Afford Anything - Vicki Robin: Financial Independence After 70 [GREATEST HITS WEEK]

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

We delve into the world of Financial Independence (FI) with a pioneer -- Vicki Robin, the co-author of Your Money or Your Life. In the 1970s, Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, from vastly different backgrounds, came together over a shared vision: FI as a life philosophy, not just a savings strategy. Their book, "Your Money or Your Life," which sold more than one million copies, outlined a three-dimensional approach to FI: Financial Intelligence: Thinking clearly and objectively about money. Financial Integrity: Aligning your spending and earning with your values. Financial Independence: Breaking free from paycheck dependence and limiting beliefs about money. In this podcast episode, Vicki will discuss a new dimension she's added: Financial Interdependence: Recognizing the importance of giving and receiving within our communities and the world. Vicki and I discuss how to move beyond "just the money" during the quest for financial freedom. This episode originally aired in 2018. We're sharing this as part of GREATEST HITS WEEK, a 5-day series in which we're sharing 5 episodes, across 5 days, that we produced during the earliest years of the Afford Anything podcast. You may have missed it then; enjoy it now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to episode five out of five in our special five-part series that we are airing in anticipation of episode 500. Every day, for five days, we run one of five episodes that we originally aired during the earliest days of the Afford Anything podcast, either 2016 or 2017. Back in those early days, you might not have heard these interviews, and so we're running the special five-part series in the lead-up to an anticipation of episode 500. We're going to celebrate episode 500, that milestone on 424-24, April 24th, 2024. As part of a retrospective, as part of a lead-up to that, we are sharing the special five-part series. And today's episode is the interview with Vicky Robin, the co-author of Your Money or Your Life, which is one of the most influential books in the world of financial independence.

Now, Vicki Robin and her late co-author, Joe Dominguez, united over a definition of financial independence that expanded beyond simply paying your bills through savings and investments. They saw financial independence, FI, as a lifestyle that exists in multiple dimensions, your financial intelligence, your financial integrity, your financial independence, and your financial interdependence. They originally published a book about this called Your Money or Your Life. They wrote this in 1992.

And in that book, they outlined the financial independence philosophy. That book went on to become a mega bestseller. It sold more than one million copies. It spent more than five years on the Business Week bestseller list. And Oprah Winfrey said, quote, this is a wonderful book, it can really change your life. Vicky and Joe then devoted the next five years to spreading the message of financial independence, and they did that for five years from 1992 to 1997.

Unfortunately, Joe passed away in 1997. Vicky continued spreading the message for an additional five years from 1997 to 2002, at which point, unfortunately, her cancer diagnosis at that time, caused her to take a step back. But today, Vicky is healthy and continues to spread the message of financial independence. With that said, here is Vicki Robin, the author of Your Money or Your Life. Hey, Vicki. Hi, hi. How are you? I'm fabulous. Thank you. Nice. Okay, so actually the first question that I wanted to ask, so you and I met, just for the sake of everyone who's listening, we met in Ecuador. We had an awesome breakfast together.

Mm-hmm. So since I kind of know you, the first thing I want to ask is, how is your cat? Oh, well, my beautiful dear cat, Lucy, died. Oh. And she died three weeks ago in my arms. And I hospiced her. I mean, I knew she was in decline and it suddenly occurred to me. I kept thinking, oh, she's an animal.

She knows how to do this. But it occurred to me, I might have to help her. And that was like, ha. So, of course, the first thing I do is I put it out on Facebook. You know, guys, what do I do here? And I got, like, volumes of response. And two friends who are animal communicators volunteered to talk to her and find out what she wanted. It was amazing.

And so what she wanted was she wanted to do this with me by herself. So that gave me confidence in – and also the other thing that happened is I got this message on a Wednesday or Thursday. And every vet on Whidbey Island who could have put her down was on vacation. So there's nobody on Whidbey Island who could do it. And so I took total care of her down to the very last breath. Oh, it was so profound. It was the most relational thing I've ever done. And somebody gave me a booklet about animals dying, about hospicing your animal,

which is, you know, most people don't think they can do that. And one of the things they said, and I think it applies to humans as well, he said, do the grieving before she dies. Do the grieving with her because she's grieving too. You know, she was grieving, leaving this very cool life, you know, where she was the queen of my heart. And because of that, I feel so at peace. And then I went on a wild hunt for a new cat because I'm not going to live.

without a cat, without a palat in my house. And he just came yesterday. His owner delivered him to my house, drove two hours, came on Whidbey Island, delivered him. And now my animal communicator friends are saying, just talk to the cat and find out what the cat's name is. And I think, I can't do that. But I think his name is Sam. Really? And he's hiding. Anyway, so that's the story of my darling cat. And that whole process, when you are willing to bond, you have to be willing to grieve. So anyway, thank you for asking about my cat, first of all, because it puts me in a sweet, sweet space. Wow, thank you for telling me about that. That's beautiful.

It's a story of passing that's somehow very hopeful. Yeah, because look, I mean, I'm 72. I'm going on 73, right? and, you know, I'm of an age where people die. You know, it's not a tragedy. It just sort of happens. I'm of the age where you start to read obituaries to see if you're still alive in the morning. You know, and I could last until I'm 90, but I could go any minute. And it's a different feeling from being in the middle of your life.

It's a different feeling. And actually, with regards to money, because this is what we're talking about. I mean, this part of your life, it's really difficult for financial planning because you don't know if you're going to live 20 years, 10 years, one year. You don't know. And suddenly the enough that was sort of a pattern of existence, you know, you're loping along. It's just the right amount. You start to wonder, well, I have enough money to be myself, but do I have enough money to be disabled? Do I have enough money for that part of my life? And I refuse to default to the insurance industry. I refuse to pay like some godly, ungodly amount every month so that I can be warehoused in a place that just is simply depressing because everybody is old, you know, and, you know, people you befriend could, you know, literally they could die tomorrow. And they're not people you know. It's like surrendering your cat to a shelter, you know. suddenly the cat's not at home with all the familiar things, just in a little prison.

So I just didn't want to do it. So I've really focused. And if you want to talk about that, we can talk about it. I do. I do. Tell me about how you're working through that. And how do you approach it? Well, first of all, I recognized I was going through bag lady fear.

I recognized I was getting terrified and I hadn't been terrified about money in my whole adult life. And it was this fact that, you know, when I thought ahead, to when I was thought 80 was really old now. It doesn't look as old to me. But, you know, when I was like 90, when I looked ahead, I had no idea how to take care of myself at that time. Actually, a friend of mine talked to me when I was 60 and she said, well, you know, between 60 and 80, we're going to be okay, but after 80. And I was like, what? I hadn't thought about it. And so she induced this fear and I actually convened a group of friends to talk about it. It was very interesting. interesting. We met every few weeks or maybe a month and talked about it. And during that time, one of the people in the group, their daughter almost died. So it was really, really worked on it. And I finally admitted, I said, I'm just so scared. I mean, like, if my money disappears and I'm not well, I don't know how to manage this. And this woman looked at me and she said, Vicki, if your money disappears, everybody's money will disappear. And we're going to

figure it out together. Oh, that's cool. And I thought, duh. You know, so the first thing is, I am not alone. And when I, when you think I am not alone, you actually, in not an instrumental way, but in an emotional and spiritual way, you go like, okay, who are my people? You know, and so there's a habit in the FI community of separation. There's like, I'm going to get FI and then I'm going to travel and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. And we don't think about community as wealth. We don't think about community as what will actually see us through, you know, some modicum of money, but a lot of community. Another thing that happened a year ago, I had a hip replacement. And as I came up to it, I have a lot of friends, but I didn't know if they were like, they'll show up for me when I'm like strapped to a bed for a couple of weeks. One of my friends said, don't worry, I'll organize it for you. So she organized morning, noon, and night, people to come over, make food, you know, like do my laundry and stuff like that. And it was like, and I have people not even signing up for the list, but saying, oh, you're having hair replacement. I want to help. Wow. You have great friends. Yeah. And so

it's because I've settled in a place and I've made myself useful in this place. And I've made myself useful in this place. I treat this place like my place. It's not just a place. It's not like I bought a house somewhere and I use the community. I shop at the store and I do this and I do that. No, no, no. This is my relational field. But that surgery tested it and it was really, you know, stress test and it actually worked. And not only that, you know, everybody's so busy. But when they came over to feed me and stuff like that, we would sit and we'd have these long conversations And so it was actually a time of deeper bonding. And now it's like, oh, hey, I want to go help somebody else.

Because everybody's zipping around this world. And so if they need something, if I can help them out, then I might get to settle in. So I've been talking a lot. And in the New Year Money or Life, I talk about community as currency. I talk about the ABCs of wealth, you know, that actually we think of wealth as money. But the A is your abilities, the things you can do for yourself, you can do for other people, and you could do for money if you needed to. It's your competencies.

It's your grounded, practical relationship with the world. When we're so focused in our jobs, we become habituated to spending money for everything. From house cleaners to handymen, to yard workers, to accountants. I mean, we just outsource so much of our lives to other people because we really don't have the time or the interest to learn new things. But for me, on the FI path, the financial independence path, one of the cool things that happens is that people start to realize I could pay somebody $45 to come over and replace a faucet washer.

I could spend 10 cents at the hardware store, learn a, you know, like watch a YouTube video and do it myself. And then do it for other people. and eventually if I have to make some money, I can do it. I mean, I just wrote to one guy I met at one of the Chautauquas who was impressively brilliant about tax planning. I mean, in his presence, I felt like, oh, God, I should be doing some of this. Yeah.

And he's like selling this and buying that and, you know, and working the margins and stuff like that. And he's wondering, like, can I, a lot of people wonder, when can I pull the trigger? You know, when can I get FI? And I told him, dude, you have a brilliant skill. I've never met anybody who's as good as you are. Don't worry, because that's going to be in demand.

So the A is abilities. You become a more vigorous human being. B is belonging. You know, that's the people who will show up when you have your hip replacement. Those are the people who claim you as their own, you know. And for some people who have. really great families, that's your family. But for me, who's family is down to a nubbin, you know, I just really don't have many people who are in my family, blood family,

and they all live elsewhere. My friends are my family. And the friends who show up, those are really my family. So it's that showing up for one another, you know, and belonging is so important. A sense of belonging is so important. We're tribal people. And I think some of our nervousness in this world is that many people don't have anybody to talk to. You know, many people don't have anybody who would claim them as their own. And then the sea is for community, and it's the place you live on earth. And we have, in our community, we have something called Hearts and Hammers, where once a year there's big workday, like 400 people show it for this workday.

So people apply, you know, if you're older and you can't fix your rotting porch, or you can't, like, retrieve your house from the blackberries, a team will come to your house on that workday and do it for you. So that's a homegrown mutual aid. They don't have to be your belonging people. They just, you know, because you're here. And also there's the other part of community is I include the natural world. Can you forage? What's the soil like?

What's going to happen in climate change? You know, is your house going to disappear as the tides come in higher and higher? So that's what I mean by community as currency. And so that's been a big lesson for me in aging. People talk about aging in place. When you're based on money, then that doesn't actually make any sense. But when you're based in community as currency, then that makes a lot of sense. You know, you can be instrumental about it and you can offer.

service to a lot of people who are younger than you, just like, okay, they're going to be there for me. And I'm, you know, I'm building an intergenerational family here. How do digital or online communities fit in with this? Well, I mean, they can't wipe your butt. You know, they can't come and cookie food. But they can. I mean, some people abhor Facebook, but I've arranged my Facebook. So there's only people. I have a subgroup that are only people. who I want to follow or who respond to my posts with, you know, sweet little kisses or whatever. So I am, like with my cat, I could say, I don't understand how to do this.

How do I do this? And suddenly, all sorts of people show up. They show up on Facebook. They show up at my house. They grieve. You know, I think it's possible to strengthen your community in this way. one of the people who helped me out when Lucy was dying, she was telling me while she was over here that she had a challenge.

She had a living space challenge. And I said, oh, I have a motor home. Like, if you need to live in my motorhome, you could live in my motorhome, you know, during your transition time. She just contacted me and said she might need it. And I said, of course, you know, it's like I have an asset that I can actually provide for her because she provided for me. So I think it's this blend of online, you know, at a distance and then how those friendships that form online, like you don't know, I didn't even know so and so and so and so and so actually tracked my life, actually cared about me.

So you start to learn who cares about you. So I think in terms of a knowledge-based, support when you're making a decision, or you're grieving, or you have a curiosity about something and you put it out and people can respond to it. What do you think of this, Paula? You know, community is something that I've been thinking about a lot more. Community belonging and an emotional support is something that I've been thinking about a lot more in the past six months or so. And all of that is really a subset of being the most mentally and emotionally healthy person that you can be. Because I think there's a lot of attention that's given to physical health.

There's broadly a large awareness about physical health. There's really less of one about what creates emotional and mental health in a person. And having a strong sense of community, having a strong sense of mission and purpose and contribution, it was a really key. Well, your poster child for that. I mean, you know, your podcast, you have a large audience who is being served by your writing, your inquiry, your knowledge. And it must be very rewarding to have people write in and say the changes that they made because they heard something from you or they read something from you.

It's got to be. You know, it's officially called the helpers high. I mean, there's scientific studies about the helpers high that actually you get happier when you're helping. Yeah, I got a message on Instagram the other day. A lot of people will write to me and tell me about financial improvements that they've made. But this one stood out to me because it wasn't specifically about financial improvements. It was it was from someone who had just lost her significant other. And she said that I really have. helped her through that. And we had never communicated before. You know, she only has experienced me through my public-facing works. It was our first direct one-to-one communication. And to hear that I had played a role in her life at a time period like that, it goes back to emotional support, which lately I've started to come to consider as one of the most important things. previously, I suppose I had thought, take care of these other things so that then you have the time to work on your emotional self. And now I kind of feel the opposite.

Now I feel like work on your emotional self so that you can bring that strength into everything else that you do in your life. Right. Also, I mean, this is one of the lessons of aging is your need of others goes up. And if you are addicted to being the helper, then it's very hard. And most people I know, it's very hard to ask for help. Maybe from an expert, maybe from a therapist. You know, I mean, there are people who are professionals that you might turn to. But to ask for help from friends is a big challenge.

And you have to remember that when you helped somebody, you got to, the helpers high so that when you ask for help, you're actually giving somebody an opportunity to contribute to you. You're sort of softening that boundary of, I've got it handled, I can do everything, I'm superwoman, you're softening that boundary that people bounce off of. They want to get closer to you, but they can't get through that independence, self-reliance. But when you need others, then you open that boundary. And that's what I did last year. And it was just stunning. And it didn't diminish me. It just brought in more friends. So it's just interesting to think about the whole flow of giving and receiving. If you're only the giver, then you're actually infantilizing the receiver. Like,

I've got something that they want. So, you know, you're starting. to render that person not capable. But when you are in a flow of giving and receiving, that's actually love. You know, and we experience it. We hope to experience it with our mates. But, you know, it's like the formation of community, a lot of it, people in my community who really become community heroes and heroines, you know, the community points to these people as this is an example of who we are.

they're people who have both given and received. So, I mean, that's the thing I think about also. I mean, I realized a couple weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I gave a little talk at a conference. And because I'm getting more honest every day, I tell people like, look, you know, I am not an expert in finances. I'm an expert in resources, the flow of resources. That is love, that's money, that's help, that's underutilized resources and unmet needs. I'm making markets all the time. Making markets is incredibly human. Financial systems are sort of an add-on to humanity, but humanities always come to the marketplace for that kind of exchange.

And the marketplace itself becomes a community. It becomes where, you know, you should, show up, you gossip, you see your friends. Yeah. And so I love that. I love connecting underutilized resources and unmet needs. I love doing that. And actually how I stay afi is because I do that all the time. Like my house, when I bought my house, I had sold a house that I co-owned with other people

in Seattle. And suddenly I had a lot of money in my bank account. And it started to create some pressure on me. like, what am I going to do with this? Because I wasn't, like, super eager to just, you know, squirrel it away. And I realized, oh, I have enough. I could buy a house in the community I live in. So I found the house I lived in now.

What I call a plain brown people box. You know, it's a split entry house. There's a million of these houses in the United States. We all know them. You go up a half a flight of stairs and there's the great room and then there's the three little bedrooms and downstairs is a garage and a family room. And I looked at this thing, I thought, that is like way too much space for me. So I had this thought.

I said, this place, if I get it, has to be a site of production, not a site of consumption. Yes, you said that in your book. That exact line. I remember that line because it was so, I highlighted it. It was such a beautiful line. Yeah, so the family room became a mother-in-law apartment. And then a couple of years ago, the garage became another one. So I turned this house into a triplex.

And of course, the guest rooms was an Airbnb. So suddenly this house is a third of my income. And it's all because resourcefulness is really, I think that's the most admirable thing, is somebody who is not the almost, but I mean, I think that's a piece of what this ABC's of wealth is. It's the kind of recognizing that this thing isn't only something you're going to buy, use up, and throw away. it's not something that's going to pass through your life. It's going to be a resource. You're going to be in relationship with it.

And it's going to serve you while you're serving it. This whole idea of giving and receiving, you know, and this idea of mutuality and reciprocity, that's way more important to me than even if I. When I'm in that flow with people, that makes all the difference. That's joy. Because the world becomes an object.

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Life is either a great adventure or it's nothing, Helen Keller. Why that? What does that mean to you? Because that's what my life has been. That's been a motto for me for a long time. When you think about Helen Keller and maybe not everybody listening knows who she is, but she was born, deaf, dumb, and blind. I mean, you would predict that somebody like this would be locked into their physicality

and unable to relate to the world, unable to speak, to hear. So she had a nurse or companion who helped her figure out how to communicate. If somebody like that could say that sentence, could consider life a great adventure with all of those impediments, who am I to not take that on? The other thing about it is that I really do feel that. I mean, my quest, I have this, I'm like a moth to a flame when I take an interest in something, when there's something that's on the edge of what I know that I know is, I don't know. I just, the other thing I say about myself is I'm terminally curious.

You know, I'm the thing that's like always sniffing at the edge of the fence, you know, and digging and trying to find my way underneath it. You're a cat. I'm a cat. Yeah, so I have learned so many things in my life, and every one of them has been an adventure all the way from how to butcher a deer to, I rebuilt the engine in my car. I built a motorcycle from a box of parts. I've learned how to make wine out of beet skins. So that's some of my survivalist things.

I've learned how to grow food. I've learned how to forage. I've learned how to write a book or two. I mean, I'm right now, I'm like 72 and a half and I'm learning how to do podcast. You know, I'm not, I never stop learning. And for me, learning is the adventure. When I don't know something, I'm willing to be the idiot in the class, you know, ask the dumb question and, you know, completely get, you know, I'll be the lowest status person like, how could she say that? but I'm a learner.

And so that's the great adventure, is learning. I've also, I lived for 10 years on the road in campgrounds and doing service in communities where I would go. And so I realized that, you know, life is a, you know, life is a journey. You know, you can stabilize somewhere. There was a period of time where it said, I'm not going to live anywhere that doesn't have wheels. This makes no sense to me. Living someplace that's anchored to the ground, I completely don't think that anymore. But yeah, so I've actually, I'm someone who's gone through phases, who's gone through philosophical changes.

I had cancer 13 years ago, I guess, 14 years ago. And I gave up everything that I thought, where I lived, what I did on a daily basis. I just dropped it all. And it called Cancer My Hall Pass, you know. Well, I don't have to show up. who I thought I was. I can see who else. I ask, who else in this body wants to live, who hasn't had a chance to live? And who else? Yeah, what did you find? Who was that? What I found was I had become quite ideological about financial independence and about, you know, the approach in your money

or life. And I became like an avatar for frugality. And actually underneath the surface, I had an inner spender that was really not being fed. I wanted to do more things. I didn't want to just be that person. And yet there was so many people who counted on me to be that person that I didn't have any room. And so I did a lot of inner work on who else is in here. And that's when I moved out of where I lived. I quit all my roles of leadership.

in groups and organizations. I moved to the village I live in now. I spent my first year singing in a choir, doing ecstatic dance on Sundays and painting. And I knew that if anybody from my old life saw me, they would like, I don't get it. This isn't the one person I knew. Oh, and the fourth activity was going to the dollar store

and buying stuff for my apartment. and the thrift store. You know, so I just really, I know what I like according to what I think is right, but I don't know actually what Vicky likes. I don't know what this body likes. I don't. So I really went from living out of my head to living out of my gut, out of my intuition, you know, this sort of semaphore that seems to have opened up in my belly

that knows a lot more than what I know with my head. And you were always, you went to an Ivy League school, right? You were always cerebral. Yes. And I still, I love learning. I mean, I still, you know, for me, putting ideas together, that's like sexy. Yeah. But yes, I was raised that I had a head and then I had ambulatory appendages that hung off my head. Right. Yeah. Your body is just a vessel for your mind. Well, yeah, it's just a carrier. It's just like carries your mind around so that your mind can go do things. Exactly. Yeah. I was raised with the same idea. Yeah. Anyway, we're going far afield love, but this is fun.

Oh, this is great. This is exactly why I love for conversations to unfold organically, right? Because I'm sure you've done a million interviews that have been like, so tell me about what was the inspiration for your money or your life. Okay. Give me the brief bio. of Joe, like you've you've said it a million times and if people want to know that, you've said it a million times that that information is out there on the internet already in many forms, which is why I intentionally did not want to ask the typical questions that. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm, of course, through this fire movement, I'm connected with a lot of people who trying to figure out when to pull the trigger, you know, when they're at their number and after their number

and can they pull the trigger because, you know, this passage from one's whole identity, community, creativity, challenge, everything is in the bucket called earning money, my job. And then you take the job away and it's sort of like taking a clam out of its shell, you know, or taking like, let's say a hermit crab that has gone into a shell. you take that shell away and the hermit crab is naked. Like where am I going to go and get all these needs met that were nicely met by a job? But I am living testimony.

I've been like FI for over 40 years. Life never gets dull. And the more relational you are, the less money you need. So, I mean, I've been saving ever since. I just, my bank account keeps filling. So I'm doing a lot of local lending. now. We have a network of lenders who want to lend to local businesses and the businesses will put in a proposal and then whoever is attracted to funding that can make a deal with that

business. So I've created myself to be a revolving loan fund in my community. And I, you know, pet store, you know, two restaurants, a flower shop, solar installation, some farm So I just keep accumulating money and then I keep thinking about how do I want my money to express my values? What will make me happy about where my money is doing its work, you know, so the apartments in my house, the local lending. So life is either a great adventure or it's nothing. And to me, like the post-up, and once you get used to like, once you get your sea legs, you know, post-FI, you know, You know, you start to feel like, what's this ship like? You know, how do I balance here?

There is an endless amount of things in the world to pay attention to groups to participate in issues, hobbies, interests, everything. There's so much I don't understand how anybody has time for a job. Exactly. Honestly, Paula, this is the freedom that comes not only with age, but with, surrendering a presentable story, surrendering the narrative that you wear like a costume to go out in the world, having a looser grasp on your identity because you don't have to keep it together for a job. And these are things people can do at any age. So it's, this is not per se my message.

I could turn all this into a message. I could be like a clever little monkey and go like, oh, I said that to Paula and I said that to Paula. And maybe I can write a blog post about it or whatever. But what I found with the FI community, with the fire community, is that I'm an elder in a community I didn't know existed. Yes. And I've met people like you and Brandon and Pete and Grant and, you know, the whole nine yards. and who hold your money or life, at least in high esteem and me as the author, I find that that gives me a lot of room to think about the wisdom aspects of this path,

not just the mechanics or heroics, but the wisdom. And not even just like the social change, like, what would a world be like? Everybody was if I. I mean, I think about that stuff. But I think there's a spiritual teacher. He was asked, what is a saint? And he said, somebody who's really peoply. Or in Yiddish, it's a mensch.

You know, I think that's the big opportunity is not to be a big deal, but to be a mench, to be real, to be kind, to be permeable, to be relational. You know, love sweet love, that's what the world is made of. You know, that's what we need more of. All these songs are about love. And yet we don't have a time for love. You know, our jobs occupy so much time and brain space. Has there ever been a time that you have not been peopley or have not put such an emphasis on relationships? And what did that do to your life?

I live by myself. You know, my primary relationship is with myself. I wake up in the morning with myself. I don't think I could live. I don't think I could be relational if I weren't relational with myself, if I didn't have a lot of a long time. And I think that's another thing that changed when I had cancer because I made myself just totally available to anybody at any time

for decades of my life out of a sense of wanting to be of service. since then I have understood that it's not even understanding with my head. It's just like I spend days on end by myself. And it's very nourishing. And I don't do it in order to. I'm in relationship with myself. I'm in relationship with my cat now. You know, my new cat.

I'm in relationship with my garden. I'm in relationship with my house. It's, I think I have been lonely. There's been times in my life when I've been very disconnected from anything that's meaningful. I felt lonely and bored and out of place and confused. I felt all those things. I've been through times of depression, which is definitely, it's like you on hook from the world. and it's extremely uncomfortable

and not be able to reach out of yourself and touch anything. So it's not like I haven't had those times. I wouldn't have called myself a workaholic in my like 10 years of promoting your money or life and thinking we're going to save the world. But I do think I hollowed myself out somewhat. You know, I had a lot of repair to do afterwards. That, to me, even though I was surrounded by people,

disconnection from self, I think, is the problem. So I'm very connected with myself and I spend a lot of time alone. And I do not suffer fools gladly, as they say. And it's very hard for me to spend time in chit-chat, you know. I don't have much capacity for there's women in my community and probably men too, you know, older people who are not partnered, who form these gaggles of older women, you know, and they, I just don't have much capacity for it. The ladies who lunch, the thing. Exactly. And nothing wrong with it.

I mean, I sort of wish I did have the capacity for it, but I don't. And so, I mean, I'm a pretty high bar friend, you know, it's like people who befriended me know that there's going to be this focus. But yeah, I think disconnection is loneliness. and that can happen alone or with people. Yes. You can absolutely be lonely in a group of people. Yeah.

Feeling at odds, sixes and sevens, as they used to say. And when I was younger, I thought, oh, we're going to change the world and we're going to do it before I die. I thought it was actually going to be done by the year 2000. And I don't think that now. I just think I'm one being among almost eight billion beings. and I'm doing my part. It interests me. I mean, it keeps me engaged and meeting people who are fascinating and stuff like that.

Can you keep a sense of mission and purpose when you see yourself as one in $8 billion? Yes. Yeah? Yeah, because I'm one. You know, I'm filling my existence with good stuff. It used to require that I thought I would change the end. outer world. You know, I thought I was going to be able to pull the rug out from under the consumer society without it even noticing. But that had a lot of I, I, I, I, I, I in it.

That had a lot of, like, heroics in it. And I feel like I'm here. I've located here. And so I'm, I'm somebody who is doing my part here, knowing that there are millions, of people in this world who are doing their part where they are. I'm so inspired by them. I'm no better nor worse than people who are doing their part in other places. And some people are doing their part through their jobs. Their jobs are their work. You know, I'm not like dissing jobs. But I'm actually living in the world that I want to be living in, not through a fiction or not through promoting my ideas and trying to get them through so that everybody does them. I'm simply living like a minch and showing up for the things that I care about.

And that may just be age. You know, age starts to do that to you. You're less attached to your persona and your inflation of your importance in the world. And that goes back to what you said earlier, finding wisdom, not through tactics, not through heroics, but finding the wisdom in all of this. I think that's it. And thank you because I have not articulated this in this way ever before. I hope you enjoyed episode five out of five in this special five-part series.

And we're doing all of this in anticipation of and in celebration of episode 500, which we are about to air on April 24th, on 42424. So I hope you enjoyed the five-part series. Hit me up on Twitter or on Instagram and let me know which of these episodes you enjoyed the most. You can find me on Instagram at Paula P-A-U-L-A-P-A-N-T, and I'm on Twitter or X, as it's now called, at Afford Anything. And of course, I'll see you in episode 500, which is going to air on the 24th of April. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being part of the Afford- Anything podcast, whether this is the first episode,

you've heard or whether you're about to listen to all 500 of our episodes. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being part of this community. And I will see you in our next episode.