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TEBI Podcast 41: Andrew Hallam on "Second Lives" filled with purpose ...
797 Plays1 year ago
In the first of a series of 12 TEBI episodes looking at meaning and money during later careers or second lives, Jonathan Hollow interviews author Andrew Hallam, focusing on his latest book, "Balance". In this lively, in-depth discussion, Andrew talks about the key themes in the book that make up a balanced life: purpose, relationships, health and money. He talks candidly about the life lessons that have brought him to a nomadic but highly fulfilling existence as an author and speaker. He tells us how he manages to maintain meaningful connections with loved ones around the world, and what he has learned about giving and purpose from family members - and even complete strangers.
This podcast series has been developed with financial planning firm Mulberry Bow. Based in London, they offer a highly personalised service to around 150 individuals and families. Robin Powell and Jonathan Hollow are very grateful for their enthusiastic support for "Second Lives".
Transcript: https://www.evidenceinvestor.com/introducing-second-lives-a-brand-new-podcast-series-from-tebi/ --
Links to key mentions in this podcast:
Andrew Hallam's website: https://andrewhallam.com/ --
"Balance" by Andrew Hallam: https://andrewhallam.com/balance/ --
Mulberry Bow financial planners: https://mulberrybow.com/ --
How To Fund The Life You Want: http://tinyurl.com/how2fund --
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Transcript
Introduction and Book Discussion
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm Jonathan Hollow and together with Robin Powell, I published a book last year called How to Fund the Life You Want. Our book deals with money and investing, but it also looked at the evidence behind long-term purpose and happiness.
00:00:17
Speaker
I'm living out the lessons of our book.
Life Changes and New Ventures
00:00:19
Speaker
I left full-time work. I'm fulfilling my long-term dream of studying ancient history. And as I present this new monthly series for the evidence-based investor, I'm going to talk to 12 fascinating people who are either living out their second lives or who are experts on money and meaning in later life.
Interview with Andrew Hallam
00:00:38
Speaker
This episode begins the series with Andrew Hallam.
00:00:42
Speaker
Born in Nottingham, but rooted in Canada, he's an author, communicator and teacher who has lived an enormously varied life. His latest book, Balance, is the ideal introduction to this series. In it, he distills wisdom and evidence about what makes people happy and how they can manage money and investments to support a happy life. I'm truly delighted to be interviewing Andrew on this first episode.
00:01:09
Speaker
In a few moments, we'll be talking about the money lesson that changed his life, why he thinks that the cars the rich buy tell us so much about money, and why he secretly buys meals for strangers in cafes.
Collaboration Highlight
00:01:24
Speaker
But just before we roll this interview with Andrew, I'd like to say a word about Mulberry Bow. This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with them. They are a chartered financial planning boutique in the city of London.
00:01:38
Speaker
that offers a highly personalized service to around 150 individuals and families. Robin Powell and I liked the fact that the team at Mulberry Bow do not have sales targets, nor do they have their own financial products to sell. They sit on your side of the table. For more information, just Google Mulberry Bow Wealth Planning or follow the links in the notes for this podcast.
Financial Lessons from Experience
00:02:08
Speaker
of balance.
00:02:24
Speaker
It was at a summer job that I was doing, so I was paying my way through college. I was 19 years old, and I was working at a bus depot. So essentially, the transit buses would bring the city buses would come in at the end of the night, the end of the shift, and I would fuel them and then drive them through an automated bus wash. And we were under the supervision of a series of mechanics, and the rumor was that one of these mechanics was a millionaire.
00:02:52
Speaker
and a self-made millionaire. And that if he ever talked to me about money, I should make sure that I listened to him. And honestly, Jonathan, it didn't make sense to me. I mean, I knew generally what his salary would have been. And so the idea that this guy who was in his, he was 46 or 47 when I met him, the idea that this guy is just working because he enjoys it,
00:03:19
Speaker
And actually had you know a million dollars and it made no sense to me whatsoever but you know one day he sat me down and he asked me some questions and I'd say that moment really changed my life He asked me What would you do if I gave you $10,000 right now? And I I thought oh My god, this guy is gonna give me money
00:03:46
Speaker
I said to him, well, I'd put it towards my schooling. Years later, he said to me, he goes, I remember that conversation. If he had told me that you would be buying a new car or a stereo for your car, I probably wouldn't have talked to you again unless I had to. He sat me down and he said this. He says, you want to be a school teacher. School teachers don't get paid bucket loads of money. They're a lot like mechanics.
00:04:16
Speaker
But you're doing this because you want to do it. You found a career that you're passionate about. And he said, this is a good thing. You don't have to choose a career based on high income that you're not necessarily really keen about.
00:04:31
Speaker
In fact, you could do something you enjoy that pays you a middle-class income, but if you become financially literate, you can end up having much more money than most of the people that are earning double and triple your salary over time. And so he showed me how compound interest worked.
00:04:50
Speaker
He talked to me about needs versus wants. He talked to me about advertising and about how most of society is completely brainwashed to buy stuff that they don't need. And they spend far more than they should. They often borrow money to do it. And he said that doesn't lead to a helpful life for anybody because stuff doesn't really create happiness.
00:05:19
Speaker
And then you set out on a path that implemented some of those things you've learned, but you also say in your book, I love your honesty. You also describe yourself as becoming or acting like a frugal weirdo. It was, it was in my twenties when I realized the power of compounding interest and realized that the more money I could invest
00:05:47
Speaker
the faster I could reach financial independence. But I did some pretty crazy things. At one point, I rented a place, lived in a place that was 55 kilometers from where I worked. And I wanted to save money on rent, and this rent was cheap. And I figured, wow, if I ride my bike, 55 kilometers to work and back,
00:06:14
Speaker
I can end up paying so little in rent and not pay any fuel for the car.
Understanding Happiness and Balance
00:06:20
Speaker
You set out in your book some evidence about what I would call the shape of happiness that people typically experience in their lives with particular respect to their 20s and then their maybe late 40s or early 50s. Can you just talk about that general shape that you found out about?
00:06:42
Speaker
Yes, it's U-shaped. And so by that, what I mean is when you are in your early 20s, the world is your oyster. Generally when we look at global surveys on overall life satisfaction, it's very high. It's very high for most of us in our early 20s.
00:07:04
Speaker
But what happens is expectations start being put on our shoulders. Some of those expectations are genuine. Now we need shelter. We need a place to live. We need to get a job. But coupled with those genuine expectations are the smoke and mirror expectations that we just perceive but don't really exist. So they are the keeping up with the Jones's expectations.
00:07:35
Speaker
This is Jonathan Hollow, and you're listening to Second Lives. I'm interviewing Andrew Hallam, the author of Balance. If I don't get this job, what will people think of me? Or if I pursue this kind of job, I can have some sort of status within my neighborhood. If I buy this kind of house, if I buy this kind of car. And it's interesting, Jonathan, because what that ends up doing
00:08:02
Speaker
is it actually ends up dragging us down based on life satisfaction surveys. The U drops into our 30s, into our 40s. It's at that point where we are basically living a life for other people without realizing it.
00:08:20
Speaker
And what the research suggests is that in most cases, once we get into our early fifties, the Joneses do not matter. You just stop caring about what other people think. In fact, really, you become much more secure in your own skin. Don't wait until your fifties before you realize
00:08:47
Speaker
The smokescreen in terms of the pressures of society, they're figments of our imagination. Don't let them weigh you down. Be who you are and be comfortable in your own skin. People are not gonna like you anymore for driving a fancy car. There's so many things I love about your book because there's this great combination of evidence and really challenging practical tips
00:09:15
Speaker
And one of the things I really love about it, so I'd like to ask you to explain that now, is you have this simple metaphor for what makes a balanced and happy life. And it's a table with four legs. If I ask somebody why they have achieved something that they've achieved, whether it's a PhD, or they've run a marathon, or why are you raising your children a certain way, eventually, if I continue to dig with the question why,
00:09:42
Speaker
It eventually boils down to people saying, well, it makes me happy. This is what I want to do. It makes me happy. So then Jonathan, I started looking at, okay, wait, let's look at this and redefine this then. Because if that's the case, we've knocked out all the cobwebs. If that's the case, success equals life satisfaction, full stop, full stop. That's it. Success isn't big house on the hill, big money, big car. Success equals life satisfaction, full stop.
00:10:13
Speaker
So then I come to my four-legged table. So one of the legs, yes, is the money leg. We need money. We need enough money for shelter, we need enough money for health, pay for medical, we need enough money to pay for the experience we can enjoy with some friends, and we need enough money to be able to save for our future. So that's one component. Another component, of course, is our physical and mental health.
00:10:41
Speaker
That's huge. You know, our body, we have one vessel and we don't have to all be Olympians. But the idea that we do what we can with what we have. I have a friend who was hit by a car and he's a partial quadriplegic. But in the health pillar of that table, he's got it going on.
00:11:04
Speaker
because he does what he can do with what he has. The third element of it, and by far the most important element of this table, is relationships. Having people you love around you. And then the final pillar is a pillar of purpose. So many people will be asking themselves, what is my purpose? Andrew says I must have a purpose.
00:11:31
Speaker
They are expecting some kind of divine light to give them this life purpose. It doesn't have to be super grand. It can just be as simple as a part-time job. Those four pillars, money, relationships, health, and purpose, I want to dig a little bit deeper into each of those because you have so many interesting things to say about them in the book. If we start with money,
00:11:59
Speaker
You've touched on this before in the conversation so far. We can do so much with money. We can buy things. We can buy experiences. We can buy help. But you have some really interesting things to say about the problem of what you call hedonic adaptation, which is when we get overexcited by the power of money to buy us things.
00:12:21
Speaker
Can you say a little bit about some of the evidence you review in the book about that? And I'm particularly interested in your research into the cars driven by the rich. That itself is really fascinating. Well, first of all, a car is a depreciating asset and a brand new car is and always will be. And people who try to be efficient with their money recognize that.
00:12:48
Speaker
So, Thomas Stanley studied millionaires from 1973 until his death just a handful of years ago, and his daughter, Sarah Stanley Fala, has continued his research. They have done more research on millionaires than anybody in the world. And here's what he found. He found that if you ask the typical multi-millionaire how much they spent on their latest car,
00:13:15
Speaker
The figure would completely astound most people. For decimillionaires, it was in the region of about $45,000. So that's people with $10 million and more. I had a little apartment in Victoria, British Columbia, and there's a parking garage down below. I would say 30% of those cars, Jonathan, were worth more than that, yet that's what the typical decimillionaire in the United States paid for their latest
00:13:43
Speaker
vehicle. Given that relationships are the most important component of life satisfaction, do you really want to be driving around flipping the middle finger to everybody? Let's be really honest with this. When you drive through a poor neighborhood or a middle class neighborhood in your Ferrari or Lamborghini, you might as well be flipping the bird to everybody who you pass.
00:14:12
Speaker
Envy is not a good thing. This is one of the reasons why I think, Jonathan, that most of the world's richest people actually drive day-to-day vehicles. Probably everybody who's brought a new car will have had a bit of a buzz at the beginning, and then that buzz fades. That's this concept of hedonic adaptation.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yes, exactly. We touched on a little bit, a Michigan State University study that was actually replicated in Germany as well, where people were asked, first of all, what kind of car they owned and how satisfied were they owning that particular car? And what was found was that people who had very high-end vehicles, they would always say, when you ask them,
00:15:04
Speaker
You've just bought the top of the line Mercedes-Benz. How do you feel about it? How much do you enjoy it? They'll always say, really, really enjoy that. Love this car and the handling is an incredible, incredible vehicle. This is what Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman calls reflective happiness.
00:15:25
Speaker
It's the happiness that we think must be occurring as a result of us owning one of these objects. Research suggests that we have no higher actual day-to-day driving satisfaction
00:15:38
Speaker
whether we drive a top-of-the-line BMW or whether we drive a 10-year-old Honda Civic, it's hedonic adaptability. We simply get used to whatever it is that we own. We're pying for the latest phone, the latest iPhone.
Educational Ethos with Mulberry Bow
00:15:53
Speaker
I want the latest iPhone. Loads of people pying for that stuff. Now for a word with Mulby Bowe, who've collaborated with us to develop this series. I spoke to Simon Bullock, the founder of Mulby Bowe,
00:16:08
Speaker
and asked why the involvement in a podcast series like Second Lives.
00:16:14
Speaker
I suppose, Jonathan, what I would say is that from when we started Mulgribo in 2015, we've always sought to educate our clients, not in a patronizing way, but sort of being in partnership with them, asking them those, have you ever thought about type questions? And now it's really become part of our ethos to demystify the jargon and the technical aspects of world planning areas like pensions and trusts, and really put our clients in control.
00:16:40
Speaker
At the same time, good financial planning is really about helping clients better align their hard-earned financial success with what's important to them. And it really felt like your podcast series was very much in that spirit. Thank you. That was Simon Bullock, the founder of Mulberry Bow. And now back to Andrew Hallam for the final section of my interview with him about the life lessons from his book, Balance.
00:17:07
Speaker
So let's move on to the second big leg of your table, relationships. You're very big on pro-social activity and you tell an interesting anecdote in the book about yourself and buying lunches for strangers. Research suggests that on an emotional and a physiological level, we are benefited by helping other people.
00:17:38
Speaker
It actually lowers our blood pressure. It allows us to, all kinds of blood markers that actually allow us to fight illnesses and infections if we give. We donate. And you've probably heard that before, but where it's very powerful is when it's
00:18:01
Speaker
what's called pro-social giving, where you can actually see the benefit of what you've done, and it doesn't have to be big. So it really started with me the first time I was in my 20s, and I went out for lunch with my sister, and we were sitting in a cafe, and I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't need to have a lot of money. And I said to my sister, let's pick someone here in this cafe. Let's buy their lunch, pick up their tab, don't let them know.
00:18:30
Speaker
not let anybody know. Just watch. Just see. I mean, it'd be kind of fun. So we called the server over and eventually my sister and I selected somebody and said, hey, that couple over there, we want their tab. We want to pay their lunch, but we don't want you to let them know who paid. Just say it's on the house. Yours is on the house.
00:18:58
Speaker
And we just loved watching. First confusion. You know, they ask for the bill and there is no bill. And they would say, the server would say, oh, somebody else picked up your tab or it's on the house. And it was just, it was confusion. And then it was delight. And we just sat back and for us, it was a bit of mischief, but we really enjoyed it.
00:19:20
Speaker
And it's funny because over the years, obviously we all buy certain things, you know, what, what did we spend? My sister and I might've split that, you know, maybe it was, you know, heck $15 a piece, if that, uh, and we felt amazing. Pros socially giving really doesn't, doesn't enhance your life satisfaction and your health.
Meaningful Spending and Community Building
00:19:43
Speaker
That connects to another key theme that you write about in the book, which is that we are,
00:19:48
Speaker
We are the sum of our experiences, and it's the experiences and shared time with others that we particularly remember and value. Yeah, that's why when we are spending money, spend money on experiences, especially if it brings you together with people that you love and respect. Because years from now, I like the campfire story analogy, sitting around a campfire.
00:20:14
Speaker
You and your friends are not going to talk about the things you bought back in 2023. You're going to talk about the dumb things you did, the laughs you had, the experiences that you shared. Those will be the stories and those are the things that make us who we are. Our experiences become parts of our identities.
00:20:36
Speaker
You yourself are a global traveler so how do you manage to maintain and get the benefit of important relationships when you're on the move and not in one location that's a great.
00:20:52
Speaker
A great question, Jonathan, because our lives are different. We've chosen something different that definitely wouldn't be for everybody. But when we do go into a community, we often stay for several months and we get involved in community-based activities there right away. So we hit the ground running and we end up making connections with people. And we often go back to those places. And in a sense, they feel like home when we go back to a place where you feel loved.
00:21:20
Speaker
That's how I define home. It's wherever you feel loved. One of the things that Pelly and I love to do is we love to bring friends and family members to us. If they don't have the financial means, then we pay for that. And the beauty of that too is it's a cool way of us to give and then to see the joy and then also nurturing the relationship that we have with those people in spending that really good, what might be two weeks concentrated time together, really connecting.
00:21:50
Speaker
Having spent far less on material things over my lifetime, having invested much more of that money instead of spending it has obviously given us a surplus of money to do some cool things with it. So when we went to Panama this winter, we contacted my sister and said, come to Panama.
00:22:11
Speaker
We're going to do this. We'll go to the ocean. We'll go to the tropical beaches. We'll go up into the mountains. You don't have to pay for anything. We'll pay for your flight. Everything is covered. We were just able to connect and have just fabulous conversations in a really chill environment. I guess for some people that might take a bit of adaptation to accept that kind of gift.
00:22:32
Speaker
I think, yeah, I think you're right. I think in the very beginning it can be, but I also know that I've spoken to a lot of my friends over time and I've said things like, to my father, for example, they wanted to buy, my mother and father wanted to buy like a motorhome.
00:22:54
Speaker
They're expensive and they didn't have the money to pay for a motorhome. And I said to my dad, I don't know how much time my dad has in terms of, well, none of us know how much time we have left, too. That's number one, no matter how old we are. We always have to think about that. But I knew that my parents, I didn't know how much longer they would be able to go camping. They loved that kind of thing, to travel into the British Columbia parks in Western Canada.
00:23:21
Speaker
So Pelly and I offered to buy them a motorhome, a really nice motorhome, far nicer than what Pelly and I drive. Pelly and I have a nice one. And it was really hard for my father to accept this. And I said to him, I said, dad, this is how I explained it to him. I said, dad, can you imagine you and I are living right next to each other and we both tinker in our garage. And we tinker, we build things and we fix things.
00:23:49
Speaker
And I have three 10 millimeter wrenches. And a 10 millimeter wrench is something that we would be using fairly frequently. But I said, dad, imagine you don't have a 10 millimeter wrench, and I have three. Dad, how many do I need? Let me give you the 10 millimeter wrench. Once they accepted it, it was just this really cool, it was an amazing moment. I'll never forget it. In fact, best money I've ever spent, Jonathan, by far, by far.
00:24:19
Speaker
So I want now to talk about the third leg of this table, which is health, a really key link that most people know about between health and relationships. And in the book, you talk about this study that identified places called blue zones, where those two things are in very good balance. I wonder if you could just explain what you found out there.
00:24:42
Speaker
Yeah, I like this because it it really does Culminate with everything we've been talking about so far doesn't it there was a little town in the 1950s in Pennsylvania called Rosetta and It was found that people lived freakishly long lives in Rosetta So researchers descended on this town and tried to figure out what's in the water What are the people eating?
00:25:09
Speaker
Why do these people live so long? Why are cancer rates relatively low? Why is heart disease virtually non-existent? And they couldn't find any kind of difference in their diets or their water. And in fact, they found the diets weren't that great. A lot of people smoked, they had a lot of sugary foods, deep fried stuff. These people had descended to Rosetta originally from Sicily.
00:25:36
Speaker
and they had lived in a really tight, tight community in Italy and had established much the same kind of thing in Rosetta where the houses were quite close together, very European style. You know, old European style where things were close together. In the United States, things are all far apart. People got big, huge lots of land, big, huge house. But what they had found was that in Rosetta,
00:26:06
Speaker
If you had money, the people that did have money didn't show it off. They maintained living in small homes. They purchased modest vehicles. They didn't try to outshine their neighbors. There was always an open door policy where people's children were running in and out of each other's homes. They were kind of raising each other's kids. It was very, very communal. In fact, they had
00:26:33
Speaker
23 civic clubs and communities in this small town of 2,500 people. It was just such a tight community. And then into the 1980s, what happened was many of the younger people got the sense of the American dream.
00:26:52
Speaker
want to do better. And so those people decided that they were going to build bigger houses and buy plots of land. And they had moved outside of the nucleus of the town and they bought fancier vehicles. And in a way, they divided a social wedge between themselves and the people that traditionally historically they would have been embracing.
00:27:19
Speaker
And so the town just became like a normal US town, you know, quite fractured. And today people don't live any longer in Rosetto than in any other normal town in the United States. This is Jonathan Hollow, and you're listening to Second Lives on the Evidence-Based Investor.
Community and Longevity
00:27:38
Speaker
I'm interviewing Andrew Hallam, the author of Balance. Back to this concept of blue zones.
00:27:46
Speaker
Dan Butner wrote this fascinating book called Blue Zones. He wanted to identify what areas do people live the longest and why. So they studied diet. Is it this area here in China because they're all vegetarians? There was a book called The
00:28:01
Speaker
the China study. And yes, research does suggest that vegetarians do typically end up living longer. But this book focuses entirely just on diet. But that's not entirely true at all because you have this pocket in Sicily where they eat a lot of meat. They'll have a pocket in France where there's a lot of fatty
00:28:21
Speaker
cheeses and red wines and meat. When they tried to isolate the variables to find what is the common variable that allows people to live the longest and happiest, they found it was much like the Rosetto study. They found that it was where people had tight communities, where they spent time together,
00:28:44
Speaker
Some of the people listening to this will be thinking, Crikey, I live in a community that sounds almost the opposite of Rosetta. There's a lot of status, obsession. There's a lot of keeping up with the Joneses. I mean, have you got any practical tips or rules of thumb that you've built into the book that will help people to think differently and avoid that peer pressure, which can have such an influence on stress and health?
00:29:11
Speaker
Okay. Now this doesn't sound like it's anything like what we're talking about. Let me, let me, let me come into this in a moment. So, so I'm not a big, I'm not a big fella, but I used to teach at a high school and it was fairly rough. And it was in, uh, it was in British Columbia, you know, and it was, most of the people were, uh, they came from blue collar families and there would be teenage boys that would end up at some stage fighting. And the fascinating thing was that,
00:29:38
Speaker
If I got in to separate the fight with one other teacher, and we would be smaller and weaker than the boys fighting, we could separate them quite easily. And here's why. A big part of them didn't want to be fighting.
00:29:54
Speaker
And so they would pretend to be fighting against me to get at their adversary, but there was a part of them that didn't want to be fighting. There was a part of them that was pressured by it. And there are people around, there's an audience. And I think once we start talking about this with people, about the pressures of society to try to always keep up with other people,
00:30:17
Speaker
There's a part in all of us that understands this, that recognizes this urge, which is basically societally created. I'm going to now move on to your last big theme, which is purpose. And in relation to that, you talk about in your book, you talk about a really remarkable, I think quite radical person called Casey Coleman.
00:30:44
Speaker
Why is he such a striking and surprising example of purpose for you? He is one of the most extreme people I have ever met. First of all, let me explain. He's 80 years old. He walks about three hours a day. He does push-ups every day. He can do 50 push-ups without any problem. This is an 80-year-old.
00:31:14
Speaker
He does yoga and meditation every day. He is supple, he is flexible, he is strong, and for the last 30 years, he has lived in a car. He is the absolute extreme case of anti-materialism.
00:31:35
Speaker
So for him, he has fully embraced this non-denominational spiritual side of who he is. And so when I asked Casey, like, you know, what drives you when you go off on these walks, what are you thinking about? He says, you know, Andrew, one of the things I do is I look at the stuff that people throw out that they put on the ends of their driveways.
00:31:59
Speaker
or they throw into dumpsters or hanging out of dumpsters and I think we buy as a society so much junk, so much stuff that we don't need. We buy so many 10 millimeter wrenches. We buy to excess. And so he says, when I see something that I think is functional that I think will help somebody, I pick it up while he's on his three hour walk, takes it, puts it in the back of his car,
00:32:29
Speaker
And then he wanders through a community, generally a homeless community, an area where people could use something. He found a jacket or he found a pair of shoes and he gives them to these people and he sits down with them and he talks to them. And he asks them, you know, together we could perhaps form a plan to try to get you into a better place.
00:32:55
Speaker
And this isn't always going to work. Their cynics are going to listen to this and say, well, that's not going to work if someone's on the streets and addicted to drugs and alcohol. But sometimes that can be just the tipping point that's required. It's just that that's the point for somebody who is ready and it could be a Casey Coleman who sits down, shares something, gives something, lends an ear. That's Casey Coleman's purpose.
00:33:23
Speaker
Wow, he sounds like the most incredible guy and comes over very vividly in the book. Can I talk a little bit about you and plans and purpose?
Nomadic Living and Personal Values
00:33:34
Speaker
You've got to a very interesting position in life and I think it's clearly where you want to be. Is that because of a really clear plan or is it more because of a set of values or has it been a dialogue between the two?
00:33:51
Speaker
It's probably been a mix of everything because I didn't initially plan for this in terms of the life that we have right now being relatively nomadic globally. So what I do is I write a regular column, which keeps me thinking, keeps me learning. I do a lot of speaking engagements throughout the world, so my wife and I will
00:34:10
Speaker
fly to a different country and often spend time there then exploring and such. This was something we fell into. We were both teaching at an international school and my wife wanted to take a year off.
00:34:23
Speaker
And we had the financial means to do that. She wanted to take a year off to travel. And then one year led to two, which led to eight, which has led to nine. And yeah, we've just continued to do it and we've really, we've really enjoyed it. And it's not necessarily a life for everybody, but I, you know, we, you and I mentioned in a previous conversation and it really does come back to that conversation I had too with that mechanic.
00:34:46
Speaker
I'm doing what I enjoy doing and that's sharing things with other people, sharing information and learning. So as a teacher, I'm still teaching and really enjoying that. So whether I'm teaching through my writing or whether I'm teaching through the talks that I'm giving, I'm really enjoying that. And then establishing
00:35:05
Speaker
new friends and connections along that way through the process. So I know that I often try to think of friends as I do. Think of often strangers as friends I haven't met yet.
00:35:18
Speaker
And I love seeing the world that way when we get invited to give a talk someplace. Pelly and I know that at some stage, we're going to connect with at least one of those people. And one of those people is then going to become a part of our lives in some way, maybe a small way or maybe a big way.
00:35:37
Speaker
I wanted to talk to you a lot about meaning and purpose because there's so much great stuff in your book about that but i should say that there's a lot of really good stuff in the book about how to manage your everyday money how to manage your investments of you have you had a financial plan.
00:35:55
Speaker
Since your early 20s, have you had several financial plans? How has that developed over the course of the last 20, 25 years? Yeah, that's a good question. Fairly early on, I wanted to see and figure out, crudely, how much money I would need to be financially independent. So it wasn't like I wanted to quit my job.
00:36:17
Speaker
But I knew that if I could be financially independent, I would have choices. And those choices could be, well, let's quit. Or let's take a volunteer position somewhere in, and perhaps that could be our career going forward. Or let's travel for several years and then potentially come back to a job that might be really, really fascinating, but hardly pay any money at all. So it gave us loads of options. And so early on, I crudely tried to figure out how much money I would need
00:36:45
Speaker
such that I could be financially independent. So I could theoretically do a volunteer position forever and be able to sustain my life. And so, yeah, I came up with a figure and then learned later, I suppose it was into the late 1990s when I first started reading about the 4% rule.
00:37:09
Speaker
You could theoretically sell an inflation adjusted 4% of your portfolio per year, and the money should last at least 30 years. In many cases, you actually end up dying with more than you ended up starting with as a retiree. So that's been something that I've wanted to continue to teach people as well. And I haven't at this stage, Jonathan, started to withdraw an inflation adjusted 4%.
00:37:34
Speaker
just because my wife and I live fairly simply and we still have an income, although I have taken out large chunks of our investment portfolio to purchase things generally for other people. There may be people listening to this and thinking about purpose and saying, well, I don't know whether I've got a purpose in my life, but I feel like I need a financial plan
00:38:01
Speaker
Do you think those people are putting the cart before the horse if they develop a financial plan without really thinking deeply about purpose? Or do you think the two things can run in parallel and dance together? Yeah, perhaps the latter. Because, you know, I think sometimes about writing a book, and you and I have both done that, you and I sat down and we outlined a book. And we both know that when we started writing, that outline changed.
00:38:28
Speaker
So I think having that, you know, she's sitting down and having that financial plan and then
Final Reflections and Future Episode
00:38:36
Speaker
as you start working your life in the direction that perhaps you feel that will give you satisfaction and give you purpose, you start to change the outline of your life's book through that process. So I think, Jonathan, they're probably the thing that we continue to come back to. There's no concrete plan. Now sit down and here's my plan for life. Here's my financial plan.
00:39:00
Speaker
It's just like that with book writing. We don't do that typically. We'll come back and we revise it. But I like that flow idea, the thing that you mentioned there where we have both of them sort of going at the same time and then they complement each other. Thank you. Well, look, Andrew, it's been such a joy to speak to you. You have so many interesting things to say. Can you just finish by recapping on what balance is all about and where people can get hold of it?
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Balance is just about really enhancing life satisfaction. And to me, that's what it's all about. So we're all mortal. At some point, we're going to die. The people around us are going to die. And so to use the resources at our disposal to enhance our life satisfaction, to build that really great, solid four-legged table, which has that component of money that that part is sorted,
00:39:56
Speaker
a component of health, a component of relationships, and then that component of purpose. In terms of buying balance, you can purchase it at any online bookstore, probably quite a few brick and mortar stores as well. Thank you. Well, I look forward to meeting you in real life sooner rather than later. It will happen.
00:40:23
Speaker
So that was Andrew Hallam. I hope you found him as fascinating as I did. In the next episode, I'll be talking to Alex Davis. She was once a finance director for a family business. Now she's doing a doctorate in the poetry of the Roman poet Ovid. And she's finding great fulfillment in encouraging students of all ages to begin a first or second life at university.
00:40:48
Speaker
Please join me for the next episode of Second Lives from The Evidence-Based Investor. And I'd like to thank again, Mulberry Bowe, the chartered financial planning boutique in the City of London that has worked with us to develop this series. For more information, just Google Mulberry Bowe Wealth Planning or follow the links in the notes for this podcast.