The Marginal Utility of Money

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Automatic transcript, lightly corrected for names, with profanity masked. Some passages may contain transcription errors.

Financial Independence as the ability

But as we

Like I don't want one Here's the example I love to give is like flying private, right? It would take me between half a million and a million extra dollars a year to fly private

and I'm working right now to be more comfortable two days a month that math doesn't math for me I think. I think flying private is a great example where the tradeoff between life force and joy or the pleasure or the benefit of flying private doesn't make sense. And it's different for everybody. I think you you hit the nail on the head and something I talk about a lot, a lot is hard as it may be to believe. You know, money is not finite and I'm just stating that as a you can make a lot of money you can make

money in a game that's not a zero sum game is time and even more than that is energy or life force because I would argue that even if there's not every dollar beyond that has verya very little marginal thought of it.

I think for most people the easiest way to get to that point where you're covering your bag is to choose simplicity and because I I'm actually in a phase of life right now as you and I have discussed at length became a nifty nester recently. We're considering some pretty radical simplification to our life for that exact reason it's not even about the money. It's about just like treading lightly. I know it's again we can't emphasize this and hard to embrace that when you're young and you're just trying to get ahead. But I think it is useful as as a framework and a planning tool to say look, no, I don't need $50 million to to have a great life.

When I give my talk, how to build a kick a** life, I actually ask people like, what's their definition of FU money. And the numbers are usually huge, like 1020 million 50 million 100 million like these crazy numbers that frankly most people will never reach and I think it's very liberating to recognize that maybe I don't need 50 million or 50 million to live my best life. Yeah, and this is, you know, this is this is something that is is near and dear to my heart and I think about it. You know, again, from a normal higher earner perspective right like let's let's say, you know, 250 300 K year right someone who has a

actually clear on what was important and you know, we talked about selling my super cars on the show before. Yeah.

And I

and look, if I did this for years, I did this for years on end, it might, I'me. start to shift and it might get boring. But for right now, like I can't imagine anything better than what what I'm doing right now. And, and yes, like it took it takes money to have a second home. That's really cool that I get to do that., um, $50 million. Well, I think what you've done during this writing retreat is you've distilled your life down to the essence of what makes you feel the essence of what makes you feel alive. interesting question to, think about is what you mentioned earlier, like right now, like this a week, you've had the luxury of like, ignoring a lot of like day, day to day mundane life stuff. So you can't do that forever obviously, but how close could you get to that, that essence that distilled down essence of your

life is really interesting that you're sort of doing, doing this and you're kind of trying it on on for size. like you're living a simple life like a monk this week and and there probably some things you love about it and some things that would get old pretty quickly, but then it's worth like evaluatinging and saying, hey, you know, how close do I want to be to it. And what does that look like? Yeah, I mean, I can tell you that we sort of on the backside of this last week have rearranged our summer summer schedule. And we're tacking on a few more weeks up here and basically trying to stay as many nights as we can until school starts. because it's addicting I mean I really is amazing and, and for whatever reason nothing physically about my life has changed and

I mean, we love space until we actually start to create it. and. And that's what I I live a pretty slow life as it is. But man, this week has just turned it up to a it is it is just absolutely it's it's addicting. Well, we've talked before about how slowly and imperceptibly we accumulate these little obligations and individually you don't even notice them, but they do start to add up and I think it is worth sort of occasionally stepping back and asking yourself like, hey, can I can I shed some of these obligations and and live a simpler life again. I'm reminded of the there's a quote from the advertising legend David Ogilvy

where he says simplicity is the ultimate luxury. And I really do believe that I mean I'm in a phase of life where I'm being ruthless about this and really trying to strip my life down to the essence of the few simple things that I enjoy and I have to tell a quick story because you know as you mentioned earlier like I think a lot of guys listening to this might have trouble relating to two rich guys, you know, talking about you know how the unimportance of money, but I will say a few years ago when I was at the peak of my corporate career, you know, I was I was in the sweet sea sweet of a multi billion dollar company, I was, you know, well into seven figure compensation, and I was I was a climber at the time to

and I met this guy named Tom, who is now a dear friend of mine. He's a climbing guide, he lives in Davis. He guides at Red Rock Canyon about six months a year, travels the world the rest of the year, he's ex military, no college degree. He told me that he's never made more than $70,000 in a year, which kind of blew me away because from observing his life, he had he has such a kick a** life, like he does work he enjoys he has a ton of money, he has zero debt pays cash for everything he has a tricked out Sprinter van he has a 71 Mustang that he's restored. He's got a work truck he he rents a nice house in a suburb of Vegas, he's got a nest egg of savings. He has awesome

friends and an awesome partner. And I literally asked him one time and it was a rhetorical question and I said, how in the hell do you have a better life than me? I'm literally, he told me he lives on less than $4,000 a month. And I said, I was at the time I was making 20 times that. And yet I felt like he had a better life than me. And the point of this story is, these principles were talking about, about apply at all levels. Right. So, Thomas was super deliberate. He actually told told me he said, I recognize that I will never have high income. So I've chosen a simple life. And I thought, Wow, that is profound. And in fact, I adopted that for my own life just at a different level, level, but that's what you know, ultimately played a role in my reboot in 2018 was really stripping down to the essence.

And my point here is, you know, Thomas can do it on $4,000 a month. Have a great life. It is possible to thread that needle at lots of income levels. Yeah. And, you know, we've, we've spent some time, you know, maybe, maybe talking to the person who can't relate. But I think we should also, you know, talk to a lot of our peers and, and friends that are, you know, building these massive, massive companies. And the real question is like, for what? And look, you know, I'll caveat that by saying, like, I do know a handful of people, but I want to play, it's handful who are so mission driven, they can't imagine doing anything else. They truly think they're, you know, creating world changing technology. I'm going to set

that aside for a minute, sort of the Elon Musk, Musk syndrome, right? Like he's, he's actually willing to live a miserable life so that he can bring his technology to the world anyhow. And I do think that is a certain stance. It's not you and I'm going to say I'm going to make one up out of thin air, but like, you know, running a $50 million home services company or something along those lines. Like, look, you can do mental gymnastics and convince yourself that, you know, you like helping people and that you care about your team. And these are things that we hear these people say, but like, it's stressful. Like running an eight figure company is stressful. Right. And if you have, have surpassed this world, like I think there is an opportunity to step back and go like, what am I actually doing here? Like, what am I doing it for?

I'm so glad you brought this up because this is the I love my work out. And there are you as you mentioned, there are the Elon Musk's of the world who are so incredibly mission driven. It transcends money transcends everything. But two things number one, Elon Musk himself has referred to his life as a tortured existence. I don't think that's what most of us want. I don't want to live a tortured existence. And number two, most people are not Elon Musk. What I found over the past 30 years is that most people who say they love their work. It's a cop. It's a cop out. They actually don't know any different or it's all they know. They've built a one dimension life. And that's a sad situation is when you

can't even recognize that you've you've you've covered your bag like you're there. Now you have earned the luxury of deciding how you invest your life force. And to be honest, if the best thing you can think of to do with your life force is to go into an office every day, that's pretty sad. Right. And again, there are the few exceptions who are truly mission driven. That is not most people even in the upper echelons of the business world that is not most people. Yeah, you know, and I think the phrase, you know, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. I I mean, just please everybody know that is absolute and total. I love what I like. I can't imagine I'm loving what I do more. And there, there are many days where it still feels like

work. There are still aspects of what I do that I don't love, right? There's admin, there's, you know, all kinds of stuff that doesn't light me up. So, you know, again, I am, I am kind of living at this pinn No, I am leaving upside on the table, not just financial, but like audience growth, fame, whatever it is, like, like I could triple down right now. And look, there are days when I wake up and I go, man, you know, should I do the like this is not a solved ongoing thing, right. And, you know, I have a very dear friend who is a has a massive personal

brand and he's always jabbing me to, to, you know, go all in on this. And, and I like the idea until I look at my life this week and I go, dude, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing and I'm going to leave that upside on the table like it's it's just That's, honestly, and that's what makes you special. And I like to think that's what makes both you and I sort of unique and the reason that I think this podcast is important is that message is not out there. And I think you're going to tell that you're going to communicate that message in your book. And so maybe we can end right where we started, you know, I talked about how, for my work, the stars are all lining like I was just doing the accounting and like July is going to be an amazing month for my work financially and I'm also like everything

I'm working on, like six different projects, they're all sort of interesting in their own way. And the instant I can get back on the rock and climb instead of work, you can rest assured that's what I'll be doing. Yeah. And, and, and fair enough, right? Like, and I think that there's ultimately that like there's no right answers. And, you know, one of the principles that I hold in my in my coaching is like, I don't know what the answers are for you, I can just help you ask really good questions. And I think that's what we're doing here. Like I said on this show is like, look, man, I don't know what the answer is for for your best life, maybe you do want to work harder than I do like that. And like go for it like totally fair. But be sure you're actually choosing that intentionally and not just accepting the default.

I'm not as quite as as unbiased as you are maybe because I do feel like that there are things that make life better and things that make life worse and some of those are absolutes. I, you know, and I think part of the benefit of the what 50 plus years of combined experience that you and I have doing a lot of stuff is that we've seen kind of some things that work and some things that don't. Yes, there are exceptions and there are nuances. But but I think in general, you know, humans are human, human, and we all yearn for freedom and control and purpose. And there's more to life and there's purpose beyond earning dollars.

We'll we'll we'll close it. We could probably talk for six more hours on this topic and both get pretty damn fired up a mega live stream. Absolutely just just rant against the marginal utility of dollars on ironically as we possibly can. Yes, ironically. Great discussion, Kevin, and thanks for joining as always. Awesome.