How Money Can Buy Happiness – Episode 261

Why does buying experiences, not things, tend to give most people greater personal gratification? 

On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Reese & Ryan have a conversation about happiness, experiences, and possessions. How can you ensure all the moving pieces that make up your busy life actually enhance its quality?

Your brain is constantly jumping from the present to distractions like your to-do list and other worries. While the purchase of things might bring short-term pleasure, Ryan and Reese explore why anticipation of an event excites the brain—making the experience more enjoyable and memorable.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey everybody. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Dentist Money Show. Back for a special treat for all the guests, to me is a host, my good friend, the original guy, big Hoss, Reese Harper joining me today to talk about kind of a cliche thing that we’ve all heard, we’ve all probably said and repeated at times, but tends to be proven over and over again with science and research and studies to be very true in our lives, and that is that buying experiences or having experiences over buying things will increase a lot of contentment and happiness.

Ryan Isaac:
So we dig into a lot of the studies and the research and some really cool stories around it and end with a few indicators that will give you some better peace of mind to know if you’re in a better position or in an okay position to have more experiences or buy more experiences, spend more time and money on those things. So thanks for tuning in. Thanks for joining us. If you have any questions, go to dentistadvisors.com, schedule a quick call with one of our friendly dental specific advisors, and thanks for being here with us. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consult an advisor or conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions general principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now here’s your host, Ryan Isaac,

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m Ryan Isaac in studio, and this feels weird with Reese Harper, who normally does this entire thing in the reverse process. Reese what’s happening, buddy. Welcome back to the Dentist Money Show by popular demand

Ryan Isaac:
You know, I’m loving being here, the people, it’s amazing, but ever since I stopped introducing the podcast, the listenership has gone up like crazy and people are, they’re demanding more of sir. So we’re just stoked to have you started introducing it because whatever you did, people started listening.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s really weird. It’s weird for me to introduce it and then you’re the guest, but it actually feels like, I don’t know. I feel like Kurt Rambis introducing MJ and I’m like, you guys know this guy he’s just going to pop back in and the legend is going to come back. I’m Kurt Rambis but we got Michael Jordan over here…

Reese Harper:
Sliding in. Dude, I definitely feel like I’m learning a lot from you and Matt these days. It’s been fun to listen to you guys put out some great content. So nice to work. Shout out to Matt.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, shout out to Matt. The people are demanding to hear a little Reese Harper. It reminds me, there’s this line in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where he’s in the village and they’re trying to explain to them that that like gemstone is missing from the shrine and they just keep repeating, bring back to us, bring back to us. That’s what the people are saying about Reese Harper. Bring back to us.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s nice. It’s nice for you to make the old man feel wanted.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, well you are.

Reese Harper:
Now at this stage with the way the business is growing, my life has taken me into the world of management, which for those of you who haven’t, when you have a dentist out there is listening right now and he’s lost his job and he’s now managing people,

Ryan Isaac:
Lost your clinical job.

Reese Harper:
Just know it’s a real thing out there. That’s a real job one day. Like there’s some people actually just do that all day.

Ryan Isaac:
Some people just want to do that, which,

Reese Harper:
And some people do it because they have to,

Ryan Isaac:
because there’s no other choice. And that’s what Growth Tokyo. Well, before we jump into this as always, we’re going to remind everyone that the illustrious Dentist Money Show is brought to you by Dentist Advisors, which is of course a comprehensive fee, only financial planning firm, just for dentists across the country. Check us out at DentistAdvisors.com.

Reese Harper:
Don’t forget it folks.

Ryan Isaac:
Don’t forget. I always laughed to myself when I think of like, I apply this sometimes I’ll think, “yeah, this Christmas, I don’t want to buy a couple hundred bucks worth of worthless junk. I want to spend 10 grand and go on a trip with my family and that’ll be an experience.” And then I’m like, wait, the math though.

Reese Harper:
But do you ask your kids what they want?

Ryan Isaac:
What do you guys want? We want some toys.

Reese Harper:
I want a toy. I want that pink unicorn.

Ryan Isaac:
I just want that $50 toy.

Reese Harper:
Floating toy for your pool.

Ryan Isaac:
Kind of interesting. Here’s where we’re going to begin this article again, it’s from the Atlantic, October 7th, 2014 called “Buy Experiences not Things.” There’s just some cool data in here that gives more context to this cliche that I think everyone knows, but I don’t know when, when you go through certain things, it proves to be true in your life, but it starts out with this statistic and this kind of guides, the whole discussion, which is that they say according to studies, 47% of the time, the average mind is wandering. And it says it wanders about a third of the time when we’re doing things like reading, talking with other people, taking care of kids, and then it wanders like 10% of the time, even during very, what you would expect to be very in the moment present times we’ll leave it vague.

Ryan Isaac:
The premise though, that begins this, it shapes the context of why experiences matter more to people in terms of happiness and satisfaction than things do is because our brains are constantly wandering and they’re constantly thinking of other things and how this relates, and so we’ll kind of like begin here. How this relates though is when our brains anticipate experiences, let’s say it’s a trip of some kind or a concert, even a good meal, like Reese, would you consider a meal an experience? I think you and your world, the meals and experience, you know to…

Reese Harper:
For me experiences largely have to do with meals. Sometimes I don’t always have to go do something when I go out. It’s just like I go eat and that’s the experience.

Ryan Isaac:
There was this really interesting thing. I think a lot of us can relate to this during a lot of the stay-at-home the shutdown this year, I’ve done incredible amount of Amazon ordering, like a lot, unfortunately, and even though I get really excited about the stuff I’m going to order, because I need use it or I’m excited to have it, they were talking about how the human brain is a lot more patient and even kind of excited with the anticipation of waiting for an event.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s say you’ve got a cool vacation, or you’re going to go test out a new restaurant in your favorite city and you haven’t been there before, and you’ve heard a lot of good things and you’re going to do that in like two weeks. That anticipation of waiting for the event or the experience has shown to be actually pretty enjoyable to our brains and our emotions versus waiting like two days for Amazon prime to deliver your thing.

Ryan Isaac:
And if you thought it was going to be delivered in one day, and then it’s like, sorry, it’s been delayed. It’s two days. We’re mad and the experience of waiting for things to show up, doesn’t do nearly what it does for us as waiting for the vacation or the big restaurant thing to happen or the concert but curious what you thought about that, cause I’ve experienced that all year long as I’ve ordered stuff and I’ve thought, I’m just mad if it doesn’t show up by 6:00 PM and it’s 10:00 AM the next morning or something, but I can wait three months for a vacation that I’m stoked about and be excited every day about it.

Reese Harper:
Yeah. I don’t know. Until maybe four or five years ago, I didn’t really get to have enough money for a lot of experiences. And so I wasn’t doing a lot of things, but I was doing a lot of little things. My vacations were like camping with my kids and driving up the canyon kind of a thing. But I found as things started going better for me and I started having more discretionary income and then my travel experiences got better and they became a little more diverse, I actually did experience like a lot more satisfaction from that, even though in the logic that I’m sure everyone would want to hear is like the quality of vacation didn’t matter. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It does.

Reese Harper:
It actually did a lot.

Ryan Isaac:
It does. If you sleep on a nice bed.

Reese Harper:
It’s kind of like income levels, right? Like income levels, like there’s a difference in general satisfaction around income level. And there is a general, I was laying on a rock ground with a cot that my son ended up taking over and I have to take the tarp and the blanket.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, the tarp and the blanket routine.

Reese Harper:
And a sleeping bag. But like if I got to design an experience, I think that’s where the, see some of those experiences that I had to go on were forced experiences. Like I don’t have enough money, so I’m going to have to do this. So it wasn’t something I really planned. When it gets to the point to where, like you, I’ve seen you actually plan some experiences in the last few months where you’re consciously doing things that actually reflect your values and your personality and your preferences. I think it’s the social kind of behavioral juice that it gives us when we plan something that reflects who we are.

Reese Harper:
It’s, it’s a little creation that you’re doing. It’s not so much the consumption of, you’re going to the beach in your van. Right? And I’m going to the mountains in my truck. Right? But both of those things reflect our values for us individually and they allow us to kind of feel like we’ve handcrafted this experience that manifests who we are in the world.

Reese Harper:
I think that’s all happening. Subconsciously. You’re not doing that, trying to send a social signal. Right. But it’s just natural. And I think that’s why experiences feel more organic and better, and like more rewarding than purchases. Purchases don’t always… You didn’t create the purchase. You consumed it and someone created it for you, as opposed to you crafting your own experience. If you’re traveling, you can pick your restaurants, you can pick your meals, you can pick your hotel, you can pick your activities, your activities matter.

Reese Harper:
Like I like mountain biking, and someone else might really love horseback riding, or maybe someone loves both, and that’s the definition of their vacation, right? Maybe someone really doesn’t value spending a lot of money at the Four Seasons. They’d rather spend money at the Marriott and have money for the Michelin restaurant, and so, you get to craft your experiences and you don’t get to craft your purchases the same way and that’s what companies struggle with and purchasers like product manufacturers. They’re like crafting features so that they can give people the satisfaction of having created their own experience. Like that’s the point of colors that you can pick. That’s why I iPhones have colors, that’s why…

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s software, that’s the user interface and that’s like the front end…

Reese Harper:
Yeah, it’s black mode, white mode, dark mode. It’s your iconography. It’s your profile pic. It’s your avatar. Right? It’s like… But you can’t do that as much. Think about the things we just listed. They’re not even close to the same as the food now pick, the destination that you chose to go to.

Ryan Isaac:
Sleeping in a van on a highway.

Reese Harper:
Yeah. The time of the year that you chose to travel, right? The location. And, there’s just so much to craft with an experience and it doesn’t have to be just vacations. We’ve kind of narrowed it down to just vacations, but like the sports that you choose to play, the activities you enroll your kids in, right? The experience of art that you consume. Right?

Reese Harper:
For me, it’s all about, it’s not just vacations. It’s about all my leisure time. I’m looking forward to my Wednesday night dinner or my Friday night outing or my weekend plans or the way I want to construct my Saturday and I don’t know, you and me think a lot alike this way. So, I’m probably preaching to the choir. Maybe no one else can resonate with this.

Ryan Isaac:
No, it’s a fascinating piece of that article and the studies, you hit right on the head. There’s a line in there that says experiential purchases are more associated with identity, connection, and social behavior. And I’ve never thought about it that way until I read this and what you’re saying, just so…

Reese Harper:
That’s cool.

Ryan Isaac:
Which is so true.

Reese Harper:
So I’m being bashed up by science.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re backed up by science, yeah. Science has your back. What do you know? Well, and it’s so true. And there’s another part in here I want to connect to that, but yeah, these experiences, they’re kind of a reflection of who we are and as we, as we experience them, as we do them, they kind of reinforce the people we want to be, and they reinforce like the tribe we identify with and they just make us feel like we have connection and we have identity.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s all… It’s one thing we all want is kind of our individual identities and connection to groups. And, even though, there are things all of us like to buy, like things, tangible, physical things. Some are car people, house people, gadget people, whatever, but those are more of a signal to other people or can be more of a signal to other people than they are like an inward connection to our own identity and our own social behavior. It’s really cool to think about it that way.

Ryan Isaac:
Here’s another thing it pointed out in the article I thought was fascinating is, think about… Okay, you said your camping trip where you had a tarp and a blanket on a rock. I’ve had so many of those crappy camping trips that are cold and uncomfortable, but I remember sitting up, I remember the times of sharing a flashlight over a little table playing a card game with my daughter or the little walk you took at dusk.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t remember that it was a horrible night of sleep or I was cold or my mattress deflated the whole night. So the thing about experiences, if you book a vacation and it rains, I mean, maybe you just remembered that it sucked really bad, but maybe you remember that it forced you to stay inside and play games with your family or read a book or just sit and watch the rain.

Ryan Isaac:
And you kind of reshape… What it pointed out is with experiences, whether it’s a meal, a concert, sporting activity, a vacation, whatever, you kind of reshape the story after the fact to still make it a benefit. It’s still a positive. It’s still added to your identity connection.

Ryan Isaac:
Whereas if you buy a computer and it breaks or doesn’t work, or you buy a thing that just doesn’t function the way… You’re just pissed. You’re just mad. Like, I got this car and it breaks all the time and there’s not a good story behind that. You don’t after the fact be like, “Ah, I remember this car I bought and it didn’t work very well and I just kept having to repair it. Such good times, allowed me to spend time in the mechanics shop and it was great driving around trying to figure…”

Ryan Isaac:
You don’t retell the story like you do a rainy vacation where you were forced to stay inside and play board games with the family. So I thought that was kind of cool.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, I remember, last well in the… Just recently, I did this with my son and he’s like kind of an adventure kid. He likes to explore. He likes to go. He’s got like an adventure pack and he likes to overnight and he likes to survive in the woods and he likes to get you on a couple of days and only eat.

Ryan Isaac:
Which one is this?

Reese Harper:
Gabe.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool. Shout out to Gabe.

Reese Harper:
And he’s like we can only eat the fish we catch and we can’t bring anything that’s pre-packaged and I’m like, dude, we could probably only go for two days like max, like where’s the Wasatch Front. It’s not like… We can’t kill elk that we see the moose are coming up and hugging us. Like we can’t kill them. All right.

Reese Harper:
So the domesticated wildlife. All right. Anyway, so the point is we went on this backpacking trip couple months ago and it was up to a lake that’s at a really high elevation in Big Cottonwood Canyon and it’s about, I want to say it’s like a 4,000 foot vertical climb.

Ryan Isaac:
What lake is this.

Reese Harper:
Lake Blanche. So there’s about 4,000 feet of vertical climb and it’s, it’s only over three miles or three and a half miles in, but 4,000 feet of vertical, which is like walking up stairs the entire time.

Ryan Isaac:
For three miles.

Reese Harper:
It’s not like… It’s a very steep incline and that was where we were going to hike to camp for a couple of days and we backpacked in. Right? And both of our packs were pretty heavy because he had all of his, he wanted to bring… I’m like every pound matters, dude.

Ryan Isaac:
Yep.

Reese Harper:
And he’s learned that as we’ve started backpacking more, but he was like really convinced he was going to find a couple of big meals. And so he had a lot of knives and hatchets and he had a lot of fishing gear and a lot of tackle and live bait and his bag and a canteen. He had to have had like 40 pounds in his pack. I’m like, dude, I’m just going to let him take that one,

Ryan Isaac:
He weighs like 70.

Reese Harper:
Because we hadn’t done a vertical climb this intense. We had done like longer hikes, like much longer hikes than this, but this, this one was like a real test of your capacity on your back. Anyway. It totally annihilated him along the way. He was so mad the whole, like after about the second mile, he’s just like, I can’t believe this. He was really cranky and really mad. And he wouldn’t say that now, right, today, because he had an amazing time, but I’m going to tell you what’s going on along the way, because it’s relevant to your example, which is he just the whole time, it was just like miserable.

Reese Harper:
And we get up to the top and he’s still miserable for a while. And he actually, he brought, we had, cause we had several meals. I don’t know if it’s like we had to do four meals. We had to find food and survive for several of these. But he brought one…

Ryan Isaac:
He was dead serious about that. You are not bringing food with me.

Reese Harper:
He’s done that. This isn’t only time.

Ryan Isaac:
Did you have like water purifiers or do you bring water too?

Reese Harper:
Yeah, we had our water purifiers and we’re going to drink from the lake.

Ryan Isaac:
He’s like a survivalist kid.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, totally. He doesn’t anyways… So I just told him to bring one backpacker’s pantry meal, which for those of you who don’t know that, these are dehydrated meals that you just can pour into a cup and then you heat it up with a jet boil. So we’ve just got a little propane, small cup that fires up and you dump this food in there.

Reese Harper:
Anyway, we get to the top, we’ve been there for half a day. And his plan was catch fish and eat the meal, your first meal so that you can, you know, wake up the next day and catch the fish for the next, because it was dark and we couldn’t fish by the time we were there. So anyway, he, he forgets the backpacker’s pantry. Like he doesn’t have any food and we’re a long way from being able to get back to civilization.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m just going to interject here, having traveled with you for like 14 years. You don’t always remember to pack things. Yeah. Like I’m like, all right, you said, you’re going to bring it. Don’t rely on me. So…

Reese Harper:
Well I asked him in the truck before I left. I’m like, did you get the backpackers stuff? And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah. I put it in there.”

Ryan Isaac:
You’re like, all right.

Reese Harper:
And what he ended up doing was he put it in the truck, but he didn’t put it in his pack. So anyway, he ended up leaving it on the seat of the truck right by the side of him. Anyway, he was so depressed about it and so frustrated that he forgot that my point of this whole story is he took a bunch of pictures. They were like insane really cool pictures of him fishing, him hiking, him climbing, seeing animals, seeing moose, seeing everything.

Reese Harper:
It was a really cool survival trip for him. He loved it. But his first, we’ll say 10 hours of the trip out of the 48 were really insanely bad, but he doesn’t even like all of those details. He’s telling people today, “Yeah, it’s pretty easy hike. You know, getting up there is not too bad.”

Ryan Isaac:
You can bring whatever you want. You can just load your bag. It’s fine. You can make it.

Ryan Isaac:
We wanted to take a break for just a second and remind you how easy it is to book a free consultation with one of our dental specific advisors. What you do is you go to dentistadvisors.com and you’ll see a big green button that says book free consultation. Click that button and book a time that works for you. Or you can just call us at eight, three, three DDS plan. Let’s start a conversation about how we can help you with your finances.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, so they ask people in the survey, if people would rather have a high salary, that’s lower than half of their peers. So high salary, but it’s lower than their peer average, or would they rather have a low salary that’s higher than half of their peers. If that makes sense. So in the survey, I’ll say it again, they ask people if you’d rather make more money, but it’s even at more money, it’s still less than half of what your peers make, or you can make less money. And, but it’s more than what half of your peers make.

Reese Harper:
In other words, imagine you live in a neighborhood where all of your friends that are living around you make more than you, no matter what, but you always have more money because you’re living around in that area [crosstalk 00:22:24] or you’re around those friends or you have a better job, you’ll always be making less than your neighbor.

Ryan Isaac:
You can keep getting raises, but you’ll… you can keep getting raises. You’re always be making less than your neighbors. Or you can make less money, not get raises, but have more than the people around you.

Reese Harper:
And everyone around you will be like that. Person’s got a lot of money.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, but you’re not progressing in your income. And the results of the study is that people couldn’t pick, like they couldn’t get conclusive results out of this study because people would go back and forth. They couldn’t decide what’s a more powerful driver for them psychologically to actually have more money, like I have more money, I can do more things in my life can be more comfortable, but I still don’t make as much as the people around me. That was such a powerful, discouraging piece of that, that people weren’t sure if they’d rather take that, then I just rather make less money, but have more than people around me.

Ryan Isaac:
Then they asked it another way. So then they asked people, would you rather have two weeks of vacation? And your peers only get one week of vacation. So you have only two weeks of vacation, but it’s twice as much as your peers or would you rather have four weeks of vacation, but your peers get eight.

Ryan Isaac:
So it’s the same question, but in terms of vacation and unanimously, like not even hesitation, everyone’s like, I’m on four weeks, four weeks vacation. I don’t care how much anyone else is getting. I quantifiably want more vacation time. So it was easy for people to think in terms of time away and away from work to have this open-ended do what you want with your time, but they didn’t quantify that in money and income.

Ryan Isaac:
So what do you take from that? I thought that was like, kind of crazy to think about the vacation is a no brainer. I want as much vacation as possible. I don’t care what everyone else is doing, but people couldn’t decide if they wanted as much income as possible based on what other people had.

Reese Harper:
Well, I think it just shows that people are as a general rule, like wealth, like objective wealth, like objective measurements of wealth, like 2 million, 1 million, 300,000, most people won’t value that over other values that they have. And some of the other types of values that are important to people, I’m just like throwing out like random values here.

Reese Harper:
It might be like adventure or having order and structure in your life. That’s a value. Being able to be really strong, like inner strength is a value or being accepted by other people, having your peer network kind of accept you, right? Being fulfilled in your life which is like your self actualization needs, right? Or being independent. Right? Like I want to be independent. Right? I don’t want to have to be responsible for a lot of things.

Reese Harper:
I want to be like, kind of on my own, that’s a value. But so it was like power or happiness or honesty, or there’s some many. There’s a thousand values. No, probably more like, I bet if we were defining them, you could generally agree probably between 50 and 60 values, 70 values that people define and wealth or money is one value like that people could have. And for some people it’s their highest value, for some people it really is, but for most people, because there are so many other values that drive happiness, that drive them in their day, I don’t think that…

Reese Harper:
It’s not common for people to actually pick an objective level of wealth in their lives, when it comes to the choices they make, they’re going to pick, like a lot of people will pick health over wealth. A lot of people are going to pick challenge over wealth, doing something hard over making, making more money, right? Like a lot of entrepreneurs that I’ve met that I relate to, are people that have like picked industries, because they’re very challenging and they were very fulfilling, not because they were like the biggest market cap or the largest opportunity. And that’s okay, too.

Reese Harper:
Some people are going to value wealth more though, or they’ll value market opportunity. More my point in bringing this up is I just think that most people’s happiness is as a product of aligning their values around their life and if wealth is in the right place, right, it will often not be your primary value and so for a lot of people, their happiness is driven by so many other factors that have to do with social interaction or personal values that are much different than just an objective level of money. So it doesn’t surprise me, but I think it’s important for people to know that because you will never be happy if your values in your life aren’t aligned for you.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s end this thing with maybe some like personal financial advice, because I try to translate this into the different personalities of people that we work with and I’ve met over the years. Surprisingly, it’s not the majority of people, but there’s a fair amount of people in there in the category of they cannot bring themselves to spend money on things.

Ryan Isaac:
And I’m surprised that it’s more people than I ever thought it would be. And I have these conversations at least a couple of times a month with clients who, despite their wealth and their indicators and their income and their savings liquidity, they still won’t just stay in the little bit nicer hotel.

Ryan Isaac:
Or I was joking around with the dentist the other day, and I don’t think he’d mind me sharing this. It’s pretty general. A lot of people do this. I’ve done this a ton, despite being in an excellent financial position, he still ops for the three hour timeshare presentation when he travels abroad on purpose, because it’s such a killer deal for the resorts that he subjects himself to that madness. And he laughs about it. He’s like, yeah, man, but the deal is so good.

Ryan Isaac:
We had this conversation, just reminds me, there’s a lot of people that struggle to spend the money, even if they’re okay to spend it. And so you’ve seen that over the years, what are, what are some indicators of some things that stand out to you as here’s a green light for you’re okay to explore these experiences or these things that really drive you. There’s things like your savings or liquidity or net worth or income or profitability, collections, whatever, what are some of the things that stand out to you that have been helpful indicators to let someone feel allowed or have permission to do?

Reese Harper:
Some people are just going to die with millions of dollars in the bank and never have really had done a lot. And their life might have been better because of that reality. Like in their own mind, like they just want security. Now, that’s a common personality type. I would, I don’t know. What would you say? I probably bump into that, I would say one out of 10 people, maybe two out of 10 people, but it’s not like it’s not half of people. Like it’s, you’re the exception out there if you’re this type of person.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s the exception, the person who struggles to spend money even when they have it’s the exception. The majority of people are out there going, “Look, I want to have something for the future, but I want to live today, cause I don’t know what the future holds.” That’s the majority of people,

Reese Harper:
Some people show up to the timeshare thing and they actually may be able to enjoy their vacation more because they’re like…

Ryan Isaac:
Exactly, you can’t qualify that.

Reese Harper:
I’ve been like most of us, if you’re on the eight out of 10 people or nine out of 10 people that don’t struggle with this, you might remember the first time though, that you did struggle with that. You know, it’s just, your other values kind of prioritized real quickly and you were like, that pain of giving up that hundred dollars or that $500, that thousand dollars it’s worth it.

Reese Harper:
There’s clearly some financial indicators that allow you to know if you’re being, probably the more important thing is for the eight out of 10 or the nine out of 10 that are wanting this experience, how do you know if you can have it and feel okay about spending it all or if you’re really being neglectful and, I think to me, it just boils down to your liquid net worth. And we’ve got a few indicators that we use to track that part of your net worth.

Reese Harper:
If your personal net worth is growing at a rate that, I’ll let you hit another variable cause I know you’ve got some other thoughts on this too, Ryan, but if your personal liquid net worth is moving forward every calendar year at a rate that’s… If you’re in your thirties, it’s at least 20 to 30% of your personal spending, and if you’re in your forties starting to get closer to half of your personal spending to almost 75% of your personal spending per year.

Reese Harper:
I just want to see someone’s liquid net worth moving in a positive direction in order for me to know that they’re going to be okay because there’s complete financial independence and that’s a really cool thing to try to achieve for some people. But a lot of people don’t want to like sacrifice experiences to pursue financial independence.

Ryan Isaac:
Like perfect ideal conservative.

Reese Harper:
If I can just see out in the future a few years and know I’m going to be okay, then I just want to kind of redirect my life to live in the present moment. Cause I don’t value accumulating too much. I want to work more.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, and isn’t that like maybe the goal or outcome of good financial planning for somebody is that there’s not one perfect path that you’re supposed to end up at or end up taking. It’s more like, how do you make it so that all this money and all these moving pieces just enhances the quality of your life. And maybe that means you stop working one day at an early age with more wealth than even your grandkids will ever need. Maybe that means that for you or maybe it means you just kind of like work as long as you feel like you want to. And you have just enough money to last you until your last breath and then it’s gone and hopefully you timed it okay, but maybe that means that for you, but I don’t think there’s the right way.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s just, how do you, how do you get balance and organization and some accountability to just making sure that you’re achieving what you want to achieve. For me, I look at one of the most like realtime easy indicators to know if you’re okay to spend a little bit more, try to go after some more experiences that might cost you more time or money, is a savings rate for me. I just want to see how healthy and sustainable and consistent is somebody savings rate for their given income level.

Ryan Isaac:
It could be 15%. It could be 30% just depending on income, but that will tell, that’ll tell a big story on whether or not you’re in a position to afford to spend. Maybe it’s not just money, but maybe it’s taking time off that costs you money to go after that.

Reese Harper:
I think that’s a great insight.

Ryan Isaac:
Anyway, this has been a treat for the people and a treat for me. So thanks for…

Reese Harper:
And a treat for me too.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re a busy man. Thanks for coming back and doing this man. Reminder to everybody. If you have some questions or want to chat with us about any of these subjects or want to learn more about your own financial picture to see if you’re able to make the progress you want, achieve your goals, maybe enjoy life a little bit more, ask us a question in the Facebook group. It’s dentist advisors.com/group or just search the Dentist Advisors Discussion Group on Facebook or go to the website, dentistadvisors.com, click on the book free consultation button and book a chat with one of our advisors.

Ryan Isaac:
So Reese, thanks again. Appreciate it.

Reese Harper:
Thank you guys.

Ryan Isaac:
[crosstalk 00:34:41] Excited for your future adventures with no food and water up in the high mountains. Just pack warm clothes.

Reese Harper:
I’ll keep you posted.

Ryan Isaac:
Don’t don’t get lost. Thanks man. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time.

 

Work Life Balance