Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: No Worries with Jared Dillian

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

On today's show, Ben Carlson and Michael Batnick are joined by Jared Dillian to discuss his new book No Worries: How To Live a Stress-Free Financial Life. Jared is the editor of The Daily Dirtnap, a daily market newsletter for investment professionals. Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's show, Ben and I are joined by Jared Dillian, author of The Daily Dirtnap. On today's episode, we talk about why you probably shouldn't buy a German car, why Jared thinks you should pay down your mortgage, and other tips for living a stress-free financial life from his new book. No worries. How to live a stress-free financial life. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben,

are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. We are joined today by Jared Dillian. Jared is the author of a new book. I'm holding it up like the audience could see this. They can't as a podcast.

But it's called No Waries, How to Live a Stress, financial life. Jared is the author and editor of The Daily Dirtnap. Jared has a newsletter that I read. I don't know, the newsletter is not we weren't going to get these bastards. What is it? That's like essays. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. Jared spent a long time on Wall Street. He was at Lehman Brothers, doing a lot of ETF trading. On the cover of your book, Gregory Zuckerman, says an independent thinker with a unique voice. And I was just telling Jared before we started, Jared is the only person that I read, and I do read a lot of his stuff, who really and truly says what he thinks.

Jared, I'm curious because it seems like you write with so much freedom. Are you thinking, like, as you're writing on, at least what I read, we're going to get these bastards, are you thinking in the back of your mind, like, what is the person on the other end of this going to think? Or are you truly unbridled? No, I don't, I generally don't think about what somebody's going to think, although I will say that I do self-edit. It may not seem like it, but there are hot takes that are just steaming at the bottom of my hot take hampered that never come out. There's things that I would

like to write. But if you check out my second book, All the Evil of This World, that's where they all are. Like, that's, you know. I came across your, your newsletter because Michael kept just sending me stuff saying, you've got to read what Dillian wrote today. It's Yeah, you take a blowtorch to a lot of things, which you do in the book as well. But, Jared, this is your, like, sixth book? Fourth book. Fourth. All right.

Well, you'll get to a sixth. Was Street Freak the first one? Yeah, that was the first one. Yeah. So Street Freak was about your experiences during the meltdown at Lehman. Yeah, I mean, and it wasn't strictly a Lehman Brothers book. It was about me having bipolar disorder and working on Wall Street. And, you know, obviously, I worked there from.

9-11 to the bankruptcy, and it's about that time. All right. I don't think I ever asked you this. Where did the name Daily DirtNap come from? Or am I an idiot? Is that a phrase that I just don't know about, or did you make that up? So I used to be a local on the P Coast Options Exchange, and Dirtnap was a big word on that exchange.

Like the traders on the floor would say, oh, my God, the market's taking a dirt nap. It was like a big word on that floor. So I kind of brought it back to New York. and then I made a part of the newsletter. What did it mean when Mark was taking a dirt nap? Was that like Mark was getting crushed? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like a mafia phrase.

Yeah, yeah. So I think the part I like most about your book is that you do focus on the stress part because something Michael and I talk about all the time is we hear from and talk to wealthy individuals who are so stressed out about their money because of their place in life because there's people richer than them or whatever.

and the whole idea that I've always thought is that if you're constantly worried about money all the time, I don't care how rich or wealthy you are. You're not really, you're not living a rich life because it just consumes you. So I like how you take the book from that angle. At what point in your life, because you talk about your own experiences, did you let that stress side of things go and not worry about money as much anymore? Well, first of all, let me say, you know, you hit the nail on the head. Financial stress is not related to how much money you have at all. You know, like you said, there's billionaires who are, like, freaked out about money. They think they're going to lose everything, like, all the time.

And then you have people with no money living paycheck to paycheck. And as long as their basic needs are met and they don't have any debt and they don't have any risk, they are, they don't worry about money at all, you know. So I've actually, you know, one of the reasons I wrote this book, is because this is the way I have lived my life really since I graduated from college, you know, with a couple iterations along the way. Like, you know, in the book, I talk about the fact that I used to be a CF, you know, and I'm no longer a CF. So for those who haven't read the book yet, Jared's talking about cheap f***es.

And you're so right, Jared, when you talk about, like, there's really very little correlation between money and really. real happiness and in weird ways, like money and even like how stressed people are about it. I was a valet parker for many years and it was always the assholes in the nice cars who were CFs who gave me a dollar folded up a million times as if I wasn't going to unfold it. And I can't tell you how many times people in 15 year old beaters were giving me $5 and $10, like regularly. Yeah.

So tell me about your transition from. CF to how you live now? Well, in the book I talk about, I tell the story about how I went out to San Francisco in 2012 and I was, I was making decent money with the newsletter. I mean, the newsletter was pretty new, but I was making a few hundred thousand a year. And I went in the Prada store in Union Square. And I didn't even know what Prada was. Like I was a dork. I didn't, I didn't know anything about fashion. But I just had some time to kill and I walked in this Prada store and I see a pair of boots. And I was like, oh my God, those are the, those are the best boots I've ever seen. And I picked them up and I look at the price tag and they were a thousand

bucks. So I said I can't buy these boots. So I walked out of the store and I did a couple laps around Union Square. And then I thought about it. I'm like, actually, I can't. You know, I make, I make decent money. You know, I like the boots. The boots are going to make me happy. So that was the moment at which I crossed over from being a CF to just a normal person. and that has some perspective on, you know, the fact that, look, like, you make decent money, you can afford nice things. Like, that's kind of the purpose of money is to buy things that make you happy, you know? What a novel concept.

Well, I tell you, you balance it out with, you say you have the cheap fucks on one end, the higher laws on the other end, and the happy life or the stress free life is finding somewhere between. So you're spending on some things like that that you can be okay with. but other areas of your life you have to cut back. And that's a hard part for people is not going to the extremes. Yeah, and the things you have to cut back on, there's basically three big things. And it's your house, your car, and student loans, like those three things.

Like everything else is just small stuff. And people get really focused on pee-wee bullshit that does not matter. You know, like there's people who make six figures who stand in the grocery store and sit there and try to figure out which is the cheapest can of soup. You know, it just, it doesn't matter. Like, just grab a can of soup and put it in the cart, you know. But there's the three big things, the house, if you get a house that's a little bit bigger, it's going to cost $100,000, $200,000 more.

You're going to be paying interest on that over the course of 30 years. It's going to be multiple six figures in interest. That is the stuff that matters, not buying coffee on the way into. to work. The $4 you spend on a cup of coffee does not matter at all. I love how you talk about, like, people are unable to give up on small, give up small luxuries. And I cannot agree more. Small luxuries are what make life worth living. It's so weird, though, because a lot of the personal finance industry is focused on depriving yourself. And like, money is not for hoarding. The goal of life is not to have a pile of money

that you can't spend. The goal of money is to spend it and enjoy it. So talk about it is getting the big things right. You got me jumping around in my seat over here because I'm really, I'm really fired up about this. There is a personal finance industry in this country, right? You have some really big names. I can name them if you want, but they all pretty much say the same thing that you should just relentlessly cut small expenses, small luxuries. And, you know, and And it just does not matter. Like these things don't matter. It's not the little things.

It's the big things. And in this country, we're kind of taught that it's the little things that matter. In the book, I talk about the make your bed speech by Admiral McRaven, you know, where if you make your bed in the morning, you're going to have like a terrific day. It's not the little things that count. It's the big things that count. I love the stat that you put in here that I didn't realize about the car thing. So I agree that you've got to get the big things right, especially the car.

in the house and student loans is a bigger one probably now than it was back in the day. But you said the average person spends 4% of their time driving a car. And I am more of an A to B kind of guy. But I say it. Now say it. You're a big truck shamer. Well, no, I understand. Listen, I'm okay with people driving a luxury vehicle or driving a huge truck that costs 80 grand

as long as their other stuff is taken care of. And the whole point you make in the book, too, that I really like is you're saying, listen, when you're young, you're probably going to have to be more of a CF. And you're going to have to save a little bit. and but your relationship with money should change and evolve over time as you make more money and progress to your career. And that's exactly what's happened to me. And I think that that's the most important point for people. And it's hard if you pigeonhole yourself into one area and or one way of looking at money that it's hard to ever change your mind and get out of the mindset.

Yeah, cars, cars really do not matter, you know. I mean, what I talk about in the book is that the capacity utilization of a car is 4%. Right. So if you had, four people in a car driving 24 hours a day, the capacity utilization would be 100%. And instead, we have one person. You drive it a half hour to work. It sits in the parking lot all day. You drive it a half hour home. It sits in your driveway. You're using it 4% of the time. And cars just do not matter. So I'm a Toyota guy. Like you mentioned Toyota and chill, right? Like I buy Toyotas. I drive them for 10 years. They're fully depreciated. And, And that's how you end up saving money.

I love this quote, worrying about money is stupid because there are just, there are choices that we can make to reduce that worry. And financial stress is the source of most people's stress. And it just need not be that way. The fire, the fire movement, you take a blowtorch to this and I love it. Michael sent me this a couple weeks ago. Yeah, you really go after the park community. Your essay on fire was hilarious.

But you wrote, I don't want to live in deprivation for 15 years. so that I could live in deprivation for the next 40 years. I bet and I joke about this quite a bit. I don't understand this mentality. I think this has to be deep rooted in some sort of psychological, something, or the other. It's the fire movement is an anti-consumption movement, right? It's about the idea that we shouldn't consume anything. We shouldn't produce anything.

we should just exist and just let time pass. Like, it is, it is one of the, you know, you know what's funny is there's the whole van life thing, which goes along with this thing, you probably heard about van life where you sell off all your positions and you drive around in a van. Like, you know, Chris Farley, there's that joke about living in a van down by the river.

Well, now people actually want to live in a van down by the river, you know. Well, I think the other thing is about, about fire especially is a lot of people just really hate their jobs and they don't look what they do and they think if I save 80% of my income for the next eight years and I live off of it forever, I don't have to go to this soul-sucking job anymore. I think that would solve a lot of the problems for people if they actually found a career or a company that they actually enjoyed working for. 100%. But, you know, what I've found is the people who hate their jobs

will hate their jobs no matter what job they have, right? It's really about, it's really about your attitude. You know, I've never hated a job. Like, I was in the Coast Guard, like I was in the military. It was hard. I didn't hate my job. You know, I wasn't like dying to get out of there every day. So I think it's really, there's a certain, there's a certain psychological profile of somebody

who dislikes their job and they want to stop working. But then you stop working and what are you doing with all this time? You know, like, what are you doing with this time? And then I talked about the fact that, okay, you saved up a million bucks and you're age 35 and you dropped out of the workforce. And what are you doing for the next 50 years? You're watching that million dollars tick up, tick down, go up and down every day. Anytime the market goes down 20 percent, you're freaking out. You think you have to go back to work.

Like, it's miserable. I don't know why anybody would choose this. It also seems socially isolating. Yeah. Like, what do you talk? What do you, if you don't know co-workers and no, whatever. Okay, let's talk about houses. So you say a house is not an investment.

I completely agree. My insurance bill that I pay today proves this. People like to talk about the house that their parents bought for $150, that's now worth $400 without talking about all the things, all of the expenses that went into that. You like prepaying a mortgage as quickly as possible. I think Ben and I, this might not surprise you, would disagree. However, however, I feel like the way that you lay it out, I understand completely.

And I think to prepay or to not prepay your house is one of the most personal things about personal finance where I see both sides. I don't think there's like a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do. I really think that this is situation, financial dependent, personality dependent, all and all the sort of things. With that said, why do you like to prepay in the more? mortgage. So in 2010, when I moved to South Carolina, I bought a pretty cheap house. I mean, housing values around here are pretty cheap anyway, but it was a $280,000 house. And I was like, screw it, I'm just going to pay cash. I have the cash. I'll just pay cash. I lived in that house for five years. Best five years ever. Like, didn't have a mortgage payment, you know. And I started

to think about it. I'm like, you know, no matter what bad things happen in my life, whether I get into a car accident or I get cancer or I have legal problems or something, nobody can take this house away from me. It's paid for. I own it free and clear. Nobody can take it away from me and that peace of mind was incredible. The next house I bought in 2015, I put 35% down and I paid that mortgage off in three and a half years. So for the last six or seven years, I've been living in it free and clear. Same thing. So it's really the one downside of prepaying your mortgage, which I will admit to, is you lose liquidity. Okay. So once you send that check into the bank, you can't get that money out, not until you sell the house. But you could afford that. You

could afford to give it a liquidity. Yeah. Yeah. So it really is situation dependent. The thing that I like, the angle that I like is, of course, you're paying way less interest, right? That's a given. But if you think about paths of return. Yeah, like I would say, why would the hell would I ever pay off a 3% mortgage when I could invest it and do better than 3%. But your point is that you're paying that 3% off in a straight line. Like, you know that you're getting it. You don't know what you're getting in the market in any given year. And when you combine that with the peace of mind with the interest, I totally, I wouldn't push back. I get it. It's just. You never got a little tempted to take some money on at 3% to borrow against it. Just a little tempted. No, I never did.

And the funny, and that calculus has changed now that interest rates are higher. Yeah. So before, you could earn a certain 3% or an uncertain 9%, but now you can earn a certain 7% or an uncertain 9%. It makes, with interest rates higher, it makes much more sense to pay off the mortgage now than it did a couple years ago. I agree with that. One of the chapters in the book, you talk about relationships and money, and you talk about, obviously, one of the most important things you, choices you make is, your spouse than being on the same page. But in the next segment, you talk about money and friends.

And I actually think friends add more stress-sus situation than ever these days when it comes to thinking about your finances the right way, because it's so much easier to see the vacations your friends are taking on social media and the stuff they're buying and comparing yourself to the Jones as used to be just the people down the block or the people that you worked with. And now it's literally everyone on Instagram and social media. And it's impossible to not compare yourself to others. So how do you think about that in terms of trying to live a stress-free financial life

and comparing yourself to others when it's so hard to just live in your own bubble these days? Yeah, it's funny. Like, I never had that reflex. You know, I'm on Facebook, like a lot of Generation Xers, and I see, you know, I have some very wealthy friends, much wealthier than I am. I'm friends with a guy who built this, like, $15 million house in Silicon Valley. Like, I'm, you know, I'm friends with a lot of rich people, and I look at them, and I'm just like, that's their path, and I'm on my path, and that's totally fine, you know.

So I don't get FOMO. Like, like, I just, I don't get it in the stock market. I don't get it in real life. I don't, I don't really, I don't covet my neighbor's possessions. You know, I just kind of do my own thing. So that's, that's unique. Most people, most people cannot watch somebody who they feel is intellectually, inferior to them make more money. And I totally get that. It is a very normal thing to cover it,

especially if it's like the worst is, I guess, let's just use crypto as an example, where you see people that you think are dumb in something that you think is dumb getting rich. That is really difficult to stand by. So I'll tell you what, actually. The first time I bought Bitcoin was in 2000, it was June 2020. And the reason why I bought it was it was emotional. Howard Lindsay calls a schmuck insurance. For me, it was an emotional hedge against it going to 100,000. I do have FOMO. And I know that if I saw this go to 100,000 and I owned zero, I would spontaneously combust. Like, I would just go up and smoke. So in order to protect myself, because I'm weak, I am weak and I'm not afraid to admit

it, in order to protect myself from having those bad feelings, I capitulate. I said, I got to own some of this. Michael always says, I know myself. Michael always says, I'm going to be fearful and other people are fearful. So maybe that's the part is, like, Jared, you seem to know yourself and be comfortable in your skin. Michael does too. I do think that's an important part of it is, is understanding your own personality and what

the levers are that are going to, they're going to impact your feelings about money. Yeah. Yeah. I think the best way to really find out who you are as an investor is to just get after it. Like, Ben and I have very different predisposition. I am a gambler. When Ben opened his first account, I think, Ben, did you buy a balance? Did you buy a Target Date Fund?

I had a Target Date Fund on my IRA was my first ever investment. His first ever investor was a Target Date fund. Now, I am able to bucket my personalities. Like, in my retirement funds, I am Jack Bogle. Like, I just keep buying index funds and I will keep doing that forever. And then in my this account and my that account, I behave much differently, which I don't think is totally. irrational? Well, it is irrational. There is, you know, Richard Thaler talks about this,

this ideal of compartmentalization, like, because money is fungible, right? But it's rational. It's rational irrationality. It's rational or rationality, yes. My first investment was also an index fund in 1997. I bought a Vanguard index fund. The first stock I bought was Philip Morris in fall of 1998, the week before the Engel case, you know, the master settlement agreement before. So it was trading at 18 or 19 bucks. The stock was totally bombed out. It had like an 8 or 10 percent dividend. And I bought it. And the stock went up after the settlement. And it went to 25. And I sold it. And then it went to 80. So you always hear these stories about people on Wall Street where they make all this money. They get these big bonuses. And they might be

the masters of the universe when it comes to investing in our same markets, but they're terrible at managing their own personal finances. Did you learn anything like that when you worked on Wall Street that you saw people overspending or not paying attention? Because that's kind of the, okay, so you learned a lot about personal finance that way. Yeah. I mean, it was, there were, you know, coming out of Lehman Brothers, you know, I lost a lot of money in stock. My stock went to zero, right? You know, I basically, in the financial crisis, I took a 50% haircut with my personal investments in the Lehman stock, you know, there were some people who were basically financially ruined by the bankruptcy. And there were some people who were totally fine. And it all depends upon how you structure

your financial affairs. Some people were very conservative. So, Jared, you wrote, there's nothing wrong with trading stocks recreationally as long as you're being honest about your intentions. That's what I do in one of my accounts. I, I'm not. like slinging, right? I pretty much buy and with the intention of holding, at least for a little while, but I do so because I get personal enjoyment out of it. I have zero expectations that I'm going to beat the S&P 500, but the purpose of that financial account is not to beat the SEP 500. It's to provide me with entertainment. I know that from what I've seen in your writing, you don't have that gene.

You approach the investing side much less. You're not looking for thrills. No, no, absolutely not. No. The funny thing is, is that I'm in the financial entertainment business. I have a newsletter for sophisticated investors. And the goal is to beat the S&P 500. I don't think I do consistently, you know, but it's fun to try. It's fun to think that you can.

There's a lot of people who invest as a hobby, right? And that's what it is. It's a hobby. And that's a good hobby to have. But if the hobby sort of takes over your life and you devote 100% of your assets to some trading account where you think you're going to beat the markets, You know, it's a couple months ago, I talked to somebody who talked to somebody who worked at one of the online brokerages. Okay, I won't say which one. But they said the online brokerages, their business model is basically to acquire new customers all the time. Because what happens is they acquire a customer, they get $10,000 or $20,000 in funds, and over the course of about five years, that goes to zero. And they stop trading.

And then they have to acquire new customers. Like, that's generally what happens with people's recreational trading activity is that over time, it will go to zero. I like- Buy high, sell love or put it into Brooke. Yeah. One of the parts of the book that I like for you that you say, that mythly dispel, you say, like, listen, everyone in the U.S. is not some YOLO spender who's buying the big truck and totally we're doing it. Most people are pretty decent with their money. And I think that's true with investing, too. But you say, you know, people budget and they buy stuff within their means, but they don't try.

to make more money. And I think that's the reason that the frugality side of personal finances is so big, because it's easier to talk about saving money than it is to help people earn more money. And that is where the big changes come when you make more money. It's way easier for people to save more money when they make more. I think that's pretty obvious. And it's something that not a lot of people think about, like, oh, that's the part that I should be, the lever I should be pulling more as opposed to, you know, making me on toothpaste in the backyard or whatever. You know, Dave Ramsey, Susie Ormond, the way they look at the world is you have a pie, right? This is all the pie we have, and we're going to slice this pie into smaller and

smaller pieces. And what I say in the first couple chapters of the book is, just go make another pie, right? Like, it's, the other thing about this is cutting expenses is miserable. Like, if you're, If you're having to undergo austerity and you're cutting expenses, it is the worst thing in the world. You know what's fun, though? What's fun is going out and making more money. Like, that's actually fun. I mean, yes, it's more work, but it's, look, like, there's been a couple times in my life where I've had, like, two or three jobs at the same time, and I'm working like 16, 18 hours a day.

Those were actually the happiest times in my life. Yeah, so what was the deal? You were in the Coast Guard and getting your MBA at the same time and starting to work on Wall Street. Yeah. So my typical day was I would get up at 3.45 in the morning and I would go down to the P Coast. Now I would get down there around 5.30 and I would work until noon. But, yeah, what's the P Coast? Coast Oxygen Exchange, right? So I would- Where was that, by the way?

Where was it? Yeah. San Francisco, downtown. Okay. And then at noon, I would come back and work for the Coast Guard. until 10 at night, and then I would go home and study until about one or two in the morning, and then I would get up like two hours later and do it again. Like, I did that for about a year and a half.

I was sleeping like two hours a night. So. Brutal. It was awesome. You talk about money as being a choice, and I don't think a lot of people would have like the chutzpah to say that, because in certain situations, people have the mental wherewithal, the fortitude, the personality, the drive to make it happen, not everybody is born into a situation where they even would know where to begin to make more money.

No, that's true. I mean, a lot of this, but I wasn't born into that situation. You know what I mean? My mother was a teacher, and then she was a substance abuse counselor, and my father was in the Coast Guard. He was a pilot. So, and my parents divorced when I was seven, and then I moved in with my grandmother, and we were living on like $10,000 a year, right? Like, there was nobody in my family saying, you should go work on Wall Street or you should start a business or do anything like that.

Like, I just figured it out for myself. But the point in the first chapter of the book, I say we all get to choose how much money we have. It is a choice. We get to choose how much money we have. Like, there are things I could be doing to make more money, which I don't do because I don't want to do them. Like, I could work as a strategist at a bank and, like, double or say double my salary, right? Like, I could do that. Or I could start a hedge fund.

Like, I have the ability to do that. I don't want to do that. My life is, like, I'm happy, and I am choosing how much money I have. Like, we all choose. let's talk about the market a little bit. So when you're writing, how often do you write the newsletter? Is that daily? Yeah, every day, yeah. Every day. So every day it goes out. What are we talking about now? What's on your mind? You know, I've been, I've been bearish on stocks for the last, really since about the middle of December, since about 4,800 in the S&P. And I've been wrong for about the last 5%. And that's been a little bit painful. Well, probably the biggest bet in the newsletter recently, when rates were above 5%, I had a big bet that rates would come down.

And that was one of the best trades of the last couple of years. So that worked out really well. So when you're expressing that posture, do you have any preferred vehicles? Are you using futures or ETFs or what exactly? All the above, yeah. Who's your audience? Who's your main audience? Is it mostly DIY traders?

Is it people on Wall Street, a little bit of both? It is, I would say, 40 or 50% institutional, you know, fast money types, and probably 50% or 60%, not necessarily retail investors. They're high net worth. They're more sophisticated. But yeah, that's my audience. So the book is called No Waries, How to Live a Stress Free Financial Life. And I love the mentality of the goal is not to be a billionaire.

The goal is to be happy. Yeah. That's most personal finance books. Like this is what, you know, when I started looking into this five or six years ago, I would go into the bookstore and you would see these schlocky books like 12 easy ways to become a millionaire and stuff like that. And I'm like, you know, the goal isn't necessarily to be a millionaire. The goal is to be happy with your financial situation.

So this is really a book about financial happiness. And financial stress, you know, as you said, is the worst kind of stress because it compounds all your other stress. If you're experiencing stress in another area of your life, let's say you have a kid who's a miscreant and is getting suspended from school or you have marriage problems or substance abuse or something like that, financial stress makes all of it worse, makes all of it worse. And it's unnecessary. It's all about how you structure your life, your financial life. Jadda, before we get out of here, I want to throw one theory that I have at you

about financial stress. I think there is a number at which point money starts to dominate your life in a bad way. And I don't think that number is too high. I don't know. I'm sure it's different for everybody. I don't know if it's $8 million or $20 million where you start to experience significant lifestyle creep where, God forbid, the money starts to go in reverse, your income starts going to reverse. You can't, you can't downshift because downshifting is very painful. People start to know about your wealth because it becomes inevitable. It becomes difficult to hide. What's your thoughts on too much money becoming a huge source of stress? Well, you know, I worked on Wall Street in a time where the money was very easy and people

thought it would go on forever. And people structured their life in such a way. They had huge costs of carry. They had big houses. They had expensive cars and stuff like that. And then the game of musical chair stopped and they were stuck. And some people really, really got hurt by that, you know. So if you find yourself in a situation where you're making decent money, the answer is put it aside. You know, put it aside. Pay down debt, build up savings. And, you know, if you expect, if you experience a downturn, it won't be as painful, and you'll be able to scramble and do something else. All right.

You don't make it super easy to subscribe to the Daily DirtNap, and I have to know why. I'm sure there's a story behind that. So you went to the website. Of course I did. So you have to email you. And I know there's a story behind that, because for most places, you just click a button and boom you're in. Why did you do it that way?

So a couple reasons. first of all, I've had the form on the website where people can sign up, and my business went to zero. Like, people didn't use the form, right? If I have an email and people email me and I can send a personal response, the likelihood that they're going to subscribe goes way up. So it creates some work for me, but it actually has a much higher success rate. Like, believe it or not, the system works, you know. Also, the other thing I can do is I can offer. people discounts. Like if I just have a form for 795 bucks on the site, if somebody comes in and

they're a student in a university, I can give them a lower rate and stuff like that. So I used to know a guy who ran an RIA and he only would market the people who had $25 million in up. And the only way you could get in touch with him was writing a one page letter about why you want to become a client. And it was like self-selecting. To your point, he knew that that person was going to become a client if they reached out that way. It makes sense. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Jared, congrats in the book. No worries how to live a stress-free financial life. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

We appreciate you coming on today. Thanks, man. Thanks both of you.