Taking Stock on Money, Happiness, and Dying Regrets

The value of compound experiences, the continuum of YOLO versus deferred gratification, and the fallacy of enough — Dr. Jordan Grumet has learned a lot from his dying patients about money, happiness, and end-of-life regrets. What are these concepts, and how can they help us find meaning outside of money?

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Transcript

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- What kind of hospice doctor teaches about money?(energetic music) Welcome to Common Cents on the Prairie TM, a podcast dedicated to helping you demystify the sometimes complex topic of money. I'm Adam Cox, head of Wealth Management for the First National Bank in Sioux Falls. We're a community bank based out of South Dakota. In this podcast, we share expert insights from around the country and stories from our local community to arm you with the tools you need to make better financial decisions. Because the truth is, the more we talk about this stuff, the better off we're all gonna be. Today I'm joined by Jordan Grumet. Jordan was born in Evanston, Illinois, 1973. His interest in becoming a doctor was ignited when his father, an oncologist, died unexpectedly in the prime of his life. This profound loss not only inspired him to practice medicine, it has also given him a unique perspective as a financial expert, challenging him to think deeply and critically about concepts like wealth, abundance, and financial independence. After graduating from the University of Michigan, Jordan received his medical degree from Northwestern University and began practicing internal medicine in Northbrook, Illinois. He currently is an associate medical director at JourneyCare Hospice. After years of blogging about financial independence and wellness, Jordan launched The Earn and Invest Podcast in 2018. In 2019, he received the Plutus Award for Best New Personal Finance Podcast. It was nominated in 2020 and 2021 for Best Personal Finance Podcast of the Year.

His book, Taking Stock: 1:31

A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life was published by Ulysses Press in August of 2022. I hope you enjoy this thought-provoking conversation with Jordan Grumet. All right, Jordan, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining me.- Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for the conversation.- Yeah, great, great. So, all right. I've been really excited about this conversation because your path is such a unique one and, but it's not, I would say, not a very common path to writing a personal finance book. So let's talk about your journey a little bit and start at the beginning. How did you get into medicine and then how did you then transition to becoming a hospice doctor?- So when I was seven-years-old, my father was 40. He was a cancer doctor oncologist and I idolized him and he died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. He went to work one day, got a severe headache, and passed away very quickly. And as a little kid, it was one of those things I just didn't understand. Like most little kids, I thought through a pretty selfish lens, I thought I had done something wrong. and I struggled with trying to figure out what this meant in my life. And at some point I decided that my role in life was to step into his footsteps, to become a doctor like him and carry out that journey that he was never able to carry out. And so from a very, very young age, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. It was was pretty much an identity that I clung to. I can't even remember a time really where I didn't think of being a doctor. And, you know, that sense of purpose carried me. I mean I had a learning disability as a kid. I was actually way behind my peers. It was questionable whether I was gonna be able to learn how to read. But I was so confident that one day I'd become a doctor that I eventually breezed through that high school, medical school, residency, pretty much I was very clear on this idea that being a doctor is what I was meant to do. Interestingly enough, I started practicing, and after a few years, I got really burned out and realized all those things that I thought being a physician was didn't actually ring true. I didn't feel like I was helping people as much as I thought I would be. I was bogged down in administrative work and paperwork. And just about every bad meme you've ever thought about being a doctor, I lived through. And so I was looking for a way out. I was looking for a way to make as much money as possible to eventually leave medicine to live off of whatever money I made. I happened to be lucky enough to get a phone call from a guy named Jim Dahle who sent me his book, The White Coat Investor, to review for my medical blog'cause I was writing about medicine at the time. That taught me about financial independence. And so I was working on making more money so that I could retire early, and I started doing some medical side hustles. And one of those was a hospice company saw me taking care of a hospice patient and it was something I was innately good at'cause I had practiced a lot of geriatrics and I had done a lot of end of life care and they asked me to be one of their medical directors, which came with a monthly stipend and working a few hours a month. And I'm like, oh, this is like a side hustle, I can make extra money. And so I did that and lo and behold, it ended up being the thing in medicine I like the most.- That's a fascinating story. And it touches on this idea of how we define ourselves. And I've heard you talk about this before as well as forever, you defined yourself first and foremost as a doctor, but then it sounds like somewhere along that journey, that changed a little bit for you and how do you think that changed and why was that?- Well, looking back, I had held onto this identity of being a doctor for so long, but it never really fit me that well. I mean I went to medical school and residency and I had very few doctor friends. I hated hanging out in the doctor's lounge when I was at work. And really something that really drove it home is my wife and I would go to parties and people would start talking about what they did for a living and I would be embarrassed to talk about being a doctor, which is kind of crazy because this is a really proud profession, but it always felt off for me. And so I realized that this identity wasn't fitting me but I had no other identity to fall back on. When I realized that I had enough money, when I learned about financial independence, realized I had enough money in the bank, realized that I could leave medicine, I had a little bit of an identity crisis. I actually had a panic attack and eventually went into a good 6 to 12 months of depression where I started to try to really figure out who am I and what's important to me. Now, I was lucky in the sense that I had always had things that I loved doing, but I had pushed them into these little time slots. Whenever I could, when I wasn't busy being a doctor, I would write a blog or I would do public speaking or there were all sorts of things that I really loved doing, but I had always told myself, well you can't make a living doing those. Those are hobbies, you make a living being a doctor. When I realized this financially independent, I could then start exploring some of these other things that I had always enjoyed doing in life. And eventually I came to a conclusion that as opposed to my identity being that of a doctor, more appropriately, I was a podcaster, and a public speaker, and a writer. All of these things coalesced into this idea of being a communicator. And that was an identity that just fit me so much better than that of being a doctor. I knew for sure 'cause what happened is when I discovered financial independence, I started going to these personal finance conferences and I would meet bloggers and podcasters and writers and I immediately felt more comfortable with them than doctors I had known for decades. It was like within a first few minutes, I knew I met my people and that was how I kind of realized, okay, this identity of being a communicator really fits you more than that identity of being a doctor. And because of that, I was actually able to start building a community and having deeper connections with people because I was finally being a little bit more true to myself.- So you define yourself now as more of a communicator and it's, I don't know, it's interesting to me. How how does a doctor and a hospice doctor, how do you find personal finance and your voice there and what did that look like for you?- So as I was saying before, when Jim Dahle sent me his book, it was this huge epiphany. It gave me the vocabulary to understand my finances and I could look at my numbers and thank God I had such great financial modeling from my parents. They owned real estate, they owned businesses, they invested their money in the stock market. So I did all these things copying them, but I didn't know why I was doing them. So when I got Jim Dahle's book, I realized I was financially independent. And that brought on that identity crisis and I had to figure out who I was. And part of figuring that out was actually to start writing a blog. I started a personal finance blog called diversefi.com and I actually wrote every single day about what I thought about my finances, what I was going through, what I felt about my identity, what were the next steps in my life. And it became this online diary, this journal of what I was going through, but it also became an accountability partner because after writing every day and making it public about all these things I was going through and what my plans were and what my dreams were, it actually spurred me to action. And part of that action was to really start subtracting the things out of my work environment I didn't like anymore. So I was too afraid to just step away from medicine totally, especially when I was having this identity crisis. So I did nothing for quite a while. But eventually I said, okay, there are parts of being a doctor I no longer like. And I started subtracting out those things I didn't want in my career anymore. So my practice that I owned that was taking up all my time, I got rid of that. And then I was doing nursing home work and I started getting rid of that'cause it was stressful and I was getting late night calls. Then I stuck with just hospice'cause I enjoyed that the most. But I found I didn't wanna be on call, I didn't wanna have an employer. So I started being a consultant and I only worked about 15 hours a week and I found that I would do this kind of work even if I wasn't being paid for it. So what I did is I took that identity of being a physician and whittled it down to just what still felt purposeful to me. But by doing that and by only working 15 hours a week, I all of a sudden had all of this other time to start pursuing those things that I always had an inkling were interesting to me but I never pursued. And that's where the blog came in and the podcast came in. That's where I really started developing myself as a communicator. And I just found it so much more gratifying and I felt a real sense of purpose, not just in the goals that I could achieve, but a purpose in the day to day activities. So for instance, I do a lot of podcasting now. I love podcasting. And regardless of what happens to each podcast episode I put out, I feel this great sense of purpose when I'm behind the microphone asking questions and having great conversations. And that ended up being enough. And so that's how I kind of transitioned from this world of being a doctor, then a hospice doctor, to really looking at myself as a communicator. As I started getting rid of all those things that were giving me friction in my life and started doing less and less time doing those and started filling in that free time then with things that I felt really defined a sense of purpose and identity. And so it was really a big personality or identity shift that I did Slowly over time as I gained the courage through this online accountability, this writing I was doing about who I am and what I wanna be and it just started going from there.- Oh, that's awesome. I've had a similar experience with this show. I've shared before, I am an introvert. I don't get out of bed every day looking for attention and wanting to work a room or anything like that. But podcasting and the videos that we do have really opened up a different world for me where we're able to teach and inform and educate and have great conversations that maybe we wouldn't have given ourselves permission to have in another format, in another part of my life. And it's been additive, it's a lot of work, but it's been so additive that I wouldn't trade it for anything so I totally understand what you're saying. One of the things that I've heard you talk about before and you spoke about how your parents invested and were good with money, and sometimes that's a learned behavior. And I've heard you talk about frugality. And I'm interested to know this idea of frugality. It sounds like it freed you up from not having to work with a giant hospital system with a very demanding schedule or for maintaining your own practice like you were before. So where did this idea for frugality come in to play for you? Was that born out of circumstance or was that from your parents or from your spouse, parent, where did that come from?- You know, it's funny cause I would never really call it frugality. What I would say is that my parents were really good at spending what they thought was important money on what they thought was important and then saving a lot. So my parents were very high net worth individuals. They had big corporate jobs, they made lots of money. And I would say that they modeled this behavior of always saving about 50% of what they brought in. We definitely spent on vacations and had a nice house and lived in a nice neighborhood, but we didn't spend uselessly. We didn't spend frivolously. And so I think they modeled that behavior. Interestingly enough as I grew up, things were just never that important to me. So I didn't really think about things as a mechanism of happiness. I thought more about ideas or plans or skills or passion. So to me growing up, this idea of becoming a doctor was my real passion. My passion's never really focused on what I could buy or what I could own. So when I got married and we started looking at our budget, as opposed to budgeting things out, we would just say, okay, we'll live off of my salary and we'll save yours. And we really did some type of negotiation like that for a lot of our lives and our careers. What we did is we took our money and we put into savings before we could even see it. And then we lived off of what was left in the bank account. You know, there are a lot of habits eventually we gained over time, things like not carrying cash around. So especially before credit cards were so big, we just never carried cash around and therefore, we'd never have the money on hand to spend it. For instance, if you don't have any cash around, this was before credit cards again would operate the vending machines, if you never carried cash around, you didn't have money for the vending machines so you just didn't tend to get the things at the vending machines. Or when we were shopping, we wouldn't do a lot of unexpected purchases. So if we happened to be shopping and saw a big purchase we liked, instead of buying it right then and there, we would go home and think about it for a week and then decide if we really needed something like that. But I think I was freed from a lot of this decision making'cause that stuff was just never that important for me. I don't like thinking about frugality and I don't like thinking about budgeting. So we always tried to work that into our lives so we didn't have to think about it. So again, having our money directly deposited into brokerage accounts, having our 401ks automatically fill every month, making sure that whatever was in our bank account is what we could spend, but taking all of our investments and our savings and making sure it never even showed up in the bank account. So for us, frugality was about trying to be easy and smart as opposed to being something we really had to think or work about.- Well, I love talking about money and marriage and so was that a tough evolution for you guys to get there together or did that come naturally?- You know, it came naturally. I married someone who grew up pretty close to poverty, but she was from a very educated family. They had come from another country. So when they came to the US, they lost everything. And so they lived a very humble life when they first got to the US so she was used to saving and being very careful and working really hard. And so when we got married, it was very natural for us to save and invest and to be very careful with our money. I would say the only real friction point came when I decided that I was interested in financial independence and wanted to leave my job, that was something she couldn't even have imagined, right? Because she grew up in this poor family where it was hammered into her head that having a good job and making a lot of money were important. And then all of a sudden her spouse was saying, you know, I'm making more money than I've ever made. We're affording this wonderful lifestyle. But now he wants to step away and not make as much money. That was a little more difficult for her and took a little more communication. But ultimately we've usually been on the same page.- Okay, well I feel like we've been flirting with this idea of meaning and purpose as we've talked about your story. How do you think about defining meaning and purpose and maybe what's the correlation of defining that for ourselves and personal finance?- So I think we make this mistake quite often. In my book I talk a lot about purpose, identity, and connections. And the biggest mistake we make, I believe, in our community, is we tend to put the money first and then we figure once we get the money settled, we'll then start looking about things like purpose, identity, and connections, or purpose and meaning if that feels more comfortable for you. My goal is to get people to start thinking about purpose, identity, and connections before they think about money. Because ultimately we forget that money is a tool not a goal. And so we use it as a tool when we're using it correctly to live more meaningful lives. But how can we figure out how to use that tool unless what we know what meaning in our life looks like? So my goal is really to encourage people to start thinking about purpose, identity way earlier in the game and so they can then figure out why they're building this financial framework and what that tool of money is going to be used for. Now when people hear me say this, they're all like, oh, it's really easy to say what's my purpose and identity? But that's a really hard thing to figure out and I agree. Figuring out your money is really easy. Maybe it's not easy to make lots of money or earn or invest a lot of money, but it's pretty easy to figure out what the steps are, right? You know you have to get a job, you might wanna get as many raises as possible, you might wanna start a side hustle, you probably wanna invest your money in the stock market. These are all things we can learn. We can go online, we can figure it out. Things like purpose and identity are a lot more ephemeral and therefore a lot more difficult and they take a lot more hard work. And I think that's where we usually get stuck. It's so much easier to go for the low hanging fruit and figure out the money'cause it's definable. It's much harder to figure out who do I wanna be and what has purpose and meaning in my life, but I think that's what we need to do. And a big part of my book is actually telling people how to go about doing that. One thing I learned by being a hospice doctor and dealing with people who were told that they had a terminal illness is it gave them the ability to let go of all society's expectations, their personal expectations, what they were told they could and couldn't do, and actually think about what they really want in life. And so my goal is to take young people and have them do this kind of life review process that we do with hospice patients. Have young people start doing the same thing now and start really connecting with their sense of purpose. What's important to them? What would they regret if they got to their deathbed and hadn't accomplished? Who are the people and the things and the experiences that hold meaning for them?? I wanna get people to start thinking about those things now.- I'm so glad you mentioned that because I think people could listen to this conversation and look where you and I are at currently in our lives and financially and things like that and say, well, maybe it's easier for you two to talk about money and meaning and those bigger issues. But I think, sounds like you and I share the same opinion that it's probably even more critical for younger people to define those things as early as possible before they get into the grind or as early in that process as possible because I think that's where people lose themselves and then they wake up one day and they say, what is this all for? Why have I been working so hard and spending all this time away from my family or not taking those vacations? Or maybe I even haven't saved enough? I think the sooner that we define those things for ourselves, the better off we're gonna be.- So my theory is that, pardon me, my theory is that we are given a set amount of time on this earth and it is set, we can't change it, we can't buy more time, we can't sell time, all we can do is somewhat control the activities we place in these time slots, whether we call them days, months, weeks, or years. All we can do is control what we fill those time slots with. So the idea is to subtract out all the things you don't like doing or get rid of the things that aren't affirming a sense of purpose, identity, and connections, and then replace them or add in things that are giving you a sense of purpose, identity, and connections. For me that was easy because in my forties, I found that I was financially independent. So I came at this question with a lot of privilege, right? What's important in my life? What can I get rid of? What can I add in? All of that was really easy in my forties when I had enough money. But my argument is really that we should be asking these same questions even when we don't have that same privilege. When we're in our twenties and we're building our life, it's really important to look at what's going on in our lives and start finding these things that are purposeful and meaningful to us and start filling our time slots with those and start getting rid of the things that aren't. And you can't figure out how to fill those time slots correctly unless you know what purpose and meaning look like in your life. So let's say you're in your twenties and you're working an eight to six or a nine to five and you hate your job, but you're like, look, Jordan, I need to work this job because I need to make money and it's not the best job in the world, but it was the one I can get. How am I gonna get rid of what I don't like which is this job when I need the money and how am I gonna bring purpose into my life? And I think we have to realize that money is one tool that helps us out, but it's one of many tools. And when we're in our twenties, we have some other tools, we have our energy, we have our free time, maybe we're still single, maybe we don't have children. All of these tools we can utilize to start really bringing a purpose or passion into our lives and start thinking about how to get rid of those things we don't like. So if you're grinding it out in an eight to six and you don't like it and you're making just enough to survive, but then you have your weekends free and because you're young, you have some energy, maybe it's time you went for a passion project, something you could turn into a side hustle. Maybe you spend three hours a week every week doing something you're passionate about and you do that for six months. And so what happens? Well let's say you're lucky and you start making some money at it, maybe then you're creating some margin in your life so you can turn that eight to six to a nine to five, or maybe you'll work Monday through Thursday and take Fridays off. And by doing that, maybe you'll have more time to do that passion project, you'll build it even bigger, you'll make more and more money. And then hey, maybe you go part-time at the job you don't like and you've now filled in the rest of your time slots with this passion project, things that do have a sense of purpose to you and happen to make money. That's like the best case scenario. Let's say you do this three hours on a Saturday of something you're passionate about and you never make any money doing it. Well in a sense you're no worse off except now you've spent a few more hours doing something that has real purpose and meaning to you on the weekends. And so I feel like you can't lose even when you're struggling, even when you don't come at it from a place of privilege, if you start being intentional about how you are filling your time slots now and start working on building more purposeful and meaningful activities into those time slots, think about how well you'll be off in your thirties and forties and fifties and sixties. What you'll probably find is you're spending more and more time doing things you like to do and less and less time doing things you don't like to do. And if you're intentional about your finances and think about building a financial framework around that, what you're really doing is building a very purposeful life that happens to create enough of this money to support you. And I think that's the goal. And I think if we start in our twenties, we're a lot better off than if we start in our forties.- Oh, that's awesome. You used the word enough and I think we should pause there and talk about that for a little bit. There's this idea, the fallacy of enough which is more or less if we hit a certain milestone, we hit a plateau that we set out for ourselves that we're all of a sudden gonna feel better and all is can be right in the world and we'll have this great sense of calm that comes over us. And whether that's a weight loss goal or a vacation goal or a personal finance goal. So in your experience, Jordan, once we hit those goals, do we ever really experience that sense of calm?- So enough is a tricky thing and I love that term, the fallacy enough because I think we confuse ourselves and say once we get to this goal, once we get to this place, we're gonna be happy. And so I would suggest to you that often goals are false. Let's look at money. Money is a perfect false goal. There are lots of people who think that once they just make enough money, once they get to a certain net worth, everything's gonna be great. So what happens once they get there? Well, once they get there, they realize that their only sense of purpose up to that point was making money. They have no idea who they are or what they wanna do with their life, so they can do one of two things. The main one they do is they figure money was my purpose. I got to this goal. Now I'm gonna double down and just increase the goal. So my net worth was X, now I'm gonna make my goal, my net worth to be 2X, and that becomes their purpose, which is great except it's a kind of false purpose, right? Who wants their money in life, their purpose in life to be making more money? It's just not that very fulfilling. So that's one thing that can happen. The other thing that happens is once you get to that net worth goal, instead of being happy, you become petrified. You're petrified that all of a sudden you're going to lose what you've gained. It's called loss aversion. And we find that people are doubly afraid of losing what they've been striving for than actually the possibility of not getting there in the first place. So when you make these goals, these difficult things like money, your ultimate goal, you generally find yourself upset. And I don't think it's just money. I think when we set these big audacious goals in front of us, we generally find ourselves empty when we get there because we don't know where to go next. Instead, I think we should define enough more in terms of what I call in the book a climb, right? So what is a climb? In my mind, a climb is an activity that feels very purposeful for you that you do and it is gratifying to you regardless of the outcome. So a perfect example for me with this is podcasting. I love this goal of having two million downloads on my podcast every month, right? But I'm way, way, way far from that. And the truth of the matter is no matter how hard I try, I may not get there, right? Like I can make my podcast better, I can get better guests, I can do all those things, but it's such a big audacious goal, I may never get there. And even if I got there, I'd either be afraid that I was gonna lose those listeners or I'd want double the number. So instead, what I really enjoy about podcasting is when I get behind the mic and I'm about to interview someone and the excitement of creating a great conversation, regardless of that outcome, regardless if it ends up being a good episode or not, regardless if anyone listens or not, it's something that's exceedingly purposeful for me. So I know that this is a good climb because actually being in the process is enough as opposed to some product or some goal as the end point. So I know this climb is gratifying for me and it's a big part of my purpose regardless of what comes of it. The other side to that is I do like this idea of making some progress. So as opposed to these big audacious goals, like I want two million downloads, what if I set much smaller, more attainable goals, things that I can affect, like I like to get 10 more listeners every month. That's something I probably can do. So to me, I wanna fill my life with as many of these climbs as feel purposeful to me where I define enough as joy in the process with small incremental gain. And so that's what enough is to me. And that's also what happiness is.'Cause I think happiness and enough are really intimately tied together. And so that's how I see happiness.- Well I think it is probably has a lot to do with, we always see these same studies over and over again that more money doesn't make us happier after a certain point, and there is a point. I think you had the quote in your book, and I may get it wrong and I don't even know if it was your quote originally, but it was something like money is like oxygen, if we have enough, we never think about it. If we don't have enough, we can't think about anything else which I think was so good. But the whole concept is that after a certain point, my dad used to always say, you can only eat so many steaks. And so there needs to be goals beyond just making money. It's what can it do for your life? What can it do for your family? But then you reach that saturation point. And I think that's troubling to a lot of people, especially younger people when they're just starting their career is they're thinking, well I have debt and I have all of these obligations, I have to pay back and I need to buy a house and that's really difficult now. And so all of these things combined, it just manifests in a way to say I need to make more money. And then at some point in our lives, I think we all realize that maybe the money wasn't the the goal that we should have been reaching for anyways. So I love that you brought that up.- Yeah, money solves money problems. The truth of the matter is only a small fraction of human issues are related to money problems. We give money an outsized role in our lives, but I've really learned this from the dying. Almost no dying person on their deathbed looks up at their loved ones and says, gosh, I wish I made more money. Gosh I wish I had a better job title or worked more nights and weekends. The truth of the matter is most of our human problems are not money problems, They're problems of purpose and identity and connections and money will only go so far to solve those problems. You really have to work on the rest of it.- So I'm glad you brought up the dying. Let's pivot there a little bit. And this was, for me, so just candidly, my brain doesn't like to process the really big questions. I'm a rise and grind kind of guy, I'm one step ahead, the whole thing. I mean I like big picture stuff, but the idea of laying on my death bed and thinking about, well was it all worth it? It's tough. It's tough for me, which is why I like your work so much because you've challenged me to really give that some more thought. So you had a quote that said that the dying have much to teach us about money and life. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?- Yeah, I think it goes back to when you are given a terminal diagnosis, you really are given that one chance to look really clearly at your life and define what was important to you and what wasn't. And the truth of the matter is almost no one looks back and says money was the defining characteristic of my life. A lot of times what dying people regret is what they didn't have the energy, courage, or time to pursue, what they didn't allow themselves to pursue for whatever reasons. Maybe they're afraid they're gonna fail, maybe their lives were too busy, maybe society told them that you can't do that. Whatever it was, that's what dying people regret. And so I think they're giving us this message that we have to stop thinking about money as the limiting factor or only factor, and again, we have to think about money as one of many tools to live a good life. And we have to start utilizing the money we have as well as those other tools to start living a better life today and not wait until we're on our death beds. We need to think about what's meaningful to us now and not put it off.- So Jordan, for the dying, what is it in your experience that they feel truly mattered when they look back and they reflect on their life? What are those big things that they think mattered?- So what really mattered is their purpose and identity. And that has everything to do with their experiences. It has everything to do with their passions. It has everything to do with the people they surrounded themselves with. And it has everything to do with trying to do those important things. Not whether they succeeded, and this is a really, really big one. Whether they succeeded or not is much less important than whether they had the courage to try. And I'll give you a perfect example of a character in my book, Ernesto, who I took care of in his forties who was dying of leukemia. When he was in his twenties, he went against everyone's advice, he left his high paying job. In the middle of the beginning of his career, right when he was really starting to get momentum, he left and took a year off to train and then tried to climb Mount Everest. Now he made it to Mount Everest, they started climbing, the weather changed, and he never made it all the way up. They had to turn around and head back'cause it was too dangerous. In his forties, on his deathbed dying of leukemia, it was the only thing he ever wanted to talk about. He would regale the hospice team with all these stories about being up on the mountain and the wind in his face and how they had to turn back. He didn't regret that he failed. He didn't regret all that money he didn't make, he didn't regret the opportunity cost lost by giving up a year's worth of salary because for him, the experience, the joy, the memories compounded just like the money in our bank accounts compound, and they were paying dividends even on his deathbed. Failure's not important, it's not having the courage to try. And that's what Ernesto taught me. And I think that's what a lot of the dying have taught me.- Well I wanna put an exclamation point behind something you just said there. You know, in this show and in our line of work, we talk about money compounds and we get really, really excited. Eighth wonder of the world, right? We get pumped about young savers putting money aside and what that can mean for the future. But you said something there that's really interesting. You said basically money isn't the only thing that compounds, experiences compound as well. Is that fair?- Yeah, experiences, love, joy, compassion, connections. When we exhibit those, when we live a purposeful life, those things grow. They grow inside of us and they become our memories and the memories compound, and that's what generally makes us feel like we lived a good life.- Jordan, you say that patients often die as they live. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?- So it's a saying we have in hospice and people often ask me, well, is death scary? Is death anxiety provoking? What is death like? And I always answer them, well, you kind of die like you live. So people who are anxious and unhappy in life tend to live anxious, unhappy deaths. And people who are happy and contented in life tend to live good and contented deaths. And this is why it's so important to start thinking about these things now. People ask me, well how am I gonna one day have a good death and not have regrets? And the answer is so simple, it's by living a good life. It's by thinking about purpose and identity now so that you don't have regrets. So you do those meaningful things now. If you do those important things when you're young and you're healthy and you're living, you're gonna find that when you meet a doctor like me on your deathbed, you have a lot less regrets. And I think that's really the story. I mean, this is the whole point of the book. It's the whole point of what the dying have taught me is learn to live a good life and you'll find that you don't have the regrets and you live and see a contented death.- And maybe we'll leave it with this. You know better than anyone in your role that none of us is guaranteed a long, happy, healthy life. It's just, it's not, it's uncomfortable to think that way, but it's true. Now some people can realize that fact and they can think, you know what? Screw it, I'm just gonna live for today and I'm gonna enjoy my life and live life to the fullest and I'm not gonna think about tomorrow. When they do that, they introduce another risk though that they will live a long time. And if they do live a long time and they don't plan and they don't save, you and I, and you've talked to some about this as well, you know that the decisions and the choices we make later in life when we don't have the resources are not great either. So Jordan, how do we balance this idea of wanting to live for today and find that financial independence, but at the same time protect ourselves and save for our future?- So I love this question because it's really the basis of a struggle that we have every day of our lives, right? YOLO versus deferred gratification. Do I spend today on something that has purpose and meaning for me? Maybe it's a thing that I like or maybe it's an experience versus do I take that money, put it away in the stock market, let it compound, and then let it support me in retirement? It's a very difficult question and it's one that no matter how well versed you are in finance, you're still gonna come up to it every single day. Here's what I think. I think we have to ask ourselves a question. And the question is, what scares you most? Are you afraid that you are going to die young and wealthy and never get to use that wealth like my father who died when he was 40 unexpectedly? Or are you afraid that you're going to live long, spend through all your money and die broke? So young and wealthy or old and broke? What scares you most? If you figure that out, then you can start looking at how you spend today and toggle on that continuum between YOLO and deferred gratification. I'll give you an example. My dad always thought he was gonna die. He told my mom, when he married her, he said, I think I'm gonna die young. And indeed he did die at the age of 40. So when my dad thought about his financial life, he wasn't really worried about retirement. Of course he wanted life insurance for the family, he wanted to make sure we were all okay, but he tended to spend his money. In fact, when he came out of fellowship as a cancer doctor, he got offered this really lush private practice job where he'd make tons of money and instead he worked at the VA system for about half as much because it was a job that would be more gratifying to him. And my dad lived his life that way. He lived for today. He had hobbies, he loved photography, he loved to travel. He didn't worry much about having enough for retirement'cause indeed he died at the age of 40 and he didn't have to worry about it. So if you're like my dad and you're worried that you're gonna die young and wealthy and you don't wanna miss out on these experiences, let's say you make a certain amount of money and 50% of it goes to housing and transportation and food, stuff you can't do anything about. So then you have 50% left. If you're worrying about dying young, I say you take 40 of that percent left over and you put it in a YOLO fund and then take the 10% and you put it towards financial independence. So one of two things is gonna happen. If you are right and you die young, you are spending 40% of your money on those experiences and those vacations and those things you loved. It's not a bad way to live even if you're gonna die young. Let's say you're wrong and you live long-term. Well, it's true. You've only been putting away 10% for retirement. You're not gonna retire probably till you're 60 or 70, but this whole time you've been spending 40% on YOLO, you've been living it up and doing exactly what you want. It's not a bad way to live even if you can't retire to 60 or 70. So in a sense, you kind of, you've succeeded either way. Let's look at the other side. Let's say instead of worrying about dying young and wealthy, you're worried about dying old and running out of your money. This was me. I was like, I'm gonna live a long time, I'm afraid I'm not gonna have enough money. I need to make tons of money, get it in the stock market and allow it to compound. So if you're like me then, let's say again 50% of your income goes to the necessities, you got 50% leftover, someone like me would take 40% and put into a deferred gratification retirement fund, and then I'd use 10% to YOLO right now. Let's look at the different scenarios, if I'm right and I live a long life, I'll be able to retire in my forties, which I was able to, and then I can live the rest of my life doing whatever the heck I want YOLO-ing as much as whatever money I have saved up will allow me to do. The worst case scenario is if I'm wrong, let's say I think I'm gonna live a long time and I'm grinding it out making as much money as possible, only spending 10% on YOLO and then I die young, well, that's probably the worst case scenario but at least I was still spending 10% on today and I probably died with this great dream of what life would be like. So I probably never knew until the last moment that I had planned incorrectly but three out of four case scenarios don't come together so bad if you look at life that way. So I'd say let's look at what scares us most. Decide if we're afraid of dying young or dying old and broke, and then start making spending decisions based on that so that we can live a purposeful and meaningful life now.- I don't think we can end it any better than that. Thank you so much for doing this. I mentioned before your work was both scary for me but also incredibly inspiring. And it's made me plan a vacation, which I don't often do. So thank you for that. Where can other people find your work, your book, where should they go?

- So the book is Taking Stock: 41:22

A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. The best way to learn about me and the book is to go to jordangrumet.com, That's J-O-R-D-A-N-G-R-U-M-E-t.com. There you can find A, the book, and all the information about where you can buy it, as well as the three places that I've historically made content. So I have a medical blog, which I wrote at between 2005 and 2018, the link is there. I have a financial blog called diversefi.com. And then what I spend most of my time doing nowadays is the Earn and Invest Podcast. Links to all of that are at jordangrumet.com.- Perfect, and we'll also put those links in the show notes. Jordan, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it and I hope we get the chance to talk again sometime.- Thank you for having me, It's been a blast.- Awesome. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe and share with your family or friends. If you have a topic you want us to cover in future episodes, send us a note through our website. And if you're at the point where you want an expert opinion on your finances, reach out and we'd be happy to start a conversation. And remember, any comments, insights, or strategies discussed on this podcast are intended to be general in nature and therefore may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything we discuss, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and or your financial advisor.