3 Wealth Experts: True Riches Aren’t in Your Net Worth (Kevin Dahlstroom, Pete Adeney)

Money is only a tool. Financial wealth is actually— has nothing to do with true wealth. The day we become truly wealthy is the day we wake up and finally realize it's not about me.

So what is wealth? I was at the top of the corporate world, C-level executive for a multi-billion dollar company, and me and all my peers were making, you know, well into 7-figure compensation every year. I'm not— it's gonna sound hard to believe, but we all felt poor where it's just never enough. I did everything I was supposed to do. I checked all the boxes that define success. Why am I so miserable? And he talks about this thing called the 4% rule. And, you know, he retired at, you know, his early 30s. And I was like, that sounds really interesting. I actually tried being fully retired for a little while after I moved to Boulder. That lasted about 3 weeks because I always say whether you're a billionaire or you're broke, you're awake for 16 hours a day. What are you going to do with those hours?

The trick is really understanding what is the life that I want to live. So I have people in my community. I've trained over 300 high performers to think about Wealth and What Makes a Rich Life. If wealth is a feeling, feelings can only be experienced in the present, right? The past is gone the minute I finish this sentence. To experience wealth, we have to be in the present moment. And money is something that takes us out of the present.

Wow.

That was a very well thought out answer. As you get deeper into understanding what really brings you happiness, and like you said, you're trying to get the feelings of owning this thing. You're not actually after the specific, like, handbag or Ferrari or whatever else it is. A lot of times everything I focus on is not like cut something to save money. It's always do something that's better. And sometimes, a lot of times it also happens to cost less. So it's always a win-win. Right.

Yeah.

Here has been around a lot of rich people is in theory, those people have complete control over their time, right? But they don't have the second part, which is actually the harder part. The ability to turn that control of your time into meaning. And we, we derive meaning from— because we were on the hamster wheel where it's just never enough.

I wish that I had discovered that when I was 30, but we call it the Unbreakable Year, is mapping out starting with your perfect day, your perfect week, your perfect month, your perfect year. And then I actually applied the 4% Rule. Now we start editing, and I call this the Marie Kondo budget. Does this thing truly bring me joy? And this can be ever shifting.

If you had no constraints, what would your life look like? Like, What would you do? Who would you be around? One way to make your number way more achievable is to assume— I thought we'd start by just each of us kind of telling our personal stories, but I'll start with mine because it's intertwined with these guys. So I think, you know, a lot of you follow me on X or Twitter and maybe know my story, but I'll give the short version, which is When I came out of college and I had a little bit of a rough upbringing, which I won't get into, but was lucky enough to— my escape vehicle was getting a scholarship to a good school. Came out of college and this was the mid-'90s, like the internet wasn't really a thing yet. I didn't ever meet anybody who I particularly worth emulating or that I looked up to. And so I just kind of followed the script, right? So success means working your way to the top for a man, working your way to the top of the business world. And so that's what I did. I put my head down and I just started grinding and never questioned the path. And it turns out, you know, I made it all the way to the top and had some, you know, to, to be, you know, had some amazing experiences along the way. Um, but I sort of woke up in my mid-forties and realized like, You know, on paper, I've checked all the— I did everything I was supposed to do. I checked all the boxes that define success. Why am I so miserable? And why, why are all the other guys in the executive suite, um, also, uh, miserable? And, you know, I've talked to some of you about this, where the seed had been planted years earlier when I started rock climbing, and I started being exposed to a different way of living. You know, I saw the video of Cedar. I was like, yeah, that dude doesn't have a lot of money at that time, But man, he's like living a pretty cool life, and could I have some piece of that in my life? But I'll tell you, one of the, um, a moment I remember is before I moved— I moved to Boulder in 2018 as part of a major reboot, um, but, uh, even before that, it must have been like 2016, I was here visiting and I was climbing the Third Flatiron, which some of you climbed yesterday. And I was climbing with a guy named John Alcorn, who I'm still friends with to this day. He's like, we're talking about life and money and wealth, and it's like, hey, have you ever heard of Mr. Money Mustache? I was like, what the heck, that sounds idiotic. And, uh, but he's like, no, like, he, he's, uh, talks about this thing called the 4% rule, and, you know, he retired at, you know, his early 30s. And I was like, that sounds really interesting. And, um, you know, I'd spent a lot of my career in finance. I was a math guy. But the way Pete laid out this, what is known as the FIRE movement, Financial Independence, Retire Early, and the 4% rule, it really spoke to me. It's so simple, but yet so profound. I was like, if I make some changes in my life, I already have enough money to be free, or at least I'm very close. And I was joking that there I was. I was at the top of the corporate world, C-level executive for a multibillion-dollar company. And me and all my peers were making, you know, well into 7-figure compensation every year. But I'm not— it's going to sound hard to believe, but we all felt poor because we were on that hamster wheel where it's just never enough. There's always a bigger yacht. There's always something more. And, you know, as I said, I'd been infected with this climbing virus that was starting to make me question everything. And that was actually a huge unlock for me was like, oh, it's a framework where I can actually put numbers in a spreadsheet, and it actually— I can feel good about this crazy thing I'm contemplating doing, which is like quitting my job with no plan, blowing up my life, moving to Boulder. Um, and it'll fast forward— not to segue into Mike, uh, I met Mike through this organization I'm a member of called Baby Bathwater, which is awesome. You guys should check it out independently. And Mike kind of approaches things from a spiritual standpoint. Like, I think you'll hear from Mike, they're like He expands what is wealth. Like, I'm pretty simplistic, like, like, control of your time, do cool shit. Mike challenges me to level up, to even think on a more spiritual level, like, what— not just what is wealth, like, what is our— why are we— what are we doing here? What's the purpose of everything? So what I think is going to be cool about this is that each of us sort of arrived at a lot of the same conclusions, but coming at it from a— from very different backgrounds and perspectives. So With that, enough about me. This is mostly gonna be about them and you guys answer questions, but maybe Pete, like talk a little bit about your journey and kind of how you got to be sitting here today.

Yeah. Well, I'll start with the end, which is the present. So I'm, uh, 50. I'm gonna turn 51 next month and I've been retired now for coming up on a little over 20 years now. So I've spent the majority of my adult life, like retired after working a 10-year career. And it just keeps like year after year keeps going by. I keep realizing better and better idea it was that I just accidentally stumbled into in my 20s and, you know, the age 30. And the reason I came upon that is really just because I was a different thinker as a kid. Like I was always the kid, like the first spanking I ever got was when we were sitting in a classroom like this and I was bored of the story. So I went over and started playing like in the dollhouses at the back of the classroom or something. And some other kids joined me. And then she's like, "You're supposed to be here for storytime." And we all got like publicly spanked 'cause this was like in 1979 or something. And I still remember that. And I, you know, I got in trouble for being independent, but really there's benefits to that too. So when you fast forward to my, you know, I went through a normal school career, but I was like, this is not feeling so good. All this like learning stuff that you didn't choose to learn. So I got an engineering degree, started working in that career as a software engineer and back then and as it is now, that was a pretty like high-demand job. It was above average, but it wasn't like Kevin-type, you know, CEO money. But it was just like an upper-middle-class salary. And I was like, well, what do you do when there's more money than you need? Do you spend it all or do you start learning about investing and just like spend some of it so you have a really good life and then invest the rest? And then it turns out if you do that for about 10 years and you're like fairly efficient, at maximizing your fun per dollar, then you have enough to retire after about 10 years of work. So that's what I did with my fiancée at the time. And our goal was to be financially independent by the time our first child was born, who's an only child. But we both wanted to be stay-at-home parents and not have to do what we saw our colleagues doing, which was like, you know, splitting time and being a substandard engineer and like a harried parent who wishes you had more time to be with kids. So we achieved that goal. And we both, even though we're not married anymore, we both feel like everything about that was like the best choice. And we both still love our financial independence even though we've moved on. You know, we're still, we both still think that was the coolest thing we ever did. So later I started writing about this and that's how Mr. Money Mustache, I don't know why I named it that. It was just a joke at the time, but it stuck. And that's why some people here have heard of it. And that's how I met Kevin is 'cause he was a blog reader. So enough intro, we'll probably get more questions, but onto Mike.

Yeah, thanks. Well, um, I wish that I had discovered that when I was 30, but it turns out I grew up in a family with 5 kids and my mom was pretty hard on us. And so the only way to get attention at the dinner table was to have done something, uh, well that day. You better have got an A on a test. You better have won your swim meet. You better have achieved something. And that was how I received love in my family. And so that, that set me on the path, uh, to becoming a, a high performer and thinking that the more external achievement I got, the more love I would receive. And, uh, that culminated— I went and flew jets in the Navy, uh, from 2003 to 2011. And then I got out and started a company. I sold that company in 2019. And that's really where my journey begins. Uh, kind of as Kevin has said, I did everything that society told me would make me feel successful. I, I tested myself in combat. I had built and sold a, a multi-eight-figure business. And, um, I was the same person the next day. And I went, oh no, where do we go from here? And 2 years later, I woke up more stressed out, uh, didn't even want to get out of bed some mornings because I bought a failing turnaround company because I thought I needed more ultimately. And that, uh, very public failure forced me to my knees and maybe reevaluate what's really important in life. And fundamentally Um, what we want when we think about money, where we think about success, is not actually the thing. It's the thing underneath it. It's the feeling, right? So if you guys all close your eyes right now, and if I had deposited $10 million into your, your account tomorrow, how would that make you feel? That's actually what we're chasing. It's not the number in the bank account. And so now my work focuses on how do we cultivate that feeling before we have to hit the external milestone and find it empty.

Cool. Awesome. So maybe we'll start with, uh, the question that you posed to Cedar, which is like the, the title of this, this, uh, panel, which is, um, so what is wealth? I mean, all of us are, you know, uh, late 40s, early 50s. So we've been on our journey for a while. Um, so how do you guys define wealth?

I can start.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this question.

Yes, we all have.

Uh, and Essentially what I believe is that money is only a tool, that financial wealth is actually, has nothing to do with true wealth. True wealth in my opinion is freedom. And for me, that's freedom in 5 areas and they are sort of hierarchical, but they're not sequential. So freedom of health, freedom of relationships, freedom of time, freedom of mind, and freedom of soul. And what I'll talk about with freedom of soul is that there is no true wealth without purpose. Or another way to say that, no true wealth without service, right? The day we become truly wealthy is the day we wake up and finally realize it's not about me. It's actually about helping other people. And so finding a way to align our actions with those values is where we start to step into true wealth. And it turns out you don't need $10 million or $100 million or even $100,000 to start doing that. And so, you know, I'm, I'm putting the finishing touches on a book called Be Rich Now, but it's essentially How do we bring that feeling of later? How do we stop putting off our lives in service of some arbitrary goal and pull that forward and create that wealth in the true, in the fundamental moment?

Is it, so is it under that framework, is it fair to say like wealth is almost like a choice?

Yeah, absolutely. We can all choose to be rich. So if wealth is a feeling, feelings can only be experienced in the present, right? The past is gone the minute I finish this sentence. The future's a fairy tale that only exists in our mind. So to experience wealth, we have to be in the present moment. And money is something that takes us out of the present, right? If I'm worried about how I'm gonna pay my bills or how I'm gonna pay my rent, it's really hard to remain present. So money is not worthless. Not all of us can go live in a cave like Cedar, right? Like we live in this real world. And so the point of money, the point of money is to take care of the things that allow us to return to the present. And then once we've taken care of those basic needs, now wealth is a tool to experience more joy in the present.

Wow. That was a very well thought out answer. I could tell you've written a book on the subject. The funny part is, um, I approached this from a very simple, like, you know, a 20-year-old who hadn't thought about all this stuff. And I eventually arrived at these same conclusions now that I've had 20 years of retirement to think about it. But initially I would've just said like, I want enough money because I don't wanna have to work. And then if you ask why, be like, why do you not wanna have to work? It's so I would have the freedom to spend my time the way I want. And then you say, why is that? Well, it's 'cause I wanna have children and I wanna be able to like be a super dad, but I also have all these other interests that I wanna be able to pursue. And every time at work I feel it's taking away, taking me away from the things I wanna do. So my answer is still freedom and it's only after having like so much freedom to think about what am I doing? And then I've, like you, I've come to realize the best thing to do with your time is to help other people. So pretty much everything I do now is just, and it's not like I'm super, you know, saint, just infinitely generous. There's a lot of selfish benefits to helping other people. It makes you feel, you know, useful and like you're having a great day and you meet people and you're, you know, you're building a community. So there's a lot of benefit to helping other people. And it takes a lot of freedom to be really helpful because if you're, if you're busy getting what's yours and just trying to get, you know, stack your bank account or advance your career, that really encourages more selfish behavior. So the abundance that comes from financial independence, which allows this whole freedom in all areas of life, is probably what I was seeking in the first place. But it turns out it doesn't take all that much money to achieve it. So as long as you get your basics covered, and I kind of specialize in how to make your basics, you know, more easily covered by being efficient about it. Um, that's my little niche in financial independence cuz I was an engineer, but it still leads to the same place, which is like happy spiritual abundance.

And we're gonna come back to the pragmatic, uh, how much is enough? Like what's the number type thing? Cuz that's a really interesting discussion.

Yeah.

But as I said at the beginning, it's super interesting that we all had very different paths, but we've, I mean, my, my definition is gonna be very similar probably, but I, I am gonna add one, one wrinkle. So You know, 'cause I've thought about this a lot. I mean, it's kind of the theme of my Twitter account for those of you that, uh, get inflicted with my words on a regular basis. Uh, but, um, mine is two parts. Number one is freedom or control of your time. Right. And I think a lot of people sort of stop there. But, um, one thing I've observed over the years, been around a lot of rich people, is in theory, those people have complete control over their time. Right. But they don't have the second part, which is actually the harder part. And they're both hard. The harder part is the ability to turn that control of your time into meaning. And we, we derive meaning from, you know, cool people and cool things, which was like kind of the genesis of this, this whole thing. You'd be shocked at how, like, I observed this, this is more the, the norm than the exception, especially in the corporate world. And men are particularly susceptible to it is, um, that they, you know, they have one-dimensional identity. Right. And you know, they allow their career to become everything, but it's never enough. And I can't tell you how many guys I've met who, were they to stop, start working less, would have no clue what to do with their time. They, and it's, it's a, it's the classic, like the, it's a CEO who's worth, you know, 20, 50, $100 million. Um, has, you know, like us checked all those boxes. Um, but they're at a crossroads because they're starting, they're in their 40s, maybe 50s. They're starting to realize that, you know, there's no end to a hamster wheel. It just keeps rolling. And, uh, but they haven't made the investments in other areas of their life to turn. You know, they, they could quit their job tomorrow. They know that, but they have nothing else. And a lot of times what ends up happening is these people, this is a, a big clue. So look for this online. When people say they love their work, usually, not all, not in all cases, but usually what that means is work is all I know. That's really the translation. Um, and they haven't made the investments over time into other dimensions of life. And you look, I'm the first to say there's a, there's seasons to life. It's a sliding scale, right? So like, there's definitely a season. Some of you are younger, and if you want to get ahead financially, if you want to hit that number, which we'll talk about then you gotta put your head down. It's gotta be probably the biggest part of your identity. But if you, I, I have this diagram where like, you know, what percent of your identity is your work? Ideally, it should, over the decades, it should slide down. Unfortunately, that never really happens for a lot of guys. It's the classic, you know, career trap. And, um, for me, uh, climbing, like starting with my, that fateful video of Cedar that I watched back in 1990, whatever, you know, that it really was like, it was like, oh. I never knew there was a different way of living. Like, there's other stuff you can do. And frankly, to the guys who say they love their work, I usually say like, God, you don't have much of an imagination, do you? Like, this is literally the best thing you can think of to do it? There's so much cool shit out there in the world. I want to go explore. But they don't know how. They don't even have a place to start. And for me, you know, I drone on and on about climbing to the point where people just start rolling their eyes. But for me, it really was— it's not just about the climbing. It's just, it was transformational. And that it exposed me to, uh, another way of living. So to kind of summarize, I think it's like, it's not just achieving financial independence because, you know, I actually tried being fully retired for a little while after I moved to Boulder. That lasted about 3 weeks. Mm-hmm. Because we need more, like you have to, I always say whether you're a billionaire or you're broke, you're awake for 16 hours a day. What are you gonna do with those hours? Like the, uh, being quote unquote fully retired. Like, I guess some people are comfortable watching cable news all day and becoming radicalized, uh, in politics, but, but that wasn't, that wasn't enough for me. Um, so I don't know, super interesting to, uh, that, you know, I think there's a theme here that we've arrived at, like very common, different paths, same conclusions. But I do want to come back because there is, you know, Mike, you say a lot of times like money can solve money problems, right? And so I want to come back to this, like, Let's talk about money. How much, uh, how much is enough and how do you figure out what that number is? And I'll, I'll, I'll tease it with, um, um, in one of my talks, I talk about this study that Harvard Business School did. They surveyed 2,000 people with a net worth ranging between $1 million and $100 million. And one of the questions on the survey was, um, how much would you need? How much money would you need to be content? And what do you think the answer was?

Twice. Twice.

Exactly. Across the board, whether somebody was worth a million or a hundred million, it was twice as much. But that, that should be a pretty strong signal to you. Uh, that is what I call the hamster wheel. It, it sort of never ends. But maybe since you, this is your niche. Mm-hmm. And, um, the thing that, uh, attracted me to Pete initially was like, I, I was saying earlier, like, we don't, we may not become a dirtbag, but we can be inspired by like people who live on the fringes. When I first encountered Pete, like you used to publish your annual spending, which was, I wanna say it was $25,000 at one point. Mm-hmm. And I was like, this guy's crazy. Like, you, what's right?

Yeah.

But, but, um, I learned so much, uh, uh, from you about like, it's much easier to just live a simpler life than it is to just stay on the hamster wheel and accumulate money. So, so what's your thought? Like, how do you think about the number?

Yeah. Well, I think the first thing I like to do when I'm, you know, introducing people to the concept from scratch is you got your income and you got your spending and you can control them both. But if you don't control the spending side, they're both gonna tend to rise and you're gonna think that you're normal the whole way, all the way up to like the stratospheres of spending. So you have to understand that it is possible to be happy on, uh, pretty much any level of spending cuz like, you know, humans were happy before money even existed. And there's lots of people who have less money than you, even in the United States, that are quite possibly gonna be happier than you. So what really matters is what, what type of life you're gonna lead, but also how good are you at spending? Like, for example, some people will have to spend $30,000 on something like, for example, getting a car. Some people are like, ah, they're not very good at cars, so they buy like a Cadillac Escalade because someone else has it, right? So this is like an $80,000 truck and they're just driving it empty to work. Someone else who's good at cars will be like, oh, I really like, you know, this, this used like BMW that he can find for like $8,000. It's better in every possible way than the stupid Cadillac, and it's better to drive, but it costs more than 10 times less. So that person has made a smarter spending choice in that one area. And if you think about all of these areas of life, you know, you got your food, housing, transportation, how to, how to raise your kids, and how to have a great life and how to have fun. All of those are subject to spending skill and you can get better at all those things. And I just naturally being an engineer, I like look at everything as an optimization problem. So I'm like, okay, it's time to do laundry. What's the best way to dry your clothes without using a lot of energy? Well, it turns out these things are called clotheslines. And I'm like, I just did all these things just cuz it was fun. But when it all added up, I was like in this bottom percentile of how much everything costs. So I was, we were, you know, we were, um, raising a family and still only spending about $25,000 a year. And that's like right in, in Longmont. And that's like in a big 5-bedroom house with top of the line looking everything, but I'm just like really good at buying bikes and really good at, you know, optimizing everything. So then I try to, in my writing, I try to train people. Like, you don't have to be super hardcore like me. You only should only do it to the level that it's fun, but there's just so much fat. There's about a 4 to 1, you know, uh, 400% difference in like just by applying a tiny bit of brainpower to each category. So in other words, you can cut your spending if you're a high-spending, high-income person. You can cut your spending by up to 75% without even your lifestyle looking different to somebody else with just like getting a little bit better at spending.

And does everybody know the basics of the 4% rule? Raise your hand if you're not super clear on what that is.

Okay. Yeah, we should cover it.

Yeah, maybe just like explain the basics.

The other bit. So I just talked about spending, but let's talk about income. So there's a really easy way to think about how much money you need to be retired. And that answer is if you take a chunk of money that's invested properly, you can rely on that to generate about 4% cash flow for the rest of your life, regardless of the stock market fluctuates. And it gives you an, a raise with inflation every year. So to put numbers to it, if you have $1 million investments, you can rely on a $40,000 retirement income forever, you know? So if you can live on—

You can draw down assets.

Yeah. And you're not even drawing down, you're just like sustainably harvesting investing the income from your portfolio. If you had $1 million of rental properties, you could think of that money coming in as rent. If you have $1 million of stock index funds, like almost all my wealth is just in stock index funds. So I can think of, of that amount being reliable. I happen to live still on less than $40,000 a year. I just can't seem to spend more even though I have so much more. And I, I'm happy with that. I like knowing that. I like knowing that I can spend up to, you know, 10 times more than I am now, but I just, I try little experiments and I settle where I'm happy. So anyway, if you can't do that on $40,000, well then you just need $2 million. That's $80,000 or $3 million is $120,000. So it's really, really simple and it cuts out all this crap with the financial advice industry where they're like, well, it depends on your annuities and your children and your inheritance plan and all this other stuff. And everyone's like, I don't know, I'll just work to 65. Just think about like, you know, 4% of your wealth, that's how much you're currently qualified to be retired on. And then that's kind of the foundation of financial independence.

And before I ask you the same question, because, uh, this is gonna be fun, uh, is, um, the, one of the cool things about the math is it's so simple, but actually if you start playing with a spreadsheet and if you, I've actually got some spread, some simple spreadsheets I've built that I can share with you guys. Um, but what you realize pretty quickly is Um, it's actually, in my opinion, it's, it's a lot harder to accumulate millions of dollars of assets than it is just to live a simpler life. And the way the math works is like, uh, one of my favorite, uh, like little examples is if you cut your monthly spending by $5,000 a month, the way the math works on the, the 4% rule, um, you need 300 times that less in assets to be financially independent. So, uh, what's, uh, 5,000, uh, it's 1 point. So cutting your expenses by $5,000 a month means you need $1.5 million less to be, quote unquote, retired or financially independent. And for a lot of— for anybody, but especially if you're not a super high earner, like a million bucks is hard to accumulate. It ain't easy. So it's just really, if nothing else, it's inspirational to kind of play with the numbers and put down your spending and put down your assets. What could I— like, what level of spend could I retire on today if I wanted to? And when you put it on paper, you actually become quite motivated to reduce your spending because you realize— I mean, if you're like me, like, dude, I just want freedom. Like, the things I love don't cost a lot. But I want to turn to Mike because I know Mike loves his toys, right? And so he maybe comes at this from a slightly different angle. How do you think about the number?

Uh, well, Coco Chanel says the best things in life are either free or very, very expensive. Uh, and, and I think the trick is really understanding what is the life that I want to live. So I, so I have, uh, people in my community. I've trained over 300 high performers to think about, uh, wealth and what makes a rich life. First, we go through an exercise and Kevin has a version of this and, and, you know, it's, it's, there's nothing new under the sun, but we call it the Unbreakable Year is Mapping out, starting with your perfect day to your perfect week, to your perfect month, to your perfect year. And you go through and you add it all up, right? And you go, okay, how much does that cost? And then I actually apply the 4% rule. Okay. If you spend $30,000 a month, you need $15 million to, you know, spend that indefinitely without ever having to draw down on principal. And then now we start editing and I call this the Marie Kondo budget. Does this thing truly bring me joy? And this can be ever shifting. So another one of my favorite quotes is by Alan Watts, which is, I am under no obligation to be the the same person I was 5 minutes ago. So a thing that brought me joy last month may no longer actually continually bring me joy. And so it's this constant check-in of, does this thing still give me the feeling that I, A, thought it would, or B, does it still measure up to the amount of money that I'm spending on it? So for me, fundamentally, like my heli skiing trip every year, that's an expensive trip. It's $12,000. And that is the cornerstone of my year. That is my favorite week of the year. That is something I absolutely want to keep in my budget. As long as it makes me happy. On the other side of that, uh, I thought cars would make me happy, and for a while they did. So I've, I've owned Lamborghinis, I've owned McLarens, like I've owned some really incredible cars, and that was a big part of my life. Me and my dad shared this love for cars, you know, we went to car shows growing up. And so for me, you know, achieving success meant being able to, to order a Lamborghini. It was the coolest thing. And then last year my wife came to me and said, hey, when was the last time you drove the Lamborghini? And I went and looked. I had a McLaren and a Lamborghini at the time, and I put 800 miles on those cars combined in the last year. And I had to get real with myself and say, hey, this was a really important part of my life. I used to go to track days. I used to go to car meets. I haven't done that anymore. And so I actually sold both of those cars last year. So hey, there's a much better allocation of this money in my Marie Kondo budget. I can use it for other things, and I don't regret spending the money on those things. They made me happy for a time. They don't make me happy anymore. So it's consistently evaluating and cutting the things that don't make you happy. And then it's always a trade-off, right? There's two ways to essentially be financially independent, earn more or spend less, right? And, and for a lot of us, um, I want to build a life I never have to retire from. So I actually, you know, it's, it's retirement for me is being work optional, but it doesn't mean stopping to work. And the more I can align my values with the work that I'm putting into the world, the less I act like— I'm working harder now than I ever have in my entire life because I leap out of bed to do what I do. I love writing. I love speaking. I love getting to coach people on what makes a rich life. And so I'm actually spending a lot of time working right now because that's the thing in my life that's lighting me the most up. And turns out I make a lot of money from it.

Funny how that works out. Look, some of these things also even transcend money. Like one thing I often say is whether you're a billionaire or you're broke, uh, as Tyler Durden said in Fight Club, everything you own owns a piece of you. And it really is true. There's an overhead that comes with all these material possessions that even train, like, even if you can easily afford it, it's a chunk of your bandwidth that's going to that thing. And I think you have to ask of everything in your life, does this bring me joy? Thus reducing inflammation, right? Uh, I love that line, by the way. But, but, um, does this bring me joy? And if not, then remove it from your life. Um, uh, because the, the whole idea, like minimalism is just something I've come to. It's very related to what we're talking about. People think of minimalism as like denying yourself of everything. It's actually exactly the opposite. Minimalism is about asking of everything, does it bring me joy or not? If the answer is no or maybe, get rid of it so you can gorge on things that bring you joy. Rock climbing. I, that's the, where I spend probably the biggest chunk of my time, uh, every week now because it brings me just incredible, uh, incredible joy. And, uh, real related to this concept. So your, your Unbreakable Year, some of you who follow me have probably seen my ideal end state exer— I know some of you have done it. It's a very similar thing where like, it's interesting, like we all have in our minds this picture of what our best life would look like. But when you put it on paper, it actually is a different exercise. It actually, And in my, my exercise, just to summarize, is it's literally just a bulleted list, 20 or 30 bullets of like, if you had no constraints, what would your life look like? Like, what would you do? Who would you be around? How would you spend your time? Where would you be? Uh, simple things like, there's things on my list like get sunshine almost every day, like to your point about the hormones. Um, but when you, when you do that exercise, um, almost in every case, people look back at that list and they're like, oh. This is different than I thought it would be. And then the second epiphany is, oh my gosh, most of these things actually don't cost a lot of money. I don't need $20 million to live my Unbreakable Year or my best life. So pa— it's a, it's a powerful thing to do. I, I highly recommend it. All these exercises are, um, super related. Then the last thing I wanna say, and then we'll move is, um, the thing you point out that, um, you didn't point out today because, so I want to hit it is Um, the 4% rule gets even better because once you, um, one way to, to make your number way more achievable is to assume that you're not gonna retire and do nothing. Like, um, you know, I sort of retired a long time ago, found that to be miserable. I just started a company. Um, not even because it wasn't monetary driven, it was because I have an innate desire to build and create. My point here though is almost everybody who retires under fire continues to do something that generates money. And guess what? That same multiplier I talked about, reduce expenses by $5,000. Now you need $1.5 million less in assets. Guess what? If you, if your family commits to being like a barista at Starbucks and you make $3,000 a month, that, that same 300 multiplier applies. So now you've just whacked another $900K off the number. And I've, uh, when I give my talk on this, I kind of go through a progression of like an example scenario. And we start off with like, you need $8 million to retire. And we end up at like $1.9 million. And like, $1.9 million is still a lot of money, but that's very achievable for someone who's a decent earner and is living a careful life. So anything to add to, to that one?

No. Although. Combining the two things that you guys just said, I think the main thing I like to remind people when they come in from the streets, you know, they're used to the standard American consumer lifestyle and we've had all these dreams and like consumer things implanted into us. And then they're like, well, I want to have like the flashy cars. Like everyone says flashy cars, even if they're not, if they don't have a shared, like, you know, connection with their dad about it or whatever, they all say like this fancy stuff. Um, but they don't really, they haven't really thought it through about what it really feels like to own that versus a functional, high-quality thing that's not expensive. And as you get deeper into understanding what really brings you happiness, and like you said, you're, you're trying to get the feelings of owning this thing. You're not actually after the specific, like handbag or Ferrari or whatever else it is. So a lot of these desires drop away the more you realize how much they've been, they've come from a marketing, you know, consumer culture thing rather than what's really there. And a good example is testing it on kids. So like, You know, I was a really passionate dad. Now my sons are grown up and now I just, I like playing with other people's kids and being like the fun uncle because I still love kids so much. And what I really noticed is that Uncle Pete's style of adventures, they always have like the best days and we don't spend any money, even though like, for example, I'm, I'm currently in this long-term relationship with a wealthy woman. She's a doctor. So her kids are used to being overscheduled and in all the expensive trips and everything else. And then I come over and we just go in the forest and like, make stuff out of sticks or like make a dam in the creek and do all this other stuff. And we don't even go to Chipotle and spend like $60 on burritos. And then they come back and those are like the best days that they've had. And that's totally how I raised my son from scratch. Cuz that was what I remembered was my best childhood. So sometimes better is also cheaper, but you don't even know if you haven't had that lifestyle. You know, if somebody grew up rich, they never got to play in the creek. So then they're carrying that onto their own. Children and then spending a lot of money on something and getting less value for it. So a lot of times everything I focus on is not like cut something to save money. It's always do something that's better. And sometimes a lot of times it also happens to cost less. So it's always a win-win, right?

Yeah. You want to jump in on this? Absolutely. To piggyback, which is essentially what we just talked about for the last 10 minutes or so is the outer game, but what makes true wealth is actually the inner game. And so getting into How do I want to feel, or how do I want to not feel by this purchase? And we find out that most of our purchases are actually driven by subconscious emotional patterns. Either I want to feel successful and this is what success feels like, you know, this, I think this thing would make me feel successful, or more often it's actually, I grew up poor. I never want to feel poor again. So by buying this thing, I'm going to feel not poor. Right. And so the inner work starts to become, how do I unwind those subconscious patterns? How do I cultivate that feeling in myself? What actually, without actually having to spend any money. And I always tell people, like, buy the ticket, take the ride. If you think a Ferrari is going to make you happy, it might for a minute, but then at some point you're going to have to return to that inner work and go, shit, that was temporary. And again, those experiences are really fun, but they're not going to be the thing that actually fills you up. It's going to be that inner work, that soul-level work, and ultimately tying it to purpose, because that's what happens when we heal ourselves. We realize, yeah, it feels pretty good to help other people heal as well.

Yeah, the, the bio on my Twitter profile says, um, I, I learned everything the hard way so you don't have to. And so as you might guess, I have a perfect example of this. Does anybody know my Porsche story? If you follow me online? All right, so I'm gonna tell the very quick version. So, um, you know, growing up, to me, uh, the Porsche 911 was always the most beautiful car, the epitome of success and wealth. And, um, and I had posters hanging on my wall as a kid. And then fast forward, what, 20 years, and I'd started this big new job, got this big signing bonus, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to go get that Porsche that I've always wanted. And I went to Park City Porsche in Dallas, Texas, bought a gorgeous 911 twin turbo convertible, wrote a check cash. It wasn't even a stretch for me. I wrote $230,000. This was more now, but back in the day, $230,000 and I drove it home that night. I'm laying in bed staring at the ceiling that, that, you know, back to this point about everything you own owns a PCU. That car was already stressing me out. And what I realized, it was a kind of an epiphany. I have to spend $200,000 to get the epiphany apparently. But, but I realized like I'm not 13 years old anymore. Like what seemed like success isn't success anymore. I would actually pay to not have this car. Right. And so literally, uh, I took the car back to Park City's Porsche the next morning and I went to the manager and he said, he shook, to his credit, he shook my hand and he said, you're the first person who's ever done that. So, um, yeah, you know, by turning in the Porsche, I went back to driving what my kids call the jalopy, which is a truck that, uh, I actually just gave it away. Like Cedar, you do with your car. I just gave it away because it, the repairs were running me like $2,000 a month. I could lease a Tesla for like $200 a month. But to your point, that car, which was worth— my mechanic said it was worth less than zero, but I'm going to say $2,000. It would cost 1/100th of what the Porsche cost. But I love that car. It had all my climbing gear in it and slide-out drawers. I could go off-road and beat the shit out of it, and it would just come back for more. And so it really is true. You don't have to ne— it's not a negative trade-off. It often is a huge win that by, by accepting the less is more. Mm-hmm. Um, okay. I wanna just a couple more things and I wanna open up for questions, but I do wanna touch on this dimensions of wealth thing. And Mike, I think you have the best framework that anybody I know to talk about that. So this'll be your, your little niche to talk about, like, and, and, and what's funny is it's, I bet it's gonna overlap 80% with what our medical panel said about what health is. So what, how do you think about like the dimensions of wealth?

Yeah. So, so as I said earlier, my basic framework is, is creating freedom in, in the 5 areas. And money is not one of those 5 areas. It's just a tool to increase that freedom. So, uh, again, hierarchical, not sequential. You can work on these all at the same time, but without the other, the other one, uh, can't actually happen. So freedom of health means a body that works to do the things we want to do. Freedom of relationships means I get to spend meaningful time with people who see me and there's no external forces of control. Like I'm not beholden to them or they're not dependent on me. Uh, and then freedom of time, Kevin could talk about endlessly, but it's using that time now to do something that, that's meaningful. That starts with freedom of mind. And what I would say is the highest form of self-actualization is the ability to hold two thoughts at the same time. My mind doesn't collapse when I, when I look at to hold paradox. So, one of those paradox means I am completely enough as I am and I'll never stop growing, right? So, as we start to cultivate freedom of mind, we're open to new ideas and we don't collapse into tribalism or seeing a lot of the stuff that we see is we hold empathy for all viewpoints. And then, freedom of soul really comes into, number one, understanding that we are part of something greater than ourselves. And this isn't necessarily religious. It can be spiritual. It can just be the interconnectedness of human beings. And typically, all of the ancient wisdom traditions or all of the things that we see that pass down spiritual wisdom tend to point at the same thing. One, we're all connected. And two, we can access that connection through some type of contemplative practice. For me, the basis of that is meditation. And ironically, meditation is the best practice I've ever found to return to the present. That's actually the basis of that practice And if wealth can be only experienced in the present, then meditation is a form of returning to presence over and over and over, which increases our wealth because we've learned how to actually live our lives, not in the past and not in the future. So, that's my basic framework. And then, for service, I have one more framework, which is me, family, community, and world, right? So, I've got to start with myself. I've got to put my own oxygen mask on first. If I don't have a body that works, if I'm sacrificing myself on the altar of stress to help other people, that's not actually being my, my most effective or living my best life. So I need to start with me and then I need to focus on my family, right? The people who are most important to me. That is the place where I can have the most outsized impact. Now I move into community, something like this, and then impacting the world means I'm helping someone who, whose name that I don't know. That doesn't mean I have to have a, a massive Twitter following, but how can I help someone that I don't actually have a direct connection to? And as we go in that hierarchy, we start to experience more and more wealth in the present. I'll stop there.

I find it interesting that in today's world, too many people I think have inverted those concentric circles. And, um, it can be overwhelming. Like when, if you go to Twitter and you're scrolling, you, you know about all the world's problems and you might be led to like think I have to do my part to solve all the world's problems. It might even be a super misguided, you know, like we've seen some recent examples. And this idea of like starting with yourself and working out is super powerful for that.

All right.

We're going to revert to Q&A and, and, uh, but I'm going to ask the first question because I think it's a, it's, it's one that should be asked. And I'll go first because I don't want to, I want to give you guys time to think. Like basically like what's your best advice for achieving true wealth? And I'm going to say, um, two things. Number one is first recognize that, uh, we're all time billionaires. Do you guys know the concept of a time billionaire? So a billion seconds is about 30 years, right? And so every single person in this room has a billion seconds left. And the only question that matters in life really is how are you gonna spend those billion seconds? And that, you know, being a time billionaire is infinitely more valuable than being a monetary billionaire. And when I say that, sometimes people like roll their eyes, like, whatever. That's like, like a nice line.

Mm-hmm.

But, uh, here's one to make it real. Like Warren Buffett is, I believe, 94 years old. He's worth $100 billion, would he trade his $100 billion to be your age? I bet you anything that he would.

He says that all the time.

Yeah.

And so, so treasure that time. And the other piece of it is a billion seconds is a long time. You have plenty of time to build your ideal life. So the second part of what I'd say is advice is do the Unbreakable Year, do the ideal end state and define what that is. And then brick by brick, just build it. That's, that's the way I did it. It's the way most people do it. It doesn't happen overnight, but you've got a billion seconds to do it. One piece of advice just to get—

I think, um, I'm always a little bit more analytical and, you know, sciencey. So I think the best thing that's been for, uh, helped my happiness is to understand what happiness is and the causes. You know, as a, as a creature, like as a human, we're a biological creature. And we have all these different things that, you know, that we're kind of wired to like and not like and what leads to a satisfying life. So the more you learn about what makes other people happy and why things work for making most people happy, you know, like status is shallow, whereas health and relationships can be genuine happiness. The more you learn about this, which basically just comes from like asking wise people and reading books, the better you get at it so that you'll make fewer false attempts, you know, like the Porsche 911 that you only have for one day. and you'll, you'll have, you'll invest your time more accurately in, in getting the real happiness. 'Cause I've been practicing, you know, mostly like through my 20 years of retirement and I just get a little bit better at it each day. And now I've really got my, you know, my happy days wired so well that it's pretty amazing. Um, and if I could apply those skills back to a younger version of me, I could have even more of a satisfying life. 'Cause a lot of it just boils down to these daily habits of like what, what leads to a happy life.

The formula.

Yep.

Yeah.

So, uh, mine would be do the inner work. And when I think about the inner work, it's on an XY axis of waking up and cleaning up. Waking up being understanding that we're all interconnected and there's, there's something going on that's bigger than ourselves. Cleaning up, meaning facing my traumas, my shadows, and healing some of those subconscious patterns that, that drive us from happiness. And, uh, you know, the fundamental root of suffering is wishing for things to be different than they are, right? And, you know, another way, that's, that's how we think about money. Oh, if I just had this money, then I would be so much happier. It's actually almost never the case as, as to, to Kevin's point with the 2 times more than I have now. And so, uh, you know, if I can start cleaning up some of those things that make me feel not enough, that make me feel not whole, and get to this realization that Everything is perfect just as it is. I am perfect just as I am. I have everything I need within me to live this happy life. Now, I can just start eliminating some of these things that take me out of the presence. And I think that's what the work actually is, is how do I eliminate the things that take me out of joy and that take me out of present in the moment? And feeling not enough is something that all of us struggle with. And so, diving into that work is the only real way to experience wealth present in my opinion.

Awesome.

Questions? Mr. Batten.

So, I mean, as I listen, one of the ways I think I could personally misunderstand what you all are saying is that it's about freedom from work. And I think maybe I'm also hearing you say it's really more about finding freedom in work or different kinds of work. And Joe, so maybe react to the idea of freedom from work versus freedom in work.

Yeah, you definitely don't want to make work be a bad thing in your life. It's just that most careers and jobs are kind of bad. And, uh, you know, if you have the freedom to design your, your job correctly, or your, your enterprise, whatever you're doing with your life, then you can make it just right. You know, you can work towards making it more and more just right each year. And that's the real key. Like the best example is like, you know, someone who works in a law firm where they get abused all day and they have no free time and they're trying to be a good family man, and these are absolutely competing desires. So sort of what Mike says, the stress of the job and it's pulling you away from what's really meant to be, you know, like allows you to be in the present and be, follow the things that you want to do. So yeah, I still like working, but we're also wired to work different amounts, right? Like I'm a lot more of a sloth than Kevin is. So I genuinely do less And that's the right amount for me. But I had to find that out through experimenting. Yeah.

I put it really simply as, as good as it gets is choosing your struggle. If you don't have any struggle in your life, that's a guaranteed path to misery. Um, and you know, it, it varies by person. Like one of the, on my ideal end state, one of the things that says on there that I get, I always get questions about is it, it says control 80% of my schedule. And the question I always get is like, why isn't that 100%? It's because I think we have to be on the hook for things like, you know, um, that struggle is what provides part of the meaning in life. And, and earlier in life, work may be a bigger part of the struggle you choose. Later in life, you may choose different, I mean, you know, I go struggle on the rock or whatever. Um, but, but that struggle, what that you could call work is absolutely necessary for contentment, for happiness. But you can get to a point where you actually get to choose it, and that's as good as it can possibly get.

Yeah, for me, it's about aligning to service, right? And so I think we make a fundamental mistake telling people, follow your passion, you'll never work a day of your life. I am following my passion. I'm fucking working hard right now, right? So, uh, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to translate. We don't have to pull whatever we're passionate about or whatever service we're passionate about into our work, right? For me right now, I'm coaching people. I'm doing that direct one-on-one interaction. But there's another guy out there that could be running a private equity firm so he can help fund a homeless shelter, right? So, as long as you have that element of service, as long as you don't hate your day-to-day and what you're doing, it doesn't mean you have to quit your traditional job or quit your, you know, sell your company and go, uh, you know, on the, on the, you know, proverbial mission. Like you can, you can balance both of those things. But number one is, is this making me miserable? Yes or no? Okay. Let's, let's branch from there. If not cool, now how can I increase my fulfillment with the money that I'm making from this thing that doesn't make me miserable?

Back, very back first.

How did you make the final jumps? You came up with your number that I asked before, percent. Um, how did you make that final jump of moving the bullseye and completely changing your life?

Oh man, I can go on a huge rant on this, but, and I will, uh, but The, the, uh, it was, it, yeah, it sounds like roses, but it definitely wasn't easy because, you know, I think Cedar alluded to this and it's like, everybody's calling you crazy. You know, you've got the perfect life. Uh, and frankly, you know, the ugly side of, of my reboot was my wife was basically happy in Dallas. She had, you know, she plays tennis, she had her country club, she's doing her mom thing. My kids were in middle school. They had no, And I, but, but one thing that I've observed that's just interesting to me is people are generally willing to make big changes in their life. Like if they're in a toxic relationship, they'll get out of it eventually. If they're in a, just a dead-end career, they'll pivot. If their health is a disaster, they'll have a wake-up call. And, but this one thing of like moving to what I call your happy place, it, it, it conjures just every fear in the book.

Like.

And that people magnify the fear 100x and underestimate the downside 100x. And so ultimately some of it is, um, I, I actually, the, there was a bunch of things that kind of led up and, you know, climbing played its role and the, the financial thing played its role. But I used to go to lunch. There was a guy who I worked with named Ben, and we'd have these lunches and, uh, we would talk about our ideal life and it always involved, we were both outdoor people, so it always involved being somewhere cool. Like Boulder, and we'd have these lunches and they'd talk for 2 hours and do another one a few weeks later and another one. And at one point I said to Ben, I said, you know, are we gonna, are we gonna shit or get off the pot? Like, you know, are we gonna talk about doing all this stuff forever or are we gonna actually do it? Um, it's never gonna feel easy. There's never a convenient time. It's always a horrible time to do it. Uh, and that was what ultimately convicted me is, you know, most people won't, but I'm going to. I'm going to be that, I'm going to be that guy that I said I'm going to be. And again, it's not easy. Like, it wasn't all roses and it takes years to kind of sometimes, you know, rebuild that life. I was telling some people earlier that I just not too long ago asked my wife on a walk, I said, you know, be honest with me now, 6 years later, are you glad that we, you know, blew everything up and we live in, in, um, Boulder? And, uh, she said yes, genuinely yes. Even though that was almost like, it was like, um, it pushed our marriage to the brink, to be honest. And my kids weren't super happy, happy with me for a while. Um, but I would say this, if you, you know, this is specific to like moving, which I think, you know, people underestimate the value of your environment, uh, and And being in your happy place. But if you talk to like 100 people who have made that bold move, and I have actually talked to that many people, um, nobody regrets it, even if things didn't go as they expected, because things probably won't go as you expect. Even if like, well, when I took a leap of faith, like, I mean, I had some financial security, which was made it a little bit easier, but I didn't have any plans for my work or my career or anything. I took that leap and, you know, things didn't work out exactly as I expected, but guess what? Like resourceful people find a way to make things work. Right. And so, yeah, take that bet. And again, we tend to, you know, now we're entering the rant phase. The, you know, I'm into bets that are asymmetric, like, and investors will tell you this, like, you, you know, you don't wanna make bets that are 50/50 because, you know, half the time you win, half the time you lose. What you wanna do is whether it's in, in investing, in relationships, in life, you wanna make bets where the downside can be contained, right? So the downside of moving to Boulder was that we end up in Boulder. That's better than a kick in the balls. Mm-hmm. You know, it's like, it's like not a bad place, but the upside was that it's transformational for my family. And that's, you know, that's, that's worth it. And so you think about all the decisions you make in life is, are they asymmetric? If I'm making this bet and can I, can I mitigate the downside to make it even more asymmetric?

Can I just piggyback on that? We also conflate, there's almost no one-way doors in life. So we imagine moving to be this, this whole big thing, but you can move, live somewhere for 6 months and be like, I hate this. I want to move back. And if it turns out you could just go back. So, you know, there really is so much downside that we think that we're so afraid of what might happen. We move and we don't like it. And there's, there's rarely one-way doors. And same thing with jobs. Like if you have a super rad high-paying job that you're really afraid to leave and you leave it, you could probably go get another one of those jobs. Like it turns out like it's, it's not as scarce as we think it is. And it's never one way.

Well, it was back to what Senior said in one of the questions about, uh, was it perceived versus real risk?

Yeah.

Almost all of the fear is perceived risk, not real risk. And it's, it's very important. And, and actually like things like climbing really are the best teacher because you have to get really good at discerning. Like Cedar's alive because he's good at discerning. Uh, he comes across as like a, a happy-go-lucky guy, but trust me, he's super calculated. Honnold is super calculated in everything that they do, and they're very good at understanding, is this a real risk or is this just a perceived risk that I can push through?

Cool.

I've seen this guy has a question. Yeah, uh, Pete, I've got a question for you. So you were living that—

you're—

you've been living this lifestyle for two decades.

You meet a woman and you, you say, hey, I'm living this lifestyle.

I'm curious, like, with your new partner or your new girlfriend, like, how did that conversation go and how did—

how do you guys manage?

Maybe she has a different perspective on that. She wants to talk about it. Yeah, well, the thing about my my lifestyle is it's, it's indistinguishable from a high-income lifestyle. Like it's never looked frugal. I'm just like an optimizer. So, and that's kind of one, maybe why my writing caught on is 'cause people see my lifestyle and as long as it's not misportrayed, which it does get by the media sometime. If it's not misportrayed, people are like, oh, that just looks like what I have. Like he has a nice car, he's got a nice house, goes on cool trips, like good enough. I just happen to do it more efficiently and I, so I, it ends up costing less. Because, you know, at the heart, I'm not like a super cave dweller minimalist. I'm, uh, you know, kind of a North American kid who grew up liking nice stuff. I just like having like, you know, and I'm a bit of an environmentalist, so that saves me from the private jets and stuff. But, um, in general, I still like nice stuff. So in my dating life, so it's actually interesting because I did, my wife and I did separate, you know, like 6+ years ago. So I've had, uh, A very interesting, uh, you know, like it's been kind of nice as a middle-aged man to go, go through all the stuff you didn't get to do when you were younger, because you got married young. So, um, I met lots of women. Um, never has the money issue been a problem other than the fact that I just have more than most of the people I meet. So sometimes they want me to pay for everything, which is, that's fine too, you know, but like you find a balance in the money situation. But I think I find like a certain personality goes along with a certain sensibility with money. And I've never been attracted to people who like to show off for status. So, you know, if I was at like a, a Paris fashion show or something and I'm meeting people there, I just do use some example I know nothing about, you know, those people might not appreciate my lifestyle cuz I like camping and I like do-it-yourself construction and these other things. I like Colorado. I'm a Colorado flannel-wearing type guy. So, and I meet women in Colorado and we're all aligned. So. To answer, it's never been an issue. It's just we have a lot more fun together because we're not stressed about money.

I have to say Pete did mention something one time that frankly was very offensive to me, is that he buys his coffee beans in bulk from Costco. No, that's a— life is too short for that.

Yeah, I mean, and if that was, if I noticed a difference, like I've tried all the coffees, right? And all the expensive ones too. So I picked the one that tastes best to me. If I wanted something different that happened to cost more, I would do that, right? Some of my tastes in life are, more expensive. Um, but you know, I just don't, I don't let the, uh, the marketing or other people's perceptions of value influence what I want. So like I have a Tesla car, it's not the cheapest car, but for me it's the very best one. So like I spend more on that.

Yep.

Partly just because it aligns exactly with what I use cars for.

Yep.

Jay.

Pete, how would you recommend someone who doesn't necessarily budget, but they track everything they spend, not become obsessive to try and minimize.

Yeah. Are you saying you're like that? Oh yeah.

I track everything I spend. Like, I don't constrain myself in any way. Yeah. But I know I'm long because I spent more than my alpha month. I get frustrated with myself.

Oh, I see.

Right. So how do you like mentally not like become really obsessive?

About this?

I think the best thing to do is to make fun of yourself on a regular basis. Like, it really helps to say like, hey, I'm an irrational being and I have some hangups and like admit it, be public about it to your friends and then, you know, work on it. And, but the first step is sort of like identifying that within you and realizing, do I, first of all, do I want to be different or am I happy with this behavior? But if it's something you wanna change, you really can. So like, I never tracked my spending. I just was a natural optimizer. And in recent years, I've decided I'm too much of an optimizer and I want to, in certain areas, that I want to worry about it less. And like the example I like to make fun of is like, I have a lot of guests at my house. Everyone has different shower habits, right? And some people just like to flip on the water and leave it running for a long time while they are like finding their clothes and stuff. Total waste. My shower warms up in like 10 seconds and they're used to some other shower. And the old me would be like, oh, So much water's getting wasted. They could just turn that on afterwards, right? But now I'm like, abundance, like we have plenty of hot water. I have infinite money, who cares, right? And if someone wants to learn from me, they'll ask, but I don't wanna push my efficient beliefs on them and make them feel uncomfortable. 'Cause then that person's not gonna wanna take showers at my house anymore. And that means I won't have that friend anymore. So just learning to like train any habits out of yourself that you wish weren't there. You know, maybe like look at other people who aren't hung up on this thing and see like, what do they do? And you can change over time and you just get, you know, you get better over time.

Jay, I know you didn't ask me, but I have an opinion on this. So wild. Uh, which is that, uh, for, for data and tracking, it's going to be different for everybody, but I think there's two questions you have to ask yourself. One is, what is the minimum effective dose? Of tracking, right? And then two, what decisions am I trying to make from this data? If it's just to see the number and then beat myself up, it's probably not really a good use of your time. If it's, hey, if I'm 10% over budget, I'm gonna find things to cut. Okay, now you've tied an action to that, to that tracking. But we sort of have this love affair with data, right? Like I sleep between 8 and 9 hours a night. I had an Oura Ring. It stressed me out because it was now telling me that I wasn't getting enough REM and like, I'm good on sleep. Like, I'm doing the thing. I don't need the extra tracking in my life. And I find more joy not tracking my sleep at all than I used to when I was optimizing my sleep, right? So, you know, if you want to make decisions from that data, figure out what's the minimum effective tracking to make those decisions.

That's a good idea. Cut yourself off cold turkey and just see what happens. It might open up space in your life for something else because you're like, "Oh, I want to track. But wait, what am I supposed to do instead with this time?" And you might replace it with something that's genuinely valuable, like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to go for a morning walk instead." Whatever.

I have a question. So, um, we moved, so we did, we did the move to the place that's gonna, uh, be the best for you thing. But what I found is I moved to a pretty affluent suburb. I live within my means, all those things. Uh, and I knew DC would help with most of this stuff, not all. Um, but one of the traps, the challenges that I've felt over the last 4 years living in the nice suburbs of Atlanta is you get surrounded by people, some of it generational wealth, some of it just people trying to keep up with the Joneses. But like, I've become acutely aware that the environment can just be oppressing. Like, you could feel the pressing of like, oh, that person, you know, like the just cultural reality of living in that type of environment. How can, how do you counterbalance? I guess it's more about how do you counterbalance that? Because I'm aware of it. And my wife acknowledged it, but then simultaneously, I know that environment plays such a big role in how we can play a big role in how we make.

It's, it's very hard to be a lone wolf. Uh, so I lived in a wealthy, like the time I lived in Southlake, Texas in the suburb of Dallas, it was like the wealthiest per capita suburb in the US. And I was absolutely a lone wolf. I was telling some guys earlier, I'd like go out for walks, which is a simple thing. Nobody ever left their house. There's McMansions, you know, right at one, right after another. And so I think the answer is you have to find your tribe. Someone should actually do an event where you can get men together and, you know, but, but, um, but I think that's, that's part— to me, that is, you know, to me, like, Boulder is an amazing, like, inherently an amazing place. Um, but for me, it's actually even more about the tribe because I never found my tribe, uh, which is, you know, as I've told you guys, is one of the primary reasons I started this. Um, but when I moved to Boulder, it just happened naturally. Uh, and now I've got, you know, so all of my closest friends are now, um, I've met in the last 7 years in Boulder. Because when you're, um, when, when you're in the right place, you know you're in the right place when it's easy to find people you connect with who share those values. Like, living in the suburbs of Dallas is probably not the best place to find people who really value the outdoors, for example.

So you got to be the leader rather than the follower if you're trying to create community. Like, you created this event, right? I've always done that since I was a little kid. I wanted to be the organizer so I'd get all the friends to do what I wanted to do, and that really leads to getting a lot more friends. But even on the household situation, like, I've, I've learned that it's best to be— know as many of your neighbors as possible and ideally be friends with as many as you're possible. And so in my my neighborhood, like we all moved deliberately to live near each other. Like I have 5 good friends right on my street and we hang out and share stuff and have driveway parties and everything. And you really can do that kind of stuff if you're more intentional, instead of just saying, well, this house has a bathroom and kitchen that I like, so I'm gonna buy this. You know, you have to be like, well, who am I living near? And are these people that I actually wanna hang out with?

But, but I, I'd say to counter that a little bit, cuz I, I tried to force it when I lived in, uh, Dallas and my wife used to always get on me like, Why can't you, like, you know, talk to any of the other dads at all these events? Why are you always off in the corner by yourself? And, um, and I tried to force it, tried to smile for years, tried to drink beer and, like, watch NFL with the guys, and that's just not fundamentally who I am. So I eventually kind of went the other direction. I'm done pushing rope. Like, I'm gonna go actually go find people I connect with. And man, it makes life so much easier when you're swimming downstream.

Yeah, right.

The Colorado And the last thing I would say, a little bit of a counterpoint to these guys, the unfortunate truth of waking up and dropping out of the default is it's lonely. And that's just the reality. That's why groups like this exist, but it's going to be harder to fit in into people that have accepted the default and, you know, do the, do the things because it's what they're supposed to do. And it's hard to talk about football or, you know, whatever the thing people talk about, your fantasy football team. Um, you know, you're not going to connect with as many people. And so it does become more critical to find that relational wealth and then go all in. I mean, I now, I go a mile deep instead of a mile wide. I have less friends and I'm actually less interested in having more friends. And it's kind of the reality of the situation is I don't connect with as many people as I used to, and that's okay. But I connect with myself on a much deeper level than I ever have. And that's for me, true wealth.

We were talking about this last night. So you're gonna see it, all of you. How do you stay ambitious, even if you're successful? And they keep that edge.

That's good.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, it's, it's that when it's not about you anymore. A lot of times when potential coaching clients come to me, They'll ask, hey, if I start this inner work, will I lose my edge? And my answer is, if your edge is driven by darkness, if it's driven by not enoughness, if it's driven by, I'll finally be happy when, and we start diving into the inner work, you might lose your edge. But what you get to build in that place is gonna be so much more joyful. It's gonna be so much more from the light, and you're gonna impact more people, and it's gonna, it's gonna feel a whole lot better. And by the way, you actually might start readjusting some of your goals, right? If you're, if someone comes in and go, my goal is to hit $100 million. Okay. Why? Let's start digging into the why. It turns out maybe you only need $10 million. Uh, and a lot of people, you know, a client recently sent me a mug that said, Mike Brown helped me lower the bar. Like he's less ambitious than he was, but he's a hell of a lot happier. Right.

So, um, Yeah, that, that's, well, I loved what you said earlier is like, there is this par— most of us here are high performers, probably all of us. As you said, like, it's okay to hold two opposing thoughts at once, whereas I am enough and I want to continue to grow because I'm wired to be an achiever. I derive immense joy from it. I think one thing to check yourself on though is to what end? Like, uh, and I think, um, one thing I've shifted and I actually like now that I'm thinking about it real time. Like that was kind of the basis of my whole reboot was like, I wanted to achieve in ways that are aligned with who I am, not in ways that are trying to please the world or check boxes or achieve status. So I think there's nothing wrong. Like I'm tired of apologizing for who I am. I did that for too many years. Like I am an achiever. I set high goals. I like to kick ass. It feels very good. It brings me joy. Um, where I got off track was I was doing it to please others, not to please myself.

And my third answer is I don't really, I'm not super ambitious. I just, I'm happy with that.

The best answer.

I'm very happy with the medium. Like I, uh, I like being medium great at a lot of different things cuz I just have a very wide range of interests. But what I wanna maximize for is just the most satisfying and enjoyable and meaningful life. So that I'm a super high achiever in that department, but I don't really care about like you know, making my blog and my platform become super big. You know, that's why I never hired employees to work for me because I didn't want to have to like the extra stress of managing people because I realized that wasn't where the trade-off of the more success in exchange for less free time and ability to be a dad during my, my primary dad years back then. And, uh, yeah, that's fine. Like, cause there's, there's no limit to how much you could do. So you could always say, but it could be like that money question. Like, oh, I could easily do twice as much. And be twice as successful at whatever I'm doing. And that's an important thing to let go of. You have to think of like, what's the right level of quote, quotation marks, success for you and ambition. And like, you know, I'm totally fine just waking up and having breakfast and then deciding what to do each day. And like, that's, by the way, works best for me.

The way I actually met Pete, uh, it's a great story to back this up, is I was the CMO for this big company and I discovered the Mr. Money Mustache content. I was like, Ooh, I wanna turn that into a video series for this financial services company that I'm, I'm running marketing for. So I reached out to Pete and I'm like, I can pay you a bunch of money to create like some videos for me. He's like, no thanks. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. I've got lots of money to give you. He's like, no, I think I'd rather spend time with my son. That's literally exactly what he said. And it really did jog me as like, wait a second, why can't I buy this motherfucker?

Like, No.

All right. One more question that we probably should wrap. Uh, this has been awesome, but yeah.

Yeah.

So you guys talk about freedom and it sounds amazing. It sounds like it also could be done pretty cheaply. Um, but it also is pretty vague. And so I'm curious, uh, you talk about the, um, like 16 hours a day that you got to fill that time, like, or, or how you're spending it. How do you figure out what that was actually gonna be like? Did Kevin, do you figure that out in the 3 weeks that you were visible in there in the— Did you know what you were gonna look like at 30 and how you raised? And then I just wanna drag your question, like when you were focusing on this accumulation phase, did you have like a north star of when I reach that, here's what I'm gonna do instead?

Or is it now I'm gonna figure it out as it, as it went?

I think it's, it is a lot of trial and error and this is why I say you don't wait until you're 45 to start thinking about things other than your career. Start making those, like try rock climbing, try surfing. Interact with lots of different people, figure out who you wanna be around because, um, you know, a lot of those will be dead ends and you, they, you won't be passionate, but you'll eventually, if you just stay at it and try enough things, you'll, you'll stumble into things that you're passionate about. And then you, you, you have a burning passion to go a mile deep with those things. And, um, it's, it's, it's just like anything else in life. It's like start planting the seeds and making those investments early. Because there is, you know, it's crazy to me that like, I call it someday thinking. A lot of guys are, they think, I'm gonna kick ass in my career and I'm gonna make $20 million and then I'm gonna build an awesome life. And unfortunately it doesn't work that way. It blows my mind that people think that like, it's gonna take 20, 30 years to build my career, but my great life, I can build that in a week. That's crazy. Like it takes just as long to build a great life as it does to build a great career. And it can be a sliding scale. Maybe for some of you younger guys, you don't have the freedom to go rock climbing every day depending on what the weather looks like, but you can start making those small investments and exploring and figuring out what you like so that as you achieve, as you get closer to financial independence, you've got burning desires that demand your time. Like I always say, it's, I like to work with people who cannot wait to get out of meetings. Like if you don't have anything better to do, you're probably not that interesting of a person. If I'm sitting in a, uh, in a conference room, like looking at a PowerPoint, I literally, I'm all, I'm there for it. Like I'm locked in, but I want to get out of there as soon as humanly possible because I've got way better stuff to do.

Yeah, absolutely. And my answer is maybe a little simpler. It's just that I already enjoyed my weekends when I was a worker, when I had my normal engineering job. And I just wanted my weekends to be longer because they were already packed with doing all this stuff. And sure enough, now that my days, my entire life is just the same stuff that I did on those weekends. You know, just adjusted for some different life situations and you can add in new interests over time. But in general, it still boils down to just like outdoor activities. You know, I like to be outdoors and do hikes and bike rides and camping and construction. And like child raising is a big part. And it was like, there's way more stuff to do than I have time to do now. So like job would just be reducing the amount of things that I can do that I enjoy. So that's why I was so keen on ending it so early.

That's beautiful. Thank you. My answer is, uh, keep the decision window small. So again, back to living in the present, uh, it's really heavy to think about what's my legacy, what am I going to leave behind, what's my life's purpose. I try to think about right now. My purpose right now is writing, speaking, and coaching. That doesn't mean my purpose in 10 years is going to be that same thing. And I want to give myself the permission to grow and evolve and change as my tastes change. The only constant in life is change. We're always changing. And so trying to find the one big thing that's finally going to make me happy is, I think, an impossible quest, right? So, so what's making me happy in the moment, and how do I make sure that I'm engaging in the habits and the activities that bring me joy in the present that's also taking care of myself long term, right? You, you— and if you become— so I'll add a hot take, which is I hate goals because goals imply that there's something outside of yourself that would make you happier than you are now. I try to become process-oriented. I love waking up and writing every day. I love waking up and speaking to clients. I love playing with my kids. If I focus on those things, outcomes, A, become inevitable because I'm doing the thing where my actions are aligned with my values, but B, outcomes don't really matter because I'm focusing on the things that are bringing me joy in the moment. So I don't know, that's how I balance that, that whole idea.

Listen guys, that's a wrap. Uh, again, thank you so much for attending this experiment.