How This Wealth Advisor Spends $1M/Year ($300K on Vacations)

0:00Today's Money Wise guest is Adam Katz. His dad was a guidance counselor in the Bronx and died with only$133 ,000 to his name. Adam didn't even get on a plane until he was 16 years old. But now he's a wealth advisor and he's as rich as the people that he advises. A few months ago, he asked his kids to guess what his net worth was. One of the kids said$8 million and the other kid said$75 million. In this episode, we're going to find out which one of those numbers was closer and we're going to get into some serious spending details. He walks me through every dollar he spends in a year, The mortgage move he and most of his clients use, why he optimizes life for vacations and how much money he spends annually on those vacations, and a specific tipping system he's created where he always tips way, way more than the average as a point of pride.

0:43Adam's entire philosophy of money and wealth revolve around optimizing for moments of outsized generosity. You'll see what I mean after you listen to this episode. Real quick favor before we start, subscribing to Money Wise costs you nothing. It's free to do and means a world of difference to me. If you enjoy this show, please go ahead and hit subscribe. This is how I get paid. I get to talk to founders like Adam inside of Hampton. It's a private network for high growth founders who are doing on average$25 million a year. If that is you, check it out at joinhampton.com. Now let's get into the show.

1:13I'm Daniel Burke. Here is Adam Katz on Money Wise. Well, Adam, thanks so much today for joining Money Wise. I'm really excited to learn about you, learn what you do, learn kind of what qualifies you to be here on this show. But if we can start with what you do, tell me about yourself and what is it that you actually do and how do you work with wealthy people?

1:32Adam Katz: Being on a chat like this, being able to talk about various things around relationships, how it interplays as it relates to money, as it relates to the way we think about parenting and time and health. I feel really, really well equipped to help with that. The nice thing is I have this duality as a peer, as a person who sold the company, went through what I like to call step function wealth creation events, but also as a provider. And to be a person that has worked around entrepreneurs and founders for so long and to be able to co-pilot this journey with them has been amazing. So, you know, really been doing that for a couple of decades around mostly venture backed founders.

2:15That's cool. When we talked ahead of the show, you had mentioned growing up with scarcity. And I want to understand how did you go from scarcity and your early childhood to what you are now, which is personally wealthy and then also working with wealthy people?

2:30Adam Katz: Yeah, I tell everyone, I used to think luxury for an automobile was a headrest in the back and a fold down armrest. My dad was a guidance counselor in the Bronx. He was very proud of what he did. I joke that his mother said, Irwin, you can go to NYU School of Commerce, which is the business school, the law school or the school of education. She said, Irwin, they're going to always want teachers. So he was a guidance counselor for 31 years and then an educator for 13. And there was no excess cash flow in our family. So I didn't really grow up with the idea of what money meant. When he sold his house after my mom died, there was about$650 ,000 on the for sale sign.

3:08Adam Katz: And there was$50 ,000 of equity. He had used the home as a piggy bank forever to get us to go to colleges in a way that felt in line with their values, to pay for bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings. and my dad died with$133 ,000 to his name. So the idea of abundance was always there for love and nurturing, but the scarcity dynamic that most people would have had with money never really crept into our life. There was no abundance, but I never felt like there was scarcity. Interesting. And did that, I guess I'm sure it did. How did that affect the way that you grew up thinking about the dollar? Yeah, it's a great question.

3:49Adam Katz: And I think in some ways, there's so much more subconscious that happened and is conscious in that where I landed today, I didn't even think was possible. I often say that I thought the proverbial doctor lawyer money was wealthy. That was really what my town probably had most of. The idea of having tens of millions of dollars or hundreds, I don't think I even realized that was possible. It was an era where the internet wasn't a thing. There was no social media. You didn't get a peek into these brands and into these resorts and into private aviation. You just, you literally had no way to have a people into that world.

4:26Adam Katz: So I don't think I knew what I was missing out on. The only thing I felt like I was missing out on was Florida. This amazing destination that so many of my friends seem to go to mostly on an airplane, which was a foreign vehicle to me as well. And it go, I never went on a plane with my family and never had. What was the first plane you took? 16 by myself to visit a camp friend. And then the first time my toes went into sand and I grew up in Rockland County in New York. So the Jersey shore wasn't that far away, but my parents weren't into sand. They were into concrete pool situations. The first time I actually had my feet in sand was when I met my wife at a vacation in Turks and Caicos Club Med when I was 24 years old.

5:08It's interesting to hear your story. And then you ended up at Merrill Lynch, right? I mean, tell me kind of how that happened, because that's fairly drastically different than the story you just told.

5:18Adam Katz: Psychology always, I thought, was interesting. And so my girlfriend at the time, she had a friend. So I remember being a junior in college and we're sitting in my parents' house and my girlfriend's there with me. And we're talking about her friend that had just gotten a job at this firm Merrill Lynch, which I like to tell people I thought was a residential real estate firm, like Cork. And it was, I was just about 10 to 20 years stale. But in my mind's eyes, this was just like, you know, there were signs out on people's lawns that said Merrill Lynch. And I didn't really know what it was. And this guy was doing investment banking, which I definitely didn't know what it was.

5:54Adam Katz: I joke, I thought bankers hours sounded pretty good. You like that at four or five. So I clearly missed the joke, but he was making$50 ,000,$50 ,000. My dad made$48 ,000 after having worked for 31 years. So I found myself cold calling the white pages. I think it was the white pages when that was a thing. And I made my way through the financial services, made my way to Merrill Lynch. And what I've always been good at is talking. I'm good at telling stories. I'm good at contextualizing stories, saying things slightly differently than other people have. And I somehow finagled my way into an internship, ironically, with Merrill Lynch.

6:36Adam Katz: And I commuted longer than I worked, meaning I would take the train in from where I was in Waltham, which wasn't that budding of a town as it is today. I'd hop on the commuter rail back and forth. I think the commute was three hours and I was there for two hours. And he didn't - Three one way? advisor. Yeah. No, no, no. An hour and a half each way, but I only worked for two hours. So I was commuting longer. And back then, this is 1996, 1997. He didn't have to pay me. They were allowed to do free internships, but he did pay for my train pass. And then I just ended up hustling throughout. So what was enticing about that at the time, knowing that you didn't really come from a background where that was in the home and then you had no real idea of what you were doing at first to be enticed enough to do it.

7:23What about it was enticing?

7:25Adam Katz: It's a great, I think that there was nothing more than I could make some money. I've never even asked it that way. I think it was as simple as, wow, I could make, by the way, I only got 33 ,000 as my salary. I didn't get the 50 because it wasn't investment banking. It was in wealth management and it was in like leadership and wealth management. And they placed you into a group. It was a group where I say that I was an explainer, not a creator, which to me is a much higher value area of most places, especially in today's world. And I was just always good at explaining stuff. I just had to get my pattern recognition, my 10 ,000 hours.

7:57Adam Katz: And then, you know, you couple a pretty deep voice like this that I've had forever, premature titling on the system at Merrill Lynch. And, you know, I became a guy nationally that was flying around the country in my mid twenties. I'm helping close some of the biggest opportunities at the firm as like a specialist. I wasn't the advisor yet. Okay. So let's, to your point, let's start at the finish then. Let's, let's get into this thing. Tell me the numbers. And I think I want to, I want to kind of preface this with like, it's a bit unconventional to be a wealth manager like yourself and to be as wealthy as you are.

8:30And so I'd love you to just kind of walk me and the listeners through your balance sheet and what wealth looks like in your name.

8:37Adam Katz: Yeah. And just, again, I have to contextualize. So what eventually happened is I left management for very obvious reasons. At one point I was involved in recruiting the advisors to Merrill Lynch. I was head of sales and business development of the private bank, probably interviewed 60 of the 160 teams we brought over. So I've talked to way more of me than I would ever want to. Joined one of the teams I recruited. Eight years later, we felt the longer we stayed at a big firm, the less relevant we'd be to a growing portion of our clients' lives. We started our own multifamily office. We had a really fortunate dynamic over a bunch of years for so many reasons, mostly focused on bringing forward a whiteboard of wishlist ideas for our clients that we didn't want to practice on them over the next five to 10.

9:22Adam Katz: We ended up selling that business to what is now probably arguably the largest non-bank wealth manager for ultra high net worth clients across the world. So that's where I live now. But when we sold that business is why I was able to have wealth creation at a bit of a different level, right? Rather than just an earner. So it is unusual. I've had some people say to me, wait, as a wealth manager, you're as wealthy as the client or as well, you know, that seems weird. You must be charging them so much. I'm like, no, I had a business that I sold. And it's like, oh, that makes more sense. So I will say this.

9:56Adam Katz: And, you know, you, you know, we sort of were thinking about the way I would talk about this. So one of the ideas I talk a lot about is raising kids in a Zillow world. So in today's world, like when I grew up, I knew nothing about how my parents helped other people. and I knew nothing about it. They helped themselves, meaning consumption and then charity. Well, you don't have a choice anymore. Your kids know everything about what you spend. But it's a numerator absent a denominator. The denominator is the question you're asking, net worth and or cash flow. So we talked to our kids. We had this amazing South African safari adventure in December, one of our best vacations, probably about$125 ,000.

10:40Adam Katz: which right now is probably our most expensive vacation. And I can break it down. And as we talk about it, but at one point I look at the kids and I told you how old they are, 16, 20, we said, how much do you think we're worth? And my daughter said 8 million. And my son said 75 million, pretty big divide. And we like asked them how they got to the numbers, right? We asked them, and especially as everyone's listening, he's just like, that's a big difference. And 75 is like a real number. So we heard sort of their why and how they got there. You know, I tried to not show disappointment. My son who guessed the 75 was like, you see Matt?

11:15Adam Katz: You see Matt? You're wondering why I'm asking him. I'm like, no, no, no. Just try to understand how you got there. And then when he tried to break down the map, it didn't really work that well. So what I would say is that my wife and I have not yet told our kids the exact number. So I think what's important for this call, because I understand getting closer to the real numbers, extremely important is I would narrow the band from between eight and 75 to between 25 and 50. Okay. That's fair. Um, I'm going to, for, for my own brain, I'm going to call it right smack down the middle at like 35, 36, but 25 to 50, definitely a number that's in the middle.

11:50Adam Katz: Yeah, that's a, that's fair. And so that's liquid net worth in terms of if you needed to spend that amount of money right now, could you liquidate or is that mostly in like private assets or walking through those numbers? It's a great question. So I could make that liquid within probably 12 to 16 months, but it's not right now. I would say that - And so what is it then? Break that down for me. Yeah, sure. So I'm probably about 75 % illiquid and then 25 % liquid. And I would say when I think about the overall allocation right now across various private equity that has high correlations relation to the equity markets, and I would consider it a beta or a market investment, plus actually public equities, that's probably in the 60 % to 65 % range.

12:43Adam Katz: There's probably 10 % in private credit. I mostly have my private credit gobbling up one of my mortgages, as I'm sure a lot of people that are on this and listen to this know that if you buy a home with cash and then take the mortgage out afterwards, you can actually deduct all the interest versus the traditional$750 ,000 worth of a mortgage is all you can usually deduct if you characterize the mortgage as such. But if you do it the way I, and most of my clients do, you buy it with cash, you take the mortgage after. And as long as you income trace it to other investments, you can deduct all of it.

13:19Adam Katz: So a lot of my private credit helps gobble that off. So that's probably about 10%. And then I probably have another 10 % that is in, I would say, drawdown style vintages of private equity, probably more venture than private equity, probably vintages back from around when I sold in the late, actually, probably I started more in 2018, 2019. And then I've got a lot of direct co-invest. I will tell you though, I have like 30 K ones across all of this. I was going to ask. So is that in the 65 %? Is 30K1s in that 65 % bucket or in the 10 % bucket? Oh, no, no. It's across probably, I would say it's across some of my company equity and then some of the others, but of that 75 % illiquid, there's 30K1s.

14:05I had a guest on who had like 120K1s and I asked him, do you like that? Certainly not. I don't know anyone who likes having that many K1s.

14:16Adam Katz: And what happens is you get so excited and enamored with the romance of being involved with so many of these types of investments that you can't help but do that. And then I'm sitting on probably, I'm in that 20 % cash range right now, which has a lot of reasons around it. I would say for me though, I care about the size of the balance sheet. I care about the composition. I've probably got, I would say at least 70 % of it is just growing. There's a chunk of it that I use a lot of the payments to sort of fund lifestyle right now. I don't mind thwarting some of the growth. That doesn't bother me.

14:52Adam Katz: And then for me, though, I think on the income side, probably about a million dollars a year after taxes. And I gobble up at least all that every year. And, you know, happy to dive into sort of the breakdown there. But, you know, a bunch of it is around what I say is memory making, which is a combination of vacations and donations. Those are my two biggest line items to start. Okay. No, that's really helpful, I think. So 20 % cash, is that like literally like in a savings account cash? 3.8 % getting paid on time right now. I mean, you know, in 2021 when a lot of people I work with had big exits, cash was paying 30 basis points.

15:33Adam Katz: And obviously we can have the nominal versus real return. People are like, Adam, but inflation, which I have a whole philosophy on inflation we can dive into over this call. But for me right now, the optionality of cash, I have a lot of equity exposure. The only other thing I would do with that cash is to go into more private credit. And right now for a pickup of eight, you know, not even eight, probably four to five percent before taxes, because I've already gobbled up all the interest from that mortgage to trade, you know, many millions of dollars of cash of accessible liquidity is not interesting to me.

16:09Adam Katz: I have enough cash flow from other things. And part of me is a little bit in my head around just, you know, geopolitics in the world and optionality of satchels of cash. Although, of course, it's not actually sitting in a safe in gold bullion. It's cash in an account somewhere. So maybe it's not as portable as I think. But my team continues to try to push me off of that. But right now, my wife and I are pretty happy with the barbell. OK, so two questions. I want you to pretend I'm stupid when you explain them. The first question is you mentioned gobbling up the mortgage. Yeah. I want to understand what that means.

16:43Cause I think, you know, half the listeners probably know exactly what you're talking about. And the other half are like, what, and what am I doing wrong that I can maybe start to practice? And then the second one is the private credit. I'd love for you to break down some of your reasons behind the private credit line. And so you can start with the first and go on. Sure.

17:00Adam Katz: So, um, and again, not giving tax advice, but a lot of people don't realize that if If you characterize a loan as investment loan, as long as you're offsetting with investment income, it works. So a lot of people know, hey, if I have a portfolio of securities, I take out a margin loan and then I go invest that into something that throws off taxable income. I can match and deduct the taxable interest against the taxable income. It's actually not that peculiar. But what a lot of people don't realize is that with a mortgage, you can do the same thing. A, you want to make sure your accountant understands it.

17:43Adam Katz: I always say never mix and match strategies and practitioners. So you got to make sure the person who's going to do your taxes. And it's funny. I was like just signing off because it's 10, 15 today. So I was signing off on my, that's one of the funny things. I try to explain to every one of our clients, you're always going to file on extension forever. And you're also going to pay estimates forever. So it's always funny. Like these are some of the new things that we'll talk about. One also is like how much liability insurance starts costing when you have a fun life. But going back to, I actually look today, 45 is what I'm paying a year, which I'll get into the breakdown of why.

18:17Adam Katz: But, you know, if you think about the mortgage side real quick, again, really what you're doing is you're saying, hey, I bought a home. Let's just use simplicity. We can just use my, I bought my house for three and a quarter, took out a$2 million mortgage at 5 % for simplicity. It was maybe 5.1. And so I have$100 ,000 of interest. If I take some of that$2 million to go invest in, and let's say some private credit, and this is what I would do, a million dollars generating 10 % generates that$100 ,000. So at that point, I've gobbled up the full$100 ,000 that I can deduct. After that, there's no more to gobble up, and I'm just going to pay normal taxes on it.

18:58Adam Katz: So I have more flexibility what to do with the rest of the money. So hopefully that explanation makes sense. It does. Yeah. Appreciate that. Yeah. Sure. No, I love that. What I tell everyone is like, I typically start here and people I meet are here in terms of just information. And my goal is to narrow the gap as quickly as possible. I can tell you also know what you're talking about because it's hard to dumb down complicated things unless you really deeply understand those complicated things. And so, you know what, when someone knows what they're talking about, I'm like, hey, let's dumb this down for people like me so we can kind of understand.

19:29No, no, I love it.

19:30Adam Katz: And I didn't mean to glaze over the last part. And then I know we have many more interesting things to talk about, but private credit for me, what I always like, I always explain, you know, you're either going to get paid on time or over time from an investment. So if you're going to get paid on time, meaning someone's going to pay you, as I already alluded to right now, my cash essentially is a loan to the government, right? Just call it treasuries for simplicity. It's like, I'm not really nervous about them having the credit worthiness to pay me back. And therefore, right now, the market clearing rate is, let's call it high 3%.

20:02Adam Katz: But if I'm going to go give that money to someone else, I got to make sure I'm going to get my money back. Now, I'm going to demand, of course, a higher interest rate than what the government's going to give me because they're the most credit worthy, even though they're not as credit worthy as maybe they've been other times. I personally like loans, though, that have an asset behind it, not just cash flow. So, I like asset-backed loans. Most of my private credit is asset-backed. Again, it's very personal to me. This isn't advice. For instance, I'll be in a fund that is a bridge lender for a real estate developer.

20:38Adam Katz: For simplicity, imagine a real estate developer needs$10 million to build a place. You say, well, I'll give you$5 million. I'm like, okay. You got to come up with the other five. 50 % loan to value. But I have first lean on the property, meaning if you stop paying, I now own this$10 million property at$5 million. So I don't want to foreclose on you. But if I do, even if I have to sell it at 30 cent discount at 7 million bucks, I just made 40 % on the 5 million. So I don't like to be personally in loan to own investments where they might be charging a much higher rate, have a much higher loan to value and a much higher chance of default.

21:18Adam Katz: I like stuff that's boring and that just looks like a bond and is just clipping coupons, paying me on time. So the private credit that I personally have done is typically backed by either a physical asset like real estate or a financial asset, like some type of a lockbox, if you will, that has cables that maybe have two or three time coverage of my loan. So let's say my loan's a million dollars. There's$3 million sitting in a box and it has nothing to do. It's bankruptcy remote for maybe the rest of the stuff. So that's the kind of private credit that I tend to be in. And it's all illiquid. So there's been so much going on the last couple of years of the mismatch of the liquidity of the investments and the wrappers.

21:58Adam Katz: And we've seen a lot of that where there's been confusion and frustration around the liquidity. I personally tend to invest, again, this isn't me as an advisor talking, I personally invest in stuff that has a good match. I know I can't get the money for four years. so I don't have to worry about things going on along the way. Someone else wanting their money back doesn't impact me. So that's the kind of private credit I've done. Very interesting. You mentioned earlier the vacation for$125 ,000. How do you break down a vacation expense like that? And then tell me more about the way you're spending money.

22:36I imagine$125 ,000, you said that was the most expensive, but if vacation and philanthropy are the two largest line items, I just want to know more. Break it down.

22:45Adam Katz: No, no, for sure. And, you know, this is where I'm so comfortable talking about this because everyone who knows me can look any of this up. And it doesn't mean you're going to look it up, but like my kids will be like, oh, how much was that? I'll be like$32 ,000. Well, there's no reason to lie about it. Now, I'll talk about the why. And a big theme that I want to keep harping on throughout this conversation is when you have wealth, by definition, people will see what you're doing, whether it's buying, whether it's donating, whether it's where you live, what you have on your body, the most portable forms of wealth.

23:20Adam Katz: And it's up to you to explain your why. Because absent you explaining your why, people will come up with their own narrative that tends to suit them, which is interesting, right? People want to come up with a narrative that makes them oddly sometimes feel better about themselves. So I think it's really, really important to explain your why. So for us, vacationing is just something we love doing. We love memory making. Of course, you can memory make without spending as much money. But Dan and I love bringing the kids places. We can talk about first class because that is always the proverbial elephant in the room.

24:00Do the kids fly first class? Yes.

24:01Adam Katz: Yeah. We all fly first class. I tell people, the only people who know how you travel are the people you tell. I guess by definition, I'm telling people with a big megaphone right now, but the kids never put stuff on Insta. And again, we don't really take a lot of pictures. We don't share a lot, but the reason why is I'll start with one of my old partners use a really, really complicated phrase, which is a cousin to Frosted Flakes, which is they're great. And you who chocolate drink is it's great. And in this case, it's better. First class flying's better. Now, we're not having a financial discussion about it yet because I need to compartmentalize this for people.

24:42Adam Katz: But like, it's more physical space. It's a better ratio to the bathroom. If you have a mini bladder like me, you don't have to have the Greg Fokker kung fu fight with the overhead bins. I think everyone would agree this is all better. Is it worth the money? Well, now we're going to get into some of my frameworks, which is like, I'll very quickly, like the three digit rule is probably the most sticky thing that I say. I have over 30 of these in the book. If I asked you, Daniel, like, what do you know your net worth more than three digits from the left? I would tell you probably zero chance can get more than three digits.

25:16Adam Katz: Most people can't get two. And the thing is when you start getting into eight figure, nine figure wealth, you start rounding by hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions. And the upgrade to first class usually costs for a whole family, 10, 20, 30 grand. And by definition, you can't even tell me down to 30 grand what's in your account. But if you were to port it on top of your vacation budget denominator as massive utility, you wake up more rested, you get a little bit more sleep, you're a little better nourished. Although if anyone ever served you at a restaurant where you get in first class, you'd send it back.

25:51Adam Katz: It's really weird when we get into the relative world instead of the absolute world. So as a family, we went through, we've gone through things with like at one point down, it was like, if it's four hours or less, they're sitting behind us. But I like being with my kids. It's actually as simple as that. I like being with them. They understand what it means when they hang out with their friends, they fly coach. Although because they fly so much, they have pretty good status on their own, which is a little bit of a weird unintended consequence. I guess we can stop putting their record locator in there, but they're pretty, they're pretty savvy at this point.

26:22Adam Katz: So I would say for us, we've probably were spending 250 to 300 on vacation a year. Um, we vacation one vacation or is that five vacations? I mean, I vacation more than anyone I know. Um, and I say that half kidding, half not, but I vacation a lot. So we usually are going away six to eight times a year. Um, I, uh, great question. So, you know, recently, if I think about the last couple of years, We were just in South Africa. We were in Iceland. We did an Alaskan cruise. We did Galapagos, going to Thailand in a couple of months, go to Aruba every year. Dana and I did a really cool trip during the summer when we're sort of premature empty nesters.

27:10Adam Katz: We're almost in permanence when it's the beginning of summer camp life. You like it. When you're getting close to permanence, you don't. But she and I went in through Lucerne down to St. Moritz. We did the Glacier Express, which is super cool. He then took another train to Lake Como back through Milan to do some shopping. We're pretty good at that sport. So really, I mean, it's a pretty wild pin across the map. Between your wealth management, your, let me make sure I'm clear here, your wealth management, and then also your job as a wealth manager, and then these vacations, who's taking care of all this stuff?

27:46Adam Katz: Yeah, I appreciate that. You're certainly not the one managing all that, right? Well, it's so funny. If you hire the right way and empower people, you actually are the least interesting person, potentially your clients on a day-to-day basis. So what I always say is I get to know people. I'm going to massively upgrade the situation if you start working with me. There's going to be a lot more people than just me. And as you can gather, I like to chat. And we do half-hour calls a lot of the times. And if I'm on the call, we're not going to get to anything substantive. So the way I really set things up is that people hit me with the highest, best use of stuff that really only I can help with.

28:24Adam Katz: A lot of it's around transactions. They're negotiating secondaries, negotiating terms for bankers, for IPOs, M &A, gnarly stuff around family, around kids, around donations, around aging parents. You'll get me anywhere on the planet. And in my auto signatures, I always put my out of office where I am. and then I write at the end, if you need me, you know how to get me. I don't put my phone number there. I mean, the way I end the - If you don't know how to get me, you must not need me. Then you're not really - It's funny. Like the way I end my book is something I call the scarcity seesaw. Can I actually read this real quick?

29:00Adam Katz: Is that cool? Yeah, please do. All right, cool. This will take a minute. And before you do, what's the title of the book? Sure. The title of the book is Making the Zeros Count. Great. There's a field guide for decamillionaires, centimillionaires, and billionaires, but the back, and this is important, It starts with stop counting all those zeros. Just make them all matter. This book is about generosity. This book is about intentionality. This book is about parenting. It's about time. So the last carry in my book, I call these little pithy ideas carries. It's called tipping the scarcity seesaw. And I think this actually is really important.

29:33Adam Katz: That's how I end the book. I think it's really important for anyone listening. There will come a time when you are the thing that is scarce, not an elusive new client or customer, not the next greatest product or service, not some massive real estate deal, not that hard to land investor on your cap tables. Now the opposite. You are scarce. But the trick is to be intentionally abundant everywhere you want to be. A hobby with friends, aging parents, your kids 4 p.m. soccer game on a Tuesday. Be there, be present, be abundant, and keep your phone on do not disturb to most of the world indefinitely.

30:07I ask every guest on this show what their net worth is. Most of them have to think about it. And it's not because they're hiding something. It's because their money is in dozens of different places. Two brokerages, a business account, some real estate, a crypto wallet they forgot about, a syndicate, and so much more. But we know that personal finance really is not that simple. Sylvia fixes that. Sylvia is an AI built for one very specific and important job. Managing your money. You connect your bank accounts, your brokerage, your credit cards, your crypto, you add your real estate and whatever else you own, and now it knows your entire financial picture.

30:42And you can just ask it questions in plain English, like, should I refinance? Or how do I lower my tax rate? Or what's actually risky in my portfolio? Or you can ask, what's the smartest way to pass this to my kids? You could ask ChatGPT those questions, but ChatGPT doesn't know what you own. It also isn't trained on personal finance. Sylvia is. In accuracy tests on tax, mortgages, and credit cards, it beat ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok. In all three categories, Sylvia won. The more complicated your money is, the better Sylvia gets. Their data shows people who use Sylvia regularly grow their network faster than people who don't.

31:23And this is the case at every income level and net worth bracket. Go to Sylvia.com, connect to your accounts, ask it the question you've been avoiding, and start understanding your personal finance more accurately than you ever have.

31:36Adam Katz: And I would say, you know, what I talk a lot about with people and I'll try to jump into some meaty stuff is that, you know, because of the role I've had for so long, I've been able to change so many people's lives. And I know that sounds super hokey as a wealth manager, but by helping people reorient the relationship to money, untethering them, as I say, from like the umbilical cord that attached them to their formative years. It's really fun to play around with things. And, you know, that three digit rule really gets people thinking because it's not about the three digits or two digits to the left.

32:14Adam Katz: You can see it's all the digits to the right. You can't. And those tend to be a hundred dollar units, thousand dollar units, maybe even $10 ,000 units. And man, when you start porting that numerator where you can't even see it in your gigantic bank account into little denominators where it matters. My real, real visuals, imagine like a droplet of water in a, in a, in a pool in the backyard. And then you're, I can't see it. And then let's just move it into the bathtub. Still can't see it. Maybe a glass still can't see it. Maybe a thimble still can't see it. Then you get it into a baby's teaspoon and you finally can.

32:48Adam Katz: Imagine taking so many droplets of water you literally can't see and putting them places every day. And that's probably the most exciting and fun thing. And I already told you guys I'm obsessed with and addicted to generosity. And a lot of what people remember most is I will then tell them that the idea of random acts of daily financial kindness should become second nature to you. So I have a whole tipping construct. I actually was looking before we got on the chat today. Like I spent a hundred grand this year at restaurants, 35 ,000 of it is tips. So remember, that's not a 35 % tip. That's a 50 % tip.

33:28Adam Katz: So I don't tip based on percentage of bill. I just did some backwards math. I tip based on day part. And the reason I do this is I'll tell the quick story of I was at a celebratory dinner with my daughter a few years ago. and the check comes and we were on a four top, even though it was the two of us, she was, I don't know, at the time, 12, 13 years old. Obviously she wasn't drinking. That would be weird. And I wasn't drinking too much because that would also be maybe a little weird. And so the bill came, it was maybe 250 bucks and obviously 20 % to$50 move on 300 bucks total. But that didn't sit right with me because it wasn't the waiter's fault that they got a dad and his daughter at the table instead of, you know, me and Daniel and our wives celebrating something amazing where we'd blow it out.

34:18Adam Katz: We'd eat way more food. We drink a bunch and maybe it would be a thousand dollar bill, which of course would just result in a$200 tip. So I said, well, why wouldn't I just tip 200 bucks? and that's what I did that night. And so what I decided to do is, and I love having systems, and again, that's why I call them carries. They're like things you could have on your person and this is the way I organize the book. So I tip based on day part. Breakfast, 25 bucks. These are all minimos. Lunch, 50. Dinner, 100. I'm getting a coffee, 10. Any drink at a bar,$25. dollars. I also only carry, um, twenties and hundreds in my pocket.

34:59Adam Katz: I always carry a lot of cash because most people that you want to tip don't want a QR code. You're assuming that they have the same banking system as you or a little tone deaf as a society. So I only have twenties and hundreds so that I never even have to think about what the process is. So if you take my bag at a hotel or you take my car to Valet, you're getting 20 bucks at a minimum. Um, when do I give a hundred when, you know, I just bought a Vispring mattress. Have you heard of these mattresses? I have heard of them. I have not slept in them. So I have some clients that maybe, you know, have been part of the other mattress companies that are out there.

35:35Adam Katz: But my wife and I recently bought one of these ridiculous mattresses that she first slept on at a hotel in Paris. And it was$33 ,000 to which you might be like, holy shit for a mattress. Well, first of all, let's get to my first thing I said is financial wealth is a gateway to time wealth, and health wealth. I mean, if we can't invest in our sleep, what do we do? Next, three-digit rule. I'm down to 33 grand. I have no idea what I have. I might not even know what I have down to 330 grand, which sounds gross, but that's the three-digit rule. And then I'm like, man, if I poured it to my sleep denominator, my sleep health, amazing.

36:10Adam Katz: And so we recently got that mattress that it's actually, I quite love it. But again, as you start thinking about some of these dynamics and you think about this idea of generosity and this idea of tipping. And when they came to deliver this mattress, there were three guys. And not only did they deliver the mattress, they brought down another mattress. They brought down another mattress I couldn't move. And so as they're leaving, and they were there only in the house for like 22 minutes, they each got a hundred dollar bill. Because anyone who brings something to my house, And it goes back to, like I say, if I don't know what I have in my pocket, I don't have the right to keep it there, which may sound controversial to people.

36:53Adam Katz: But if you thought about, man, I have a lot of cash and I don't, I don't know. Do I have$1 ,800 in there? Do I have$1 ,100? Do I have$650? If you don't know, put it somewhere that matters. Take it out of the bathtub. Take it out of the pool. Take it out of the glass and put it in these little baby teaspoons where the person that's getting it cares about it so much. So for me, like the tipping dynamic is amazing. So this year, as I said, I turned 50, Dana turned 50. So we did some pretty blowout extravagant stuff, which I'm happy to talk about what we did all about memory making. But I had one part, I celebrated eight days of May.

37:26Adam Katz: My birthday was in May. And I'm happy to talk about what I did. But one of the things was we did a dinner at like our local steakhouse, which we love. We had like 14 people. And this, Dan and I go there almost every week. and almost no matter what the bill is, they get a$250 tip from me. So if it's 300 bucks - So they like you. They see you coming. They put their tie back on. We're going to talk about the difference of service, which is okay, but I like the random act of daily financial kindness where I'll never see the person again. And I'll talk about when the formative stuff happens, but I want to finish because I'm going to ask your tip question.

37:59Adam Katz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the bill is 3 ,000 bucks. I gave him the$2 ,000 tip. Wow. And why? Your birthday celebration. Let him in. Yeah. It's just, I wanted to make it a round number. And then just general charity. I mean, we've donated probably, I don't know, four or 500 grand over the last few years to so many things. We're very into hyperlocal stuff. Some of it, you might argue that people really need your money. I don't know. We like to have it where it's hyperlocal, it's tangible. We did something really big for our synagogue after I sold the company. And it's funny, like that was an example of the what, why dynamic where we're not the most religious people.

38:38Adam Katz: We don't go very often and people were confused. Like, why would the cats? And we pretty much did a massive internal renovation. Not structural, but I tell everyone the reason we did it is as young families moved to my area and they're looking at different synagogues. I said, I want people to say, wow, this place is ready for the next 30 years, not the last 30 years. And it was as simple as that. And so, you know, explaining the why, what I didn't anticipate, though, is the rabbi had us come up on the holiest day of Rosh Hashanah, which is the big New Year celebration. A thousand people at the synagogue calls us up by all of our first names.

39:13Adam Katz: So the kids weren't super psyched about it. And he asks the whole congregation, a thousand people to stand up. and if I needed to turn and have a conversation about money or anything like we're talking about today super comfortable but man having someone talk about you and your generosity in front of a thousand people different and I wasn't as comfortable as I thought I would be so I always say to people like you got to take everything out for a spin and see how it feels donate differently tip differently fly first class see how you feel buy some stuff I always say I don't know why people thinking.

39:46Adam Katz: Buying material stuff makes you materialistic. That's a weird dynamic to me. There's a reason why the luxury good market exists. And it's not just for aspirational folks. We actually care about attribution. And it's not because we need our name on things, but I like the idea of spectrums. And if you think about two bookends of a spectrum of inspiration and shame, I don't mind living somewhere in the middle. I know a lot of people that have started donating a lot more because of things they've seen you've done. And it's because they're a little embarrassed. They're like, geez, because their units never changed.

40:21Adam Katz: If you think about that three digit rule and suddenly like, wait, the grandeur I used to have of a hundred dollar bill versus what I was worth the first time I saw one. Wait, are my hundred dollar bills, $10 ,000 bills now? Have I readjusted when a friend asks me to donate and they're running the New York Marathon. Do I still give a hundred bucks? Maybe I should be giving a thousand bucks. We went to this place in Mexico called Gran Velas, not an advertisement, but a great all-inclusive. People call it the four seasons of all-inclusives. And for the two rooms for the week is right around Christmas, New Year's.

40:55Adam Katz: It was$37 ,000. No all-inclusive, but that's a pretty big number. And I had trouble getting seats every morning. So we all know that dynamic. It's very irritating, right you especially here I might pay all this money I'm like I still have to get up at 5 30 a.m this is terrible and every day you know you get your bill even though it's all inclusive and you like put a tip or you don't so I was like probably putting my 25 bucks again this was many many years ago so the next year I come back and I had an epiphany and I said you know what I'm going to give them a 250 tip every day so playing around with the numbers if you do that for six days, it's$1 ,500.

41:38Adam Katz: So I said to myself, well, if the bill for the week wasn't$37 ,000, but it was $38 ,500. And that package meant I never had to get up ever. And I always had the same four seats where I wanted them. And I had waiters that walked around after me in the pool. Would I check the box for the$38 ,500 version? And of course, the answer is yes. Negligible. People mentally compartmentalize money over different denominators. The idea of tipping$250 is mind boggling to people. But if I bundle it and put it over the$37 ,000 denominator, it's irrelevant. And this is where I think people get more empowered as they get to know me and hear these ideas.

42:18Adam Katz: And again, I've been doing this one-on-one for so long. The book is now amplifying. It's a megaphone getting to lots of people I'll never talk to. And I think at my hokey level, I'm hoping it makes the world a little bit of a better place. Every year when summer ends, you tell yourself it's finally time to start taking health seriously. But work picks up, schedules fill, and your health slips down the priority list again. Does this sound familiar? This, my friends, is why a growing number of Hampton members have been loving Daily Body Coach. It's become an inside secret within the community for getting lean, strong, and healthy without the mental load of having to think about training and nutrition.

42:51Daily Body Coach is run by a Hampton member, Anthony Monica, who's also a software founder. And you feel that pedigree come through in this experience. As a customer, you get your own team of trainers, nutritionists, and psychologists who take the time to understand how you operate, what tends to throw you off, and what your daily life actually looks like. The result is a highly personalized operating system that's guaranteed to deliver results. If you want to avoid falling off, restarting, and repeating the same old cycle, you need a system that can work long-term. Which means it needs to be designed around your existing habits.

43:19That's what Daily Body Coach builds for you. So if you want to transform the way you look and feel and start taking your health seriously over the long-term, you've got to try Daily Body Coach. Click the link in the description or go to dailybodycoach.com slash moneywise, and I'll connect you directly with Anthony.

43:33Adam Katz: With people leaning into generosity, getting the dopamine. And now on the flip side, the problem is now when we've gone back multiple times, I am swarmed by service because I don't think I realized how much money that was to these folks. And then I'd always do some version of a cash tip at the end. But I think playing around with numerators and denominators, when people compartmentalize, same thing with the flights. I'm like, what if the vacation was 50 ,000 and your flights were only five, but what if the vacation was six? I play around with it. I'm like, you're just compartmentalizing the flight costs versus the whole vacation costs.

44:13Adam Katz: And I think we get trapped into numerators and denominators a lot, relative value, things like that. I buy a lot of nice stuff. I like nice stuff. I'm playing around a little bit. I wore an Apple watch for 13 years. And my oldest, my son, wrote a whole essay to a private school he went to about mechanical watch movements mocking his dad who wears an Apple watch. and I just I have reasons that I just sort of abandoned nice watches because I didn't really understand how people spend 50 100 200 thousand dollars on watches like 15 years ago and I heard didn't make sense to me and then what happened was and I'm wearing it today actually is that I was with my son we were looking at some schools in Boston when he was getting ready to go to college and we ended up going into torno and you know I've really been in a torno in a very very long time.

45:01Adam Katz: And I tried a couple of watches on it. And I tried on this Rolex. And I tried it on. I'm like, oh, this is sort of cool. I've never seen one. It's sort of black. It's matte. It's sort of my vibe. It doesn't really look like a Rolex. I'm like, oh, how much is that? I go, it's$35 ,000. I said, okay. I haven't bought anything yet since I had sold the company. And I said, well, I might be interested. They're like, oh, you can't buy it. I'm like, what do you mean I can't buy it? It's for exhibition only. And I'm like, wow. Classic Rolex. I've got a willingness to pay, but you don't have a willingness to sell.

45:31Adam Katz: And I didn't really understand that part of the luxury market. And unbeknownst to me, Dana remembered that I was interested. She went to a local mall where they have a Rolex and she worked on it for nine months. So I forgot about it to be very candid. And we're sitting watching TV on a Saturday. She remember that watch you were interested in? And I'm like, yeah, she's like, it's in. I'm like, like, what do you mean it's in? She's like, well, I know you liked it. So I've built a relationship with the woman at the mall and she got one. And what went through my mind in the split second was fuck, I don't think I want it.

46:07Adam Katz: But then I, then I flipped around and said two things. One is what an unbelievable labor of love where I pretty much go by whatever I want, whenever I want, But I couldn't buy this. And I thought it was so special and so awesome. So we go over the mall, I try it on my go, I love it anyway. And we bought it. And then since then, I've bought four, three more nice watches and one very, very nice watch that my wife refers to as my house watch because there's parts of the country. nice one uh so it's a vacheron which is you know one of the the holy three if you will um it's a tourbillon so it's got the really cool spinning thing um and you know it cost over two hundred thousand dollars and how did you how did you figure that out that you wanted that one i mean so it's a great question yeah so i did i was like i was at the mall right when the vacheron store happened to open and sometimes you can get lucky when a boutique opens because they have a little inventory.

47:05Adam Katz: So I'm trying a few watches on. And the first ones they showed me were like four year, 50 grand, which I'm like, okay. And at that point I had bought a couple in that range. And then I try on this one and it's green. It's like a green mat, like alligator leather, and it's got the tourbillon. And I'm like, oh, this is beautiful. I try it on and I had my daughter with me and I'm like, how much is this? And they're like, at the time they're like 191. So I did take a little bit of a breath, right? My own three digital. I'm like, okay, that's a number. And then I said, well, will you sell me that one?

47:33Adam Katz: Because in my mind, I'm like, even in, you know, I live near Short Hills. So it's the Short Hills Mall. I'm like, even there, I don't think everyone's walking in and just willing to drop 200 grand on a watch. And he said, no, it's allocated to someone else. And you fast forward many, many months later and he had it in and it was the first time, which I liked. I like getting uncomfortable because it's fun, right? You build your bandwidth and I'm like, oh, this is fun. Like I'm pretty uncomfortable about this, but I knew it was a balance sheet shift and that's the cheat. Can I sell it exactly what I bought it for?

48:04Adam Katz: Maybe, maybe not, but like you're getting 80, 90 cents on the dollar. You're not getting 30 cents on the dollar. Um, and so, you know, I've been able to buy a bunch of watches lately. Um, you know, there's been more, it's funny. I was like looking at the year, this year spend and, you know, it's these blowout 50th celebrations, which was probably cumulative, of at least 100 grand, maybe more. I'm happy to sort of talk about some of those. Yeah, walking through all those now, let's assume this year wasn't an outlier. What are you spending for the year? Philanthropy, tipping, generosity? Yeah, normally I think we're spending in that 250 to 300 range on vacations right now.

48:42Adam Katz: Part of it's the flights. I mean, first-class travel internationally - And that's vacation only, but what about, I mean, I'm talking investments, mortgage. Oh yeah. Yeah. So short, no, no, sure. So I would say on the mortgage will build up. So mortgages is about one 20, one 30 total. They're both interest only mortgages. So the bigger house, uh, in Westfield where I live, uh, is around probably a hundred, a hundred, five thousand of interest. Um, and then we have a lake house that we've had almost a decade, which I call my memory maker. By the way, I bought that lake house 100 % with debt way back when.

49:18Adam Katz: I actually used a HELOC from another house I had plus debt. It's pretty wild. I always explain the survivorship bias of the journey I'm on. And of course, that listens to this. This isn't very easy. And most people would not be able to handle the volatility and the risk. But you don't get there usually without taking a risk that most folks wouldn't take. So on that house though, I bought a long time ago, way before COVID. And as I said, we called it the memory maker. Not only my kids, but so many of my friends' kids probably will talk about this lake house they went to. And they probably went like five or six times, but in their mind's eye, it'll be 50 or 60 times.

49:55Adam Katz: And I learned to wakeboard and I learned to do this and that. And that to me, and we don't use it as much anymore. Fortunately, it's under an hour from here, so I can get back and forth easily. But between those two, it's about maybe 115, 130. Property taxes where I'm probably the dumbest financial advisor out there because my kids don't even go to the schools. And by the way, with salt, can't really do that. Probably between both houses is 75, 80. Okay. So you're at 200 between the houses and then you have 250 for vacations. So we're 450 plus let's say a hundred on food plus the$50, or you said 35 ,000 in tipping.

50:31Let's just say 150. So we're at like 600, right?

50:34Adam Katz: And then probably about 150 a year and donating. Okay. Outside of the tipping, this is just philanthropy. Oh yeah. Full on actual charity. I always say like the, the, I guess my housing is closer than I thought it was when I hear that. Um, we shop a lot. I mean, it's sort of a thing to say. I mean, a few thousand dollars a month or like a hundred thousand dollars a month. No, no, no. I would say that, you know, there's years, a year like this year where there were a bunch of watches, bunch of bags, um, some other stuff, you know, it could be four or$500 ,000 in an aberrational year. I would say in normal years it could be a hundred grand.

51:11Adam Katz: Okay. So this year we're at about a million then with that. Yeah. But then like I was, I was talking to my insurance advisor, you know, $45 ,000 on liability insurance. So you think I've got the two houses, I've got four cars because my son, you know, I've got, and I've got a young driver. So I've got two nice cars. Dana has a nice car. And then what are those? Sure. So I, I love cars in general and I like things that most people don't have. So I have a super rare BMW called an Alpina B8 and I have it in the Alpina green. It's likely you never seen this car. Does it match your green watch? Cheesily, it now does.

51:53Adam Katz: I love it. No, that's sick. That's awesome. Don't let anyone tell you that's not That's super cool. But what I love about it is it just looks like a BMW. It's just a little different looking. It's got different badging. It's radically different. It's such a one-of-one car. 168. It's on both sides of the scale, right? It's try tipping differently, try doing this differently, try spending a little differently. Because none of it will probably derail you because almost none of what we're talking about, besides my mortgages and I got some car paint, but think about it. almost everything I'm talking about is totally discretionary.

52:29Adam Katz: I don't have to donate as much. I don't have to buy things. I don't have to vacation. So for me, I also believe in the bell curve of consumption, like 40s, 50s, and 60s. But man, 70s, 80s, and 90s are not guaranteed, and they're not guaranteed healthy. So the idea of putting the foot to the gas pedal as far as you can to the ground, maybe through the ground, is sort of where I live. And I think it's funny. In the day job, I'm an enabling advisor. I often say, and this will go to some of the nominal versus real return of investments, like the only competition for living an amazing life, and I mean the memory making, the values, the showing your kids, showing community what you care about is some terminal value you care about in your account when you're dead.

53:16Adam Katz: And I don't meet anyone that actually cares. And like when you use the starting denominator of 50 million, 80 million, 100, and you have more actuarial life ahead of you than behind you, which I sadly no longer fit in that camp. But a lot of people I work with do, I'm like, if you had, you know, 820 million when you die or 423 or like, and again, inflation adjusted, not as much as it is, but it's just math, right? Law of 72, things double every 12 years at 6%. Like this is just math. I'm like do you care if you have 800 million or 600 million but the 600 million dollar version you did all these crazy things all this giving all this donating all this helping people all this memory making but you have 200 million less or do you want to forego all of that stuff and this is a play on obviously die with zero but to me like that's just a result of not a goal of like yeah I'll never die I just I can't spend it I mean I guess I could donate it but like there's You can't get through all of it.

54:10Are you going to give some to your kids? Do you have a legacy plan set up?

54:13Adam Katz: So I have a very good legacy plan, as you'd hope. I'm pretty good at architecting very sophisticated income estate and philanthropic plans. I would expect that. I did it myself. And there's a lot of optionality I built in. I'll put it that way. But yeah, as we have more conversations with the kids about money, I want to be supportive, not overly enabling. Dan and I lived in a roach infested apartment where we literally turn the lights on and watch for about three seconds. Them all run and hide. I don't think I need my kids to go through that because I actually sometimes people forget. Like I understand grit, but just because your kids or friends go through what you went through doesn't mean they have the same result.

54:56Adam Katz: Like let's not totally discount luck and some skill. So even if you put something through what you went through doesn't mean they land where you landed. And I think that's important. So for me, very much as obviously my kids are much older than a lot of people I chat with, we care a lot about leaning into what you care about, where you have fun, where you think that your superpowers matter. I always explain, you got to figure out where your superpowers are. And then you got to put yourself in an environment that cares. And I hope there's an environment that cares. And also, you don't have to have a linear career.

55:27Adam Katz: I didn't really figure out what I wanted to do till I was 34. So I think it's a really weird, like pushing 14. I'm three right now. And I, man, yeah, my career is anything but linear. I can tell you that. Right. But it's weird we put the pressures on it. I want to bring the plane in for a landing here and ask what I ask a lot of guests is we call it a threshold number on Money Wise. And it's the number that you had or you reached where you stopped worrying about money. I'm curious what that number was for you in terms of net worth and total spending power. What was your threshold number? Yeah, no, it's a great question.

55:58Adam Katz: I think for me, because and this might be more common, is that I blew right through. it in one day. You know what I mean? Because of the exit event. Correct. So what was it? And then how much was the, you know, yeah, I mean, I feel what I've always told people as a practitioner, which will be my answer is I think once you get to 20, 20 to$25 million and you can start predictably making a million bucks a year off of that portfolio, um, you can start living a pretty great life. I'm not saying you're living exactly the life that I am right now, because you can here, I've ramped up certain things pretty dramatically.

56:32Adam Katz: But I think when you get to like 20 to$25 million, you're probably way wealthier than the wealthiest person you thought existed in your hometown. And that's the thing that I try to, like, forget 250 million to an app. Like, think about the unitization of money for all the survivors that we're seeing in the headlines. Again, going back to survivor spice, like people don't normally make billions of dollars, right? Then money really becomes all 100 % irrelevant. There's really nothing you can do to move the needle anymore of your first three digits. Everything's an asset. I don't know if people remember Brewster's Millions, but Brewster's Millions is the best movie to watch.

57:09Adam Katz: And I know people have their own version of scorecards and things like that, and that's cool. Just that's not what motivates me. You start porting the numerator onto different denominators. So I think when you get to that$20 to$25 million range, I mean, most people can live a pretty great life. The other thing is anyone who gets to that range, you're not going to knock it out of bed again. And this is what I remind all the entrepreneurs is like, if you're who you are, so many people pay you a few hundred thousand dollars a year cumulative to just be an advisor or consultant. And then I remind people, yeah, but that's not that much.

57:40Adam Katz: I'm like, but if you're spending a million dollars a year, it's 30 % of your spend. So it matters a lot. And think about even at 5%, how many more millions of dollars would you need in your proverbial account to make an extra 300 grand. And then they start doing the math. They're like, another five or six million. I'm like, right. So I think when you get to 20 to 25 and you have the ability to also probably play around with some additional income to really ramp up probably the stuff on the edges I'm talking. But otherwise, you could probably spend, I don't know, 50, 60 grand a month. And for most people, that's a pretty bang in life.

58:17And I would say that I

58:18Adam Katz: probably thought that was where I wanted to go again. The stuff that has really changed for us is, you know, donating at a certain level, definitely doing some of the blowout 50th stuff, which again, aberrational for the year. I know we never touched on it, but I know we're coming up on time. Awesome. Adam, this has been a great episode. I appreciate you sharing as transparently as you did. And I love, I love when an episode turns philanthropic. I mean, I'm a big, you know, I'm a big believer in being a generous donor as well. And I try to give whenever I can. The three-digit rule, I think, is going to kind of reshape the way I think about even being generous.

58:54And a lot, actually. You got my gears spinning. So I really appreciate you sharing with us today and coming on Money Wise.

59:00Adam Katz: My pleasure. And again, the name of the book, because I definitely would love people to check it out, is makingthezeroscount.com is the website. I'm donating 100 % of any of the profit to charity, which won't surprise you from this conversation or from reading the book. That's awesome. Adam's story is pretty cool. At the beginning, he talks about the house that he grew up in. When his dad sold it, there was$650 ,000 on the sign and only$50 ,000 of equity left. His parents had borrowed against it for years to pay for college, bar mitzvahs, weddings. His dad worked 31 years and made$48 ,000. And he died with$133 ,000 to his name.

59:35Adam was 16 the first time he even got on a plane. And he was 24 the first time he put his feet in sand. Now he's worth as much as$35 million. He spends about a million dollars a year, close to$300 ,000 on vacations, $150 ,000 on donations, $35 ,000 just in additional tips. And when he talks about any of it, he talks about the tips the most. What's pretty cool about Adam is he really does value generosity, outsized generosity, generosity that might not ever even get noticed. And that, I think, is the part that Adam would want you to take with you. The generosity doesn't show up with the money.

1:00:08It was there first. He was always someone who wanted to be generous and was generous with what little he had. Now, the money just made the numbers of generosity even bigger. A lot of you listening might not have$25 million yet. I don't. I'm 33. I've got a third kid on the way, and I'm always optimizing to make sure my family has what they need. But the three-digit rule doesn't care what your number is. Everybody has digits they can't see. At my scale, it could be$20,$100. I mean, it's definitely not$100 ,000 yet. but the digits that you can't see, those are the types of monies that you have to freely give and put somewhere that might matter more.

1:00:41Adam's parents died before they saw any of what Adam created. He told me he wasn't as sad as he thought he'd be and it took him years to understand why. I think that's why he's in such a hurry. He doesn't trust that his 70s and 80s are guaranteed, so he's spending what he has now, mostly on other people because that's what gives him life. Look, Adam might be on one side of the spectrum where you're just tipping like crazy, But I know personally, I'm going to tip differently this week. People like Adam are who I get to talk to inside of Hampton, a private network for founders and CEOs doing on average$25 million a year in revenue.

1:01:12If you've done$3 million in revenue or have had a$10 million exit, you got to check out joinhampton.com. That's where a lot of these conversations start. And a lot of these challenges like, hey, how much are you tipping? Or should you be tipping more with what money you have? Those are the types of conversations that happen behind closed doors in Hampton. And you're missing out if you're not there already. Adam Katz was a great guest. And I'm really thankful that he came on the show to talk about generosity, wealth, and life. I'm Daniel Burke. This is Money Wise. I'll see you next week.