, which is an episode I did.

1:04:05You can go search for Nick Gray or cocktail party, but we're going to do just like pizza night. You know, we do this all the time. Friday night is always pizza and movie night. We're going to do pizza night and maybe we'll do it on a weekend where you could start a little earlier, but just start inviting like open invitation to all these people we're meeting, um kids mostly when i say people we're meeting it's like all of our kids friends parents right and start to build the community of people that are probably going to be our friends because we don't have the work friends and so it's going to be the school and parent friends and i want to build that and find the right people and so we're just going to start doing this kind of regular you know bring whatever ingredients you want get a bunch of dough and sauce and like we have a little pizza oven and we'll just like kids can run around the backyard you know that kind of stuff so that's like something that we want to kick off i love that nick would want me to ask are you going to have the name tags in the icebreakers you know i i'm not opposed to having the name tags in the icebreakers at all they actually really help i am a huge fan of like like i'm going to this conference and they're like let's get a directory and send it to people like i don't know why certain events make it so hard to figure out who other people are and so yeah for sure will have name tags icebreakers it depends like if it's all a bunch of kids that are in the same class and everyone already knows each other maybe not but also it's kind of fun it is kind of fun yeah i love that i think name tags are essential so that that's really great i i've always wanted to do that where all right here's an open invite it's hard to plan sometimes which is why i actually like you just impromptu called me the other day and i'm like this is awesome and i actually it It spurred me on.

1:05:43I happened to be in the car and I made a couple other just random impromptu phone calls and they're fun sometimes. Years ago, I almost wanted to have this text list when my kids were younger, like, hey, we're going up to the elementary school to go play in the playground. If anybody's free, just come and join us. We'll be there for the next two hours. It's so hard sometimes to organize plans. People really, they thrive off. We thrive off getting together with other people. Community is important. Friendship is important. These random one-off conversations, they're fun. And it's sometimes hard in our little suburban islands unto ourselves.

1:06:19I love that idea because I think anything you can do to kind of lower the barrier to actually having in real life connection is wonderful. So it sounds like you have a lot more plan than I do. But like the impromptu phone call, this will maybe spur me on to do something. I think I'm new to the kids in school thing. Unlike you, you know, you after years, you've probably built up your network of friends through your kids, parent, that kind of thing. But I was like, we moved to a new place in the middle of COVID with kids that aren't in school. And like, yes, it's been five years and we've met lots of people.

1:06:52But I don't think we've built that kind of community that I want. And so when I heard Bill just talking about things, I was like, that's what I want to do. Like, that's what we need to prioritize. Now, where we find the time, that's what I need to work on. Like, what I need to work on is what am I willing to say no to? And that's hard because when I get excited about a thing,

1:07:12Chris Hutchins:in a way that's probably a superpower and kryptonite, I can't stop. Building an iOS app is something like completely unnecessary. And I'm like, so excited about building it, even if I never shipped it. You know, it's not about the end result. It's that I'm just so excited about the learning and the process and the tweaking. And, you know, I'm like designing icons. The most ridiculous thing is I was sitting there like hand drawing SVGs in Figma to make sure that the icons were great for an app that I might not even ship to that many people for a tab on the app that might not exist, you know, like because I might change it.

1:07:51Chris Hutchins:And I just like get so enthralled and wrapped up into it. But I'm not 20 or 30 anymore where I can stay up and pull all nighters if I'm excited about something and no repercussions. And like, I need to figure out that balance of you just don't have all the time. And where does it come from? I don't know. But if you let your health slip now, you're certainly trading future time. And so, you know, some of the things that I think short term get sacrificed are sometimes actually not what you want if you think about them. whether it's family or health or that kind of stuff. So it was really another good kick in the pants.

1:08:25I probably have regressed 10 % in the net worth tracking from where I was post-episode, but that one I feel like I'm still pretty good at. But the optimizing, if I'm not optimizing for net worth and I am optimizing for net fulfillment, you gotta do the work to figure out what that means for you, right? I think Bill defined net fulfillment as the sum of all your experiences in life relative to what the ideal set of experiences is. And if you don't take the time to think about what that is for you, then you can't possibly live a life maximizing your net fulfillment if you don't know what the experiences you want to have are.

1:08:58Agreed. Something you said in there, you have to do the work. I think you always have to do the work. A lot of us are, to quote my kids, like NPCs in life, like the non-player characters. But I don't think a lot of people listening to this show are, or my show. And you have to do the work as part of it you can't just sleepwalk through life you absolutely cannot so hopefully this is a call to action for both of us and for everybody listening i think uh i think people are going to enjoy this and take a lot out of it chris i definitely want to hear your updates and uh i'll do likewise yeah i'm going to try to remember to to follow up on this i'll maybe take less than three and a half years to to loop back to it nice but i find that the combo of trying to buy back some time and reflect on stuff, I've been thinking, you know, gosh,

1:09:48Chris Hutchins:I've been re-listening to old episodes. You know, it's been weird. Like, I know that there are some people who have listened since the beginning, and maybe they have better memory than I do, and maybe they put those episodes into action better than I did. And so maybe when we pull an episode out of the archive, it's not as powerful to them. But I'm like, gosh, I've been thinking about some of these topics, knowing that I've covered them, you know, going back and listening them has been really valuable because sometimes, as crazy as it sounds, in the middle of the conversation as the host, I don't take it all away as well as I do if I come back to it or if I sit on it and come back to it.

1:10:23So one solution is by a couple weeks, one solution might be go pull out a few more of these greatest hits. And I'm not doing this every week. That's not the end goal. But I think trying to leverage some of the knowledge I already have from work I've already done has been really valuable. I agree. It's funny because I'm actually interviewing somebody who I haven't talked to in almost nine years in about 35 minutes here. I listened to her episode from 2017 and yeah, it was really interesting. Other than one thing I said about my life that's not true anymore, I could just hit upload on that tomorrow and it would be as valuable of an episode as i've done in five years it because it was a fantastic episode i suspect you have a lot of those i have a lot of those and yeah going back to again what you said an hour ago is all right well maybe that's a way that you can get that month quote unquote off but still provide amazing value to your community is you hand curating four episodes that are just amazing and are as timeless today as they were then.

1:11:35I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. Certainly. I think they'd get a lot of value. And sometimes it's easy to get caught up. And this is myopic for us. But hopefully this is a larger issue that people could take away from it. It's like, again, with your newsletter and my newsletter. Yeah, there are going to be a couple of people who are like, oh, I really love getting that newsletter on Saturday, in your case, or Tuesday day in mind. But at the end of the day, when it shows up five weeks later, they're happy, they're enjoying it. And nobody's like mad at you that, oh, Chris, Chris talks about optimizing and making a better life.

1:12:09And he took a month off to have a better life. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Is that the person you want in your community? No, of course not. So tell them you know where to tell them to go to. Yeah. Brad, this has been fun. I'm really excited. Thanks for joining me for people that aren't familiar with ChooseFi, choosefi.com. You got the newsletter. You've got the podcast. Definitely check it out. For anyone here that isn't hearing this on your feed, you can go to allthehacks.com and find what I'm up to, my newsletter and show. This has been fun. Yeah, and talk about in real life. We just wanted to mention, if you're in the financial independence community, you're interested, we have 300 ChooseFi local groups in 300 cities across the world, including the Bay Area, of course.

1:12:52chooseover.com slash local. And this is what it's all about is finding these communities. What's great is you and I jumping on a call and an episode like this happens. And we talked years ago about doing like little roundup episodes or like little random shows a la Tim and Kevin. And that's the fun about life is serendipity. So hopefully this spurs us on to do another one. Not too long. That sounds great.