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!

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.

As a parent, I thought it’d be interesting to write about the differences between public school and private school people. If you are trying to decide between spending money on private school or getting a free education, this post may help.

As someone who went to mostly private international schools through the 8th grade and public high school, college, and graduate school, I’ve experienced both sides. These experiences have shaped who I am today.

In recent years, I regularly play recreational softball where most of the players hail from public schools. I’m also a member of a private tennis club where I play weekly. There are subtle differences between the two that are worth mentioning.

The world’s happiest people don’t reside in America, the wealthiest country in the world. No. The world’s happiest people all live in Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland!

That’s right. Despite being dark for most of the time during the winter and freezing for three months a year, Scandinavians are the happiest bunch!

Let me share what I learned about the world’s happiest people after I took a trip to Stockholm, Sweden back in 2012. I’ve since gone back once and had the same takeaways.