Category: Life

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The Problem with Bucket Lists and How to Be Happy with Less

It’s often said that happiness equals what you have minus (or sometimes divided by) what you want. When our wants are many, what we have is of little consequence. That is why there are hordes of unhappy millionaires and high achievers who quietly suffer (yes, suffer) under the weight of lofty and insatiable desires and ambitions. Western ideals place great importance on the “haves.” And despite an anecdotal feeling that my greater social circle is less materialistic, I’m less certain that we’ve diminished our appetite for having things. The things look and feel different. Less like fancy watches or cars or gaudy showings of riches and more like spreadsheets full of countries and crags unvisited, food not tasted, status not yet achieved, or routes not sent. We believe subconsciously or otherwise that by checking items off our bucket list we will arrive at some sense of blissful satisfaction. But biology and evolution suggest otherwise.

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Dr. Jim Dahle of the White Coat Investor on Building the Ideal Life

Jim Dahle is the founder of the White Coat Investor, a widely consumed personal finance and investing blog and podcast specifically designed for physicians and other high-income careers. What Jim created in 2011 as a simple blog has grown into a multi-media empire that now employs fifteen people and hosts content from a range of columnists.

Jim has cut back from his full-time (plus) emergency physician career and White Coat Investor responsibilities to focus on what makes life worth living, and that’s where I wanted to pick up this conversation. Jim is a climber, husband, and father of four. Today we discuss how he’s managed to step away, at least slightly, from his hard-charging career and blogging days to what he’s now describing as his ideal life.

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QA11: Laying It Out in Simple Terms

We’re back to the digital mailbag to answer your questions!

For this week:

  • How has my lifestyle evolved since achieving financial independence and how do I spend my time?
  • Updated thoughts on money and markets
  • Are we putting too much faith in institutions like Vanguard?
  • Can and should life insurance policies be used for retirement savings?
  • Tax avoidance versus accepting higher tax rates
  • What is a Simple IRA and how does it differ from a 401(k)? Can I still do Roth conversions?
  • Savings rates are great! Should I pay less on my loans to maximize my savings?
  • Big picture: Where do I start on getting my financial life together?
  • Outreach and presentations
  • So much more!
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The One Time to Be Average with Dave Rosen

Dave Rosen is a climber and ophthalmologist in his final year of residency. And Dave grew up like so many of us: broadly exposed to the importance of money and taught a thing or two about saving, but investing was a foreign concept and his lack of knowledge was a source of shame.

While Dave skimmed over it, he’s no slouch as a climber. He has bagged a pile of double-digit boulder problems up to V12, sent 5.13c, and developed numerous boulder problems, particularly in the South Mountain area near Phoenix where he and his wife lived for medical school for four years. He is hard-working, analytical, and pragmatic in his career and life approach. 

In this conversation, we discuss how Dave found climbing from the world of canyoneering, his early exposure to money and how that has markedly changed in recent years, the constant pull of greener grass, working backward from an ideal lifestyle, and the ethical and moral dilemmas of early retirement.

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Six Important Reasons to Reconsider Early Retirement

Today on episode 65 I’m revisiting a post published almost exactly two years ago. At the time of writing, I’d been away from my corporate job for eighteen months. I spent six months of that time living in a tiny A-frame camper with my wife and dog before resettling in the St. George, Utah area.

I was climbing a lot and working on this website, but I can now comfortably admit that I was in a bit of a low spot in terms of overall life satisfaction. The issue was one of expectations. In other words, I expected too much about a life without my career and I took for granted elements of my work life that enhanced life satisfaction. I was feeling stale with this project—I wouldn’t start the podcast until late summer—and despite having all the time in the world to dedicate to the craft of climbing, I was slowly coming to the realization that I’d used climbing as an attempt to fill a void that was not yet clearly defined or outlined.

Two years later, I’ve spent considerable time addressing each of the areas discussed in this post, to varying degrees of success. Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for other changes still ongoing.

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Jeff and Priti Wright: You Might Need a Sabbatical

Today on episode 64 I’m excited to welcome Priti and Jeff Wright, two accomplished young professional alpinists from Seattle, WA. In 2020, Priti, a software developer, and Jeff, a mechanical engineer at Boeing, embarked on a year-long sabbatical to travel across the globe and climb alpine objectives in Patagonia, France, and Pakistan, finishing by the beach in Hawaii.

The trip was wildly successful, even amid the raging pandemic, including ascents of the Cerro Torre, the six classic North Faces of the Alps in a single season (including the Eiger North Face in winter), culminating in the first ascent of K6 Central and the third ascent of K6 West—both 7000+-meter peaks—in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan.

In contrast to early retirement, Priti and Jeff make the compelling case for a traditional career peppered with sabbaticals. This episode is filled with lifestyle and career philosophy, planning concepts, detailed financial considerations, and just a damn good time. And they are even planning their next sabbatical in 2024, which will look drastically different than their trip in 2020. You won’t want to miss this one.

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The Blue Dot Effect: Pessimism in a Beautiful World

As I’ve recently mused, financial independence won’t solve life’s problems. We will never “arrive.” We will never achieve perfection. An impactful 2018 study, nicknamed the Blue Dot Effect (a stand-in for the more lumbering “prevalence-induced concept change” title), helps us to understand the mind’s tendency toward finding problems, even where none exist. The results have broad implications for individuals and members of a progressing society.

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Heather Larsen: Risk And Reward In Outdoor Careers

Today on episode 61 I’m pleased to welcome Heather Larsen, pro slackliner and climber and lover of southern Utah’s desert heat. What is probably less known about Heather is that, following humble beginnings, she graduated at the height of the Great Recession with a double major in finance and economics.

In the intervening years, she struggled greatly to find work in her field, even competing for bank teller jobs with 20-year finance veterans. Out west she found work in seasonal park service positions, growing more and more fond of the outdoors, eventually discovering climbing and slacklining.

Heather could have easily fallen into a mindset of defeat. But with persistence, she was eventually able to secure a career in financial reporting, enabling her preferred lifestyle balance of elite outdoor adventure and self-made financial security.

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