Mark J. Podolsky shares how a 2010 market crash cut his income 40% and taught him that money alone doesn't guarantee happiness. He discusses aiming for 10-20x passive income over expenses and references his book Dirt Rich and a mentor who sold his company for $360 million.
Questions this video answers
Dirt Rich
10 times or 20 times the passive income of his fixed expenses
About 2010; about 40% of his income was lost
Three kids; his wife does not work
$360 million
Chapters
You, For me, enough is basically having 10 times or 20 times the passive income of my fixed expenses. So I've got generational wealth and I'm working because I want to, not because I have to. I just wrote a book about all this called Dirt Rich. I really break down my entire story of how I got into this and the entire cycle. And I was really living out of control for a long time because I had known limits. So I've got three kids and a wife. My wife doesn't work and I had a nice house and I had to get a multimillion dollar house. And you know, because my neighbors had luxury cars, I had to get luxury cars. And of course three kids, public school isn't good enough for them, so I had to go through three private schools. And really what happened was in about 2010, the market turned and about 40% of my income was, was just lost. And here I am stuck with this huge personal overhead. Even though the company was profitable, right, And I was still doing relatively well, that lifestyle wasn't sustainable, nor did it make me very happy, even though I thought it would. So basically what happened was I really got to the point like, okay, what really does make me happy in life? And now that I've come out of it and. And one of my mentors sold his company for $360 million. And I remember meeting him for coffee and I said to him, I'm like, orey, this food tastes better, our colors more vibrant, like what's going on? And he was miserable. He's like, I've never been more miserable. And the reason is, and the reason I was miserable was we kind of lost purpose. I think there's a lot of mis wanting in the world where you think you're going to be happy if you don't have to work. Well, I can tell you, you need to have a purpose every single day to get up and it needs to be bigger than your.
