Afford Anything - Imagine You Only Have 10 Years to Live ...

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

#89: Imagine you’re financially secure. You have enough money to support yourself, your family and pursue your dreams. You’ll need to continue working, but it’s fulfilling work with a reasonable schedule. What would you do with both your time and money? Next, imagine you’re financially independent. You DON’T need to work anymore. Your investments create enough money to support yourself and your family. What would you do? Okay, let's shake things up. Imagine you visit your doctor, who tells you that you only have 5-10 years to live. You’ll never feel sick, and you’ll have no advance notice of the moment of your death. Your financial position is the same as it is today. What would you do? Now imagine the same scenario as before -- you have 5-10 years to live -- but in this scenario, you have unlimited funds. What would you do? These are 4 of the 11 questions about money and life that I asked a crowd of 100+ people at the World Domination Summit. I share the rest of the questions on today's episode. Get Rich Slowly founder J.D. Roth also joins me on this episode to discuss building a fulfilling life. For more, visit http://affordanything.com/episode89 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that's true, not just of your money, but also your time, your energy, your life. Every day that you spend doing X is a day that you don't spend doing Y. So what do you want to spend your days doing? My name is Paula Pan. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. And in today's episode, I'm going over 11 questions that may help you figure out how you want to spend your days, what you want to do.

in the next 24 hours in the next week, month, year, and how the decisions you make about money can fit into those plans. Now, the backbone of these 11 questions came from three questions that my good friend J.D. Roth, the founder of the website Get Rich Slowly, has been posing in workshops and in his writing for many years. And so I invited J.D. to come on to the show with me so that we could discuss these questions, these questions that help you figure out how to make wiser decisions about money in life. So without further delay, here's myself and J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly. And now the website Money Boss to cover 11 illuminating questions about figuring out what really matters. Hey, Jady. Hey, Paula. How's it going? It's going great. How are things with you?

I am excellent. So are you ready for these 11 questions? Boy, oh boy. And by the way, these, they started as three questions. I've metastasized them into. 11. They're a cancerous growth. That was probably the wrong word. I've blown them up. Well, they're not an explosion. I've elongated them. Yeah. I think it's going to be great to hear what you've come up with. I'm curious about it, actually. And just for your listeners who are unfamiliar, I'll give a little bit of background. I have three questions that I've been asking my readers and people who come to my workshops, I've been asking them these three questions for a number of years. I originally got them from a guy named George Kinder, who had three questions that he used in what he called his life

planning practice. About a year or two ago, I discovered that George Kinder isn't actually the originator of these questions. They actually come from a guy named Alan LeKine, who is a time management expert. And he just came up with these three questions to help people focus on what's important in their life so they can make better decisions with their time. And that's that's the origin story. And how long have you been posing these questions to audiences? Way back in the olden days when I ran get rich slowly.org, I brought them up after seeing George Kinder speak. That was probably 2008, 2009. But in my own presentations, I think the first time I used them maybe 2012, maybe 2013, so four or five years. You've probably heard a lot of people

answers over the years. Yes. A lot of times these questions, at least the three core questions, can get very personal and so people are reluctant to share sometimes. But people do confide with me and share their answers. All right. Interesting. Okay, well, let's get started in these questions and I'll pose each one and then we can talk about what comes up. Yeah, I'm curious to hear what you got. Yeah, exactly, how I've expanded on them. All right, so we'll start question number one. And I think this one is similar to the original one that you've been posing. Imagine you're financially secure. You have enough money to support yourself, your family, and your dreams. You will need to continue working, but it's fulfilling work with a reasonable schedule. What would you do? And so you mean what

work would I do? It could mean what work would you do or it could mean what would you do with your time and money? Mm. Mm. So I've got enough money to support all of my immediate needs. but not necessarily the future. I still have to earn money to save for the future. Correct. But you do have disposable income. So you have enough money to support yourself, your family, and any dreams that you have. So if you dream of traveling or sailing or having an RV or whatever it is that you want to do, having a workshop in which you can do art projects, you have enough money for that. Mm-hmm. My own answer is I would do what I'm doing, which is raising a fur family and writing about money. From my experience, this is one of the most important questions to get people to answer to figure out what direction they want to go with their lives. Because if they can figure out what they would do, well, I guess you're not saying that money is no object, but they don't have to worry about money. They have enough and they can work at whatever it is that makes them happy.

from my experience, asking people this really sends them down this path of soul searching, you know? What type of responses have you heard when you've posed this question? Generally, the most telling response I get is from people who are working jobs that they hate. They're stuck in the job or they believe they're stuck in the job because they have to keep earning money for their family. But if you can help people see that they have enough for their immediate needs and have a little bit saved, I guess in a way I'm talking about the proverbial FU money that J.L. Collins talks about where you have enough money that you can take a few risks through your job. If you can get people to understand that they don't have to stick in a job they hate,

it just opens up this world of opportunities. And so at various conferences, including the retreat in Ecuador that you and I have both attended, talking with people one-on-one and looking at their financial situation, if I can make them understand that you earn a job that you don't like, But look, you have plenty of money saved. It's time to take a risk and to look for something that you believe would bring you fulfillment. I think that's very powerful. All right.

Question number two. Imagine you're financially independent. You don't need to work anymore. Your investments create enough passive income to support yourself, your family, and your dreams. What would you do? Believe it or not, this is the question that is more difficult for people to answer than the one that you asked just before. Interesting. Why do you think that is? Because I don't think many people have thought through,

what would I do if money were no object? Because that's really what the question comes down to, is if money were no object, what would you do? A lot of people might think about it facetiously or approach it facetiously and say, oh, I'd party all the time, I'd travel all the time. But what this question is really asking you to do, do is define what is important to you. What is it that brings fulfillment to your life? If money were no object, how would you pursue that fulfillment? And that's tougher for people to answer. It requires some soul searching. What would you do, Paula, if money were no object? I feel like I'm already in that space. I'm already in that position. All right. Fair enough.

Where I still would want to have some type of a home, some sort of a home base. I don't want to be completely nomadic to the point where I just don't have a permanent address. But from that secure home base, I would still frequently travel. For the past several years, I've been averaging about 12 to 15 trips a year, more than one a month. And typically, I go to about five or six foreign countries a year, and then the rest of them are domestic trips. And it's a mix. Sometimes I'm camping in California or Arizona. Sometimes I'm off in Europe. Sometimes I'm in South America.

When I'm at home, I spend a lot of time reading and writing. I was going to say, it sounds to me as if you have figured out the answer to this question for you and you're following it. But a lot of people, when they approach it, they're kind of overwhelmed and they don't know what it is that they would do. And some people feel like they need permission to pursue whatever they're. dreams might be. Again, going back to the Ecuador retreats that you and I go on, many of the people who attend these retreats have achieved financial independence. They have enough money to do or to support themselves for the indefinite future. But they haven't figured out what it is they want to do. And so that's why they go to the retreat and helping them hone in on what it is that they

can do is challenging because many people are looking for permission. They want somebody to say, yes, you can go ahead and do that, not understanding that they are the ones who have to give themselves permission. I think of a, there's one person that I met who wanted to start a charitable foundation. Just didn't know how to do it. Thought that, yeah, I would be doing good work, but, you know, it's not, it's not really, they thought it was self-centered, I think. I was like, no, if this is what you want to do, you ought to pursue it. And honestly, I didn't stay in touch with the person, so I don't know what happened ultimately. That's interesting.

Why would they think that starting a charity would be self-centered? Well, I think it's because they were pursuing something that they wanted to do. A lot of people get wrapped up in this idea that if you're doing something you want, it's selfish. Even if it is for the good of other people, a lot of people get wrapped up in that idea, you know? I don't remember the details exactly, unfortunately. It is interesting how many, I've noticed that also in terms of people that I've talked to,

a lot of people feel that they need permission to do what they know that they are already capable of doing, capable of and want to do. I think uncertainty is a huge thing that scares people. And when we were younger, our parents told us what to do, our teachers told us what to do. And there's some comfort. Most of us chafe against having too much of that in our lives. We want to have some freedom. But there's also some comfort in knowing what comes next and having somebody else decide that.

So when you get to a point where you have all the money you actually need and you don't have anybody else telling you what to do next and you've got to create your own reality, that can be a challenge. All right. Question three. Imagine you visit your doctor who tells you that you have only five to ten years to live. You'll never feel sick and you'll have no advance notice of. of the moment of your death. Your financial position is the same as it is today. What would you do? Now, I think this is a powerful question for somebody like me. So I think you and I have talked about this in the past, Paula,

that the people in my family, the men in my family, tend not to live very long. And so in my case, I really do hold tight to this idea that I might only have another five or ten years left to live. And so that forces me to make decisions based on that. Recently I took a 15-month RV trip around the United States. One of the reasons I did that is I thought, you know, I might only have five or ten years left to live based on my family health history. So that was a very important thing to me.

And I was going to say that when I ask this particular question at workshops, the answers become more personal. So those first couple of questions, the answers tend to be more like dreaming, acquisitive or experiential. But the answer to this question starts to get personal. If you only have five or ten years left, you want to do the things that are important to you, and you want to spend time with your family. I can guess where the next question is going, and that one leads people even more to family and friends.

Actually, there's one more question and then another one. And then I'm going to tell a story about the, well, You'll hear it. All right. First, the next question. All right. Imagine the same scenario as before. You have five to ten years to live.

You will feel healthy throughout this time. But in this scenario, you have unlimited funds, unlimited money. What would you do? See, this is one of your new ones, one of your metastasized questions. Exactly, exactly. This is one of the ways in which I took the original set of questions. that you had and expanded on it. Because I love this five to ten years to live question,

and I thought that I should break it down into two different scenarios. One where your financial situation is the same as it is today, and one in which money is no object. And I thought that I should pose both of those questions and have people answer those separately so that you could compare and contrast the way that you would respond in each of those scenarios. And so what kind of differences did you note? Well, when I pose this question to the audience at the World Domination Summit, a lot of people, in scenario one, where your funds are the same as they are today, you have the underlying thread of the answer, such as I would leave something for my kids.

But in the unlimited fund scenario, they did the same thing only bigger. So in the my funds are the same as they are today iteration of this question, they might say, oh, I would, you know, set aside money to pay for. to help my kids make a down payment on a house. And in the unlimited fund scenario, this is really funny. This one particular woman was like, I would buy each of my kids a house in cash. And also I would give them all the therapy they need. And give them, that's awesome. So, yeah, I guess the thing that I saw is that in the unlimited fund scenario, a lot of people were still doing the same thing.

They were just doing that same thing on a, exactly. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. But let's move to the next question. All right. Imagine that you visit your doctor who tells you that you have only 24 hours to live. What feelings come up?

What regrets would you have, if any? What did you miss? And in the next 24 hours, what would you do? Yeah. Now, this is the one that really hits people. When I'm doing the workshops and especially when I'm doing it with a small group, this question can really knock people on their asses because it makes them realize that a lot of what they do on a day-to-day basis, I'm going to use a loaded word. It's meaningless. It doesn't actually contribute to their happiness. It doesn't contribute to their well-being. And it doesn't contribute to making the world a better place. It's just they kind of get stuck in a rut. They become complacent. And so this question forces people to look at what is actually, what is the most important thing?

I mean, if you only have 24 hours left, you're going to do what's most important, right? You're going to spend the time with the most important people doing the most important things. Absolutely. And this is where people are drawn to relationships. This is where they're like, you know, I'm going to spend the time with my partner or with my children or with my parents or with my friends. When I pose this question at the workshop, I had one woman say, you know, if I had five to 10 years to live, I would spend that time with my family and friends. if I only had 24 hours to live, I would spend those 24 hours by myself. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, I thought that was very interesting. Just getting right with yourself. Yeah. She said, I would spend those 24 hours alone in thought and prayer. Interesting. I review these questions several times a year because I write about them and I talk about them. But it's been a few months. In those few months, I found out that a close family member is struggling with terminal

cancer. And so these questions, I'm looking at them in a new light. And it's, it's interesting. I feel like I should sit down with him and work through these questions with him. I was like, well, gee, if I only had five years to live, I'd stop contributing to my 401k. Use that money for fun. I'd empty out all of my retirement accounts. Yeah. There were also a lot of people in the workshop who said, you know what, I don't like this dog. very much. Oh, the doctor that keeps giving me a death sentence.

Yeah. That's awesome. When I first said, he tells you you only have five to ten years to live, one person was like, I would get a second opinion. That's funny. The second opinion is the same. All right. The next question.

Brainstorm a list of everything you would buy or experience if you had unlimited funds. Do not hold back. Do not fear judgment. Do not self-censor. What would you do? That's a curious one, isn't it? Jady, I'm curious? What's your answer to that?

If you had absolutely unlimited funds, we're talking into billions. I don't think I would change much, honestly, Paula. I mean, maybe I'm fooling myself. But I'd want a little piece of land. I'd probably move off of the hillside where I live now, down to the banks of a river. small house, you know, five acres next to a river, that'd be awesome, right? And just while away my time reading books. My girlfriend would tell you that I'm not completely out of the acquisitional

phase. I'm still inquisitive. And I am. There's no doubt. But I don't, I don't long for big things. I don't, I don't need a fancy car. I'm fine with my 15-year-old Mini Cooper. I'm fine with an older home. I don't need, I guess I want a hot tub, but that's about it. As long as I can read and write and hang out with people, I'm happy. Yeah, Jady, I think a big part of why you and I get along so well, I think a big basis of our friendship is that we have so many shared interests, which is fundamentally reading, writing, and travel. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, with unlimited funds, I'd probably just, you know, travel constantly. Well, that's not true because I'd want a home base. I'd spend three months on, three months off. Do you realize how similar your answer sounds to mine? That's exactly what I said to the financial... independence question. I said, I'd still have a home base. I would still have some sanctuary that is my home. Yet I travel a whole bunch and I read and write a lot. This is why you and I are friends, Shady. Well, there are many reasons, but there's one of them. It makes me realize that I have come a long

way. I'm not perfect because nobody is, but I've reached a point where I've learned to temper my desires because in a way, desire can lead to happiness, but it can also lead to unhappiness, too. If you're constantly wanting something different than what you have, you're never going to be content. Yeah. There's a beautiful paragraph at the beginning of John Bogle's book. John Bogle wrote a book called Enough. John Bogle, for those of you who are listening, is the founder of Vanguard and the founder,

the inventor of index funds. He's one of my heroes. And he opens the book by telling the story. story of a party in which there. Kurt Vonnegut. Yes. Yes. That's who it was.

Kurt Vonnegut. And who is the, oh, Joseph Heller, the author of Catch 22. Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party together. Sounds like the beginning of like a walk into a bar together joke. Yeah. They're at a party together. And the party's hosted by some very, very, very wealthy person. Kurt Vonnegut turns to Joseph Heller and says, hey, our host, you know, made more money in

the market today than you. made from all of the sales of your book Catch 22. And Joseph Heller replies, yes, but I have something that he will never have. I have enough. I love that anecdote. I actually, I'm pretty sure I included it in my, oh, yeah, there it is, page 12 of my book. That's pretty funny. Jady, I knew you for years before I ever knew you had a book.

Yeah, well, I don't push it very much. Well, you know what? We will link to it in the show notes because I have read it and it is a good book. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, that's a great anecdote. Learning what enough is and what that means for you is just so important. Let's move on to the next question, which is of this list of everything that you would buy,

narrow it down to the ones that are realistic within your lifetime. And now circle the top three items on that list. The things that I want most. Yeah. That are realistic within the lifetime. I had to add that one after the fact because there were a few people who, you know, had some things on there. Oh, I would own the Mona Lisa. Okay, well.

Not realistic in the life. Yeah, this brings up an interesting question because if I were to do this exercise, one of the things that I would circle is a hot tub. I mean, I want a hot tub, and I think I would be very happy with a hot tub. And yet, at the same time, I'm sure you've seen the research too about how it's almost impossible to predict what will make us happy. I can think all I want that a hot tub is going to make me happy. But the reality could be something very different. The study show that the present you is very poor at predicting what the future you will actually want.

The present you has a tough time making. the future you happy. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why spending on experiences such as that are more likely to lead to happiness than purchasing objects. And there has been research that's done that shows that when people spend money on experiences rather than possessions, they tend to have greater happiness over time. And part of that is due to nostalgia bias. Part of that is because memories become rosier in hindsight while objects depreciate. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I've seen the same stuff and I've seen it true in my own life. And you're right. Memories do become rosier and the experiences gain greater value. I think of in 2012, I took a trip to Turkey with my cousin, Nick. And Nick and I were in Turkey for several weeks. And at the time, I wasn't miserable on the trip, but I didn't really enjoy it either in the moment. I made sure to be present and do all the things. But I just, I was like, whatever. But over the intervening five years, I've come to really cherish those memories, I guess.

It's now one of my favorite trips. And so this nostalgia effect or whatever you called it, I think nostalgia bias. Nostalgia bias. It can make experiences, even experiences that don't seem that great in the moment, they can gain value later on, I guess. And why is that? Why did that trip to Turkey, because this is fascinating because you're not fooling yourself. You still, at a cognitive level, at an intellectual level, you remember that you didn't like it very much in the moment. Why is it that you cherish it or that you gain more satisfaction over the memory now? Well, that's a complicated question. In this case, when I took that trip, I was gone for five weeks, not just to Turkey, but to a couple of other places. And I was missing home. I had just begun to date,

Kim. And so, you know, you get all piney for the person that you're newly dating. And Turkey just, it wasn't what I was used to. It wasn't what I was expecting either. So I just never felt comfortable there. It wasn't a place that I had wanted to go. It was a place that Nick had wanted to go. So there were all these different things in the moment that prevented me from enjoying it to the fullest extent, I guess. And again, I did my best. I know enough to like be in the moment. and not be complaining the whole time. And I didn't complain. But at the same time, I was like, oh, it's not my favorite trip.

I was too busy judging it, I guess. But then in retrospect, some of the things that we did on that trip were amazing. They were so much fun, riding a scooter through the hills of Central Turkey, taking a hot air balloon ride through Cappadocia, waiting in the sea, going to ancient Roman ruins, seeing one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was just awesome. Feeding all the stray cats. You told me about that, I remember. Yeah, absolutely. And the dogs and stuff. Drinking fresh pomegranate juice. I mean, in retrospect, there are a lot of amazing things that we did. And now I also appreciate that going to Turkey is more difficult than it was five years ago.

And again, my cousin is struggling with cancer. And so the memory takes on some added value because of that, too. Oh, this is the same cousin. Yeah, it is. Oh, wow. Sorry to interrupt. No, that's good. Go on. Well, that's pretty much all I had to say on that is that is my own personal experience with the nostalgia bias. Does he feel the same way about the trip?

No, he liked it then. He likes it now. Nice. Nice. I'm glad you had that experience with him. Yeah, me too. Me too. We'll come back to this episode in just a moment, but first, a question for those of you who run your own businesses.

Are you hiring? No, I'm not asking for me. I want to know if you know where to post your job in order to find the best candidates. See, a company is only as strong as the people who work for it. Frankly, the people who are on my team, Steve and Aaron, are way smarter and more talented than me. They are really the ones who run this show and hold everything together. And I absolutely would not be where I am without them. So I understand the importance of hiring good people.

They are crucial to running a successful business. So if you are looking for somebody to hire, check out ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is a site in which you can post your job to 100 plus job sites with just one click. Their powerful technology efficiently matches the right people to your job. And that's why they're different. Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them. In fact, over 80% of jobs posted on ZipRecruiter get a good.

qualified candidate in just 24 hours. So you don't need to juggle emails or calls to your office, just screen, rate, and manage candidates all in one place with ZipRecruiter's dashboard. Right now, my listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, for free, by going to ZipRecruiter.com slash afford. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash afford, a F-F-O-R-D. One more time, to try it for free, go to ziprecruiter.com slash afford. Hey, hey, I want to give a shout out to FreshBooks. They have signed on as one of our main sponsors in 2017, and they have an awesome product. It's meant for freelancers, soul entrepreneurs, small business owners.

If you have a side hustle or if you're self-employed and you need to send out invoices to your clients, yeah, it's necessary. You've got to send invoices to get paid, but it's also annoying and it's tired. I'm consuming and nobody really likes doing it. It's just one of those costs of doing the job. Enter FreshBooks. They automate the invoicing system. You type in some basic information and their system handles the rest.

It automatically sends follow-ups to invoices that haven't gotten paid. It lets you know whether or not your client has even opened your invoice or not. Basically, they take the suckiness out of invoicing. Give them a try for free for 30 days at FreshBooks.com slash Paula. That's freshbooks.com slash p-a-u-l-a. So the next question, we've circled the top three items on the list. So next to each one, write down how much you think it'll cost and how soon you would want to achieve it. And so, for example, let's say that you want to backpack through South America for six months,

at a cost of $50 a day for 180 days, that's $9,000. And let's say that you wanted to start it seven months from now. And then that leads to the following question, which is then calculate how much you would need to save per month in order to achieve that. So in that example, if you wanted to backpack through South America, $50 a day times 180 days, it's $9,000. Starting in seven months, you would need to save $12.85 per month if you would need to save $12.85 per month. if you don't plan on making any money during the trip if you needed all $9,000 at the start of the trip. So I like what you're doing here. You're taking the questions from very broad and you're helping narrow the focus and helping people actually look at like the top three things that they want to do or get and figure out what it would take to actually accomplish those things.

Exactly, exactly. Because a lot of times I found that if you say something broad like, oh, I would love to. go travel through South America for six months. It's immediately followed by this idea of, but I don't think I could do that because I just don't know how. And the moment you, you start putting numbers to it, putting numbers to a question really more than what it does, more than math, what it really does is it changes your frame of thinking. So if you just say, oh, I would love to travel, well, that's very ambiguous. What does that actually mean? If you say, well, I want to travel for six months.

All right, great. Now we have a number. Now we're getting somewhere. And then if you look further into it, you start reading about budget travel and you see that you can do that on about $50 per day. Then great. Now we've got even more numbers. And functionally, what's happening at this point is that your brain is going from this, you know, having this like kind of cloudy amorphous dream to actually constructing questions around how do I execute this? plan. I think it's, I like what you're doing there. Was that the last question or do you go down even

further? Oh, no, I go down even further. Wow. I like that. So the next question after that, so just to use our example again, this trip is going to cost nine grand and it's going to start in seven months. That means that if you need the entire amount on day one of the trip, you would need to save 1285 per month. So right now it's just basic, basic elementary math, right? So our next question is, write down a few creative hacks that could reduce either how much or how soon. So for example, let's take this backpacking through South America example. Let's say that you don't need the entire amount at the beginning of your trip. Let's say that you could find some type of an online freelance gig that paid $500 a month.

You could do that from South America, which means that, You could continue to earn $500 a month from South America while you're traveling. That's not a huge amount of, you know, a small amount like that means that you're not going to be working 40 hours a week. You'd work just a couple of hours. You'd check in a little bit. But for the most part, you're not really working that much. It's, you know, maybe a couple of freelance articles or a one free, you know, a little freelance web design project. It's nothing major.

Right. But you've got this $500 a month, monthly retainer. that's going to keep you afloat while you're traveling. That means that you would only need to save $785 per month rather than $12.85 for the next seven months. So that's one example of a creative hack that could reduce the amount of money that you need to save. The other way to do it is reducing how soon, you know, how that seven month mark. So if, you know, there's that relationship between timeline and intensity, right? If you want to shorten the timeline, you kick up the intensity and vice versa.

If you want to reduce the intensity of how much you're saving, then you just expand the timeline. Yeah. This reminds me of a story that I tell about a friend of mine. I don't remember when this was late 1990s, I guess. This is my best friend from high school, Paul. He and I always had different values. He was better with money than I was because, as most people know, I sucked with money for a long time. Anyway, one day Paul and I went for this hike.

and he told me what he'd been up to. He'd said, you know, I've been living up in Washington, a small town in northern Washington. He was working two full-time jobs and a part-time job. And he got free rent in exchange for a house sitting with an elderly homeowner. And he told me he'd only had like five or six days off in the past eight months. I was like, dude, you are insane. You're working two full-time jobs, a part-time job, and taking care of this elderly person and you're not getting any time off.

Why are you killing yourself? And he told me, he's like, you know what? I want to travel the world. He says, I want to buy a one-way ticket to Thailand. I'm just going to go. And I'm going to go as long as the money lasts. And he gave me a date. I think he said next September is when he wanted to take off.

And he said, do you want to join me, J.D? I was like, yeah, of course I want to join you. But how do I make that possible? And he just kind of shook his head because he was demonstrating how to make it possible. You set the goal and then you make it happen. He was working those two full-time jobs, the halftime job, and taking care. getting free rent in exchange for doing that homesteading stuff. It took me a long time, another six or seven years, to come around and understand what Paul

was trying to tell me. And basically, he was saying that you need to have this dream or this plan that's so amazing, so motivating that you'll do whatever it takes to accomplish, you know? Wow. And did he end up going on that trip? Oh, absolutely. He would send me postcards from Thailand and India and Israel. And Europe, he had a great old time.

And he came back. He had burned through all his savings. And so he's like, all right, great. And he settled down. He'd always been kind of flighty before that. He settled down, went to work and got a regular job and lived a regular life. But, I mean, he had, I think it was eight or nine months on the road that he funded with his dedication and hard work. Nice.

Nice. That's excellent. That reminds me a lot of my own story. Yeah. Yeah. You probably tell your story all the time, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, I told it on a recent episode of this podcast. We'll link to it in the show notes. But that was essentially what I did. I worked, it took me three years to save up the money to travel. I wasn't working quite as hard as he was. I worked a full-time job and then a side hustle during the evenings and weekends.

Doing that for three years, I was able to save $25,000. And then I went off and I traveled the world with it. That's amazing. Nice. Thank you. That leads us to the final question, question 11, which is, remember, we've narrowed it down to three goals. So now choose one of these three goals that you can realistically achieve within a reasonable how much and how soon framework. At this point, you know the numbers. The only question left is, how wide does your monthly gap need to be? That gap between what you earn and what you spend. How wide does that need to be? How wide does that need to be? and how will you grow that gap? How much of that will come from earning more versus cutting back? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, this is what I call personal profit. That gap is your profit, the difference between your earning and your spending.

And I think you've nailed it. You figure out the goals that you want to accomplish, and you figure out how to increase your profit so you can meet those goals. Exactly. And I like, J.D, that all of this has started from those very big pictures. your questions of, you know, imagine that money is no object. What would you do? All right, now imagine that you only have five to 10 years to live. In your current financial state, what would you do? And if money were no object, what would you do? Yeah. I think those questions are really excellent for,

in terms of priming you to figure out exactly how you get to that point of personal profit and how you get to the point in which you're arranging your money around your best life. Yeah. I think you're exactly right. How have your answers changed, J.D., over the years, as you've written about these questions, you've posed them to audiences, how have you seen your answers to these change and your understanding of these questions change? Well, okay, so the first thing to understand is I use these questions as a basis to come up with

what I call a personal mission statement. it's a way for me to get myself to think about my life and to get other people to think about their lives and discover what is actually important. And then I want people to like massage that into what I call a personal mission statement, which is really this underlying goal or not underlying, like this top level goal that directs everything else that you do. And so in my case, when I first did this, I was led to that I wanted to explore the world. I had never traveled and I wanted to see what the world had to offer. So it's 2008 or 2009 when I first answered the questions and over the next several years, I did a lot of travel.

I visited 25 countries. And then I did that 15-month RV trip around the United States. Now I haven't re-evaluated in some time, but I can feel my value shifting to where I'm more interested in establishing a home base now, I guess. I still want to travel. I want to explore the world. But I'm ready to settle down and to be more focused on my immediate environment instead of the larger world, I guess that that makes sense. And so for me, that's led to some different decisions.

Instead of having an apartment or a condo where it's easy to take off, I recently purchased a home with an acre. I have two cats. I have a dog. I have a long-term relationship. All of these things now reflect how my values have changed. And for that reason, I suppose it's important to continue to check back in with yourself about how you would answer these questions on a regular basis. Oh, absolutely.

And it's not like you have to do it every month. But my friend Chris Gillibault does, I forget what he calls it, but it's essentially a year and review at the end of each year. And you can go to his site, the art of nonconformity. He has information about this. He performs like an annual review. And he looks at what went well, what went wrong. how his current plans are aligned with his mission statement. I'm sure he doesn't call it a mission statement, but that's essentially what he's doing.

And I think if you did that once a year and New Year is always a great time to do it, ask yourself these questions and see, okay, what has changed? Has anything changed? And if things have changed, what does that mean for your current situation? Do you need to make alterations to where you live or how you live or what you're doing for a living? Absolutely. Absolutely. Twice a year I check in with myself to see what my goals, what my big picture goals are and make sure that I'm still aligned and I'm still living in accordance with my personal mission. So New Year's is one of them. I think New Year's is a great trigger for that. And Burning Man is the other one because it's a week off in the desert surrounded by art, camping, disconnected from the entire, from normal daily life. And it's a great time. to go into serious self-reflection. And I think that's a great point.

One thing that I struggle with right now is I have allowed life to just sweep me away. I'm just like, I feel like I'm buffeted on this river of life. But at the same time, I recognize that I'm allowing that to happen. I'm very much about being self-directed and proactive and having an internal locus of control. And I recognize that I've kind of given that up over the past few months. And it's frustrating to me. And I feel like what I need to do is exactly what you're talking about with Burning Man.

And that's take some time to slow down and just be with myself and reevaluate what is important to me. Basically ask the questions that you've just posed so that I can make a few course corrections, I guess. Because that's what it comes down to is as your priorities change, you will make course corrections. And there's nothing wrong with that. Well, thank you so much for joining us, J.D. Thank you, Paula. Jady, thank you so much for joining me on today's show. And to all of you who are listening, thank you so much for sticking with me. These questions came from a talk that I gave at the

World Domination Summit. If you want the slides for the entire presentation, including a written printout of these questions, head to afford anything.com slash episode 89. Again, that's afford anything.com slash episode 89, where you can download a PDF that has these questions written, and that PDF includes blank space for you to fill in your answers. Speaking of which, what are your answers to some of these questions? Which of these 11 questions stood out to you? And how would you answer them? Please share it with me on Twitter at Afford Anything, on Facebook,

Facebook.com slash Afford Anything or on Instagram slash Paula Pant. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. I'll catch you next week.