The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 101
Episode 101: White Lines and White Lies
Welcome to the Liquidity Event! In this episode, we'll take you on a rollercoaster ride through bizarre headlines. We've got kids partying too hard at the White House, the CEOs who make hundreds of millions, and of course AI! In other news, we're excited about Honey Homes, a handyperson subscription service that is priced fairly. Oh, and did you know you can get paid to walk 10,000 steps a day?! Don't miss this one!
Links
Secret Service Examining How Suspected Cocaine Ended Up at the White House
Khosla Ventures just doubled down on this handyman-on-demand service for homeowners
You Can Get Paid Ten Thousand Dollars To Walk 10,000 Steps in a Day
Airdate: 07/07/2023
Read the Full Transcript:
Presenter:
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice.
Welcome to the Liquidity Event, a show about all things personal finance, with a laser focus on equity compensation. Hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI, each episode will take you through the week's news on FinTech, IPOs, SPACs, founder wins and fails, crypto, and whatever else these nerds think is interesting.
Learn more and subscribe today at brooklynfi.com.
Shane:
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Liquidity Event. We are your host, Shane Mason.
AJ:
And AJ Ayers.
Shane:
And this is episode 101 of the Liquidity Event, being recorded on July 5th and airing on July 7th.
AJ, how was your Independence Day yesterday?
AJ:
Oh, it was super independent. I was independent of most things. It was awesome. I actually got to hang out with you for a little bit, which is rare and nice. Had a sweaty beer outside in the sunshine and the rain and it was lovely. How about you?
Shane:
Well, you can probably tell by my voice that it was quite a fun day yesterday.
AJ:
Happy Birthday, America.
Shane:
Why are we recording on July 5th again?
AJ:
Because Shane, we have a weekly podcast that we record at the same time every week. And I have often offered to swap you out for another co-host, but you demand that it must be you. So here we are.
Shane:
The show must go on whether it's hungover or not.
AJ:
So here we are. I will take us through the meats of this podcast today.
Shane:
It's two o'clock on a Wednesday, do you know where your brain is?
AJ:
If you just bring us through... Yeah, just rip us through the S1. Just kidding.
Shane:
What's up? What's S1?
AJ:
We've got some fun stuff for you today, folks. We've got battle of ransomware companies. That's going to be super fun. Of course, we're talking about AI because who isn't? We're talking about really rich ass CEOs who pull in more than a hundred million dollars a year. And we're going to talk about the beloved fire movement, the financial independence, retire early, movement. Yeah, it's financial independence Week here at Brooklyn Fi because it's America's independence week here in America.
Shane:
I see what you did there. Well done.
AJ:
Speaking of America though, you're only here for two days. Where are you off to next?
Shane:
It's July FI.
AJ:
Where in the world is Shane Mason? What's your middle name? Paul. Where in the world is Shane Paul Mason? I had to explain who Carmen San Diego was to Nabil the other day.
Shane:
I thought you were going to say it to a Gen Z person and then-
AJ:
No.
Shane:
... ended up being a Gen X person.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
Is that a purely millennial thing?
AJ:
Yeah, I think it's purely millennial. Carmen San Diego came up twice in... What's that called? Synchronicity. When you hear something and it comes up all the time. It came up in a show we were watching and then some dumb TikTok I was watching and he didn't get it. He's like, I know the song, but I don't really know what it means. So I had to explain Carmen San Diego to him.
Shane:
Right. I never caught her, but it's also been popping up a lot for me. The simulation's trying to push some Carmen San Diego content down my throat lately.
AJ:
Did they make a movie, a live action with someone? Or did I make that up in a dream?
Shane:
Well, if they do, I hope Selma Hayek plays Carmen San Diego. I don't know.
AJ:
We'll have to look that up. Producers please.
Shane:
She's in the new Black Mirror and she plays herself and it's incredible. They've been playing the song.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
It's an acapella song. That TikTok has been going around of them doing it acapella and it being a bop.
AJ:
It's a planned film. It was supposed to come out in 2021, but it's not coming out. Anyway, so where are you headed next?
Shane:
Oh, yeah.
AJ:
Mason San Diego.
Shane:
I have a 7:30 flight to Dublin tomorrow. I'm going to see my buddy, the builder. Yeah, Harry, who's the listener of the podcast.
AJ:
Oh, what's up Harry?
Shane:
We may listen to this episode together, live, on Friday.
AJ:
Oh, it'll be the first one-
Shane:
In person.
AJ:
... that you ever get to hear. Congratulations to you.
Shane:
Listeners, I don't listen to the podcast. I was there already. Why would I listen to it again? My bad. Listen to my own hot takes, my own shitty takes all over again.
AJ:
We got some nice feedback on the last podcast. I got some nice shout outs from friends and acquaintances, so that was fun.
Shane:
Oh, your friends listen to the podcast? It must be nice.
AJ:
All right. Should I talk about some articles and you can jump in with some asides?
Shane:
Well, speaking of listening to the podcast, I have a little anecdote. I was in Porto Escondido at Surf Camp for the past two weeks, which was awesome. I highly recommend to anyone out there to go to camps. I've already mentioned this a couple times, but somebody asked me-
AJ:
Adult camps. We're long on adult camps by the way.
Shane:
... Adult camps.
AJ:
If you have an adult camp startup, I am looking to invest.
Shane:
It doesn't sound very scalable, but maybe if you throw some machine learning and some AI behind it.
AJ:
I'll generate AI and some language models and we're good to go.
Shane:
I think we could raise a five mil seed round at TechCrunch Disrupt this year.
AJ:
Yeah, let's go for 50 and see how it goes.
Shane:
A 50 million dollar... I don't want to be at the helm of a 50 million dollar seed round. It sounds like a nightmare. I can do a lot of things business wise, but I can't do... But I won't do that.
AJ:
Sorry. Tiny, quick segue. I saw this tweet last night? I forgot who it was, but they were asking for a friend. We just closed our first round of a hundred million dollars and one of the investors, the lead investor, pledged 50 million and they only sent $50,000. What do we do, question mark?
Shane:
Is this like a Reddit AMA?
AJ:
Yeah. It was literally a person tweeting for their friend. I assume it was for themselves. Asking for friend.
Shane:
Hey, we're short 49.5.
AJ:
What do you do when your investor doesn't send the money that they were contractually... I don't know. I'm not a lawyer.
Shane:
Oh, that's a nightmare, man. Yeah, I don't know. I don't if we want to. Is it really 50 million?
AJ:
Maybe it wasn't 50, maybe it was 10 million. It was millions. The 50,000 was insignificant. Maybe it was 10,000.
Shane:
Why even send 50,000-
AJ:
I don't know.
Shane:
... As part of your.
AJ:
I don't know. But yeah, I think that the best advice was basically cut your losses, go back to the investors and just try to replace them. But that sounds really hard. Your lead investor bails and doesn't send the money.
Shane:
Yeah, you've got to start over. I mean, we've been talking about it a lot on the podcast about how hard it's to fundraise in this environment, this high interest rate environment that we've been experiencing. All the money's going to AI.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
If you're not working in AI, you're not getting any cash. It's been a recession for fundraising. We've talked about it on the past three or four episodes.
AJ:
We're going to talk about it again.
Shane:
What was it, 90 billion of venture capital investment happened in Q4 of 2021 and we're now at looking at 30 billion per quarter?
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
So it's like It's been cut by two thirds.
AJ:
Yeah, it was like...
Shane:
Yeah. 90 to 30, something like that.
AJ:
Crazy.
Shane:
Down 67%.
AJ:
Speaking of AI, we've got-
Shane:
Hit me.
AJ:
... this Fortune article. The title of the article is AI Could Cut Time Spent Coding by 45%, but even seasoned tech professionals will need extensive training to harness it's full power. McKinsey experts say, as our resident coding expert, Shane, do you think you're going to... You excellent Python coder. Do you think you're going to be replaced by AI? You are the type of coder that AI is going to replace.
Shane:
Exactly. AJ's making fun of me because over my vacation, I spent 40 hours doing a Python course on Code Academy. And yes, but I did that... You and I both dabbled with coding a couple years ago, realized that why the hell did we learn how to do this skill? That's hyper technical. It's like learning how to be an architect. It's just not really relevant to us. But we have our proprietary tech tool that is all coded in Python. and then I've gotten into it AJ, because of ChatGPT. Bt you can ask ChatGPT to pump out code for you.
AJ:
Right.
Shane:
So I was like, all right, if I can ask you to pump out Python code, I can go from a novice to a level two out of 10 a lot faster than doing it the old school way of actually doing all these projects. So yeah, I mean, I've asked ChatGPT to kick out some code, throw it into the your IDE and try to run it. And yeah, it's really, really cool that it can... And the purpose of the article, them saying you need to be trained is you need to know how to prompt it to get it to import the right libraries, get the functions to work accurate. You need to know what the inputs and the outputs and how the APIs work.
So that's why I was wanting to learn the language. Yeah, I'm not actually going to be great at doing clickety, clackity, getting code to run. So yeah, obviously having ChatGPT kick out your rote basic normal, just like it is with a blog post. Get the skeleton of your code put together, then you can customize it to talk to the rest of the code base that you have.
AJ:
Yeah, I mean you have to have the skills. This article highlights, you have to have the skills as understand the intent of the user you're building this thing for. How do you translate that into code? So it feels like a college level course. You're skipping 101, you're going right to the 200 level. It's like who cares if you don't need to actually type out the code? You need to know how to massage the code, test the code, make sure it's what your customer or your client wants, which is pretty cool.
Shane:
Yeah, because I got into coding, there's all these Instagrams that I follow, all these blogs or whatever, and they all joke about, no one knows how the code actually works.
AJ:
Right.
Shane:
They just copy paste from Stack Overflow or from Reddit or from ChatGPT into the code base and oh, it works. So that's what I'm trying to become. I'm not trying to understand really how it works, but I need to know how to copy and paste and how to prompt. And those skills are going to be super valuable.
AJ:
I was recently at a Women in Tech mixer event and I met a bunch of people and I was like, oh, you're a founder. And they're, yeah, I'm the technical co-founder. I'm like, cool, what's your coding experience? They're like, I just graduated from da da da bootcamp. And I was like, oh no. That's no longer enough. You actually have to understand the architecture. I'm excited about this. I think it'll create more jobs. But I do worry a little bit that if you don't already have the experience of going through what it was like to be a coder from 2000 to 2022, you might be far behind. At this point you're just going to have to leap ahead and basically just become an AI expert. That is your way into a job at this point.
So I actually looked up a few different... If you are an engineer, you're 22, you're interested in coding, you can kind of code, you're looking for a job. Maybe a lot of these entry level coding jobs are going to disappear. So what do you do to level up? So there's two programs I found. One is the Artificial Intelligence Graduate Program at the Stanford University School of Engineering. That's going to be a good thing to throw on your resume, kids.
Shane:
No big deal. Just go to Stanford.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
Thanks AJ.
AJ:
Yeah, you have to have a 3.0 and know basic Python. It's fine. But this other one is interesting. The artificial intelligence business strategies and applications. So UC Berkeley Extension Education Program. I would hire someone if they had that shit on their resume.
Shane:
Oh my God.
AJ:
That's awesome.
Shane:
Did you hear that listener? Just go to Berkeley or Stanford if you're having trouble getting a job.
AJ:
They're extension programs. They are attainable for your average bear.
Shane:
Oh, so they're like executive education-
AJ:
Executive education extension. Correct.
Shane:
... They're not like Stanford MBA where you pay $50,000 to get the network.
AJ:
Correct. This is going to be a couple grand virtual, but you get the certification. It can't hurt. I think I'm going to sign up. BRB. Speaking of BRB, the Bidens were not at the White House this weekend. They were at Camp David. However, someone was partying doing lines of blow in the Oval Office because they found cocaine residue in the Oval Office over the weekend.
Shane:
It was in the Oval Office?
AJ:
I thought it was the Oval Office. Maybe it wasn't.
Shane:
I heard it was in the White House.
AJ:
Okay, I might've embellished that a little bit.
Shane:
Oh, okay.
AJ:
Maybe it was in the White House.
Shane:
If it was at the desk at the Oval Office office, that was iconic.
AJ:
No, I think I might've embellished that or maybe I [inaudible 00:12:05]
Shane:
Fact check, live fact check.
AJ:
Live fact check. Also, there's definitely footage of someone doing cocaine in the White House on someone's Friends Only Instagram right now. Someone dumb enough to do that-
Shane:
Absolutely.
AJ:
... definitely posted that.
Shane:
Yeah. What level of depth do I want to get into personal stories here?
AJ:
None actually. Anyway.
Shane:
It had to be Hunter Biden, right?
AJ:
Let me save you from yourself.
Shane:
Do you know about Hunter Biden?
AJ:
I am I familiar, yes. Anyway, I'm going to pull us out this one folks. We're going to move on.
Shane:
No, for those that don't know, because I didn't really know about Hunter Biden. But he's just well known to be the biggest party animal. Records himself doing hard drugs and put posting in on the internet. I didn't really know about this until recently. That is so wild for Joe to have to deal with.
AJ:
A wild hand, that man got dealt in terms of family.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
Anyway, let's move along to the CEOs who pull in more than a hundred million a year, just like us here at Brooklyn Fi.
Shane:
We pull in hundred millions pesitos, maybe.
AJ:
Anyway, are you doing the conversion real fast?
Shane:
Yeah, no. That would even be great. A hundred million pesos would be fantastic.
AJ:
Still up there.
Shane:
I've done the math, yeah.
AJ:
Our friends at the Wall Street Journal did a nice review of all the CEOs that make over a hundred million dollars. Now, we're not talking about a hundred million in cash. Most at that level, both at that level, the company-
Shane:
No, it's stock.
AJ:
... it's all stock. Right? So the highest paid CEO was Steven Schwarzman of private equity giant Blackstone. He makes 253 million, but about 190 million of that comes in the form of carried interest. Which is the best way to get paid because it's basically like getting paid in long-term cap gains. You don't actually have to pay ordinary income taxes on it, which is a fantastic loophole that basically only applies to hedge funds managers.
So folks, if you remember Biden's tax plan, I think it was both in the first and second version of it, had a proposal to close this loophole, which only applies to a very small percentage of the population making an absurd amount of money. That tax plan is definitely not happening at this stage in the political landscape. But yeah, carried interest is an excellent way to pay much, much lower taxes on, in this case, hundreds of millions of dollars. So good for you, Mr. Schwarzman.
Shane:
Oh, man. Where to go with that? There was another article about hedge fund talent getting paid more than NBA Stars. I think the Journal ran it that there are... And I had to explain to one of my friends about why somebody, as a hedge fund manager, would make a hundred million dollars a year. Like Steph Curry is making 50 million a year, but the hedge fund talent apparently is getting... And I don't know why people even know this because it shouldn't be public information, but they ran an article about how some hedge fund talent is so in demand that they're getting paid like signing bonuses of 10 to 20 million, a hundred million a year of income.
AJ:
Well, a lot of these companies, they're publicly traded. Blackstone is publicly traded. They're not in the S & P 500 because of the weird stock structure. But yeah, it's all public. You can look all this stuff up. That's how the Journal got this.
Shane:
Oh, right on. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. If you're running a 10 billion hedge fund and you're able to increase the returns by 2%, the scale. Whereas the revenue of the Clippers is never going to get to that level of influence that a hedge fund manager would have or the ability to provide value to it's investors and stakeholders.
AJ:
Yeah, a hedge fund manager could own several NBA teams quite easily.
Shane:
Yeah, sure. I know that's really the analogy.
AJ:
Well, in terms of the scale, yeah. Some other highlights here, Barry McCarthy of Peloton makes roughly 160 million. Most of that was granted in stock, of course. He joined the company in spring of 2022 when Peloton stock was a lot higher than it is now. So that guy's got about 150 million of underwater stock options. So we'll see if he sticks around for a while at Peloton, which is also not doing so great.
Another highlight here, we've got Live Nations, Michael Rapino making 139 million. So all your Taylor Swift and Grateful Dead Ticketmaster fees are going to that CEO's 139 million paycheck each year. Love shitting on the rich. Nothing like a good eat the rich article.
Shane:
The only one that gets the middle finger there is the Live Nation CEO getting a hundred million dollars. Anyone that's tried to go to a concert-
AJ:
A hundred 39 million.
Shane:
... Whatever. He makes more than a million dollars a year, fuck that guy. 139 middle fingers. Anyone that's paid $40 for a convenience fee to Ticketmaster to go to a show.
AJ:
40? It's like a hundred. I bought Black Pink tickets that... The most expensive tickets I ever bought and the tickets themselves were 400 and I walked away paying 750 total per ticket. Like, what?
Shane:
Yeah, so convenient.
AJ:
So convenient for me you to send me an email. Anyway, what else have we got here?
Shane:
Car repairs.
AJ:
Let's go to car repairs. Yeah. When was the last time you had a car repaired?
Shane:
Oh, I'm about to have a car repaired. I've had a car sitting in the sun in New York for six months without being turned on, so that'll be interesting. Probably a replacement battery in my near future. But no, actually, I drove from LA to New York and I had just changed the oil. And somehow I shouldn't have paid more than $10 for an oil change because as soon as I got back in the car, every light was on. And I got on the highway and it started rattling, started doing speed wobbles. I had to inch back to the place and ask him what the hell happened. So last summer.
AJ:
Cool. Oh, yeah. We've got a New York Times article, Why Car Repair Have Become So Expensive. And the thesis here is basically cars are made up more of computers than actual parts that fit together. So an auto mechanics manual and training from the nineties is basically no longer applicable. You basically have to be a software engineer to fix a car. If the air conditioning doesn't work, it's not a part you can replace. It's something wrong in the computer. This is going to make people mad because people who have these electric vehicles or these more complicated, more expensive cars are more expensive to repair, which the insurance companies are going to have to foot those bills. So again, eat the rich. The richer people with the nicer cars are going to drive up the cost of insurance for everybody. So let's eat the rich.
One thing I wanted to bring up is pride around driving a cheap, used, old car. I find this a lot, especially in the financial planning FIRE community, which we're going to talk about later. There is this sense of, of course there's car culture. I drive a fancy beautiful car and I'm proud of it. But there's this opposite effect of I drive a beater and I'm proud of it because it doesn't cost me a lot of money and it's not a luxury that I need. Have you come across that and do you subscribe to that?
Shane:
I don't know. I haven't come across that.
AJ:
No?
Shane:
No. I mean, I work with a ton of accountants and they all drive beaters. It's funny, a CPA either drives a Honda Civic or they drive a Mercedes SUV.
AJ:
That's what I'm saying.
Shane:
Yeah, they do one or the other. It's like, I've had this car for 125,000 miles or they haver an SUV with 1100 miles.
AJ:
Do you remember Brad Barrett, our FIRE buddy on his podcast? They always talked about their shitty cars, which is pride. It sort of works. It's a car that they made millions of, so it's really easy and cheap to fix. So this car is not a liability to my financial independence projection.
Shane:
Yeah. I mean a certain type of person subscribe... Jeff Bezos famously drove that Honda Civic while he was a billionaire as well. And I don't know why billionaires to do that.
AJ:
That's what I'm saying. Where does that come from?
Shane:
Another entrepreneur came to me, she was following my Instagram. She's like, you have to stop posting yourself traveling. Your employees are going to think that you're spending too much money or not working on the business. Or please add more photos of you working.
AJ:
Working.
Shane:
What do you want me to do?
AJ:
Oh my God. That reminds me of that TikTok. It's lik boss just started following me and it's like, love work, love coming to work early. Work is so awesome.
Shane:
Knocked out 150 emails this morning. Working late.
AJ:
Productivity.
Shane:
Yeah. It's not a business Instagram, it's my life. But I think there's an element of projecting to the people at the company that you too, are just like them. You drive a beater and you are the owner of the company, but you're also driving a Honda Civic. So from an entrepreneur's perspective, that is a part of it, is image.
AJ:
Sure.
Shane:
Also, the Walmart dude... What's his name? Sam Walton, I think, also drove a shitty car until he died.
AJ:
Right. And what's his face? Warren Buffet famously drives a shitty car. It's like a thing. I don't know. I like nice cars. I don't have one-
Shane:
It lives in the same house.
AJ:
... but I would like one. I would like a nice car, but I don't have one. In fact, I'm about to drive a 1998 Honda Civic and I'm learning how to drive stick. I'm very excited about that. I've never been able to... I've tried to learn once, but not seriously. But I'm going to learn at the end of the summer and I'm very excited.
Shane:
You're going to learn kind of the same way I did, which was owning a car, owning a stick shift.
AJ:
Yeah, exactly.
Shane:
The way I learned is I went into a CarMax and they had the car that I wanted, but it was only in stick. And I told the car salesman, I was like, I will buy this car from you right now, but you have to teach me how to drive a stick shift as soon as I buy it.
AJ:
Oh, I love this story.
Shane:
And he was like, what? I was like, let's go, parking lot right now. So I got it into second gear for the first time and he was like, I think you're good to go. And I had to get it into the third and fourth and stuff on the highway. The clutch was a little hot. So I'm looking forward to your experiences. You're driving it from San Francisco down to La?
AJ:
Nabil's going to drive that and then he is going to teach me that week. I'm not ready to learn on the five with the semis, dodging the semis, me and my little Civic. No, I'm not.
Shane:
You could not pay me. I would need thousands to be in that passenger seat. But I think you're going to like it. It's really fun to shift around.
AJ:
Growing up in LA, you just can't escape car culture. I love cars. I appreciate them. When we travel, Nabil's like, what's that? What car is that? I don't know. I think they're beautiful. Anyway, I'm going to go be a car mechanic/software engineer after I graduate from the Stanford School of AI Auto Engineering that I just invented.
Shane:
Take that robots. Changing oil, this is your upgraded life.
AJ:
That's my upgrade. AJ Ayers steps down as Co-CEO of Brooklyn FI to become an auto mechanic for Rivian.
Shane:
All the robots are poets and playwrights.
AJ:
Oh yeah, that's your favorite.
Shane:
And painters. And we're auto mechanics and plumbers.
AJ:
Speaking of auto mechanics and plumbers, I've got a hot new startup for you. It's called Honey Homes, which I learned about from our friends at TechCrunch on their podcast. It just raised 12 million dollars, small community. They have over 500 members, which does not seem like a lot. And basically it's a subscription to a handy person. So you pay about 200 bucks a month and you basically guarantee, well, not guarantee, a handy person actually employed by Honey Homes. Not a contractor like Uber. An actual employee will come to your house to fix things or put furniture together. I'm not sure what the extent of the services on offering are, but this sounds pretty cool. I would pay for this. Especially if you're a homeowner in a big city and you're not a renter and you can't... It's almost like calling your landlord to fix something, right? Hey, the toilet's backed up. Or I need to hang the shelf. Or I need to put my air conditioner in and not kill anyone. This seems pretty cool to me.
Shane:
That seems amazing to me. I see this being very popular with women and not for the reason that you think, that you're not handy or whatever.
AJ:
I know.
Shane:
But because if somebody is coming into your house as a contractor from TaskRabbit or whatever, you just have this person with no repercussions at all in your house, hanging shelves. What are you going to reach out to, TaskRabbit? I lost my phone in an Uber, the guy tells, the guy tells me, I have your phone. Uber does nothing about it. Does not even coordinate at all. That's just not our problem If you lose something.
AJ:
Right.
Shane:
As opposed to this, if you have an employee and you have an ongoing relationship, you can't afford a handyman. You need seven different type of handymen. Owning a house, as you know is a pain in the ass.
AJ:
Huge pain in the ass.
Shane:
You have to have a plumber. You have to have an electrician. You have to have interior, exterior. So yeah, I see this being extremely popular with women who don't want strangers, just a ton of different strangers in their house.
AJ:
Or anyone. Just you live alone in your house in upstate... It's only in a couple cities right now. I think it was Dallas and the Bay, I don't remember. Also having someone on demand in these big cities. Austin is a market where housing exploded, all these people moved there. You can't get your house painted in Austin. If you want something done, it's like a six month or year long waiting list. We had a client a couple years ago who bought a house upstate. Like everybody else wanted to put in a pool. And the waiting list was two years long. It was just crazy. SO if you need something hung like a picture frame or whatever you call this person, they show up. You get to cut the line.
Shane:
First of all, how dare you bring up the Austin housing market? Second of all right, maybe when coders all get 10 times more efficient, they can use their spare time to repair these houses. I guess we do have a shortage in physical labor, right?
AJ:
Oh, yeah.
Shane:
In construction workers.
AJ:
Contracting is my next big idea. That's where I'm headed after this.
Shane:
Open the border up, man. We need some more immigrants.
AJ:
Yeah. I don't have a good segue here. You can get paid $10,000 to walk 10,000 steps in a day according to this News Week article.
Shane:
All right.
AJ:
I will walk 10,000 steps. Anyway, the app incentivized physical activity by providing financial rewards to individuals who meet your daily step goal. 10,000 steps is a lot of steps. Have you ever looked at your health app? How many steps on average do you walk?
Shane:
I only get 10,000 when I'm living in New York City or Mexico City. Those are both walking steps or walking towns.
AJ:
What's your annual average?
Shane:
I think it's like 7K a day, something like that.
AJ:
So embarrassing, during the pandemic... I had some health issues, so that's my excuse. But my average was less than 3000, which meant I lived an extremely sedentary lifestyle. So one of my personal goals-
Shane:
I had a dog.
AJ:
... True. Yeah. And I don't like to leave my house in general. But one of my goals for 2023 is to get my average up to 6,000. And I'm on track, which halfway through the year I'm feeling good about. But 10,000 is a lot.
Shane:
I'm very surprised that that's so low for you.
AJ:
Yeah. I'll have days where I'll walk like 20,000. Especially when I travel, that's all I do is walk around. But there are days in the winter where I might not leave my house.
Shane:
I believe that. Give us the Lisbon, AJ. You just got back from Portugal.
AJ:
Oh, yeah.
Shane:
Give the listeners your review of Portugal.
AJ:
11 out of 10, loved Portugal. Great food, beautiful... I was just in Lisbon, just a quick weekend trip. And loved the food, great seafood, beautiful coastline friendly people. It's just such a cool city because an earthquake destroyed it in the 1700s, completely flattened most of the city, they rebuilt it, but Portugal was neutral during our world wars. So there was no bombings, no fighting on their soil. So it's just this beautifully preserved city from the 1700s. So pretty windy roads. Yeah, just loved it. Loved, loved, loved it. I want to go back to the steps app for a second.
Shane:
Yes.
AJ:
So basically you get paid to walk around. I love this idea. I'm sure you've done this, you've run a 5K for charity. This is like you get to run a 5K by yourself on your app. You could take the financial awards and donate them. This is such a great way to motivate yourself-
Shane:
Oh, really?
AJ:
... and do good. I just mean that's what I would do. I would motivate myself. And even more motivation would be like, okay, I do this and I get financial rewards and I'm going to donate them to a cause that I care about.
Shane:
Oh, okay.
AJ:
That's my spin on it. That's like what I would do.
Shane:
Yeah. I hear that. My camp for kids could use some money, so I'll look into this off podcast to see if I could get some.
AJ:
Cool. If I could get to 10,000, that would be very motivating. That would be more motivating if I could give money to your camp in your dad's name or your name, that would be more motivating than money for me.
Shane:
Yeah. Exactly.
AJ:
Even though I am quite motivated by money.
Shane:
You don't say.
AJ:
Speaking of motivated by money, we've got 30 seconds left folks, but I just want to shout out to our friends in the FIRE movement. We've got this Fortune article, a couple who retired early with 4.3 million dollars, says the FIRE lifestyle is wearing thin and they're sick of being cheap skates. And they have all this money and it has poisoned their souls and they don't want to spend money on anything and they can't enjoy life. So we don't want that to happen. We want to be frugal. We want to save, but live, laugh, love, baby. Don't hoard it. No one's going to be happy.
Shane:
These articles are so... I know we don't know have much time. I just think that these articles get clicks and that's why we see these articles about being rich and retired and young is terrible. No, it's not. Shut up. Get your money and retire. Enjoy your life.
AJ:
Please interview me in five years. I will happily tell you how happy I am. All right folks, thanks for joining us today. Shane, drink some water and some... Oh, we'll have to do some Gatorade. It's in your shoe, by the way.
Shane:
I did see that.
AJ:
We'll next did. We'll see you next week, folks. Bye.
Shane:
Bye.
Presenter:
Thanks for listening to the Liquidity Event, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn Fi. Head on over to brooklynfi.com where you can subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel. Or if you want to learn about their full service, financial planning, tax and investment firm specializing in tech professionals and creatives on the path to financial independence. We'll see you next time on the Liquidity Event.