Top Five Regrets of the Dying (Book Club with Frank Vasquez and Ginger) | Ep 574

29:31I need to do this other thing. And it really just takes some reflection and the courage word to decide. It's funny, they call this quiet quitting now. I just call it limiting, self-limiting my career so that I could do other things. But the expectation always that you have in most careers, most competitive careers, is that you're just going to keep going and getting bigger and better, and you need to decide how valuable that really is. Yeah, and like you were saying at the beginning, how there's some connection to that. There's a denial of sort of death there. Yeah. Well, ultimately, you know, if you're really serious about your whatever profession, you're looking for that Nobel Prize, aren't you?

30:17Whatever it is that's going to go on that plaque somewhere that makes you immortal. Yeah. People try to cheat death by becoming immortal in some way, and it generally doesn't work. And as a proposition for whether it will work or not, it probably isn't because life is random as to who actually gets remembered. If you go back 60 years and look at who was being talked about in the popular press or whatever, you're probably like, I don't even know who that is. I mean, and go forward a little more in 200 years. It doesn't matter what prize you won. The people get remembered for all kinds of things that they never intended.

31:02Sometimes books that they wrote before they died and nobody heard about it until somebody published it 50 years later, then all of a sudden they become famous. Okay. So I think this leads into what we both agree is maybe the big one, which is about the people one, right? So read us the one about relationships. Well, there's two. Yeah. Three is I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. Okay. Which the example is a woman named Margaret who hit her pain and kept her emotions all bottle up to maintain peace in her family. It's interesting. This one is almost the female version of this role-based expectation that particularly these people who are older would have been baby boomers or silent generation or something like that, who did live in that world of men need to have careers, women need to take care of the family and be the backstop and make sure everybody's happy except for themselves.

32:05And so it's kind of an old story, but it still goes on that some people, particularly if you are introverted and you live in an environment where you feel like you have to take care of everybody else, or maybe you were a parentified child or there's some other history going on there, that you do feel like you didn't actually live your life. You lived a life for other people that was never fulfilled in some way. I think this is much less likely to be something that is experienced by people in the fire movement. Oh, say more. Because people who are listening to things like Choose FI have already decided that they want to do something different or more, or they're not completely sort of bottled up or restrained in that way.

32:58Yeah. That I think people who have these regrets probably would not be listening to podcasts like this one or reaching out. You've already expressed some bold emotions. I think this is a common thing that therapists run into, particularly with female clients who are older. Okay, well, let's jump to one then that you might think is more relevant. So the one about maintaining relationships. Yes. It's entitled, I Wish I Stayed in Touch with My Friends. But I think more broadly, it is, I wish I would have pursued my relationships better or more, regardless of whether they were particular friends or family or anything of that nature.

33:39The example was this woman named Rosemary, who was an isolated widow. She had had friendships earlier on, but she had let them lapse as sort of marriage, children and work took over. And she was regretting that she missed these people, that she spoke fondly of them, but kind of realized, well, she doesn't have everybody to talk to or she would really have wanted to talk to those sorts of people. But I think it goes to a more broader perspective of maintaining those old friendships, but also how do you make new friends as an adult? This is so important. And so it covers a big spectrum because people who feel successful at the end of their life, and this comes not only from Bronnie Ware, but from people like Daniel Crosby and others, generally have good relationships.

34:34Yeah. That regardless of whether they're old friends or some other friend they met along the way or some combination thereof, the people who report sort of having the best experience of life, it's always based on relationships. Yeah. And so if you're wondering what to do when you reach FI, what should I prioritize? One of the things you need to prioritize is your relationships. And that includes spending money on relationships. Okay. We're going to go in, going to see those old friends, looking them up, finding them. You're the one that's financially independent. They may be working. You need to get out there and renew those sorts of things, or at least invite that to happen.

35:22And that is also the way you're going to make new friends is to join some kind of club organization, go to Camp Fi or other things like that. Whatever your interests are, that is where you're going to find new friends. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to read from an email that we got about this, this part of the book. And this one just really touched me because I think so many people can relate to this. Okay. This is Susan. And she said, I just finished this book and it really resonated with me both as a retired RN and as someone starting my retirement while my husband continues to work. I struggle with the differences my husband and I have with nurturing friendships.

36:08To me, people in relationships are the things that really matter. I'm the one who generally makes or accepts invitations to nurture our relationships. My husband is more of a loner, and it is not as important to him to spend his time in this way. I struggle with balancing this for us as a couple, and I really hope that I don't regret not spending more time with the people who are important to me. I hope that this dynamic changes once he retires as well. And my thought to this is, yeah, you're going to regret it. So you've got to do something now, right? Today. And just like you were saying, oh, well, once you reach fire, you have to really work on those relationships.

36:46Even better, start now, right? Before you get that, right? Because this is the most important thing. That was my takeaway from the book and from life. Yeah. Yeah. I think the, um, I think these five things do ultimately boil down into two, one being self-expression in its various forms and the other one being maintaining positive relationships or growing them over time. And the person who just wrote in, that's a very common situation. And again, it does attach to some of these general kind of things that women are often maintaining the relationships of the family with other people and organizations.

37:28And the person whose relationships are tied up in work, often those are not actually what I would call real relationships in terms of a friendship, because what you really have in common with that person is you work with them. And oftentimes what people find is that when they stop working, those relationships fall off relatively quickly, because they were based on being both happened to be involved in this organization or this project. And a real positive relationship tends to form on somebody having a problem and somebody else helping them with it. Interesting theory. That is, in my experience, so, and this is the difference between acquaintances and friends.

38:14You need to start with acquaintances. You need to go and suppose you want to build new friendships. You don't like the ones you had before, or they're not there anymore, or you can't rekindle them or whatever. And I think this applies to most people that even if you do have old relationships that are good, you probably still want some new ones, particularly if you're retired early and you have half of your life left. So the first thing you do is you go and join organizations that do things that you're interested in and you get acquaintances through that, find people you do things with. But in my experience, a real friendship does not form there until somebody has some kind of a problem and somebody else reaches out to them or helps them with it.

38:56I want to frame that another way and see what you think about that. I hadn't thought of it that way. That makes a lot of sense to me. I always think about the place of that friendship is when one person risks being vulnerable and that the other person can respond to that with care. That bid and acceptance from God. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree that that's a better, a broader definition. I mean, the example I'll give you is how I became friends with Diana Merriam, who runs the Economy Conference. Tell us. So I got to know her because she had been on podcasts talking about hiking the Camino. And that's something that me and my wife had talked about doing.

39:37And so I reached out to her and said, tell me about that and give me some books or some materials I can read and look at that. So I did that. So, you know, we were kind of aware of each other and were acquaintances in that respect. After she ran her first economy conference, I mean, the conference itself, she felt went well for a first go, but she lost a lot of money,$40 ,000, which was like a year's worth of living for her. and so she was wondering can I still do this and she reached out to a few random people including me oddly enough she reached out to me because she thought I was good at social media which I'm not

40:19so but I did help her you know sort of look at her numbers she says do you think I can keep doing this and I said well you can't lose$40 ,000 a year she says no no I can fix that I can break even. I know I could break even if I just fix a few things. And I said, yeah, and I'll help you. I can't do social media, but I know you need to fill these slots for people doing little workshops and things. I can teach. So I will come and do one of those for you. Yeah. She made herself vulnerable by saying, I need help. Yeah. And you said, I can help. Yeah. And that's how we became friends. And so I'm driving to Chicago in a few weeks and And I'll stop and see her then.

41:00Yeah. And, you know, we went to our wedding one and a half years ago and things like, I mean, it's just that process in order for that to happen. First, you need to get yourself out there to getting acquaintances on the things you may have mutual interest in. And then when that bid comes, you have to take it or you need to make some bids. Yeah. Knowing that, you know, some will be rejected, but the only, the only way you really get to a friendship is if there is this vulnerability and acceptance of it and help with it. Courage. Yeah, again. I'll tell you why I framed it the way that I did, why I think it's important to talk about it in terms of vulnerability, because I see so many people who, guess what?

41:40Everybody wants more friends. Everybody wants to have more love in their life. Yeah. And what can happen is that people think, well, if I'm just perfect, right? Like if I'm just like this super amazing person, then this other person will want to be friends with me. And then I have to be like, no, no one wants to be friends with the perfect person. What are you talking about? Right. It's the moment where you actually reveal that you're not perfect. That brings people to us that allows us to feel like, oh, this person's like me. You know, like I could tell this person something. Yeah. Yeah. I think people often confuse fame for friendship, particularly in the era we live in when, you know, you can put up stuff on social media and get lots of clicks.

42:25It's like the more clicks I have, the more, you know, friendliness I have in my life. It's like, no, that is not actually how it works. There's no real relationship there at all. If somebody just sort of likes what you do or admires you from afar or anything like that is not, there's not a two-way street going on there. Yeah. And so just becoming famous or notorious or whatever in some activity is not, if you're joining groups, that your goal should not be to be the best performer of the activity. And in fact, you're more likely to make friends if you're a bad performer and reach out to somebody and say, can you help me with this?

43:09I can't figure out how to get into this yoga position or whatever. Because that exchange of the bid or the problem and the person solving it, that's how friendships are formed. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about the idea of bids because one thing that you said that I think a lot of people say is like, okay, well, if you're looking for friends, then go join a club, you know, a group of people who like to do what you like to do. And most people who are my age who hear that are like, what are you talking about? I have a job. I have my families. Like, where am I going to find this weird club?

43:45And how am I going to have time to do that? So, I mean, it's great if you can join a bunch of clubs, but it's not essential, I think, to go find a pre-made sort of network that you're going to fit into perfectly. And what you were saying about the bids, I think, is so essential. You said, well, you're going to have to increase your bids, right? Which can be so simple in terms of just like looking for one little way that you can connect with someone, right? Right. So I'll give you an example. Before we press record, Frank and I were talking really briefly about books because I had said, oh, yeah, I have that book you mentioned.

44:24I have that on my bookshelf. Right. And I think maybe Frank and I like to read some of the same books. So later, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a list of some books that I think Frank will like, and I'm going to send it to him. Right. Like that's a bit that's like me noticing, hey, here's one thing that we have in common. So I can take a little bit of time to do this thing, right, to show him that we have this thing in common. And there's so many ways that we can do that in our lives. Yeah, that's correct. You know, when I was talking about joining clubs and things, who I was addressing that to is people who had reached fire, and they're not working anymore, they have the time to do things like that.

45:03I agree with you. I had no time whatsoever to do that when I was working and our family was growing and our kids were still in school and doing all their things. I only had time for work and the family and maintaining some old friendships. That was about it. But that changes over time. And when you're talking about somebody who's retired and that space between retired and then dead, that is where you need to get out there. So for me, one of the things I joined, I'm a board member for a charity. And I've met a lot of interesting new friends that way. Yeah. But it's sort of like you don't know where you're going to find them or who you're going to connect with.

45:51Yeah. And what I was, I was probably just anticipating the usual question or the usual things like, yeah, well, I'm just kind of content with my life. And it's just, it's fine. It's like, well, would you like to make some new friends? No, not really. you know, just this sort of, I don't want to try very hard because I might get rejected or something negative might happen. But the problem with that thought process is no, but you're more likely to regret later on that you didn't make an effort to develop new relationships or deepen older relationships or do something in that, that had to do with, I'm just doing this for relationship purposes.

46:30Frank, I've got a great title for your book, which is The Space Between Retirement and Death.

46:41Okay, before we back away from the relationship regret, I want to go back to something you said about like, hey, you might have to spend some money on this. Because I think that, yeah, like, let's talk about that. Like, what are things that are good to spend money on? Your relationships. and I think it's not super intuitive that that might be a useful connection. So maybe can you talk about that a little bit more? Yeah, I think, and I've tried to prioritize this more now in my life, that there's one of the questions I'm always asking myself in whether to choose to do an activity or not is, is this going to further a relationship or is there a relationship component to this activity?

47:25So recently, we took a trip to South Africa. And we took it with some new friends of ours. This was with Bill Young and his wife, Karen. So I had met Bill at like FinCon in 2019. And his wife was there and I talked to her. And so we kind of bounced around and had this, we saw each other in various places. But over the past, say, year and a half, we become closer friends and friends as couples now. But part of that was over the summertime, they wanted to take a little trip and they decided to drive up to Tennessee and see us in the D.C. area and stay with us and did things. But there had to be a bid and acceptance there.

48:09And then we had also planned this trip to South Africa that, again, we were talking about doing the Camino and they were wondering if they wanted to do that. they found this trip to South Africa that they wanted to do. And then they asked us if we wanted to go on it. And we said, yes. And it costs a lot of money and it was great. But the point of it is, for me, I will not travel anymore unless there is a relationship component to what I'm doing. And it might just be with my wife because I traveled so much. So I only go to one Phi conference, Iconomy. And Mary comes with me. And I won't go to any other ones because I spent so much time away from her that I want her to be part of my life and whatever we're doing with that.

48:56Yeah. But that's different for each person as to how that plays out. But the point of what I'm saying is you want to make relationships a component of what you are doing or planning on doing, whether it's joining this club or going on this trip or taking on this job or giving to a particular charity or whatever it is, see if you can, and never use the excuse when you're fi that it costs too much. You shouldn't be having that problem anymore for most things in most people. And I think that that gets oftentimes used as, as an excuse or the first priority is minimizing costs of something. Yeah. And if somebody else plans a trip or something and you think it's costing too much and you'd rather stay in a cheaper hotel.

49:44You'd rather do this. It's like, no, pay the money, stay in the hotel, do the thing. One of my friends, my old friends is a big Cubs fan and he likes to go to a different city every year and watch the Cubs play whoever is there. And so last year it was the New York Yankees. And so it was in New York and it's like, I've been in New York a million times for work. I don't need to go to New York again. New York's expensive. It's crowded. There's all kinds of things that are undesirable about going to New York. But I went. I didn't go there to go see the Cubs play the Yankees. I went there for the friendship and for the relationship.

50:21And that is the way you need to start thinking about these things. If somebody invites you to do something or you're organizing something, the cost of it or what it is in particular should not necessarily be the biggest priority anymore. It should be, Who do I get to hang out with for some period of time doing something fun? And that should be the priority, not some other thing that might have been a priority at some other point in your life. Right. So recognizing the thing you're buying is not a ticket to a game. The thing that you're buying is a life experience with the people that you love.

50:59Yeah. Because that's how you made friends when you were children. Yeah. You just went and did things with other kids and eventually you became friends because you were doing things together for so long. I love how this gets back to what we were talking about at the very beginning about sort of being future oriented and how that's wonderful in some seasons and in some ways. And yet you can see in the example that Frank's giving how it just wouldn't make sense to say, no, I need to really save this money. Right. Yeah. You can imagine a situation where you had planned out a vacation budget for the year, and then you would plan the events for that.

51:40And then something comes up where a friend or acquaintance of you says, hey, this thing came up and I want to go to this thing. And your reaction should not be, it's not in my budget. It should be, yes, I don't know, assuming you like this person. and it's like, take it out of next year's budget or do something else. Don't spend money on something else. You need to make sure you are not making decisions about money and budgets and finances and things when you could choose relationship over this magical plan that you have about how much you're gonna spend on vacation this year. Now, obviously I'm talking about people who are fire close to it.

52:24I'm not talking about people or at the beginning of their jury who do need to say no to the eighth wedding or some destination thing that their friends want to do. That's a different story. I'm really talking to people who are at a point where they do have the wherewithal to say yes, but the reason they're saying no has to do with some other priority that they've created over relationships. Yeah. I think you have some awareness of your audience, right? That this audience isn't the one who's going to blow their yearly income on eight weddings, right? They're more at risk of sort of making that mistake of...

53:04Yeah, I'm talking about people particularly in the second halves of their lives. All right, let's move on to our next regret. Number five is, I wish that I'd let myself be happier. And the example is Harold, the man stuck in routine. He's an older man that lived a comfortable but unfulfilling life, stayed in a job and a marriage that no longer brought him joy out of fear of change. In his final weeks, he reflected on how he could have pursued happiness by leaving his unfulfilling situation, but chose familiarity instead. His regret was not about specific actions, but in failing to allow himself to seek joy, showing that happiness often requires courageous choices.

53:46And to me, this is what Emerson was talking about when he's talking about a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds that oftentimes people fall into consistencies about the way they are and that prevents them from changing. And I'm sure this person was like, well, I, you know, it's a good enough marriage. It's a good enough job. It's good enough I'm, quote, content, unquote. I read that in a, there was a post on the Choose That Buy board where somebody was saying, we have this money, we've saved a bunch of money in our account. We're also going to get a pension of$135 ,000 a year, but we only spend$75 ,000 a year and we're content with that.

54:35And the sort of conversation, well, what do you want to do? And they're like, well, we'd like to spend more money on our kids and help them and work with our church and do these other things. And my reaction is like, well, why aren't you doing that right now? To me, the minimum you should be spending is the$135 ,000 minus taxes. Because if you're content with 75, what happiness or relationships or other things can you buy, essentially buy with the excess that you know you can spend anyway? You're not going to have any financial problems. But it's kind of this weird idea that because I'm content with this amount or this situation, that's enough.

55:20I was also reading Morgan Housel's new book, The Art of Spending. And he talks about some of the most dangerous words in his chapter about identity are, I am a saver. Because putting that as, and he was saying that if you're a saver your whole life, when do you spend the money? you're just saving and saving to max wealth at death. Right. And that doesn't mean die with zero. It just means be more thoughtful about it. But he was saying that attaching identity to those sorts of things is not where your identity should be because it's just as bad as saying, I am an attorney and that's my identity.

56:00I think where you really want your identity to be is that it has something to do with either relationships or creativity or both. And I imagine you're saying that because if your whole identity is being an attorney, well, one reason you might be saying that, right? There's a time when you're not going to be an attorney. If your whole identity is being a saver, what do you do when it no longer makes sense to save, right? Like we are sort of ripe for crisis. Yeah, that eventually tends to cause, it actually, it not only does not develop relationships, it detracts from relationships. This fixation on always being efficient and saving money.

56:43People notice that and they don't want to be around you. And those people may be your kids. there is a lot of work done by, his last name is Grubman, and he counsels very wealthy families. And they all have these ideas. It's like, well, I need to toughen my kids up by showing them, by not giving them too much early on and making them work for it and all that sort of stuff. And some of these kids get to be age 40. They don't realize how wealthy their family was. They find out and they're not happy about it. it's huge resentment time. Yeah. Because you were basically just setting up a dishonest situation.

57:24Actually, Morgan Housel has a story about this in his book. One of the funniest things was he was talking about there was this family that had a grandpa who would tell the grandchildren, it's like, I'll buy you a lift ticket if you walk up the mountain at least once. And he thought that he was like teaching them a lesson and they would think, oh, grandpa's so tough and cool and macho and whatever. And Morgan writes, what they were really learning is that grandpa was an asshole. And that is likely what people are going to start thinking about you if your identity is a saver to the point of irrationality and there's no real reason for it other than you thinking it elevates you in some way.

58:09And so choosing your identities can be very important. It's funny, I actually talked about this a little bit in the last twos fi episode i was on number 508 it all comes back around it does but that that has to do with the idea of narrative psychology and picking your story or the stories you want to have now and you want your identity i think to be connected with some kind of relationship at least some of your identity that you know i'm i'm a good friend i'm a good father. I'm, you know, the organizer of our family. I, you have a natural profession that you're a counselor. You know, me being on the board of a charity is another identity that helps me feel elevated.

58:55But that has to do with the relationships with other people. But I think these kind of inchoate saver, trader, butcher, baker, candlestick maker are probably not really good identities to adopt or keep. Yeah. You want to think of what identity do I want in terms of relationships? Another good way of thinking about this, about spending money in relationships is making a down payment on your eulogy.

59:29People say, you should write your eulogy. That's maybe a good exercise. But I also think is like, what generous or kind or nice thing can you do with money today that is a down payment on your eulogy so that when somebody gets up to give you a eulogy, they will say, yeah, they really knocked it out of the park with this. Oh, all right. I want to read another email from a listener that's about this. So this is from Adley. And she said, if I had to guess, the regret I'm most at risk of having is I wish I had let myself be happier. I come from generations of women who didn't have the space or freedom to be guided by what their hearts truly wanted.

1:00:10At 36, I recently found myself telling my daughter's swim instructor, who was heading off to start her freshman year of college, do what makes your heart sing. It will never lead you wrong. It's amazing how easily I can cheer on others, care for others, as Bronnie did, and yet still wrestle with fully allowing myself to be happy and at peace with who I am. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, that's also part of Bronnie Ware's story herself. Yeah. That, you know, after multiple different sort of careers and bouncing around and relationships that didn't work, she finally found a few things that did and then did find a relationship and have a daughter she valued.

1:00:53She thought at one point that wasn't for me. I'm not cut out for it. I'm not allowed in some way to be happy. I think that's still a common cultural restriction that many women face, depending on what kind of family or group they grow up in, that it goes both to that kind of expectation kind of thing that your purpose is to make other people happy, not to be happy yourself. Okay. One thing I loved about this comment was how Adley had the wisdom of like knowing where the solution to this is, right? Where she was saying, I can do this for other people, but it's hard to do it for myself. And that can be such a good starting place for people in terms of like, how can I care for myself?

1:01:43Oh, I have those skills, right? Like I'm so great at doing that for my family and my friends and people who are basically strangers. I can give us some confidence around. I really want happiness for those people. I really want to cheer them on. And so we can kind of start to work to do that for ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think some people think, well, if I assert myself in a, you know, I want to do this or this would make me happy that other people are going to think bad of me in some way that, you know, I'm selfish or, or many other negative emotions associated with not taking care of the other person in favor of taking care of myself.

1:02:23And, you know, I think that's, that's still a relatively common problem. Societally, it's still probably more with women than it is with men, but. Society. Yeah. Okay. Well, I want to read one more listener email because this is kind of along the same lines. And it also kind of gives us a way in to that solution. So this is from Charlotte and she said about the book. She said, I haven't read it yet, but my mom died from cancer when I was 20. And I've always carried with me the treasured gift that this gave me, that I know I was deeply and unconditionally loved. And it's people that matter. Tell your children and the people who matter that you love them all the time.

1:03:03It is also important to appreciate the ordinary so that it becomes extraordinary. the autumn leaves on the trees, the hot cup of tea, the walk to the park with my toddlers, chocolatey faces and marshmallows after cold swims, torrential rain, Sunday roasts, being grateful for every day to stop looking externally and to start looking internally to feel like I have and I am enough. And this is part of that thing about allowing yourself to be happy, allowing yourself to choose happiness. And I love how she has chose those small things. And that's also about being present focused. Yeah. You know, for me, you know, I enjoy humor and I try to laugh every day and I give myself extra points for making somebody else laugh.

1:03:47But that to me encapsulates those moments that occur or that you live in. You can either appreciate them or miss them, depending on what your focus is. And if you are too future focused or focused on something else, you will miss life. Isn't that what Ferris Bueller told us?

1:04:13We were going somewhere more profound. I got you to laugh though. I mean, and the other point this raises is how, how death that you've experienced the death of another person oftentimes does help people focus. And I think that's always been one of the purposes of being exposed to death helps us appreciate life more. But the fact that we are not as exposed to death in our modern society than we used to be, because there used to be whole protocols about how to die, about how to have the family come. Because most of most people died at home and it was sort of like so-and-so's dying. So everybody would come and they would express their, their thanks, regrets, whatever they had to talk about.

1:05:06And this might go on for weeks. And we just don't do that in our society anymore. That oftentimes many people I think are not exposed. They haven't been around somebody who's died. Yeah. And that gives us this great luxury of pretending it won't happen to us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And all of the things we do to avoid it or think it's not going to happen or prepare for it in weird ways. I think one of the weirdest things that goes on in personal finance is the fixation with long-term care. Because most people aren't going to have long-term care. You're just going to die. but you know i i can tell you that my personal experiences with people who have died or are dying have been some of the most meaningful experiences of my life i don't know how many you want to hear about but i can tell you about a couple tell us okay well the one that's common to charlotte i had a good friend who was like my first friend outside the family was the next door neighbor who I was friends with since I was like four.

1:06:11He died when he was 16 of leukemia. And he was, he was a special person. I mean, he, he was really smart. He was really gifted athletically and he was also extremely charismatic. So it was like, he was the last person you would think, you know, is going to have a problem in life, let alone be dead at age 16. But I can tell you that what the effect that had on me was this kind of urgency. It gives you an urgency to life if you've known people who have died, that you are more likely to really pursue something, whatever it is you think is important at the time, with a lot more vigor and gusto. And for me at the time, it was going to Caltech or MIT.

1:07:01And so I really, you know, I wasn't that greatest student up through junior high school, but I really kind of buckled down and made that my goal. And part of that was this urgency I kind of felt is like, well, if Stevie can die when he's 16, I could be next. I mean, I might only live 10 years. Yeah, I got no time to waste. And I think that that's, it's actually a healthy thing to happen. I mean, it's not healthy for people to die and it's sad, but that experience of somebody else dying close to you, I think does give, give people more urgency in life and meaning. Yeah. But then I've spent time with, with people on the end of their life who lived a long life.

1:07:46And, you know, I had a, and this has turned into one of my most important friendships in adulthood. So my friend was a woman named Mamie, Mamie McCoy. And I was friends with her for about the last 10 years of her life. She died at age 90. I became friends with her through a pro bono case. Her house got seized by the federal government and there was a shooting in it and there was all kinds of crazy stuff that happened. But, you know, we were able to not fix that, but get her to a better place and get her into senior housing. But we really, I wouldn't say we became friends until the end. of that segment, because it was at the end of that segment, there was some money that we had gotten.

1:08:32And I said, well, what do you want me to do with the money that we got from the government for this? And she says, I want you to take care of it. And that was a bid. And I took her up on that. And so she was poor. I mean, this was only about$20 ,000. She lived entirely on social security and Medicaid. She was in, you know, senior housing for poor people in Washington, DC. And you're familiar with Washington, DC. I'm talking about across the Anacostia River in Ward 8. But I would go and see her every month to talk about, you know, what she wanted to do in the rest of her life. Now, Mamie was born in 1915 in rural South Carolina and had come up to D.C.

1:09:22with the African-American migrations that occurred in the 20s and 30s seeking work in the cities. And so for most of her life, have you ever seen the movie The Help? I have read the book. Okay. She was the help. Oh, sure. And so all through like the, I guess, the 40s, 50s and in 60s, that was kind of her job. And it left her with this kind of interesting legacy. I'll tell you what I'm telling you. She was a connoisseur of baked goods. And she found out that my wife knew how to bake. So every month she would ask me for various things. Can your wife make me a sweet potato pie? How can you say no?

1:10:08A red velvet cake? Sometimes you'd want me to bring her a honey ham. Or she'd ask me for something like, can you get me some housecoats? And I'd be like, Mary, where do we get housecoats? She wanted the ones with the pockets in them. For her, she felt wealthy, not by having money, but by the fact that she could ask people to go and get her things and bring her things. That was what made her feel wealthy. She also used those baked goods that we gave her to develop relationships. She would, you know, take them down to the little beating rooms with all the other old folks in the home there. And she was like, my lawyer's wife brought me.

1:10:56How do you use your resources? Tell me all about these things. But then there was another thing that I helped her with that really, because she was really a present focused person. she lived this crazy life she had survived three husbands she had a glass eye there was there's a one story after another uh because she was always a present focused person she never knew what was gonna happen next but when it came to the end of her life it's like well what what was important to her that she needed to do and this is what you might want to be thinking about before you get really old. So what was, she was religious and believed in the afterlife.

1:11:42So what was important to her is what she called her homegoing, which we would call death, but she viewed it as the next step. And in her view, in order for this to be done the right way, essentially. She wanted the cemetery plot, the casket, all of the things that in her mind made the right kind of home going. And she asked me to help her with that. It's emotional to think about. So I was driving Miss Mamie and we'd go casket shopping. We went shopping for cemetery plots. This is what she wanted to spend that money on. The point of this and what I learned from that is that at some point you need to be really focused on what's important to you.

1:12:33And it may not be something that other people think is important. And you need to have the courage to pursue it and to ask for the help you need to get there if you need help. Because I can tell you, once we had made these arrangements for her home going, and had seen the cemetery plot, she knew exactly where it was, had picked out the casket. It was a blue-gray metallic.

1:13:00She was content. I mean, she was happy with feeling like, I have done the thing that I needed to do at this point. And I don't know how many people get to their death and feel like, I have done the thing I needed to do. Some people do. I think it's fewer. But in order to do that, The first thing is you have to be conscious about the fact you're going to die. You don't know when it's going to be. For most people, it's probably later than sooner, but it may be sooner than you think. And I mean, there's no time like the present to be thinking of, you know, what are those things that I want to have done or be done before that happens?

1:13:45And, you know, maybe I need to be working on some of them today or something like that. That's why I'm often very critical of people who have reached fire or they have a lot of money and they're like, I just don't know if I have enough to retire. And then there's this, how am I going to pay for long term care and how? There's this litany of whiny things. But I can tell you there are people in the world like Mamie who were perfectly happy with next to nothing because they were very intentional about what they really thought was important and made sure that they focused on that, that her relationships with people were very important for her.

1:14:27she used the things that we brought Mamie's fruitcake is a whole other story that I can tell you about but what I learned so much from her and my experience with her about living and dying I mean it's a gift and you know I hope I can do as well as she did okay so our conclusion here today folks is be courageous and not whiny okay when we started today i had shared frank's theory for why people not a lot of people wrote in right that frank said all people in the fire community don't want to think about death i didn't tell you my theory my theory was that people don't want to do homework and i'm always assigning them homework so i get it maybe you don't want to read books but if you have made it this far into this episode then maybe this topic is of interest to you.

1:15:25And so we would encourage you to read the book, but maybe we could close by Frank and I each giving a recommendation for a similar type book that people might enjoy whether or not they read Bronnie's book. What do you think? Yeah, I think so. I actually, I will also tell you, I have a podcast episode where I list several of these books. It's number 436 of Risk Parity Radio that you can listen to. Yeah. So give us a sneak peek. Give us one of them. Yeah. I think some of the best books about this are not specifically about death, but transitioning to the second half of life or the next stage of life.

1:16:04One of them is called Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. Another one's called Second Mountain by David Brooks. Another one's called Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. No relation. I always get those two confused. Yeah. You need to have a different name. And both great books. But any of those three, just talking about how do I get to my next stage of life? Because that's really what this is about, is not worrying about what happens at death, but what are you doing between now and death? And you need to sort of focus on being done with career one or that first, whatever stage you were in, getting to fire, and then where are you going next?

1:16:48And all three of those, I think, are very useful ways to look at it. Because this book is, what do I not want to be regretting? And those books are more like, well, now what do I do? How do I approach this? Yeah. I'll throw in Midlife, a Philosophical Guide. I'm not going to try to say his name because I'm a screwed up. But I just finished it. And it's not about death, but it is about regret. And it's about how once you hit midlife, you're actually able to kind of see some of the losses of like paths that you didn't take where you couldn't kind of see those before. And I think it's a really interesting exploration and it gives some clear like ways to reframe it.

1:17:35Like, what do we do with that regret or how do we think about it? So if regret is of particular interest to you, then you might enjoy that book. Frank, thank you so much for your willingness to come on and to share with us today. I'm very happy. You're much better than Brad. Brad, did you make it to the end of this episode? This will be your test. Made you laugh. There you go. You got many points today.

1:18:07And thank you everyone also for listening today and we'll catch you next time. Thank you.