61. “I am going to die in 5 years. Should I quit my job?” (Part 2)

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I had a double lung transplant in October of 2020. According to my calculations, I have about like a 67% chance of living five years post transplant, so another three and a half years roughly. But I'm behaving like I was when I thought I might live to be 90 and there's like virtually no chance I'll live to be 90.

At some we're going to be looking back saying why didn't we do the stuff we could do when we could do it, which is now.

There's no virtue in living a smaller life than you have to, but yet.

It does feel sort of satisfying in some way. I can't quite explain why.

If you knew that you had only a 67% chance of living the next five years, what would you do differently? Welcome to part two of my conversation with Tom and Julie. They're both around 50 years old and they have accumulated a $12 million net worth. But Julie still works at her day job because she likes the income and they hesitate on spending money on things like travel and eating out. The stakes are high for Tom and Julie because she knows the statistics of how long she will live after receiving a double lung transplant. Now we're talking about life or death here and we're talking about millions of dollars. Julie herself has said that she wants to create experiences for their two young daughters. So why are they finding it so hard to make changes? As you listen to today's episode, please know that there are two follow up letters from Tom and Julie which you can get@iwt.com SL Episode 61. But first, let's get into today's episode. I'm Ramit Sethi and this is I will teach you to be rich.

I have this concept of money dials, the thing that you love to spend money on. Have you ever articulated what your money dial is?

For me it's travel. I really like that. When I was in my master's program, that's where I would would splurge and really tried to to have some good experiences. Now that I have kids, it's where I imagined splurging. And like with COVID I'm not comfortable flying because of my being immunocompromised and so on. But I do feel like there's things I would like to do. Like if my kids are in distance learning and I'm working remotely, going to Arizona for a month in the winter and just getting out of this terrible northern Midwestern climate for a while and just experiencing a different part of the country and being able to eat outside and in restaurants.

What do you think your beliefs about wealth have cost you?

I have reflected a lot on that over this recent time frame here, the last probably 18 months. And I would say they have cost me or other us, our family, a lot of experiences. 20 was a big year for us. That was of course when Covid hit and everybody was impacted by that. But it's also when my lung function went way down and I had to have the lung transplant. So I feel like prior to that I wish that Tom and I had really taken advantage of the opportunity to take our kids on trips to go to some less developed countries together or if Tom didn't want to go, I should have found a friend to go on those trips with. That is what I think I have missed out on. I don't think anything I could have bought with the money is any material things will be anything that I will miss. I don't feel like I would have had a better life if I had had a nicer car or better shoes or I think it's experiences like what do I want my girls to remember? Because I feel like Just all those losses of my parents makes me just think about what I remember from them. And it's about experience, experiences and getting out. What I want my kids to, what I want to impart on them is a sense of adventure, of like, you and your friend can go to Vietnam and you can go to Laos right after they open the border and you will be just fine and you will figure things out and you might be uncomfortable and you might have to drink Diet Coke because they don't have coffee. And I'm really worried I'm going to leave them and they'll be like cupcakes or just not cupcakes. But just think like the upper Midwest is the world. And I feel like the upper Midwest, it's a really nice place to live, but I want them to have broader horizons. And then, of course, Western Europe is so great and we all speak Spanish and so getting to live that and just becoming aware that there's different cultures and different ways of being and there's nothing wrong with eating dinner at 10 o' clock every night and just having those broader experiences and adventures. That's what I want. Versus staying here and, and being very comfortable.

At some point, we're going to be looking back saying, why didn't we do the stuff we could do when we could do it, which is now, right? And that's where I don't want to be in the future is looking back and thinking, why didn't we? We could have, but we didn't.

You have a clear, clear view on mortality. You have statistics, you have numbers. You know what most other people cannot know, which is how long they will likely be around. You have a view that most of us will never have. And wow, Tom, you really said it. You do have a magic wand because with the exception of a few places and a few methods of travel that you probably do not want to do, you can essentially create your own magic wand style of traveling right now. So I, I'm a little puzzled. I love your vision. I know that we have a ticking clock and you have $12 million. So to me, all the pieces are here. What is stopping you?

I would have said, oh, it's my health insurance. But then Tom had debunked that myth by doing some research and figuring out options.

Okay, so it's not that, and so.

It'S not health insurance. I think it really goes back to that feeling of security. And my actions say that I have weighed that more heavily than I have weighed the desire for experiences. I would say security and comfort and routine. Is what I have prioritized versus the alternative.

Does going into more adventure and experiences, is that mutually exclusive from safety and security?

When I say safety and security, I mean what I get from my job. I guess I could. Could continue working remotely and work. It sounds exciting. But then it also sounds sad to close the door on this chapter because there's a lot of good things about it. But then I feel also, then why am I spending eight hours a day at my desk instead of with my kids, instead of with my friends and doing other things I want to do? But my big priority would be spending time with my kids. But I feel like. I feel like once I leave this role, I probably won't look for another professional role.

How old are your kids?

12 and 9.

Why would you continue working?

Because it makes me feel more secure. I don't.

This is very interesting.

You know, if you said money from.

Work, how much do you make, Julie?

A couple hundred thousand a year.

Okay, so you make more in interest from your portfolio than you make from your job. Are you aware of that?

Honestly, no. But I do believe last year was a big year for capital gains. So. It was.

Everybody noticed how she's changing the subject, but, yeah, that was a nice pivot. It almost worked.

Yes, I know. We have. I know. Like, I understand the math of. Oh, if we withdraw 2% a year and the interest. Yeah, I get the math.

Can you finish that sentence for me? If you withdraw 2%, then what?

And. And say we don't reinvest the capital gains and the dividends, that we would have a very nice lifestyle. I am just. But then why can't I. I don't know. I'm just having trouble connecting.

This is where the intellectual part doesn't square up with the emotional part because, you know, just doing some simple math, right, and using a financial calculator, we can easily see that we could live our same lifestyle and our net worth will most likely grow a little bit, but not shrink. And that's if we both stop working today. No matter how many times I talked to Julia about that, she can't get there. And I really think, like, one of the big hurdles for her not quitting her job is she. She wants to still have the security of the. The paycheck coming in. You know, she'll. She'll make a comment, like, I got paid today. You know, I'm like, oh, great, Julie.

What does that mean?

Like, who cares? Like, doesn't matter, you know? But, like, that's, like, important for her.

Like, I got paid Today, logically, this.

Makes no sense, but emotionally, it makes all the sense in the world. When Julie grew up, she saw her mom almost become homeless. Her mom then told her, safety, security, you need to put money away. And so when she receives a paycheck, it's not really about how much she's making from that paycheck, but rather what that paycheck represents. Safety, security, and knowing she will be okay. The problem is that those beliefs are now costing her a lot. I ask this question to guests sometimes. What is the cost of your beliefs? People come on, they say, I think the stock market feels like gambling. I say, okay, what is the cost of that belief? For many people, it costs you millions of dollars in lost earnings because you just randomly believe that the stock market feels like gambling. Well, for Julie, she has a ticking clock on how long she will live. And the cost of her belief is severe. It is eight hours a day away from her family. It is not being able to create the experiences that she herself says she wants to create. So you can have your beliefs. Nobody's changing that. But what is it costing you?

Real question for you.

Do you know how often you're supposed.

To see your primary care physician? How about the dentist? How about a dermatologist? A lot of us just wait to get a text from the dental hygienist to know it's time to make an appointment.

But your health is important and we.

Talk about going from defense to offense with your money.

What about with your health?

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Ramit.

There'S this myth that if you rent, it means you haven't made it. I don't really believe that I rent and I want you to know that you are not a failure if you choose to rent.

In fact, I want more freedom right.

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Well, I intellectualize it and I go back to this framework that says there's three narratives.

I love a good framework. Tell me. I love a good framework.

There's three narratives for critical people who have a critical health issue. One is the chaos narrative where they just. Everything's awful. It's just doctor's appointments and tests and uncertainty. And the other is the restoration narrative. So they go from sickness to being like they were before the sickness. And then the other is a rebirth. It's like being a reinvention narrative. And so they might become an advocate or they might discover something that they love or. And I feel like then I just. Then I start intellectualizing and being like, well, I went with the restoration path.

I get it. I totally get it. I mean, as anyone who's into intellectual frameworks understands that they can be very powerful, but they can also be taken too far. And they can be weaponized. They can be weaponized into selling stuff that people probably shouldn't buy. They can even be weaponized against ourselves to rationalize anything that we possibly want to. You think that that might be what's going on here?

I do. I recognize that, that there was value in me working for a time because it's what I've really felt like I should do. But I feel like it's time to really reexamine that. That decision. And I feel like that framework is an excuse.

You know, a lot of people are facing a very similar situation to what Julie's talking about. You might not see the similarity, but literally millions of Americans are experiencing this right now. Retirement people hate the idea of not having an income even if they have enough. That's because since we started working, we got used to a steady income. And an income means value. In our society, being able to earn an income means you provide for the family or you contribute to the family, even if you have enough money in your portfolio or you have a big pension or you have $12 million. Like Tom and Julie, our minds are not wired to translate a big amount of wealth into a steady paycheck. And there are so many easy answers to this. Literally, they could pay someone $100 a month to log into their Vanguard account, sell a few shares, and transfer money into their checking account, and this problem, at least logically, would vanish. But of course, it wouldn't really, because this is emotional, not intellectual.

I spend a lot of time thinking about, should I work, should I not work? Here's the pros, here's the cons. And I felt like there are some real pros. My setup is pretty nice at work. It's a pretty good situation overall. I mean, it's still work, but. And I just think about my grandmother going into this. This factory. She was a seamstress, and she would sew clothes, and then they would be, like, shipped all over the country to be sold, I guess. And I just remember, like, how hot it was in there and how noisy. And I don't know what she was paid, but I don't think clearly was. Not a lot. And I just think, God, I'm so lucky just to have such a great setup.

You are lucky. But, Julie, there's no virtue in living what your grandmother would have done. If you want to honor her and you want to do it financially, write a $2 million check to some organization. You can afford it. You make that back in interest in a few years. But for you to stay at a job when, if I'm reading correctly, that is not part of what you want to spend the next five years of your life doing. That doesn't add up for me.

Yeah, I think that is a very fair point, that my situation is not my grandmother's, and it does not honor her to. To live a smaller life than I can.

That's right. I think that's a tragedy to live a smaller life, especially because you have a ticking clock and you have daughters. And even beyond your daughters, you made a lot of really smart decisions and.

Disciplined work to get here.

I'm not asking you to completely change the way you look at the world.

That would never work.

What I'm asking you to do is to take the logical extension of all the work you already did and simply shift into the next phase of your rich life. You accumulated and you won't. You had a family, great. You're a great parent, great wife, you won at all that stuff. Now let's take the wins. All that work you put in, all that discipline, all that time, you've now afforded yourself the ability to do something with it.

I think too, Julie, if there's things that you get out of working emotionally or, you know, you could find that other places, whether it's volunteering someplace online or if that's of interest or finding another, and maybe it's not right, but it's not like you're saying you close this chapter and like, oh, now I can never have like other adults like that in a work situation that I talk to. I think you could make that happen, but just like frame it up differently, however you wanted to.

Yes, that's true.

That's great, Tom. The framing matters so profoundly. It's not quitting. It is spending more time and attention on this new chapter of my rich life. And in order to do that, in order to travel the way you want to travel, in order to create these experiences you want to create, it's incompatible with, with working the job that you.

Currently work, it'd be very difficult to have a full time role and have the flexibility to travel. It makes me think continuing to work, it probably is not the right path for me given our situation and my limited time.

Yeah, I don't think anyone on this planet would give you a hard time for saying, you know what, I had a double lung transplant, I'm a multimillionaire, I have two kids and I'm ready to move on to a different chapter of my life. Yeah, there's. Nobody out there is going to say a thing to you except congratulations.

In my opinion, it's a total no brainer for Julie to leave her job. She's not expressing any joy over it. If anything, she's expressing joy over her new rich life. Travel, creating experiences with her family. The major reason that she continues to work is for the income, which is irrelevant to her. So in a later conversation, I recommended that she get out of this job as quickly as she can and really focus on that next chapter of her life for her and her family. And as a quick sneak preview of Tom's follow up letter, this is what he wrote. He wrote, quote, thinking through how others likely would perceive her leaving work lifted some of the anxiety she's been feeling over this decision. They would completely understand and support her decision. Just think about that. We're talking about life or death. We're talking about essentially an unlimited amount of money and a ticking clock and still peer pressure reigns.

Rule.

This tells you how powerful peer pressure is, that even if you are facing debt and even if you will not run out of money and it is still worrisome to us to consider what other people would think of us leaving a job or making an alternative decision. Guys, this is why I want you to start practicing this skill of designing your rich life and living it now. Because you can't wait until one day when you magically have all this money and all this time you will not have the skills to live your rich life. That's why I'm so insistent about what I do. That's why I do this podcast and my programs and my book. Because if you don't practice it early on consistently, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a change later on. Now for Tom and Julie, I can tell you that I feel very confident for them. But as you can see, it takes a lot of agony, a lot of soul searching to be able to make this decision. And I just want it to be a little easier for everybody. You can get those full follow up letters from Tom and julie@iwt.com Episode 61.

But let's keep going.

On today's episode.

Can I make a general suggestion for some rule? You know, I love rules, money rules, all kinds of rules, but I love rules that are positive. So I don't like restrictive rules unless we need them sometimes. A couple rules that come to mind for me. Number one, at this stage, with $12 million and a double lung transplant, it probably should not be hard. Anything you do probably should not be hard. It should be easy.

What do you mean when you say that.

If you were going to go travel somewhere.

Yes, I got you.

Yeah, it should be easy. I'm not saying it all has to be luxury, but for example, we have to do six different visas and two different vaccine shots. And what are we going to do to get a taxi at the airport? That can be complicated, especially if you're just going with you and the girls. Maybe Tom's not coming on this trip. Let's just say it should be easy. Would you be willing to entertain that rule?

Yes. I can embrace that rule.

I like that. Okay. I just love your smile on that. Have you used that rule before in your life?

You know, I have to say, I took my girls way up north a couple weeks ago to a cabin, and it was fine. It was exactly what we had. I had scoped out, but my daughter and I had to get the canoe off the rack and get the paddles out, and it was fine. We had a great time, and I'm really glad we went. But we went to another resort for dinner where they had all the canoes lined up, and we were out on the dock, and one of the people who work there came up and said, can we get you in a watercraft or something? And I just felt like this is the kind of place I want to stay going forward. I don't want to be, like, hauling my canoe out and my kid got bitten by a bee. It was just drama that we don't need.

Okay. So this new rule would.

So I embrace that. I feel like it's consistent with the direction I have thought.

Beautiful. So that's one of the new rules. It should be easy. What's another rule you'd like to create for this phase of your life, Julie?

I think for me, it's something around not making more opportunities with friends.

Tell me more. What would it be?

Just initiating more instead of waiting for. Waiting for people to initiate and initiate.

What would you do once a month with your friends?

It could. I mean, we're a little limited with my situation and Covid still, but I feel like it might just be getting together for a drink at a bar with an outdoor fire pit or heat lamps. Even though it's cold outside, there's still places that we can go get dinner or drinks. It's like seeking out opportunities like that and planning them. I have a bad habit, and I think Tom exacerbates this habit, which is totally my issue, not his of just waiting for people to initiate. But I feel like there will be more joy and more engagement and more memories if I figure things out and take the lead versus wait for. Wait for the invite.

Okay, that could be a great rule, whether or not you initiate it or you hire somebody to do it for you and plan which restaurant has an outdoor fire pit. It actually doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that once a month, you're out with your friends. That matters to me.

What I'm doing here is walking Julie through the idea of. Of creating money Rules. You can Google Ramit's Money Rules to see my 10 money rules, but let me give you a quick background on why these rules are important for you. At any given time, in any given month, you're going to face a thousand different financial decisions. What flight should I take? Should I get an extra piece of pie? A million different financial decisions. It helps to simplify these decisions down to a few key rules, especially for things that you are going to consistently encounter. If you fly a lot, you probably want to have a rule around what seat you choose, if you go out to dinner a lot, or if whatever is important to you where you live, you want to create a rule around that. What I'm doing with Julie is helping her align her beliefs with her spending. And suddenly, when you're faced with these decisions, should I do this or should I not? A lot of times we revert back to what's comfortable, what we've known. But the life we want to live, our rich life, requires us to make some changes. These rules help make it easier to do that. So Google Ramit's Money Rules. You can read a bunch of articles that I've written and see my rules. But as for Julie, I want her to kind of try this new mindset on for size.

When I talk to new business owners, I hear a lot of the same motivations. I want to make extra money. I want more freedom. I want flexibility. But I will tell you something that I've never heard. I want to start a business so I can fill out a bunch of tax forms. That sounds like my hell. The good news is you don't need to be a tax expert to start your own business. Instead, you can use Gusto, this episode's sponsor. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one, it's remote, friendly, and it's incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. They offer automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, workers comp 401k matches, you name it, they can help. Plus, it's quick and easy to switch to Gusto. Just transfer your existing data and get up and running fast with no hidden fees and no surprises. Try gusto today@gusto.com ramit and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll@gusto.com ramIt once more. Gusto.com ramit I know that some of us think better when we write our thoughts out, but for a lot of us, including Me, I'm better when I can think.

Think out loud.

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When I look at your numbers just conservatively, you'll make about $650,000 in interest this year. The year after that, you'll make $700,000 in interest. The year after that, 750. And it goes up and up. 922, 987, 1.2 million. Eventually making millions of dollars in interest per year. What's the point of all of it?

Yeah.

What are you thinking, Julie?

I'm thinking the point is what, what you leave behind with the people that you love, that's how you live on. That is your legacy or at least for, for me will be. I don't have some great business that I build or invention that I created. And so, so this is just making me reflect on am I using my energy towards that, that purpose or, or not. And I think that the answer is, is fairly. Is evident. And I'm also thinking like when we got a, a nice inheritance from my parents, it was definitely an amazing gift to get and I feel like they had a great retirement. And Tom would always joke because my parents were always traveling and overseas. He'd always joke, oh, your parents are off spending our inheritance. And he was, he was joking. But it, but to me it seemed sad to get that inheritance because I felt that it was their opportunity lost. Like, gosh, they could have enjoyed that.

Yeah. As much as they were able to do. They could have done more. And it's sad to think that they felt like maybe they didn't want to do that more because of their attitudes about money, which I don't want us to be in that same situation.

Yeah, there's no virtue in living a smaller life than you have to.

But yet it does feel sort of satisfying in some way. I can't quite explain why.

I get. It's like. It's like finding a great coupon. It's like finding a great deal. It's like knowing that you. You made the right financial decision, even though it was a hard one.

I get it.

But you won that game.

That is how big you won.

So perhaps now the game to play is not the game of making lists of pros and cons. Perhaps we don't even play that game at all. Perhaps the game we play now is not a game of how will this affect our finances, because there's effectively nothing that the two of you could spend that would really meaningfully affect your finances. Certainly not the way that the two of you spend money today. So perhaps we have to play an entirely different game. What might that game be, Julie?

It's about maximizing that time. It's about, given these. Given what's safe, how do we have the most experiences in the funnest way possible so that figure out how to.

Do it in the best way we can, make it as easy as we can figure out how to do it, given the limitations we may have, but still figure out a way to do it. That could be the game. How do we accomplish what we want to? How do we get to Phoenix the easiest way possible that we both agree on? How do we do something we didn't think we could do? Yeah, that could be the game.

Julie, I love that word you used. I never heard you use it before today. Fun. How do we have the most fun? What a beautiful word. How do we use money to have fun? How do the two of you use it to have fun? And how do you use it with your kids?

Fun.

Fun can be staying at an Airbnb that's like a farm. Okay. And it. And it can be staying at a five star hotel in New York or Tokyo.

Fun. You decide.

But I love that idea of playing the game of how do we maximize fun for the rest of our lives?

And I do think, like, it is a little cliche, but travel is the thing. And I know Julie's preferences and I think I need to work on being more accommodating to what we can do versus what maybe we want to do.

And what is the difference between what you can do and want to do?

I mean, I would love to like, hey, we're going to Tokyo. We're, we're, you know, staying in five star hotels. We're going to Manhattan, we're going to San Francisco where we're going places like that and doing stuff actively with other people. And we can't do that stuff now yet.

But because of COVID and because of being immunocompromised.

Yeah.

Okay, right. Is that you can't do things indoors or you can't do them at all?

You know, it's all just trying to mitigate the risk. Right. So without an immune system, like the chances of getting Covid go up if you're indoors, no matter if you have a mask on or not. So it's just kind of risk and reward. So we've kind of, and Gail, Julie's doctors have advised her that, okay, if you can stay outside, that's better. And like, you shouldn't be eating in restaurants indoors.

And so, so could we find, is there a solution we could find that would allow you to experience one of these cities but do it outdoors?

Yeah, I, I, I think maybe. And I mean.

All right, so let's plan a trip together. Let's do it right now.

I am going to throw out there Phoenix and Santa Fe in February, March of 2023.

That works.

What are we going to do there?

The bigger question is how are we getting there? Are you saying we're going to be driving in a car for 48 hours straight?

I would say drive. I don't know why we would have to do 40 hours straight. I think we could plan a route and stop at places that are interesting and we'd have to be a little creative with the indoor dining in the middle of winter. But I feel confident we can manage through that.

Yeah, I do. And I think as extravagant as it is, I mean, even when we were looking around at potential transplant centers for Julie and like trying to think about the travel, I was just like, well, we, if we wanted to, we could rent a private plane to go to this city completely. So would it, would it be easier? I'm going back to one of the rules we talked about. Would it be easier if we chartered a jet and flew there, just us?

That's what you saved all this money for. What's it for? Life and death is where you use the money. This dream of going to New York or San Francisco, it's very Achievable. If you had to hire a private tour guide to bring a private doctor along with you for $10,000 a day, it would still be worth it. You make that money in interest, but to be able to create the life that you want in this remaining time, it's almost priceless. And at your net worth level, we don't even need to factor money in.

That would be one of my rules.

We are not factoring money into our decisions anymore. Can you imagine?

No, No, I can't. I. It's just so ingrained in how I think about decisions as not the only factor, but a contributing factor. As I weigh options and alternatives, it's really hard for me to think about what would it be? How would we make decisions and not consider money?

Notice how Julie has immediately gone back to weighing options and factors and logic instead of that word she described just a few minutes ago.

Fun.

Fun does not involve a spreadsheet and pivot tables. Sometimes fun is just saying what if? What if we do that? And then doing it.

What comes to mind when I share these specific moments? Renewing your passport, Scheduling a dentist appointment. Replacing that light bulb that's been out for six months and you're not sure what's the right bulb.

We all procrastinate on weird stuff and taxes are usually right at the top of that list.

We wait until the last second, then.

We get overwhelmed, we gotta pull all this paperwork and we're panicked because the deadline is approaching.

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Taxes don't have to be a task with guilt. They can be a tool to build wealth.

My amazing wife has taught me a lot of things. She certainly leveled up my style. She certainly taught me to stop and celebrate more, something I did not used to do. But she also taught me about the fashion industry, specifically its sales tactics around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. She basically has a rule of not falling for sales gimmicks for things you don't actually care about, but you are tempted to buy them just because they're on discount. Instead, use a tool like Rocket Money to stay on target with your conscious spending plan. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Just link your accounts to start and it lays everything out. Your subscriptions, your bills, your due dates. You can customize it with your conscious spending plan, like a lot of our readers do. Rocket Money has saved users over $2.5 billion, including over $880 million in canceled subscriptions alone. Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com Ramit today. That's RocketMoney.com Ramit RocketMoney.com Ramit.

Honestly, don't think we would fly, even though we can. Even though we just had this conversation. I think like when Julie sees the price of chartered flight, whatever it is, say it's 15 grand, 20 grand, I don't know, 25 grand. It will not happen.

You should all see Julie's face right now. She's looking down like absolutely mortified as the prices are going up. I don't know what it costs from where you live, but I would guess 30k one way. How would you feel about that, Julie?

I think there's benefits to driving.

That's a nice way of putting it. Now, I appreciate that that is how you feel. Now I'm going to ask you another question. What will you do?

Probably look at the map and see where we could stop if we drove and think about it.

And in the end, what will you do?

That 30k seems like a lot.

It is a lot. You're chartering a private jet for yourself. It is a lot of money. Let's just be honest about that. My question is, what will you do?

I would be inclined to drive.

Why not do both?

We could.

What would that look like?

I would see that as flying to Phoenix and then maybe doing a road trip to New Mexico. And I think there's a lot of interesting places to stop. There's Flagstaff, there's the Grand Canyon there.

And how would you get back?

I had envisioned flying round trip.

Okay, so you could fly round trip and you could drive between cities. Fantastic.

That sounds good.

It is such a beautiful vision. And what would your daughters say about you?

What would they say about me?

About you? What would they say about mom after they've gone on all these adventures and years from now, looking back, what would they say?

I would hope that they would look back and, and just have lots of, of laughs because I know you, you like to travel. You know, things don't always go as planned. It all goes into the pot of being part of a memory. And so I feel like that is one thing. And then I want them to feel independent because I've done hard things with my mom. Love it and come out fine.

I don't think there's any challenges that we haven't faced before in the last couple of years that we couldn't overcome. Wow.

Problem solved. Love it. And first of all, let's take the win.

Round of applause.

That was awesome. One thing I love is Tom using that rule. Hey, what if we made this easy? Everything would be done. Because from now on it's easy. And I have a vision of wanting to be with my friends, with my family, be safe, and it would be done. I would spare no expense on my health at all. I, I totally get the safety concerns for double lung transplant. And so I would happily, happily spend thousands and thousands and I would never think twice about it.

You can see these rules come in so handy.

They're like a grab bag. They really help you. Recenter. We want more experiences. We want to get out of the house. Fantastic.

And we want to be safe.

If any of this stuff violates one of these rules, like you're not going to be safe, then don't do it.

But if there are ways to be.

Creative, to make, make it safer and.

Make you feel more comfortable, I'm all for it.

I think sometimes the two of you might have a tendency to over intellectualize or kind of get down in the weeds. But these key rules or principles can.

Really bring you back up to your.

Vision of a rich life.

Tom and Julie were one of the most interesting conversations that I have had on this podcast. First, they are multimillionaires through simple, low cost, long term investing. Great proof that the IWT approach works. Next, Julie Struggles spending money, she struggles on her own. And she also struggles with the dynamic of Tom's frugality. Finally, the wrinkle of Julie recently having undergone a double lung transplant and knowing that her odds of living for another 10 or 15 years are low. Therefore, everything aligns to help her change, to help her start spending money in a way that creates her rich life. But guess what? It's really hard to change and that's why she came to me. What I learned from their conversation was that they have a dynamic of over intellectualizing things. It feels good. If you worry about money and you've been taught you need to save and money is for safety and you might run out, it is hard to shake that. But guess what? A lot of people who feel that way do. They go to the spreadsheet. And that's exactly what we saw Julie doing. She feels a sense of control by having a spreadsheet. She feels a sense of control by earning her income from her job. Even though the income is a rounding error, it is irrelevant. With $12 million, she makes more in interest than she would from working. But the logic doesn't really matter. It's very hard for logic to change people's minds. So instead I spent time talking about what kind of legacy she wanted to leave, what kind of experiences she wanted to create with her daughter and her husband, and actually walking through an example of planning a trip out. I wanted to make sure that she knew she should and can prioritize her safety and her health. Unlimited spending on health, that should be a rule for them. But I also wanted to know that it was time to gently nudge her and Tom to get going. Living a rich life, it's not just going to happen. What I also wanted to emphasize was some specific numbers. A $35,000 private jet does not change their money situation at all. That would be essentially like going and buying three or four entrees at a nice place for somebody else. That is how much money they have. What I really hope she understands, whether or not she takes a private jet, whether or not they go and travel internationally, that's really up to them. What I want for them to realize is that they do have the opportunity to create their rich life and they can't wait any longer. I received follow up letters from both Julie and Tom after our call. You can read the full letters@iwt.com Episode 61 but let me give you a quick excerpt of what Tom said. Quote I realize that given our financial situation, we actually do have a magic wand. But we simply haven't been using it. What are we waiting for? We need to break out that wand and use it now while we still can. Our Money rules will be our guide for how we can use this magic wand going forward. As a result of this call, Julie has made the decision to quit her job, which I fully support. Our plan for the next year includes going on an extended trip to Arizona where we can really put our money rules to the test.

It was a joy to talk to.

Tom and Julie and I wish them both the best. Best you can read their full follow up letters as well as some of the bonus material from this episode@iwt.com Episode 61 thanks for listening to I Will Teach youh To Be Rich. I'm Ramit Sethi. Please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you haven't read I WILL Teach you to be Rich my best book. Pick up a copy. You can get it at any bookstore or any library and it will show you the specific tactics for how to build the I will teach you to be rich system into your personal finances.