The Childfree Guide to Money w/ Dr. Jay Zigmont #920

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Joel Matt and today we're talking about the Child
Free Guide to Money with Jay Zigmont.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
All right, Joel, so picture this all right.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
After a great night's sleep, you wake up in the
morning when your alarm goes off, Maybe even the sun
is peeking through your windows a little bit like that's
what's waking you up. No crashing of toys in the
playroom to.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wake up to.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
You get yourself ready, maybe to go on a run,
maybe to go to work. No arguing with your kids
over what they can and can't wear to school.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
This is sounding nice.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
May maybe you make yourself a delicious breakfast again, no
arguing with a kid over what they're gonna eat. This
scene sounds incredibly foreign to us, because, as listeners know,
both of our families have a ton of kids and
we love it most of the time. Yeah, most of
the time. But it's not what everyone out there what
they want in life. You know a lot of folks

(01:08):
they might prefer the quieter scene that I just described,
and that's totally fine. But our guest today he argues
that not having kids presents his own set of financial
problems to address. We're joined by a founder and CEO
of Child Free Wealth, doctor Jay Zigmont. Doctor J is
a flat fee fiduciary who specifically addresses the different priorities, needs,

(01:31):
and concerns that folks have who don't have kids. And
that's what we're going to talk about today. So doctor J,
thank you so much for speaking with us.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Hey, thanks for having me join you. And that morning
is pretty close to what I had this morning, although
our dog did wake us up. You know, he wanted
his breakfast like he's pretty set on top.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, I was gonna say, don't rub it in, man,
all right? Like I had literally had a four nine
year old wake me up at four am, had to
walk her back to her room. That is, it's not
every night, but that probably happens once a week and
those are the worst nights to sleep for me. The
first question we ask everybody who comes to on the
podcast doctor J is what do you like to sporge on?

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Matt and I.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Our thing is craft beer. We're drinking one right now.
But what's that for you? You're doing the right thing,
saving an investing for your future, but you also got
a spurge a little in the meantime.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Right, Yeah, So I'm gonna give you a silly one,
but I do consider my splurge. I have all of
the streaming services, like, and I can't watch them all once,
but like, I like being able to switch between them,
except Apple Plus. They keep running out of shows so
I have to cancel them. But like, it's so nice
to have this choice of whatever I want because I
love binging something, diving into it. And let's be real,

(02:36):
I could probably take turns by them and save some money,
but I want to have it at my fingertips.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
There you go, set it and forget it. Do you
have a favorite series or show.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
That you're you've been into you recently?

Speaker 4 (02:48):
So actually right now, even though I resubscribed to Apple
Plus and watching Silo, I don't know if you've seen that.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Okay, little I saw some of it. I read the book,
the first book. It was getting a little post apocalyptic,
and the book was better.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
Let's be real on that. But usually, no, it is interesting.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, and by the way, I will say, agree with you.
Apple's Apple streaming service is definitely the worst of the
ones out there. Like they have the fewest good stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
That being said, the stuff that's on there, I'm a
huge like, I can't wait for what is it Severance
Season two to come back because I so enjoyed that
first season.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Doctor J.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
You know, before we hit record, we're kind of talking
about making political predictions and what happened a couple of
weeks ago in South Korea. We're gonna avoid the political
chatter on this question, but like being child free, it
certainly seems like it's like it's trending up. How big
of a trend is it becoming based on the data
that we've seen recently, so.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
If you look at the overall population as best we
can guess, because we don't have great studies on this,
because it's not a question that's ask there's about twenty
five percent of the US our child free or permanently childless.
And just for definition, child free means you don't have kids,
aren't planning to having kids ever, usually by choice. Childis
tends to be now by choice. It's not like your
child free for the weekend. You know, the grandkids get

(04:03):
you know, the grandparents have the kids for a bit, No,
like never, And if you look at the younger generations,
they're just stopping and pausing before they have kids and
going do I want to do this. Yeah, and that
is completely different than what we call the standard life
script just is go to school, get married, have kids.
Like it. It's that American dream, you know, the house,
the pick offense to two and a half kids, a dog.

(04:26):
I think you're seeing a lot of the younger generations.
We've actually studied why they choose to be child free.
And I'm like, you know, in this world and in
where my finances are, where my life is, where my
health is, I'm gonna skip having kids. It's not better
or worse, it's just different.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
On the generational thing, I'm curious to pick your brain
on this because the there were all these predictions about millennials. Hey,
they're always going to live in the city, they're never
moving to the suburbs. And it seems like maybe some
of the things that millennials were supposed to do, or
or maybe like that they were likely to avoid ended
up happening just a little bit delayed. Do you think
that's going to be the case for younger generations like

(05:04):
gen Z Or is that one of those things where
it's like now they're flipping the script.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
You know. I always have people, you know, ask this question.
They usually ask the question like, are they going to
change their mind? You know, and there's a lot of
judgment built in there. But I'll just give you an example.
So I interviewed a whole bunch of people from my
book for the first book with ports of child free wealth,
and I had somebody, there's twenty one getting sterilized. They're
not changing their mind. If you actually look at the

(05:27):
number adults under forty nine who don't have kids, forty
seven percent say they're never gonna have kids. So I
mean we're talking huge, huge numbers. It's not like, oh,
we're putting it off and doing it later.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Do you think that? So, based on some of the
interviews you've that you've done, are child free folks actually
better off financially according to the data and according to
some of the life experiences and the anecdotal evidence that
you've come across.

Speaker 4 (05:54):
So this is where it gets interesting. Child free folks
don't have a goal of passing on money to next generation,
so they actually tend to bring their net worth down
over time intentionally, kind of that dio zero approach. So
when you look at total net worth, there's a slight difference,
but not much. What is interesting is if you look

(06:14):
at the gender wage gap. If you look at parents,
you know, if you have a standard couple, you have
a male female, the woman tends to make about eighteen
eighteen hundred dollars less per month, that's median income monthly income.
If you look at child free couples, that gap goes
down to one hundred and twenty bucks a month, which

(06:34):
statistically is nothing.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Basically yeah, non existent.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
Right, So it's not actually like they're like, you don't
become child free. There's not like a check you get
in the male you become rich, but you get different
choices in life, and we're seeing it in things like income.
And it's really interesting when you say, hey, this gender
wage gap, there's such a big issue, disappears and like

(06:57):
you have to stop and think about that.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
So when you look at the people give for why
they opt to go child free, and say, listen, having
kids isn't for us. Finances tend to be the second
biggest reason. Then most people say, hey, not doing this,
not going down that path, Like is it the the
headline number to raise a kid to maturity that has

(07:19):
people freaked out about procreating? Is that's sort of like, oh,
it's going to cost you a quarter million dollars to
get this child from age zero to eighteen, And man,
I think of all the things I could do with
that money instead. Like what when we say finances is
one of the top reasons, what do we mean by that?

Speaker 4 (07:34):
You know? In actuality, most people when they're child free
have more than one reason why they not gonna have kids.
And we've actually studied this and finances is about thirty
percent of folks cite it. And it's interesting because a
lot of them and I don't have I've been kind
of down this rabbit hole trying to find better data,
but a lot of them are like, hey, I saw
my parents struggle. I don't want to do that, and

(07:57):
like this. There's a lot of this story about like
I had difficulty growing up or we had difficulty growing up,
and that's where we're going to go. And what's interesting
is if you actually sit down and look at the
finances of having kids, it can scare anybody, you know.
I mean, it's eighteen thousand dollars a year on average.
I had somebody we still have a few clients that
have kids, and I had somebody who want to put

(08:19):
their kid through private school and then college. And the
total budget was a million dollars, like huge numbers, but
a lot of times people don't even stop and think,
you know, we were in the pre record, you know,
I'm just outside Nashville. And you mentioned Dave Ramsey, and
Dave Ramsey's interesting these guys baby steps program. We've got
a program we called the No Baby Steps, so we
just gotta have the alter alternant. But what's interesting about

(08:41):
his program is he has a financial plan for buying
a car and everything else, but kids come. Whenever the
kids come, you know, and there's some religious things there
and other things. But like if you actually stop and
look at the finances, a lot of people will go,
how the heck am I going to do this in
this economy, in this housing market, like in this wage

(09:03):
is it's hard. I mean, I give it to parents
who are figuring out how to do it.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, it's It's what you're pointing out is that it's
a bigger financial decision than buying a Toyota camera.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
Yeah, but people just default and do it, you know,
like you're just expected to do it. And what we
found is, in many cases, child free people put more
thought into not having kids. Then parents put into having
kids and I'm not judging it all like I don't
get a vote when you having kids or not, Like
that's what you do, awesome, But what happens is having

(09:32):
kids is the default choice. The not having is the
going against the grain and going against the shared life script.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
I guess historically speaking, the civilization and progress and a
lot of that is based on having kids. And so
I think if someone is going to the lineage, yeah,
like your genes. But yeah, it makes sense that to
go against that script that it does require a little
bit of thinking. But that kind of raises the question then,
like what made you want to write this book because

(10:00):
like it seems like the financial decisions that child free
folks face they are pretty similar, right, like like we're
still talking about saving, We're still talking about investing, avoiding
bad debt.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
So yeah, address the book specifically.

Speaker 4 (10:11):
So the basics are the same. You know, get out
of debt, have a budget, all that. That's good for everybody,
But then everything seems to change after that. And the
reason I did this I'm a certified financial planner. When
I was studying to become a CFP, I realized there's
absolutely nothing in the literature about life without kids. All

(10:33):
of the financial plans, the financial software, the education assumes
you either do have kids or you you know, planning
on it. And my wife and I are child free.
And I started this research question, and the question was,
how weird are we? Like, you know, like just I mean,
we're two pH.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
You know, for a few minutes, I can already answer
that question.

Speaker 4 (10:54):
Like we're two PhDs. We'll sit around at night talking
about research sites, like literally last night, nine o'clock at night,
where texting back and forth about a research study, like
in bed, like I mean, okay, we're weird, but how
weird are we for being child free in the life
we live? And all that? And I didn't even know
the term child free existed at the time. I found
a Reddit group that's got like one point five million

(11:15):
people in there. It's Reddit, so it's a bit of
assess pool. But like you know, there's these groups. And
come to find out, being child free changes almost everything
about your life and financial plan because the core assumptions
are different. Child Free people don't want to pass some
money the generation, they don't want to retire, or in

(11:35):
the classical sense, they've got to worry about their long
term care. Things like life insurance doesn't fit. They're making
different choice with their life, and to the point where
what we say is you have to plan for your
life first, then your finances, which may sound like semantics,
but that's a big difference.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
So you just mentioned like maybe a different view of
retirement for child free folks. For is it just that
they have more or flexibility over when they're willing to
or desirous of retiring And what are the major particular
financial challenges that child free folks need to consider. I've
got to think, I mean, just we talked about this
just briefly at the beginning, but that achieving financial freedom

(12:15):
is actually easier, right because you're talking about eighteen thousand
bucks a year for kids. I mean, that might be overblown,
and I don't know that I one hundred percent agree
with those statistics, but you know, without having to expensive
kids to raise, plus you've got more free time to
let's say you want to increase your income. I got
to think the financial piece of the puzzle it becomes
easier to solve.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
It's not necessarily easier. So income disparities still exists if
your child free or not. You know, there are still
people who are struggling, but the difference is you get
different options. So, for example, my wife got offered a
job and we embrace someone called the garden of the Rose.
One's growing, on's vice support. She's the rose right now growing.
She's like, I want this job opportunity, it's twelve hundred

(12:57):
miles away. We packed up the car and went. Like
the biggest issue was you got to see two masterifs
in the back of a Prius. That was hilarious, but
like we could do that for her career. And what
we find is for child free people, the goal is
not fire or standard retirement. It's how do I enjoy
my life more. Now we have a concept we call

(13:20):
file finance priends live early, where it's more like dialing
backwork to the work you enjoy and doing that across
your life versus I just want to put in my
years and get out. So I have a lot of
people that leave really high paying jobs to go do
something they enjoy. You know, for some reason, I have
a lot of librarians. I don't know why they want
to go back and be librarians or authors or things
like that don't pay a lot of money, but they

(13:41):
can enjoy their life. And what happens is, yes, if
they were one hundred percent focused on money, they have
the time to do side businesses all that they can
grind it out. But then you hit what we call
the child free midlife crisis, which is you hit your
personal professional financial goals. You're like, now, what, Like we
hit that way earlier in our life, and it's that

(14:03):
existential crisis, like, what's the point? What's my next forty years?
Look like? That's really hard.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
That's a really good point because when you have extra
mouths to feed and you have maybe a bigger house
in which means a bigger mortgage because you've got more
people living under the roof, the flexibility that you can
have typically unless you're incredibly dedicated to building financial security
for yourself is minimal. Like you can't just say I'm

(14:29):
gonna take this job and shove it. I'm gonna go,
you know, write the next great American novel, because you
got to have that next paycheck to be able to
feed the kids all and keep the lights on. So
that it sounds like that's one of the benefits of
opting to be child free is not necessarily that oh
I'm gonna, you know, get millions in the bank more quickly,
but that hey, I can make alternative decisions that would

(14:51):
be much harder to make if I had kids in
my life.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
Yeah. The way we say it is living a life
of child free wealth means you have time, money, and
freedom to do to enjoy. It doesn't mean you're rich,
like it doesn't mean the bank account is huge, but
you have that flexibility. You know. We have a child
Free Wealth podcast and one of our top downloaded episodes
is I'll make you quit your job. And when I
work with clients, my para planner with at the time

(15:16):
was helping me out. She actually kept track us. It
was something like eighty percent of the clients we met
with them like, quit your job, you hate it, it's
making you miserable. Let's go find you something else. And
like just the standard says, you've got to do this,
You got to feed into the house, you gotta do
all that. Child free people we rent, like, we can
we can move, we can move every two years, we
can do whatever you want. And it gets to a

(15:38):
point where it's almost too much flexibility and it can
become analysis paralysis or paradox of choice, like what do
I do if I can do anything?

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yeah? Well, I mean so yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
On that note, like what are some of the solutions
then that you provide to folks as they've sort of
reached this the stage of burnout in their life?

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Right?

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Because for a lot of folks, and you're write about
this in the book, how as parents, we can often
like we've got our own goals. As we achieve those,
we tend to then focus on the goals for our
children in different ways that we can provide for them.
How do you sort of ameliorate that problem there when
you don't have kids?

Speaker 4 (16:14):
So this is where it gets interesting. If you look
at people's success with money, about eighty percent is your behaviors,
the way you're thinking, and kind of like does your
money match your values? And we'll spend a lot of
time with our clients talking about that. We've spent more
time on that than the actual numbers and investing. Our
goal is to make your finances simple so your life

(16:35):
can be amazing. But people are like, well, what I
want my amazing life to be? And I'm like, I
have no clue. How am I supposed to know that?
Like I'll ask them what do you want to be
and to grow up? And I don't care what age
they are, and they're like, I don't know, nobody's ever
asked me.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
I'm still asking myself that question. Jay.

Speaker 4 (16:48):
Okay. So here's what happens in the standard plant. You
go to school because somebody in your high school set,
you know whatever, it's family or counselor whatever, said you'd
be great at this career. Then you go in that career.
You're in the career, you get some promotions, you get
to kind of like mid thirties forty, and you're like,
how the heck did I get here? And what it
is is the eighteen year old version of you made choices.

(17:10):
You're like, oh, I want to be a nurse or
whatever else it is, and then you're like, this is
not what I really want from my life. And the
hard part is parents usually don't deal with this until
kind of like the empty nest phase, you know, the
kids are out, what's my next chapter? And some people
it's just like I'm gonna put on my grandkids or
where else. But we're doing that much earlier as child
free people, and the question we get to is what

(17:32):
do you want your impact to be. I do an
exercise with my clients and I'll ask them, what do
you want the second line of your obituary to be?
So the first line is Jay died at this age
in Nashville. The second line is normally Jay was a
father of three leaves behind blah blah blah blah blah.
For child free people, that's not gonna be the line.
What do you want that line to be? And this

(17:54):
is where we'll dig in with people and it takes
months of work, and it's like, I don't know, and
you know, if you're not leaving a genetic legacy, what
do you want that you shaped hold look like when
you're leaving? And how do you want to make an impact,
whether it's giving, or it's work or you know, family,
whatever it is. And then how do we make sure
your money matches that? Yeah, so really getting these deep

(18:16):
questions like the the how do I save enough to
retire is a really easy question. But what do I
do when I don't want to retire and I don't
know what I want my second half my life to
look like.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
It sounds like you're half therapist, half life coach, half
financial advice Like you're all these things rolled into one
and which which is like, you're like at the centaur
of personal finances for these people.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Great visualization exactly, doctor j Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
But which is so important? I mean, that's I feel
like on this show, that's a lot we hit on
a lot of other topics besides just like nuts and
bolts of how to open a roth ira or what
contribution limits are. And that's like the biggest conversations in
money center around those hopes and dreams and desires. I'm
curious too, like I feel like, and I the longer
we've been in this space, the more we hear about

(19:03):
the concept of generational wealth, people wanting to save and
invest enough to pass some sort of large inheritance down
to their kids, or we even here talking of super
funding five twenty nine plans and getting your kids started
off on the right financial foot. And sometimes, man, it's
hard enough to say for your own retirement and your
own current goals and pay for those things, much less

(19:24):
trying to advance the financial abilities of your kids. And
you make it sound like that's one of the benefits
of going child free too. It's like you don't have
to worry about that.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
Well, I don't know if it's not worry about it.
So I think it's a different goal set. So the
way my wife and I handle this is our nephews
get what's left over, like they're in the will, you know,
like they get what's left over. But the way we
look at it is if they get like ten grand
or one hundred grand, that's fine. If they get a
million dollars, we made a mistake. And here's the reason.
If we're going to be ninety something when we die,

(19:56):
who knows what age, But I'm just gonna pick that
they're gonna be sixty something, and the odds that they're
going to need that money then is very low where
I could make a bigger impact earlier in their life,
you know. So we have five twenty nine's for all
of our nephews. We're very you know, education centered people.
By who we are, we have plans around that. You know.

(20:17):
I have clients. I have a client, one of my favorites.
She's got to count and it's just called the get
the babies to love me you count, And like it's like,
how do you get let's be realized this And what
she said is she doesn't want to go into education.
She wants it going to like the first car, investing
in their first business, or backpack across to Europe or

(20:38):
whatever an experience, because the reality is for an eighteen
year old kid, giving them ten grand for an opportunity
has a huge impact on their life. Giving them a
million dollars when you die has little to none. And
that's where you start thinking about things differently. A lot
of child people are charitable. Well, if you're charitable and
you give it in your state, you get no tax benefits. Instead,

(21:01):
we can give it throughout our life and be part
of the cherries and new things. Like, it's just different
set of assumptions. And this generational wealth is kind of
like an excuse that parents sometimes use of why they
keep working and why they don't have to like address
like the big issues about why am I doing all
that fun stuff. They're like, well, I'm gonna give it
to my kids. And you see people like just hoarding

(21:23):
money to give to their kids, And I'm like, how
about you enjoy your money, how about you enjoy your life?
How about you enjoy it with your kids? And those
are the types of things we're doing.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
And I like that within that response, you never mentioned
spending a ton of money, even though we will get
to that some of the different goals maybe that you
have for yourself when you get to the rose stage
of the gardener in the rose illustration, which maybe we'll
have you unpack a little bit more. But you've you've
touched on a lot of different topics, Jay, and we're
gonna get to more of that right after this.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Break far we're backwards. We're all talking about generating wealth
and growing your money even as a child free person.
Doctor j Zigmont is with us talking about this today,
and Jay, let's talk about like financial products and the

(22:13):
need and desire for certain financial products changes if you
don't have kids. You briefly mentioned life insurance, but that
is one of the financial products that Hey, typically if
someone else relies on your income, that's when you want
to have life insurance. And granted you have spouse still,
so there might be a need for life insurance. But
what are the factors and how do people need to

(22:33):
think about whether or not they need life insurance if
they're kind of entering that child free zone.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
So the way we look at it, the first thing
to keep in mind is thirty two percent of child
less folks will never marry versus two point five percent
of parents. So we have a large population what we
call soloist single with no kids. If you're a soloist,
there's almost zero need for life insurance. Yeah, I have
people like, well, I have life insurance because I need
money to bury me. I'm like, that does not cover burial.

(22:59):
Like that's a complete a different product, you know. And
even if you're in a couple, so this would we
get that term dank dual ink of no kids. Chances
are your spouse is gonna be okay without the life insurance.
But things like disability insurance are a much bigger issue.
So if you are single and you don't have disability insurance,

(23:19):
you need to go fix that today, Like social scurity,
disability pays nothing. I mean it's such a small amount.
You can't live on it. And if you don't have
a spouse or kids or other people that you can
rely on to help you with it, you're out of luck.
So like, it's not that we don't need insurance, we
just a different insurance. The challenge is a lot of

(23:40):
the people when they come to us have been sold
these big old life insurance policies because that's just the
standard answer. And by the way, that's where the insurance
companies make their commissions.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, and they're selling a product maybe that you don't need,
and you feel like you've done the right thing because
you've heard it on enough podcasts or articles or something
like that, but it doesn't fit your situation.

Speaker 4 (24:00):
I had somebody who used to sell life insurance for
one of the big companies, and I asked them about this.
I'm like, help me understand, Like I don't understand this world.
And he said, when he was working at the company,
no matter what age you were, no matter what your
life was, their goal was that your whole life in
this example, insurance payment per month was the same amount
as your mortgage.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
And I'm like, that's nuts, that's insane.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
But that's how they make their commissions.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
So I had clients and I sent them to their
insurance broker. I said, go get a quote for disability insurance.
So they go to their insurance broker. They come back
to me the next meeting and they're like, I have
these six quotes. Five of them were for life insurance.
And I'm like, guess what they're trying to.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Sell you stuff, you failed the assignment.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Like the problem is these are the assumptions that are
built in, and what happens is all of these things
like that you gotta have ten to twelve times your
salary and life in shirts are general rules that just
don't fit when you're living a different life.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Script for those soloists, do you have a like I guess,
a rule of thumb amount when it comes to the
amount of disability that you think your clients should have.

Speaker 4 (25:09):
Our goal is always something the sixty to seventy percent
of your income because that's usually what you can buy
and as long as you're paying for it out of pocket,
that's going to be tax free when you claim. So
that's why seventy percent works is because you're not paying
taxes on it. It is one of those things like
that's an absolute must. You know, there's very few things
in finance that I can say are just absolute must,

(25:29):
and that's one of them.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Well, when you look at the stats, by the way,
and disability insurance, more people are going to encounter our disability,
then they're gonna ye die prematurely, right, So it's it's
one of the most underutilized insurance products that people don't
think to.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Get I agree, Jay.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
So before the break you talked about the gardener in
the rows. Sort of model that illustration right where you
packed up the dogs in the back of the prius.
I want you to send me a picture of that,
by the way, but elaborate a little bit more. Explain
how y'all arrived at this. I guess this framework and
what that means for each of you at diferent stages
of life.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
Absolutely, and this is one we use often with our couples.
And now keep in mind child free couples are not
always married. They often ask me, kind of should I
get married? And the question is do you need health insurance?
They go no, oh, then don't bother getting married, like,
you know, like it changes the assumptions. But in couples,
it's very hard to find two careers at the same location,

(26:23):
at the same level that allows you both to like
chase your dreams. You know, we come out of an
academic world. I was in academia and my wife was
also in academia. They always have the person who gets
a tenor track position, and then they have what they
call the trailing spouse, which is just a terrible term,
but it's like the leftover job that we give to
the person that we don't really care about.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
The lunch tables down in the cafeteria.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
Well, that's kind of what they're doing. I mean, you know,
even you know I got a PhD, they'll find me
a job teaching something randomly, but like you know, I
get the crappy one. Yeah, And what will happen is
there's this approach. It's technically in some areas called the
gardener and the flower. I call the gardener in the
rose because my wife is not just any flower. And
what it is is you have a conscious plan that

(27:09):
one of you is growing and the other ones providing support.
If you look at a lot of our systems in
the country, they're still based around a concept that in
a couple, one person's providing support and the other ones
doing their career. And in this gardener in the rose,
what we do is we actually have a conscious decision
of who's in what role. The rose is allowed to

(27:29):
be selfish, kind of like we're gonna move, We're gonna
do whatever you got for your job, that's your thing.
The gardener provides a day to day support, which literally
might mean gardening and you know, taking out of the house,
might be paying the bills, whatever else. It is so
that the other person can explore. And what we do
is we put an intentional plan in there to swap
so for for our life every five it's five to

(27:52):
seven years ish. And I say ish because you know,
it depends on exactly where we're on a careers. But
it doesn't always have to be for career. When I'm
the rose five to seven years from now, we're going
to get a boat and travel the world. It's not
about the career to me. You know, there's other things
I want to do with it. And the result is
you each and a couple get to live your best life,

(28:14):
whatever that is. You know, there's a there's a book
out there. It talks about like an eighty percent marriage,
you know, where you each get eighty percent of what
you want. And I'm like, that's twenty percent resented, like
you know, like it's there's just issues there. And because
we have that flexibility of being child free and we
can do different things, there's got to be a better
way as a couple to communicate around that and plan

(28:36):
around it.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, I like that. And when you have kind of
a recipe and a timeframe for it. It means like
all right, cool, hey off ramp for us coming up
and for me, And I think the time frame is
really important. I think Jay, you talk about that like
how there's a limited amount of time, and so I
think that that's an important ingredient to keep resentment from
building up, thinking that like, well, how.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Long is this going to last? Like is it always
going to be your turn or is it going to
be a b turn at some point?

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah, you've talked about Jay, and it's a really important part.
I think of what you discuss in your book is
is the solo tax and the fact that not all
child free folks are in a relationship and so yeah,
there's been talk about like the pink tax, but there's
also kind of something like a single tax on people
who opt to, you know, remain solo.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
And there's a.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Bit of a financial disadvantage to living alone, right, even
if that's what you want. So for you and and
your wife, two incomes, one mortgage, right, but like when
you're living solo, it's one income, one mortgage. Like talk
about maybe the trade offs there.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
And by the way, the challenging your language said one
mortgage child free. People aren't buying houses, they're renting, and
we're still okay with that because we give this flexibility. Yeah,
but for the soloist, there's a great study Fidelity did
the Rise of solo households and they talk about some
different stats in there, and they found that the cost
to be single across your life is somewhere between four

(30:00):
hundred and forty thousand dollars and a million dollars extra
because you can't split the house and you can't split
the utilities all those other things, and people just don't
get that, you know, like some people are, you know,
single by choice, some people not by choice. That's that's
up to them. But there's all these things that come

(30:20):
with it. And then it gets even more interesting because
a lot of our soloists that's what we call single
no kids, are soloists are then also expected to take
care of their parents, like, well, you don't have kids
and you don't have a spouse, so you can take
care of mom, which, by the way, that's just an
assumption that just not be there. But it's one of
those things like, oh, well you're single, so you can
move in back in with mom and take care of her.

(30:41):
No like, I can live my best life too, but
I have to pay for that. And you start kind
of looking at the way the country is set up
and you start seeing this what we call pro natalist bias.
That bias is towards kind of the old school nuclear family.
You know, the housing size of other structures are there

(31:02):
like this. You know, if you look at communities are
trying to say, like, how about if we have affordable housing,
people are like, no, we can't do that in our community.
Like there's all of these things and the result is
those who are soloists probably have it the hardest. But
the Census found when they looked at individuals, we looked
at net worth. They found that single, childless women have

(31:24):
the highest net worth. So maybe there's something to the struggle.
I'm like, I'm gonna take care of my stuff. I
can only rely on me. And we do see that
a lot where they're great savers, they're doing great things,
and now we're like, all right, how do you enjoy
your money?

Speaker 2 (31:39):
As the next set Yeah, okay, I'm curious about that
question of if let's say the single person has siblings
who have kids of their own, and it does come
they're in the sandwich generation, and it does come time.
And we probably have had a lot of listeners in
that group who are saying, okay, who takes care of
mom and dad? How do we do this together? Or

(32:00):
how do you push back in that conversation, in this
conversation to say no, no, no, no, this isn't just on
my shoulders just because I'm the one who didn't opt
to have kids.

Speaker 4 (32:08):
Yeah, we call it the financial bingo, which is like,
you don't have kids, so you can take care of mom.
And the hard part is if you don't plan for that,
your mom's or your parents, whoever it is, their health
and their finances can have more of an impact on
your plan than your own choices. So we actually we
have a program called eight No Baby Steps and No

(32:28):
Baby Step seven is what is your plan for your parents?
And the first thing we talk about is what's your boundary?
So like, for my wife and I we've decided nobody
lives with us. We just can't do it, like it
just can't. Will we support them otherways? Yes? But what
is that boundary? And it's one of those things where
people like, well, I'll deal with it when it happens,
but what then happens is mom falls breaks her hip.

(32:50):
I'm just gonna keep picking a mom. It doesn't give
me dadever. But mom falls breaks her hip, and then
mom moves in for six months recovery for our hip,
and we get them month seven and you're like, mom,
are you ever moving out?

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (33:02):
And she's like why, Like I love this here, like
you know, and those just assumptions are there, and you
hear the term sandwich generation. When you take care of
kids your parents, we're the open face sandwich. You don't kids,
but we're still take care of our parents. And it's
actually something I think both parents and child free folks
need to be talking more about. We do something with

(33:24):
our clients we call the parent checkup. Will will take
on the parents as a financial client, just to look
through their stuff to figure out how they do it.
And what we tend to find with parents is they're
either broker than we thought or richer than we thought.
There are very very few parents that are kind of
that middle ground, like either I'm gonna get big old
perance from them or they're gonna be relying on medicaid,

(33:47):
and like living with me, you need to know which
one of those it is, but your parents never want
to talk about it. They're like, Oh, I'll be fine,
I'll be fine, don't worry about me. No, mom, I
need to worry about you.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
Now. At some point we.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Are going to after I need information to work with.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
Yeah, and anyone listening, I'm gonna give you the same
tool I get my clients, blame me, doctor Jason's. I
have to ask you questions like blame your financial planner,
like that is something you can blame others for. And
we'll actually sit down with the parents of our child
free folks and we'll say, let's talk about what's your
plan for long term care, what's your will look like,
what's your power eternity look like, what do your finances

(34:24):
look like, what's your insurance like? And it's the first
time as a family that they've ever discussed this. And
what I find is this really really awkward conversation to start,
but it always brings people together because you're actually like
planning for the future.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, some of that you said awkward conversations start so true,
like so hard to talk to you, of all people,
your parents about their financial situation. It feels like now
you're the parent and they're the kid, it just changed.
It's a role reversal thing that's really weird from an
emotional standpoint. So what questions, Well, one, how do you
broach the conversation? And then too, what kind of questions
are you asking of your parents to kind of gain

(35:00):
some of that insight.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
So there's a general role in finance that says you
can't coach somebody who's you've seen naked orf they've seen
you naked. So that really means you can't teach your
parents anything like just yeah, I'm just gonna be transparent
on that. You know, the likelihood that they're going to
listen to their baby talk about this stuff is very low.
So I actually think this is a role for a
comprehensive financial planner to kind of help you through it.

(35:23):
And what it is is I often tell my clients.
You start with, Hey, I've been talking to my financial
planner about my will, my power of attorney because for child
free people, we're doing that real early, like in your twenties.
And I've been talking about that, and they said, I
should ask you questions about yours, and Mom, I don't
care about how much money I'm getting. That's not what
I'm asking I just want to know what your plan is.

(35:47):
And as you start asking the questions the kind of
the first time you bring this up to your parent,
you probably won't get far, but you started a conversation
and then you can dive in deeper. So one of
the examples I often site is you'll talk to their
parents and say, hey, do you have a plan for
long term care? Long term care is stupidly expensive. Well,
I had somebody who was a colleague. I was working

(36:08):
with this woman and she went into the hospital for
ninety days. It was a long term thing, rough medical thing,
got out at ninety one days and went to a
long term care facility and she's like, why have this
long term care insurance? Well, guess what in that ninety
days the bill was not paid for that long term
care insurance and guess she ends up with nothing like

(36:29):
that is hundreds of thousands of dollars gone. So how
do you have that conversation with your parent? Like, Hey,
what do I do? And I had somebody go to
the parent and ask this question about long term characters
and he was like, yeah, I stopped paying that last
month because it was it doesn't make any sense. I'm
like you're seventy five years old, you don't stop paying
your long term care insurance policy that you got years
ago that was really cheap, Like you pay the long

(36:52):
term care bill before you pay your electric bill, you know,
And that's part of those conversations is just understanding what
it is. I mean, I'll have my clients pay the
long term care bill because it's gonna be a whole
lot cheaper than actually paying out of pocket or having
them lived with you.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
All Right, Jaye, we got a few more questions we
want to get to, including what does retirement look like
when you don't have kids, grandkids, and and that's partly
a financial thing, but it's also just kind of partly
a support thing as well. So we've got more questions
to get to with doctor J. Right after this, all right,

(37:32):
we are back from the break, still talking with doctor J.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
And you know, earlier on you're talking about I joked
about I'm still asking myself the question like what do
I want to do with my life? Like and you
were talking about the kind of impact that you want
to be able to make with your life legacy, like
that is an issue that you discuss with your clients
because I think many child free folks want to leave one,
but they're not.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
You know, they're not doing it in the form of
offspring with their kids.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
But what other specific suggestions do you have for them
as they're trying to find some different creative ways to
do something with her money in an impactful way after
they've left this mortal coil.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
So, really, what I'm trying to do, I call it
recondoing your life. Let's get rid of the things that
don't bring you joy and do more of the things
that do, which sounds simple, but that's actually really hard,
especially when you've been doing things for across your life,
Like what do you really enjoy? What do you want
to make an impact on? What are the causes, what
are the people you care about? And how do we

(38:32):
do that? So I had a conversation with a client
on this and come to find out what she really
wants is her impact is she wants to have that
garden that's the one known throughout the neighborhood that people
come to, they walk through, they get centered with the universe,
they see the butterflies, they do this, and I'm like, Okay,

(38:52):
if that's the impact you want to make, then we
got to buy you some land you can make this
nice garden with. And at the time she was renting,
I'm like, no, no, no, we need to put your
money towards this. And it was interesting because people think
about like legacy as like giving money to a charity
or people, but how do you want to make an impact?
And her impact was I want to have this impact
on the community in this way. I have others that,

(39:16):
you know, we have a debate do you want to
give money or do you want to give time? You know,
so if you're going to do charitable donations, the time
is throughout your life. But if you give enough money
then you could be on the boards. Do you want
to be part of it? And what we'll tend to
do is, at some point in a child free person's life,
every dollar you earn is going towards your estate, which

(39:36):
is not a priority. So we got to bend the
curve and start spending more money. And often what we'll
do is set a goal that like, let's say they
love travel, that they do an equal amount of travel
as giving, Like I'm talking about like I have clients
like spending six figures a year on both giving and travel,
and we'll work through this whole process, and I'll help

(39:56):
through a tack stuff and all that's easy. At the
end of the year, I always ask them, did you
get more out of the giving or more out of
the travel. You'd be amazed how many times it's the
giving that they got more out of And like, that's
part of that conversation. And what the reason I do
that is It allows them to have spend a little
bit on themselves enjoy it, but at the same time,

(40:18):
it also allows them to make an impact and test it. Yeah,
and now I've had other people like I gave to
this charity, that charity just was terrible, Like I didn't
like what they did with it. I'm never gonna give
to them again. Awesome, Like we learned we can try
these things and then figure out what do we want
the next forty years of our life to look like
and optimize for that.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
I love that that you are literally doing an assessment
as opposed to I think oftentimes folks think about it
from the standpoint of like, Okay, they have this picture
in their mind as to what they want it to
look like, but like they're never really gonna know whether
or not that that's going to provide fulfillment to them
right Like they might even end up like in their
later years and dying hoping that it leaves the kind
of impact that they're wishing it would. But the ability

(40:59):
to kind of try it out beforehand, I think that's
a really smart way to kind of just do this
like ab testing and see which one of these moves
the needle of the most and oh, that moved the
needle a ton. Okay, how can I then funnel even
more dollars towards that? I think that's incredibly start.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Wade into the waters right to see is this the
kind of water I want to be something to right out? Yeah. Jay,
When we're talking about retirement, oftentimes the four percent rule
is something that people are told, oh, yeah, this is
the amount that you can tap of your retirement accounts
without running out of money later on down the road.
And so you seem to think that the four percent

(41:32):
rule doesn't make as much sense for child free folks.
Is that is that true?

Speaker 4 (41:36):
It is? And two parses One, many of my child
free folks aren't going to retire in the standard like thing.
They're going to kind of tune back. It's kind of
like if you want to go down to the fight
the fire community. It's kind of coast FI essentially, or
breathe the Fi if you really want to go that way.
But how do I do something I enjoy? Like I
have a bunch of clients that are a therapist, and

(41:56):
they will like cut back from clients seeing clients four
days a week to two, but they're constantly working. Well,
that now changes a bunch of assumptions around your retirement.
The other thing that happens is the four percent rules.
Goal is for you not to run out of money. Well,
if your child free and your goal is to wind
down your wealth or die with zero, it has a

(42:16):
conflict and the result is you'll actually underspend. And if
you look at a lot of the data on the
four percent rule, there's just as much a risk of
underspending as overspending, in some cases more. And that becomes
a problem and they'll use the kind of the twenty
five times your your expenses get kind of a rough
fine number. And often I'll talk to people I'm like, hey,

(42:39):
you got this number in your head, why don't you
change your life now? And they're like, well, because I
haven't hit the number. I'm like, well, you don't need
that big of a number because you're not trying to
pass some money in next generation. Like, well, but the
four percent rule says I have to I'm like, it's
not really a rule. Okay, it's a back of the
nap can matter.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
It's not like the eleventh Commandment or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (42:59):
But okay, in the fire community, it is.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, that's the big difference.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
And if you look in the fire community, it's really
interesting to watch. I think with the fire community, there's
a lot of folks that it's kind of like the
dog who caught the car. What do I do next? Okay,
I've been scrimping and saved my whole life. I hit
my FI number, and now I'm like, what do I do?
And it's amazing how many people then start writing fire
blogs or other businesses with it, Like they go back

(43:28):
to something because they haven't thought about what they want
to retire too. Oh, they want to retire from.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
On that note, we knew somebody who retired early and
had a pretty great job and he got so bored
so quickly he started driving for Uber. And that's not
like a lucrative profession or anything like that. And it's
not like he needed the money, but I think it
was just kind of this stopgap measure where like I
feel like I need to do some sort of work,

(43:54):
and I guess this is the direction I'll go in.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
And that's normal. I mean, we call an encore career,
and what we often find is, how about you know
you've been a whatever, you've made a whole bunch of money,
or an executive youve made six figures. How about we
do what you really enjoy? And I'll often ask them,
like what you want to be before you went to
college all that? Like what was your dream? Now? I
want to be an astronaut. I'm too old for that,
but like, what did you want to be? And people

(44:19):
will say, oh, well, my passion is I have a
lot of authors. I want to write books. Cool, how
about we do that? And they're like, but I make
all this money at my job. I'm like, yeah, but
you don't need that. How about we take the time
to do this, Like and I have some people who
don't want to call phase retirement where they're like, work
two months, take a month off, maybe travel, they go

(44:39):
back and forth, but they're doing alternative structures and alternative jobs.
The result is they're happier, they're working because they want
to versus they have to.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
Thus, going back to your not fire but file financial independence,
living early, squeezing some of that living in in between
some of that work. So while we're talking about retirement,
how does being child free impact when you might recommend
for folks to tap social Security? Does that change things?
Or is delaying and waiting and receiving the full payout

(45:11):
does that still make the most sense.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
Yeah. So our solution is we want what we call
a die with zero safety net. And we don't literally
want to die with zero. I'd love to bounce my
last check, but I don't know when that last day is.
But the safety net, the way we structure it is
we put off social curity till seventy The reason there
is that's essentially an annuity that it is cost of

(45:33):
living adjusted, so you have some money there. We figure
out a plan for long term care. Our goal is
to actually have an answer for your long term care,
either money set aside or insurance by the time you're
about mid forty and then a little cash cushion. And
what we do is we say, okay, you've got long
term care, take care of you've put off social curities
to get the biggest benefit from that. You got some cash.

(45:54):
Now let's optimized for spending money. And it's a different
way of looking at it. And people will challenge to me, like, well,
you could make more money by taking your social curity
earlier and investing it. Yeah, that works in concept, but
nobody ever a history really does that, like you know,
they spend it or where else it is. But also
we're doing that so that the client looks at it
and goes, I have a safety net. If i do

(46:16):
spend through my nest egg, I've still got social curity.
Now it might not be a full payment. Let's love
the whole debate on whether social curity is solve and
but you know, you can figure that out and then
you can actually spend your money, which takes a lot
of work. I spend more time with my clients talking
about spending money than saving money, Like reprogramming their brain

(46:39):
is a challenge.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Well, and kind of going back to what you said
about firefolks the dog that caught the car, I feel
like we are starting to see more folks talk about
that as well. There's more books coming out as folks
are talking about how to spend money in a strategic way,
because that, I mean, what does that do? Like what
they're getting out there is sort of the underlying problem.
It's not just the simple math problem. But that's easy.
And I think that's why somebody, folks, oh, twenty five

(47:01):
times your angul expense has got that, Well, what is
truly going to resonate with you in a way that's
going to allow you to feel like you've.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Got fulfillment in life?

Speaker 4 (47:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Yeah, and that's way more interesting.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
And her number on a screen that represents your overall
net worth just it's a piece of the puzzle. But
if you're not even close to the whole thing exactly,
I'm curious to jay. Like, so, my grandma ended up
moving back in with my folks for like a decade, right,
and now she's living with my uncle. But it's kids
often play a role in their parents' retirement years, and

(47:35):
yet child free folks, they're not going to have the
ability to go stay with their kiddo or something like that.
So do you have any thoughts or how do you
navigate those conversations about support in those retirement years.

Speaker 4 (47:47):
Yeah, and you were very nice on the way you
asked it. But the question I usually is who's going
to take care of you when you're older? Like that
that's like boil it down, that's it. And I kind
of have a love hate thing with this question. What
I hate is implies you think your kids are going
to take care for you. And here's the stat The
US Census looked at adults over fifty five and they
found that for childless people, two point five percent we're

(48:09):
getting any financial support from their family. Wow, so that's
like nothing.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
Now they looked at parents over fifty five and they
found that one point five percent of parents were getting
any financial support from their family. So guess what, your
kids aren't gonna do it? Hmmm, just like this assumption
Gramdma's gonna live with you forever, Like that's an assumption.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Does that stat also include as far as like housing
a parent?

Speaker 4 (48:34):
This is specific about finance and that you know, so
there might be housing or other support you're getting, but
it's the financial support in this case.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
So yeah, hey, maybe they're putting a roof over your head,
but they're not maybe by cutting you a check or
giving you cash.

Speaker 4 (48:47):
The data Unfortunately, I've worked as a paramedic for many years,
and you go into nursing homes and you look and
see who's getting visited, and the answer is nobody. Like
I mean, it's pretty sad. So the way we look
at it is it costs about one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year for long term care. On average,
men will spend two point two years in care, women
three point seven, So we're talking about half million dollars

(49:09):
for women, and that cost is increasing by five percent
of a year. I mean, it is just insanely expensive.
So our answer is we tell people, if you're gonna
plan for long term care, there's two things. We're gonna
end up with some money either set aside to do
that or a standalone long term care insurance policy so
that takes care of the finances. The harder question is

(49:31):
who's gonna make decisions for you when you can't, because
all the systems are based on your spouse makes the
decisions first, and then you're next of kin. Well, especially
for the soloists, you're kind of out of luck. And
that's actually the harder one. The financial one is just
a math equation. How do I put how much money
to put aside for that how do you make decisions

(49:52):
on who is gonna put me in the home, who's
gonna check on me out? It's really hard and the result.
I've been working on this for about three years, and
in California or in Arizona, you can hire a professional
fiduciary to do that for you. But that's two out
of fifty states. If you're in the other forty eight,
you're kind of out of luck. You know, attorneys are

(50:12):
willing to serve as your financial power of attorney or
your executor. They won't touch the medical stuff. So we've
been working on this for three years and we hope
to have a product out middle of next year that
we're calling Childfree Trust that we're going to be able
to serve as child free people's medical power attorney, financial
power attorney, executor, and trustee. And we're doing that because

(50:32):
the system's broken for child free people. If you don't
have somebody you can appoint, the government or the healthcare
systems are making the decisions, which I don't trust either
of them to make decisions for me. Yeah, and you know,
the who do you live with? That's an easy question,
Like how do you pay the bills? That's easy it's
how do I trust somebody to do those tough things?

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah? Is that not what what living wills address?

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Or is that just more kind of like a again,
I guess, more of a serious sort of scenario where
you might be in the hospital, incapacitated, not able to
make decisions. Can you, I guess distinguish between the two.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Yeah, So living will or medical power attorney go to
hand in hand. Your living will will say who makes
the decisions for you? The living will will say like
should you do CPR or not? But you know, kind
of like the real bad end of life stuff. But
it doesn't talk about all the other things. So, for example,
your living will isn't going to determine am I going
into a nursing home? Am I going to a good

(51:30):
nursing home, a bad nursing home? Am I staying at home?
Am I getting caregivers? None of them?

Speaker 1 (51:35):
So the qualitative choices.

Speaker 4 (51:37):
Yeah, and you hope the person that you name is
following your wishes. The hard part is if you actually
look at the data. ARPS does a lot of studies
on elderly and they find me a number of elderly
fraud is just through the roof, and I had a
reporter reach out to me and she was trying to
talk about this topic for child free people, and she's like, well,
here's my solution. I'm going to give my nephew my

(51:58):
estate and he's gonna to take care of me. Well,
here's the problem. You just set up fraud, because now
the nephew looks at it and goes, do I put
my aunt in the good home and get less in
the money from her, or I put her in the
cheap home and get more from the estate. Like you
would hope people would make the right choice, but they
often don't.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
And it's a tough choice. I guess then as the
nephew for sure, Jay, this has been just an awesome conversation.
You've shed a lot of light on what child free
folks endure when they're thinking about their finances from whether
they're solo or in a relationship. Where can our listeners
go to find out more about your book and what
you're up to.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
So the book is the child Free Guide to life
and Money out in your favorite bookstores. Always encourage people
to go to your favorite independent bookstore websites, child fiewealth
dot com, child fee wealth on all the socials except
for Twitter, because he says childless people should not have
a vote, so you know the choices we have to make.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
All right, Well, doctor j we appreciate you taking the
time to chat with us.

Speaker 4 (52:59):
Great having you all.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Right, Matt, good combat with doctor j R. Make you
want to send all your kids off to boarding school.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Didn't make you want to go back in time and
not have any kids so that you could truly have
that great night's sleep that you didn't have last.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Night, I mean, the way you described it. Sorry to
hear about that. I'm not gonna lie. It sounded nice,
but no, I'm not willing to upend my entire family structure.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Well, that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
And like, I don't think either of us felt the
need to belabor the point of our own worldview and
kind of what we think is important. And obviously kids,
I mean, they are a massive part of that. But
even still, it was a lot of fun to talk
with doctor j because there were like certain commonalities that, like,
everything that he talks about is something that's important to
folks who are child free. Are also things that we
do when it comes to making sure specifically that our

(53:42):
money and our spending aligns with our values. And so
my big takeaway is going to be when he was
talking about it's when I asked about, like I guess,
the legacy aspect of your life, and he was talking
about different ways to essentially leave an impact now and
the here and now while you're still alive and not
just putting it off as of this ultimate destination right

(54:02):
And in a similar way, I think that's oftentimes how
a traditional view of retirement is looked at. It's like,
I'm going to get to this point of nirvana and
it's going to be easy for me to step away
from my work and I'm going to have quote unquote enough.
In a similar way, when it comes to how we're
living our life, like find some of the different ways
where are spending and how we're spending our time can
align with what's important. And I love the example that
he gave of the lady that wanted to leave like

(54:23):
a community garden, and I think there's all sorts of
different ways that we can do that does not necessarily
bolster our bottom line like our net worth number, but
it does start to shape and have an impact on
what our world and our communities look like today. And
Man I am one hundred percent all about that, even
if it's done like sacrificially. Probably even all the better

(54:45):
if it's done sacrificially, because that means it's even more
important to you. But finding ways to essentially convert our
dollars into difference in the world.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Or into impact, Yeah yeah, yeah, So about you. When
he said to talked about alternative structures and alternative jobs,
I thought that was so compelling. And I think this
is true for people who are child free and people
who are not child free, and I think it probably
takes more intentionality and it takes more of a financial
backstop when you have kids, because it's just harder to achieve, right,

(55:15):
some of those alternatives, like if you're making now the
encore jobs, yeah yeah, and then you opt to go
become a librarian and you're making a third of that
or something like that's really difficult to pull the trigger
on when you have mouse to feed, when you have
a family. But if you just have a spouse, or
if you are a what he called a soloist, you
have a lot more options over what your life looks like.

(55:37):
And you might say, you know what, I have been
killing it at this high end job this high earning job,
but I am like so not into this anymore of
those sixty hour work weeks, whatever it may be, and
you might be ready to take a massive pay cut
to do something you enjoy a whole lot more. Well,
those decisions I think are easier, like you said, if
you have kids. But that's also those are also decisions

(55:58):
people can make when they kids. Exactly, you just have
like more parts of the equation to consider, But I
think those are That's always a good thing to push
yourself towards. It's saying, well, can I be more frugal?
Can I frontload the sacrifice a little more so that
I can have this sort of optionality and freedom, And
that's what pursuing your finances with the way we talk
about here on how to Money, I think that's what

(56:19):
it allows you. It's not just about building the biggest
network number that she is humanly possible.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Exactly. Yeah, I guess my. Yeah. My ultimate sort.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Of takeaway is a lot of what he talked about
isn't only prescriptive for child free folks. You can also
do a lot of these things with kids in a
different way though, perhaps. But the beer Joel that you
and I enjoyed while we talked with Doctor j was
a Christmas ale by Bells and this was a Scotch ale.
What'd you think, bud.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
So Bell's is one of the og craft breweries in
the country out of Michigan, right, And I thought.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
They were like Kalama Zoo because on the label here
it says Calm Stock.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Mass Calama Zoo. I think that's my founders, Oh.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
My thing to founders.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
That could be okay, but like Michigan is home to, yeah,
some really good craft breweries and this one, well one
We're a week away from Christmas, so we had to
drink a Christmas beer on the show, and this is
a Scotch jale. It's it's very much in the Belgian
line of beers, right, the kind of caramely slight, sort
of Christmas spice vibes. I think Scotch shales are underrated,

(57:17):
are they? We almost never drink them.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
No, yeah, it's not a common becoming beer that.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
And so Scotch shales or winter warmers like that's kind
of right in my wheelhouse this time of year with
cold tempts. But it's also not this burly fourteen percent stout.
So if I want to go in that direction, but
I want something maybe with a softer touch.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
This is what I'm rolling with.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Yeah, it's a step up from a brown ale. Yeah right,
and so but it doesn't it's not nearly as aggressive
as some giant stout out there. But it doesn't have
like this like the Belgian. You said Belgian. It doesn't
have like the Belgian yeasts. And when you said that,
that's what I immediately thought of. I was just like, well, yeah,
like it doesn't have like that kind of Belgian funkiness.
So don't expect that were you to pick up a

(57:54):
Scotch Sale and I don't know.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
If you pick up a Belgian do Bell. Let's say,
this has kind of a lot in line with that.
The Quad a lot more going on, but the du
Bell is simpler, and this kind of fits that vibe.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
I think he's so fancy over there.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
I call him Doubles. But we all that being said,
definitely enjoyed and would recommend this beer, especially this time
of year.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Oh real quickly.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
So, Doctor Jay's book is actually going to come out
December thirty first, so if you're interested in checking it
out yourself, that's when it hits the shelves, but you
can find our show notes up on the website at
howtmoney dot com. We'll link to his site his wealth
advisory firm there as well. But Buddy, that's going to
be it for this episode until next time. Best Friends Out,
Best Friends Out,

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Joel Larsgaard

Matthew Altmix

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Childfree Guide to Money w/ Dr. Jay Zigmont #920