EVERY SPOKEN WORD
105 min read · 20,627 words- 0:00 – 0:23
Intro
- PAPete Adeney
Optimal minimal
- TFTim Ferriss
At this altitude, I can run flat-out for a half-mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time.
- PAPete Adeney
What if I did the opposite?
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
- PAPete Adeney
The Tim Ferriss Show.
- 0:23 – 6:20
Sponsors, show setup, and who Mr. Money Mustache is
- TFTim Ferriss
This episode is brought to you by Varidesk, and I'm actually standing at my own Varidesk right now recording this. You've probably heard of research that shows how sitting all day is terrible for your health. Sitting is the new smoking, et cetera. But standing all day isn't necessarily the answer for everyone. Sometimes you just want to sit down, and that's true for me as well. The middle ground is Varidesk. Varidesk's height-adjustable standing desk solutions allow you to stand when you want to and sit when you need to. And as an example, I had this set to the lower position. This is a large model, and it took me clickety-clack two seconds to raise this thing up, and it feels like it has hydraulics effectively because I didn't have to use any muscle to do it. 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That's V-A-R-I desk.com. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. They've become incredibly popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because they provide the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra wealthy, but for any account size and at a fraction of the cost. For instance, they monitor your portfolio every day across more than a dozen asset classes to look for opportunities to rebalance or harvest tax losses. Now, would you do the same? Are you doing the same? Probably not, and the power is in the software. Wealthfront now manages more than $4 billion in assets, which is up from around 2.5 billion when they started advertising on this podcast. They're growing incredibly quickly. Unlike old-fashioned private wealth managers, Wealthfront is powered by innovative technology, making it the most tax efficient, low cost, hassle-free way to invest. They don't have bloated sales teams or retail locations, so they can deliver all of this sophisticated financial advice and these services at a fraction of the cost of a traditional financial advisor. So at the very least, go to wealthfront.com/tim and take their free risk assessment survey. It only takes a couple of minutes, and Wealthfront will recommend a personalized portfolio of investments. In other words, they'll tell you exactly where they would put your money. So even if you don't use their service, you have a huge leg up and you have additional information for making good decisions. They use investment theory to automate good financial behavior and decisions that people typically don't make but should. So go to wealthfront.com/tim to get your first 15K managed for free or just to get more details. Check it out, wealthfront.com/tim. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to dig around, find world-class performers of all sorts of stripes and breeds and species, and deconstruct what they do. How do they make decisions? What do they do first thing in the morning? What are the habits, routines, details that you can apply to your life? And this particular episode was very much an in-demand requested episode, and the guest is Mr. Money Mustache, @mrmoneymustache, Pete Adeney in real life. He grew up in Canada in a family of mostly eccentric musicians, then graduated from computer engineering in the 1990s and worked in various tech companies before retiring at age 30. Pete, his wife, and their now 11-year-old son live near Boulder, Colorado, and they've not had real jobs since 2005. This begs the question, of course, how? How did they do that? They accomplished this early retirement by doing a number of things, but in effect, optimizing all aspects of their lifestyle for maximal fun at minimal expense and by using basic index-fund investing. Their annual expenses on average total a mere $25,000 to $27,000, and they do not feel in want of anything. So again, since 2005, all three of them have explored a freeform life of interesting projects, side businesses, and adventures. In 2011, Pete started writing the Mr. Money Mustache blog about his philosophy, which has grown to reach about 23 million different people and 300 million page views since its inception, since its founding. It has become a worldwide cult phenomenon with a self-organizing community and incredible news coverage. This episode explores his story, philosophies, and routines. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with the one and only Mr. Money Mustache, Pete Adeney. Pete, welcome to the show.
- PAPete Adeney
Thanks, Tim. It's an honor to be on here.
- TFTim Ferriss
And you are, I would say, in the top five most requested guests for this podcast that, uh, that, that I see on the internet and beyond. I had somebody come up to me recently in New York City of all places said, "You know who you should have on the podcast?" And it was you. And so I'm Really excited to dig into all sorts of stories and conversations and discussions because I'm thinking through many areas of my life in which I think you are an expert or have certainly spent more time ruminating
- 6:20 – 7:49
Biking for groceries and the baseline lifestyle choices
- TFTim Ferriss
on these things. But I thought we could start with your experience getting groceries. [laughs] Could you describe for people what your experience looks like getting groceries?
- PAPete Adeney
Uh, well, it's kind of varied, but I feel strongly about groceries. So in an ideal, like, a utopian grocery day, I would throw my bike trailer onto the back of my single-speed bike and roll down to, like, the local kinda hippie natural grocery store and then just load up with, like, 150 bucks of awesome stuff and then pedal it back up the hill and then unload it and then have people show up and a giant barbecue that night and, uh, feast.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] So if that's the utopia, what does the, what does the compromised utopia look like?
- PAPete Adeney
Well, it's usually pretty close to that, but sometimes people don't come over, or sometimes, uh, there's some reason I have to use the car, and maybe I'm taking, taking it past the grocery store, so I'll rush in and get some stuff. But I think the, you know, the thrust of the question is, like, does this guy really, uh, get groceries by bicycle? And it's definitely true. I kind of do everything by bike here in Longmont, Co- Colorado. Like, at least 99% of my trips, uh, away from the house here are human powered, and, uh, that's just the way I've figured out makes me happiest to live.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. And at, at this point in time, you have a household of three. Is that right?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, that's true. One boy.
- TFTim Ferriss
One boy.
- PAPete Adeney
One girl.
- 7:49 – 8:23
Annual spending reality: $25–27K and what that number means
- TFTim Ferriss
And... Got it. All right. And, and what, uh, what is the... 'Cause I think this is, this is, uh, this is gonna be a, a core piece of the discussion. What are your average annual family expenses at this point, would you say?
- PAPete Adeney
Right. Well, we've been adding this up ever since I started writing a blog. We never really added it up before. But it always comes out around $25-27,000 of annual expenditures, uh, with the notable exception that we don't have any kind of mortgage or debt or anything. So that's all on purely stuff that we want to buy.
- 8:23 – 12:31
When the blog started to feel like a “cult” and why it grew
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. And maybe we'll, we'll... This is gonna be Memento style [laughs] in terms of chronology, as a lot of my conversations are. It's just a quirk of my brain that I'm trying to-- a bug I'm trying to turn, turn into a feature of this podcast. W- what was the blog post or the day that you realized Mr. Money Mustache had a cult-like following? Was there... And I use that, I use that in a, a complimentary way, by the way. Uh, you have some of the most diehard fans I've ever encountered. Uh, was there a particular piece or moment when you realized how strongly and, uh, how devoted your fan base was?
- PAPete Adeney
I think it's kind of been like one of those frog in hot water situations where it just gradually happens and then occasionally, especially when my friends stop in on a, like, a Money Mustache event, they're like, "Dude, you're a cult leader. Did you realize that?" It's-- But it didn't really happen any specific time. I would say the first time I was really surprised by the effects of blogging was when I had a, a guest post on this awesome previous, uh, blog called Early Retirement Extreme, and a whole bunch of this, uh, Jacob blogger's fans came over to mine, my blog, and just flooded it and just crawled and read every single article and started putting in all these comments and, and then I... It was really a rewarding thing, and I, it just kept going from there. It's sort of a self-motivating thing. Um, and then the other incident was probably we had a party once, a blog related meetup in, uh, in Ottawa, Canada, which is kind of one of my homeland, hometowns. And, uh, all these people came, like 200 people, and it overflowed into the backyard of this, like, unwitting host's place. And, uh, it was a little weird 'cause I didn't even get to meet anybody. And that was the first time I became uncomfortable with, like, oh, well, I didn't wanna be one of those people where you don't even meet everybody who wants to meet you.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] So Ottawa, uh, I've actually spent a, a decent amount of time in Ottawa, uh, and have... And I had a BeaverTail for the first time while ice skating or planning on ice skating in Ottawa due to a startup there, well, it's a, quite a large company now called Shopify.
- PAPete Adeney
Shopify.
- TFTim Ferriss
Correct.
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, yeah, I knew that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, and the BeaverTail, that's the right way to do Ottawa is skating and BeaverTails.
- TFTim Ferriss
And now BeaverTail is... I don't even remember exactly what it is, but it's a pastry, right? I mean, it's, uh, what is it exactly? It's like a chocolate covered pastry. Uh, and for those people who've not been to Ottawa, you can, you can skate for hours. I mean, it's this, this gigantic, uh, I guess they lower the water level, or maybe they raise the water level so that you can skate effectively around the entire city if, if I, if I'm remembering correctly.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, that's right.
- TFTim Ferriss
And-
- PAPete Adeney
It's pretty awesome
- TFTim Ferriss
... the, uh, the... But to, to get back to the blog, w- what, what do you think has... What are the aspects of your philosophy or your writing or your persona that have struck such a chord?
- PAPete Adeney
Well, it's funny you should ask that 'cause the first time I ever did a talk, like a big public talk, it was, uh, to a conference of bloggers. It's called FinCon, and I just stopped by 'cause it was in Denver. And, uh, I'd realized that this blog was kind of behaving like a cult. And then I looked up, like, what are the properties of a cult? And then I read some articles and maybe a book or two on cults, and I realized, man, I've accidentally done it.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
And, uh, and just because that's my idea of a sense of humor is, uh... So it turns out, if you wanna start a cult, you need to just have a few key elements, like a recognizable leader. You need to have a sense of us versus zen, them. You know, like, oh, we're an oppressed people, and the rest of the world doesn't understand us. And a couple other things. It helps to feel like you're virtuous, uh, and have some kind of, like, good changing the world, and the rest of the world needs your help. And, uh, yeah, so if you look at all the cults, including informal ones like Star Trek or, uh, Apple, there's always these same kinda characteristics, and I accidentally emulated those, and in retrospect realized, "Hey, well I guess that was a pretty good idea."
- 12:31 – 13:49
“Mustachianism”: consumer insanity, efficiency, and earlier freedom
- TFTim Ferriss
S- so for those who are part of the us, in your case, what is... What's the belief system? What are the-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... uh, the tenets?
- PAPete Adeney
Right. So the belief system, which I jokingly call Mustachianism, it's kinda like a lifestyle and a fake religion, and the beliefs are that the, you know, sort of the Uni- United States especially is the ground zero of this consumer insanity that has overtaken all of our minds, and it's just causing people to behave in an irrational way and sort of sabotage their own ability to have a good life. For example, y- they work way more years than they have to because they're consuming a lot more crap than they have to without actually getting any life benefit about it over. And then the same thing applies to the health, their health and their, their sanity and their mel- mental health. They're... Everyone's very inefficiently going about their life. So the correction, uh, through Mustachianism is just being a bit more thoughtful about this stuff and seeking efficiency in the way that you spend your money, and make sure that you get fun out of it each time that you spend something. And, uh, applying this, you just end up a lot healthier and wealthier and able to retire from mandatory work at a much earlier age in your life, which a lot of people are drawn in by the prospect of an extra four decades of freedom that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten.
- 13:49 – 14:41
Retiring at 30: how they thought about it in 2005
- TFTim Ferriss
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you retired effectively at age 30? Is that right?
- PAPete Adeney
Right. Yeah. This is perfect reverse chronology, just like you planned it. So-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
... now we're back to the year 2005, and, um, after working about a 10-year career in software engineering, my girlfriend, who is now my wife, and I, uh, determined we had enough money saved up to live off the investment returns forever. So we just quit our regular cubicle jobs, and just in time to have our baby boy at the time, and that was, of course, about 11 years ago. And we didn't even know this was a weird thing to do. We thought, "Oh, yeah. Well, of course, you know, when you get paid as much as we do, like, it only takes so long until you don't need to work anymore." And it was only after several years of retirement that we noticed that we were kind of oddballs, and everybody else, uh, who earned the same amount of money was still broke.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- 14:41 – 18:51
The “25x expenses” rule, 4% spending, and what early retirees actually do
- TFTim Ferriss
Broke in, in probably more way than one. Uh, and I, I want to dig into some of the, the numbers related to this. So as a discussion point, one of the, one of the things you, you had said over, and I always ask guests for potential prompts for, for, for topics that could be fun to explore, and one of them was you only need to accumulate 25 times your annual spending to retire forever. Could you elaborate on that and how, uh, how you arrived at that number? Because I th- I think this is, this is a useful exercise for people to hear.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. This is a core piece of math that is very, uh... It's widely known if you're a financial independence enthusiast, but it's almost, uh, completely secret to most of the, of the rich world's population. So if you have a, if you have a handle on your annual spending and you know how much you need to live on, all you need to do is save up 25 times that amount, and on the very, very conservative side, let's say 28 times that amount, uh, in conservative investments like a giant Vanguard index fund, and that's enough to fund you with passive income with a high degree of safety for the rest of your life. So if you have a... To just keep the numbers simple, if you need to $30,000 to live on, multiply that by 25, and... Oh, darn, now I'm giving myself a tricky math question.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
I think, you know, it's like $750,000 you'd need saved up or something like that-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- PAPete Adeney
... to, to quit forever, and that's a lot less than most people think. Most people, at least in my age group, they're shooting for the tens of millions, uh, type of range if they, if they were to ever quit work early, and they haven't really done the math on how easy it really is.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. And what are... Are there any assumptions embedded in that in terms of percentage annual yield and so on? What are, what are the, uh, whether historically based or otherwise, what are, what are the... Are there any other assumptions embedded in that?
- PAPete Adeney
It is. Yeah. There's, um... It's kind of based on a really long-term study of the stock market dating back to the 1920s or something like that, or maybe even earlier. And the idea is it goes up some years, it goes down some years, consistently pays dividends, and in the worst case scenario, you wanna still not run out of money. So that's where the 4% comes from. It would've gotten you through a lot of the worst case scenarios. There are some situations when you could've spent up to 5 or 7% of your portfolio every year and still not run out if you had happened to retire just before a big stock market boom that went on for a long time. But most people don't like taking a huge amount of risks, so the 4%, or 3.5% if you wanna be extra conservative, with today's stock market valuations, that's more of a, a safety net. And it's really just a mental crutch because what I find is that when people retire early, almost everybody, like over 95% of people, still have a lot of interests and passions, and then they're pretty good at making money if they manage to save up that much in the first place. So they still make money in their, quote, "retirement." They just have a lot more fun doing it, and, uh, that nest egg that's pumping out dividends and returns just adds extra confidence so they can, they can have more fun in the process.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, I've, I've read two different definitions of retirement, uh, or maybe they're characteristics that are... I think one was attributed to you, one was written by you, both of which I thought were very helpful as a orientation for thinking about the subject. And the first is, you know, retirement or financial independence simply means that you have your living expenses covered by non-work income, right? Part one.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Part two is definition of a modern retirement, the activities you pursue once you are done searching for money. And, and, uh, I think that's a very useful framework if p- in particular you're considering an early retirement, uh, at, at say the age of 30, 40, 50, whatever it might be. Um, the... How do, let's say, media, not to cast aspersions on everyone who is part of [laughs] the media since I suppose that's what I
- 18:51 – 23:07
Misconceptions: “extreme frugality” vs spending for maximum happiness
- TFTim Ferriss
am right now at this moment. But w- you've been covered a fair amount, and I know, like everyone who's been covered a fair amount, you get misquoted, or people get the message wrong, or they just take sn- snarky cheap shots, uh, occasionally. It doesn't happen all the time. You've actually had some of the most complimentary profiles I've ever read. But where did they get it wrong? Where do people get you, your message, your principles, philosophies wrong?
- PAPete Adeney
Well, the, the misconceptions are sort of two different things. From the media side, they often assume... Well, I mean, the ones that aren't complimentary, they assume, "Hey, there's this crazy guy, and he's just a lifestyle guru, just like another junior Tim Ferriss trying to get everybody excited about his crazy ideas-"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
"... and he's not really retired." Or, or they say, "Yeah, he, he made so much money, but that doesn't apply to the regular person when they're, you know, when they're trying to make it on, like, $50,000 a year salary," or, "What about people with more kids?" So, um, the media don't understand. They o- they often assume some kind of extreme frugality that would be undesirable to live under, and, uh, that's, that's really inaccurate, and I, I work pretty hard to fight it because I don't have my spending set up for the minimal level. I have it set up for the maximum amount that I can possibly spend and get value out of it. You know, 'cause it's easy to make money. So I set my spending at the maximum happiness level and then stopped spending when I stopped getting more happiness. So that's the s- that's really the fundamental mistake. And then as for the, the non-media world, they're a little bit more suspicious, like they just think I'm make every- making everything up, and, and I don't even... You know, I never did any of this stuff that I say I did in the first place. So then it's more of a conspiracy s- theory if you're reading, like, the comment section of MSN-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
... which you should never do.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Uh, you ha- but you do have, uh, and, and I think this is why, this is part of the reason I wanted to bring it up very early, a, by most standards in the United States, a low household annual expense, right?
- PAPete Adeney
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
And, uh, it, it might be helpful here to talk about, because I, y- I asked during our soundcheck what you had for breakfast. So could you repeat your answer, please?
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, yeah. Well, um, my, my breakfast was a fancy black espresso with foamed milk, uh, and coconut, coconut oil foamed into there too, and then some dark chocolate, like 90% dark chocolate, and, uh, some nuts, almonds and cashews and stuff. And, uh, it's not exactly related to, uh, low expenditure, but-
- TFTim Ferriss
It's indirectly related. I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back to it. What type... But since I, I love the particulars, what type of coffee, what type of chocolate? Do you recall?
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, yeah. Well, right now my co- coffee is some kind of organic-y fair trade thing, but bought in large quantity from Costco, which is obviously a lot cheaper than getting, uh, like a Starbucks equivalent every morning. And, uh, yeah, the nuts are from Costco as well, now that you mention it.
- TFTim Ferriss
So, so the, the, the reason I bring it up is that, uh, and I think Stumbling Upon Happiness or Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is, is a good exploration of this. Oftentimes what we think will make us happy does not make us happy, and we can talk, I, we should dig into what happiness is for you because I think it's, it's, it can be a dangerously nebulous term. But the point being that to, to have a functional car and then to have what society tells you is the optimal car, say some type of sports car, ha- there's a massive delta in price, and you pay some severe penalties for that. But to have a, a, to go from a good chocolate to an excellent chocolate to world-class chocolate, it might only be the difference of 10 or $12, right? And so there, there are, there are places where you can optimize without being obnoxiously or frugal, or frugal in an dis- to a disabling extent, and derive maximal pleasure. That's the point I was trying to make, is that, um-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah
- 23:07 – 28:19
Where to start optimizing: cars, commuting, walking, and “human-powered” living
- TFTim Ferriss
... and what I would love to hear from you is for those people out there who are spending far more, multiples more than you are per year, who don't know where to start, are there any easy optimizations that could have a dramatic impact on their ability to get closer to, uh, optimizing for happiness as opposed to, uh, succumbing to internal or external pressures to remain on this treadmill of, of overconsumption?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, right, and this might actually be a better answer for your earlier question too because as a, an engineer, like I was kind of born part engineer at least, and for me, optimization is really, really fun. It's like beautiful, and when something is not optimized and when something's inefficient, I actually find it offensive and ugly. So I had a lot of joy, I get a lot of joy from looking at each of my life spending decisions and being, comparing it like, "Okay, if I get this car, it'd probably make me about this happy, and this car would make me this much happy, whereas if I ride my bike, it does this other thing." And you do, you apply that to food and housing and transportation and clothing, travel, exercise, and then all these categories can become super efficient, where you end up getting incredible happiness out of them. Uh, and the cost can sometimes be not only low, but sometimes you'll get paid for doing stuff that other people spend tens of thousands of dollars to do. So if you're a beginner at the sport of optimization, you can just start with the stuff that costs you a lot of money. So my favorite one, to be a bit repetitive, is the car because, uh, the average middle income American spends like $12,000 per household, which is just on driving around in these like gas-powered racing wheelchairs, and, um, that's more than they even invest in, in their future. Like, that's more than they're spending on their freedom. So step one, don't have a car that's worth more than about 10,000 bucks at the most, um, unless you're at least like a m- a single millionaire, preferably multi-millionaire, because you can get a great, perfectly great car that'll be trouble-free for 10-plus years for under $5,000. So the reasonable ceiling would be 10, and that's already gonna be a pretty giant thing for people. And then number two is don't use that car a lot. So everybody assumes that, you know, a short drive to work is anything under an hour, whereas I think I encourage people to take a really, really hard line approach on that because it's a giant factor in life happiness and fitness and money. And my rule is you should never get a job, you know, unless you're at gunpoint, that requires you to drive to it. Like, either find a new job, find a place to live near that job. I mean, even if it requires moving to a new city or a new country in the long run, you just gotta keep that nagging thing in your mind like, "Okay, I drive to work now, but this is not optimal. In the long run, I will optimize away car dependence." And, uh, yeah, just start with that one, and then you can move on. You can read stuff on my blog and figure out how to cut your grocery costs down and, and your housing and everything like that too. But I really like the mobility because there's fitness involved too, you know? And there's, there's happiness of forcing yourself out into the fresh air every morning as soon as you, you give up the cage of the car. Such a huge thing, and it's such a overlooked thing in our country.
- TFTim Ferriss
I d- I couldn't agree more, and I think the, um, the, uh, it forces you to make other decisions like you pointed out. I haven't had a car for [sighs] close to three years I wanna say now. Uh, that does not mean I don't spend time in cars. I do. Uh, so I, I tend to use, whether it's a getaround for trips to Tahoe or things that are further away that require some travel or Uber, but I probably walk, walk... I tend to walk more than I bike, um, for whatever reason, but that's, that's typically, I'd say, 70, 80% of my locomotion-
- PAPete Adeney
That sounds great
- TFTim Ferriss
... is walking, and it's, it's helped me to make other decisions to optimize for, say, having people come to me as opposed to having to constantly bounce around a city or travel around the environs and think about how I can better use the capital I have for, uh, types of leverage that don't require or replace the need for bouncing around continuously and wasting that time in transit. And also, I f- I found for me at least very slow or very fast [chuckles] in terms of transportation work well. It's in the middle that I get very frustrated because if it's very slow, I can also say batch phone calls. I can listen to podcasts, listen to audiobooks. I can take time, uh, for that type of enrichment in the process of moving from point A to point B.
- PAPete Adeney
So true. Walking is so powerful and so underrated. Like, your brain just goes into overdrive. All of your problems sort of start to solve themselves in the background. And for people who don't do it regularly, like an hour a day of walking to genuinely go somewhere, um, they just dis- discount it because they haven't even experienced this incredible power. So I'm glad we're both on that train [chuckles] or on that shoe.
- 28:19 – 34:53
Books that shaped thinking: cities, weirdos, and mindset
- TFTim Ferriss
What are... [chuckles] Yeah, exactly. What are, uh, what are some of the books that have... And this could be two different lists, but some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you or books that you most frequently recommend to your readership.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, I don't have the, the ultimate... I'm not the ultimate book connoisseur. Um, I don't spend as much... I don't burn through as many books as some people. So, uh, but in recent, uh, months, three books that have had a pretty big impact on me that I'm about to recommend to people, it really depends on who you're talking to. So if you're into changing the world for the better, um, one book that spectacularly opened up my mind is this one called Happy City by an author called Charles Montgomery, and it kinda just pulls back the curtain on how we're wasting most of our resources and our human and money resources on building up the country into a spectacularly inefficient asphalt jungle. So that's for urban planning nerds and fixing the world nerds. Um, but for people who feel like they personally want to, um, they're wondering why they're such a weirdo, I'm a big fan of, uh, the book on Elon Musk by the author Ashley Vance. I think it's called Elon Musk and, Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. That book I read, and it talks about Elon as a little kid and growing up, and it's like, "That's exactly how I was as a kid," and I thought I was the only one. And it, uh, he has this feeling where the world is incredibly illogical and no one's listening, and he just wants to just fucking change it. Like, "I'm just gonna do everything myself then." And I can really... Everything except for the fact that he actually does it and I don't, I can relate completely to the feeling of that book. And finally, a really, really old-fashioned book if someone just wants to wake themselves up and start turning into more of like a positive, um, less depressed person is this 1950s classic called The Magic of Thinking Big. I've recommended that to like so many friends 'cause I stumbled across it when I was like 15 years old and it was really, really old even then. And, uh, it's like this, uh, this 1950s cheesy, stereotypical like man's world. Has some flaws in that way, but that just makes it more funny. And it's a great way to just remind yourself like, oh, when you think big and act Confident and sparkly, then it's amazing how much stuff actually goes better for you. So those are my three
- TFTim Ferriss
So I can't comment on the first two, but I, I have to comment on The Magic of Thinking Big. So I have a copy, my original copy of The Magic of Thinking Big about 15 feet to the side of me right now in my living room. It is one of the books that has traveled with me, and it's face out, so I see it every day-
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, wow
- TFTim Ferriss
... when I'm sitting on my couch, along with a handful of others. Tribe from Sebastian Junger, Dune, Frank Herbert, that's a bit of a long story. Gratitude, Oliver Sacks. I'm looking at them right now. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, Zorba the Greek, and Less is More, which is an anthology of writing on minimalism, and, uh, The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. This book, despite the title, which like you said, I mean, it's, it's, it screams cheesy at you, and it was-
- PAPete Adeney
That's why it's good, though. It is cheesy.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah.
- PAPete Adeney
It's, like, gorgeously, delightfully cheesy, and you're like, "Yes, I am a powerful 1950s man as well, and I'm going to conduct some business."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] No, exactly. And it was, it was introduced to me by a man named Stephen Key. Stephen Key, fascinating guy. He lives in, I think it's Turlock, California, middle of nowhere, and has built this, this fantastic career for himself developing products, a lot of toys, and licensing them to gigantic companies, whether it's Disney or Nestle, Coca-Cola, you name it. And, uh, he, he makes these incredibly simple prototypes out of construction paper oftentimes, and then will license these ideas for, I'm, I'm as- assuming hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars over time. And he was given The Magic of Thinking Big at one point by, uh, I believe it was a Fortune 500 [laughs] CEO. So the lineage at least, or the path that the book took to me was, was fascinating in and of itself, and I read it, I would say, around 2003, 2004, which was just before I took my, my walkabout and all... did all the experimentation with my business at the time to either redesign the business or shut it down, and that was the journey that then precipitated the writing of The 4-Hour Workweek. So the, The Magic of Thinking Big, I, I, I've been meaning to reread it, and part of me, I don't know, tell me if... I'd be curious to get your opinion. So I read it so long ago, and I have such a high opinion of it, that I'm worried I will read it now and it will not age well when I read it a second time. Have you read it recently?
- PAPete Adeney
Uh, last time was probably about five years ago, and I found it was just as good. I just love the cre- the, you know, the overly simple examples. Like, imagine that there's two little gentlemen in your head. There's Mr. Success and Mr. Defeat. Mr. Defeat always wants to throw some oil and sand into his cr- your crankcase of your mind. And it's just like these, you know... I find that most, maybe this is my engineer's, uh, brain handicap again, but I really get annoyed by overly flowery language, like kind of-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
... Harper's Magazine, Atlantic stuff, where s- pe- people just go on for, like, eight pages to cover something that could have fit in a couple sentences.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- PAPete Adeney
And Dr. Schwartz doesn't do any of that shit, and, uh, in fact, his writing style really inspired me. And, like, when I write as Mr. Money Mustache, I'm thinking, I'm, like, channeling David J. Schwartz, and he always starts off every story with this little anecdote, like, that makes him sound, like, casual and powerful. He's like, "I was relaxing in my lounge one day when a few of my employees came in for questions." And, you know, like, it's just-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
You know, you gotta read it again. I'm, I'm gonna read it again.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. All right. It's been on my, it's been on my to-do list for January because I've set aside... We're doing this interview in January 2017, and I've set aside, uh, the first two weeks minimum to simply consider options [laughs] because I've, in the past, suc- uh, fallen prey to over-calendaring myself, uh, and for fun things in, in many cases, but nonetheless over-calendaring, so I don't have as much, uh,
- 34:53 – 55:28
Persona vs real life, and why home-building/manual work matters so much
- TFTim Ferriss
slack in the system, uh, empty space as I would like, and, uh, been meaning to, as part of my self-imposed curriculum, reread The Magic of Thinking Big. So I will, I will jump into that. How are you different from Mr. Money Mustache, if, if at all?
- PAPete Adeney
Um, well, the lines are pretty fine, pretty, you know... I, I, I don't know if there's, like, a really formal diff- difference, but, um, he's probably a bit more perfect than me. Like, I, I'll complain occasionally, and, uh, if I don't catch myself, and, you know, I won't, I don't actually complain on the blog about, you know, wah, wah, wah, this, the world is being mean to me. But in general, like, because I read Magic of Thinking Big so long ago and internalized it so much, and I kind of ran my work career and my, you know, my international adventures of moving to the US and everything under those assumptions, I, I feel like, you know, I'm pretty, I'm fairly Mr. Money Mustache. I'm more sensitive. Here's the thing, like, I don't lecture people in real life-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
... about, you know, like, I don't actually smash my fist through the driver window of pickup trucks and honk the horns with their foreheads and tell them they shouldn't be going through the drive-through with this stupid off-road diesel thing. But-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
But I think it, but... and I write it. So yeah, the Mr. Money Mustache is a little more violent in, uh, in his writing and, and confrontational, and I enjoy that 'cause it helps me remain more calm in my real life. 'Cause nobody wants to be lectured in real life about, even if you have some ideas you wanna share with them, you have to wait for them to come to you. And when you're running a blog, they have come to you by definition, which means they're a lot more open To, uh, having their faces punched in a literal, uh, a literary sense.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Right. To get, to get prose mugged, um, while you're-
- PAPete Adeney
Sure
- TFTim Ferriss
... while you're shaping their behavior. Uh, th- the question of the US. So the, uh, I've spent a little bit of time in China, and even as a, uh, a- as an American who's somewhat desensitized to consumption, [laughs] I think that China is, it's appears to be 10 times more materialistic and, and, uh, and driven towards overconsumption. But the, that's not really leading... I don't wanna lead us necessarily into a conversation about China. The, the a- the question I was gonna ask, and this might have a very simple answer, why did you decide to stay in the US?
- PAPete Adeney
I just love it here. It, it goes, uh... It's kind of like the furnace of the world. Like, many of the problems, uh, in the US that stem from under-regulation are also its strengths, in the sense that you can just start stuff up, and then nobody even notices that you're doing it, and you can have a giant company before anyone's even noticed. And, uh, it's just the entrepreneurial and the optimism and the lack of rules is kind of... It goes along with my personality, personality, because I hate rules. Um, I'm really in favor of people self-regulating in the sense that don't, uh, be a jerk to your neighbor and don't pollute the world and everything like that, which is the part that, that annoys me about some of the US, uh, business culture. But in general, I just love it here, and I, I love the giant range of geographies too, compared to Canada, which is kind of just a string of cities along the border. In the US, you have a grid of cities and islands that range from, like, arctic tundra to tropical islands and coconut, you know, coconut shell tops and everything like that. It's just a lot more variety and excitement here.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, there i- uh, there is a lot of variety here, and I've actually decided that this year will be my year of exploration in the domestic United States. And I've, uh, I've, I've realized that my default, and the default of, of many people, I think, when they have their designated time for travel or vacation is oftentimes to fantasize about the trips overseas, and I've realized I've neglected to explore so much diversity in the United States itself. So I'm, uh, planning on somehow transporting, uh, me and my pooch around the country, which I am, uh, very excited to do. And next thing I'd like to do is, is read something and h- get your comments on it. So this is, uh, this is from a, uh, a piece, a profile of yours in the, The New Yorker. Uh, which, congratulations, I guess it's one of the top 16, is it, most read of the year, uh, profiles? Something along those lines?
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I saw that thanks to you, I think, on Twitter.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] I did d- I might have driven, uh, some traffic there, which, which, uh, I was happy to do and also hesitant to do because I, I know that there are s- I'm s- I'm for sure there are things that are at the, at the best incomplete, um, and, and maybe completely off base at worst, but that's just the nature of the beast when you're dealing with these types of profiles. Um-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, I did a snarky responses, uh, section for that, like complete on that Genius.it website.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
So if anybody-
- TFTim Ferriss
Your inline responses. [laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh.
- PAPete Adeney
'Cause that, that way you can, the writer can write his story, and then I can add my stuff right on the side, and that kinda corrects for the one-sidedness of normal New Yorker journalism.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, I might have to do that myself, although I'm not sure I wanna reopen the wound. I was misquoted. Even after correcting fact-checkers, I was misquoted, and a number of people were misquoted pr- probably half a dozen times in my- in the piece that I had in The New Yorker, which really rankled me because, of course, it sits at the top of Google [laughs] with PageRank. But-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... water under the bridge for now. Uh, I'll put that aside. The, the piece I wanted to read, though, I don't, I don't think is, is going to, uh, push those buttons. Uh, let me start with the following. So being an engineer, he runs the numbers. Once, after his bike was apparently stolen, he ruminated on the wisdom of locking one's bike. And this is, uh, this is then to your writing. "This was the first theft in many, many years of very carefree living. The Craigslist replacement value of that bike was probably around $500. What value do I place on a decade of the fearless freedom of leaving shit happily unlocked and not worrying about it? How about the value of my time saved in not spending my life fumbling with an enormous keychain? 90 seconds a day for 10 years is 91 hours, or at least $4,500 of my time at $50 an hour. I was still coming out way ahead." And you concluded, "If you can't afford to lose it, you can't afford to buy it yet. Otherwise, the object owns you rather than vice versa." And there, there are plenty of folks out there who f- who think we are more opposed than I think we are. Uh, because the type of math that you did here, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it, but these are the types of things that I think about constantly. Um, because the, how the, in the, how many of these rote decisions, common decisions are burning up the non-renewable resource of time in the interest of some marginal utility, perceived marginal utility in terms of, of dollars and cents. But, uh, it, I'd love to hear any sort of thoughts or, or elaborations that you have on this, because I, I loved this example.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. Well, it's, it is the, the math, sometimes explicit like that and sometimes more implicit, um, that drives most of my decisions, and that's why I, I'm surprised. Like, anybody who says that Mr. Money Mustache and Tim Ferriss are opposites in any kinda way, I think they're not really understanding the picture, 'cause it's really just an optimization process, right? Like, um- I'm not opposed to spending money. My only limitations on spending money are, number one, it has to make me happy, and number two, a factor in my personal happiness is, like, resource consumption because I kind of know the numbers behind all the, the costs to other people, like, and to the earth of everything that I buy. So that kind of rules out certain types of spending that other non-science-y, non-environmentalist people might feel okay about. But if you push that bit aside, um, it's all just about having the maximum amount of fun. So, um, and if you have limited money, then having to go to work for a longer time is a genuine source of non-fun, and thus spending less money is gonna give you more of something that's more fun, which is time, and then you're all set. So that's a win. And then now in this post-work, uh, world where I've stumbled into more money than I could have imagined having, um, my spending hasn't changed, and that's just a sign that I got some of the decisions approximately right to begin with. And, and if I had started buying more stuff afterwards, that might have been a sign that I didn't really do the math right to begin with.
- TFTim Ferriss
What do you do with the sur... And I apologize if this is a simplistic question, but what do you do with the money that you have as a surplus in this post-work life? What, what happens to if the expenses aren't going up or nominally go up and down by a few thousand dollars a year, how do you allocate the surplus?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. That's some- that's another thing that has to be optimized [laughs] because I, I feel that money is such a valuable resource, so I'm still working on it. So I try to l- you know, I've, I've been doing small donations, like paying for more stuff when other people I know can't afford it, and then I did a medium-sized donation, uh, with the effective... under the effective altruism, um, movement that I know that you've covered at one point in your-
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure
- PAPete Adeney
... Tools of Titans book.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, had Will MacAskill on the, uh, on the podcast, the co-founder or maybe founder of, of that movement.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. And I think one of those two founders sent me an email after I sent my donation to them, and, uh, they seem really, really, really sharp people. Uh, so that's a, that's one useful thing to do with surplus money. Um, the only reason I have some of it still sitting in my investment accounts, and it's still rolling in, of course, 'cause I still have this unexpected blog income, um, is I feel like I can leverage the attention of all these people for something good and that would be bigger than just donating, like, you know, a million dollars per whatever period to, um, to standard causes. I think, um, I would, I would like to create kind of like one of those tipping point effects in the US that might, for example, tip us more towards bike-based transfor- transportation, um, instead of, uh, car-based, you know, and, and potentially save, like, billions or trillions of dollars of society's wealth and have it go somewhere better if, if the whole society got more excited about a different way of living. So that's why I haven't just given away all the money yet because I feel like, for example, what if I could start, like, a little mini town where we do things really awesomely? And this, of course, sounds a bit like a cult, like, "Oh, yeah, we have to start a commune." But, uh, something-
- 55:28 – 59:47
Consumption, kids, and teaching values (including paying per bike mile)
- TFTim Ferriss
curbing consumption. But a few, a few questions for you. The, the first is... I, and this is related to kids. So I don't have kids. One of the considerations has been a concern for consumption. So how do you reconcile kids with consumption, or do, do you not see them as, uh, dramatically increasing the sort of consumptive burden?
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, yeah. Yeah, kids are definitely a huge, um, form of consumption. Like, if you're a, a rich world resident and you have a kid, you know, that's, that's another 100 years of rich world lifestyle going on there. So, uh, but I'm not a pure person. I, I strategically in- indulge in fun stuff, and, and my wife and I knew we wanted to have kids, and we just happened to feel that one was the right number for us. Um, and I'm not judgmental of- against other people. But I think, um, it's just good. It's one of the things to throw into your equation of, of like child raising. Like, should I have one or maybe 13? You're like, well, if, if consumption of natural resources, uh, is a factor, you might not have 13. But if it's not a factor, you know, no judgment from me. And so we got one, and then, uh, you can have probably like a 4X, you know, 400% difference in the amount of consumption you do on behalf of your child, just depending on how you raise them, depending on what activities they're into, and what kind of stuff you buy them, and how you train them as well. If you train them like, "Hey, we're rich, and rich people get to buy whatever they want," then you're gonna raise a super consumer, and more, the richer you are. Whereas if you teach them that there's a balance and give them a little bit of biology and science in their upbringing, then they're gonna have a value system that prevents them from being nearly as destructive, and yet they'll probably still have more fun in the world as well.
- TFTim Ferriss
Is it true that you paid your son per mile ridden on his bike at one point?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, we still do that. There's just kind of a...
- TFTim Ferriss
I like this, by the way.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
This is not in any way a criticism.
- PAPete Adeney
[laughs] Right. Uh, every parent, uh, many of them like to find excuses to give their kids money in order for them to figure out how to manage it at a young age. So I didn't wanna just hand over money like, "Here." Money comes from nowhere, so I thought that bicycling would be kind of a little income system for him. So he has an odometer on, on his bike, so it automatically tracks the miles, and then, uh, I just give him 10 cents a mile, which adds up pretty fast if you're an all-bicycle family. So then I just give him little payouts, and then we've got a spreadsheet where we keep track of his money. He's 11 years old, by the way. And, uh, and that earns interest, so he has a comparison of like, if I keep my money in the Bank of Dad, then I'm gonna earn interest. Whereas if I spend it, my capital decreases, and then that interest-bearing piece of like my little green employees are gone forever. So he still spends his money, of course, but he just knows everything's a trade-off, which is, makes it more, more thoughtful.
- TFTim Ferriss
Now, you are an engineer, and it's, it seems like you have a strong, uh, [laughs] engineer genetic through line in your family. Has your son tried to Ferris Bueller the odometer at any point? Of course, doing the opposite.
- PAPete Adeney
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Has he figured out how to, how to tinker with his odometer? Or I guess, is he so good that perhaps you wouldn't have noticed?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. I mean, you never know. He might be [laughs] hooking it up to a cordless drill and spinning that front wheel.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
But, uh, no, I don't think, uh, he's not-- That's not in his personality. Like, uh, he's not into really cheating on anything.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
He's-- Plus, it's, it's kind of an abundance. Like, he has more money than he can spend. The little dude has like 1,000 bucks-
- TFTim Ferriss
That's a lot
- PAPete Adeney
... in his, uh, spreadsheet now. And the only thing he really wants to buy is, is the odd video game, which might be like 20 or $30 once every few months. So he's pretty much retired already because the passive income [laughs] that he's earning is, uh, is close to funding his video game needs.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Either that or he's got the best long con in history. Like, he's been, he's been conning you with his good behavior for 11 years just to, just to tinker with this odometer.
- PAPete Adeney
[laughs]
- 59:47 – 1:11:36
Investing resources: index funds, simple paths, and when (not) to go active
- TFTim Ferriss
Which I don't think is the case. But for, for those people who are listening, and I'm sure you're asked this all the time, but books on investing or personal finance, uh, are there any go-to recommendations? And they don't have to be books. They could be resources. But for people who want to self-educate, could certainly be one of your top, you know, one or two blog posts as well. But, uh, if you were to pick from potentially your own stuff, but also from other work that's out there, where would you direct people?
- PAPete Adeney
I think, uh, it depends on how interested in investing you are. One of the key, um, nice things about the world, especially the US financial system, is you don't have to know much to be a very good investor. Like, you can be a top 10% investor by just buying one Vanguard fund and leaving your money, just putting all your extra money in there forever. Um, so if your, if that's your idea of, of good enough, uh, which it should be for most people, then you can just read, uh, any book by Jack Bogle, John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, is one good example. Um, a friend of mine who's a blogger named Jim Collins wrote this book called The Simple Path to Wealth, which is just sort of like a even simpler, more story-based, like enjoyable old man's tales. ... explanation of how, why you should invest in index funds. And, uh, so that's another idea. But much more important than how to invest, as long as you don't screw up your investing, like leave your money in a checking account or buy a shifty life insurance whole life program or whatever, you know, the, uh, the things that swindle people out of their money, um, you're gonna be fine in the investing side. So the other side of that equation is a book, and I really wanna write a book myself so then I can just recommend my own. But for now, there's a really great one that's called, uh, Your Money or Your Life, that everybody's heard of. And if you just get your, get the, whatever the latest edition of that book is, um, it really teaches you a philosophy that's pretty similar to mine, which is that consumption is not really what's making you happy, buying yourself treats. And, and it's quite easy to become financially independent as soon as you modify your spending in that way. So a huge surplus of money is, on a weekly or monthly basis, is the real solution to your financial problems rather than becoming a super kickass investor.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a, there's a book that I read. I don't know if you've ever read this book. It does primarily focus on low-cost index funds, if I remember it correctly, but, uh, by Daniel Solin, The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read.
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, yeah, I've heard of it.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I had, uh, I, I, I quite enjoyed, uh, that book. It was a little more nuanced. Certainly anything by Bogle is, is fantastic. Uh, for people who want to dig deeper, are there any additional books that you would recommend or that you've enjoyed yourself?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. If you wanna get deeper, like for example, more into the Warren Buffett si- side of things where you're an active investor, um, one really interesting book that I read a few years ago is called The Little Book that Beats the Market.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- PAPete Adeney
And, uh, it's really a lesson on investing, value investing fundamentals, how to understand if a company actually is a good deal to buy. And that helps put a regular, you know, like a sober shell around investing instead of the ridiculous speculation, like technical chart investing, I think is, is kinda universally proved to be bunk, but people are still doing it. Like, "Oh, yeah, the Bollinger Bands are wild this week, I'm gonna ... You know, I see a support level at 53.5 unless something happens." Like, all that stuff is statistically ... It keeps being proven wrong, and people keep doing it, so don't do that. If you're gonna be an active investor, then get really good at understanding companies rather than technical fluctuations, and that's why Warren Buffett makes a lot of money, uh, above the market returns is 'cause he's a savant in understanding business. And some people genuinely are that. Like, it may be, it would probably be less than one in 1,000 people that could do that.
- TFTim Ferriss
He's also, he, he's also-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... a savant in emotional detachment in the sense that, I'd love to talk to you a, a bit about stoicism and so on at, at some point, but he, he is utterly unaffected by what he would call Mr. Market, right? The, the ups and downs of-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... any given company that, uh, he may have bought in the form of shares or outright if he purchased the entire, acquired the entire company. And that type of emotional detachment is also exceptionally, exceptionally rare.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. And that goes without saying. Like, to me, that's a prerequisite. You should be able to-
- TFTim Ferriss
I don't, I don't have that at all. So I mean-
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, okay
- TFTim Ferriss
... well, well, no, in the sense that if, if I'm going to be active, it is very hard for me to be an active investor in publicly traded equities. Uh, for whatever reason, I can do highly speculative startups, and that's [laughs] a disturbingly high percentage of my portfolio because I can't balance a portfolio with [laughs] illiquid assets. Uh, it's very challenging certainly. Uh, but with, with publicly traded equities, if I'm trying to be active, uh, in any capacity, I do very poorly emotionally with those fluctuations, and I make bad decisions.
- PAPete Adeney
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, but if we're talking about something like an index, then I'm fine. If it's, if it's ex- if it's in- if it's entirely hands-off and I have other people or in some type of, say, automated fashion with whether it's a Wealthfront or something else, then I don't have any trouble with it.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's ... And since I don't do active stuff anymore, then that's ... I totally would agree with you on that, in agreement.
- TFTim Ferriss
The, uh, the book you mentioned, was that by Joel Greenblatt, The Little Book that Beats the Market? Is that the one?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, that's right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- PAPete Adeney
It was really interesting. And it was a little book, which is perfect for my short book attention span.
- TFTim Ferriss
He is, yeah. Joel is, is exceptionally, he's an exceptionally smart guy. And, uh, he has a fascinating track record because he, he can teach, and he has taught, uh, in, in classrooms in New York, uh, at universities. He can write, and he's also very, very well-respected as not only a value investor, but also an, an, an inve- an inve- what you would call an event-based investor. So his first book, I think it was his first book, is perhaps the most sophisticated of them all, which is where people can make the most mistakes. So I, I think The, The Little Book that Beats the Market makes more sense as a, as a first read, or maybe the, uh, his later book, The Big Secret for the Small Investor. But [laughs] book with the title that is, is sort of blessed and cursed in the same way that The 4-Hour Workweek just sounds so schlocky, as if it's gonna appear at 3:00 in the morning on an infomercial, that it's, uh, [laughs] but it's highly memorable, so it's been, uh, helpful and punishing at the same time. He has a book called You Can Be a Stock Market Genius, which is actually really sophisticated. I've met some of the most successful, um... And most of, by the way, hedge fund managers are not successful. But I, the handful I've met who have been exceptionally successful, this book, which is intended for novices effectively, is one of their favorite books. Um, so lots of, lots of, yeah, lots of interesting stuff out there.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, I'm gonna check that one out for sure since I like Joel Greenblatt's writing a lot. And I, I still follow, um, I, you know, I read in- investment and finance books all the time. I just try not to recommend them too much on my blog because it's supposed to be about lifestyle and, and making your life good, and I don't want it to be all esoteric. But-
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure. Or-
- PAPete Adeney
... I do read like the Timothy Geithner book, uh, Stress Test. I read that 800-page, um, description of the financial crisis, and I was ... found it pretty captivating knowing what really happened in the background. But-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, yeah
- PAPete Adeney
... for the average person, it's not gonna help them get rich and retire earlier, so I don't talk about it too much.
- 1:11:36 – 1:23:01
Rapid-fire topics: success, luxuries, documentaries, TED topic, training, and “use it or lose it”
- TFTim Ferriss
... to a minimum. So outside of your immediate family, when you hear the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you? Or who's a person who comes to mind for you and why?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. I've racked my brain over this question because I know it's a standard, uh, Ferriss podcast question, and I don't have a answer that anybody would recognize because I, I can't judge the success of any celebrities or well-known people because success is such a balanced thing, and it depends on how happy you are at home and how nice you are to the people who are close to you. So to me, the people in my life that I've seen, um, seem to be very high in success range are a couple of friends, these are male friends, that run their own business. They basically both fit into the same description. So they run their own business. They're a little bit older than me. Their business is extremely successful, but they've scaled it right, right back in order to be a lifestyle business and handed off a lot of responsibility to their employees, and they kind of pay them more because there's so much surplus anyway, and they're like, "Okay, you deal with all the junk in exchange for you never calling me on the weekends." So both these friends work pretty minimal, like 10 to 20 hours a week, and yet somehow their businesses keep doing better because of this hands-off approach, so they're making even more money. Um, but yet they have a fairly Mustachian lifestyle, and this is probably because I, I met these guys through the blog. And then they, they both have kids, and they have really, really good relationships with their, their children, their semi-adult children, and their wife, and basically just really good shape. Physical shape. They do a lot of adventures. They always say yes if I invite them to do something. They're like, "Oh, yeah, that's... Sure. We'll, we'll fly over and meet you in that random spot for some mountain biking or whatever." So they've co- they've managed to combine all of these dimensions of what most people want in a kind of a carefree way, and, and they're not overly focused on any one of them, which allows them to be extremely fun people to be around. So that's my definition of success, and that's what I kinda hope for for myself by the time I'm, like, 50 years old with a pretty old kid.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Where, where... On the flip side, we, we talked about what some of the critics get wrong, what perhaps media sometimes, uh, misinterpret. Where do f- where do your fans get it wrong? What are the most common mistakes that your readers make, or misinterpretations? Uh, you know, when, when do they get the message wrong?
- PAPete Adeney
That's pretty rare. I find it's a, it's pretty... There's... I, I write a lot of stuff, right? So anybody who reads a lot, they'll see all the little c- nuances and bits in what I try to express as a philosophy. But for those of them, um, those readers who don't have all the details, a lot of people assume that I'm very s- you know, like, I would be mad at them if I ever found out that they bought something luxurious. Like, "Oh, don't tell Mr. Money Mustache I bought this $2,000 mountain bike, 'cause I really love bikes, but, but, you know, everything else is good." And, like, I don't, I don't judge people to nearly the standards that they think I judge them-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
... to. [laughs] So, and, uh, the other thing is it's the same. For people who don't know my real life, they often assume that it's pretty spartan and, and that I'm always penny pinching. And this goes back to the same answer with The New Yorker article too. But, um, I'm, I'm really, I'm really in favor of, of celebrating and decadence and, and feeling like stuff is luxurious. So, uh, so I'm really not as minimalist as people, people think I am. I'm really maximalist in the fun department.
- TFTim Ferriss
Besides the studio, what are some of those luxuries? And we could tie that into, uh... Let's limit it to purchases that have most positively impacted your life or that you just love because they're so damn fun for you. What are, what are, what are some of those things?
- PAPete Adeney
Um, well, some of the, some of it is vacations. So since, um, since retiring from real jobs, my wife and I have had a nice tradition of going somewhere semi-tropical every winter for a good long period. Most winters at least. Sometimes the school schedule messes it up a bit. But, but yeah, for a month or more we'll often go. And so we spend some money on these vacations, and we'll rent a nice house on a beach, um, like in Florida or Hawaii or Costa Rica or whatever. So vacations, um, most of the money goes to rent basically, like Vrbo type stuff. Airbnb-
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure
- PAPete Adeney
... is one example of indulgences that I still have a lot of warm memories from. And I really like knowing that I can do that at any time. So even when I'm not on vacation right now in January, and, uh, sometimes if the cold weather blows in, I think, "Man, I could just press a few buttons on this computer and just fly right out to anybody's Vrbo and be there within, like, a day or two." And, uh, just having that freedom is, is a form of luxury in itself. And then I can go out and shovel some snow and be happy about it. And, uh, yeah, the other purchases, um, nothing's really expensive, but when I built out the current house, the main house rather than the studio, I was feeling pretty rich at the time, so I, I went a bit high-end on some of the stuff. Like, I have this really gorgeous high-efficiency wood-burning, wood stove fireplace thing that brings me pleasure every day, even though it's more expensive than, uh, you know, than, than just a basic fireplace. And the windows in my house, for example, are very kind of these fancy windows that cost about five times more than, than it would've cost if I'd gone bare bones. So it's usually stuff related to home, vacation, and food. You know, we've, we've been known to go out for sushi a bit more than a, a person in debt should go into sushi. So we take advantage of our non-debt status. It's, it's really not too much though. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you have any favorite documentaries or movies?
- PAPete Adeney
My favorite, uh... I'm actually got a huge, huge list of documentaries that I've been meaning to watch, many of them collected from the, from the guests on your, um, Tools of Titans book. But the one that I did watch and enjoy is actually a series rather than a documentary, but the, um, the Cosmos.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, sure.
- PAPete Adeney
The, the remake of Cosmos.
- TFTim Ferriss
With Neil deGrasse Tyson.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. I love Neil deGrasse Tyson, and, uh, I love his awkward but scientific way. And the topics he covered in those, in those episodes were, like, so stunning, and it was a great education for my son, who is very, very into science himself. Um, so that's kind of... Like, that's the documentary that stands out in my mind.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's a great series.
- PAPete Adeney
Probably the most interesting thing in the last five years anyway.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, it's a fa- it's a fantastic series. I've been hoping and meaning to have Neil on the podcast. Uh, we've had, I guess, some, some indirect email exchanges. So if, if anybody's good buddies with Neil, give him a poke and let him know that I'd still like to have him on the podcast. Uh-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] If you were to give a TED Talk on something that you are not known for, what would you give it on?
- PAPete Adeney
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So any, any kind of pet obsession or something you're lesser known for. Maybe your diehard fans who've read every single line of everything you've ever written would have heard of it, but, uh-
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... yeah, if you had to give a TED Talk on something.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, I think I do have an answer. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right.
- PAPete Adeney
So the, the... If you define the thing that I'm known for as the early retirement Mr. Money Mustache stuff- Then, um, the other topic that I'm super passionate about is, is energy and, um, like the world energy balance and solar power and how the humans, how humans consume it and how we can basically fix our energy consumption related to climate change and all this stuff. So I'd probably write one up about that and explain how we're at this insanely close tipping point where fossil fuels are just about to be economically unfeasible even without regulations and stuff, and, uh, I think that can make a good T- TED Talk because a lot of people are... You need to popularize the ideas, and right now they're kinda dry and numbers-based. Like, you're talking about terajoules and kilograms CO2 and all this stuff, and there's a lot more fun and emotion in that topic if you, if you package it right. So I think that'd be a good talk.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. W- what is your... Like, what, what I've been curious about, I know you've written about this before, but, uh, when you are-- if you, if you were to think of when you were in your, when you were in your best physical shape in the last five years, what did the exercise regimen look like? 'Cause I saw a photograph of you, I wanna say squatting outside at an outdoor squat rack. [laughs] Am I making that up?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah, that was my most recent blog post.
- 1:23:01 – 1:32:29
Bad mainstream frugality advice, a major post-retirement mistake, and removing negatives
- TFTim Ferriss
In the... And, uh, I, I don't know which label to use here, but in the, say, frugality or low-cost living world, what is the worst advice or what is bad advice that you hear given often?
- PAPete Adeney
I think the biggest issue with, that I have with a lot of this, uh, mainstream financial advice is that they're, they make you think of saving as a negative, like kind of a negative obligation. They're like, "Yeah, we know it's, feels a lot better to buy yourself treats, but, but come on, like, if you can just squeeze out 5% or even 10%, then you're, you're doing okay. Just do that every week and make a budget," and all this stuff. And, uh, so you're, you're training people to think that saving is bad and you wanna minimize it, whereas I think it's a win-win. And most of our spending is, is a sign of weakness, and it's a bunch of stuff that we do to compensate for our weaknesses because we couldn't solve the problem in a smarter way. Like, as we talked about earlier, it's possible to walk or bike to work, which is a, a physical and mental win, and it just happens to cost a lot less. So I encourage people to radically reshape their entire lifestyle to be optimized in all these dimensions. And sure, you happen to save 50 to 75% of your income as a, as a byproduct, but the only reason that's a, a win is because your life is better as well. And normal financial advice is it doesn't really address the life stuff. And, you know, you see a lot of these totally out of shape business guru people trying to sell life insurance at the same time as they're giving you financial advice, and they're not really, you know, they're not really in it for making people's lives better. I think that's where, that's where it falls flat.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, for sure. And [laughs] yeah, it's, uh, it's important I think certainly in, in almost every area, but in, uh, the world of financial planning and advice to ensure that the person giving the advice has done what they're suggesting [laughs] or has some practice putting their words into action because otherwise, um, they haven't stress test their ideas, uh, or at the very worst, they're a hypocrite and they're doing the opposite of them. Uh, are there any failures that come to mind which are, uh, favorite failures of yours in the sense that they ended up sowing the seeds of a later success? Does anything like that come to mind for you?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. I have a pretty, pretty serious one that I call... I have an article called Mr. Money Mustache's Big Mistake, and, uh, it's right after I retired in 2005, I kind of faded in to a, my first dream retirement job, which was to start a custom house building company where I was gonna make these beautiful eco-friendly houses. I did actually. We started making these houses and, um, and the problem was, it was way, way more stressful than, than what I wanted for a retirement job, and I just had this new baby boy at the same time, and suddenly I had all these obligations and, like, a construction loan to build this thing, and I was doing marketing and working late and wrangling all these cats together, like the contractors to help out building the places and, uh, it wasn't really retirement at all. And on top of that, we did it, uh, right in time for the housing crisis. So, like, we sold our first house into the 2006 boom market for housing, but then by the time the second one was done, it was 2007 and everything was slowing down and, and then starting to drop like a rock, and then I was stuck with this beautiful, ready-to-sell house, and nobody wanted to buy it for any kind of reasonable sum. So that was... It kind of soiled the fun, spoiled the fun of my first three years of retirement of running this company. Um, at the same time though, going through hardship was, was really good for me. I had to do a lot of hard stuff that I wouldn't have done, and that's how I learned a lot of my, um, best carpentry stuff. You know, the skills that I'm most skill-- I'm most proud of is, uh, like I s- I've always messed around with woodworking since I was a little kid. But by being forced into production on these expensive modernist houses where everything has to be perfect, it really trained me a lot and I enjoy those skills now. So the combination of shittiness and skills and then, then we shut this company down, and since then I've been truly retired and had so much more fun looking back and like, "Wow, I'm sure glad I'm not doing that anymore." So I lost a bunch of money. You know, some of my retirement savings went up in smoke initially, um, and then I was started to be a bit more worried about money. That was a big part of it because I was like, "Oh, all my hard-earned savings." And if I could go back and change that, I would probably still do it, but I would train myself to be just so much more relaxed about it and be like, "Dude, don't worry, you're gonna have so much fun after this, and you're not gonna run out of money, so just have a good time with your business, um, even if it, even if it fails."
- TFTim Ferriss
What was the process like of shutting it down in the sense that was there a particular dinner or conversation or bike ride or a moment when you decided to start the process of shutting it down? And how, how did that-- what did that look like?
- PAPete Adeney
[chuckles] Well, it was pretty, it was pretty quick 'cause I bought these two vacant lots in kind of a premium new urbanist neighborhood with my business partner and the, and the company, and then we started building the first one, and it was the aforementioned stress was high, and it was like, "Oh, shit, what have I got myself into?"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
Okay, let's just get these things done and then be done with it. So then I got the first one done, and then like, woo, that was great. You know, big success. It sold for more than we were even asking for it. And then the second one, um, got more and more stressful, and I already knew before I even started that second one that I wanted to shut down the business afterwards. It just got drawn out longer, and then we got into, like, renting it out, but then the tenants turned out to be horrible, and I had these, like, scam artists move in that we didn't realize were scam artists, and they were like, "Oh yeah, we got-- we just sent you the rent, uh, yeah, it's in your mailbox. Check your mailbox." Click, and they hang up, and all these like little tricks.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
And the guy had like this, you know, fancy, like, brand-new Corvette that he had bought, and he had to hide it in the garage 'cause the repo man would take it back if he ever saw it outside.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
So all he could do is, like, pull it out, polish it, and rev it, and then put it back in the garage. And these people were just really messed up, and I happened to get tangled in their web for a while, and we had to use the, uh, the full-on eviction with, like, sheriff coming to the door to get them out of my place. [laughs] And, uh, so yeah, there was some education in there.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Sounds like a headache. Uh, what did it feel like-- W-when was it finally done, shut down completely, and what did, what did that day feel like?
- PAPete Adeney
Um, I'd say it was shut down... One of the biggest problems with this is that the, the relationship between me and my friend who started it and business partner, it just, it just soured, and it became pretty bad by the end, and we had totally different views about work and money and dividing stuff up. So we finally got him out of there by, I basically had to buy out the company. I had to put like-- I'd lost all this money, and I had to put like a final $460,000 into the company to pay off this mortgage that was on the house, um, just to kick him off the, the deed, the property deed, so that I could have control of it. So that day was kind of like, you know, we're like frowning at each other over the lawyer's table or whatever. And then since then, that, that lifted the weight off of me, and then everything was so much better. And then for a while, I rented out the house to great tenants, and I had it in that situation. I was just using the rent for kind of our grocery money 'cause that house was a fairly big portion of our retirement savings, uh, income at the time. And then more recently, I think just less than two years ago, I-- the market in our area here in, uh, Colorado started to boom again, so I just sold it for a nice high price, and then now I've been super relaxed. And then that's kind of like another wave. And it really taught me a lot about happiness because this negativity in my life, or at least I was choosing to perceive it negatively, it was washed away, and then suddenly I was happier than I could have ever imagined being, um, because I'd gone through this somewhat hellish situation.
- TFTim Ferriss
[chuckles] And then remove the negative, right?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Which, uh, is, is such a valuable question. I-- the, the question to ask before purchase. This-- th-that, that alone will return a te- 100x the effort of scheduling and doing this interview for me. That question, "Is this removing a negative from my life?" That's such a powerful reframe because I, I think that is so true, uh, and so, so incredibly useful. But the, the, the next, which is going to be completely flipping that on its
- 1:32:29 – 1:41:55
If forced to spend more: buying a downtown building, “Just walk,” and the challenge of balance
- TFTim Ferriss
head, and this is not one of my usual questions, but I'm so curious to know how [chuckles] you will answer this. If, if you had had to spend... You were given $100,000 and they said, "You have to spend this. You have to buy something or some things. You cannot donate, donate it to charity. Uh, you cannot stick it into an investment vehicle. You have to spend it, and it has to be on you, your family, or your, your close friends." But it can't be charitable in the sense that you're, say, pa-paying for the college tuition of your friends' kids and so on. Nothing like that. How, how would you spend that? What would you do with it?
- PAPete Adeney
Oh, that was my answer. You just took my answer.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] I knew because I felt like it was coming.
- PAPete Adeney
'Cause I could pay off somebody's mortgage. Yes, there's still one family member in my close family that has a mortgage. But, but yeah, we want, we wanna consume here. Um-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, if you had-
- PAPete Adeney
Can I have more than 100,000 or is that limited?
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure, sure.
- PAPete Adeney
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
No, it's not limited. It's not limited. This is just y-- let's just say that you took a step into bizarro land where everything was what it wasn't, and suddenly you are the anti-Mustache, right?
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And-
- PAPete Adeney
Well-
- TFTim Ferriss
What, what, what would you do?
- PAPete Adeney
Well, the thing is this might actually be somewhat realistic because I still consider every day, you know, is there something I could spend money on, um, that would be worth it? It's still an open question. You don't wanna be ideological about this stuff. But so one thing I've been interested in maybe buying, and if I was forced to I would do it quickly, is a, is a building. I kinda wanna own a commercial building on our town's little historic main street. This town I live in, Longmont, Colorado, is kinda one of these over 100-year-old things where it's all historic with big trees and the, the narrow main street with the tall brick buildings on it. So I could buy one of those and then set up, you know, some kind of fun community space in there where we, we play music and we have parties and we rent it out and do some teaching too, 'cause I like to, uh, do a bit of volunteer math and science teaching to, uh, to kids. Kind of advanced stuff that they don't get in the normal school. So I could have like Professor Mustache's, uh, School of Science in my downtown building. So that, that would be kind of a fun use of money.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. This is more, of course, a, uh, metaphorical question. But if, if you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, um, what would it say? You know, short message or image or that you would like to impart to the world.
- PAPete Adeney
Right. I'm picturing this in a US metropolis because that's kind of where I'm focusing my efforts right now. So I think I would say, I think I would say, "Walk," or maybe it would say, "Just walk." Something that people can really understand quickly-
- TFTim Ferriss
I like just walk
- PAPete Adeney
... and without getting... Yeah. Back to our original thoughts. Like it's the under-- It's the best prescription medication in the world and yet it's so under done so far. So that's my billboard.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. It's-- We've made as a species so many evolutionary trade-offs to be able to walk with a level head, unlike, say, a pig that doesn't have a nuchal ligament, so their heads bobble all over the place. Like we've evolved to be able to, as it would seem a survival imperative, walk very long distances.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I just feel like humans are generally better humans [chuckles] and less neurotic when they walk a lot. Uh, at least that's true for me. I'll speak for myself. Uh, I'm like 10% less neurotic [laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... which is, which is, which is a win for me.
- PAPete Adeney
So our billboard could say, "Just walk. You've paid a high evolutionary price for this ability, and let's not squander it."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] What, what are, what are one of your biggest challenges right now, and how do you plan to think about it or face it?
- PAPete Adeney
I think my biggest challenge is the over satisfied rat in a cage syndrome where, uh, it's a fine line between being too satisfied with your life, with your life and not doing enough so that you feel like a bit of a, a weenie at the end of the day for squandering one of the few days of your life, uh, versus overdriving yourself to be like, "Whoa, I gotta accomplish more," you know. "I have all these gifts and, and great situations and I have to make the most of it." And taking either of those two extremes, um, can lead to a pretty unsatisfying life. And this often-- I often compare myself actually because, um... This is a little bit weird, but to you as Tim Ferriss, 'cause I've read some of your books and I see some of your self-reflection in there where you have some of these battles. You're like, "Well, should I be perfectionist or should I relax?" And I have a lot of these same questions to myself, and one of the differences is that I, I chose to have a kid and I focus a lot of energy on that. Which by definition subtracts a lot of the other stuff I could do, like why am I not running my own kind of Tesla-type company or whatever. So that's my challenge, is, is trying to walk the line and have the... at the end of each day be satisfied that I've created the right balance of, like, stress and accomplishment versus lazy decadence, which is part of the fun of really being early retired, is that you generally can, like, just smoke a bowl and have some fun with your friends on a Wednesday and, like, sleep in, and it does not matter, and you still are gonna have all the money that you need no matter what. So [smacks lips] and it's still... Yeah, I still have trouble. I've been a little bit on the lazy side in the last couple weeks because of family conditions here at home, and so I'm, I'm craving to get back to work on something hard.
- TFTim Ferriss
How will you... How, how, how do you think you'll explore that in the coming year? Uh, testing that balance or, or trying different things to try to find it. Or maybe it's, um, maybe it's a matter of just oscillating between the poles, and that's how you achieve balance. It's not like you're never... It's not like you're ever 50/50 for a long period of time. You just oscillate between the poles. I don't know. But how, how are you thinking about that? Because I'm, I'm also thinking about the same thing in 2017.
- PAPete Adeney
Yeah. Well, it's a continuing series of experiments, um, and it's always changing. Like, I've been at this for a long time. It's been 11 years since I had a real job, and I've done a lot of hard stuff and then a medium amount of laziness in this time. So I keep trying stuff to see if I enjoy it. So, like, last August, for example, I wanted to see if I enjoyed the TED Talk kind of public speaking, and I did a whole bunch of traveling around that as well, and I found it was a bit too much. Like, I enjoyed the actual stuff that I did, but I was craving being at home, and then that's made me realize that most of my joy comes when I'm actually creating something, and this is why I'm less travel-oriented than other people, because I can't really create while I'm traveling. So I need to do a certain amount of, like, nitty-gritty construction and design and just hanging out and having un- unplanned, spontaneous people coming over for a party or a barbecue or whatever. So I need this village life. If you imagine a primitive man living in a village where he spends half the time hunting, some of the time, like, building stuff, and some of the time reveling around the fire, that's kind of my core of happiness. And when I get too much into lifestyle guru activities, like, oh, I'm gonna publish more articles or get this book done quickly or say yes to all these interviews so I can have more and more fans and page views, those things sound... Actually, they sound dumb when I say it like that. But-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
... um, when you look at the, you know, when you look at news headlines about yourself, you're like, "That's successful." Or you look at page views or money, you go, "Yeah, that's success." But it's actually g- kind of the least happy thing that I do. It's the least satisfaction bringing. So I have to balance that with, um, with these much more villagey type of activities. But if I d- if I totally neglect the internet world, then I'll feel like I'm letting the world down because you can actually create good, positive change that way that you could never do just in your own village.
- 1:41:55 – 1:51:06
Voluntary hardship as an experiment, where to start with the blog, and closeout
- TFTim Ferriss
So I only have a few questions left. I'm having a lot of fun. I mean, we could keep going for many, many hours. But, uh, do you have any ask or request of my audience? Uh, any experiment you'd like them to do, exercise, anything? It c- could really be anything. But, uh, any, any parting thoughts before I ask you where people can find out more about you and so on?
- PAPete Adeney
Right. Well, if you are new to this stuff that I talk about, then I would suggest... And if anyth- if anything that I am advocating sounds crazy, like for example, not using a car to get your groceries or not using a car to get to work, then try it and think of the idea of voluntary hardship. Like, put this, uh, that phrase into your mind, and then see where you can apply it through the day. And then you're like, "Hey, that looks hard. I think I'm gonna do it," instead of, "That looks hard. I'm gonna try to avoid it." And voluntary hardship is the, the gateway drug to the rest of Mustachianism, and thus being able to save 75% of your Silicon Valley income while everyone else is still broke.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- PAPete Adeney
Um, so yeah, find some things that are hard, even if it's just skipping the elevator and, and taking the stairs, like, up to the 15th floor or whatever. Um, just if the other people are not doing it, then that's probably a sign that it's something that you should do, and then just record your results, see how much better it makes you feel, and then just keep pushing yourself a bit further.
- TFTim Ferriss
I... And I would echo that And, uh, s- spin it s- uh, slightly differently. It's not... These are complementary viewpoints, but even if people listening, those folks out there listening, if, if you do not want to focus on savings, even if that is not the objective per se, voluntary hardship is a fantastic way to short-circuit hedonic adaptation, where you need more and more and more, almost like an opiate, to satisfy your need for X. And I would highly recommend everybody read, uh, a letter. You can find it in the public domain online. Uh, you can also find it in Tools of Titans in a slightly edited fashion. But On Festivals and Fasting, it's letter 13 from Seneca, uh, Seneca the Younger, to Lucilius, The Moral Letters to Lucilius, On Festivals and Fasting. And it talks about setting aside a few days per month, let's say, to experience voluntary hardship in different ways. And it is, it is such a fascinating psychological trick in, in many respects with all sorts of beneficial side effects, like cutting down on expenses, that I think allows you to realize it is possible to recalibrate yourself to experience greater happiness and wellbeing without simply adding more, more, more, more, more, whether that's page views, money, fancy shit you don't need, or otherwise. Uh, so I, I definitely want to second that notion. Uh, Pete, where can people find out more about you? And, uh, you've, you've written a lot. Where should they, where should they start also? So where can they find you on social? Where can they say hi? Where can they read your stuff? And where should they start if, if, if they're, they're just opening the doors to your writing?
- PAPete Adeney
I'm a big fan of old-fashioned websites, so there's always mrmoneymustache.com, and you'll see a Start Here button on there that takes you kind of to an introductory article. And then the design of the website, to the limited extent that it has a design, is just to poke around and follow links to other links. And, or you can start at the beginning and read all the 400-plus articles, uh, dating back to 2012 or 2011. And, uh, yeah, that's how most people do it, and then you can read it. If you get really into the rabbit hole, then there's a forum where, like, all these users discuss their intimate problems with each other, and it's got, like, tens of thousands of members that spend all day on there. And, uh, or you can just, for keeping it really light, you can just go to Twitter and look up Mr. Money Mustache and, uh, and say, "Hey, I enjoyed the podcast."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Perfect. Well, Pete, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate you taking the time. And to everybody listening, as always, you can find links to everything we discussed, books and otherwise, at the show notes, which is for this episode and every other episode, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And as always, until next time, thank you for listening. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is 5-Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And 5-Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up [laughs] in the, uh, the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email, and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. They've become incredibly popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because they provide the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra-wealthy, but for any account size and at a fraction of the cost. 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