Money Talks

What would you actually do with $10,000 right now — and what does your answer say about you? In this episode of See Through, hosts Dev and Roger get personal about their relationships with money, from sneaker collections and credit card debt to ETFs, day trading, and energy stocks. They break down real strategies for different seasons of life, challenge the get rich quick mentality, and ask the question most people avoid — is your money working for you or are you just working for it? No financial advice. Just two honest perspectives. New episodes every Sunday. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, so I figured maybe we could start this topic by maybe exploring maybe just to give the audience some perspective and maybe even each other some perspective on I don't know our relationship with money, how we view money. Because I think that is an important thing to contextualize because to your point, it is a taboo subject. It is a touchy subject for many, understandably. And so, yeah, what's your relationship like with money, or maybe where did it begin and where is it now? And yeah, you know, maybe we could start there.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Well, I think if I'm gonna talk about money, I have to go back to my parents' generation. Yeah, of course. Because that was the major influence for uh, well, I'm a Gen Xer for most of the people my age, I think that was probably the start of our understanding of money and our journey with money. Totally. Or or should I say lack thereof? Because what I've learned from watching my parents and sort of hearing what their perspectives were with money to where I am and how I choose to have a relationship with it, they're two polar, polar different perspectives, right? My parents' relationship was built on scarcity and respect, right? They earned it, they protected it, and nobody talked about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yes, it was like uh you would never bring it up in any conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

There was no wasting of the money. So when I think of the flights my parents took anywhere, they went back to the motherland, but they did multiple things. There was a wedding there, they had some land stuff they had to take here. Yeah, yeah. There was no vacation.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yes, it wasn't like a break.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

That's right. Yeah, it wasn't like, you know what, I need to decompress, yeah, disconnect from my reality, yeah, and go on a vacation. It was uh very much functional travel, right? And and I would say the same for anything when they need a new new vehicle, it's because the other one was driven into the ground. Yeah, and and so it was time to now change. So I think their relationship had a profound impact on my younger me because you think of, okay, as long as you had food on the table, uh roof over your head, yeah, and clothes on everyone's back, then you're you've done your job and save the rest for a rainy day because you never know when you might need it.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah, that's fair. And would you say you well, let's now how what's your did you absorb that? Are you do you function like that?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Or I always questioned it even from a young age. Of course, right? Because then I just thought to myself, okay, if you work and you I'll just use the analogy of a nine to five, you go put in your time every two weeks to get a paycheck. That can't be it. Like how, like up, you're watching other people, maybe you know, you you watch TV and you you see other people on the news, they're doing this, they're doing that. Yeah, and then there's people in your community who are elevating to other levels of income. Yeah, right, and sort of just lifestyle. And then you're questioning like this wow, do these people have really high-paying jobs? How are they able to do this when I watched my parents? You know, my mom ran a restaurant, pardon me, pardon me. She was the owner, operator of a restaurant. My dad was, you know, he worked in a sawmill, made good money as a general laborer. Then he ran a bunch of the machinery there. So they they for what they were doing, they made really good money in the era that we were in, right? And um, but from the economy of things, we were we were not rich. You know, I would say, yeah, we were comfortable middle class, yeah, right, which a lot of the people in our community were at that time because they all worked in sawmills, mining industry, yeah, trades, yeah, and stuff like that. So yeah, so I questioned a lot of like, okay, like this can't be it, because how are people having greater economy, but they're also doing the same things we are. And it wasn't later in life when you know I made my own maybe mistakes, and I don't call them mistakes, but my I had my own learns with money, right? Yes, tried the putting away, saving it, yeah, and then your car breaks down. Now you got to take that money you put away for a rainy day. Yeah, and that's again, I guess that's what it was for. You spent it on rebuilding your car, fixing this, fixing that. And then all of a sudden you're looking at your bank account, you're like, oh my god, it's depleted. Yeah, I put all that time and effort into putting this money somewhere, something unexpectedly happened. I had to build a fence, I remember that, and that wasn't cheap in my new house, and that depleted my savings as well. Yeah, and that's where I really started thinking about okay, this can't be it, there's got to be a better way to it. And that's when investing and sort of the stock market, um, and really understanding how I could leverage my money and use it as a tool, yes, versus just uh being almost afraid and respecting it specifically because it's money and that was the only gateway to having comfort in your life. Yeah. And so for me, that's been my journey is really learning how do I leverage it as a tool. Obviously, I'm I don't want to disrespect money because you know it's hard to earn in moments, but once you figure out that it can work for you, I think it changes your relationship with money altogether.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yeah. Hey, listen, that makes a lot of sense, and I completely kind of see where your mindset evolved and kind of where it is today. I think I believe um maybe not a hundred percent copy and paste, but I I relate and resonate. But I do have a couple of unique maybe perspectives on money that maybe are more generation specific to when I grew up, which was basically in the you know late 90s, early 2000s. And I would say I'll start with obviously I think a lot of people learn their money slash their relationship and their psychology with money come from their parents and how it's talked about or not talked about growing up. I I don't know anyone my age, especially that's brown, that could maybe tell me how much mortgage is left on their parents' house or you know, how much their parents even made in like, you know, from a salary perspective. I it's because it was never discussed. It was I would say even considered like disrespectful to ask, yeah, or even rude to ask. And so it was this kind of interesting thing because as you were bringing up kind of how your parents spent their money on like plane tickets and you know, they oh they would only buy a new car. You know, I think my mom, who was kind of my main caregiver and breadwinner, I think that's definitely either an immigrant thing or a generational thing, which is they didn't spend money unless they had to. Yeah. And what they had to spend money on, there was such a finite, such a finite list around. Yeah. And to be honest, I grew up in you know, a culture here in Toronto and here in Canada that really bred like consumerism and materialism and status based on the physical objects you had. And I would be the last person to not admit that I was I definitely fell victim to that. And you know, I think my relationship with money was you should spend that. You should, you know, earn it and then you should spend it. And I think in my early kind of years of life, my early 20s, um, and I think this is still a thing, is people spend money as a way to show success and to show status and to, you know, uh impress people and to make people think that they're more established. And I still see people my age and their 30s doing the same thing, if I'm being honest. But for me specifically, I think that is really where my relationship with money started, which was my mom would never buy me anything in the sense that she did give me all the things that I asked for, but anything that she felt was dumb or stupid, which were most things, let's be honest, like you know, uh a $300 pair of shoes or frivolous spending frivolous things when I already had like two or three good pairs of shoes. Why do you need five or ten? You know, and I can appreciate that. That that was the right parenting decision, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

100%.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

But when I started to make my own money, I think naturally what I think uh, you know, I think a lot of people experience is they start to spend on the things that they were never allowed to spend on.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Going to nicer restaurants, you know, uh, you know, um, buying materialistic items for me, that was sneakers. I think in like my early 20s when I started to make a decent amount of money, I think I still own like over 70 pairs of sneakers. Wow. Yeah, I think I think the last time I calculated it, if I just calculated like just per cost basis of like retail price, I think I have over like 40 grand worth of sneakers. Which is nauseous for me to say out loud now. Yeah, but back then felt like such an easy decision. Of course. And that's the second thing I want to say on the money side of things, which is I think my generation and even me personally, unlike maybe your parents or even yourself or my parents, are a lot more comfortable going into debt. Yeah. Way more comfortable throwing that on a credit card, and then I'll see you later. And what's interesting about it is I think in like in my mom's mind, even if it's on a credit card, it's still like she's like, I'm gonna pay that 100% at the end of the month. That's right. It wasn't like seen as like a I'm just gonna do this as like a I'll figure this out later. Whereas I think when I kind of got introduced to a credit card and all that, I think my relationship with money was, oh, like, you know what, I I could just keep paying this down and you know, I'll never hit interest. And like, and even interest, I think I it took me a while to even understand how that worked and how it's calculated. Yeah, um, but yeah, I think my relationship with money early on basically is you make it, you spend it, you use it, and it ain't coming with you, you know, you're only young once this kind of consumerism mentality. And I think as I grew older, what I started to realize is money is really just, I think, a mental state of being. And what I really learned were that the people that were the richest, and this is why I think our parents felt so happy compared to like people today who are the same age, the people that are the richest aren't the people that have the most, but require the least. That's right. That's a good way to say it. And a lot of because you know, even what you were saying with your parents is they didn't need the latest and greatest, they didn't need, like, for me, for example, I have to get like a new phone. I've gotten a new phone every year without fail in the last decade, every year. And and see, like, it's not that like I need one, but it's like it that's so ingrained in like my like culture and like my lifestyle. Whereas my parents, they didn't need that. And so, like, if you think about those types of things, like they add up, and like, you know, they didn't need to drink a matcha, they didn't need to, you know, you know, have a bunch of skincare products or you know, a hundred different types of things, so they felt naturally richer because their lifestyle didn't need as much to keep up with it, yeah, and so that's kind of where my state of well-being is now with money, which is I think I've really trimmed down like, okay, these are the things that I really care about that actually bring me joy and I'm willing to invest in financially. Yeah, even if they're not like big investments, they actually bring me a lot of like just pure happiness. But they're not done in a way where, oh, I'm gonna show this off to everyone and I need other people to validate that, like, oh, I own this physical object, therefore you should be friends, or therefore you should think I'm cool. So it is really just done for my own self-volition.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Well, I think that's also your maturing process with the money and sort of your family and understanding what's actually important to you in this moment in your life and stage. And, you know, we always refer to our moments in life or stages of life as seasons.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

So I think with money, you have to realize what season of life you're in as well. And based on the season of your life, can help you determine what your relationship with that money should look like. Before we get any deeper, I do want to say one thing. We're not giving you or anyone financial advice. All we're saying is figure out your own journey with your own money. What we're gonna share with you is just our own experiences and our own learns with our journey with money and what we would do if we had X amount of dollars and where we would, you know, invest it, spend it, or or or none of the above, and just leave it sitting in a savings account. Um, so I just wanted to preface by that. But I also do think, yeah, for me as well, it's been a journey. So when you think of what I learned and saw my parents' generation and what they do, and sort of where I figured out what I could leverage it for and how I've used it. And you know, I agree with this concept of the credit card analogy that you were sharing, that like, you know, when in my generation, my parents' generation, you use your credit card, you use it for the dollars you want to spend on it, not for spending the money, but getting the points, if you will. Because I got a great credit card with great points. But the cash is already sitting in the account to pay it off at the end of the month, yeah. Right. And so I could have paid for it cash, or I'm gonna collect some points at some point, I get to fly for basically next to nothing. Yeah. And so for me, that's where I take advantage of it. But understanding that relationship, money can go a long way and money can grow for you, but are you risk adverse? Yeah. Okay. So now the question that we want to sort of get into for the two of us is if you had $10,000 sitting in your savings account, checkings account, wherever, basically you got 10K. What are you doing with it? Are you just leaving it in a savings account? Are you investing it in stocks? Are you buying something that you've always wanted to buy, or are you maybe saving up, continue to save for a down payment on a house? Maybe, Dev, if you want to kick that off, and then I can share briefly where I would go with it.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, listen. Before I jump into that, I think what I would just start off by saying, in terms of like investing and you know, trying to grow your money or get your money to work for you. I just want to start by saying nobody has this figured out to 100% science. And that's I think the first thing I would say when I think about like my investments is not one person, even the Warren Buffett's of the world or you know, anyone that you maybe finance financially follow has a 100% surefire strategy that's gonna work 100% of the time. I think that is part of what you have to understand. And I think I the last thing I just want to mention before I kind of we jump into this topic is I've also learned to disassociate my emotional well-being to the amount of money that I make or that's in my bank account. I think a lot of people have their identity tied to their salary or tied to how much they have in savings. Hey, having more money or having financial assets do make you feel more calm and maybe feel more like you're in control, but that also adds a lot of stress and adds a lot of complexity to your life. That more money, more problems. Absolutely. And I remember growing up, I'm like, how can having more money be more problems? No, it is way more problems. And if you if you think and if you're naive enough to think, oh yeah, you know what, if I had a million dollars, all of my problems would go away. Yes, but you'd also create new problems that potentially will be even more problematic than the problems you have right now. That's the punchline. Yes, your current problems would probably disappear, but new ones would be introduced. Now, to your topic of the 10K, I like to think of this like, okay, so if I had $10,000 that were not critical to my life, meaning my housing expenses, my food expenses, my like critical like daily life expenses. This is outside of that $10K, right? Because of course you'd have to allocate 100% money to those critical things, you know, any medical bills you have, anything that are like really important to your literal well, like staying alive, keeping the people around you alive. Prioritize. Prioritize. So if I had 10k of excess, right out of the gate, I'm very much I like to try to think of my money as how do I also enjoy it to an extent while investing in. So right out of the gate, 10% of that money, I'd probably do whatever the hell I wanted with. So a thousand bucks. Sure. Right out of the gate. Now, that thousand bucks can be whatever is your case. In my case today, what would that 10% go to? I would say a mix of going to a restaurant that I really like, investing in tech camera gear, that's something I'm really interested in. Probably going to a sporting event or, you know, getting tickets to a concert of somebody that I really like, or all the above, depending on if I could financially swing it. Yeah. But 10%, whatever that, you know, excess amount is, I think 10% is my comfortable threshold of like buying clothes, like do something for yourself that, you know, actually adds value. And if you can be even more strategic, try and invest in something that's like really going to like shift your life. So like maybe, you know, if you're really uh like invest in maybe uh like a sauna or something, or like yeah, or like coal plunge. Yeah, like spend a thousand dollars on like a really amazing, like, you know, pair of like shoes or a couple of pairs of shoes if you know those are gonna take care of your feet, or a new mattress. Like that's like what I mean by like that 10% of money of like whatever you do it. Would you be the same in that? Or what would you would you spend any of it on yourself or are you straight straight investment?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

No, no. I would at this season of my life, yeah, I'm spending some of that money. Like what percentage are you at? I would say 25%. Wow, okay. So you know, $2,500. I would well here, my kids are also older. Yes, yes. Right. So I'll I'm not just thinking about myself, I'm also thinking about what experiences, what could I get for my kids that allows them to see what Papa's efforts allow him to do, yeah, that they can come along on this journey. Because then I unpack that with them and I have a sort of a life moment conversation with them. So the number's gonna be a little bit higher. I am older than you, right? So I'm in a different stage in my life, a different season in my life. So yeah, I would probably spend marginally more, but the remaining would be is going to be interesting to see what you would do with it and where I'm putting it.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah. Right. So 10% for me is okay, I'm gonna do something that doesn't have to have any ROI or can be just a write-off. Yeah, the other 10%, so now we're using about 20%, is I would invest in myself in something that's going to make me either mentally, physically, emotionally, or spiritually stronger. That could be therapy, that could be taking a class or learning a lesson, that could be investing in some form of an education or a programming thing or some level of like uh, you know, uh certification of some kind that basically is either going to make me smarter, make me better, take an AI course is probably what I would do immediately. Yeah, learn how to code an agent, learn how to build an agent, learn how to use an LO. Like if I was gonna do that right in this exact moment, probably do that. But I would take something like, hey, even something like I would take a course on maybe how to cook a little bit better so I can eat cleaner. Something that actually makes me like just upskills me. It's like giving me a like an extra skill point in a part of my life. I would spend 10% okay. See, I included that in my 2500. Okay, that's your 25%, that's still in your 25%. Yeah, that's another 10%. So I'm at 20% gone. Now, this next 80%, I think, really depends on kind of your risk tolerance and how conservative you are or how how um how willing you are to take chances. I will say at the current you know, stage of my life that I'm in, which to give you context, uh, I'm 33. I just had a kid about a year, I'm a year and eight months ago. So I'm a newer-ish parent. Um, we're a dual-income household. My wife works full-time as well. We live in a suburb very north of the city, so we're not living in like the downtown core, like we don't live in like the affluent, like downtown core. We have a very nice place. Like, please, in no way am I saying we know we live in kind of the boonies or anything, which there's nothing wrong with that, but we live in a very comfortable lifestyle. So right now, I'm not in the mindset of a get rich quick type scheme. Yeah. Whereas if you ask me in my early 20s, I'd probably just put this all in crypto and roll roll the dice and hope for the best, which would have actually worked if I had done it back, you know, uh when I was in my 20s. But now I'm very much a more conservative where I'm okay for my money to grow over, let's say, a 20 to 30 year time window versus, oh my God, I need a 20% ROI in the next like two to three years, which I think really shifts. So for me, with that final 80% or that $8,000, I probably take 50% of that final 80% and put it in something really reliable and really steady, which would be like an ETF, you know, VOO, something that is tried and true, really boring, not sexy. Like you're gonna look at it every couple of months and being like, I basically made no money, but I can assure you you are making small, small incremental gains. Well, sometimes large. Because it's sometimes large.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Yeah, it does take off.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Hey, with the way the US economy is currently and the swings and all of the various you know things that are happening in the world right now and the climate, in the geopolitical climate, yeah, there are been some big swings and some big swings down in both directions. So just to prepare yourself. But it's one of those set and forget type strategies. And that's the thing that I would say with investing is if you want to invest in like something that you need to check daily, it is so stressful. And this is where a lot of people get really nervous and and you know, I think sometimes over-index themselves where they put themselves in these financial positions where they're trying to get rich quick and they need something to work out in their favor. But I would take a more conservative approach, so that would be kind of where I would land on that.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah, I would say I'm I'm similar, even though I'm in a different season in life. I'm not looking for a get rich quick sort of concept myself. Yeah. But I've also been in the market probably longer than you. You've much longer. Right. And so for me, I'm in a different stage of life that I can attest to that the market's gonna go up and down, but it's always going up. Yeah. Right. And so it all depends. Timing, right? You can try to time a stock or time in the stock, right? And I'm a firm believer of the same. What I would just say is similar to you, is do your own research. I think ETFs are amazing long term strategy. To your point, you're putting 50% in there. I'm probably doing about the same. And then the remainder is probably going into individual stocks. And I I'm gambling a little bit with it. Um, what I'm also doing is with time, is I'm sort of getting into day trading and really I want to take a stab. So I don't really care about the get rich quick model. It's about sustainability and can I replace a revenue stream on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in a few hours doing day trading versus working a Monday to Friday nine to five. Yeah. And in the short test I've run, yeah, you can do that. Um, but it takes a little bit of time, effort, research, and energy to sit in front of a computer and really understand what it is that you're trying to do. Once you figure it out, um, I think, yeah, for those, well, that's why people do day trading. They leave their jobs and or they keep their jobs and they day trade on the side, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, listen, day trading is definitely a lifestyle. I think um during my paternity leave, like my parental leave, I definitely learned a lot more about it, like, you know, puts, calls, options. And listen, if you know what you're doing, you can make some good money, but there are also lots of days where you could do everything right and still lose. And make, yeah. So just to be clear, it is a very, you know, big swing type lifestyle. And so what I would say is kind of like to what you were saying, I'm not a finance bro. I don't have like all these degrees, or you know, I don't, I don't have time necessarily to, you know, sit on, you know, a stock index chart. What I did find for just a casual investor or somebody that, you know, wants to grow their money marginally, um, but with a little bit more upside than downside is if you're gonna do the individual stock thing, the the first piece of advice that, you know, I really took to heart that I found really beneficial for me is look up companies and look up stocks on things that you're already naturally a subject matter expert on, because you already know that industry and that market. And I know that sounds a little weird to say, but like, for example, like I know a lot about tech and technology. So, you know, tech companies, tech stocks, anything that deals with consumer tech, I feel very in tune around because I kind of know what's happening in that landscape. Cause just in my own spare time without actually doing anything, I already kind of researched that on my own. And I kind of know what companies I think are, you know, trying new things or really pushing the envelope, or hey, you know what, they're you know, doing the things that are making people happy. And I'm noticing even in my own personal environments, people are investing more, which generally means the company's doing better. It's kind of like you're doing your own sample study of that company. And the same can be said, I, you know, a lot of fashion companies, a lot of fashion brands, car companies we've talked a lot about, they all have stocks. And so even if you did this assessment, like if you went to any company or any brand that you love, find out if they're publicly traded. Look at the last five years of that company's stock price and ask yourself, hey, have you like if you had invested, would you have invested in this five years ago? And the answer is probably yes, because you were already maybe a day one customer or you already owned this product for a you know a multitude of years. And you know, you can kind of see that. And the same can be said as the opposite of like maybe you've bought from a brand and you've noticed their quality has decreased or it's diminished. And that also tells you, okay, well, this is maybe not something you want to invest in, as you're thinking about if you wanted to take that last 30% and maybe throw it into something that's having a higher upside, but start with something that you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, I'm gonna take a slightly different twist on it now because yeah, I like you, I've grown up with technology, I know tech, and I think where the bulk of my investments are going, whether it's ETFs or not, most of them are tech-based stocks, anyways, right? The bulk of where the success comes from all of those. I'm gonna say look and assess not just your everyday life, but the everyday life of those around you. What are the things that they use and and not even use, they need. Well, we all need to eat, we all need electricity, gas, heating. Start looking at energy stocks, infrastructure stocks, because you'll be surprised at the longevity and the growth that they can have, especially with this AI world we're walking into. And as those sectors start to evolve and think about what's gonna be needed for AI's longevity, because you know the argument in the news and if you watch social media is AI could be a bubble. It's not a bubble, right? Like it's a bubble in this respect of that it's gonna be self-sufficient and running on its own and and doing its own thing for us, because that's what Elon believes, right? In the next 18 months to 24 months. Listen, if any of you are playing with AI and if you're building anything with AI, if you're using sort of, you know, coding and stuff like that, I'll tell you right now, it still hallucinates way more than it needs to. And it's really frustrating that you're cross-referencing, cross-checking, and validating the work because it's not accurate enough. So we're still in that stage. So it's not going to be running our world by itself anytime soon. And I get it, it's exponential. We don't have the computing capacity yet with quantum computing, right? It's coming, it's down the path. But more importantly, we don't have the energy and infrastructure for it. Think of cooling all of these data centers. Um, and that's a big sort of topic in municipalities now, right? Especially in Canada, of whether or not they even want to bring data centers into their um economies. And the other component is the energy. What's it gonna take to run these data centers, right? So without all of that infrastructure sort of ironed out, I would be putting some of my money towards that type of um investment strategy as well, because that's gonna be reliant. All of our future is gonna be reliant on energy.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah, that's a really great take. And it actually kind of reminds me of another important thing I think about investing, which is I think the things that have the best runway are also the things that are not the hottest things to talk about. Yeah. Or the things that are not maybe the most cool things that have like cool logos and cool brands, and you're like, why would I invest in the semiconductor nuclear plant? Like, I've never heard of this. I'd much rather invest in like a big brand or a big logo. Exactly. And so I think that's the other piece of investing is if you only invest in the companies and the big logos that you know, I can assure you, you're really not capitalizing. No, you're not. Most companies that are on the move, and even if you think of like, you know, a decade ago, most of the companies that are worth the most right now weren't even a part of any financial dialogue. Nobody was talking about them, nobody was predicting them, nobody was asking you to invest in them. But there were a lot of people that did, and they've now made of and they rightfully so have come out really ahead. And that's, I think the thing is a lot of you know, and this is kind of the thing that even comes back to my my viewpoint of money, and I think it's the viewpoint of stocks. I've never met any generation of person, whether I'm talking to like an 80-year-old and anyone younger, when I asked them, hey, when you were growing up, when you were my age, at whatever age that was be, did you think the world was financially set up for success? 100% of the time, their answer is always no. Yeah. I've never met a single person that's ever told me it's the housing market wasn't so unattainable, the housing prices were too high, gas prices were too high, food prices were too high. Yeah, you know, any generation that you speak with, if you ask them that question, the answer is always it's too high. Yeah. So what I've also understood about this whole money and kind of investing concept is clearly people are winning, even though they're experiencing the same reality that we're all experiencing. Yeah. And so you could be that person too. That's the thing that I also want to kind of really stress is you could also be that person, but you have to be willing to, you know, try and fail and you know, put some of the investing things that you you want to try out into the world to actually see if it gives you that return that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Well, this is why I talked about different seasons of your life and what's important to you. So if you're younger and you're starting out and you're looking to buy a house, it's daunting because the mortgage is gonna be big. Yeah. But think of 30 years or 25 years, hopefully your mortgage is paid off by then. When you hit the later stages of life, you're gonna reassess it. So you might be chasing a $200,000, $150,000 a year salary today as a young person. Well, what happens when your car is paid off and it's in really good shape? Maybe it's only a couple years old and you don't have a mortgage anymore. Do you still need the $150,000, $200,000 a year job with the hustle and flow? Or maybe something a lot lower pay, slower might suit you just fine. Now you can afford the time to do some of the things you actually want to do, right? And yeah, I think you have to also assess and look at sort of what it is that you're trying to get out of life. And here's what Dev and I were just talking before we started recording this. And I said to him, I'm actually having this thought. And listen, I'm not telling anyone to go do this. This is my thought, is liquidating everything. The properties, sell it all. Um, you know, I'll pay some capital gains in there, or maybe not, depending on what my strategy is, right? And how I choose to live through each of the properties. But I'm actually thinking, uh, you know what? Why pay part property tax? Why carry any sort of mortgage when I could sell, you know, the house I'm living in now and have no debt and have a whole bunch of money in the bank, yeah, and go rent a really nice property, you know, modest, nice property that suits me and the kids just fine. Yeah. Um, and and that's it, and just ride out the rest of my days and have an amazing life, travel the world. It's true. Yeah, it's true. And I think less is more the guy who has you know car builds and stuff, but that's that that's a passion of mine. Without it, I don't know that I would be me. But my point being, who's to say that's wrong? Because I do know people do that, they sell, liquidate everything, they move to a different kind of, you know, move move to Thailand. I don't know, move to I don't know, Philly, yeah, move to another country, yeah. Right. And then they live the rest of their lives living a nice, modest, comfortable lifestyle in a subtropical climate and being stress-free, not paying taxes anymore.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah, it's true. I think anything that you're doing with your money should get you to your end goal. And I relate a lot to that. I think as I grew, I realized the only reason I wanted money was actually what I wanted was my time back. Yeah. And there's two ways that you can address that. Either you can A make more money, which is kind of that hustle culture, you know, you know, those get rich quick schemes, those, you know, crypto schemes, whatever the case may be, or you can get your time back by being more savvy with your money and needing less of it to actually sustain your lifestyle. You got it. And this is a bit of a hot take. I think if I had to redo my life today with, you know, just the information that I have right now, I wouldn't have bought any property. I would have just taken all that extra capital and put it into a stock market. And I think I would have come out way more ahead, but a topic, I think, for another day. Now, as we look to wrap up, we're gonna close this episode out. I'm gonna hand it off to Roger, who's gonna take us through um our motivational minute. And so as he's teeing that up, I just wanted to also let you all know that we're still always open to any topics and suggestions that you might have. Even this topic today, like I mentioned, actually came from one of you, uh listener. It's the first time uh that we've had that. So appreciate you for uh writing that one in. And so with that, I'm gonna hand this off to Roger, and we will uh see you next week. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

You know, I think about the generation that came for us, uh, my parents, their relationship with money, it was simple. You earn it, you protect it, you don't waste it. There was no debate about whether to invest in experiences or assets. You put food on the table, you kept a roof over your head, and whatever was left you held on to tightly because you never knew when you were going to need it. And for a long time, I thought that was just the old way of thinking, the cautious way, maybe even the fearful way. But the older I get, the more I realize they weren't afraid of money, they respected it. And there is a huge difference there. See, I've made my share of mistakes with money, chased things I thought I was supposed to, spent in places maybe I shouldn't have, learned some hard lessons that I generally wish somebody had sat me down and told me earlier. But here's what those lessons gave me clarity about what money actually is. It's not a scoreboard, it's not a signal of how well you're doing compared to anyone else. It's a tool. And like any tool, it only works when you use it with intention. So wherever you are in your money journey right now, whether you're just starting out, rebuilding, or trying to figure out what's next or what the right next move looks like, I want you to hear this. Stop measuring your financial life against someone else's highlight reel. Start asking what your money actually needs to do for you, for your life, and for the people you love. That's the only investment that never loses its value. We'll see you next week.