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You Will Always Regret Sacrificing Love For Money

Published: 02/15/2023 by Financial Samurai 67 Comments

Money is great. Money provides freedom. But you will always regret sacrificing love for money. When you get older, you will realize how true this statement really is if you haven’t found someone.

Life is simply not as fun if you don’t have someone to share it with. Further, finding “the one” might also want you to start a family. Not that everybody should have kids. Just know finding love is a huge catalyst for wanting to bring life on Earth.

Here’s a story from my friend about her regrets sacrificing love for money and career. Before you make any decision, go through a regret minimization exercise to help you make better choices.

You Will Always Regret Sacrificing Love For Money

My old boss, let’s call her Lana, who is now my friend, invited me to her house party. It wasn’t her house, but her new boyfriend’s house. I was thrilled for her because, at 54, she had gone most of her post-college life without a steady boyfriend.

She graduated with honors from Columbia University and then received her MBA from Dartmouth. For the next 30 years, she worked 60+ hours a week to climb the ranks at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and then Morgan Stanley.

In 2002, at age 37, she made Managing Director and continues to be a big wig on Wall Street today. I wouldn’t be surprised if she regularly clears at least $1.25 million dollars a year.

When I first met Lana, she was the most focused and intense woman I had ever met.

Even after going through 50+ interviews with various people on the floor and interviewing with her twice, she still wanted to interview me one last time over coffee. She was meticulous. She also correctly suspected I was a misfit who might not fit the firm’s culture.

Although she grilled me like a wagyu burger, we became friends. I think our common heritage helped us connect.

Never Could Quite Find Love Early

She would tell me about her ski trips to Whistler or to the Swiss Alps where she randomly met some guy. She always beamed with joy when she talked about her encounters.

Every time she told me of her adventures, she’d shed her image of the hard-charging Vice President and become like a school girl falling in love for the first time.

After one trip, I remember her telling me she’d met a Tunisian gentleman, whom I immediately started referring to him as “The Tasmanian,” an ode to the Tasmanian Devil who had swept her off her feet. She was thrilled.

Unfortunately, that relationship lasted for only six months because it was too hard to maintain a long-distance relationship.



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Why You Should Play Pickleball: The Best Sport Today

Published: 12/26/2022 by Financial Samurai 38 Comments

Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America. If you’re looking for an easy sport to pick up that’s loads of fun and inexpensive, pickleball is the sport for you.

After playing 29 USTA league tennis matches in 2022, my shoulder, knees, and feet began to break. The wisest thing would have been to take time off to heal.

However, I need to play sports to feel happier. If only there was a low-impact sport that also has a wonderful community. Enter pickleball!

Let me share with you why pickleball is one of the best sports today. I’ll also share some downsides, explain the rules and suggest some equipment.



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Surprising Solutions To The Loneliness Epidemic

Updated: 01/25/2023 by Financial Samurai 41 Comments

For the first year in retirement, I murmured this phrase over and over again, “I’m bored.” After regularly working 60 hours a week and interacting with clients, I suddenly had too much time on my hands. Instead of being bored, maybe what I really felt was loneliness.

After my wife took the bus to work at 8:30 am each morning I was left twiddling my thumbs. After 13 years of working in finance, I had been accustomed to waking up by 5:30 am. So I spent my time writing while she was sleeping instead of writing while she was away.

The vast majority of my friends couldn’t play tennis or hang out during the day because they had jobs. Therefore, there was a constant struggle to fight FOMO as they went on to do bigger and better things. Eventually, I found more productive things to do by consulting for startups.

The pandemic seems to have exacerbated the loneliness epidemic as more people distance themselves from others. Here’s the data to prove it.



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How To Develop A Better Personality To Get Into An Elite University

Updated: 11/15/2022 by Financial Samurai 50 Comments

Want to get into an elite university? Develop a better personality so you can receive a higher personality score during the admissions process.

In the Supreme Court case regarding using race-conscious admissions (affirmative action) at Harvard University and UNC, we learn Harvard assigns a personality score to every applicant.

By assigning a lower personality score to Asian applicants, Harvard attempts to justify its rejection of some Asian applicants, despite their higher overall grades and test scores on average. This is one way universities use to better shape what they believe the racial mix of each incoming class should be.

Below is a chart that shows the percentage of undergraduate enrollment of Asians has been relatively steady at Ivy League schools since 1990 but increased at Caltech. 1997 was the last year before the affirmative action ban in California took effect.

Asian acceptance in academics


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When To Play The Status Game Again: Money, Fame, And Impact

Updated: 01/25/2023 by Financial Samurai 48 Comments

Since 2012, I have tried hard to stop playing the status game. After all, leaving my job in banking meant losing status at age 34 when folks are usually coming into their own.

After my career was over, I turned down multiple TV show appearances, podcast interviews, and speaking gigs. To be able to just do my own thing felt incredibly freeing.

I wrote on Financial Samurai because I just wanted to write, not to gain fame. This is one of the reasons why I don’t have an Instagram account or post many pictures.

Sure, due to my lack of status and publicity, few people credit me with kickstarting the modern-day FIRE movement in 2009. Nor have I ever won any awards. But that’s OK. As a minority, being ignored is something I’m used to. I’ve got my archive of posts and that’s what matters.

Although it was jolting at first to be a nobody after 13 years of being a somebody, things got easier. Without status, I felt lighter. Without the desire for status, I could also do things for the pleasure of it, not for the accolades.

The joy of being a nobody became a way of life and I continued carefree until about 2019. Then something happened that made me realize I had better get some status back for the well-being of my family.

This post is for people who:

  • Hate to play office politics
  • Generally want to be left alone to do as they please
  • Want to achieve financial independence but aren’t sure about the downsides
  • Have children and want the best for them
  • Sometimes take things too far and are looking to gain different perspectives
  • Oddballs who tend to have unconventional thoughts, personalities, and tendencies


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I’m Producing A New Netflix Show! Love Is Money

Published: 04/01/2022 by Financial Samurai 52 Comments

I’ve got some exciting news folks! Over the past 16 months, I’ve been in talks with a couple executives at Netflix about a potential new show. They only live 50 minutes south of me in Los Gatos. Today, I’m proud to announce I’ll be producing a new Netflix original series called Love Is Money!

The idea came about when I was chilling alone in my hot tub one day. It’s my regular sanctuary where I think of new post ideas, read, skim through social media, and meditate.

A friend of mine, let’s call her Sarah, confided in me during the pandemic that her love for her husband was waning. Sarah was 34 at the time and doing really well in her career, but her husband was not.

As her husband’s company’s stock price floundered, so did their hopes of buying a $3.8 million dream house to raise their growing family in the expensive Bay Area. Sarah was pregnant with their second and both of them wanted to upgrade to a new home.

Sarah asked me, “Sam, is it weird I find him to be a little less tolerable every time his company’s stock declines by another 10%? I used to put up with him being a slob, but no more!“

It was then that I realized love often isn’t blind, nor pure. Instead, the amount of love you have for someone may be highly correlated with the amount of money they have. Hence, a new show and relationship experiment is born! It’ll actually even have Asian folks in it too!



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If You Love Your Spouse, You’d Make Them Financially Independent

Updated: 09/28/2022 by Financial Samurai 154 Comments

If you love your spouse, you’d make them financially independent. If you don’t truly love your spouse, then you’d make them depend on you for all their financial needs.

Depending on someone for money is a terrible feeling. Imagine being a grown adult and returning home to live with your parents after four years of college.

Every time you go out, you’ve got to ask them for a couple bucks to buy a loaf of bread or more likely, beer money to hang out with your buddies.

Now imagine marrying someone, giving up your job to raise a family, and being entirely dependent on your working spouse for all your spending needs. A common situation, but is it ideal?

It’s one thing to depend on someone for money as a kid. However, it’s another thing to be dependent on someone as an adult with so much education and experience.

For all this talk about the desire for financial independence, it’s odd that some couples aren’t willing to establish separate financial accounts to allow each other more freedom. There should be a concurrent quest to build your couple’s finances together and separate.



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Ask People What They Do, They Might Surprise You

Updated: 02/11/2022 by Financial Samurai 44 Comments

When you’re working, one of the most common questions to ask new people you meet is what they do. Before the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, I happily said I worked in banking. A big part of my identity was where I worked for 60+ hours a week.

After leaving finance in 2012, I noticed I gradually lost interest in what people did for a living. Part of the reason was that I didn’t want anybody to ask me what I did for a living. I lost all my status.

During social settings, the last thing I wanted to do was think or talk about money. Therefore, I kept Financial Samurai and my old career mum. I knew others felt the same, so I never delved deeper into their professions, even if they volunteered.

The final reason why I stopped asking people what they did was that I often came away disinterested with their responses. Here in San Francisco, many people work in tech, finance, or law. If you’re not working in a well-paying profession, then you might be working at a startup that could make you rich.

There are some very fine people working in these professions. However, I just wanted to leave this type-A world behind, especially while I was in a social setting that had nothing to do with work. Unfortunately, my lack of interest in what people do cost me a deeper friendship.



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If You Want To Naturally Be Nicer, Get Richer: A Surprise Apology Letter

Updated: 01/05/2023 by Financial Samurai 42 Comments

They say money can’t buy happiness. But what if having money can make you less stressed, less jealous, less combative, less anxious, and more joyful? Then surely having more money can at least make you nicer right? I think so.

My first realization with this correlation between niceness and wealth occurred at the end of 2015 when I wrote, Once You Have F You Money, It’s Hard To Tell Others To F Off!

Ever since I began working on Wall Street in 1999, the term, “f*ck you money” has been thrown around.

Here’s a conversation example:

“Did you hear about Tommy? He just made Managing Director. Now he’s really got some f*ck you money!”

“Nah, he ain’t making f*ck you money until he makes Partner MD at Goldman. That’s when he’ll get the real money through profit sharing.”



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Marrying Your Equal Is Better Than Marrying Rich

Updated: 07/09/2022 by Financial Samurai 140 Comments

Marrying your equal is much better than marrying rich

There are two common ways to marry. You can marry your equal or you can marry rich. In my opinion, marrying your equal is better than marrying rich.

There’s just something to be said about starting from nothing and getting wealthy together. It’s harder to appreciate sudden wealth, especially if you didn’t earn it. Further, it is extremely gratifying to go through struggle and build significant wealth together.

At 45, I’m starting to see more relationships fall apart than begin. But for those that are still lasting, the one constant seems to be that each partner is fairly equal in accomplishment. And that accomplishment isn’t limited to money.

People with similar levels of accomplishment tend to be of similar age, income, education, wealth, and/or experience.

Among the many reasons why people break up, a lack of respect might be reason #1 followed by resentment as a close #2.

Let’s say you’re more accomplished than your partner. You may start to feel you’re losing respect for them if you catch them lounging around too often instead of hustling to get to a top level in something, anything.

If you’re the partner who is lounging around, you may start resenting your partner for being so demanding, especially if they are much older than you. Why be so successful if you can’t enjoy the benefits? You start rationalizing to yourself.

The physical passion only burns for so long until substance takes over. Over time, it’s also easy to take each other for granted.



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