96. What Is Your Rich Life And How To Live It Today.

You still feel weird and guilty about it because you're bucking the trend and you don't fit in anymore and people think you're strange and that you're a drug dealer. When really I did was buy stocks.

All of this is counterintuitive to what we're told and it is absolutely bent my head. So much so that I had to collect my thoughts and turn it into a podcast.

I like it. So what does wealth mean to you, man? Welcome back to the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift. Alongside me is Bergs, your favorite MBA and COO of Collective Shift, Australia's leading crypto portfolio insights company, providing professional analysis and portfolio strategies for crypto investors like you. We are a unique blend of the established and the self made. And we're here to break down crypto business and personal growth. But we're here not just to talk crap, we're giving you the insights you need to make better investments, build successful businesses and level up your life. And today we're talking about how to become wealthy. But what does wealthy actually mean to you and why? Because we all have our different, you know, positions or viewpoints on what wealthy actually means. And depending on that definition would change how you actually become wealthy. Because I think there's a society breeds an idea of what wealthy means, but I think it's different for every different person. And we're going to go through what bergs is, what berg's, what bergs definition of wealthy is and what mine is as well. But we'll hand over to Bergs first. How are you mate?

Doing well, man. And this one, mate, like this is something everyone out there in podcast land you need to pay attention to because we're trained to go to school, get a job, save some money, spend some money, be a consumer, but what is it all about? And we'll be sold. This story, Ben, this story where you work your ass off, you're in, let's say it's position one and then eventually you get to position two where you have a certain amount of money, whether it's in retirement or you're financially independent and you retire early. And then you get to position three where it's, you know, retirement or time off, you're on a beach, you live off your cash flow, you've got this capital sum. And it really got me thinking because there's this story, right? And I'm sure everyone's heard a different version of it, whether it's a Mexican Guy. A guy in Ireland, whatever it may be. And it's about this rich businessman. He's in his 60s or 70s, and he's talking to a fisherman, and he's on this beautiful tropical island. And he's like, hey, man, you know, you've only got two boats out there. And he's like, you know, why don't you go out and get another boat? And. And he's like, know, explaining business to him and how it all works and how to scale. And the fisherman's like, yeah, you know, this is how I run my business now. I go out, I wake up in the morning, spend some time with my family. I go out fishing for two to three hours. I come back in, sell the fish, spend time with my friends, drink a be merry, and have some free time to myself. And he's like, man, you're doing it all wrong. If you had, like, five boats and you had a couple of employees and you went out and. And you, you know, you fished all day and you brought that back and, you know, you paid your employees, you had money left over, like, at the end of, like, 20 years or however long it is, you have all this money. And the fisherman's like, oh, that's amazing. That'd be so fantastic. And he's like, great. What would I do with my life then? He's like, you could do anything. He's like, you could have free time, you could spend time with your friends, you could eat, you could do whatever you wanted. He's like, that's great, but what's the 20 years for? And. And you always have to come back to that and be like, why am I doing this activity and where do I want to get to? What is my rich life and what does wealthy mean to me? And a lot of people define this in a lot of ways. And to be honest, I'm still figuring it out. I've got some things that I definitely know. My rich life and a lot of people will frame this has been waking up and doing the thing you want to do. Do I have that? Yes. Like, I wake up, I spend time with my family, I work a collective shift, and I've got mobility to move around and do whatever I want during the day. I wake up and do the thing that I want to do. And are you spending time how you want to spend it? Absolutely. Like, I'm not the guy where I'll sit down and just be on a beach. Like, that just doesn't work for me. And, you know, another thing for me was having 12 months worth of expenses in the bank. If I have that, I'm wealthy because I could stop doing everything today and do nothing for 12 months and figure it out. And to me, that is wealth. I don't need a billion dollars. I just need that. And things like when I go food shopping, I don't have to look at prices anymore. I still do, but I don't have to. Right? And, you know, working with who I want, when I want. And I used to have this weird idea of I need millions of dollars. There has to be a hard stop point with retirement. I want to be the guy. Or if I go to a gym and the gym owner pisses me off, I'm like, fuck you. And I buy the gym. Like, that's just not reality. And, you know, I've been listening to a few podcasts. One of them was Die with Zero. And if we combine this with financially independent, retire early, and I'm kind of building like a chain here, a lot of people will control the expense side for however many years, save up a lot of money, and they'll be very frugal on that path. And absolutely, you need to control the income side and the expenditure side. You can only cut so much in your expenditure, but your income is unlimited. There is no cap on that. The problem is, Ben, when you do that and you live that life, people that get to their 40s or 50s and they're ready to retire, they've still got that mentality and they have to change, and the majority of them can't. So when we talk about, like, position one, two, three, you want to kind of be like, how do I go from position one to position three and start to bring forward those things that I have that I want to do in retirement, bring them forward to today. And this brings me to Die with Zero, where it's a brilliant book. I've listened to, like, you know, parts of the audiobook and the podcast. And the simple thing is, like, why do you want to have $5 million in the bank and then live off that, off the capital sum, and not draw down on it? Does that really make sense? Or do you want to die with zero? So your primary spending is between 40 and 60, and after your 60s, it turns out you actually don't spend that much money and you can't do that much. So you actually don't need to work that much. You can work less and enjoy your life a lot earlier. All of this is counterintuitive to what we're told, and it is absolutely bent my head so much so that I had to collect my thoughts and turn it into a podcast.

I like it, man. I think, yeah, everyone's got their own different thoughts. And society breeds a certain way of thinking about what wealth is and when you should spend your money and how much you should save. And you. You had this interesting story when you went down camping. We spoke about this on a previous podcast. It was like, you know, you're not living a rich life. You're living a frugal life. But what the fuck for, you know, what are you optimizing for? You're optimizing for time. You're optimizing to save me for extra pennies.

Exactly right. And it's not like it's a $10,000 purchase where, okay, I'll shop around, I'll get the best price, and I'll take a few weeks to make that decision. This is $5. And I'm like, why am I thinking like that? And it really upset me because I need to think in a different way now. And that is not living my rich life. I even talked to some mates of mine. I'm like, they're like, oh, what do you consider rich? I was just asking. They're like, off. You got your house paid off. And it's just so different for everyone. It's different compared to your. How much money you grow up with, your parent situation. Do you get there faster? But then, Ben, here's. Here's the kicker. When you get to the position that you want to be in, you're like, fuck, what do I do now? And people like you and me, we have the ability to, let's say, go nuclear, hyper focus, put the skates on and go hell for leather at something. And we always need a target. And training yourself.

To be okay with that and not have to have the next target and actually live your life is hard. Like, that is the biggest struggle I've had in the last year.

And moving targets or moving, you know, who you think you were, your identity, to something new that's kind of scary.

Or even, like, feeling guilt. Like, I'm not. Like, an example would be, let's say I'm only working part time, or I stopped working for a while. Everyone else is working, and, you know, I've earned it and I've done the work. You still feel weird and guilty about it because you're bucking the trend, what everyone else is doing, and you don't fit in anymore. And people think you're strange and that you're a drug dealer, when really, I Did was buy stocks.

Your mind goes on a crazy world. So what, what does wealth mean to you man? Give me, give me, give me what your wealthy looks like.

I think wealth to me just means I don't have to worry about the day to days of money. I've. I earn more money than I spend. The excess money is getting put into investments that's automated. It's going to funds, it's going into crypto. I can support my family, my wife can stop working, I can send my daughter to a decent school, my house isn't going to get taken away. And I think I've really made my finances close. As close to bulletproof as I can. But also investing in myself and knowing that if I got fired or collective shift blew up or you finally crack the shits with me for giving you too much lip, I'll be fine to find cash flow somewhere else. Whether that's a job or starting a business, whatever it may be. And I think that mobility and freedom is what wealth means to me. Wealth is not for me, is not retirement. Like I've got money I can spend but it's just like stacking marbles. I don't need that much. My hobbies aren't that expensive. And to be honest, I enjoy what I did on the weekend that was having my mates around. We were sinking beers, listening to rap tunes from the 90s and we're making Napoli pizzas and throwing in the wood fired oven. That is the kind of stuff that I like to do.

And that combined and living that lifestyle to me and being able to spend as much time as I want with my family is wealth. It's more about time for me than it is about money now and quality.

Time with the people that you want to spend time.

Absolutely. And people, I think it's a cope as well. When people talk about quality time they're like oh, I work so much but I spend quality time with my family. And I'm like what the fuck is that? Because if you work so much you're going to be tired, you're going to be stressed. What is that? Quality time. And I don't buy into that anymore. I don't subscribe that. I'm like it's all quality time. And it is absolutely amount of time. Because even the simple things like getting ready, having a shower or you know, getting my, my daughter ready and you know, feeding her and talking to her and all this sort of shit, they are the most amazing moments. They're the ones that you wouldn't think you remember you think you have to go to Disneyland or go on a trip or it has to be this brilliant thing and it's fucking not. And you need to decide for yourself what you're willing to trade. And again, you may sacrifice that for a few years and do a job while you're away to get ahead in life. And that's perfectly okay. Like, I sacrificed a lot for 15, 16 years to get into the position that I am now. And it really is an individual quest about finding out what you want inside and then managing your psychology and actually enacting it.

Yeah, and then having a self awareness to understand what that is too, you know, and. And not just conforming to what everyone else thinks, but what do you actually want?

And also be aware that that can change.

So you could be on a. You could change your path and then 18 months later you could be like, well, this isn't what I want to live. Or you could have a medical event or someone close to you passes away or your parents get sick and you want to spend more time with them. All of that is okay. To deviate from the path. You don't need to have millions of dollars when you retire. Like that is a story that is sold to people because it's simple to tell. And we see Jeff Bezos living his amazing life, but you don't see the like 20 years that he put in, all the shit that he went through, how much he aged, all the like, mate, who wants to do that? It is. Is absolutely you sacrificing your time, the best years of your life to then have a big sum of money. And it comes back to like, D with 0 on this particular podcast. How many years? Like, how much would I have to pay you, Ben, to have five years in jail.

Maximum security prison for me.

To be in jail for ibs.

How much would you have to pay?

Fuck.

Exactly. For me it is zero. You could not pay me any sum of money to sacrifice five years of my life in jail. Now everyone out there, I want you to apply that to your life. Are the things you're doing like being in jail, what are you sacrificing? If you hate your job, you hate your life, it's flowing onto other areas.

Shouldn't say you hate your life, you hate your job, and that flows onto you not living your best life. Is that a good trade that you're actually doing? Because you're putting yourself in jail? But what for? So can you go somewhere else and not sacrifice all of that for money and then have your time and live Your life in a different way. These are the questions you need to ask yourself. And it's very, very difficult and confronting when you do.

Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that.

Yeah, exactly right. But a lot of people are like stuck in this like corporate loop. I know a lot of guys are working finance and they work crazy hours.

A lot of them take drugs to stay up. They hardly see their spouses, they have oodles of money, amazing houses. Honestly, it's the same with doctors. Like maybe not the drug side, some doctors, not all, but. And well, no, it's. Let me clarify that. And these are just a pharmacist. It's a big elephant in the room for them. They, they cop a lot of the poor buggers. But you sacrifice all that time. You go into your job, you love your job, but then it's insane hours. You don't get to spend time with your family, you're making a trade, you get paid well, but where do you end up in the end of it? And try to think about that and you can structure your life in any way that you want. I just saw on TV yesterday, Ben, they'll talk about retirement on like an SBS show like Inside or something like that. And there's a lady who's 79, she's booked up until 2024. All she does is fly around the world and house sit for people. She has like two suitcases, that's all she owns. And she's happy as. Yeah, the four hour work week is a good book to read if you want to structure your life. And Ben, I've been talking for a while. I'm curious, have you thought about what your rich life would look like and what you value? I know we did quite an open and honest conversation with you and I about collective shift and how we want to operate the business and what is actually important to us. Because we came into it like last year with I want $30 million, I want this, I want that. It's like, well, great, what does that mean? What is that $30 million going to facilitate? What is it actually going to give you day to day? And it forces you to think, yeah.

I went more granular and I think for me it's just like earning a, a salary that allows me to travel freely between, you know, Bali and Melbourne. Have probably a home in both places.

Freedom. So wealthy in my time to do the things that I want to do day to day, you know, whether it be creating content, you know, create a YouTube channel. Time to be creative and building an audience. Being wealthy in.

Wealthy in.

What's the word? Opportunity, you know, with. With even having an audience and talking to people, because I love, you know, talking to my. The guys on Twitter and like people that listen to podcasts. Like, wealthy in that aspect of having the people around that are enjoying what I'm doing.

Also wealthy in health and being mentally fit and physically fit. I think that's really important for me and being in a. In a mental state where I can actually even enjoy.

You know, enjoy the day to day and enjoy. Not that I'm not enjoying the day to day, but just being at a point where, like, things are freeing in my mind to do the things I want to do. And that's, you know, just allowing my day to day to be.

Balanced, I think is probably the best way.

You touched on health. That is such an important thing because we reduce our entire lives to a number because it's easy. But life is more than that. It's about your friends, your relationship, your health, your activities. And this was one that really tweaked for me because I have been incredibly sick at points in my life where 2016, I had a whiplash injury and my back is just completely fucked. I was constant inflammation, constant pain. I suffered from chronic pain every day, even now and then I got really sick. I had pneumonia twice, I had viral meningitis I had to go to hospital for. And a slew of things along the way. A lot of gut troubles, couldn't sleep, completely fucked, stressed out, just ridiculous. And you come to a point, and for me it was eye opening because that's what happens when you're old, not when you're young. When you're old, that's the life you're going to live. I know what's ahead of me. And the other side of this is tomorrow isn't promised today. What are the things I can do today because I don't know if I'll live till next year. What are the things I actually want to experience and do? And my health is a huge part of that. Like, there is no amount of money you can give me. And I've said this to people before, where if my whiplash could go away, what amount of money would I pay? And the answer is everything.

You know what I mean? Like to live your life without that.

It's funny that health and that time, like they're the two things that like you, you and the people around you. That's. That's what you want ways.

And it comes back to the quote where a healthy man wants a million things. A sick man wants only one thing, and that is to be well. And we forget and forget and forget because we are generally healthy in society and you don't realize until you get sick. So I want everyone to stop right now and think, hey, what path are you on and how can you look after your physical and mental health? Because please don't go down that sick path for anything in your life. It is not worth it.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. The other one is just wealthy in friendships, quality friendships. Like, I've been optimizing that, trying to push that a little bit more recently because, you know, I went on monk mode and didn't talk to anyone for a month and now, you know, try to like, you know, catch up with old friends and, you know, even someone that I met in Dubai, you know, she lives in Malaysia. We, we went out for lunch and caught up and just that, you know, just. Just to connect with old people that you have, you know, good connections with the things in common and someone that you probably wouldn't have caught up with normally. It's fun. It's exciting to hear what they're doing and they have interest in you and it's just like, it's a cool little interaction, you know, something that you would normally do. So that's something. I mean, I think being wealthy in friendships and relationships is really big.

Does it just fill your soul? Yeah, it's like this is.

That was just awesome. Like, cool.

So Tim Ferriss talked about this on one of his latest podcasts and he said no matter what's happening in his life and he's got a lot of fucking problems. He really, he genuinely does. Like, he has, you know, depressive episodes, he's got chronic pain, all this sort of. Yeah, he's got a lot of money, but he's. And he said no matter what happens, if I go out to dinner with friends twice per week. So it's just a solid hour or two sitting around, eating dinner, talking. Anything can happen in his life and he will be fine. Yeah, that's.

So that, that's just like that pie chart of your. Of your world and having like that friendship being filled. Know, I think, I think definitely in the startup and when you're busy and you just have no, like, you just tired, you just can't be fired. You just like, that's. That's the first thing to go is, you know, going out and doing social things. But sometimes actually can re. Re. Energize you.

Absolutely. And think about what you're really trading off and what you're sacrificing because you can choose to be happy and choose to have an amazing life. For me, the majority of the time, I had the time, but I just felt so crap and, and so tired and so sore. I'm like, off. I don't want to go out. I just want to rest. Leave me the alone. You start canceling on people or you don't book stuff and you're like, I just can't shut all the doors and just like, just relax because you're going so hard at other things and that is such a stupid thing to do. I feel so dumb for doing that for so many years. The things I've missed out on. And now I'm like, I will never make that choice.

Yeah, that's, that's a good inside man. That's crazy because, yeah, I, I, you know, I haven't gone through that period, but I certainly definitely enjoy those times when you have a good conversation, a good meal with people that you like. You know, it's, it's nothing better.

And that's it. And like, well, wealth is not a number, you know, it is. It's a series of things in your life that you get to decide.

Yeah. Yes. 100.

For me as well, having, having an investment portfolio that allows me to also be financially free is super important. That's nothing crazy. It's just enough that you can, you know, sit and earn a yield on, you know, but also, you know, having a decent chunk of bitcoin, I think for me is just something that I'd love to sit on for the rest of my life. And I just think that's going to carry through and just allow me to have that ability and freedom to pivot and change and, you know, not be stressed about. Money is important. So, yeah, that's, that's me, man. It's not just one number. It's, it's, I think it's health, it's relationships, it's what I'm doing day to day. And it's, and it's, and it's the capital, it's the, the fuel.

It's a fuel, mate. I love that, Ben. I wish I was, I had that insight when I was your age, mate. It's taken me a long time to figure out.

It's just something that, you know, I think it's always iterating and you're learning and, you know, you're changing.

Absolutely. So folks out there, if you're doing this, couple of resources. 4 hour workweek by Tim Ferriss. Read that and I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi. So that's actually how to do your finance and how to define your rich life. If you don't want to read that book, just listen to one or two of his podcasts. Choose a situation that's similar to yours. Whether you're just starting out or, you know, you're in your 50s and you've been divorced, you don't have much money or. Or you've got a lot of money and you don't know what to do with it. He's got all sorts of people. He's even got a Netflix show, if you prefer that. This is what really. And it takes like a few episodes to really understand his framework and what he's trying to spark in people. It's the other side of finance. It's not just the number, it's how you live your life.

Brilliant man. Well, great episode. I think that's a really good insight into what wealth means to us. What does it mean for you? We'd love for you to reach out to us. Let us know what you thought of the episode. Have a think about yourself. If you have any friends or family or just anyone in your network that you think would, you know, benefit from listening to this, maybe you think someone's got their idea of wealth twisted and you'd love them to hear our perspective. Please share the episode with. We'd love to. To get the word around. It's how we grow the podcast. You can share the link with them and. Or tweet at us and give us your feedback. My Twitter is admin since IU Bergs is at Baby Backberg. And we've also got a Benneberg's Twitter. Benneberg.

And mate, I've got to tell a quick Twitter story. So you have a lot of impersonators on Twitter, so make sure it's the right Ben, the Ben Simpson au. And what happened was one of these impersonators messaged one of our mates, Joe, and Joe starts talking to him and he's like, oh, yeah. And this guy was so convincing. And then he sent me a screenshot. He's like, hang on a minute, this guy isn't roasting burgs. This isn't bed at all. Like, within three seconds, you'd have just been roasting me, telling him how I'm a shit bloke, and so would Joe.

So do be careful out there in Twitterland, folks.

Be careful. My only Twitter is at Bensonau. Don't get scammed we'll wrap it up there. Thank you, Bergs. We'll see you next time.

Thanks, champions. And thank you, Ben.