MI323: Creating a Work Optional Life w/ Rachael Camp

23:54And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. So how does the fee structure work? Is this like a subscription thing that it's a monthly fee that they pay or is it a one-time fee? How does the fee structure work? Yeah, there's two models. So one of them is a one-time financial plan and that's so they pay 50 % of the plan when they sign the agreement and the remaining 50 % when I present the plan to them. That takes about three months that we work together and develop the plan. And then we don't work together after that point. And then I have ongoing clients, which similar flat fee structure, but they pay it monthly.

24:36And that just continues. And usually, you know, at this point forever, but at any point to where they say, okay, you know, I think maybe I've got it from here and there's no defined end date with that plan. They can take the training wheels off and ride the bike on their own at that point. Right. So I'm glad you mentioned the psychology of money by Morgan Housel. That is one of my favorite books as well. And my favorite chapter is the last one called confessions, where he goes into what he does personally with his own money and kind of like takes the lid off and just says, here's what I do. I wanted to go into that a little bit with you is do you kind of follow traditional savings and investing advice for yourself?

25:17Or is there anything differently that you might do in your own financial life? Yeah, I actually think I'm a pretty decent planner because a lot of the way that I work and the way that I help clients is I ask myself, how would I want somebody to help me with money? And I've struggled with money and that I have a pretty bad scarcity mindset around it. I am the type of person that will over-save who thinks I need to have a crazy high income and a crazy high net worth, but I likely will never spend through it. And this is why I think really anybody could benefit from a financial planner because I can be really realistic with somebody else and say, you really don't need to save this money.

25:57But when it comes to myself, that's a much harder discussion to have and it's a much harder thing to get over. So in my early 20s, straight out of college, I started saving about 20 % right away. I got really into the FIRE community shortly after that, which for those who don't know. Yeah. Explain that what FIRE stands for. A lot of our listeners might not be familiar with that. Yep. That's financial independence, retire early. So the idea is that you save a very large portion of your income so you can retire or be financially independent as soon as possible. So it often involves living far, far below your means and really saving and investing the difference.

26:38So I got really into that and started saving a very large portion of my income for a few years. I was the highest point saving about 50, 5, 0, 50 % of my income. That's a lot. Yeah. Last year I was still pretty high. I want to say 35%. And so this is very strange, but my goal this year is to save less money. And one of my issues is I really value travel and experiences and I track my expenses. And I looked at my expenses for 2023 and was really disappointed in how little I spent on travel. And so I can say that all day long. But again, if I don't have somebody there who is holding me accountable and saying, you say this is important to you, but the way you spend your money does not show that it's important to you.

27:22So I was able to sit down and I can't argue with cold numbers there. And so for 2024, I created a financial plan that actually prioritizes travel and experiences. Still going to save money. I can't completely eliminate that. But I have saved so much money to this point that I've reached what they call in the fire community, coast FI. What that means is you've saved enough money to where you don't have to save another dollar and you're going to hit your freedom number by traditional retirement. I did so well saving so much money that I've hit that point. And that's a really good feeling. I can't deny that.

28:00But I recently read the book, Die With Zero. And that was a very eye-opening book for me that actually has a lot of influence in the way that I'm viewing money now. So let's get into that because I told you I interviewed Dickie Bush a couple of days ago and he mentioned that book as well, Die With Zero. I've got it on my Audible. I've listened to the first chapter and I've got so many books, I've never returned back to it. So tell me about the ideas with Die With Zero. Yeah, Die With Zero is all about maximizing your life experiences. So I really feel like this book was written to the financial independence community because most people still have a problem with not saving enough money.

28:37This isn't really a book for the masses. It's kind of for those people who are actually pretty diligent savers. And so I'm reading the book and it feels like it's written for me. And it really emphasizes that while our money is sitting in our respective of accounts compounding and earning interest and dividends, our health and our energy are doing the opposite. So there are things that you can do in your life or things you want to do in your life that you may only be able to do when you have the energy for it. And obviously money and resources is a factor here. So he kind of talks about that balance.

29:14In your early 20s, you have the most time, you have the most energy, but money is kind of an issue. And you get into your 30s and now you have a little bit more money. The health is great and energy is great. And so 30s are, he argues, a really great time to kind of enjoy some of those experiences. But the idea is that we should not delay all gratification and that the risk here is that we don't take the time to enjoy the present day and take advantage of the things that we could only do today. So I have a goal of backpacking Southeast Asia. Had it for a really long time and I just keep putting it on the back burner.

29:51I read this book and it was, you know, that was something that was zero. Oh, that was zero. Okay. I thought that was a backpacking book or something. Oh, no, no, no. But yeah, I mean, that was the thing. The first thing that came to mind that I really should do this now and stop putting it off. So it's interesting to me though, that like the people that are really good at saving and deferring gratification, it leads to a life of continuing to defer gratification and not going to go do the things that you've done. And, you know, the tragic stories of like the guys and people that retire with millions, but they never fulfilled any of their dreams.

30:24You know, it's like super sad or they retire and they've got a big nest egg and then pop over. So it's a real conundrum, like the balance between saving, deferring gratification and leading a life you want to lead. Dickie had, and this might have been from the book, but he talked about having a memory dividend fund. And so I don't know if that's from the book, but what Dickie would do is save a specific amount that would go strictly to largely creating great memories. And so that for him, it was like a helicopter ride above New York City, took his mom on a trip to Greece. For you, it would be the backpacking to Asia.

30:57Is that something that you would recommend to people is like having a dedicated fund for creating great memories? Oh, absolutely. That's one of my favorite tactics to use in personal finance is when you create these goals, like vacation goals, go ahead and create a separate savings account for them and label it that. So I have a Southeast Asia one. I have a wedding savings account. And Allies is a great company for this because they allow different savings buckets and you can have as many as you want. But not only is it great for actually reaching that goal, but it is really motivating as well because it's really fun to send money to a Southeast Asia fund rather than just always sending it to your 401k.

31:38It's motivating and you can kind of see it slowly start to reach that goal. And it just helps with the anticipation and the excitement of that trip as well. So that is one of my favorite techniques to use. I would say create that savings account, label it what the goal is that you want it to be and set up automated transfers to that account and just watch it grow. I love it. And I love your dream too. I spent a couple, two years living and working in Vietnam, spent a lot of time in Southeast Asia. So maybe like after the show, we can talk about it. But yeah, I love talking that kind of stuff. So and travel, obviously such a good thing to do.

32:16So tell me how you first got into the whole FIRE movement, though. Was there a book, a blog post, something, a co-worker? How did you first realize, I don't want to work till 65. I want to create this financial independence. I can't remember what the first thing I saw was with the FIRE movement. I've always had this kind of obsession with money and I've always viewed it as the way that I can have control and freedom over my life. So it wasn't something that I always needed a push in this direction, but it was the FIRE movement was something I naturally stumbled upon when researching about my own personal finances.

32:53So I have a degree in finance, I was working in wealth management, but still, and this what I hear from my clients all the time, it's hard to know what exactly applies to you. There's so much information out there, which is great. The clients we were working with at the time, though, were worth 50 million to 1 billion. They were nowhere. Doesn't apply, right. Does not apply to me. The strategies they're using does not apply to me. So I started researching on my own. And honestly, I think the thing that really solidified the FIRE movement for me at that time was that I didn't enjoy my job. And I really did at that time have a goal of retiring early.

33:29That has transformed quite a bit. Now I have a goal to never retire. And I think a lot of people find the FIRE movement that way. They're not enjoying their job. They don't want to work for 40 years and then retire. They want to retire as soon as possible. So there's one kind of issue with the FIRE movement. I think it appeals too much to that crowd. And instead, I'm a fan of not staying at a job that you hate for 40 years just because it pays you a really high income or anything like that, but rather find something today that you enjoy more. Because 10, 20 years and whatever it is until you hit your freedom number, it's just too long to not enjoy what you do most of the time.

34:07So I'm not a fan of that method anymore. And I think too, I've got an example. I've got a friend who talked about all the things he wanted to do, worked as a CFO at a Fortune 500 company and in his 50s finally left. But at that point, it was tough because he didn't know what he'd like to do. And so he'd spent all this time and energy in the financial world, but nothing outside of it to prepare himself for when he did have the financial freedom to do what he wanted to do. Is that something you find or how do you advise people on that? That's a tricky thing. Yeah. So my ultimate goal with my own money is just to be able to chase my own interests.

34:46So as I find something interesting, I want to be able to obsess over it and really dive into it. And I do think there are different levels to financial freedom, financial independence. So it doesn't have to be this big freedom number that you hit and then, okay, now you're financially free, but there are levels to it. Okay. Do we have a 12 month emergency fund that I could live off of? Will I go and try a different job or try entrepreneurship. You can create a sort of short-term financial freedom that gives you that ability to really try something else. And I always encourage people to do that, especially the younger you are, but really just because it's a constant reminder, as cliche as it is, this is the one life we have.

35:28And I think they say the number one regret of the dying was that they wish they would have lived a life truer to themselves, not what others thought of them. So I always keep that top of mind for me and for my clients that if they are in a situation that they find miserable or just not enjoyable, it's just not worth it. It's not worth the high income. Your time is a very precious resource in how you spend it. We should put just as much energy towards that as we do towards savings, investing, thinking about our future. Yeah, I think you made a tweet. I think nobody would trade places with Warren Buffett with all the billions he has.

36:06His time is limited. So like time is, that's always how I viewed wealth is like time and optionality to do the things you want, which brings me to your podcast that you're launching. Let's talk about that. Tell me about the title of it, what the impetus of it was and how you view it, what kind of guests you're going to bring on that kind of thing. Yeah. So it's called Becoming Work Optional. And it is, it's the whole idea of it is an alternative to traditional retirement and also kind of an alternative to financial, the fire community too. So I think there's, it kind of brings it into the balance.

36:37If you view traditional retirement at one end of the spectrum and the fire movement at the other end, I kind of like to view this as somewhere in the middle to where we're not going to either extremes. But the idea here is that a financial plan should allow for maximum options and flexibility. And that the The truth is we probably have no idea what we want to be doing in 30 to 40 years. It's kind of comical that we are creating a financial plan for somebody who is 50 year old us, but we have no idea what 50 or 60 year old us is going to want to do. So we talk a lot about creating a plan that maximizes for flexibility, that maximizes for options.

37:16That's what it's all about. so that when you hit a different phase of your life and you suddenly want to do something else, well, you have the money for it, you have the plan for it, and you're allowed to go after that. And that's what being work optional is really about, that you don't have to stay in that traditional nine to five. You are not reliant on a paycheck necessarily, and you can have the option to pursue other things. That's awesome. So, and the podcast is launching soon, right? Yeah, next week. So the time we're recording this, it'll be end of January that's coming out. That's exciting.

37:55So tell me about some of your guests that you're having on and I definitely want to tune in and check it out. Yeah, so right now it's actually just my co-host and I, Matt Garasik and I, we're both financial planners. He works with a lot of individuals with equity compensation. So if that's something you have, he's an expert in that. So we'll be talking quite a bit about that. And then I'll talk to a lot of business owners and high earners on my side. And then eventually, right now, we're just doing episodes with just Matt and I. But eventually, we want to bring people on who are entrepreneurs who have hit work optional status or people with equity compensation that have hit work optional status and interview them about how they did it, the different strategies that they've used.

38:34And for anybody that has hit that status where they no longer have to work anymore, just to kind of ask them about what their life looks like now and how that impacts their decision because it's such a powerful mindset shift. But most of the people that I work with and a lot of people that this podcast will be speaking to are not people who want to fully retire, but instead just want to try something differently. So that's really who we're focusing on. That's cool. I love those kinds of stories. So that I definitely would love to listen to some of those people that you have on. I want to talk about Twitter.

39:06You've been on Twitter for a while now, but relatively not that long. You've got over 20 ,000 followers. I want to hear just about how Twitter has influenced your career, your practice, and just your experience of Twitter. We're going to dive deep into this. Oh yeah. I mean, Twitter built my business. So I have a Camp Wealth is my virtual financial planning business. And it is the way that I get all of my clients. It's the way that I get opportunities like this to be on podcasts. it's the platform that introduced me to a lot of my friends, a lot of the peers that I have and networking that I do has all stemmed from Twitter.

39:46So I really can't emphasize enough the impact it has had on my life. I started off thinking, I'll use this for marketing, maybe I'll get a few clients. And it has become way more than I ever could imagine, even down to when I made my first hiring decisions. I felt like the field of people who are interested in working with me in the caliber of these people was so high because they knew who I was. They knew my money philosophies. They knew how I was building my business. And that was something that they were really interested in being able to be behind the scenes of it. And so that was the employees and those things are all things I did not anticipate happening.

40:26It all came from Twitter. So when you started though, did you explicitly know that, like, did you start off with Twitter thinking that it was going to be a huge, you know, boon to your career? Did you just kind of like check it out? You're on there kind of lurking. There's like, I kind of feel like I'm a lurker and I love it. And I recognize the power of it, but definitely haven't put the energy in to whatever, you know, post every day like you are. So I wanted to hear about that. Like, was it, was your mindset like such that you were using it specifically as a tool to grow your career? I mean, that was the ultimate goal, but did I believe I was going to actually be able to do it?

41:01Not fully, not really. I had a lot of imposter syndrome at that time, a lot of insecurity, a lot of fear of posting on Twitter at that time. And I remember thinking that I was going to commit to posting for one year. I wasn't allowed to say, up until that one year, I was not allowed to say, this isn't working, I should give up. I wasn't allowed to reevaluate the decision until I hit the one year mark. And I think that's the advice I would give almost everybody is dedicate yourself to doing this thing for a really long period of time. And of course, it's easier to say than it is to do, but to the best of your ability, ignore the results and just obsess over the input.

41:41So during this time, I was reading a lot of Ryan Holiday, you know, Obstacles Away, a lot about stoicism, and it was just perfect for that time of my life because I took such a long time to see any results. I really needed that mindset to just obsess over the input. And that was the goal, not the results, but the goal was tweeting every day. And that's what I did. Not to be outcome dependent, like not to have it blow up and have whatever, a hundred thousand impressions or whatever. That can be real a danger. So you had a goal of writing or tweeting every day for a year. Is that, did I hear that accurately?

42:20Yep. And I was, again, I was not allowed to give up on Twitter. I was not allowed to reevaluate the decision until I had done it for at least one year. And you were doing the calendar thing with the red X, the Jerry Seinfeld trick. That's awesome. And you said that you like writing, but did you, were you studying writing? Were you studying people on Twitter that, you know, to copy them or clone them? There's some investors I like, like Monish Pabrai is a guy, I don't know if you know that name, but he's all about cloning and he cloned Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. And the same thing can be applied to anything that you want to do well at.

42:51Was that something that you did with Twitter and cloning people that were successful on it? Yeah. And actually one of my favorite strategies is to go completely outside of your industry and study other people. One of it is, I could go to somebody's Twitter who's doing what I'm doing, their financial planner, but it's really hard to kind of come up with your own ideas when you're in that same. So that feels just like copying. Right. But I'm not saying like, yeah, I'm not saying like plagiarize. Oh, right. But if I go to like a Justin Welsh who is focusing on solopreneurship and it's really different, what I can do is like take his, the way that he tweets his templates and just create a, a very similar tweet, but now it's about personal finance.

43:34So that's why I like to go outside of the industry, A, because I think you should study the best people you can find, not just the best people within your industry. And a lot of creativity comes from seeing what somebody else is doing in a different industry really well and then trying to apply it to your own. But B, it's just a little bit easier because if I go to a finance page and they're tweeting something about a Roth IRA, well, I'm probably going to tweet about a Roth IRA. It's a little bit hard to be creative from that. But with a Justin Welsh who is targeting a different audience And I can just look at the way that he tweets.

44:08And I studied a lot of psychology at the time too. So I was thinking like, what emotion is he trying to generate here? How is this capturing attention? Those are all things that were top of mind for me. I mean, consistency is really important and it's something you have to have. But if you're not increasing the skill, you're just showing up every day and posting something. You're not studying how to post better, how to use psychology and writing and things like that, you're probably not going to see results. So I think it's the combination of the two, showing up every day, but also a dedication to increasing the skill that you're working on.

44:44And what kind of time are you talking about? How long does it take you to do each day? So today it's much easier. I tell everybody that when you first start posting content, it's going to be the most time consuming in the beginning because you're trying a whole bunch of different things. You're just trying to see what works. Your skill is probably at the worst level it's going to be. So in the beginning, it was a big chunk of my day, especially because social media can get a little bit addicting and that's something you have to be very careful. But when I first started Twitter, I had a lot of time.

45:17Now I have not as much time and I have to be a bit more intentional. So I spend about, I would say four hours a week for Twitter creating the content, but I have a lot of content that I get to repurpose now or I get to draw from. So it's not like I'm starting from scratch, which is the hardest place to be when you're creating content.

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49:01All right, back to the show. And so you're generating clients for financial planning through Twitter. Are there a lot of solopreneurs that, like you mentioned, Justin Welsh, are you getting a lot of solopreneurs that want to work with you? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of business owners. So some of them have a few employees, but a lot of one person businesses as well. And then a lot of high earners too. So physicians and even a little bit of people with equity compensation, I am starting to narrow down exactly who I work with and the type of person. But in the beginning it was, you know, everybody accepting everybody.

49:37So I have a lot of different types of clients. I love working with solopreneurs. I love working with hire owners. And honestly, it's because that's the position that I am in. And so I naturally like to study my own personal finances and what would help me. And so by extension of that, I can more easily help other people. I love it. There's a guy I interviewed, Peter Lohman, who's a property manager, really thoughtful guy. You would like him a big reader, learner, but he had this idea of like, niching down to scale up. So getting very specific on... And it sounds like you're doing that. I want to dive into the tech stack.

50:15Let's say I'm a solopreneur. I want to hear about the tech stack you would recommend people use to manage their finances, whether it's... I just want to go into that because that's something I'm really interested and curious about. Yeah. I think people might be surprised how simple mine is. You can certainly get fancy with it. And I know a lot of tools that other people like to use, but I have been using Excel or I now use Google Sheets to track my finances since I graduated college. It was kind of a nodful extension of loving Excel anyway, being a finance major. And I'm a big proponent of customization in personal finance.

50:53So this is the way that I was able to fully customize the way that I want to track my expenses. I know there's a lot of great other options out there. You need a budget people love that one. So if anybody is wanting to start tracking their expenses, I'd probably direct them there first. But outside of that, then it's just about setting up automation. So you sit down and you look at your expenses, you look at your cashflow, and at a very high level, you have to understand what percentage is going to my fixed expenses. So housing, food, utilities, what percentage is going to discretionary. So this is more of the fun expenses, you know, eating out, entertainment, travel, and then what percentage is going to savings.

51:35So this is the part where I find almost nobody knows when I ask them, what percentage of your income are you saving? They almost never have a response or a good guess. So that's the first thing I would do is have an awareness of your finances. And I don't, again, maybe you need a budget would help with this, but I like to just print out statements and go through my expenses line by line and categorize them. So that'll give you a lot of insight. And you do that manually on your own? Manually on my own. That gives me a lot of insight into exactly how I'm spending my money. I'm at this point where I would think I'd be able to stop doing it.

52:11But we talked about this earlier where I realized how little I was spending on travel, which I didn't realize at the time. So I think there's a good argument for always tracking your expenses because it can quickly get out of line. But I would look at what percentage of my income do I want to save? And a very easy rule of thumb is to be sure you're saving at least 20 % of your gross income. And then after that, you just set up automations. So if you're a business owner, there's a lot more automation you have to do. So as money hits your account, this percentage or this dollar amount goes to my Roth IRA, or this percentage goes to my, or dollar amount goes to my emergency fund.

52:48Just make sure that it's set up automated if you can. I know sometimes that's hard with being a business owner, but if you're an employee, it's much easier. So you can set up automations to your 401k, you can set up automated money to your Roth IRA, and you can just line it up with the day that your paycheck hits. So a lot of people when they're starting out and they're interested in personal finance, they have a lot of motivation and they believe that that's going to stick around and it rarely does. So I'm such a huge fan of automation because it's the thing that is going to keep you to your goals when the motivation has died off because it will.

53:23I know you're a big Jack Bogle fan. I think there's some books on your bookshelf there of his. So I wanted to talk a little bit about index fund investing versus actively managing a portfolio. We've got a lot of listeners that they start to learn about the stock market. It's fascinating. They want to try to beat the S &P, whatever. Talk to me about your thoughts on that. Well, the biggest thing is I just don't think it's worth your time. It's so hard to beat the market. We have professional analysts that all they do is pay attention to this stuff and they really struggle to beat the market. So Common Sense on Mutual Funds is one of the books behind me by Jack Bogle.

53:58He's the founder of Vanguard and the father of the index fund. And if you look at the statistics, the studies, it shows how low a chance there is for an actively managed mutual fund to actually beat the index. So his argument is that we should be thrilled with just matching the index. And that's the idea behind the index fund. And that's my philosophy as well. I don't want to risk paying an active manager to try to beat the index for me when over a 10-year time horizon, they have over 90 % chance of not being able to do that. And on top of it, I'm paying them to not be the index for me. So it's kind of a double whammy.

54:38So I believe in putting it in index funds. And then outside of that, invest in yourself, invest in your skills. I mean, I just hate to think about all the time some people are spending on trying to beat the market when it's really hard to do. And you would make so much more money focusing on trying to increase your income or trying to focus on your skills. I love index fund investing. I love Jack Bogle, but nothing beats investing in yourself. That is such good advice. I know I was guilty of that in my younger years. I love investing and love studying about the markets and it's like a game. And I spent hours devoted to it.

55:15And I think I would have been way better off taking your advice, just focusing on investing in myself and outside of investing and automating all this stuff. And I think I would have been better off. Is there anything in hindsight when you look at your own investing journey that you would have done differently in retrospect? I mean, honestly, minor tweaks. The one thing I kind to beat myself up on is when I first started out, I contributed to a traditional 401k when I should have been doing a Roth 401k. That's something like when you just graduate college, you have your first job. Most likely that is going to be the lowest amount of money that you're going to make in your career.

55:51So a Roth IRA or a Roth 401k really makes sense during that time. And this was before I started to really research my own personal finances. So I just went with the traditional 401k. And in hindsight, I should have been putting everything into raw. But outside of that, I did a little bit of stock picking, nothing crazy, didn't lose a ton of money or anything. But again, just wasn't worth my time. And I wish I would have just stuck it in an index fund, forgot about it, and then spent my extra time focusing on increasing my income. When you get into the FIRE community, you start really getting into personal finance, you start focusing on investing and optimizing your finances.

56:28And there's a benefit to that. And I'm grateful for the younger me who did that because now I'm at this point where I have a good chunk of money saved and invested. But again, I still think it would have been better even during that time to be spending much more time focused on reading more books or taking courses or focusing on my CFP rather than tracking my expenses every day. And again, it speaks to figure out what percentage of your income you want to save, automate it, and then just forget about it and go do other things. What are some of the big mistakes when people come to you that you see them doing that you're like, we need to put a stop to this?

57:07What are just some of the big mistakes that people are making? One of the biggest ones I always see is market timing, even though people don't classify what they're doing as market timing. So I'll hear all the time, I don't believe in market timing. I know I can't do that, but I am waiting to invest some of this cash and I want a good deal. I want to wait till the market drops. That's market timing. One of the phrases I actually dislike in personal finance is buy low, sell high, because it kind of pushes people to believe that they can market time. And when you're really young and you have decades from touching this money, your focus should not be, I got to wait for a red day to get into the market, or I want to wait until the market pulls back, I see a dip, and then I'll go all in.

57:49The focus should be 20 years from now, When I look back at today, all of it is going to look cheap. Historically, that's what we see in the market. You give it 20 years of time and it trends upward. So at this time, whether the market pulls back 5 % or it is where it is today, this is going to be so cheap in 20 years. Just get in now and don't try to time the market. There's a lot of great graphs out there that show if you miss just five of the best market days over a 20-year time period, your return almost cuts in half. That graph should terrify anybody from being out of the market for any period of time.

58:26So some people are afraid of buying into the market and it dropping the next day. I, on the other hand, am terrified of not being in the market when it takes off. I think that's the fear people should have. I wanted to touch on the whole rent versus buying question with it when it comes to housing. I believe you rent, you're in Denver now. So talk to me a little bit about that decision? Why you decided to rent? You could have bought a house probably. Talk to me about, I know a lot of this is context dependent, but how did you make that decision for yourself? Yeah. So I've moved around my entire adult life.

59:02I lived in Chicago, lived in Grand Rapids for a little bit. So if I had bought at any of those times, maybe it would have worked out. There was a recent market rally in the housing market that it could have worked out, but most likely not. there's so many large transaction costs with buying and selling a home that it's hard to recover those costs in just a short timeframe. So one of the big things is that I really value geographic flexibility. So being able to move around, I just moved to Denver six months ago, I would have hated to have to sell a house before I did that. And moving to Denver, I'm brand new to it.

59:40I want to explore it first. I want to understand the different neighborhoods and then maybe at some point buy a house. But I always say, when I do that, it's going to be a lifestyle decision. It's not going to be an investment decision primarily because I'm not a believer that your house, your primary residence is a great investment. It is an asset, goes on the balance sheet, but I don't, most people do not make a decent return on their primary residence. And the mistake I see people make is they look at the cost of their mortgage, their monthly mortgage, and they compare that to their rent. And they say, well, my mortgage is cheaper.

1:00:17I should go buy. That ignores all the other costs of home ownership. It ignores the fact that you have to put down a huge down payment on the house and that cash could have been spent or invested elsewhere where it could have earned more money. It ignores the fact that you have maintenance costs, that you have property taxes that you'll never see again. You have to invest in the house in order for it to maintain its value. So if you want your house to increase in value or at least maintain the value, your kitchen has to stay updated. Your bathrooms have to stay updated. Not to mention that you might have to replace your roof one day or your furnace goes out.

1:00:52It just ignores all of the little costs that add up that you don't have when you're renting. And on top of that, as a business owner, I really prefer fixed, stable monthly costs. At this point in my life, I don't want a large unexpected expense because a lot of my cash is going into my business and I want it to be that way. It should be that way right now. I should be investing a lot of it back into the business. I don't want it going into my primary residence. So I hate the argument that red ting is throwing your money away because for anybody who is a disciplined saver or is an entrepreneur and is putting that cash into their business, you're going to earn way more money on your business or in the stock market than you are in your primary residence.

1:01:34So that's where you want to put the extra cash. And you certainly should do that. It's not a simple equation at all. People try to make it that way. There's so many costs to homeownership. We just got hit with a huge property tax bill increase every three years in Columbus, property taxes are reassessed. And there was a massive increase this year across the board, residential, commercial, which my wife and I own both. And it's like, whoa, it changes things. So yeah, definitely. That's a really great points about the rent versus ownership. My background's in real estate. So I've always kind of done like live in flips a little bit, but I think there's so many benefits to renting.

1:02:11The problem aren't yours then if something happens. So then the flexibility is huge. I was going to ask about like your, any like contrarian takes or controversial personal finance takes that you have. It's really the renting one. That's okay. Well, I mean, I could think of some others, but that's my biggest, my biggest one. Every time I tweet about it, people go crazy. Right. It's good. I mean, that kind of like controversy, like whatever, it's good for you. It feels like a very simple statement to say that you should run the numbers for yourself and that maybe renting is the better financial decision for you.

1:02:45But people love to insist that there's no way that renting can be the better financial decision because you're throwing your money away. And again, you just mentioned property taxes. I could argue that's throwing your money away, but I don't think either of them are throwing your money away. You're exchanging money for a place to live. So I hate that rhetoric in the buy versus rent field, but it also, I just hate blanket financial advice. So there's a few rules of thumb that are good for personal finance, but it's where we really get into trouble because it should take into account every person's unique circumstances.

1:03:19And so if somebody were to look at me and not understand what I'm doing, they were to see that I was renting when I could afford to buy, they may say this person is throwing their money away. They could be building up an asset in their home and they don't understand that I have a business, that the return on my business is multiples of a return that I could get on my primary residence. They don't understand that I value flexibility and that I might move around. They don't understand that time is really important to me. So if something goes wrong in my house, I don't want to spend any time or energy on that.

1:03:50I really value and protect my time. And I think about that even in the decision of being a homeowner versus being a renter. Landscaping and care for the home, those all require time. And I'm at a point in my life where I'm fiercely protective over my time and I'm willing to spend money to buy my time back. That's something I'm doing a lot right now. Say more about that. What are some of the things you're doing to buy back time? Yeah. So one of the big things is hiring cleaners. As soon as I got to the point where I was able to do that, I knew that that was something that I should do. I evaluate a clean space.

1:04:27It helps me think. But on top of that, it's just not worth me spending time cleaning when I could pay somebody a lower rate to do it. And to talk about the almanac of Naval Kavikant and the influence that has had, that has really reframed my view of time. And I love when Naval talks about that he set himself a really high hourly rate. It was like what,$1 ,000 an hour, I believe at the time? Yeah. In the very beginning. Now it's much higher, I'm sure. But at a time where I think he even said he couldn't really afford it, but if he could outsource or pay somebody else to do something for less than$1 ,000 an hour, he would do that.

1:05:05So one of the examples was if he bought something online and he needed to return the item, but it didn't equal$1 ,000 or more, he wouldn't do it. It wasn't worth his time. He was that fiercely protective of his time. As somebody who's a big saver, that's a little hard for me to wrap my mind around, but I have still adopted that. And it's influenced the way that I hire. As soon as I started to see how much time I was spending, just in putting data for a lot of my clients, I knew that I could afford to pay somebody else to do that and that I should do that because my skills were really sitting down with the clients having great conversations with marketing my business.

1:05:44And that was really the revenue drivers. So I need to buy back my time over here for things that weren't increasing the revenue. It didn't really require me to do it. And so that's what I did is bought back my time so I could spend time in these other areas that were more impactful to the business. Yeah. I love that idea as well. I've got in the corner over here, Amazon item that I could return. It was a$35 item that doesn't, whatever, it doesn't fit. And I'm not going to return it. Specifically, you mentioned the Naval thing. It's not worth my time. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but let's give it away.

1:06:20But it's such a good... Were there any other ideas that were impactful in Naval's book? Yeah, the idea of leverage. I'm in a period of my life where I am trading a lot of my time for money. But I understand that in order to really build wealth, you can't do that. You have to start building leverage. And actually, I started posting on Twitter because of that. So I could spend all day finding people, talking to them one-on-one, or I can put out my thoughts on Twitter and I can build up this audience and talk to a lot of people. There's no way I can sit down with 21 ,000 people individually and talk to them.

1:06:58But if I invest in the skills of writing and share what I believe are important messages online, then that's a form of leverage. I can write, send out a tweet and it goes to 21 ,000 plus people who might see it. And so that was really impactful to me to understand that there's a one-to-many approach that's going to provide leverage, but also save you time. And again, it all comes back to saving yourself your time and your energy. We've said it before, but that book is definitely one you could reread every year and get something valuable out of it. Are there any other books, whether finance, biographies?

1:07:34I know you're a huge reader that you'd recommend to people or that have made a big impact on you. I really like Cal Newport's deep work and his thoughts around social media. It's really funny because I think people would be surprised to know I don't have any social media on my phone. I intentionally keep it off my phone. So when I go on Twitter or LinkedIn, wherever I am, I have to open it up on my desktop and I'm much more intentional with it. When I first started on Twitter, of course, it was on my phone and I was just every spare second, I was opening it up and looking at it. And the idea is I really wanted to protect my mind space and also just allow myself to get bored.

1:08:14When you look at people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, they understand the power of spending a large portion of your time thinking. So Warren Buffett, I love him. He has his calendar that has like nothing on it. And he says he spends like a majority of his days reading and thinking. That's my ideal life. Yeah, exactly. But social media distracts us. Some of us could have completely empty calendars and not spend a second thinking because we have these distractions. And so when I started to notice that I was constantly distracting myself and Cal Newport in his book, Deep Work, goes into this quite a bit.

1:08:50I took social media off my phone. I try to be a lot more intentional when I go to look at emails and respond to emails as well. And really, I'm just protecting my deep thinking and my deep work. I find if I can start a day working just three hours, no interruptions, a little bit of five minute breaks in there, I'm extremely productive in trying to find these little pockets of time. Instead, if you can really block out the time and focus on something for a good two to three hours, the amount of work you'll get done is amazing. That book talks about that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great book. We mentioned Dickie Bush.

1:09:27He does the same thing where he blocks out the first, I think three or four hours of his day, just doing deep work. And what, in terms of any creative person, like to be able to have that time is huge. And like you said, there are so many distractions in our lives, whether it's whatever, Twitter or Facebook, or there's just constantly things wanting our attention and distracting us to block that out is a really good practice. And on that same note, The Creative Act, which I have up behind me here as well by Rick Rubin. Yeah. Yep. Great book for thinking about creativity and again, how to protect your creativity.

1:10:02So I would say Deep Work and The Creative Act. And it's funny because I used to not view this field as creative at all. But as soon as I started labeling myself as a creator, writer. Then I started to adopt some of the same habits that writers have or that anybody in the creative space has and the music space and anything like that. And it really does help make my content better. And I think you almost have to dive into that identity and say, I am a creator, I am a writer, and then study the habits of great writers and great creators and take your work very seriously. That's something that I've started to do.

1:10:39I think somebody could look at a finance creator, somebody just sends out some tweets and think that there's not much that goes into it. But as soon as I started taking it really seriously, I started viewing myself again as a writer and as a creator and valuing the quality of what I put out into the world. It helped a lot with the growth. I also wanted to touch on 4 ,000 weeks. I think that's how I found out about you. I think you had posted about your books that made the biggest impact. And that was one, The Creative Act by Rick Rubin was one. I forget some of the others, but I was reading 4 ,000 Weeks at the time.

1:11:12So I just wanted to hear how that book impacted you too. I love that book because I picked it up thinking here's a productivity book. I had no idea what it was really about other than I thought it was about productivity. And it was anybody who's really obsessive over productivity and trying to maximize their output and things like that should read this book because this book is about how hard it is for us to be productive and how humans were not meant to be productivity machines. We're not meant to maximize our output. And I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves of, I do this all the time where I feel like I could be more efficient with my days and why can't I get the output out that I want to?

1:11:51And this book, it takes that pressure off because it's like, you're not supposed to be that way. We are not machines. Rest is a very important part of our life. And I've been creating for almost two years now without much rest. And it's something that I've been thinking about quite a bit. I look at what I'm trying to do here, what I'm trying to build as a marathon. So I can't treat it like a sprint. And if I need rest or I need to slow down at any point in this marathon, then I want to do that. I want to give myself the permission to do that because it should be all about sustainability and doing this for a decade, not doing it for a few years and burning out.

1:12:27Good place to put a pin in it here. It's been a blast talking to you. I really have enjoyed this. So for our listeners that aren't familiar with you, what's the best way to learn about you, get in touch with you, that kind of thing. Yeah. So we mentioned Twitter, most active there. It's at camp underscore wealth. I also recently started a YouTube channel that's at camp wealth. And then I'm on LinkedIn as well. If you like to LinkedIn, have a newsletter too, that you can find on my website. And then finally, I have the Becoming Work Optional podcast coming out with my co-host, Matt Garasik. That'll be the end of January, 2024.

1:13:01You got a lot of exciting stuff going on. I will put links in the show notes to all of those that you mentioned, but I just want to thank you for your time and really enjoyed today. This was great. Thank you so much, Patrick. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com.

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