Afford Anything - Maybe We Should Spend More, with Dr. Jordan Grumet

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

#418: When Jordan Grumet was a child, his dad died unexpectedly. That was decades ago. Jordan is a father today, but he thinks often about the possibility of dying young. And he wonders how to balance enjoying today vs. saving for tomorrow, given that none of us know how long we’ll be on this earth. How do we think about our lives when the clock starts to run out?  Beyond money, what other tools can we use to live a fulfilling life? Jordan Grumet, a hospice doctor and host of the Earn and Invest podcast, discusses this in today’s episode. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode418 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, any limited resource that you need to manage. Saying yes to something implicitly means turning away other opportunities. And that opens up two questions. First, what do you value most? And second, how do you make decisions accordingly?

How do you translate values into actions? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what this podcast is here to explore and facilitate. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and today, Dr. Jordan Grummet joins us to discuss the continuum between living in the moment and planning for the future. In this interview, we refer to it as the YOLO to Deferred Gratification, continuum, the spectrum representing at one extreme end, living entirely in the present moment, and enjoying lots of fantastic, rich life experiences, adventures, travel, dining, all the joys of the present moment at one end of the spectrum, and obsessively planning for the future,

being deeply entrenched in trying to build to a certain financial independence number or trying to build to a certain retirement, early retirement date, saving and investing 40, 50, 60% of your income so that you can hit some net worth goal. That lays at the other end of the spectrum. How do you find a balance between the two? Where on that spectrum should you find yourself? That is the core question we tackle in this upcoming episode. Our interview guest, Dr. Jordan Grummet, is a physician who has spent his career working with hospice patients, meaning he spends his time with people who are on the brink of death, many of whom are in their 20s, 30s, many of whom are quite young. And in our upcoming interview, he talks about how that experience, plus the experience of watching his father die at the age of 40, has informed his views. on living for the present moment versus planning for the future. So for a philosophical conversation

on that topic, that continuum, here is Jordan Grumman. Hi, Jordan. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, it's great to be here. Jordan, you as a physician, as a hospice doctor, spend a lot of time working with people who are on the brink of death, many of whom are young in their 30s, 40s, I assume possibly even 20s. How has that experience informed your views on living in the moment versus deferred gratification? I have to admit it's a cliche this term, you only live once. For me, as someone who's interested in personal finance, I often poo-pooed. I would say, well, you know, we live these long lives and we have a bunch of new beginnings and new endings. And then I got deeply into hospice work and I was dealing with people in their 20s and 30s and 40s and realizing

that they would give any amount of money to just have a little more time, to have more experiences, to do more things, to see more people. And it really changed my idea of deferred gratification a little bit. In a sense, I found myself backing away from it and saying, okay, deferred gratification has its place, but so does being in the here and now. Can you elaborate on the dichotomy between the two ideas? I think we're continuously struggling between trying to figure out Yolo, you only live once, how do I enjoy this moment? How do I use my money and my time and my skills to be present and enjoy this life right now

versus the fact that we may live to an old age? And if we live to an old age, we're going to need a certain amount of fuel, potential energy or wealth, in a sense, to fund that lifestyle. So if we only live in the moment and we don't save at all and we don't get it into the stock market or into real estate or put it somewhere where it can compound, we may find as we get older that we can't fund retirement or we can't fund living the life we want to live. And so how do you balance those two? How do you decide when it's okay to spend now? Because God knows if we will die in our 20s, 30s, or 40s, God knows if you're going to meet a doctor like me when you least expected it versus what happens when we reach our 70s and 80s and find that we don't have enough money to support our health care needs or our housing needs. It's a difficult question of how to balance those two together. What have you seen in your work with patients as they face the end of their life in what ought to be the middle of their life? What examples have you seen of those who have felt satisfaction at life experiences that they've already enjoyed versus those who grapple with a lot of regret? So one thing I know for sure, after sitting with countless people as they've laid dying, or at least been given a terminal diagnosis is almost no one says,

I wish I had worked more nights and weekends. Almost no one says, you know, my goal was a net worth of a million dollars and I only made it to $750,000. Mostly what people regret is that they didn't have the energy, courage, or time to pursue those things that were most important for them. I've had a bunch of patients who've done it right and a bunch of patients who've done it wrong. Let me talk about one of my patients who did it, what I would call right.

I had a patient name Ernesto, and he was passionate about climbing and hiking and pretty much everything outdoors. And he had this dream of climbing Mount Everest. This was a big, audacious goal. Many people told him that there's no way you're going to have time or energy or even the skill to do this. But when he was in his 20s, now imagine, in his 20s, prime. money earning potential, building himself up in his career, he made the difficult decision to take a six month sabbatical to train and then go attempt to climb Mount Everest. And indeed, he went. And I met him in his 40s when he was dying of leukemia. And he often regaled the hospice team

with stories of being up there during the climb doing that thing that was so important to And after meeting enough people like him, I started thinking, what if he hadn't had the courage to do that in his 20s? What if he had put it off and said, I need to make money now. I need to delay gratification, get money into investments, let it compound. What if he had never taken that amazing trip? And then got diagnosed in his 40s before he ever had the time to try doing this thing that was so important to him. it just made me realize that if we spend all of our time deferring gratification, there's definitely something lost.

Like you can be on the journey to get somewhere, and that's fantastic, but you also have to enjoy the moment to moment, or sometimes that climb isn't worth it. And so in Ernesto's case, the memory of attempting Everest was essentially a life investment that paid dividends into the future and into a future in which he received a terminal diagnosis at a very young age, quite unexpectedly. I think it brings home the point that we talk about investments compounding all the time, but other things compound too, experiences, achievements, relationships.

And so for Enesto, when his money wasn't compounding because he had taken time off of work, instead he was building meaning and purpose and those things compounded in his life and sitting on his deathbed in his 40s that's what truly had value for him he used his money as a tool not as a goal but as a tool to actually do things that were important to him and what i love about ernesto's story is he actually never made it to the top like the weather changed he made it about halfway up and they had to turn around and go back the way they came but But in his 40s, while he was dying, he can say, I did this thing that was important to me. Ultimately, in a sense, he failed, but it wasn't the failing, right?

We always talk about how we're so afraid of failing. It wasn't the failing that burned. It would have been never having the courage to try. And so he was very at peace with that. And I think it gave him a lot of comfort. I mean, there were many days where staff members were gathered around as he was telling these stories. And you could see the joy on his face. he would have regretted not trying.

Yes. And I think that's again, the scenario we see in both young and old people is I regret that I didn't have the courage to do these things that were so important to me. I'm thinking about someone who's listening to this who's in their 20s right now. And they may be thinking, well, that's great for Ernesto, but I have student loans. I've got a $5,000 balance on my credit card. I have a car note. there are all of these reasons financially, particularly in your 20s, which is a time when we're just starting our careers. We don't have accumulated savings. We don't have accumulated

net worth. There are so many reasons not to. I think we have to start with this idea that we're making best guesses, right? We don't know. We don't know if we're going to live another day, week, month, year, decade, or half a decade. It's the unknown. So the question is how do we deal with this unknown. And I think the best way is to ask ourselves a basic question. And the question is, what do you fear more? Do you fear more that you're going to die young and wealthy but devoid of experiences? Or are you afraid that you're going to die old and broke? And the reason why I ask that specific question is then we can start to toggle between yellow and deferred gratification, depending where our fears lie. We don't know exactly what's going to have. We don't know exactly what's going to

happen, but we do know what scares us. And we can then make decisions based on that. And that was something I really learned from my father who died when he was 40 years old. And some of the lessons he taught helped me understand this concept. Tell me about some of those lessons that he taught. So my father died at the age of 40 of a cerebral aneurysm. He went to work one day. He was a doctor and he was actually rounding at the hospitals. He had had a severe headache the night before, figured that he would go to work and deal with it, a blood vessel burst in his brain, and he pretty much was brain dead instantaneously.

Like his body survived a few days. He was in the hospital, so they put him on the ventilator. But eventually, we realized that there was not any functioning left and remove life support. He had an inclination that this was going to happen. No reason specifically. He just felt like he was going to die young.

In fact, he told my mom that when he married her. He said, I feel like, I'm going to die young. So he made decisions based on this. This is like a test case for us asking those important questions. My dad, knowing that he was going to die young, he had no use for deferred gratification. Like he wanted to make sure his kids were okay. He wanted to make sure he had life insurance, those basic things.

But above and beyond that, he had no reason to really save for retirement. So for him, if we're going to look at YOLO to divert gratification as a continuum, he was way over on the Yolo side. So he wasn't going to save a lot of money and put it in the stock market. Instead, he was going to take that money, put it into a Yolo fund, and use it to enjoy life today. And that's exactly what he did. I mean, he was a photographer.

He traveled the world. He had a wood workshop in our basement. And that's how he spent his time. He passed up promotions and jobs where he could have made lots of money for other jobs, where he could enjoy himself and have more time. He was very cognizant of this idea that time. was limited. And so he spent accordingly. What if he had been wrong? You said that he had an intuition that he might die young,

but there was no reason, no evidence to back that. What if his intuition had been wrong and he had lived into his 80s or 90s? Yeah, there'd be no retirement savings. This is where I think having a bona fide financial plan, or in my case, a financial independence plan is important. There are multiple ways to financial independence, and we can do it at different speeds. So someone like my father who feels and worries that they're going to die young and won't have time to enjoy their wealth, I say build a financial plan. Let's say you use 50% of your income to pay off housing, travel, food, all the basics. And then you have 50% of your income left. A person who's worried that they're going to die young, maybe wants to put her ten

or 15% of what's left over into a financial independence plan, and then put the other 30% into a YOLO fund, and go ahead and use it. Use that money to have experiences, to take time off, et cetera. So what happens if you're wrong? Well, let's say my father was wrong, and he was saving 10% towards financial independence. He was using 30% towards Yolo,

and then 60% to support our lifestyle. If he was wrong, he would have been living a great life. I mean, he would have been using 30% of his income to do exactly what he wanted to enjoy himself. You're right, he would probably not be able to retire until he was 65 or 70. But he probably would also have been enjoying life to such an extent that that would have been a very reasonable tradeoff. Contrast that to me, I've always felt that I was going to live a long time. So for me, my numbers were exact opposite.

I put 10% into the YOLO fund because I figured I'm going to live a long time. I'm going to have plenty of time to do what I want. But then I would put 40% in a financial independence fund and figure that I would retire at 40 instead of 65 and then have all the time in the world and the financial fuel that I needed to go do what I wanted. So if you still build a financial independence framework, regardless if you're maximizing YOLO versus you're maximizing deferred gratification, I think you win either way. And I think that's actually how you win the game. So I'm almost imagining in my head a spectrum. And I like how you described it as a YOLO 2 deferred gratification continuum. And along the spectrum, a person who's far on the YOLO side might have a retirement savings

rate of around 10 percent. And a person who's far on the deferred gratification side might have a retirement savings rate of 40 percent or 50 percent. It seems as though the YOLO to deferred gratification spectrum would overlap with a retirement savings rate spectrum. Yeah, I think that's totally it. And so it's really easy for those of us at the extremes, like my dad knew he was going to die young. So for him, it made sense to put tons in Yolo. And me who thought I was going to live for a very long time, it made sense to put a lot in deferred gratification. The truth of the matter is, most of us fall in that great in between. So our retirement

savings are going to be in that great in between. We're going to maybe take 25% and save a retirement and the other 25% we're going to make sure that we enjoy this one life now. Money won't make you enjoy life, but it will give you the energy and the space and the fuel you need to do those things that really have meaning to you. And so, yeah, exactly. The retirement savings continuum fits right on top of the Yolo deferred gratification continuum, and then you toggle them together. Have you seen in your work with hospice patients, have you seen the families or friends

of these patients adjust their spending, adjust their retirement savings, adjust basically where they are on that continuum as a result of their proximity to somebody who is dying young? I definitely have. Most of us really put aside this idea of death. We really don't want to think about it. Just like we don't want to talk about money and don't want to think about money, a lot of us don't want to talk about or think about death. And if you're lucky, you generally don't have to start thinking about that until your loved ones are in their 70s and 80s and at least you can look at the situation and say,

well, they've lived a full life. When you have a family member who gets sick young, it really shakes the foundation of your inner core beliefs. It really changes the way you feel about the security of life and about the time you have on this earth. So it is very common for people to have a young, family member get sick or die, and for them to change the way they think about these things, just like I did when I started working in hospice, all of a sudden, YOLO doesn't really sound

too bad when done carefully. So I think we all come to terms with this idea that there is such thing as an opportunity cost. You don't spend money today because eventually that money will compound and will really help you in the future. But it's also a fallacy because we tend to think that we value that income or that money in the future more than that experience today. And the reason it's a fallacy is sometimes those experiences, those joys we have in the moment may become exceedingly valuable, especially if God forbid you're diagnosed with a terminal illness a few months later. That trip you took or that skill you developed or that thing you bought that was so important to you may be exceedingly important in your life.

One thing that strikes me as we have this conversation is that we are discussing enjoyment of life as synonymous with spending money. And I want to reflect back on a passing comment that you made earlier, which was that money itself cannot allow you to enjoy life, but it can create the space and the time for treasured experiences. are there ways for people listening who are thinking, you know, yes, I'd like to embrace YOLO, but I'm also on an incredibly tight budget, right? Are there ways for those people to have treasured life experiences and, in a sense, safeguard against future regret while also adhering to the realities of, for some, financial scarcity? So I want to make this really important goal. Money is a tool. It's one of a series of tools we have to ultimately take control of what I believe are the two most important things. So what are the most important things?

One is our sense of purpose, identity, and connections. I think it's our reason for being that which gives us meaning. That's one. The other important thing that we at least attempt to control is our time. Now, you and I both know that time is constant. We have zero control over it. But we do at least somewhat have control of what activities we place in these time slots that our lives are made up of. So time passes no matter what we do.

But there's from time to time choices we can make of how we spend those time slots, whether we are working, whether we are with family, whether we're sleeping, whether we're watching Netflix. So there are going to be plenty of people who say, I don't have that tool you're talking about. I don't have the money to use as a tool. What I'd say is, certainly you need a financial plan to help you gain more of that tool. That's part one. But the other part is it's just one of many tools in our toolbox, our energy, our concentration, our love, our joy, our personal connections, our skills and abilities. Those are other tools in our toolbox, which we can utilize in the absence of money. And so a simple example is, let's say you work 10 hours a day from Monday through Friday.

You need to work. You need to make money. It is not something that really fulfills your sense of meaning and purpose, but frankly, you need the cash. That takes up those 10 hours from Monday to Friday. But how are you then spending your weekends? If you're spending your weekends watching Netflix, I guess that's fine if that is a sense of meaning and purpose for you. But if not, then you have those 48 hours during the weekend. to refocus your attention on things that do matter.

Another way to look at it. Maybe you have a nine to five that you don't particularly love, but it pays the bills. How can you pivot from there? You might say I can't. And again, then we focus on your time outside of work. But could you do a different job with the same company that would be more enjoyable to you?

If not, is there another job you could do? If not, are there side hustles or other ways you can develop income so that you can start decreasing the time at that job you don't like and create revenue in another way. I'm not suggesting it's easy, but what I am suggesting is that we should be thinking about meaning and purpose today and start trying to decide what those tradeoffs are and being intentional about them. And so you may not be able to add a lot of extra space in your life, but even if you can add an extra hour or two to do something meaningful, I think you're a lot better off than if you haven't done that calculation in your brain and started working on it.

What struck me, when you gave the example of, let's say you work 10 hours a day, Monday through Friday, your weekdays are spoken for. What do you do on the weekends? What came to mind right away for me was chores and errands, you know, oftentimes it's those tasks that get relegated to the weekends. And so even our quote-unquote time off is filled with domestic labor. That was the first thing that came to mind. the second thing that came to mind, though, was within that domestic labor, what are the things

that must be done versus what are the things that actually don't need to be done? I think they're definite tradeoffs. And again, I don't want to say that this is easier or it's 100% clear, but if you're doing your domestic chores and labor, could you do them with a child, with a friend, with a parent? Could that become part of the plan? So at least then you were having that quality time with someone who is meaningful to you? Could you go to a different grocery store, which happens to be right next to your best friend's house so that after shopping for a while, you could stop over at your best friend's house and make lunch?

Again, I'm not saying it's easy, but how can we be more intentional about how we're spending our time to start building in this idea of meaning and purpose from the beginning, even when we don't have much? Because if we start building our financial power and potential energy up, that's the again, we can slowly toggle away from those things we like less doing and start developing those things we like to do more. And it becomes a work in progress. And so I think you have to start somewhere, even if you are in the most dire of situations,

it starts with a simple change. And we have to have the courage to try to start making those changes so that we can eventually build through incremental change the life we want and spend our time in a way that's appealing to us. One thing that strikes me about the YOLO versus Deferred Gratification conversation is that it is not just a conversation about how to spend money, but it's also a conversation about how to spend time. And to that extent, it influences the decision making around whether or not to have a side hustle or some form of side income, since that would increase income at the cost of time that you could have. otherwise be spending learning how to play the piano or hanging out with your best friends or doing something else that creates memories making that investment in experiences. So this is what I love.

Yes, we have to be very cautious of our time. If you see that you don't have enough income, maybe you start a side hustle, side project that's a passion to you, right? Maybe you love crocheting. So you start crocheting hats or something you like doing and put it up on Etsy. Maybe you love work. So you sign up for the local garden center and volunteer time to help people with gardening or get paid to help people with their gardening. Maybe this is the space you need to start thinking about what has meaning and purpose for you. And is there a small way you could make money doing something you enjoy? Maybe it won't support your nine to five. But if you're going to have to do something extra, if you're going to have to side hustle, maybe you look for something that really speaks to you.

And guess what? If you don't find it, there's nothing lost. But if you happen to find that thing you enjoy and you can start it as a side hustle, we both know that if you enjoy it and you're good at it and you start as a side hustle, maybe all of a sudden you're making a little more than you thought you would. Maybe that allows you to toggle back the hours in your job you don't like and spend more time doing that side hustle that's enjoyable. The point is the intention, the building, meeting into purpose, into your activities, the coalescing that with making money can actually start. are giving you space and room in what feels like a very tight budget. And so that's where I think we have that kind of freedom to think outside the box and really build in meaning and purpose into what we do, even if it's money-making ventures. And what I think is notable about the examples that you just gave is that oftentimes when people pursue a side hustle that is aligned with an interest or a passion, that particular side hustle might not on the surface appear to be the most lucrative choice. But as you just mentioned, and as we've both seen, if you do something that you enjoy,

you're likely to be good at it. And if you're likely to be good at it, then oftentimes you end up making more money than you otherwise would have if you had chosen the quote unquote more lucrative route to begin with. And let's look at the reverse. of it. Let's say you bomb out, you go do something you love doing it, and you make no money at it as a side hustle. My question would be, was that a reasonable use of your time? And my answer would be, if you really love doing it, then worse comes to worse, you made no money, but you enjoyed the experience. Best comes the best. You either make money or you gain skill or knowledge that serves you later in life, but at least you were doing something that was purposeful for you at the time. And that's how I

want all of us to spend more of our time doing those type of things, whether they make money or not. In this case, we hope it makes you a little money to give you space to do more of it. You mentioned Ernesto as an example of one of the patients that you worked with who in his 40s, as he was dying, he very much appreciated the memory of attempting to climb Everest in his 20s. Do you have any memories of patients who had the opposite experience where at the end of their lives they expressed a great deal of regret. You know, I have a perfect example of that. I had a gentleman who I took care of who ran a multi-billion dollar company.

He was the head of a family. He was the patriarch of children and grandchildren. They were all in business together. And as he laid dying in his bed in the hospital, he expressed this idea that he never had enough, which was a strange idea. for a guy who could have afforded the hospital wing that he was dying in. But what I think he was really getting at is he never had enough love in his life experiences. He never kind of did what he wanted to do in life.

He spent all of his time not building relationships, not building joy, not doing things that were meaningful or purpose for him. He spent all of his time building a business. And while that did bring some joy for him on his deathbed, he really regretted the fact that he didn't invest in those other parts of his life. So the patriarch died a very lonely life. He had kids and grandkids around him, but they weren't really interested in him. They were interested in who was going to take over the business when he died. He died bereft, which is a funny thing to say of a multimillionaire. But it was very true.

And I contrast that to another patient I took care of who had to do something called a Medicare divorce for his wife. She was in a nursing home. And they had to do a paper divorced to separate their assets so that his wife would qualify for Medicaid. And then once she died, he got sick himself and died a pauper in hospice, barely living off of Social Security. This gentleman had almost nothing, but you know what he did have? He had love in his life. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. The holidays are right around the corner, and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need serveware and cookware.

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in the context of financial scarcity or time scarcity, a person can still incrementally have positive experiences. But what about the flip side of that? If a person has sufficient money or sufficient time, does that mean that they necessarily know how to translate that money and or that time into having memorable life experiences? I think actually the opposite is true. There are lots of people who build a life of sufficiency, meaning money and time, but get exceedingly lost when it comes to what they want to do with those boons because they've never really taken the time to think about it. I took care of a lady named Liz who had a young family and she was exceedingly successful

at her job and she kind of discovered this world of personal finance and started looking at her time. And she said, wow, I think I can build up enough money. I can invest it. I can extract myself from having to work. And this can give me everything I wanted for myself and my children and my husband, etc. But something strange happened.

After actually learning the principles of personal finance, after learning how to invest, after saving dutifully, she found that the path was clear. She knew that within a few years, she would have saved up enough money, she would have enough invested, she would be able to do whatever she want. But instead of feeling excited or exhilarated by this, she actually became depressed because she realized she didn't really know where to focus her energy. I mean, she had spent so much time concentrating on this fuel, this potential energy that was going to get her what she wanted. But she'd never spent a lot of time figuring out what she wanted in itself. And that really caused her a lot of stress.

And so she seems to be in contrast with Ernesto, like Ernesto in his 20s, knew exactly what he wanted to do, which was attempt to summit Mount Everest. And so he marshalled what resources he had to be able to do that. Meanwhile, someone like Liz focuses on marshalling resources, but doesn't have a why at the end of it. And that led Liz to a space of depression. For anyone who's listening who is facing a similar dilemma to what Liz faced, how can they translate abundant time, abundant money into figuring out that why? So first I want to say that we need to remember that having too much money but not knowing what to do with it can be just as devastating as not having enough. For Liz, the depression was so bad.

She stopped taking care of herself. She started drinking more alcohol. Eventually she actually got into a car accident and died. So for her, this was exceedingly devastating. So it's really important that we not only figure out a path to have our monetary needs taken care of, but we also have to decide what we're going to use that as a tool to do in our life. One of the arguments I make in my book taking stock is that we spend way too much time thinking about our financial framework, but we don't do the first type of work we should do before we even get there,

which is decide more about our purpose, identity, and connections. What are those things that are most important to us? How do we want to spend our lives both today and in the future? We need to start considering those things first. And then we need to build our financial framework around that. And so I think that's the first step is you have to really decide what you want out of life as opposed to just seeing some net worth goal or some retirement date as your endpoint. And again, that leads back to the continuum of YOLO versus deferred gratification because taking the focus off of a retirement date or a net worth goal or a financial independence number, taking the focus off of that and on to what do I want this week, this month, this year, that focus in the present.

I mean, it makes us ask the question, what is YOLO without meaning and purpose? In a sense, it's hedonism, right? Like, how do you even know when to Yolo and when to defer gratification? If you don't really know what has meaning for you, Yolo works the best when you actually have a meaningful goal in mind, just like Ernesto. Like, it made sense for him to live in the moment because living in the moment was deeply gratifying for him as a person and had true meaning for the rest of his life. How do you do that if you have no idea what meaning and purpose is for you? To me, the most significant part of what you just said is what is YOLO without purpose, it's hedonism. How then can a person clarify what that purpose is such that their pursuit of YOLO is meaningful rather than hedonistic?

I'm glad you asked that because I think we have to be really concrete here. I think basically if you're listening right now and you're like, this sounds philosophical and great, but what do I do next? I think there are really three main steps. I think the first is really trying to do some of the work to start defining your unique purpose identity and connections. I think you've got to know who you are and what you want, which gets back to that quote about hedonism. It's hard to really yolo unless you know what those things are. I think once you have an idea of those things, what is my purpose, what is my meaning. The next step is to really then look at your financial framework.

How am I going to build a financial framework to support myself and to support my needs and goals? And last but not least, the step three is then to decide how we toggle on that YOLO deferred gratification continuum. And the way we do that is ask that important question. What scares us most, dying young and wealthy, devoid of experiences, or old and poor because we ran out of money. Once you know which is your biggest fear, you then can toggle how much money you put to YOLA right now and how much you put in the stock market or into real estate or however. you're going to build your wealth and allow it to compound. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they would like to read more about your work?

There are a few simple ways to find me. First and foremost, my book's Taking Stock, A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth and Living a Regrette-Free Life is available now. You can find it wherever you find books, especially online, Amazon, Target, Books a Million, what have you. If you want to know about pretty much the summation of all I've done, you can go to Jordan Grummet.com. That's J-O-R-D-A-N-G-R-U-M-E-T.com. There you can find links to my podcast,

the Earned-Invest Podcast, to my financial blog, Diversify, as well as my medical blog, which I stopped writing at a few years ago, but there are years and years of writing about medicine there. And finally, EarnanInvest.com, if you want to listen to the podcast. Thank you, Jordan. what are three key takeaways from this conversation? Number one, the tension between today and tomorrow is a continuous struggle. And to an extent we need to accept that there is no resolution, that this is something we'll continuously need to balance.

That struggle between spending now versus investing for later, That's a conversation that many of us inside of the personal finance and financial independence communities, many of us have these debates internally. And when I say internally, I mean it in two ways, both within our families, with spouses, with partners, as well as internally inside of ourselves. Jordan gives a voice to this struggle and accepts that, unlike clear, yes, no questions, should I open a Roth IRA this year, yes or no? Unlike those questions, this is one that doesn't carry an answer, one in which the only answer is to live with that continuous tension

and the continuous need to balance. We're continuously struggling between trying to figure out YOLO, you only live once, how do I enjoy this moment? How do I use my money and my time and my skills to be present and enjoy this life right now versus the fact that we may live to an old age? And if we live to an old age, we're going to need a certain amount of fuel, potential energy or wealth in a sense, to fund. that lifestyle. So if we only live in the moment and we don't save at all and we don't get it into the

stock market or into real estate or put it somewhere where it can compound, we may find as we get older that we can't fund retirement or we can't fund living the life we want to live. So that is the first takeaway. Key takeaway number two. To find out what you really want, ask yourself, what do you fear? We have to start with this idea that. that we're making best guesses, right? We don't know. We don't know if we're going to live another day, week, month, year, decade, or half a decade. It's the unknown.

So the question is, how do we deal with this unknown? And I think the best way is to ask ourselves a basic question. And the question is, what do you fear more? Do you fear more that you're going to die young and wealthy but devoid of experiences? Or are you afraid that you're going to die old and broke? And the reason why I ask that specific question is then we can start to toggle between YOLO and deferred gratification. Now, there's a second part to this takeaway, which is once you've identified that which

you fear most, and therefore that which you want most, put percentages around it, Jordan shares the example of someone who wants to retire at a conventional age, we'll say between 65 to 70, might spend 60% on necessities, 30% on fun stuff, and 10% towards retirement. And then there are others who would have those numbers flipped. 30% towards retirement, 10% towards today, and 60% for bills. So find what you fear and then put percentages to it. There are multiple ways to financial independence, and we can do it at different speed. So someone like my father who feels and worries that they're going to die young and won't have time to enjoy their wealth,

I say build a financial plan. Let's say you use 50% of your income to pay off housing, travel, food, all the basics. And then you have 50% of your income left. A person who's worried that they're going to die young maybe wants to put her 10 or 15% of what's left over into a financial independence plan. and then put the other 30% into a YOLO fund and go ahead and use it. Use that money to have experiences, to take time off, et cetera. So what happens if you're wrong? Well, let's say my father was wrong and he was saving 10% towards financial independence.

He was using 30% towards Yolo and then 60% to support our lifestyle. If he was wrong, he would have been living a great life. I mean, he would have been using 30% of his income. to do exactly what he wanted to enjoy himself. You're right, he would probably not be able to retire until he was 65 or 70. But he probably would also have been enjoying life to such an extent that that would have been a very reasonable tradeoff. Contrast that to me, I've always felt that I was going to live a long time. So for me, my numbers were exact opposite.

So that is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. There are benefits to starting a side hustle that might not work out. a side hustle that might never be profitable. People are often looking for ways to increase their income, but may be hesitant to devote their time to something that isn't going to produce the monetary returns that they're looking for. And Jordan's message is, that's okay if the side hustle, number one, is not something that you're relying on in order to make ends meet. And number two is an experiment that you would enjoy. My question would be,

was that a reasonable use of your time? And my answer would be, if you really love doing it, then worse comes to worse, you made no money, but you enjoyed the experience. Best comes the best. You either make money or you gain skill or knowledge that serves you later in life, but at least you were doing something that was purposeful for you at the time. And that's how I want all of us to spend more of our time doing those type of things, whether they make money or not. In this case, we hope it makes you a little money to give you space to do more of it. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with hospice doctor Jordan Grummet. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or a family member. That's the single

most important thing you can do to spread the message of greater financial wisdom. You can subscribe to our show notes for free at ford-anything.com slash show notes, where you'll get a synopsis of every episode along with timestamps. If you enjoyed this episode, please open up whatever app you're using to listen to this show and leave us a review. And if you want to chat about this episode or any financial topic with members of our community, head to Affordainthing.com slash community. Thanks again for tuning in. My name's Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. And I will catch you in the next episode.