#161 – Wes’s 10 Favorite Lessons From Retire Sooner Podcast Guests

Wes Moss [00:05:06]:

Yeah, it’s almost who your parents hang out with and spend a lot of time with has more impact on children, evidently, than almost any other parental decision. Now, again, exactly how we figure that out through data and aggregating, anonymous data, science and tax records, I don’t know, but I like how he’s arriving at these answers. Seth is also a really big fan of the Mappiness Project with an M. It’s happiness, except with an M that studied what environments and activities really made people the moss happy. So whether you’re inside or outside at work or at school or an event or really any place geographically pinpointed also with the weather at any given time and reporting if you were with people or not. All through millions. And millions of data points asking over 60,000 people three times a day for a year on how they were feeling through an app on their iPhone. Again, this is the Mappiness Project as far as contributing to our happiness. Sick in bed was the worst activity. Work was the second worst activity. By the way, there’s 40 of these activities listed out worst on the list where we’re the least happy sick in bed. That one makes sense. Number 39 out of 40 work. Here are a couple of the winners. Number five on the list, gardening. Number four on the list, some combination of either sports, running or exercise. That one makes sense. Think about you going for a run, how great you feel right after you get a ding on your iPhone. How you feeling? You’re feeling usually pretty great. Producer Mallory here is shaking her head on that one. Number three on the list of top happiness activities. Being at an event or an expedition or a museum or a library, that’s a little surprising, I think, about having to be at a library. That was usually cramming for a test, feeling some anxiety. I don’t have a good feeling of libraries, but I think today if I were in a library and I haven’t been in a library for so long, I’d feel pretty calm and comfortable, so I get that one. Number two, being at a theater, dance, or concert oriented event, which is interesting, I wouldn’t have thought of that. That’s number two on the list. And then number one, this one is probably no shocker. Number one, intimacy. That’s number one. That’s at the very top of the list. And if you think about those five, you think gardening, intimacy, think about some sort of musical event. You could trace almost all of those things back to things that humans have appreciated from the very beginning of time communication. Think about dancing and singing around a fire. As soon as we had Modern civilization, we loved it was such a privilege to be able to go to the theater and see a show. And I think growing things and gardening is just fundamental to our survival, so no wonder it brings us this sense of peace and joy and happiness. Pretty awesome. But if you put it all together and assimilate exactly what humans really want, first, humans want to be by the water. And again, this comes from the Happy Disk Project, because you can pinpoint different levels of whether you’re feeling good or not. So good whether you’re in the middle of the city or you’re near a lake or a river or body of water. So first we want to be by the water. If you feel good by the water, it’s because it’s programmed into you for some reason or another. And maybe that makes evolutionary sense as well. Think about how scarce it would be. Imagine if you’re in the middle of the country and you’re miles away from a river. It’s not just you’re missing the view. You may not have anything to drink or survive. Maybe that’s part of the calmness that comes around being close to water is that, hey, we can actually survive and not die of thirst. Next, our ideal temperature, it’s around 80 degrees. This might go back to survival as well. Not only is it comfortable to be 80 degrees, you’re also not worried about frostbite or freezing to death. And then number three on the list, the yearning to be sitting beside a romantic partner and experiencing intimacy, which again, what Seth is saying here, it’s any form of that, whether it’s actual sex or just hugging or cuddling, it all counts as intimacy. So put it all together. We want to be by the water on a warm day with someone we love. And that’s a pretty cool formula for exactly what humans describe as ultimate happiness. And that’s episode 148 on the Retire Sooner podcast. Jeff Lloyd next on the list here comes from author Ken Honda. We did this interview from his home in Japan. God bless teams and Skype.

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:13]:

Yeah. This is episode 133, one trick to change your relationship with money from Ken Honda.

Wes Moss [00:10:19]:

Very simply, Ken taught me how to reverse my personal money appreciation dynamic. So when it comes to money, he teaches us to appreciate everything that is coming into your financial life. So part of that trick is to understand the root of where that money is coming from. So rather, visualizing it as cash or a paycheck. Imagine the people who pay for the services you provide. In Ken’s case, it’s his readers. So he’s thankful for every single person that’s ever bought one of his seven or 8 million copies that he sold. One day when his daughter thanked him for buying her an ice cream code, he told her, no, it’s the readers, it’s our readers, the purchasers of my books that deserve the thanks. So in his case, happy money is in one part being thankful for what does come in or whatever an investment does provide. Now, as far as appreciation out, what about money going out? Traffic tickets? According to Ken Honda, they’re okay. Bill to your lawyer, it’s okay. Your property taxes, I guess it’s okay. Appreciate what it’s providing your student loan payments. Try to appreciate the root of what the payment or the bill or the ticket or the unliked charges. Doesn’t mean you have to like it or love it, but appreciate it. Ken, of course, tells us a story about getting pulled over for, I think, either running a red light or maybe this was a traffic ticket or some interaction with a cop in Japan where he was going to get some sort of charge, some fine. And he thanked the officer, he said, thank you so much for giving me this ticket or this fine because I appreciate what you do. And he genuinely meant it. But the great news is actually also got him out of the ticket.

Jeff Lloyd [00:12:18]:

It got him out of the ticket and it was a parking ticket.

Wes Moss [00:12:21]:

It was parking, okay.

Jeff Lloyd [00:12:22]:

Yeah. And he was able to talk his way out of it. But it was a good lesson for me personally because I think literally the next week after the podcast and interview, I got a speeding ticket, one I didn’t get to talk my way out of it. Two, it was a learning lesson for me on actually putting happy money into practice, as I was somewhat thankful to be able to pay that traffic ticket for the services I get back from the local police. But it was just an interesting way of thinking about paying a ticket that I’ve never had before. Hearing Ken Honda talk about it, yeah.

Wes Moss [00:13:00]:

It’S a pretty cool, easy dynamic to flip if you don’t feel this way already. It was really literally the next day I started putting this into practice, and I’m certainly not perfect at it, but it really has helped the way I think about the flow in and out when it comes to money. Number three on the list. This is from Emily S. Fahani Smith. She’s a writer and a speaker and studied at Dartmouth, and she got her master’s degree in positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. What did I learn, by the way? Jeff Lloyd? What episode is that?

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:37]:

Yeah, this is episode 64, why happiness is not necessarily the Right goal.

Wes Moss [00:13:42]:

What I learned happiness, this, according to Emily, happiness is overrated relative to something more permanent, which is belonging, meaning and purpose. Belonging to a group that a sense of belonging is more powerful than happiness. So whether that’s a church or an organization or a social group or a religious group, maybe it’s even be a Georgia football fan, that’s that qualifies because the activity of belonging, according to Emily, is more important than the activity of happiest. Meaning. Meaning and purpose are derived from these communities that we build around us. So Emily’s four pillars, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on any of these pillars, but I’m learning again, these are lessons from the Retiree Sooner podcast. Belonging, purpose, storytelling, which is interesting and then transcendence. I don’t think I’m even going to try to describe the transcendence one, but at least when she describes it, it does make some sense. So the sense of belonging, of course, that’s critical. We know that for happy retirees, it’s something that we all have to continue to work towards. Humans are super social animals and we can’t survive without a community. Now, purpose means that we have a at least my perspective on this. We have a robust list of core pursuits that help give our lives meaning, and that’s an essential ingredient for a happy retiree. We know it anecdotally, and of course we see it in our own lives and of course our happy retiree. Research shows this. What is your purpose? And Emily reminded me that what is our sense of purpose for the Retire Sooner podcast? Well, to help at least a million people retire at least one year sooner, that’s a million extra years of financial independence. That’s a purpose I can get behind. So it helps us all tremendously to have a sense of purpose. And purpose can help retirees find a reason to get out of bed and thrive any given day. Now, storytelling, which is next on her list, is vital. I still don’t know if I totally understand this, but according to Emily, storytelling is vital because we all arrange our different experiences into our own narrative. And that narrative allows us to define ourselves in the world. Without a good story, our wisdom can kind of get locked inside of us, and it’s not easily shared with those around us that need to hear it again. I think from my perspective, one of my stories is that I guess I like to educate and give people confidence about their future from a financial perspective and how to have a happy retirement. I’ll say it one more time. So Emily made me think about this. What is my story? Well, I guess my story in in large part is to just help educate and give people confidence about their future from a financial perspective and from a happy retirement perspective. No coincidence that the mission statement of our firm is helping families find happiness in retirement. Full disclosure I am affiliated with Capital Investment Advisors, which is a full service and a fee only financial planning and investment management firm in Atlanta and Denver and Tampa and Phoenix or wherever you are. And if you’d like to take your retirement planning or retire sooner, journey to the next level, capital Investment Advisors would love to help. You can find our team and schedule a time to chat. Right@yourwealth.com? That’s Y-O-U rwealth.com. Lesson number four comes from Tom Vanderbilt. It’s a writer. He’s a really good writer, and he writes about a lot of different topics design and technology and science and culture. But I interviewed him on this topic about his book called Beginners. Here’s what I learned. We need to stop being afraid of learning something new just because as adults, we may not think we’d be good at it. Much like how children approach the world, they’re always doing something new, not afraid of, oh, I don’t think I’m going to be good at that, because everything’s new as a kid or a beginner. So the older we get, the more we stop looking for and trying new core pursuits. Hey, we’re not good at sports or we’re not good at music. Oh, no, we’re not good at the arts. Tom taught me to scrap all that. That’s a silly narrative. It is time to learn chess. It is time to learn how to sing or learn how to surf or learn how to snowboard or learn how to golf or learn how to draw. Just because you didn’t learn when you were a kid doesn’t mean it’s too late to start today. I started golf I was almost 40 years old when I started playing golf. That’s kind of old to play golf. Jeff Lloyd, you’re laughing at that.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:52]:

How’s that new core pursuit working out for you?

Wes Moss [00:18:56]:

It is as you know, it’s like some of the best days ever, wednesday afternoons, being able to play nine holes.

Jeff Lloyd [00:19:03]:

Of golf, and you’re doing it in a group that’s a social network, and you’re outside, right? And with you, you’re always near the water.

Wes Moss [00:19:15]:

That’s true. I’ve lost many a ball in the water. Maybe it’s because the closer I get to water, the happier I feel. I never thought of it that way. You’re right. That’s why I hit it in the water all the time. So, again, snowboarding. Here’s another one. I snowboarded for two days when I was 16, and I kind of learned it and then never really did it again. I didn’t restart until I was almost 40. And now golf and snowboarding are two of my very favorite activities, and all four of my kids do both of those things now. And being able to golf or snowboard with any four of my boys is literally the best thing in the world. It’s the best thing in the world. So I’m glad I took it up, even though Jeff Lloyd, I may not be the best golfer in the world, by the way, does Hunter play? Does your son play golf yet?

Jeff Lloyd [00:20:07]:

He does play golf, and he’s not a snowboarder. He’s skied before, but he loves golf. He plays basketball, baseball, football. But something special about golf, he likes it.

Wes Moss [00:20:20]:

It’s pretty awesome in them. So again, and particularly for retirees, you may be even more ingrained at, oh, I’m not going to be good at that, and I don’t like that necessarily, or I’d never have done that. And I’m already 60 and it’s too late to start. Tom Vanderbilt makes a really good case, and he spent an entire year doing everything new that he had never done, including juggling and playing chess and singing, all things he thought he would never be able to be good at surfing, which seems almost impossible, but he spent an entire year learning purely for the sake of learning. And in the end, he came away with the understanding that the adventure of learning all those new skills, even though he wasn’t great at some of them, was even more gratifying than the end result. So put your beginner cap on, particularly if you’re getting close to retirement, and try something totally, totally new, even if you don’t think you’re going to be any good at it, you might end up loving it. Lesson number five. This one comes from truly I’m not using this word lightly here. Legendary author mitch album. He’s the author of Tuesdays with Maury. What did I learn? Giving is living. Giving is living. And by the way, Tuesdays with Maury, he sold over 40 million copies of this book. And it’s not a coincidence. This is because it has a really powerful message, and he’s a phenomenal writer. So Mitch wrote Tuesdays with Maury as a memoir. It was a recollection of the conversations that he had with his former sociology professor, Maury Schwartz, who was dying of ALS. They met on Tuesdays, and Maury essentially taught Mitch an entire collection of wisdom about life and death and love and work and community and family and aging and forgiveness and the importance of embracing every single moment, both good and bad, in life. And the secret sauce to all of it, again, according to Mitch, is that giving is really the key to living. Give to connect and give to grow and give to create a legacy are kind of my takeaways here. Maury, who he interviewed on Tuesdays, had been a former professor who taught him about the wisdom around the world, around life, around death, around relationships. Maury taught that giving, whether it’s time or love or help or wisdom, if Wes are able to do that, then we are establishing deeper connections with each other. And that interconnectedness is the essence of being alive, according to Mitch album, and cultivating empathy and having a mutual understanding with your fellow man. But all of that brings this sense of belongingness that arises from giving, and it fuels our emotional and our mental well being. Giving helps us grow. It allows us to step out of our self centered perspectives and lets us grow because we’re considering what somebody else needs. And then, of course, giving creates a real legacy for what we give today in this world that lasts well beyond our life, whether it’s teaching knowledge, education, skills, or something financial that can and should last well beyond our life so we can give to create a real legacy. Jeff Lloyd didn’t you buy some Mitch Album books after hearing that podcast?

Jeff Lloyd [00:24:28]:

I bought the Mitch album. Starter pack off Amazon six or seven books. Read them all. They’re fantastic.

Wes Moss [00:24:34]:

You’ve read all all six or seven? What’s your favorite, by the way?

Jeff Lloyd [00:24:38]:

I still got to go with Tuesdays with Maury. It’s just something special, a bit of nostalgia for me, having read that in junior high and just rereading it now, being older and having a family, and just put a different perspective this time around reading it than 20 years ago.

Wes Moss [00:24:56]:

That’s a good point. Number six, as we forge into our next Five Secrets of Happy Retirees from the Retiree Sooner podcast. Nancy Collymer and this was a suggestion from several of the families that I work with at Capital Investment Advisors that people kept bringing up this concept of second act careers. Wes. Have you read Second Act Careers? Have you read second act careers? Because it comes up all the time. And what we learned from Nancy is how to explore a second act career. And here’s why it’s so important. I don’t know the exact number for this, Jeff Lloyd, but I would say at least 50%, maybe even more than that. Maybe three quarters of every retiree that I’ve ever worked with doesn’t have a black and white retirement date. It’s not that it doesn’t happen. It certainly happens. I was with at and t, let’s say for 30 years, or General Motors for 32 years. And I got the job when I was pretty young, and I worked my way through the ranks, and it’s been a good company all these years, and I’ve got a great retiree package, and they just offered me another one, and I’m done, and I’m out. I’m done. And I don’t need to do anything else. I’m not going to go work part time as an engineer, working on lithium batteries to help the next EV vehicle. I’m just done. I’ve done it. I don’t have a really good interim step here to maybe go work a little bit. So I’m totally done. And again, that happens. But so often, in fact, more often than not, I find people in their 60s that are getting to the point where they’re pretty much ready to retire, but just not quite. And another two, three, maybe five years of working does wonders for both them financially so that they can delay when they’re going to take Social Security as that amount can go up the longer they wait. And they may have saved enough, but working another couple of years allows them to not start tapping into that money for what we call the retiree gray zone. But it’s not easy to find that. It’s not the easiest thing to go find a second act career. And that’s exactly what Nancy Collimer is an expert with. She wrote the book Second Act Careers and teaches us in this podcast how to go about doing that. Are you going to end up being a consultant in the line of work you were already in, or are you going to do something completely different? Are you going to go she tells the story of a rabbi who is good at speaking to a public group that ultimately used those speaking skills to do something completely different, and he ended up being a stand up comedian. That’s an extreme case, right? That’s kind of this fantasy, oh, wouldn’t it be great to go be, I’m going to be a hot air balloon pilot once I retire from building cars.

Jeff Lloyd [00:27:45]:

Yeah. The rabbi to the stand up comedian seems a little bit more extreme than the 20 year, 30 year contractor that is now working at the local hardware store, right?

Wes Moss [00:27:55]:

But we think about how to go into, let’s say, another type of career, and that includes people that were entrepreneurs and maybe they started their own business and then became consultants, or they took on new roles at a nonprofit company. Nancy tells us stories about folks who have gone back to school and gotten a completely new degree or taken on a part time job, something they always wanted to do or became a mentor or coach or even became a columnist in all sorts of industries the arts, media, technology, healthcare. So when you start going through these stories that Nancy tells, she teaches us that it’s not the second act career isn’t just a light switch. I’m going to do something totally new. It takes a while to figure out what you were already good at and then how you can apply it to maybe the same industry or maybe your same skill set to a completely new industry. That’s a process and that’s a journey. And it’s important for people considering any sort of second act career if you’re going to end up having a retirement gray zone for a couple of years or maybe it’s more than a few years, I think it’s really important to listen to Nancy’s advice and take a look at the book second act careers. Number seven on the list. Jeff Floyd, Bill Danko. He was one of the two authors, along with Thomas Stanley of the Millionaire next door. Many of you have, if you’re listening, you maybe you’ve read The Millionaire Next Door. It is, I think, the first book I read as an intern back in the 1990s when I was in my first summer job. So this was a big deal for me to be able to talk to the author of this 25 plus or 25 plus years later. So. Bill Danko, one of the authors of The Millionaire next door. One. I just love him telling the story about how he did the research. He did the research in the in the early 90s when it was they were paying people a dollar, they would put a dollar bill in an envelope to guilt people into filling out these questionnaires. Imagine you have this questionnaire, you throw it out. But a dollar, they found gave people at least a little bit of an incentive or some sort of guilt factor to actually fill it out. So that’s what got their response rate up. But the primary lessons here one. Frugality is the cornerstone of a lot of wealth building. He reminds us of the all important delayed gratification benjamin Franklin’s advice of being industrious and persevering as a saver two on Bill Danko’s list focus on wealth building activities, meaning that with every move you make, whatever you’re going to do financially starts with saving and investing as early as humanly possible, as young as possible. And investing, though, is much more important than displaying social status, which goes back to this point around frugality. And financial independence that you will eventually garner with years of sacrifice is where we’re all headed. And the millionaire next door really understands that. Number three from buildanko, we’ve got to be on the same page with our spouse, with our partner. We’ve got to actually talk about money. And The Millionaire Next Door, one of their real habits is they’re able to talk through what their financial goals are. If you’re not on the same page with your spouse, you can go through years of conflicted ideas. Not only is it hard on the relationship, but it’s hard to really build financial momentum if you’re kind of running. In different directions. And he reminds us that those who achieve this millionaire status, one of the cornerstones of that is really being on the same page with your spouse. This is kind of a fun test for everyone listening. And of course, soon as I wes reminded of this formula, Jeff Floyd, I did the math on it as well, but Bill taught us the big differences between Pause and UAW. So Paw and a UAW not the best acronym, but it stands for AW is Accumulator of wealth so relative to what you are earning? So are you prodigious average or under accumulator of wealth? Here’s the formula to determine which category you land in. Here. If you take your age, you multiply your age by your annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Inheritances don’t count in this formula. And then you divide it by ten. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re age 40, you make $200,000 a year. You divide that by ten. The math works out to $800,000.40 times 200,000 divided by ten, $800,000. Is that’s the baseline? If you have $800,000 accumulated or saved in overall net worth, this is not just cash in the bank, as our kids would say, but just overall net worth, then you’re an average according to Millionaire Next door formula here an average accumulator of wealth. If your net worth is $400,000, let’s say half of that baseline, then you’re an under accumulator of wealth. But if your net worth is 1.6 million, so double that, 800,000, then you’re appall a prodigious accumulator of wealth. Now, as I’m thinking about that, Jeff, I don’t think that that I guess if you were a retiree and you’re not currently earning anymore and you’re just living off your assets, I don’t know if that applies. You would have to go back to, let’s say age 50 and maybe see what you had, or maybe age 60, what your income was and how much you’d save. But I can just see people getting out their iPhones and pulling up the calculator as they’re listening here, which is exactly what I did as soon as I got off my Zoom interview with Bill Danko. And this is my age. Am I a paw a UAW or AAW?

Jeff Lloyd [00:33:50]:

We’re both looking at each other right now in studio, smiling, and you’re smirking because you’re looking over at me. And what’s next? I got my iPhone in my hand doing the exact same calculation.

Wes Moss [00:34:02]:

It’s a really good test. It’s a really good test. And the cool thing about it too, if you’re 30 and you find yourself right now being under accumulator or an average accumulator, the great news is this is a really fun guideline. It also reminds me of the 25 X rule that we’ve talked about. We’ve done a whole podcast and show here on money Matters as well on the 25 X rule. That’s the other rule that I like to use. And I was reminded of this rule from my kids one day in the car ride to school, where they literally just said, dad, what would you need to have in the bank? Because they’re very much about in the bank. They don’t believe in buildings or real estate. Just in the bank to stop working and be able to hang out more and play golf with us on a Wednesday. And I said about 25 times my annual income. And I’m not quite there yet, guys, so we’re not playing golf on a Wednesday, but that rule. And again, if you’re excluding pensions and you’re excluding Social Security and you’re just looking at what would you have to have in assets? Liquid. And I would count real estate assets here, and you could count business assets here, because it’s essentially the 4% plus rule in reverse. 4% plus rule says you can take 4% of your money. We want to max out what we can take out from our investments without running out. And the 4% rule is a really important rule for that. 25 X is the inverse of 4%. So if we need 100,000, we simply say times 25, you need $2.5 million in order to have that level of income for the duration of retirement. I like this 25 X rule just because it’s so easy to remember it’s just 25 times whatever you’re earning that you don’t even need an iPhone. Calculator lesson number eight don George.

Jeff Lloyd [00:35:57]:

Yeah. Don. George. This episode was called Living a life filled with travel.

Wes Moss [00:36:02]:

All right, Jeff Lloyd, here’s what I learned. Travel leads to retiree happiness. Now, in our research, of course, we’ve seen what’s the ultimate happiness booster?

Jeff Lloyd [00:36:14]:

Travel with friends.

Wes Moss [00:36:15]:

I heard you talking about that in the office this past week. Travel with friends.

Jeff Lloyd [00:36:21]:

Quick story. I was flying out to Houston, Texas, and we are just at the gate. We hadn’t even gotten on a plane yet, and I’m with my wife, and there’s this group of five or six ladies sitting next to us. Like I said, we haven’t even boarded the plane, and these ladies are having the time of their lives, and they haven’t reached their destination yet.

Wes Moss [00:36:43]:

Are they ATRA are they retirees?

Jeff Lloyd [00:36:45]:

They are retirees, yes.

Wes Moss [00:36:47]:

Are they on spring break, summer break?

Jeff Lloyd [00:36:51]:

They were on a gardening trip.

Wes Moss [00:36:52]:

No, they were not.

Jeff Lloyd [00:36:53]:

They were going on a gardening trip to Houston. To Houston, of all places.

Wes Moss [00:36:58]:

Wow, that’s kind of heartwarming. It was a gardening trip, and I need five friends. In Japan, they would call that a MOA. A group of five friends that garden for life together. All right, so speaking of Don George, travel leads to happiness and retirement. We already know formulaically and empirically and statistically, that if we take at least one trip per year with friends, we double our chances of ending up in the happy retiree group. That’s from our own research. Now, Don George, though he is a legendary travel writer, this guy has traveled his entire life and had the love of travel in his teens and started writing about it. Then he ended up becoming the editor of national geographic traveler magazine. So this is a guy with some real travel street cred. And we know, as we did, the core pursuit challenge back in the spring. It was our version of the NCAA finals. Instead of basketball teams, we used core pursuits. These are hobbies on steroids. Guess what won? It was in the final, and we were pitting up against pickleball versus let’s call it cycling and grilling versus taking a cruise, hang gliding. And ultimately, cruises ended up in the final four. That’s a version of travel. Well, in the final two, and travel ended up so really it was travel versus travel. And guess what won travel? Travel wins. That’s what we want to do when we’re in retirement. It’s a top core pursuit, this hobby on steroids that we get so much from. But don george teaches us that travel is really a journey of connection and personal growth, and that is maybe the root of why we love to travel so much. And you think about all the places you’ve been in the world and all that you’ve learned from all of those places. I think about. I was on the airplane recently with one of my kids, and on Delta they have that little travel game where they give you a picture and a little hint, and then you have to point to it on the map, and it’s like you were way off or you were pretty close and we were going through that. And, lucas, how do you know that? You’ve been a lot of places, and I’m thinking I traveled a lot when I was in college and when I was a kid, and all of those memories really stick with me to this day like it was yesterday. It’s really a part of my education. In fact, I think about and remember traveling much more than I remember school as a kid. So it is a part of who we are forever. Now, this is coming from a writer, lesson number two from him, and he made a career out of this, but writing is a way to relive your journey. And I think about I still to this day, I spent about six months living in southern spain. It was a little town called seville called pronounced sevilla, and then traveled around for about a month at one semester in college. And I still have that journal to this day. I still read it, no lie.

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:00]:

And this is probably the first time I’ve told you I did a summer in spain, and I still have my journal from that summer.

Wes Moss [00:40:07]:

Where were you in spain?

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:09]:

Salamaca. Salamaca. It’s about 2 hours west of madrid. Yeah. So we did salamaca, madrid, and then actually went to bamplona and did the.

Wes Moss [00:40:19]:

Running of the bull run. Did you get trampled?

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:21]:

I did not get trampled. I got really scared, though.

Wes Moss [00:40:24]:

It was scary. I would think that’d be super scary.

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:27]:

Bulls running at you and thousands of people. You’re dodging the bulls and the people running. Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:40:32]:

Do you think, great, does somebody get trampled every year in that, or does everybody get out?

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:38]:

When I was running, the first time I looked back and saw an actual bull, it gored a guy, it gored a runner. That was my first sight of seeing an actual bull. Bam. There’s a bull. Bam. Just ran over a runner.

Wes Moss [00:40:51]:

Or gorge a runner. Yes. I’d love to read that journal entry.

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:58]:

I’m going to bring it in.

Wes Moss [00:40:59]:

I’d love to read that journal entry. And then embracing the unexpected. I think we all know this. The older we get, think about this rainy days and you miss your train, closed exhibits, all of those things that kind of that was like, oh, it was a terrible day, ends up being maybe the best day of those travels, or maybe your most memorable day. When it comes to travels, all the things that went wrong, you think back of all your travels, they maybe ended up being particularly with your kids or with your friends. Those are the memorable times of travel, and we learn so much from that. Travel with friends. Don George nails it. Wonderful episode. Wonderful human. Number nine on the list, Jan Cullinane. What I learned from Jan, the importance of community, we know from other guests, and we know that belonging is such a huge part of the equation. Having a social network, a massive part of the equation. But the question, though, is that where do we have the right community? You may think you want to go to a place that you’ve always wanted to be and a house you’ve always wanted to be in, but really what ultimately determines if you’re going to have a happy retiree, a huge part of that is the community that you end up joining. And Nancy Cullinade goes through really some amazingly fun examples around communities, one that would still floored by this. There’s a community for retired postal workers, just for all mail carriers alone, all in one community, Jeff. Can you believe that? No.

Jeff Lloyd [00:42:30]:

I’m kind of sitting here in disbelief, shaking my head and kind of smirking and laughing like, I didn’t know that was a real thing, but it is.

Wes Moss [00:42:37]:

Well, you should listen to the podcast number ten on the list of what I learned from David York, probably one of our just most articulate guests, on how he teaches us the importance of legacy. Inherited wealth can be powerful. And this is what I learned from David. Inherited wealth can be powerful or it can be destructive. And this is really talking about legacy and estate planning, because wealth is something that puts a great responsibility on a family. It’s not just, oh, we’ve got lots of wealth. Everyone’s going to be taking care of it. And everyone’s going to be in great shape. David talks about entrusted families. These are families that really trust each other and they’re transparent about their wealth and being transparent around your wealth through multiple generations, whether it’s grandfather, father, and even kids. He makes a great case of why we need to really come together on our ultimate goals for that money, understand what the family believes and how they’re utilizing money. David says entrusted families prepare the family for wealth and not just the wealth for the family. And entrusted families maximize the positive benefits of wealth and minimize the negative effects. And we think money solves all these problems. We’ve got plenty of money in the family. It creates a whole new set of problems, and it can really be difficult for children that grow up really wealthy to have the independence that we go back to. Lesson, I think seven, that Bill Danko talks about millionaires next door. What do they have? They have independent children, and those children are financially independent as well. And that should be a topic of conversation for a wealthy family. What David York calls that families that are entrusted with each other. That’s a lot of lessons. And for me, it’s a lot of fun to talk through these and revisit and re explore so many of the things we’ve learned and the impactful things we’ve learned here on the podcast. So I hope you enjoyed this top ten list. We’d love to hear from you on any topics that you’d like to hear about or guests that you’d love to hear from. And if you’ve learned something today or from any of our podcasts, we’d love for you to share the Retire Sooner podcast with a friend. Thanks for tuning in.

Mallory Boggs [00:45:12]:

Hey y’all, this is Mallory with the Retire Sooner team. Please be sure to rate and subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. If you have any questions, you can find us@westmoss.com that’s wesmoss.com. You can also follow us on Instagram and YouTube. You’ll find us under the handle Retire Soonerpodcast. And now for our show’s. Disclosure this podcast is provided to you as a resource for informational purposes only and is not to be viewed as investment advice or recommendations. This information is being presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to and should not form a primary basis for any investment decision that you may make. Always consult your own legal, tax or investment advisor before making any investment or financial planning considerations. Please refer to the full disclosure in the podcast description for any additional information.

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