At what point can you consider yourself “wealthy enough?” Discover the answer to this question when you tune in to this episode. Be inspired to generate genuine happiness outside the concept of material wealth, live in the moment, and choose to be happy every single day!
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Resources mentioned in this episode
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At what point can you consider yourself “wealthy enough?” Discover the answer to this question when you tune in to this episode. Be inspired to generate genuine happiness outside the concept of material wealth, live in the moment, and choose to be happy every single day!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
Connect with Us
To learn more about growing your wealth through multifamily investment opportunities, visit Monument Real Estate Capital and schedule a call!
Follow our social media pages!
Facebook: Monument Real Estate Capital
LinkedIn: Monument Real Estate Capital
[00:00:00] Earl Cline
It's that idea of the journey we take where we're at, we change what we can change, and we just accept those things that we can't change, and we decide that we're going to live in the moment and be happy with the moment no matter what it is that we've decided to do.
[00:00:00] Podcast Intro
You are working professional, but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to retire wealthy and happy. Let's dive in.
[00:00:40] Roger Jacobsen
Does money buy happiness? In this episode, we talk about what brings true happiness and tools that you can use to bring happiness into your life. Welcome back to another episode of Retire Wealthy and Happy. Our podcast title suggests that we will focus on financial freedom and finding happiness. Much of the foundation material we have covered is focused on financial freedom. In this episode, we want to focus on what it will take to find happiness. Earl, you recently read a book on the various things that contribute to our happiness. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
[00:01:08] Earl Cline
Hey, thanks, Roger. Yeah, I, uh, Just recently I came across a book called The Good Life. It started as a study claims to be the long, longest study in the country about this particular issue of what really makes us happy. I think it started somewhere in the thirties where, uh, couple of, uh, Harvard sociologists, they picked about 35 or 40 young people, teenagers, coincidentally, even JFK, John F. Kennedy, who grew up in Boston at the time, was a member of the study and they have stuff about his early life and interviews and all those kind of things. Once he became president, all of the notes and everything became top secret, so to speak, but he was included in the first part of the study, they just randomly picked some people, I think about two-thirds of them. They came out of the west end of Boston, which is not the wealthiest area of Boston, so to speak.
[00:02:04]
And then about a third of them, they picked from people who may have gone to Harvard, you know, young kids that were either in Harvard or preparing to go to Harvard. So they were able to follow these people's lives over a long period of time. Were, and they came up with, uh, some suggestions of what it was that, uh, that makes people happy. And you know, we, we spent a lot of time here talking about attaining financial freedom. I know when we set up the title to this podcast, we talked about changing the title from just finding financial freedom to what it is that makes us happy. And it's kind of an acknowledgement, at least between the three of us.
[00:02:51]
That we don't think that just acquiring wealth is ever gonna make anybody completely happy because so much of the foundational stuff that we've done already is really focused just on making us happy. We wanted to take and just to acknowledge that pure wealth. I don't think is gonna make anybody happy, and that was what this study supported. So much of what we do is focused on being wealthy, uh, e even in this podcast. We wanted to just take a little bit of time and acknowledge that your pursuit of money or acquiring, uh, a tremendous amount of wealth is probably not of, in and of itself going to, uh, guarantee that we're going to be happy. As I looked at this book, I wanted to take a little bit of time.
[00:03:38]
It's very interesting in the analogies that it came up with. I want to just take a second and read this intro, uh, into the book and it'll kind of explain it. It says, want the secret to the good life? Wallenberg and Schutz give it to you in this magnificent new book. Based on the longest survey ever conducted over people's lives, The Good Life reveals who winds up happy and who doesn't, and why. And how you can use this information starting today. To summarize, lemme share a couple little quotes from the book. It starts with the question, would you choose to put more money into a savings account each month to change careers? Would you decide to travel more? What single choice could best ensure?
[00:04:26]
That when you reach your final days and look back, that you feel, you feel like you've lived a good life. And so that's what, that's, I think what all of us are really striving for. We, we want to make sure that not just when we reach the end, but that we have some semblance of being happy through the journey. One of the important things that they pointed out through this whole thing, Is it this concept of being happiness or being happy? It's not a destination. It's not like we're just going to plug in something on our GPS and when we reach that destination, we all say, Hey, we've arrived. We're perfectly happy.
[00:05:08]
But happiness number one, it's something that we have to choose to do. We literally choose to be happy. There's thousands of examples of people. You could both be stuck in a, in a mud pit buried up to your neck and the person next to you could be incredibly unhappy and miserable and complaining about the situation that they're in, and somebody sitting next to them could be whistling and zinging and literally taking the approach, well, at least I'm alive. And by the way, I'm singing one of my favorite songs from Pink Floyd. Literally choosing to be happy. Happiness is a result of literally choosing to be happy. We all experience trials and tribulations as we go through life. It's how we deal with those trials and tribulations, I think, that are gonna, that are gonna make us happy. And it was interesting because the book supported a lot of the things that I have felt over the years about, uh, being happy. I'm gonna share this one more quote. It says, in a 2007 survey, millennials were asked about their most important life goals. 76% said that becoming rich was their number one goal.
[00:06:19]
50% said a major goal was to become famous. It says, more than a decade later, after millennials had spent more time as adults, similar questions were asked again in a pair of surveys. Fame was now much lower on the list, but the top goals again included things like making money, having a successful career, and becoming debt free. It says these are common. And practical goals that extend across the generations and borders. In other words, it's not just our generation or you know, our parents' generation that focused on making money, but it's a focus for a long, long time. And Ben, you used the word hedonistic pursuits, which the book also talks about that and the problem with them.
[00:07:04]
Is one of the things that the book brought out was this idea that no matter how much you achieve in terms of fame or financial blessings, that you never quite get there, right? If that's your sole goal is to attain wealth, At what point do we define ourselves as being wealthy enough? Right? And so it becomes this never ending pursuit. I'm not quite there today. I've got 3 million, but, but I won't be happy until I get 5 million, right? And when you hit 5 million, you're like, what else did it bring to my life? Right? It didn't bring noticeably anything more to your life. It gave me more expensive vacations and more expensive toys. The book points out that all of those things, Add to our lives.
[00:07:48]
It is not about financial freedom won't contribute to your happiness, but it's not the ultimate aim that's going to do it. It seems like a very honest approach to this concept so much of the time you have the idea, well, financial freedom is not important at all to being happy, or you have the complete opposite that, uh, He who dies with the most toys wins the game of happiness. And I don't think those are either concepts that are completely accurate, but they did establish this concept, and this is, I think is why so much of our focus is based upon acquiring wealth. The concept was. In order to have a pretty high success at being happy that there's a base level of income, and it's a pretty nominal level.
[00:08:34]
I think they defined it as about 60 or 70,000 a year or something along in that range. And the idea is if you live well below the poverty line, You are going to struggle putting food on the table. You're not gonna be able to acquire healthcare, medical things. You are going to be so focused on just surviving that you're probably not gonna have the time to stop and smell the roses along the way, which I really like this idea that financial freedom is going to help and benefit you in the process of obtaining happiness. But it's not the ultimate goal. And that the truth is, there were a lot of people in the study that if they compared their life to my life, they ended up with not a lot of money. They had, uh, real jobs and lived in modest uh, homes, but they defined themselves as being happy. And the reason that they did that, and this was the point of the book that I took away.
[00:09:28]
Is that most of our happiness is going to revolve around our associations. The people that we associate with, those people that we call friends probably starts when we're young and the relationship that we had with our parents. And the book acknowledges that not every one of the people in the study had good relationships with their parents. And that doesn't necessarily define your ability to have happiness, because again, happiness is this is this journey that we go. Through, and it's about taking where we're at in life and trying to make it better, but also not being so upset about where I am today versus where I'd like to be, but accepting the fact that we're on this journey and just enjoy the time as we're moving along.
[00:10:19]
The study also pointed out that there's really nothing about fame. It's gonna make you truly happy. It's kind of an illusion. There was no evidence whatsoever that those people who ended up being very famous ended up being more happy. They may have of the outside illusion, but the most important things that the book pointed out is that our true happiness, when people got close to the end of their life, the ones that defined themselves as truly happy were in a relationship of caring. They had love for someone. Other than themselves. In most cases, they had children that had become an important part of their life. Not that you have to have children to be happy, but it was those relationships that blessed their lives. And it wasn't even defined as husband and wife. It could have been significant friendships that we've acquired, but I thought it was really, really important.
[00:11:11]
The, the thing I took away from this was spend your time developing those relationships, those family relationships, those friendship that. When the time comes, and the book pointed out that there's not a single one of us that's going to get out of this life alive, it is a part of the life process. It's a part of the life journey that we're going to spend our time and overcome obstacles, focus on things that we think bring us happiness. But the ones who got close to the end, The ones that were the happiest were the ones that had significant outside relationships, that they felt love and that they were able to give love to other people. So it was a really, really good read. I don't know that there was any new concepts necessarily for me, but it confirmed a lot of the things that I have kind of believed about my life and those things that I think have provided a significant amount of happiness for me.
[00:12:05] Ben Waller
Those are a lot of great comments about happiness, and I think we're gonna dive a little bit more into that. But before we do, I wanted to kind of bring it full circle and touch on a concept we discussed in a previous episode a few minutes ago. You were talking about in that study that people, once they get to a certain level of income, getting above that doesn't really increase their happiness much, and you were throwing out a number somewhere between 60 and 70,000. I wanted to do a quick example. In our previous episode, you were talking about that in order to have a thousand dollars a month in passive income, you needed about $150,000 invested at about an 8% annualized return. I did an example based on $80,000 per year. I. If you want it to receive 80,000 per year in passive income, roughly, the number that you need is about a million dollars in net worth or money invested at an 8% return to produce an $80,000 per year passive income.
[00:12:59]
So if I'm throwing out the number 1 million, it might seem like a large number, but the reality is if you put goals together and you work towards achieving it, You can definitely achieve a net worth of a million dollars and you can have that passive income of $80,000 per year so that you can have what the studies teach is the level of income you need to have true happiness in your life. So I mean, if you want more than that, obviously you can reach for it, but it sounds like using our example from previous episodes, if you could get a million dollars of your net worth invested, you could be producing about $80,000 per year. Any follow up thoughts on that, Earl?
[00:13:36] Earl Cline
The only thing I'd say is mathematic is correct. The truth is it may be significantly less than that because if you needed 6,000 a month, which is about what, 80,000 a year is that, uh, you're probably gonna have social security. The income that they talked about was needed to get yourself through life. At some point. We reach a retirement age. We know that some of our income is gonna be supplemented by social security and things like that. The other thing is if you have your house paid off, right? So if you have a 60,000 a year or 80,000 a year income as throughout your life, you're probably gonna get your home mostly paid off or completely paid off by the time you retire, which is gonna take that $6,000 a month. And convert it down to maybe you need 2,500 a month outside cuz you're not making a house payment anymore, you're just paying the taxes on it.
[00:14:23]
Things like that. I'm not trying to suggest I'm a financial planner, but I don't want people to get frustrated saying, oh my gosh, if I don't end up with a million dollars, I'm not gonna be happy. Because I think that need for additional money tapers off at the elder that we get, the further we get down that road to retirement. And I think to your point, there's certainly a lot of things that we want to do when we get to that point when we retire. If you're lucky and all your kids live in the same city, it's not gonna cost you a lot to travel in the world we live in today, brothers and sisters of mine, my nieces and nephews gathering around different parts of the world, at least different parts of the United States. My brother goes out four times a year to Florida. So he can see his grandkids out there, and those are expensive trips. I'm not saying you just stopped because certainly the more money that we have when we retire, the more it'll allow us to supplement those relationships or to continue to fulfill those relationships. How's that?
[00:15:20] Roger Jacobsen
That's great, Earl. Uh, my takeaway from that is happiness is a state of mind and not a destination. So anywhere you are in your destination, you can just choose to be happy. I had a point in my career when it was really a down point in my life and focusing on it. Now, I wouldn't say it was a down point in my life and knowing what I know about everything, I'd say hap life happens for us and not to us. So I can remember the exact point that I was. Where I was standing, what was going on. When I decided I wasn't just gonna be mad and negative about all the things that were going on, I decided I was just gonna be happy. And I had gone through 2008, I had lost my cabinet shop through eminent domain, not through lack of business or anything, but the city had taken it using eminent domain, and I was.
[00:16:09]
Moving my tools out of storage into another place, and I was so mad and so upset and so worried. It was a house that wouldn't sell and a, uh, spec home that I was gonna build that I couldn't do. And business going downhill and losing the cabinet shop at the same time. I just decided I was gonna be happy and focused on being happy, and I stopped being negative. I stopped saying sarcastic things and really just turned my life around in the moment by choosing a different state of mind.
[00:16:36] Earl Cline
Yeah, I think that's powerful when you get to that point where you can be knee deep in mud and you just look at it and say, it could be worse, it could be rainy, so to speak. I think that's powerful. Roger. Thanks
[00:16:48] Roger Jacobsen
Ben, Why don't you tell us about your family. You've got some young family, and what did you do that contributes to your happiness as well as some of the challenge that you have that challenge your happiness?
[00:16:59] Ben Waller
Yeah, absolutely Roger. So I am lucky enough to have a seven-year-old little boy and a five-year-old little girl. My wife and I do the best we can to be good parents to those two. If you have young kids or have had young kids, you know, it's a rollercoaster experience every day. They're super excited to see me. I get to pick my son up from the bus he runs and gives me a hug, and those experiences are so uplifting, the joy that they bring.
[00:17:24]
There's always so much laughter in our house. Sometimes there's crying too, but there's a lot of laughter, which I get to focus on, and that brings a lot of joy into my life. But having young kids, as everybody knows, is extremely challenging. I work from home, so they'll come and see me all the time. It's a little bit of a distraction and it's hard to focus sometimes on the stuff I should be doing, but I do my best to enjoy those moments when they do occur because I know that at some point, hopefully not too soon, but in the future, they're gonna turn into teenagers and they're not gonna want to hang out with me as much, and they're gonna go off and do their own thing and eventually they'll move out.
[00:17:56]
So I have to do my best to live in the moment and enjoy the experience of them. Every day, the laughter, the happiness that they bring to me. I also wanna talk to just a little bit about things that we do as a family to have happiness together. We love being outside. I'm less of a winter person, more of a summer person, which is difficult living in the state of Utah. But, uh, we like to go hiking. We, my kids love to go to the park. We're into boating, so we spend a lot of time on the water just trying to really enjoy. The beauty that is surrounding us all the time, and a lot of those things, they don't cost any money. They take our time and we have to be willing to go look for them. But hiking doesn't require any cost. It's just looking around what is close to you that you can experience the joy and the beauties of the world that we live in. It's a wonderful experience.
[00:18:44] Roger Jacobsen
Absolutely. And a lot of times you figure out what you have time-wise and what you can do and you make the most of it.
[00:18:50] Earl Cline
Hey Ben, I've got a couple quick questions. You talked about working from home. I assume that that one of the blessings of being in that financial situation that you are, that allows you to be home and spend more time with your kids. When I first moved my office to home, even today, I sit and think about my kids coming in the door one at a time, and my office was right at the front of the house. And had a glass window in it. And I remember my kids coming by and, Hey dad, how you doing? And a lot of times I'd lock the door cuz I was busy with meetings or whatever. Tell me a little bit about how that impacts your situation. Is it a positive for you? Is it a negative? How has, uh, your financial preparedness helped you with that?
[00:19:27] Ben Waller
Yeah, that's a great question, Earl. I would say that. One of my life goals you could call it, was to put myself in a situation either working for myself or running a business that would allow me more control over my time. And I think at least my perspective is that one of the reasons people achieve or desire financial freedom is that they can have more control over the time. That they have and that they can choose to do what it is that they want. So yes, that is one of the things I've focused on in my life and my career, is building businesses and putting myself in a position that I have a little bit more control over my time so that I can spend time with my kids when they show up.
[00:20:01]
I get to take my kids to the bus. I get to be here when they come home from school. Those are experiences that I might not be able to have if I was working a regular nine to five job. I'm grateful that I've been able to put myself at least in a decent financial position so that I can choose when I'm working. I can capitalize on the experiences when they happen and not miss out on those.
[00:20:22] Earl Cline
Cool. Hey, Roger, you're in a little bit different situation. Why don't you talk a little bit about your family situation and how that enriches your life?
[00:20:30] Roger Jacobsen
Sure. So in my situation we have, between Bonnie and myself, we have eight kids. Most of them are grown up and doing their own thing, and I kind of feel the beginning of. Being an empty nester. So as the kids get older, they have less time to spend with their F parents, less time with me. They have a lot of activities and things, and so one of the things that I've done is I have a couple of family members that work for me. My oldest son and my second son are both working on my flips. Some part-time, some full-time, depends on the time too. And so it's frustrating sometimes when you set up like a fun event and they won't come. But when it comes to work, they do. So you get to see them, but it's also in a workspace and not just fun space.
[00:21:11]
So as we get older and stuff, we see that we're going to see less of our kids, and we try to make more memorable moment where you can capture them and capture the time. Make 'em turn off their phones, get together, talk to 'em, find out about their life and everything else. So they're very active. Jonathan and Zachary are both big time into snowboarding. Uh, Jonathan's an avid fisherman. He's gone ice fishing multiple times already this year, and it's hard sometimes when it's like, Hey, get this done, get that done. What are you doing this weekend? We're gonna have some fun. Oh, I got a list of activities that I'm not gonna join you on.
[00:21:46] Ben Waller
Hey, Roger, I wanted to ask you a, a question since you're in a slightly different stage of life than I am, and our listeners are gonna be all over the place in their ages, you've got plenty of children that you get to experience at this age of life. Is there anything you would've done differently or wish you had done differently at a younger age to be able to spend more time with your kids or. Or is there anything, regret might be the wrong word, but is there anything you wish you would've done differently when you were raising your kids? I
[00:22:11] Roger Jacobsen
don't think that a good parent will talk about a lot of regrets in their life. I, uh, do see some things that could have been done differently and seeing that I'm no longer with a mother of those children, there's definitely gonna be some regrets in that space. At this point. I would say living a little closer would make a lot of the visitation easier. I do think that you have to have a very wide and opening life in order to spend time with them.
[00:22:38]
I'm glad that I can pretty much choose whatever I want to do every day because I don't have to actually go in and see them, but I get to, life doesn't happen to us. Life happens for us. So when I look at it like, Hey, they've gotta come in and work to see me. I gotta go into work to see them. It's kind of a double edged sword where I get the chance to do it, and there might be a different space that that works in, but I'm pretty happy about that. Thanks for sharing that, Earl, you have some grownup kids and even some grandkids. Talk about your family situation and how that has changed over the years.
[00:23:12] Earl Cline
Sure. I'm on my second marriage now. My first wife and I, we had seven kids together. My two oldest were teenagers. When my ex decided to gonna go her own way, I remember the impact that had on my life. I was, quite frankly, I thought I was too old to go back and start over raising more kids, I think. My chief goal in life, and I've always been driven to be successful in my career and to acquire some of the fun things in life and stuff like that. But even as a young kid, you know, just first getting married, if you'd asked my most important goal, it probably wouldn't have been money, it would've been to have a family, to be a, a good father, so to speak.
[00:23:54]
And so as I'm faced with this prospect, uh, and it, and it became very real. Uh, and the way that my divorce went down, that I may not be able to see my kids very often. And I remember just being emotionally devastated over the idea that I'd spent so much of my life working on a family, had made conscious decisions of not taking a promotion necessarily because I thought that it would impact my relationship with my family. And to see that, you know, the potential that would come to an end. Or be severely limited, they say that uh, men in that situation would have the opportunity to supplement. Their family life by going out and becoming more successful. And they say that for women it would be a much harder situation to do that.
[00:24:48]
Some family situation is maybe a little bit more important for them. But I remember just being absolutely devastated and I got the standard, you know, every other weekend plus one night visit. I think my kids would tell you that if it was more than two or three times in the entire time that, that they were growing up, that dad had something that he wasn't able to meet, that it just became, uh, very, very important. Unfortunately, he sometimes become what everybody referred to me as Disneyland dad. Which meant that your kids came over and you've got four hours or six hours or whatever. So you gotta figure out something that you can do that's fun. It's probably not the same as being there and coaching your children and that type of thing, but in the process I.
[00:25:32]
I can honestly say I don't think I missed that much about my children's life, and my biggest fear at the time was that I just would not have any impact on my children's life. And as time has unfolded, I. It turns out that I still have a really, really good relationship with my children. All of them, except I've got one son that he still lives with us. He may not be able to go off on his own, so he's here. Other than that, I'm what you'd call an empty nest. My kids are all, uh, moved on, married, uh, living with significant others, whatever, but they've started their own families. I have eight grandkids now. I have to tell you, for those of you who are raising kids, Ben, you won't understand this yet, but you will, and Roger, you're just getting there.
[00:26:18]
But if I had a choice today, if I could find a way that I could just skip having children and just go straight to grandkids, I, I would, I, I would love to do that when your kids bring their kids back and when they come through the door. I was on the phone with my daughter last night and eldest daughter and her daughter, Addie. Says, oh my gosh, it's grandpa. Let me say hi to grandpa. You know, and she's about three years old and it's just the cutest thing in the world. Those kids love to come over and hang out with grandma and grandpa and, and as I look back, I can't think of anything. In my life, that brings me greater joy and happiness than my association with my family.
[00:27:01]
I've been married now for the second time, almost 18 years. That's about how long I was married to my first wife. My wife and I, we share so much joy together. We fulfill each other's lives. I jokingly tell people that we probably still have the same things that upset us that did 18 years ago when we were just figuring out how to coexist together peacefully. And yet I think we've just gotten old enough to, we've just decided neither one of us is gonna completely make the other one change. And so why bother arguing about it? We just accepted each of us for what we are, and I always have an analogy or a joke about marriage. I don't think if you look at life as I do, that it's an opportunity to grow and develop and progress.
[00:27:48]
I think the idea of being married, the reason that it's so valuable in that regard is that. Living with someone of the opposite sex, I don't think there's a relationship on the planet that can try and test you more than that type of relationship. And my wife, Sheila, she agrees with that assessment of it. But it's that idea of the journey we take where we're at, we change what we can change, and we just accept those things that we can't change. And we decide that we're going to live in the moment and be happy with the moment no matter what it is that we've decided to do. I am incredibly blessed to have the family life that I have. I have a number of hobbies that I like to do. Roger and I spend quite a bit of time riding motorcycles, and.
[00:28:38] Roger Jacobsen
I was worried motorcycles wasn't gonna make it into this podcast.
[00:28:43] Earl Cline
We spend quite a bit of time riding. We're still trying to get Ben out there, but uh, it's the financial choices that I have made have put me in a situation where today it gives me the opportunity to spend a significant amount of my time doing that. I joke with my partners that I get up in the morning, I flip a coin heads, I go riding tails. I have to come down to the office and go to work. It's a little cold right now, but I tell my wife, I'm just saving up. I've had a couple weeks I haven't been able to ride, and that just means that in the springtime I'm gonna take about three weeks and just disappear.
[00:29:17]
The financial choices we make, certainly add to and benefit us and allow us to do some of those things that we really, really enjoy. And I believe that all of those things, Add to that ultimate happiness that we experience, but I don't think it's necessarily has to be expensive. I think it's just finding those things that are meaningful in our lives and just making sure that we spend the appropriate amount of time on those and don't spend all of our time just worrying about how much money we can make, or I gotta work 80 hours a week, or I'm not gonna be able to go to Europe this year, or those types of things.
[00:29:53] Ben Waller
So, Earl, I've got a bit of a silly follow-up question for you. You've already done a good job, uh, telling our listeners about your passion for riding motorcycles. This is a hypothetical question, Earl, so don't get too stuck on it. If you had to choose between motorcycles, Or your kids, what would it be?
[00:30:14] Earl Cline
Oh my goodness. You have really, really pushed the envelope there, haven't you?
[00:30:19] Roger Jacobsen
No. Let's make it more serious. That one we already know the answer to. What'd you choose between motorcycles and your grandkids?
[00:30:27] Earl Cline
Oh, as much as I'd love the motorcycles, I get a tremendous amount of joy from riding, but honest in all honesty, my kids, my grandkids, my wife, brings me a lot more joy in life than any of the hobbies that I have. I mean, motorcycles are not just about riding. They take me out to, you know, it's vacations. It's all those things combined. I honestly would trade all of those to save the life of my wife or one of my kids so that they could spend a little more time with me. That's the honest truth.
[00:30:55] Roger Jacobsen
Very heartfelt. Thanks, Earl. Ben, can you share some strategies that we and our listeners can use to bring more happiness into their life?
[00:31:03] Ben Waller
Absolutely. Before I jump into those, I want to read, uh, a quote that I got recently from the New York Times, and we were talking about this before the podcast. That's why Earl mentioned this word. The quote is, the constant quest for the things we don't have is called the hedonic treadmill. It means that when we get what we want, whether that's money, a job, love or a new house, we may get a burst of happiness, but we quickly settle back to our previous level of happiness and then start thinking about the next thing that will make us happy. We've spent a lot of time on this episode talking about our relationships with people. I. And how that is really the core of what, what truly brings happiness in our life. We also wanted to throw it in just a couple of other strategies that you can use in your day-to-day life to help build that core of relationships.
[00:31:54]
So the first one I want to touch on is self-care, and I wanna share a quick story that will help bring this home a little bit. So several years ago I had made some pretty good investments in real estate and I was able to be in a pretty decent financial position in my life, but, I wasn't doing a great job taking care of my health, and because of that I had always had this goal in life to do really well financially. And I thought that was the end all, be all. And I got to the point in life where I was set up decently financially, but, uh, because I wasn't taking care of my health, I started to have panic attacks. If you've never experienced a panic attack, I don't urge you to try it. It's really, uh, not comfortable. I thought I was dying. And when I started to look at my life and what was going on, I realized that there was a lot of things I wasn't doing that are pretty basic, that can really impact. Your quality of life and your happiness. So pretty simple though. Exercise, getting enough sleep, focusing on what you eat. All of those things are self-care items that really help just have a baseline of bringing happiness into your life.
[00:32:57]
Because I'm here to tell you that panic attacks do not bring happiness into your life. A couple other things you can use to help with self-care. Meditation is a great way to relax yourself. I also wanna throw in here that therapy, whether that's couples therapy, individual therapy, those are things that aren't talked about enough, but everybody has issues in their life. And meeting with somebody who's a professional to talk through them can really help to improve the happiness that you experienced as a human being. Uh, a couple other things to throw in here. Practicing gratitude that can be being grateful for things out loud that could be writing in the gratitude journal. Roger, I know you made some comments about gratitude. Do you wanna throw anything in here?
[00:33:36] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah, it's a very important thing. I see a lot of, uh, gratitude from the most successful investors that I know, and I think it's very basic that whatever you go over and you list in your mind over and over is gonna comment, is gonna control how you feel. So if I go through and I say, well, I have this real estate investment that's going south. I have this real estate investment that's not making as much money. I have such and such money problem. I have such and such bad thing going in my life that's gonna control your psychology to a point that you're gonna be depressed and upset.
[00:34:14]
But if you use gratitude, Then you can have the opposite and have happy feelings. So if you start with even the smallest things, I'm here, I have a choice of whether I go to work or don't go to work. I can put a smile on my face because I can think of happy thought and you'd list everything over and over. I'm gonna get to see my kids this weekend. I have a fun trip planned in the future. I have this level of success. I have ability to change this thing going forward. I can just keep adding them together until I'm happy.
[00:34:46] Ben Waller
Thanks for sharing that, Roger. Another thing I want to throw in here is ditching your phone. Smartphones are really a new thing, if you think about it. They haven't been around for much more than 10 years. I would argue that right now a lot of people are distracted by their phones. And we can be in a situation where we might be in the same room with a loved one or a good friend, and we're distracted by things on our phone. And I challenge you when you're in the moment to really be in the moment. And not get distracted by your phone. Even when you're by yourself. There's other things you can be doing than scrolling through your phone. And the next thing I wanna talk about is getting into nature. Like put your phone down, go for a walk.
[00:35:19]
Enjoy the beauty that's around you. I guarantee you that will bring more happiness into your life. Another thing I wanna talk about as far as happiness goes is giving back. And Earl. Roger, if you have any comments on this, I'd love to hear it. But when you serve somebody else, it brings a happiness into your life that you really can't get in any other way. I've had a couple opportunities in life to go serve people with my church and just service projects in the community. The feeling you get when you serve people is just so wonderful. I would encourage you to give back in any way that you can. Earl. Roger, do you have any comments about what you've done to give back or ways people can give back?
[00:35:55] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah. I think service to others can be such a wide spectrum. It can be anything from holding the door open for the next person to go into the gym, or it can be a charity. One of my favorites we've done many years in a row now is we go and collect money into the food bank. And when you sit down and think about it, it's like, I could eat whatever I wanted. I. Can go wherever I want and eat. I can go to the kitchen and there's hundreds of meals before starvation. And when you give to the food bank, they'll do a analysis for what the quantity of money that you give, because they have a formula for the amounts. They'll tell you that your gift donation will feed, you know, 3000 meals or whatever that ends up being. And so you can sit there and think, you know, somebody out there that didn't have food. Is gonna have a meal and it's not just one, it's a hundred or 200 or a thousand. And it really brings a warm feeling to your heart, knowing that somebody without is gonna have.
[00:36:57] Ben Waller
Thanks for sharing that. Roger. Earl, do you have any comments there?
[00:36:59] Earl Cline
We talked the other day of one of our guests was talking about the idea even teaching what you know to other people is a form of giving back. Had an opportunity to speak on a number of subjects. Uh, spent quite a bit of my time mentoring people to, uh, get into the, the real estate business and help them figure out what to do. It really adds to my. Understanding of the subject matter. I think I get more out of it than those people that I code as being a parent. It's the same you think of it that you're giving back, and the truth is, I think in the end we get more from it than, uh, than we could ever possibly give back.
[00:37:39] Ben Waller
Thanks for sharing that. The last strategy that I wanted to talk about today is spending money. But not unstuck. So when I look back at my life, and hopefully Roger and Earl have a similar mentality, when I look back on my life, I don't remember many of the things that I bought, but I do remember the experiences that I had with people that I love. So when you're thinking about bringing happiness into your life and your family's life, focus on investing. Into things or experiences that will be a great memory for you and for the people around you. A quick story to share on top of that, I've always had the dream of making millions of dollars and being extremely wealthy. I have the privilege to be surrounded by a few people in my life that have done really well financially. I like to, to look to them as an example and also to see what their life is like. And I had this illusion that if I could get to a certain level of wealth, that everything in my life would just be so much easier.
[00:38:39]
That I would be super happy and everything would be really simple. But when I look at other people that have done really well financially, I truly look at what's going on in their life. Things aren't easier for them. The money that they've achieved is not bringing them true happiness. They're still struggling with the same things that I struggle with every day, even though they have. Financial security. So this is, I think what Earl was trying to focus on with this book is that the wealth that we create obviously helps to support our life. We, everybody needs to eat and shelter, clothing, et cetera, but getting millions and millions of dollars is not going to make you a truly happy person. And like Roger said, focusing on right now, not the destination, but choosing to be happy in the moment is really what we need to be striving for. And these strategies are just some suggestions on what we can be doing every day to help us get to that point. But it really comes down to making the choice for ourselves so that we can be happy.
[00:39:38] Earl Cline
That's great. Ben. You know, just a summary of, we've said a number of things already, but I think it's within each of us. To I, I don't even know how to say, find happiness, but. We decide to be happy by learning to love those situations that we have. I know my life hasn't always been what you would consider a perfect pitcher, uh, the Norman Rockwell pitcher or whatever, but as I look back, like Roger said, I, I don't know if you look back and say, I would've changed.
[00:40:07]
This or that or whatever, because all those experiences have added to my enjoyment. Sometimes you go through difficult times so that you appreciate the really good times when they're there, but you don't have to decide to be miserable just because things aren't going your way. Uh, again, happiness to me is it's a journey and just enjoy the ride. I think a number of people, you know, it's a very common statement. Time is short. We all have a short amount of time, and I think the important thing is, Spend that time doing those things that are going to bring you the ultimate amount of happiness, and it's really to have some sort of balance in your life.
[00:40:48] Roger Jacobsen
That's great. Thanks Earl. To summarize, I would say that, you know, you have a lot of different things that are gonna be going on in your life and you need to focus on gratitude and happiness. Once you do, it's a state of mind where it's not a destination where you'll get there one day, but it's, I decide to be happy today, uh, there's gonna be a lot of cliches that. I can name. You know, it comes to this, there's a lot of different people that say a lot of different things that come to mind. Tony Robbins is gonna be, life happens for us, not to us. When it comes to parenting. I either win or I learn, and you really need to focus on just being happy and not the pursuit of money and the end game being happy. Thanks for joining us on our latest episode of Retire Wealthy and happy. Hope to see you next time.
[00:41:36] Earl Cline
Thank you. Thanks everyone. Goodbye.
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