What's in store for you:

1. Photo From My Life
2. Life Thought:
3. Financial Thought:
4. Good Sh*t

Photo From My Life:

Life Thought:

Life is a lot like surfing. Whenever I go surfing, 95% of my time is spent trying to paddle past the break and getting crushed by waves as I attempt to avoid them with a mediocre duck dive. I may only catch a handful of waves in a single session, and I can almost guarantee you they last less than 10-15 seconds. You may be shocked when I tell you that I absolutely love surfing.

Maybe it's the warm water or the fact that you can't be distracted on your phone. I'm not sure. But, what I can tell you is that I've always enjoyed how much surfing and life have in common.

I love life, but at the same time, I spend 95% of my time doing things that may not appear to be fun -- excel sheets, zoom meetings, taking out the trash. However, I've realized that this somewhat boring and tedious 95% of my life is actually essential. It fills my life with meaning and makes me appreciate the great waves when I catch them.

The best days for me are always the ones where I enjoy the "95% of life tasks." Now, the trick is figuring out how to make 100% of days like that.

Financial Thought:

I speak to many 30-50 year olds who are obsessed with maximizing wealth and becoming financially independent. It's a great topic to discuss even if it's not the right goal for most people. I have a relatively simple philosophy on this:

If you want to maximize wealth, you need to own equity. Very few people generate economic freedom through high-paying W2 jobs alone.

Now, when I tell this to people, most assume I'm advising them to quit their high-paying job to buy a company or work at a startup with a large stock package. However, the actual advice I typically give is the opposite.

If you can get paid $500k+ with the stability of a W2 job, it's probably not worth the risk to leave that. However, you have one responsibility:

If you want to maximize wealth, you need to consistently allocate as much of your income as possible into equity ownership stakes (public, PE, etc.). This topic deserves a much longer blog post, but here's a bit of data to highlight this. As with all scenarios I show, I simplify things and there are many caveats. The specific assumptions I used are outlined below.

Scenario 1: High Earner & High Spender. This is most high-earners and I'm not suggesting it's inherently bad. It's only a bad thing if you want to maximize financial independence.

• This individual makes $500k ($325k post tax) and spends $250k per year. They invest the remaining $75k into stocks (also known as equities). After 20 years, they have ~$3.5m and could spend ~$125k into perpetuity.

Scenario 2: High Earner & High Saver. This is harder to do, but it's what you need to do to maximize financial independence as quickly as possible. Once again, this may not be relevant for everyone.

• This individual makes $500k ($325k post tax) and spends $150k per year. They invest the remaining $175k into stocks (also known as equities). After only 11 years, they've achieved as much savings as the individual from Scenario 1 earned in 20 years. After 20 years, they have ~$7.5m and could spend ~$300k into perpetuity.

As with everything, some blend of Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 is probably optimal for most people. In reality, this should all be customized based on the individual's specific goal and needs. But, my message is simple. To maximize long-term economic output, you need to own equity.

Assumptions: 35% all-in tax rate. 7% equity returns, spending comes from the 4% rule which has clear downsides, but is simple.

Good Sh*t:

The Fall Guy: My wife and I don't watch a ton of movies. I'd say once every few months, we sit down to watch a movie on Friday night and spend at least 30 minutes looking for something on Prime, Netflix, Apple TV, etc. (Side note: can someone please re-bundle TV?) With this recommendation, I hope I save someone 30 minutes of scrolling before you find out what you want to watch!

Last week we landed on The Fall Guy and had relatively low expectations. While it definitely had a few dumb moments, it was easy to glance over them due to great plot twists, interesting cinematography and some killer stunts. If you're sick of hunting for a movie, this one won't disappoint.

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