Transcription
Unfortunately, it took me about 60 years to learn the six things that I'm going to share with you over the next about six minutes. And the first one is to stop pretending, to stop pretending that we're somebody that we're not, and just be comfortable with who we are, both the strengths and the weaknesses. With that, and just to embrace that there's going to be people that love our quirky personality; there's going to be people that don't love our quirky personality, but that's okay. There's plenty of people that are going to vibe with us. So that's number one.
Number two is kind of related. Um, number two can get quite expensive, uh, if you don't cut it out sooner rather than later. In fact, it's what I see, having been a financial advisor for over 20 years; it's what I see is probably the number one thing that derails people's ability to retire at 65, or hopefully even sooner. And that is stop keeping up with the Joneses. This need to have an image, this need—you know, your neighbor buys a nice car, you want a nicer car, even though you already have a nice car; your neighbor moves to a neighborhood down the street that gets his kids into a slightly better school—so, and all of a sudden you want the same thing. And these are all fine things to want and to do if it's what you want, but if we're doing it because we want to keep up with the Joneses, that can get expensive really quickly. And I find it doesn't bring me joy, which brings me to the third item on my list.
And that is: stuff doesn't bring me joy. What does bring me joy is relationships and experiences. As I record this, I'm in Costa Rica. I'm at this beautiful location; I'm having a great time. It's a surfing town called Santa Teresa, um, and it's just a lot of fun to be here. And so this brings me a lot more joy than—I don't care how much of that stuff comes in the cardboard boxes on our front porch—stuff doesn't bring us joy. In fact, I'm at a phase in my life, and I suspect many of you are at this phase as well, where I want less stuff in my life. I, you know, I don't want a big house anymore; I don't want a fancy car; I don't want anything that can break. Um, I want to simplify my life; I want to focus on spending the time I have left—and hopefully I have 20 plus years left—but I want to focus that time on doing things that bring joy to me and bring joy to people that I love.
And you know, it's kind of related to not keeping up with the Joneses and not pretending. And you know, so much of that stuff when we're younger that we chase is to impress other people. In fact, even doing a trip like this, you know, a lot of people are posting this on their Instagram or on their Facebook. You know how many videos I've—videos—how many images I've posted on Facebook or Instagram about me being in Costa Rica? Zero. I may eventually post one or two, but you know, frankly, it's a security risk to tell people where you're at if you're not at home. So that can be a negative. Having stuff is no longer a positive.
And, and you know, the biggest badge of honor that that that I have is if I can if I can help out people's lives that I care about—specifically my my true daughters, uh, my immediate family, both the family I grew up in as well as the family that I raised for my spouse, people like that—but the other badge of honor is is taking care of my health. It's one of those things that's so easy to postpone. And whether that's my mental health or my physical health, and frankly, I'm better at doing things to protect my my physical health than I am my mental health. I know people that have routines that that make a difference, that that you know, they they do a pre-bedtime routine, they do a shutdown routine, they do a gratitude journal. I need to start doing those things. So MIA CLE with that.
When it comes to the physical fitness, it's the same thing. We can postpone it for a day or two; we can postpone it for a week or two, but if we postpone it for too long, then it ends up having a long-term impact on us that we're likely going to regret later in our lives. And you know, I don't want to regret that. I I want to squeeze all the juice out of every day that God's going to give me here on this Earth and have as many adventures. And to do that, I need my health, and my health is much more important than my wealth. And I'm trying to optimize on enjoyment in life; I'm trying to optimize on adventure; I'm trying to optimize on relationships; and I'm trying to optimize on on my health. And so that's the next thing that that I've had to learn the hard way.
It's super easy to say, well, I'm going to sacrifice for a chapter of my life. And when we're younger, we have—if you think about the the three kind of core things that all of us struggle because they're limited resources—is our time, our health, and our money. And when we're younger, we can trade some of our time; you can trade some of our health because we have a lot of it. So investing heavily in that early in our careers where it's going to have a 20, 30, 40-year payback period for us, that can be a really good investment. But at my age now, when I'm 60, and you know, frankly, I'm financially independent now, so for me to sacrifice money as opposed to time or health, that would be foolish. The other thing that's very limited for me is time, but I have to sacrifice some time in order to stay healthy. Where I'm staying here, they have a nice gym; I can work out. You know, it's a lot easier to just uh, sit at the bar and drink a margarita and and watch the sunset, and I get to do that as well. But it's also—and that I take the time out of every day and and I invest the time for me to do yoga; they have weights here; I can lift weights; and then beautiful to run on the beach. So those are my core, my three core things that I that I try to do.
The next thing, and this is going to sound weird coming from somebody that was a financial advisor, but it's important to switch from being a saver to being a spender. We spend so much of our lives sacrificing today for a better tomorrow financially, right? We work hard; we get up early; we commute; we've got a lot of responsibilities on our shoulders. And it's important that all those sacrifices that we made and the money that we put aside is is going to result in us enjoying life more. And that's what I want for you. I want I want you to—and squeeze all the juice out of the youth of your senior years, but I want you to squeeze all the joy that you can out of the money that you've saved. And frankly, it's it's hard to transition from being a saver to a spender, so it's super important that we think about this ahead of time. Because if we wait until the day we retire and say, okay, now I'm going to be comfortable spending money—you know, I haven't helped hundreds of people retire, transition into retirement; I can tell you that's not how it works. It's like anything else in life; it's it's it's a muscle, and we have to flex that muscle; we have to work out that muscle. So starting that sooner rather than later is important, which is why I made this video here: eight things to stop doing in your 50s and 60s in order to enjoy your journey into retirement, which includes spending more money. I'll see you in that video. Thanks for watching this one. Bye-bye.