Something You Should Know - Your Fascinating Sense of Smell & How to Time The Important Experiences in Your Life

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

How many things are taking up space in your house that you will never, ever, ever use again? This episode begins with some simple advice that will help you clear out some things from your home or office and free up some space for what’s really important. Source: Barbara Hemphill author of “Love It or Lose It (https://amzn.to/31wfIdq) Your sense of smell is fascinating. Still, it is the one sense that people would be most likely to give up if they had to. That’s likely because people don’t realize how important smell is to your physical and emotional well-being. Here to explain why smell is important and how to make the most of it is Rachel Herz. Rachel is a researcher who teaches at Brown University and Boston College and is author of the book The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell (https://amzn.to/3gtkP21) A lot of people believe that playing classical music helps plants grow. People also believe that certain types of music will make babies smarter. But what does this research say? Listen and find out Dan Levitan author of This Is Your Brain On Music https://amzn.to/3jivqyJ We all have things we want to do before we die. What often happens though is, people put off those experiences until later in life - often after they retire. However, for many experiences, it isn’t just having the experience – it is WHEN you have it. Some things are meant to happen when you are 30 not 70. Bill Perkins has given this a lot of thought. Bill is a hedge fund manager, Hollywood film producer, high stakes tournament poker player and author of the book Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life (https://amzn.to/2YEt31d). Listen as he explains how timing is so important when it comes to the experiences in your life.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The one smell that is pretty much universally loved is the scent of vanilla. And the scent of vanilla is actually a chemical that's present in breast milk. It's also present in formula. Also, do plants really grow better if you play classical music to them? And the important experiences in your life. It's not just having them, it's when you have them. We have many, many deaths. The college student, he dies and moves on and goes and gets a job. The single person, he or she dies, gets married. And in those periods, there are experiences that are meant for that time period.

And if you don't have those experiences, then it's too late. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and

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Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know.

And a special welcome to new listeners. We have some new listeners this week. And I hope you like what you hear, that you'll subscribe to this podcast and tell your friends. You know, I guess it's human nature to save things to a greater or lesser degree. Some people, you know, some people save everything, but there is something about saving things. And if you're saving old bank statements or electric bills, or you've got the old VCR in the garage, or maybe some audio cassettes,

you have to ask yourself, why? You could probably get rid of a lot of it. Remember, unless you've committed fraud, the IRS won't come after you for anything tax-related that's older than three years. That old VCR? Yeah, it's not coming back. Neither are those old audio cassettes. Or that favorite shirt from 1978 that seemed like such a nice shirt at the time. Professional organizer Barbara Hemphill recommends that you put stuff like

that in a box and write the current date on the outside of the box. If you never open that box in the next year, then you don't really need what's inside, so you can safely get rid of it. She says in her 20-plus years of helping people

and corporations get rid of old stuff, never once has anybody told her they wished that they'd kept something that they'd thrown away. Not once. And that is something you should know. Of all your senses, the one you probably don't think that much about

is your sense of smell. Yeah, it's there there and you notice it when something smells particularly nice or particularly horrible or particularly delicious. But actually, your sense of smell is really fascinating. Things that smell good to you smell bad to others. Things that smell good to you stop smelling good to you if there's too much of it. If you lose your sense of smell, there are some things you can do to get it back. And here to discuss all of this and much more is Rachel Herz. Rachel teaches at Boston College and at Brown University. She's written for Psychology Today and the Huffington Post and other publications. And she is the author of several books, including The Scent of Desire, Discovering Our Enigmatic

Sense of Smell. Welcome, Rachel. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me on. So I've always found the sense of smell to be particularly interesting. But I would bet if you asked people, all right, you have to give up one of your five senses, I bet sense of smell would be right at the top of that list. Because I just don't think people appreciate it that much or care about it that much. It's just not that

important. You're absolutely right about that. And not only is it the top sense for most people to think about giving up, it actually ranks with losing your big toe in terms of how much people care about things they would lose off of their body. So forget about even competing with the other senses, it's like competing with a tiny appendage on one foot. So yes, most people really don't realize how important their sense of smell is. And even the medical community dismisses it as well. I mean, if you look at the value that life insurances place on losing your sense of smell, they use the American Medical Association value of your senses in terms of your life's worth. And the sense of smell is given 1 to 5%, and vision is given 85%.

And so you said people don't appreciate how important your sense of smell is. Well, so how important is it? Like, so for example, what? Why does it have such bad PR if it's so important? Well, just going back to the bad PR, I think part of the bad PR is actually a hangover from the Victorian era, and how, you and how Queen Victoria said that animals smell and civilized humans don't. And actually, smell has been used as a pejorative way of classifying people, like literally in terms of lower classes. It's been used in racism.

It's been used in a lot of things to sort of denigrate people and distinguish them from the hires and the lowers. And so there is really this sort of kind of pejorative concept in people's minds about just even the word smell. I mean, scent is kind of a nicer word. Odor is down there with smell. It's even probably lower than smell itself. So I think, though, that as a function of that and as a function also of the fact that we are so visual in terms of how we go about kind of collecting the data of

the world around us that we don't realize how our sense of smell is constantly picking up everything that's around us and integrating it and actually giving real depth and meaning to our existence until we are unfortunate enough to lose it if we do lose it and especially suddenly in an accident which is something I tend to do is work with people who have lost their sense of smell in a traumatic accident, and the insurance company doesn't care, and their whole life has been completely derailed, and I'm there to say, no, wait a second. It actually is involved in everything, and it truly is from our sense of self to our interpersonal relationships to our cognitive abilities to our

emotional health. Our sense of smell is really deeply involved in all those aspects of life. So I don't know what I mean exactly in terms of dates by modern times, but prior to modern times, wasn't the world a horrible smelling place? Well, I mean, again, everything is relative. So if you are used to the sort of smell of open sewage, for example, and people who are basically unwashed, then that smell is actually just kind of a smell of daily life. And there are lots of examples through history of the way people not only tolerated what we would maybe call high stenches, but actually sought them out. For example, you know, there was a period of time where rotted meat rotted in a certain

way where it gave off quite a pungent odor, was considered better to eat. And in fact, even today, the Inuits who live in the Bering Strait actually eat sort of rotted seal meat, rotted other kinds of meat that has very, very pungent odor, and they actually make a big deal about how good that is. So again, this is really cultural relativism or historical relativism. And even to give you another example that's more recent and sort of more sort of maybe in the culture we're familiar with, that the Olympics were actually going to be potentially in China in the 1990s. And the Olympic Committee went to Beijing and assessed the scenario for holding the Olympics,

and they said, no, you can't have the Olympics here because there are no public toilets within sort of available walking distance. And instead there were these sort of available walking distance. And instead, there were these sort of long houses, basically outhouses, where there were sort of communal toilets with minimal running water. And they had a very strong open sewage smell. And especially in the summer, that would have been not at all appreciated by the Western and European visitors. So they said, you have to get the sort of public toilet situation fixed before we let you have the Olympics here. And when the government said, okay, we're going to spend all this money

and get rid of all our outhouse sort of situations and build public toilets that are in the Western tradition, there was actually a big outcry from citizens saying, well, why don't you spend that money on education? Why don't you spend that money on health care? Who cares about that? So, you know, and this is just as far back as the 90s. Because it would seem to me, even if you were more or less used to those city smells

and rotting meat and all that in a more urban area, if you went out to the country on a beautiful spring day and the flowers are smelling so great, and then you go back to the city, it would seem to me that you would go, you know, this isn't really that great. Maybe we ought to clean this up. working on and writing about, our perception of what smells good and what smells bad is learned and based on our personal experiences, as well as our cultural kind of teachings. So the reason why you think that the flowers smell good, and now there's aspects of the flower scent itself that may be also liked because it has sweet connotations, and sweet connotations because the taste of sweet is innately positive can sort of imbue a scent that has sweet aspects to its smell with a more positive note. But the sense of smell itself is actually completely sort of tabula rasa until we get experiences that then code what's good and what's bad.

And the slight modification I'll say to this rule is that depending upon how strong a smell is to you, whether it's your favorite perfume or garbage, the more it smells strong, the worse you're going to find it, the more averse it's going to be. So your favorite smell, really, really strong, is going to be unpleasant, just like any negative smell. And there's going to be degrees to which you can tolerate both of them. But after that, if you have, you know, a positive association to gasoline, you're going to love that smell. Likewise, skunk, likewise, whatever the meaningfulness of the smell is to you. Actually, give an example in The Scent of Desire about the Maasai who actually use cow dung

to dress their hair and like kind of condition it and use it also as a little bit of a dye. And who would put cow poop in their hair? You know, kind of willingly as it were.

So it really is to do with what you think the smell is and what it means to you. If it's cosmetic, then hell yes. If it's, you know, something disgusting and something you want to stay away from, then you're going to choose that route. Well, who hasn't had the experience of, you know, that person who walks in with way, you know, little perfume goes a long way.

And even if you like that perfume, if they're wearing too much, it's overwhelming and it's unpleasant. Exactly. And that brings up something else, which is really important with our sense of smell, and that the person who is dousing themselves every day with their cologne or perfume bottle has actually stopped being able to smell their fragrance themselves. And that's why they put so much on, because they're trying to get a glimmer of it. And that's to do with a process called adaptation,

which I'll get to in a second. But what we're experiencing is this overdose and the fact that it's super strong. And it's like, you know, you're kind of coughing as you walk by them because they're so drenched in it. But what happens when we're exposed to a scent all the time, and it's the same thing with the smell of our house. So many people have the experience that they go away on vacation for a couple of weeks

and they come back to their house and they walk and go, oh, the house smells funny. Well, it may be that you had your windows closed and so on, so some of the smells may have brewed a bit more than usual, but that's actually how your house always smelled, and you have just become unable to detect it. It's like being nose blind, as it were. And the same thing happens with our daily fragrances that we use,

whether shampoo or perfumes and so on. as it were. And the same thing happens with our daily fragrances that we use, whether, you know, shampoo or perfumes and so on. And the thing to do is to actually stop using those fragrances for a period of time, and then you'll get refreshed again in terms of being able to smell them. There's something about the sense of smell. I think everyone has this experience, and I really appreciate this experience, that there are certain smells that as soon as you smell them, it immediately takes you back in time to a place or a memory or something. It is so powerful. And what's going on there? And so what is going on there? And it is actually, the sense of smell is uniquely emotional and uniquely evocative in terms of being able to transport us back to a time and place,

and actually may even unlock a memory for us that might otherwise have been forever forgotten. And that's actually something else, which is really interesting about the sense of smell. But what's going on is actually something neurological, and that is the fact that where the sense of smell is processed in the brain is where emotion and associative learning and memory is processed. It's the exact same space. And so before even we get to sort of thinking about, oh, I was doing this and so-and-so was there, you have this immediate kind of rush of a kind of a visceral sense of

being back there, of feeling a certain emotion. And then after that, you can get to the what was that, what was happening and so forth. Although sometimes we never even get to that, what was happening and so forth. We're just kind of sort of embedded in this feeling. That can sometimes be a bit frustrating, but it's because of where the sense of smell is processed in the brain. It's literally the same structures, the amygdala and the hippocampus, that is where emotion and associated learning and memory is processed. That's the primary olfactory cortex. That's where smell is processed.

We are talking about your fascinating sense of smell, and my guest is Rachel Herz. She is a researcher and author of the book, The Scent of Desire, discovering our enigmatic sense of smell. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool.

And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Rachel, I think everybody has heard some science teacher or somebody on TV say that a big part of the sense of taste is actually the sense of smell. True? salt, sour, sweet, and bitter, and maybe umami, and maybe a couple of other things, but let's just stick to the basic four. And those are to do with the chemicals that are in our mouth that our taste buds are sensing, and that is what taste is. That is it. But when we're eating, we are also,

we're chewing the food, whatever it is, and all the aromatics are being released in our mouth from chewing. And it's the aromatics that make bacon smell like bacon. And the taste of bacon, by the way, is just salt. So when we're consuming it, it's all to do with the scent, and the scent plus the taste is what makes flavor. So when people talk about taste colloquially, 99.9% of the time they really mean flavor. And the way that this works is actually there's an opening at the back of your mouth And colloquially, 99.9% of the time, they really mean flavor. And the way that this works is actually there's an opening at the back of your mouth that goes up into your nose.

And anyone who's ever, like, been laughing and had maybe something in their mouth and maybe it kind of accidentally came out of their nose might realize this. And it's also why if you have a cold and your nose is all blocked up and food doesn't seem to taste right, that's because that passageway is being blocked at that time. But when you're normally eating and breathing, you're inhaling while you're chewing, that's bringing the molecules of the aroma up back through the back of the mouth and into the nose and landing on the olfactory receptors, just like it would if you were sniffing in from your nostrils, and then the exhale lets it whoosh all by, and that's where you get the scent plus the taste, and that makes flavor. Is it pretty common that as you get older that your sense of smell diminishes, just like your

other senses? You know, your eyesight may not be as good as it was when you were younger. Same thing for smell? Yes, so just like with our other senses, our sense of smell tends to fall off as we age. And the reason for this actually is because those olfactory receptors that are what are sensing all the odors that are in our environment, they're naturally actually dying off and being replaced on approximately a monthly basis. This is what's going on normally throughout our life. So they're dying off, they're being replaced, and everything is working properly. But as we get older, that dying off still happens, but the replacement doesn't happen as effectively.

So we end up with fewer and fewer functioning olfactory receptors and therefore less and less detection. But there's a really large degree of individual variability with this. So some people are in their 80s and their sense of smell truly is fine. And some people are a lot younger and their sense of smell has really diminished. And where that can be very important. So if you're in your 40s or your early 50s and you've noticed that there's a dramatic decline in your sense of smell, this can actually be a warning signal for neurological disease and specifically either Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. Both of those diseases have loss of smell that occurs way before

any of the other overt symptoms that people are typically familiar with. And the sooner that the treatment can be put into place for those illnesses, the better the prognosis and the better the quality of life. Is it anything like the sense of hearing in this regard that, because I smell some things really good and people who have hearing loss often can hear some frequencies a lot better than others. Is there any of that? Or if your sense of smell deteriorates, you're not smelling anything very well. No, I think you just hit on something actually really important and really good to bring up, which is that when I told you that there are these receptors that are dying off and

not getting replaced, well, the different receptors are actually responsive to different kinds of smells out there. And if you've lost some that are, let's say, able to detect some of the smells in, let's say, bacon or roses or whatever the case might be, but your ability to detect the smells of bananas and coffee are still replenishing themselves normally, then you're going to notice a decrease in some of the smells that you're experiencing, but not others. Has anybody come up with, you know, when your eyesight goes bad, we have glasses. When your hearing goes bad, we have hearing aids.

If your sense of smell goes bad, we have nothing. Unfortunately, nothing yet. However, something that everyone can do is something called smell training. And you can get kits that you can do this with, or you can just do it with things in your house. And all you need to do is take a set of odors. So let's say take four of them. You can go to your spice rack or something and sniff each of those odors for a few seconds, a couple of times and do it, you know, each odor a few times, move on to the next one and so forth. And then a few hours later, do it again.

Do it several times each day with that set of odors for, let's say, 12 weeks. And people have really seen major improvements with their sense of smell and independently of how the loss has occurred. The only problem that sort of tends to work its way into this is if you've had a traumatic loss where there's been some neurological damage, it seems like the smell training is less effective but not absolutely ineffective. I mean, it can definitely work for some people. So just exercising your nose literally can really improve your sense of smell. And not just for the sense of those spices in your spice rack, your sense of smell overall.

Right. And this is another thing to do. And I'm glad you brought that up because what you should do is, let's say, do this with those four spices, let's say, for, you know, nine to 12 weeks and then move on to another set so that you are, because the idea is that, you know, different receptors are going to be responsive to different types of odorants that are out there. And, you know, you may be sort of reactivating those sets, or maybe you're also reactivating all of them, but the more that you can train with, kind of the more different kinds of weights you can use, or the more different sort of machines you use in your circuit, the more your whole body or your

whole olfactory system is going to get re-geared again. So yes, absolutely. It seems like this translates way beyond those four scents, but for maximal benefit, you want to do a different set of four for a period of time. So we've talked about how it's all very individual and it all is cultural and all this, but are there any smells, any scents that are universally loved? So the one smell that is pretty much universally loved, and this is actually because of also learning, is the scent of vanilla. And the scent of vanilla is actually a chemical that's present in breast milk. It's also present in formula. So if, and everybody who's alive has been either formula fed or breastfed and that aroma quality, which is connected to

nurturing and cuddling. And there's also some sweet taste in that and sweet taste, by the way, is innately positive because sweet equals energy equals calories and we're programmed to like it. So the fact that the scent of vanilla is paired with food, nurturing, cuddling, and sweet taste makes it pretty much universally loved. You know, I've often wondered if I'm smelling, let's say I'm smelling a rose, and you smell the same rose, do we smell the same thing? Is your perception the same rose. Do we smell the same thing? Is your perception the same? Or could you be smelling a rose and smell what I think of as the smell of gasoline? I mean, could it be that different? Or are we probably smelling exactly the same thing?

That's also a great question. And my answer is that a rose is not a rose. It's not a rose, as it were, or a rose by any other name is not the same. And it is because of the fact that we both call that a rose and that generally speaking, we're going to be getting a lot of the same sort of chemical odor and receptor connections, but we're also going to be having some differences. And as a function of those differences, the way I actually perceive that rose and the way you perceive that rose are going to be different. And it could also very well be the case that maybe the label that you've learned to a smell

that is whatever it is, you call one thing and I call it something else. So to give a better example, rose is maybe a little hard to do that with, but for example, the smell of chlorine. I may call that smell swimming pool. You may call that smell bleach. And someone else might call it chlorine. And it might mean completely different things as a function of whether I call it swimming pool or I call it bleach.

And it may also then smell more good or more bad or stronger or weaker. And, in fact, just because of the way we call it something It may also then smell more good or more bad or stronger or weaker. And in fact, just because of the way we call it something and the way it's coded in our mind associated with, let's say, doing laundry, which we hate, or summertime and swimming, which we love, we're going to have a very different perceptual experience of the smell, even if, let's just say in this case, our noses were actually perceiving exactly the same chemicals. But in all likelihood, they aren't going to be exactly perceiving them as the

same. But then what I'm saying is we have this next layer, which kind of complicates the picture, and that is, what does this smell mean to me? And what is it to me? And there's a lot of variability in that too, because unfortunately, we really don't have smell and tell the way we do with kids and everything else where you're pointing to things and saying, look at the doggy and look at this and see that and hear that. We really don't do that very much with smell. And a lot of things just get kind of personally coded. And as a function of that, we have very different meanings. And in that case, also very different perceptual experiences of what we're smelling. transports you back to a time and place. It's amazing how that happens, and it's always fun to do.

It's like taking a little trip in your head, and you never know when it's going to happen. Rachel Herz has been my guest. She is a teacher at Boston College and at Brown University, and she is a writer who's written several books. The one we've been talking about today is The Scent of Desire, Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes.

Thanks, Rachel. It's always great to have you on. I really appreciate it. Well, I really appreciate it and I enjoy it and you're a great interviewer. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events.

Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle.

On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

If you're like me, you've probably bought into this idea that the responsible thing to do as a grown-up is to work hard, save a lot of money, and then later, when you get older and you retire, then you can do all those fun things and have all those fun experiences that you've been wanting to do all your life. The problem with that plan is there are a lot of things that you want to do in your 20s or 30s or 40s that if you wait until you're 70 or 80, you either won't want to do them or you couldn't possibly do them because you're in your 70s and 80s. Still, people save and save and wait and wait.

And it's time to rethink that idea, according to Bill Perkins. He wants you to think about spending money on important experiences throughout your life when it's best to do them rather than do them all at the end. Bill's professional life includes work as a hedge fund manager with more than $120 million in assets. He's a Hollywood film producer, a high-stakes tournament poker player, and he is author of the book, Die With Zero, Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life. Hey, Bill, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you.

I'm very happy to be here. Very, very happy. You know, I hadn't really thought about any of this until I saw your book and material, how so many of us are kind of on autopilot. We just save and save, and we postpone those experiences till later in life because that's what we've been told is the grown-up way or the mature way or the responsible way to live your life. Well, we have to get off autopilot and we have to look at why are we saving? What are the things that we want out of life? A lot of times we're just saving to

an abstract number, 50,000, 100,000, a million, whatever it is, and not towards the events and experiences we want to have. That's the first step that we take. But in order, you know, in order to make sure that we need to survive, we need to think about, okay, when will I no longer have any income? What is the survival number that I need? How much do I need to save in order to withdraw that with interest and principle down to the day I die? Right? There's a little bit of math to getting to that number.

But once we solve for survival, now we're about experiences, adventures, things that we want to happen in our life. And I can't tell you how to live your life or what experiences to have. Only you know what experiences to have. But you have to get off autopilot. Think about them. Think about what experiences and you want to have not only when you not only what you want to have, but when you want to have them and then match that to your savings.

I understand the premise of what you're saying. Basically, you don't want to die rich, leave all that money behind and have never spent it. But, you know, I don't know that I hear a lot of people who are towards the end of their life, who have a lot of money in the bank, lamenting that they have too much money in the bank. But if you could go into the graveyards, they would say, yes, we didn't use our resources appropriately. We died with a bunch of money that we never got to utilize. We were working for money that we never got to spend. We wish we spent that time in our life doing X, Y, or Z. Still, the idea, I mean, I get the premise, but the idea of trying to time it out so that you spend it all and die with nothing

seems a little hard to do and a little scary. Plus, a lot of people don't want to die with zero because they want to leave money to their kids or to other organizations or whatever, but they want to wait until they die because what if they need that money before they die? Well, you have a mental model in your mind and you need to be thinking about, okay, you brought up a very important point. People want to leave money to their kids

or their heirs or to their loved ones. But the same principles that apply to you, that you will die and your body will deteriorate. And as your body deteriorates, certain experiences will become unavailable to you or unenjoyable to you or just your attitude where you don't want to do them. That's also going to happen to your kids. And so the time to pass money to your kids is not when you die. OK, it's not to 60 year olds when you die at 86 okay it's at the point where they're able to convert that money into experiences at the maximum efficiency and that's when they had their health and their intelligence to do so and that's generally going to be between 28 and 35 well it is interesting how it just that's just the way it's done you know we we die we give money to our kids

in our will or however but it's towards the end of our life which if we live a long life our kids are older too and that may not be so smart but it's just the way we do things yeah i think people have these habits passed on by culture and they're just kind of on autopilot that, oh, I just dutifully save and then when I die, it'll be left over to my kids without thinking about what is the optimal way to do this? What is the optimal age to give to my kids? Where are they going to have the most impact with the money they want to leave to them? You know, it makes it easy for people to just sit there and go, oh, whatever is left over, it'll just go to the kids without actually thinking about, hey, what do I want out of life? What do I want to leave for my kids?

When should I give it to my kids, et cetera. And, you know, my message is about get off autopilot, be deliberate, and let's try and model your life. We're not going to do it perfectly. We're not going to get every single dollar right. But what we're going to do is reduce the waste. I know plenty of people who have never wasted a dime, but are certainly wasting their lives. And I'm trying to help them to reduce the waste. So I like the big picture that you're painting, but what are the details? How do you do it? How do you know, okay, let's sit down and figure this out. I talk about time bucketing. Everybody talks about a bucket list, right? And I talk about time bucketing, right? A lot of people have these experiences that they want to have in their life. And like, before I die, I want to do X, Y, and Z. And I say, listen, we need to take it a step further because, you know, you just don't get this memo that, hey, you're going to die in a month.

Go run around and do all these activities and you'll be able to do these activities. Certain periods of your life when that season passes, it's gone forever. For example, I used to love watching Pooh's Heffalump movie with my daughter. OK. And one day I said, hey, let's watch the movie. And she goes, Dad, that's a baby movie. I don't want to watch it anymore. That season ended. And if I didn't have those experiences, as many times I want to watch it during that period, they're gone forever. Same thing goes, you know, the time before you have kids, the time that you're married, the time you have

teenagers, the time that you're an empty nester, and so. And so we need to look at what experiences we want to have, when, and we can look at what the costs or what we're saving for. A lot of people are saving for abstract, just a number. Let's just keep saving, right? But we're not saving just for to have numbers on a grid like this is Mario Brothers or Donkey Kong, a high score on asteroids, right? We're saving for something. And the first thing to do is identify what those somethings are and when they are. But until we get off autopilot and start thinking about the things like what is the money for, what are we trying to do, then we will never be able to solve this problem. If I were to sit down and try to figure out, you know, what experiences I want to have and when and who do I want to have them with and look to my future that way, that seems

like it would be really hard to do. I don't know what I want to do in 10 years or 20 years. I mean, it seems like a hard task. It's not trivial. It's definitely something that you're not used to doing, right? We form very, you're a very good podcaster, right? You've been doing it many, many times and you develop habits, techniques to get the story out. But you have not developed, hey, between the age of 56 and 60, what things would I like to be doing? What experiences do I want to have?

Let me pull out a piece of paper. Let me look at my relationship, travel, leisure, career, things, events, and big events that I want to do. Let me fill out even the smaller ones. You're not spending the time doing it. And so therefore, you're not necessarily good at it yet. But once you take the time to start looking at these things, I think you're going to have a better picture of what you want your life to look like. Right. And what you want to happen. And now you're past goal setting. You're modeling your life. And once you start modeling, you can be more efficient, less wasteful, get more out of life.

So how do you very specifically sit down and start this process? If you're somebody who's always been in that mindset of, you know, you've got to save, save till you retire, then you retire, and that's when you do everything. If I'm going to switch from that mindset to what you're talking about, how do I do it? Wherever you are, you know that the end goal is for you to have zero dollars, right? And your life is going to have a curve and you're going to have a certain utility of money. And for each person, they're going to have various health characteristics, right? People who are going to deteriorate rapidly, people who are going to not deteriorate rapidly, are going to be very healthy, running marathons at 65, et cetera. And that is going to not deteriorate rapidly. You're going to be very healthy running marathons at 65, et cetera.

And that is going to be the biggest determinant on what activities and what your level of consumption is going to be in the future, irrespective of your dreams, right? If you're, if you're, if you're overweight, out of shape, um, you are not going to physically be able to do certain activities i tell you like i went to st petersburg um and and it's great because they let you walk up the steps and walk around the churches and you can see you know around the balcony etc and it's 211 steps up to one of these one of these uh uh churches and there were six or seven tour bus of elderly people lined up going to the museum, which is close by, and people looking around the church. Not one of them climbed the steps, not one out of seven tour bus. And what that means is that for that part of St. Petersburg, that value proposition that's available to them, they don't get to do

it. So it's less of a St. Petersburg trip. So I would say, hey, if you want to go see St. Petersburg and you're going to travel, perhaps not wait until you're 65, 66, because you're not going to get the full experience of St. Petersburg. Perhaps come with a little bit less money, but have a lot more activity and a lot more experience and fulfillment out of it. And so as you're, as you're looking at your life and planning out your life based on who you are and your, your modeling and your time bucketing, you get to see like, okay, these are the events of my life. This is the activities, this is the money I'm going to have. And this is how I'm going to aim towards zero. You know, I have it, I have it on my spreadsheet,

you know, my last year is 80 to 86 based on my, um, my expected death date, not much going on. A lot of grandkids come to visit, see the grandkids, you know, hang out with the family, read, read five books a year. Those are the type of things that are in there. I don't have any wave running, hella skiing, travel here, et cetera, because, you know, I've looked at my mother and my father and my grandmother, and I'm just like, they didn't go, they won't go anywhere. I have to pull them out of the house. And I used to like mock that, but I realized like, wait a minute, that's me. That's going to be me. And the idea that I need all this money for these activities

that I'm doing now, or even that I'm doing in my 60s, is comical, and I've come to terms with that. And so I think as people, you know, model their life, they will come up with a natural curve of consumption and have a plan to go to zero, while also making sure that they survive. Your example about St. Petersburg was, I think, just perfect because there's an example of something that somebody may have said in their, you know, in their 20s and 30s. You know, someday I want to visit St. Petersburg. But when they finally get there in their 60s or 70s, they can't climb those steps. But if they'd gone in their 20s and 30s, they could climb those steps if they so desired.

So timing is everything for a lot of this stuff. Yeah. I live in St. Thomas for a good portion of the year and we have a lot of cruise ships that come down. And we have so many fatalities from people paddle boarding and swimming in the water because they're not in the shape to do it. They're older, etc. And their idea in their head of their capabilities doesn't match their physical capabilities. And it's sad because they waited too long to come to St. Thomas. They could have been having memory dividends. And, you know, one of the things I talk about, you know, trying to get, you know, this book is about net fulfillment, not net worth. Right. And, you know, part of your fulfillment and who you are and the narrative of who you are is the things that you've done, the experiences

that you've already had. Right. And so when you hit a game winning home run or had your first kiss or get married or going to a trip, not only do you enjoy that experience as it happens, you actually get to enjoy that experience as you recall it, as you talk about it with friends, whether you're recalling it out loud or whether you're just laying in your bed late at night reminiscing, you're getting enjoyment out of it. You're getting that experience of it. And that's what I call memory dividends. And these experiences produce dividends that you get to enjoy for the rest of your life. And so, you know, one of the things, um, I noticed with my dad, um, when, when he was unable to leave his place, I bought over, um, old highlight reels of him playing college football at the University of Iowa.

And he loved it, laughed, cried, reminisced over players that he knew and friends. You know, at that time, I realized that you don't retire on money, you retire on your memories. And so when you're out there having experiences, whether they're charitable or hedonistic, you're investing in your retirement. And like you say, when you have an experience, depending on when you have it, it will be a better or worse experience. And if you're going skiing at 80 for the first time, it's probably not going to be as much fun as it was if you were 12. I mean, it's just to look to take the extreme. And so it's the same experience. It's the same thing, the same place, the same everything. But it's when you do it that determines how good the experience is. Correct. And that's the big thing why i'm like you know not a bucket list but time

bucketing like getting each period right like we don't have just one death i mean i know this sounds morbid but we have many many deaths the college student he dies and moves on and go gets a job the first time job person you know he he dies the single he dies, gets he or she dies, gets married. You know, the person, you know, and these these periods, they come and go. And in those periods, there are experiences that are meant specifically for that time period. Right. Some of them can bleed over into other time buckets. But generally, there's a many, many experiences from the time bucket. And if you don't have those experiences, then it's too late. It's over. It's as if you hit the grave, right? There's other experiences you can enjoy, but those times are gone. And so, you know, I like to say my glow stick days at the club raving all night, they're

pretty much gone, right? I'm just, even if I have the ability, I just don't have the attitude or the temperament to do it anymore, right? And I don't have the energy, but I'm just saying that period has passed, you know? And pretty soon due to, you know, the deterioration of my back and natural deterioration, my days of being on a wave runner, I love wave running, those days are coming to an end pretty soon and so the enjoyment i'm going to get out of it the the fulfillment that i get out of it it's now and then pretty soon it'll be never and the and the only enjoyment i'm going to get from wave running is the memory dividend right of remember that time we were in the sea we went wave running, it was beautiful,

we saw the dolphins, you know, and so on and so on. I'll be able to cash out on the memory dividend forever, but I won't be able to wave run. Well, I love these kinds of conversations that really make you question how you've always thought. I mean, I haven't really thought so much about when I have experiences so much as just having experiences. But you've made it pretty clear that timing your experiences in your life is just as important as having them, and that the memories from those experiences from the right time are the real dividends.

Bill Perkins has been my guest. He's a hedge fund manager, Hollywood film producer, high-stakes tournament poker player, and he is author of the book Die With Zero, Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life. And you'll find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Bill. Thanks for being on Something You Should Know. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Listening to music can be wonderful. It might even seem magical. But

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