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Welcome to personal finance for long-term investors, where we believe Benjamin Franklin's advice that an
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investment in knowledge pays the best interest both in finances [music] and in your life. Every episode teaches you
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personal finance and long-term investing in simple terms. Now, here's your host,
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Jesse Kramer. Welcome to Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors, episode 122. I'm Jesse Kramer. By day, I work at
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a fiduciary wealth management firm helping clients nationwide. You can learn more at bestinterest.blog/work.
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[music] blog back/work. The link is in the show notes. By night, I write the best
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interest blog and I host this podcast. I also put out a weekly email newsletter,
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all of which help busy professionals and retirees avoid mistakes and grow wealth
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by simplifying their investing, their taxes, and their retirement planning. And happy holidays to you listening. You
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might be listening to this on the Wednesday of Thanksgiving Eve, or maybe on Thanksgiving itself as you drive to
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your uncle Rick's house. Or heck, maybe my voice has already put you to sleep
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and you're enjoying your well-deserved post turkey nap. Today I'm welcoming
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Phil Pearlman back to the podcast to remind us that health and wealth are two sides of the very same coin and that
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these next five weeks, yes, these next five weeks are certainly full of mirth, full of friendship and family, but they
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also happen to be, at least here in America, the unhealthiest period of our entire years. And Phil will share some
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pretty compelling data on that front. And because long-term health and long-term investing and long-term
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finances have so many parallels, I wanted to spend some time today talking specifically about health. But first, a
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quick review of the week from Sou Falls, who said, "Jesse is a rock star. Recently, I listened to Jesse's
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explanation on Bitcoin, and for the first time, I feel like I'm getting to understand it. Not that I wanted to
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invest in it, lol. But the way he explains the various topics of personal finance and goals and how to achieve
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those goals gives me huge motivation. Thank you, sir." Well, Sou Falls finest,
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you know the drill. Thank you very much for the kind words. I'd be happy to send
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you a supersoft podcast t-shirt. So, please drop me an email to jesse@b bestinterest.blog so I can get that sent
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out to you. Before Phil joins us, I wanted to give you some inspirational willpower to say no to that third slice
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of peon pie today or tomorrow or whenever you're listening to this. This is an article I've read here on the
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podcast before, but it feels right to read it again. And the article is called, "Do you have a deeper yes?" And
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it comes from a podcast that I was listening to from Michael Kitsis and Carl Richards, two fantastic financial
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planners who who kind of share some wisdom on their podcast about kind of what it's like to be a financial
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planner, what it's like to be working with clients, and I always learn something new from them. And Carl on one
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episode asked a very compelling question. And the question is pretty simple. What's one thing that you do
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regularly that you'd like to stop doing? And I'd almost pause and put this on you
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listeners right now. What's one thing that you do regularly that you'd like to
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stop doing? And each of our answers will vary. It could be a destructive habit, a
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simple bad unhealthy behavior, maybe just wasting time, right? Lots of us have bad habits where we waste time that
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we wish we could stop doing it. And as I listened to their conversation, Carl eventually he posited that in a very
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effective strategy of saying no, that it becomes much easier to say no, I should
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say, when you have a deeper yes. Saying no becomes much easier when you have a deeper yes. And Carl used the example of
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a client of his who chose not to pay for an expensive parking spot at work cuz you know he he could park close to work
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and he'd have to pay for that. So instead of paying for that expensive parking spot, he took the would-be
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parking money and he parked it. Get it? He parked it into a bank account. And then every few months those monies would
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grow enough that he would pay for a family dinner at a nice restaurant. And for him, family meals at that nice
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restaurant were a much deeper yes than the parking pass. It made saying no to parking pretty easy in that case. And
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Kitsus, Michael Kitsus and Carl Richards, they're both these celebrity financial planners as I mentioned. So,
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their message is certainly tailored to other financial planners like me. Early on in most planners careers, we're
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incredibly excited by the opportunity to work with any clients. And I felt this acutely potentially because I'm a
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latecomer to the industry and a career changer. But like all good businesses and all good business owners, we need to
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ask, what does my ideal client look like? For me, it's an individual or family who needs my help, right? They
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want to delegate their financial planning to an expert, regain more time in their own lives. They value my help.
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They understand the benefit of getting this stuff right and the cost of getting it wrong. It's someone who's enjoyable
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to be around, right? I don't want to work with jerks, and I hope my clients share that value with me. And last, it's
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someone who can pay for my help. The Best Interest blog, this podcast, personal finance for long-term
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investors, there will always be free resources. My goal is to keep these totally free resources, and I love the
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fact that they're free, but they survive because paying clients who meet all the
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criteria I just listed out. They seek me out. When readers or listeners refer people in your lives to come work with
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me, when people like you listening refer your friends and family to come work with me, you're making this whole
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enterprise possible. So, I really do. I have a a ven diagram. I'll link it in
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the show notes. I have a ven diagram of these four intersecting circles. needs my help, values my help, can pay for my
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help and enjoyable to be around. And at the middle of that intersection is an ideal client. And my my time and my
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bandwidth are finite. So if I say yes to a non ideal client, someone outside of the center intersection, I'm exhausting
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my limited bandwidth and I'll eventually run out of that bandwidth completely and
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eventually I will be forced to say no to people even when they are my perfect ideal client. So, my deeper yes for me
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in this case is my truly ideal clients. They are out there and they're worth
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waiting for. And while it's certainly hard to say no to people who want my help right now, it's easier to say no if
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I know there's a deeper yes out there. If I know that there's an ideal client
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out there waiting. Plus, I can refer those nos to other fiduciary fee only adviserss who have a different deeper
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yes than my own. And listening to Kits and Carl and at least for me too, we're
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applying this deeper yes idea to financial planning and to our clients. We should also apply this idea to our
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personal finances and I would advocate in the spirit of today's episode to our
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our health decisions. So, pivoting now to to your deeper yes, one of the great common frustrations in personal finance
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sounds something like, "I wish I had more money for travel, but I guess I did
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spend, you know, $17,000 on that jet ski last year." You know, spending money is
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a constant and and an alluring tease. But I think it becomes easier to say no to overspending when you have a deeper
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yes. And we can apply some sort of biodal spending to our lives and to our mindset. There we either have spending
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that totally lights us on fire and it's the best money we could spend in the
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world or we try hard not to spend it. It's just like we're spending money, I
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should say, maybe on the barebones essentials that just keeps life functioning. We pay for our our living
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space. We pay for food. We pay for transportation. the basics or we're spending money on the the most amazing
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things possible. And I would say there's nothing wrong with spending that money
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on the jet ski like in the example I just uh gave. But do you have a deeper yes that might steer you away from that
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spending? And if you don't know that deeper yes, I think we should try to discover it right now. To discover your
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most meaningful spending, I would say that you ask yourself the following questions. And some of these questions
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are going to resonate a lot. Some might not resonate at all with you. And you can build your own list and and
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eventually even build a ven diagram like the one that I mentioned to see which of
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your spending decisions and maybe which of your health decisions fall into your ideal intersection where these circles
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overlap. So I'll get going on the questions now. Number one, what are your core values? Number two, which
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expenditures align with those values? Number three, which purchases bring you the most joy or satisfaction? Number
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four, what spending do you most regret? Five, which expenses contribute to your long-term goals? Six, how do these
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expenditures improve your quality of life? Seven, what are your essential expenses? Eight, are there any
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non-essential purchases that still hold significant meaning to you? Nine, what are you sacrificing to make certain
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purchases? 10, would reallocating funds to other areas better align with your values and goals? 11, do you value
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experiences over material goods or vice versa? 12. What experiences have been most memorable and fulfilling? 13. How
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does your spending affect your relationships? 14. Does your spending contribute to causes that you care
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about? 15. Which purchases do you consistently make? 16. Have your spending patterns changed over time? 17.
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How does your spending support your personal growth? And 18. What purchases have had a lasting impact on your own
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personal development? Now, if you want all 18 of those questions, again, I suggest you check out the show notes,
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bestinest.blog. blog/do have a deeper yes. We'll put the link there if you want to read the article for yourself.
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Because I would submit that once you discover your deeper yes, it becomes easier to say no to other spending. It
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would sound something like I can't buy the jet ski because I'm taking my family
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to Portugal next summer and that is a deeper yes for us. It's like that Henry
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David Throw quote from Walden that if you didn't already know it, the movie Dead Poet Society made it pretty famous.
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if I
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could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live
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what was not life living it so dear. Nor did I wish to practice resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted
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to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life to live so sturdily and spartanlike as to put route to all that
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was not life to cut a broad swath and shade close. to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms. And
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if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it and
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publish its meanness to the world? Or if it were sublime, to know it by experience and be able to give a true
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account of it in my next excursion. The part that most people think of is that I
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wish to live deliberately, to suck out all the marrow of life and and to not when I came to die discover that I had
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not lived. That's the part of the poem that most people remember. And and the
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idea there is to in our case spend deliberately or eat deliberately, make choices deliberately, to put route to
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all the nos or the negatives in your life and to look for the deeper yeses. And if that plan proves to be mean, as
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thorough would say, then report back about that meanness. But I predict that you'll find it sublime and you'll be
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able to give a true account of such wise spending to the rest of us. And I would
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also submit that when it comes to the the health choices in our life, we can put route and we can make easier nos. We
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can make the decision to say no easier if we have a deeper yes. And by cutting out all the things that we want to say
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no to, by putting route to them, right? Then then we will have a more deliberate
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healthconscious life. Here's a quick ad and then we'll get back to the show. I
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send a free weekly email to thousands of readers that shares two simple things, just two. The first are my new articles
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and podcasts, so you'll never miss when I publish new content. And the second is
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my favorite financial content from other corners of the internet, so you can see
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what's been helping me the most. But Jesse, I don't want another email. >> I hear you. I make this newsletter
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short, sweet, and full of essential information, and readers enjoy that. About 85% of newsletter subscribers are
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engaging with the newsletter more than once a month. They're enjoying it, and
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you will, too. You can subscribe for free on the homepage at bestinterest.blog, blog and you'll get a
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free weekly email that thousands of people like you are already reading, a free white paper to help you plan for
00:11:26
retirement, and you can sign up for free at bestinterest.blog. With that, I think we should kick things
00:11:31
over to Phil Pearlman. Phil has a doctorate in psychology. He used his knowledge to spend most of his career in
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the behavioral finance world of Wall Street. But more recently, he created the Pearl Institute and he's dedicated
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his life to helping people optimize their well-being. That is his calling. Phil's an expert in the areas of
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personal health and effective processes of change and as you'll hear today, a
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true teacher by nature. So, without any further ado, here is Phil Pearl. [music]
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Well, Phil, last time you were here, episode 79, we learned all about some of the cool overlaps between investing and
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health. And I'm sure we're going to talk about that again today. But because this
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is December now, I thought we would have a little bit of a holiday twist to today's topic, today's conversation. But
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maybe we can rewind the clock a little bit and start with some of the basics because one of the things I remember
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from working with you, I remember these four pillars that you kind of think about and focus on when it comes to our
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health journeys. A lot of people I think diet and exercise. I know you added two
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more in there, but do you mind just starting there with kind of these four main focus areas that that you focus on
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in this simple health concept? >> First of all, Jesse, let me just say it's great to see you. Really nice to
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talk to you. It's always a pleasure. >> I wish that I had Jesse's girl,
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>> the whole thing. It's It's beautiful. So, let me just tell you. So, you know,
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the Greeks had four elements of the physical universe, right? And now we look back at that as being so quaint and
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simple. They had earth, wind, fire, water, right? Four elements. Now we have like, you know, all these different
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Californian and, you know, like these different all these elements. We know the periodic table, but back then they
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had four elements. And you know, unless you're unless you are a chemist, those
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four elements go a very long way. And there are four elements of good health, too. And you can read all the books you
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want. There's like 10 million blog posts. There's a thousand book 10,000
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books. But really, if you understand the four elements of health and just have a
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really a basic idea, you can get yourself very healthy. And those include nutrition, the food that you put into
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the only body that you're ever issued. That's number one. Number two is exercise, movement, moving your body,
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working up a sweat sometime, lifting things that are heavy sometimes, and building your muscles up. Number three
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is sleep and rest. That's how we rejuvenate our body. That's how we rebuild after we've spent ourselves,
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after we've run around, maybe we've gone for a jog, maybe we've done some
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weightlifting. That's how we rejuvenate. And also our brain, it's how we rest and
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rejuvenate our brain. And then the last one nobody ever talks about and that is love and community and belonging. Family
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and those types of elements are incredibly important to our thriving and our health span. Staying healthy for a
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long time. You get those four going. And if you're just starting out or you're
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not in shape or you're not feeling great, even if you just start with one and you just say, "Hey, you know what?
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I'm going to start I'm going to start walking in the morning and then I'm
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going to go for a jog. And then what happens is is they compound and they begin to you know the more you start
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exercising well the better you start sleeping right and then the better you're sleeping and the better and the
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more you're exercising the more your body is craving nutritious foods and you
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start learning about that. So there really is a sort of a compounding effect or a cumulative effect. But really if
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you just focus on those four things, nutrition, body movement, exercise, sleep and rest, and love and family and
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community, you really can get yourself super healthy without having to learn big words like mitochondria and V2 max
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and isomeir and telomeres and all those kinds of things. I fell over the other day and I think I actually twisted my
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telomeres, but maybe not. No. Uh, it strikes me though when you're talking about the cumulative effect of these uh
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of these four pillars that maybe I should rewind the clock a little bit and I mean you've got a really interesting
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health story of your own, right? I mean, I remember you telling me about like maybe it's like where you found yourself
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health-wise in like that 40 to 45 year old age range, something like that. And then you've you've been on this health
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journey ever since. But I mean could you remind me of of those details? >> Yeah, you know we have an epidemic in
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this country. We have a health epidemic. People don't take good care of themselves. We have huge amount of
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highly processed foods. An incredibly high percentage of the average person's
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the average US adults diet is super processed foods. We don't get enough protein. We eat way too many processed
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and carbohydrate high carbohydrate foods and we're as a result we are not only
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obese in the aggregate but we have high blood pressure we have high blood sugar levels we have all types of signs of
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poor metabolic health and so myself when I was a kid I was an athlete when I was
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young I was an athlete and the older I got the further and further away I got from that the less exercise, the more
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crap I put into my body, including and in my case, including alcohol and drugs. And so, I'm just such an addict. It's a
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comedy. Like, if there was a if there was an addict scale, you could just like plug in a thing and get a reader, I
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would be like, you know, like super high on the addict thing. And for years and years, pot, alcohol, cigarettes, sweet
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foods, cookies, cakes, all kinds of things. And I was big and I was in very poor shape. I was probably, you know,
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50, 60 lbs heavier. And I was struggling to get healthy, but I really didn't have
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all the pieces together. I was like fighting myself. Like I was would do like healthy things and then I would do
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like unhealthy things. And I was really fighting myself. And finally it really sort of came to a head. Literally I was
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in this mode where I was fight I was kind of fight. As a matter of fact I I ran my first half marathon when I was
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still using and there's a there's an old photo from like eight years ago where I
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was with my kid. My kid was a runner and I was I did not look that healthy but I
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just plowed through the half marathon slowly. Now 8 years later I'm 58. I can
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run it much faster, more than a minute a mile faster >> than I could then. But I was just
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battling the battling. And then I was really trying to quit. I was trying to get healthy. It was like back three
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steps forward, two steps back, five steps forward, seven steps back. And finally, I went out one night. I don't
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know if I ever even told you this story. >> I I didn't know about it. I know the
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story because you wrote a great little post about it. That was the first time I heard this story. Yeah. Right.
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>> Right. On my sixth. And you know what? What I'm trying to do now is I'm trying
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to help people and so I try to do whatever I can to get people to to motivate people to inspire people to so
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I wrote this post on my sixth anniversary of being sober from alcohol and pot. I wrote a story about I I went
00:19:04
out one night with a buddy of mine who lives in Brooklyn was going to crash at his place. He lives he moved since but
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lived in Brooklyn with his wife and his dog and we went out to some to see Shabbaka Hutchkins which some like
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avantguard British jazz music wild. We just partying from early in the evening and we were just wrecked. Get back to
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his place. We go up on the roof and we're still drinking and and smoking and
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I just fell on my head, hit my head, passed out. Boom. And the next thing I remember, I'm sitting on his couch and
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there's like paramedics there and they're like trying to get me to go to
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the hospital or whatever. And I'm like, "No, man. I'm all right. I'm good." I
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was like, I was ready for a bong hit, you know? And it was like, "No, I didn't
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go." And that was the last time that I ever partied. Like, I got with my wife,
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I had a great doctor, got with him, and I just quit at that point. It was like a
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light bulb went off and instead of me fighting myself, I just sort of gave up. Like I just sort of let go of all of a
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lot of crap. A lot of like, hey, I got to do this. Keep up with the Joneses. Party one more time. It's always that
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one more party. And I just gave it up. I was just like, you know what? I'm done.
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And I just started doing a lot of a lot of things for myself and my family that were that were healthier and and I just
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started eating good foods, started moving my body. That part of me that was an athlete came back to me, you know,
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like I was an athlete. Like that's who I was. And you know what? It's who I still
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am. >> And it really came back to me. And I like I feel closer to the 12year-old
00:20:54
Phil than I've ever felt before cuz it's like that 12-year-old Phil who like go
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out and go up to the schoolyard and race his buddies that that's still inside me.
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That's like still who I am. Well, no. Thanks. Thanks for sharing, Phil. And uh
00:21:09
it sucks that you had to go through that rock bottom moment in a way, right? But
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at the same time, there's this silver lining because I'm looking at you now
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and and how healthy you are now. Oh, and of course there's a silver lining to
00:21:21
that rock bottom just like you know for some of the conversations with listeners
00:21:24
who have a rock bottom in their finances before turning things around or just other aspects of life. And so you were
00:21:31
able to quit using cold turkey. And not to make light of the moment, but speaking of turkey, I think we can pivot
00:21:37
back to the holiday conversation now because I hear story. >> Well done. >> The four pillars.
00:21:44
>> And I think when most people think of health around the holidays, immediately
00:21:48
they think diet, right? That is the pillar that they think of. Maybe that's my own bias. And so I'm I'm just
00:21:54
curious, you know, when in the conversations you have even in your own personal life when it comes to health
00:21:58
around the holidays, is diet the thing that you're focusing most on or just give us maybe some of your general
00:22:03
thoughts about health around the holidays to start? >> Okay. So to set the context, we all know
00:22:10
and I'm assuming that we have sort of an advisor financey crowd here. And so I
00:22:17
would think that most of us are pretty familiar with seasonality in markets, selling May and go away, Jeff Hirs and
00:22:26
the stock traders almanac and that whole thing. And there's different months of
00:22:30
the year that are stronger than others. There's different seasons of the year
00:22:35
that are, you know, and even taking into account the election cycles. And there's
00:22:41
a whole science to that. And Hersh is kind of the the man on that. But there's
00:22:46
a lot of people doing a lot of great work there. And there's also a seasonality to metabolic health and a
00:22:54
seasonality to weight gain. And as it turns out, and this makes such intuitive sense, and I'll go into a couple of the
00:23:01
reasons or what we think are the reasons, but from about the week of Thanksgiving to the week of New Year's
00:23:12
Day, we gain all of the weight that we gain during the year during that window from, you know, like mid late November,
00:23:22
November 20th, whenever, depending on when Thanksgiving is to like Jan 1, Jan 2, we gain not only all of the weight
00:23:31
that we gain for the year, we gain more weight than we gain all year. So in other words, from January, November, we
00:23:38
have a tendency to drop a little bit of weight, but we gain so much weight during this window that as a tendency up
00:23:46
until the time we're about 60 65. As adults, we tend to gain on average and this is these are means, these are not
00:23:55
individuals, every individual is different. >> We tend to gain about 1 to two pounds a
00:23:59
year as adults in America, which is profound. like over 10 years, right, that's 15 20 pounds that you gain and
00:24:06
over 20 years it could be 30 40 pounds that you gain >> during this period. And so what Jeff
00:24:13
Hirs would say is that, you know, seasonality a lot of times is not that big a deal if the market is just doing
00:24:21
what it usually does during the seasons. Like if September is a wonky month and it's choppy and maybe it's down a little
00:24:29
bit, it doesn't give you that much information because September is usually a wonky month. And if December is a
00:24:35
strong month and November is a strong, you know, November, December are strong months, well, they tend to be strong
00:24:42
months, so it's not that big a deal. What when you have a period of the year
00:24:48
in the market when it goes against the seasonality that's you know what Jeff Hurst would
00:24:54
tell you is that signal that's when you're getting information like we just
00:24:58
had a strong September and we've had a strong year and now we're having a
00:25:05
strong and we're taping this a little bit earlier so if we crash I'm taking a
00:25:09
mulligan on this conversation but I'm assuming we're not going to crash. I'm
00:25:13
assuming we're I'm going to take the risk that I'm assuming we're going to
00:25:16
have a strong into the end of the year. And what that September that was a stronger September than usual was
00:25:22
telling you was that hey, this market's stronger than it usually is. So, it's
00:25:27
when we're not conforming to the seasonality of markets that you're getting important information. The same
00:25:35
exact thing is true in our in terms of our health. So, how do we go through this time of year right now, December?
00:25:46
We're you're we're watching this in December. How do we go through right now
00:25:50
going the other way, maybe losing a pound or two, maybe staying very healthy? I'm going to get into that in
00:25:57
one second. There was just one more thing. You asked about nutrition and what are the factors and I gave the four
00:26:04
elements and they're all very important and they all go together. But if you put
00:26:08
a gun to my head and I had to choose one, it would be nutrition. There's no doubt about it. Nutrition is so
00:26:16
critical. Is that in general, Phil? Or you're saying especially during this time of year?
00:26:21
>> It's always, always, always. It's it's you can't exercise your way out of a bad
00:26:26
diet. I mean, unless you're like serious marathoner. I mean, a guy like Kip Chigi
00:26:31
can eat whatever he wants, but guess what? He's running 100 miles a week. Doesn't matter. It's all he's burning
00:26:38
everything, right? But me and you and even people, you know, like I'm running
00:26:42
a good amount a week, 25 miles a week, 20 25 miles a week. But even me, if I go on a bender, even a day or two, I notice
00:26:51
it and I'm very sensitive to it, but I notice it. But people, if they're not
00:26:56
eating well, even if they're exercising. So, let's put nutrition at the top. And
00:27:01
if we were to assume, we don't know for a fact fact, but we can make some assumptions about why people gain
00:27:09
weight. Well, there's all kinds of parties. There's office party, there's
00:27:13
Christmas parties, there's Thanksgiving is ridiculous. You know, your aunt Dolores brings over, you have an apple
00:27:20
pie, you have a pumpkin pie, you have peacon pie with the ice cream, >> pie, baby.
00:27:26
>> And then your aunt Dolores brings over a peacon pie. So there's two pon pot
00:27:30
glorious but it's gluttonous at the same time. It's glorious and gluttonous.
00:27:35
>> And so we just eat and then we drink more than we usually do and we drink
00:27:41
rich wintry drinks. That's one reason why it's just obvious that it's one
00:27:49
thing. And then the second thing is more of an evolutionary thing and that is that it gets cold in the winter. And so
00:27:56
our bodies, you know, we have this sort of natural tendency to want to to want to just plump up a little bit during the
00:28:03
colder months as a layer of protection from the cold. Put in insulation in your house, you're like insulating yourself.
00:28:11
So that's a kind of possible causal rationale. But anyway, the tendency is so if we can go against the seasonality
00:28:19
of weight gain, if we can stay steady or maybe lose a pound or two during this traditional weight gaining period,
00:28:28
we are really making that is signal that is telling us that we may be on to something. We may be on to a set of
00:28:36
habits or a system or a lifestyle or a self-concept that runs counter towards this obesogenic culture that I described
00:28:49
before that you know 70% of the people over 70% of the people in this country are either overweight or obese and
00:28:57
metabolic illness is running rampant and there are some good new drugs out there
00:29:03
ompic and so forth Earth, but they don't agree with everybody and they have side
00:29:07
effects and they're expensive and so you just can't you just can't say, "Hey,
00:29:12
just go take a pill or go take a shot in this case." And so there are things you
00:29:15
go so to your point before you start with what you put in the only body that you ever get. You get this one body when
00:29:23
it's all used up. Guess what? I'm sorry. There's no mulligans when it comes to
00:29:28
your life. There's no mulligans. You know, it's used up. You're done. You're
00:29:31
dead, Jack. We all go sometime. and you want to go as far out into the future as
00:29:36
possible and you want to be as healthy for as long as possible. Here's a quick
00:29:40
ad and then we'll get back to the show. Serious question. Why do podcasters constantly ask for ratings and reviews?
00:29:48
Yes, they do help highlight our shows to new listeners. They help strangers find
00:29:52
us on Apple Podcast and Spotify. It's totally true and a good reason to ask for ratings and reviews. But I have
00:29:58
something more important, at least more important to me. I want to know if you like this stuff. I want to know if you
00:30:04
like my podcast episodes, my monologues, my guests, the information I share with
00:30:08
you and the stories I tell. I want to improve and make your listening more enjoyable in the process. So yeah, I
00:30:14
would love to read your reviews. And sure, if you throw a rating in there, too, that's great. If you like what I'm
00:30:20
doing, please share it with me. It's such a great feeling to read your feedback. I'd love to read your review
00:30:26
or see a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Thank you. when we were kind of working together and and talking more
00:30:33
frequently, I was having a pretty good uh I was on a good streak, right? I was building some pretty good habits into my
00:30:38
life and I called you because I was flying out to Palm Springs, California to one of my friends bachelor parties
00:30:45
and I was like, "Hey, man. I've got all these good things going. and I'm
00:30:48
building up some really good habits and I'm about to go into a weekend of snack
00:30:52
food and ordering pizza and beers available at 10:00 a.m. And I I just remember thinking to myself like kind of
00:30:59
had a couple questions for you at the time and and they're related in a way.
00:31:03
And the first one was do you have wiggle room for cheating in your health structure as in like a a
00:31:10
cheat meal or you know something like that some sort of flexibility. But then the second one, and maybe this is what
00:31:16
we can focus on right now, is I was thinking to myself, what can I proactively think about doing? What can
00:31:21
I plan ahead of this trip? What can I commit to that allows me to feel like I'm partaking but still keeps my health
00:31:30
a priority? And so, as we go into the holidays, it's my question for you right
00:31:34
now is we don't want people to say, I know it's after Thanksgiving when this
00:31:37
comes out, but we don't want people to say, "Hey, you got to skip Thanksgiving
00:31:40
dinner. Sorry, man." We want people to feel like they're partaking, but at the
00:31:45
same time, you know, what's a good framework for setting some limits or just proactively thinking about keeping
00:31:52
our health top of mind? This is a process and a journey for each person. And we are all
00:32:01
scientists and we are all the subjects of the scientific experiment. We are chief scientists and the sole subject of
00:32:10
an important scientific experiment. So we learn more and more about our about ourselves as we go along. It's not just
00:32:17
one day, one event, one Thanksgiving, one New Year's Eve. And so it may take
00:32:23
some time to get to a place where habitually you're behaving in a way that promotes your good health rather than
00:32:32
detracts from your good health. And I say that to say small steps in the right direction are great. You know, we're not
00:32:41
going all or none necessarily. Some people do. Some people come to me and will walk through it and they go, "Oh,
00:32:49
okay." And they start doing those things. But those are the fraction of people. Usually people have baggage.
00:32:56
They have a history. they have issues with their body or with their the way that they perceive themselves and it
00:33:04
becomes a journey. Rare cases it's not it's just like this. And by the way,
00:33:09
some people never go on the journey at all. I'm sad to say some people just maybe it's just me that I I'm not
00:33:15
perfect at helping people, but some people just aren't going to get there. Like I just re I hate to say it. I wish
00:33:23
it weren't true. Breaks my heart. But anyway, most people have a journey. Cake, for example, this coming holiday
00:33:30
season. There is lowhanging fruit. There's places to begin, right? We don't
00:33:34
have to be militant. We can be, but we don't have to be. But the really the best place to start is alcohol
00:33:42
consumption because it's so bad. And a lot of the our poor nutrition is cultural. I remember being 9 years old.
00:33:53
I'm watching Saturday morning cartoons. Tony the Tiger comes on. He's selling me
00:33:58
Frosted Flakes. He's like my freaking dope dealer, you know? Like he's selling
00:34:03
me crack. Crack for 9year-olds is frosted flakes. Boom. Right to my skull. And I'm like, "Mom, I want Frosted
00:34:12
Flakes." And so the next day it's like, "They're great." And I'm eating Frosted
00:34:17
Flakes. And if you look at Frosted Flakes, it's poison. And I would go out and run around and I would burn a lot of
00:34:22
it off. But the precedent that it was setting, the habits that it was putting into place was really, really bad. The
00:34:29
really the worst thing is the alcohol. And alcohol is the same way. The commercials for alcohol have just been
00:34:36
as bad. I mean, the one that I really, really remember was Billy D. Williams was like the coolest guy in the world.
00:34:42
I'm stamping my age on this. Billy D. Williams, the coolest guy in the world.
00:34:46
And you know, he was doing like malt liquor commercials and like the door, you know, he would be standing at the
00:34:52
door and he's talking to the camera. Yeah, I got malt liquor. And then this gorgeous woman comes up behind him and
00:35:00
he like closes the door like, you know, he's got the malt liquor. She's got the
00:35:04
malt liquor and he's about to get some, right? He's about to get a little little
00:35:08
booty call. And it was like, what's cooler than that? So we got we're brainwashed. And so alcohol really is
00:35:16
not cool. Like I hate to say it, but it's really not that cool. The Clydesales are cool. Billy D. Williams
00:35:23
is cool. The tequila guy, right, the Van Halen singer, the second singer for Van
00:35:28
Halen, you know, with people my age, he's so cool. He's selling some fancy
00:35:33
tequila. And like people I know that are my age that are well to do Cabo Wabo or
00:35:39
whatever his tequila is, people love to drink that tequila cuz it's cool. But
00:35:42
it's not really that cool. It destroys your brain. It makes you fat. It messes
00:35:48
with your internal organs. And it destroys your metabolic health. And it causes cancer, by the way. It affects
00:35:55
your sleep. I could go on and on the negative effects. So, the place I would start with would be alcohol consumption.
00:36:01
That would be number one. And, you know, if you're not going to like cut it out
00:36:05
completely, you know, you just say, "Hey, you know, this is Christmas Eve. I'm going two drinks. I'm not going
00:36:11
seven. And that week I'm going five drinks. I'm not going 15 or Katy bar the
00:36:17
door. Like I'm just going to limit it. And by the way, as an aside, if you can't limit it, you really got a
00:36:23
problem. >> Yeah. Yeah. You might need to seek some help. >> You might want to see some help. Like if
00:36:27
you say, "Hey, I'm just going to have Q tonight." You wind up having aid, you
00:36:30
got a problem there. I mean, I'm just It's a slap. I'm slapping you in the
00:36:33
face. Just saying it, but I'm just talking reality. That would be number one. Number two, what I would recommend
00:36:40
is that you eat. I would call this the right foot rule. Like you get off foot in the right foot. So what I would do is
00:36:47
I would eat a lot of high protein natural foods to start the evening. >> I still think about this one, Phil. I
00:36:57
remember this one from us talking about it. >> It's so critical. >> Like as a matter of fact, I've had one
00:37:03
meal so far today and that was six eggs. >> And it's 5:30 p.m. as we speak right now
00:37:09
for for listeners. one one meal by 5:30 >> about about before we before I came on
00:37:14
about 4:30 about an hour ago before I came on had a half dozen eggs that's 40
00:37:20
grams of protein and 400 calories give or take you know all the healthiest fats in the world and amino acids and
00:37:29
vitamins galore and I wasn't hung I'm not hungry after I do that and then I'll
00:37:34
have a little dinner with my family and I'll be good to go and I'll have animal
00:37:39
protein and vegetables for dinner and that's that. And so if it's Thanksgiving, before you start piling
00:37:46
into the stuffing, before you start piling into those little rollup biscuits, that's what we make. The
00:37:54
Pillsbury dis biscuits. They disappear. They disappear in about 5 seconds, by the way. We make them. Got to make them.
00:38:01
I'm having relatives over. But they disappear in like two seconds. instead of having starting with those, you just
00:38:07
get a big plate of turkey and you have a bunch of bunch of turkey and that way at
00:38:11
least you started with something. So if you go off a little bit off the rails, you got a head start off on the right
00:38:17
foot. Those are two big recommendations. Limit alcohol and get off on the right foot. I like those two cuz they're
00:38:23
simple, right? It's it's not 10 different directions that are kind of complex. It's two simple things that we
00:38:28
can all keep in mind. I'm kind of thinking chronologically here. So, you know, we get through after Thanksgiving.
00:38:34
Now, we've got that holiday party season. Probably there's more opportunities to drink. And then
00:38:39
eventually we get into what Christmas cookie exchanges. I think in our office, so many people bring in food to the
00:38:46
office. Our break room becomes a sugar factory during that 3-week period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
00:38:54
Eventually though, we get to the tail end of all this. It's now January 1st or
00:38:58
maybe it's December 31st and we're thinking about potentially hopefully we're not thinking about too many
00:39:03
unhealthy choices, but maybe we're sitting there thinking I got to do something and tomorrow is New Year's
00:39:09
Eve. So, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on health related New Year's
00:39:14
resolutions. I I liked what you said a few minutes ago about this is a journey. It it isn't necessarily just one day the
00:39:20
light switch flips and you go go, but either way, you know, to bring it home, what does whether it's a New Year's
00:39:27
resolution or just in general a a lifestyle change, a slow and steady lifestyle change, what does that plan
00:39:34
look like going forward? >> New Years are great. Like people will sort of criticize them and say, "Well,
00:39:41
why don't why not just start today?" They're great. The same way that round
00:39:46
numbers on the major averages are great. Dow 40,000 means something. It meant something when we crossed it. Dow 10,000
00:39:54
meant some meant something. You know, I remember like Mark Haynes having the hat
00:39:58
back in the day on CNBC. Those round numbers mean something because that's the way our brains were. It's just as
00:40:04
simple as that. And so the moments mean something. And birth and rebirth are mythologies are archetypes for a really
00:40:14
good reason because that is important to us too. And throughout history and throughout stories I mean just look at
00:40:21
the Bible. You know we're talking about Christmas right now. Well look think
00:40:25
about Easter. That's the rebirth of you know he has risen right? It's a rebirth
00:40:30
of Christ. that is like it's built in because metaphorically rebirth is so important to us and we can all be reborn
00:40:39
multiple times throughout our lives. >> So what I would recommend for a New
00:40:44
Year's a New Year's resolution is I would recommend that you not try to like
00:40:49
just do everything. Hey, I'm exercising. I'm going to run a marathon. I'm going
00:40:55
to lose 50 pounds. I'm going to stop eating ice cream. I'm gonna do, you
00:40:59
know, don't try to do it all. Just pick one thing. Pick one thing that is getting your goat. That might not even
00:41:08
have to be the biggest worst thing. Just one thing and go after that. Hey, I'm
00:41:14
going to go for a walk five mornings a week. By the way, going for a walk in the morning outdoors is one of the
00:41:20
healthiest things you can do in in the history of the world. It affects your mood throughout the day. It gets your
00:41:26
blood flowing. It evens your metabolism. It resets your circadian rhythm and improves your sleep even though it's in
00:41:35
the morning. Multiple great effects. So maybe the thing is that, hey, you know what? I'm going to start going for a
00:41:41
walk. And maybe you go out and for Christmas, you get yourself some warm exercise clothes, like, you know, you
00:41:47
get a pair of like the lined leggings or whatever. And, you know, a pair of gloves that are like sleek but warm. and
00:41:56
you get out there and you just start walking and maybe that's it. Maybe that's it because we are all, you know,
00:42:03
we're all interconnected. Mind, body, spirit is one word. We're all inconnected. And once we start getting
00:42:10
ourselves moving in the right direction once we do one thing, maybe it could be to stop drinking. Like that could be one
00:42:16
thing. Like that's a tough one, but maybe that could be that one thing. I can't recommend it enough. When I did
00:42:21
it, it changed my whole life. So maybe I'm just biased, but now I've done a lot
00:42:26
of research in that area and I know how much it affects you. In fact, I have a I
00:42:31
have a pro bono client that I've been working with. He reached out to me when
00:42:36
I wrote that article and I just said, "Listen, we're going to talk. You know,
00:42:40
we're going to talk a couple times a month for half an hour and he's not in a
00:42:44
position to pay me." and he's been I talked to him today and he has been
00:42:50
sober for 3 months almost 3 months he's like hey I'm my brain is clear getting
00:42:56
clearer during the day I'm not as foggy and I'm be able to think a bit more it's
00:43:01
just having so it can be that like he'll two years from now he'll still be having
00:43:07
effects like his body will still be healing and he'll still be having positive mood effects positive executive
00:43:14
functioning effects positive energy effects, positively positive metabolic health effects, and
00:43:20
body weight effects, positive body weight effects. Drinking is another great one. But just getting and walking
00:43:27
is a simple one. Hey, I'm going to walk more days than not in the morning, get
00:43:32
out, get fresh air. Once you do it four or five times, you're like, "Wow, I feel
00:43:36
great." You get back and you're like, "Okay, can get really get some stuff
00:43:40
done." That That's what I would really recommend. I would really recommend that
00:43:45
if you want to go hardcore, I would definitely recommend another one would be to begin to cut out carbohydrates and
00:43:54
especially processed carbohydrates because those are one way of looking at our obesity problem. A fancy term that
00:44:02
the fancymancy guys use is they use this term called energy toxicity. And what they mean by that is that we're just
00:44:09
taking in too much energy. And what do we do? And carbohydrates are energy. Fat is energy. Carbohydrates are energy. And
00:44:15
then protein is protein. That's the really the two major classes, the two major classes of macronutrients. When
00:44:22
you begin lowering your carbohydrates, that energy toxicity, the excessive amount of energy, because what happens
00:44:29
when we take in too much energy, our bodies store it as fat. So that's how we
00:44:33
get fat. We take in way too much energy. We have we live in this world of abundance. We could go to a restaurant
00:44:39
and eat three pieces of bread before we get a pizza. How much energy toxicity is
00:44:44
that right there in that one meal? Or you have a uh you know, you have four pieces of bread and chicken parmesan.
00:44:51
That's a lot of energy toxicity right there. And so if you want to cut down,
00:44:56
you know, I would I would recommend googling like low I'm not going to get into details of it, but googling low
00:45:01
carbohydrate therapeutic diet would be something that I would highly recommend. So any one of those doesn't have to be
00:45:08
all three, but just pick one that like resonates with you and do that one. >> That's awesome, Phil. Our bodies are
00:45:15
temples and as you love to say, like we only get one of them, right? We only get
00:45:18
one of them. And as much as we want to go into this year end and celebrate this holiday season, personally, I think
00:45:25
finding that balance is huge and health is wealth, we know these things are interconnected. So, thank you so much
00:45:31
for coming on today and and sharing your wisdom with us. And uh I alluded earlier
00:45:35
to some of your blog posts and I know at one time you were getting behind the microphone a little bit. So I'm I'm just
00:45:41
not sure if you are still kind of writing or recording anything or simply just if if someone wants to reach out to
00:45:47
you to ask you a question or to follow along with some of what you're doing.
00:45:51
How can people find you? Just go to philpearlman.com. I'm going to be cranking the blog back
00:45:56
up. I took some time off. I didn't really have that much to say. Like everything that I've said, everything
00:46:02
I've said today, I've already said before. You know what I mean? Like I'm
00:46:05
putting it together in a beautiful way and we're doing it in a really seasonal
00:46:09
way, which is very, very nice. But a lot of these ideas for months, I've written
00:46:13
about it before and so I'm ready to start up again. Like I had like I took a
00:46:18
little, you know, I consolidated in a higher area and now I'm about ready to
00:46:22
break out again. So it's a great time to go to philprin.com and sign up. find the Prime Cuts blog
00:46:30
and sign up for that. And yes, you might even see some videos from me as well. >> That's awesome. We'll link it in the
00:46:36
show notes. I follow Prime Cuts so that when you do write, I was going to say it's been a little while, but when you
00:46:40
do write, it ends up in my inbox and uh it's always worth reading. >> I took the summer off. Like I just do,
00:46:46
you know, I'm just doing my thing now. Like I'm just, you know, I could take
00:46:49
the summer off. >> I totally get it, man. Good for you, Phil. Well, hey, thank you again for
00:46:54
coming on Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors. >> Adios. Thank you for having me, Jesse.
00:46:59
Appreciate you. >> Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Personal Finance for Long-Term
00:47:03
Investors. If you have a question for Jesse to answer on a future episode, send him an email over at his blog, The
00:47:09
Bestinest. His email address is [email protected]. Again, that's jessevestinterest.blog.
00:47:18
Did you enjoy the show? Subscribe, rate, and review the podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find the show
00:47:24
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00:47:29
on the next episode of Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors. Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors is a
00:47:35
personal podcast meant for education and entertainment. It should not be taken as
00:47:40
financial advice and it's not prescriptive of your financial situation.