Getting Personal with Personal Finance: Vicki Robin & Ginger | Ep 541

29:33And last year, actually the year before last, I discovered this company called Rhodes Scholar, which is a theoretically over 50 travel adventure company. And I did a six day whitewater rafting trip with them and I had a ball and I probably spent twice or three times what I would have spent had I, you know, had to find the company, if I had to design everything myself. Yeah. And so, yeah. Okay. Okay. Vicki, you know, Just let other people figure it out for you and pay the surcharge. And it's a reasonably priced travel company. So things like that. I've had a lot of delayed inner processing, a lot of growing up and healing wounds to do that came from my younger life.

30:29And I just overwrote them because I had places to go and things to do and people to meet and things to accomplish. And so there has been quite a bit of remedial work, if you will, on self-examination. And I have spent money on that. And I would have never done that in the past. So I've invested some of the surplus in teachers who have really accelerated my path and held up mirrors that I would have never held up to myself. and in the past it would have been an indulgence you know and i will say you know it's like this is the payoff of a lifelong frugality is you actually have enough money you know i used to joke that i'm gonna die and you're gonna find a million dollars in my mattress because you know like there's stories about you know a woman taking an ironing and that she was a millionaire so she wouldn't spend so it's balancing this is a difficult thing balancing the safety of money to see you through to the end.

31:34I used to say, I want to die with a dime in my pocket, but not a day later. In other words, I wanted to spend down everything, but that's not possible because you may outlive your money. So how do you do this? How do you, you know, balance, but I'm pretty much aware of what surplus I have, you know, what the monopoly money is in my life. And I spend it every year. You know, my basic nut is keeps pumping out, but the surplus I spend, I bought a house 12 years ago and, you know, I just plunked a lot of money into just owning a house that was on the market for a long time because it had some problems with it.

32:14So I did fix it up and it's been like, I had a refrigerator where I had to arrange things on different shelves because some places the refrigerator would freeze my vegetables, you know, so I had to like, and I thought, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I bought myself a new fridge and it was like, oh God, I got a new fridge. And these may seem like such normal purchases. So I guess maybe there's a message here, which is that when you get older, even if you're not decrepit, even if your mind is working perfectly, you really want more ease. And the kind of things that you could do in your 30s, like, you know, live in a 10 by 10 room, you know, with five roommates, and your bicycle hanging off the roof, sailing so that you can save, you know, 90 % of your income.

33:07You know, that's sort of, you can keep doing that, but it's actually a degradation of life. So there is a way in which, and this is back to like supporting yourself when you're in your eighties and beyond, there is a way that you realize that I might not have, I might be, you know, upright, I'm walking, but I might not have the, my body might not have the will to do the things that I've done when I'm younger. And it's not just so go ye forth and, you know, climb Mount Everest, which you might do while you have a really great body. But it's also just sort of forgiving yourself in advance for the fact that you are going to not have the oomph that you had and that you're going to spend more money.

33:54So I'm very, very glad I have this. And what I did with my house, which is a very fire thing, is it's a split entry house, very, very typical box. And on the ground floor is a family room and a garage. And so I converted both into studio apartments. So like I get income from, I said, I want my house to be a site of production, not a site of consumption. So, you know, and that's a fire thing to do. You know, you buy a duplex, you live on one side and and you pay your mortgage with the other. So my habits of maximizing return on investments, like I bought one of the first hybrid cars, it was a little Honda Insight.

34:41And I had that for, I don't know, 15 years. But when it was really on its last legs, and I bought an all electric car, because I'm an early adopter of all things that might save the planet. So I had that insight. and I rented it on the QT. Somebody moved here and they needed a car for three months. Well, you know, so I'm clever in that way to be able to mobilize what I have into income. I don't know if I'm answering your question. I'm just thinking about how my spending has changed. Yeah, I know a few people who are recently retired in their 60s and who really struggle with spending money now.

35:28And I mean, I think this is common no matter what age, if you've been frugal. And I hear you saying like, yeah, that was hard for me. And that was something that I needed to kind of reassess and think about in a different way. Can you speak to how you did that? Like, was it just a matter of time or was it really working on changing your thinking? it was definitely changing my thinking. It was watching my mind. It was an embarrassing mind. I mean, I would buy something that felt like a treat. Maybe it was$4. And then I would not buy something that I wanted that was$4 in order to make up for it.

36:07Nobody was counting. My mind was doing it. I called it cash register consciousness. I think the biggest recommendation is to develop another stream of passive income, whether it's, you know, renting my car or converting parts of my house. And even that I felt like I have a pile of money and I'm taking it off the top. And so if I have to not take too much off the top because I have no inflow or I have a fixed inflow and I could overspend, and then I don't have as much of my stored wealth to throw off money. And so I recently, you know, I've done everything pretty much for free, although I stumbled into, you know, being an author of a bestselling book, which was great.

36:59and I recently thought, you know, I need to convince my mind that I can earn money at this point in my life. And the fact of the matter is, is that I have a super popular blog on Substack that I haven't monetized because I didn't want to. I just wanted readers. But I thought, no, you can do that. You can do some coaching and, you know, classes and stuff like that, you could ask for money. So it's made a difference for me, you know, not so much. I mean, I've gotten a little bit of money from it, but it made a difference in the psychology of I can still earn if I need to. If I spend down some of that pile, I have this other income.

37:45And then, you know, when you get a lot older, you can, you could do a reverse mortgage if you plan to stay in your house, So if you have tangible wealth, which I have, I have this house and I bought a rental house when there was like a little dip in the market and I just snatched up a house. It was incredibly well-priced. And I have great renters and they do repairs. And I lowered their rent because it was like, what? You're doing that? And we have such a great relationship. The stove died and they bought a new stove. But really, so I could definitely raise their rent year by year, the maximum amount and harvest more money from that investment.

38:32But that's a nice relational investment. You know, we're partners in well being. Yeah. Yeah. So I've, since living here, I've created more avenues of passive income, not totally passive because I have to maintain the objects. You know, if you retire when you're 60 and you've been in the fire community, so you've been forced to be like creative, you know, because I think fire is very creative. You can do that. You can create other passive income. And the empowerment that comes from that is really, I found it made a difference. Yeah, I think this is a counterintuitive answer, right? Where I said, well, how do you learn to spend money and feel okay about it?

39:15And you spoke to, well, what's underneath that anxiety? Like, why is it hard to spend? And can you address that? So it's not, oh, I can just start to feel better about spending, but I can start to find my strength. Like I can start to think about all of the resources that I can bring to this if the time comes. And that knowledge, even if you don't end up starting a business or you don't end up making extra money, can influence how you feel about spending money, right? Because this doesn't have to be the last dollar I ever earn. I still have the ability to make money. Yeah. I used to call it pin money.

39:53And it's a different activity from having developed the habit of making money and you can't really, you know, your identity gets a big ding if you're not making money because you identify with your income. That's different. Yeah. Yeah. You're asking questions that I have to be thoughtful about. Yeah, I mean, it was really hard. You know, when I moved here, you know, this is, as I said, it's what's called a NORC, Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. and I moved into a village with a lot of homeowners who had considerably more wealth than I did. It was hard at first to even socialize, you know.

40:31Let's go out to lunch. Okay. And I order the cup of soup, you know, and they order, you know, the pile of muscles and then they say, let's split the bill. Oh, no. So it's so many layers. is, you know, identity, self-respect, respect of others. And I think the other thing I'm cultivating is a sense of abundance. And abundance doesn't mean there's always more money where that came from, but that the world is, yeah, that there's so much abundance in nature and in love and other people and spirituality and in gratitude. And, you know, I mean, when you call, you go on to abundance. It's not like, ooh, that costs too much money.

41:18I have to save it. It's that, wow, I get to have enough money to buy the plate of muscles if I want to. So it's an abundance attitude and it hasn't, it served me well. That's another thing I guess we We have to adapt. You know, we've had a frugality attitude in order to get to FI. And then you cross over and you need an abundance attitude of there's so much pleasure. There's so much to see and do. There's just air to breathe. You know, it's just getting up in the morning and just thinking what amazing thing is going to happen today. You know, I wonder if there'll be birds coming to the bird feeder.

42:02You know, it's like not like, oh, God, you know. my refrigerator's in the fritz or something. So maybe that's a part of the shift from being an earner to being retired is to develop an abundance attitude that isn't about making another million. Really understanding what enough is and how big enough is. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So enoughness in the accumulation phase is like, it takes a lot of attention to like oh yeah that bite of food was just right and this bite of food was more than enough so i'm going to stop and that's a beautiful attention to sufficiency but there's a built-in sufficiency in the world because nature is it's a self-generating self-nourishing self-replenishing world that we live in.

42:58And even if you are in this society, not part of the 1 % or the 10%, there's still so much to enjoy. Yeah. So in pleasure, that's another part of it is, you know, maybe you've been into self-denial in order to get to FI. But what would it be like to just to focus on the pleasure of existence? That's really focus of mine. You know, yeah, I think that the more I shed the identities and the fears, etc, the freer my mind is. And I think that's where I'm headed in, in this coming of aging, as I call my blog. There is a sort of a vast ocean out beyond all the restrictions, you know, all the shoals and the reefs and all that dangerous passage out of the harbor.

43:55There's something beautiful out there. And it's not just heaven after you die. It's something else that I'm just discovering what it is. Yeah, that's so beautiful. I think what I hear you saying is that you've gotten really good at putting your attention on things as you've gotten older, and that you have really really put your attention on your inner life. And like, how can I make connections? And how can I really be a part of this community? And that giving attention to those things has brought such meaning and richness to your life. I can tell you're a very intentional person. And I wonder if this careful attention, like if there's anything that has been hard to put your attention on as you've gotten older?

44:40Well, death, for one. Well, the big one. I don't want to think about that. You know, I know for a fact that I will die. Yeah. But my mind will not go there. Yeah. I was gonna say you're ahead of so many of us because we don't think we will. that's part of what I realized you know my come to Jesus moment of turning 78 and realizing I'm in the part of my life where death is you know like I'm not in the part of life where death is later so yeah um there's plenty I don't want to put my attention yeah but intention is pleasure for me it's not duty and you know the pandemic gave me time to learn the craft of writing I mean I've written written written written but I was more like an activist more like a warrior like I'm writing things to convince other people and in this period of time I've had just the joy and pleasure of learning the craft of storytelling and telling stories from my life.

45:51And I just get up in the morning and I sit down. I have a writing group from seven to eight. So that puts me in the chair. And I just love it, you know? And a lot of people my age or, you know, someplace in here start to do memoir. And it's not just, it's not like writing your autobiography, you know, maybe selling three copies to your family or something. it's that process of self-reflection it's that process of making something out of the material of your life yeah and it's a big activity of this period of time is self-reflection however you do it yeah i mean would i like to have some rich person with a boat sail me around the world sure You know, are there pleasures that, you know, if I had more money, I might do?

46:49What about this? I guess this is kind of related to the death question. But one thing that maybe I had not expected, so I'm 46 now. And in the last few years, I have started to feel urgency that I have not felt before, right? About really coming to grips with, hey, if I'm gonna do such and such thing, it has to fit in in these years ahead and there aren't endless years ahead. And so that's not, that sounds like wisdom. That sounds good, but it's not good. It's like panic, right? It's like, it's very difficult feeling for me to sort of work with. and a worry I have is that that urgency is going to be heightened every year.

47:39And I wonder if you have ever had that experience or what that's like for you now. Do you feel kind of that urgency? I don't feel urgency, but I do at this point. I feel like if old dreams are going to get realized, it's now. So it's more like priority than urgency. Even when you just say that word, it calms me down a little, right? Like even just saying like, okay, think about your priorities, right? And that feels like a manageable thing. Like, oh yeah, we can make choices about what we care about the most. Yeah. I mean, isn't that what we do all our, you know, the whole fire path is a path of choices.

48:23you know what's most important to me now and in the future what's going to bring me the most happiness what's going to be most important and I think it's difficult you know they call it a midlife crisis I didn't have that but I think that is the moment and it's sort of about your age you know at least they talk about it for men I don't know about women but it probably happened for you know women it probably happens earlier when they realize that they're not going to ovulate forever where it's like okay you know 20 years ago I thought the world was my oyster I had every option you know the future was was just full and free but this is the point where you realize limitation and there are choices that you made in the past that probably are just like that's how I spent my 20s that's how I spent my 30s that's it that's how I did it you know there's an acceptance of finitude.

49:19So it's a focus on what's important. And I feel for myself that pretty much I've done that well. Like in my 60s and 70s, I've been so creative. You know, I was like socially creative. I started all sorts of projects. I had a podcast. You know, It's like anything I wanted to do, I just felt like, okay, I can do that. And now I think there's maybe one or two more big things. I have a book that I wrote years ago that never got published. And, you know, it just sits there yammering, you know. And I always wanted to do a solo show. And I'm now doing, you know, I'm now underway. And, yeah, I've done a lot of work reconciling with my family.

50:08I don't feel like I've done a lot of work on that, you know, for several years. Just this coming of aging thing is like, oh, the people I left in the dust, the people who cared about me that I didn't care about, the people I cross and I didn't think I was crossing them. I just thought that I was doing what I wanted to do. You know, that's big work. So I feel like I've done a lot of that. And this solo show came up recently. I thought if I'm going to do it, it's going to happen, you know, because I might not even be able to memorize the script later. So I don't know. I sort of feel like, like life is, it's an unfolding, you know, like something comes and I give myself to it.

50:55I recognize, okay, this is on my path and I give myself to it, whether it's inner work or something on the outer. And then in giving myself to it, somehow or another, I complete that bubble of desire you know and then I get to the edge of it and it's in the past and it's done and then I have a faith that the next thing that is mine to do whether it's inner work or outer work will present itself you know as I feel like life is sort of like an endless packages that I'm opening on Christmas not quite you know I'm not that conscious I'm not that liberated but something like that and so I don't know after this solo show.

51:37I don't know. You know, I can imagine if I do it well that I could take it on the road. I mean, that would be amazing. You know, there's all these conferences on gerontology, you know, there's lots of old people, there's lots of old boomers, you know, so it's sort of like another whole possibility of meaning making that is here. Yeah, I just, I don't know that you're asking questions that I don't have pat answers to. But yeah, yeah, we're going to die and we're all going to die incomplete. There's going to be unlived parts of ourselves. And then, you know, when you think about it, a hundred years from now, this world is going to be populated with a whole different set of people.

52:22And it's not us. You know, when you're younger and you come into life, you think, ah, this is our world. I own the joint. And then you realize, oh, yeah. So that's a reckoning. I've worked on that reckoning that indeed, I will not be around. Indeed, in 100 years from now, there will probably be no trace of me in the visible world. There'll be just a few bones in the ground. But all of my importance or whatever it's been, it's all gone. You know, I can leave, you know, beautiful legacy, I can like, I could put my name on the building, and then somebody will come along and rename it. So it's like, we're gone.

53:10I'll be gone. Yeah. I mean, you talk about another way that people do the thing that I was describing earlier, where it's like, Oh, well, when I think about getting old, I think about what an awesome, fit, beautiful old person I'm going to be. And I think there's another thing we do, which is when we talk about our legacy, or like, here's what I'm going to leave behind. And that's wonderful. That's wonderful. But it also allows us to not maybe confront some of the stuff that we're talking about, which is, hey, that building that has your name on, maybe it will get renamed, maybe it won't, but it's crumbling to the ground at some point, right?

53:47Like at some point, it's gone. And that understanding that can help us to love our life more. I agree. I mean, you know, I read once that monks were sent to sleep in graveyards to really start to get that. Yeah. Yeah. I've known, I've known people who spend an awful lot of time on their will, you know, as their legacy, like who gets what piece of money or property and then a falling out happens and they have to rewrite their will or, you know, the organizations I'm going to give money to, you know. I don't know. It just, now I haven't had children, so I don't have that focus on something with my biology living on.

54:37So, yeah, it's a task. It's a task. And we don't know. That's the other thing is you do not know. You do not know. I have a friend, you know, this is the time. I mean, I have a friend who's now into deep dementia and she was funny. She was a writer. You know, it's like it's impossible to think about that she's lost that capacity. I have several friends who have Parkinson's, you know, who are really they're doing their best. But I have more and more friends who died, you know, so there's also sort of a natural process. of more and more people dying. And so you start to understand that you're part of that flow.

55:24And I didn't have a lot of experience of people dying when I was young. We can be really shielded from that too. And we can shield ourselves until I think a certain stage of life. And then that doesn't really work anymore. Right. Right. So yeah, it's like it's adulting at a massive scale, you know, maturation. Adulting is maybe what you do in your 20s when you realize your parents aren't paying for you anymore. But maturation is this part of life where you realize that, you know, there are limits, that there are things that you may never be able to fix that you did in the past, that your time is short, that your control over resources or people is, you know, I mean, I live in an earthquake zone.

56:14You know, this whole town could fall into the water. So, you know, we do our best to have guarantees, but there are no guarantees. And that's why you have to be really good at making new friends. You know, because your generation is falling off the edge. Well, let's go ahead and wrap up. Vicki, thank you so much for being willing to have this conversation and to answer with some real answers. and let's end with you giving some advice to me. And, you know, I really appreciated at the beginning how you said when I was 60, I thought a lot about how I could take care of the me that was 80. And so if we go back even farther, how do you think I, as a 46-year-old person, how do you think I can take care of 80-year-old me now?

57:09Oh, right. I was just thinking 65-year-old person. Well, I would say it's not a bucket list, but I would say my 50s were the most powerful time in my life. I really, I wielded power, you know, in my own way. You know, I had the book, I traveled the world, I hobnobbed with, you know, leaders, I had something to say. And I see your 50s is like, when you see a sailboat with a big spinnaker, you know, this big ballooned out sail in the front, that's what I feel like your 50s are. So I would say just whatever it is that you want to embody in this life, you know, whatever you're passionate about, whatever you want to taste, feel, you know, whatever difference you want to make, whatever it is that's there for you.

58:07It's not a question of, you know, scarcity. There's a scarcity of time, so get on it. it's like use these years especially for women you know because for women being powerful when we're younger is there are barriers to that and I don't know if you're partnered or if you have children but you know very often the child rearing part by your 50s is pretty much done you can obsess about it all you want but you don't need to for me that part of my life was so exciting and I was thinking it was a little wild you know I started three big things all at once because I didn't really know better you know and I had a big appetite I had a big appetite for the kind of experiences that I wanted to have which was making a difference in the world yeah and I had the social credibility and I had the you know I had all that so that's what I would recommend just like go for it in your 50s and I'm not talking about a bucket list about you know you should go to the Taj Mahal unless you want to.

59:13I mean, if you've always wanted to be a biologist, you know, and study rare plants in the Amazon, this is the time. If you always wanted to go back and get a master's, this is the time. If there's some unlived part of yourself, this is the time to live it. That's what I would say. Love that. Okay. We will put in the show notes, Vicki's book and her blog. Check her out. She's wonderful. And thank you again. Yeah. And my podcast. And your podcast. Yep. Bye, y 'all. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first, subscribe to the podcast.

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