7 Steps to Living a Long Life
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Welcome the money for the rest of us. This is a personal financial on money, how IT works, how to invest IT and how to live without worrying about IT. I'm your host, a David stein.

Today is episodes ty four. It's titled how to live forever, or at least a very long time. We're approaching five hundred, three episodes on money for the rest of us and almost a thousand if we include the premium episodes for members of our money for the rest of us.

Plus the pro often jokes that someday i'm going to run out of topics to talk about. Topics arrive as long as i'm engaged in the world, researching, learning, visiting with people. Usually I have several topics doing in the background, but occasionally, like this week, the topic I was going to discuss just isn't ready.

In that case, I was on world population and turns out july eleven is world population day, which I didn't know existed, but it's also of the day the united nations releases its latest projections for the global population in the decades ahead. And since have been two years since their last release, thought, well, i'm gonna wait to talk about those trends until after we have new data. For decades now, I have tracked notes on what had happened to be reading IT could be a study from an academic journal article, from a newspaper books on reading.

I used to use a wiki called social tax, and then they went under than I used ever note for a while. But the last four years i've used rome research. And so when I can't find something to talk about, i'll go into room research and look at articles I have saved recently and to see if there's a theme and IT turns out there was actually a theme that we could call pata a very long time.

And to do so, happy. Now that's not strictly in investment related theme or an economics related theme or even a monetary theme. But as we save an investor retirement and many of us look forward to retirement, we ve want to make sure that we're living as healthfully as possible, recognize that some of us to reddy genetics, whatever, will get sick and die sooner than we would have liked.

We're getting ready for our mid summer brakes, so there won't be a podcast episode next week. These breaks are important IT allows us to reach. So if we do one middle, we do one more extended break at the end of the year. But as I looked through room research to see what i've been saving, what i've been studying, one of the things that has occupied my mind the last couple of months, and really continuously, is how do we keep participating and growing a thriving business? I have always, as long as I remember, thought about business and business strategy, even as a pretty at eight twelve, I convince my mom to purchase a copy writing course.

I didn't know IT was a copywriting course, but IT was a course from someone that had taken out a full page in the sanity inquire, an individual standing in front of A A motor home and promising that he would teach us how to make money in business. And I launched numerous businesses throughout high school running classified ads. Most weren't successful.

The handwriting analysis business was not successful. A research service business was not successful. The only successful businesses were those involving my hands, washing windows, moving loans.

As an investment advisor, I thought a lot about how do we grow our business, an institutional advisor, how do we expand the S A. Management business. And I continued to do that, that money for the rest of us.

Now we don't have an advisory business. We are a media company. And in the investment education business, we also have software as a service with asset camp.

One of the trends we've noticed is people don't consume our content as much as they used to. This, turns out, is a chAllenge for many creators. There's essentially too much content.

I recently read a blog post by Stephen goldstein at amplify media. He quoted bob egan, who is a CEO of disney. I couldn't confirm the quote because the only reference I found was this blog post.

But let's assume either said IT or something along these lines, he said we try to tell too many stories and ended up losing four billion dollars. Goldstein expounded disney struggles reflect a common chAllenge for creators across all platforms, too much content beating for too few eye band years. In the paccar space, there are over three million podcast, two hundred million episodes.

There are thirty million new podcast episode created each year. There are over eight point three million titles on I, M, D. B.

This would be movies, T, V shows, T, V episodes, million audio tracks on spotify, four hundred seventy thousand audio books on order table. And that's not even counting what seems to be commanding more, more attention. Short form video, tiktok, instagram, reals, youtube shorts.

So one study with the estimate is that typical individuals spend over an hour a day consuming short foreign deo. I recently had a conversation with a podcast friend of mine who was two teenage sons, and he mentioned he couldn't get them to sit down to watch a movie as a family they would prefer. Third, watch short form video on their phones.

And it's easy the entertaining we get a document hit watching short form video. What's gonna show up next? For that reason, I I deliberated spend very, very little time on IT.

I don't have a tiktok account. I block the youtube short recommendation on youtube. I watch youtube videos, but I don't score and watch youtube shorts. I will sometimes watch an instagram real, but they can be addictive, at least for me. And so I prefer longer form content. And we are very grateful that you have listeners consume our long form content at money for the rest of IT means a lot, that of all of these billions of different types of entertainment, you choose to listen to money for the rest of us. And because there's so much competition, IT helps more than ever.

When you share our podcast with your friend's family and colleagues, your personal recommendation of our show not only helps us grow, but IT lows us to bring the insights we share in our content to more people who, like you, value their time and are seeking quality content. So thank you for being part of our community and helping us spread the word. We've been in the mountains, vita hope for three weeks now.

Every morning I get up and I walk a half month to the end of the the lane where cabinet, and then have a choice. Do I want to turn right? Or do I want to turn left? I usually turn right and find my way walking up into the first, I listen to the birds.

I got an up room. I can identify the birds by sound. I have a nature APP.

If there's a plan to A A word flower I don't recognize, I gently don't listen to anything on the morning walks, no music, no podcast. Sometimes I do. It's a longer walk.

And I thought about this reason is one of the articles that I said saved was a peace written by jama Kelly of the financial times. Tired why our brains crave beauty are in nature. And SHE wrote, I think you must be getting old.

I've started wanting to to know the names of trees and birds and wall flowers and the same way, but not everybody. We have A A neighbor down in two thousand is approaching ninety. And we asked about some bird, and he says it's a gray bird, just grasp he had no interest in the name. Kelly continues, i've become enema red with the changing of the seasons. I find myself in local White land at six.

I am not because i'm still at a forest rate from the night before, but because I want to get straight out into nature after waking so as to catch the bright morning light, the do on the leaves and the bird song in all its rebound cci's sss, or maybe i'm just tapping in to part of my nature. And he talks about and and refers to a term called neuro aesthetics, which is a study that combines esthetics are with cognitive neuroscience. And they're looking how the brain responds to different forms of aesthetic experience.

And those that study IT believe that our brain craves these athegither experiences of being at walking in nature, viewing art, be a movie, could be entertainment, probably short, formal video. But I find that I need that morning walk in the pro. I take an afternoon and evening walk, and I don't listen to anything when i'm walking alone, typically because I want that large block of silence, with exception of all the birds.

I ve been reading the books slow productivity by cow newport. It's sort of a follow up to his book on deep work. But his whole theme is we need to slow down in order to be creative and in order to be productive.

He writes the advantage of doing fewer things is about more than just increasing the wrong number of hours dedicated to use activities. The quality of these hours also increases when you approach a project without the hurry need to attend. Many barely contain fires.

You enjoy a more expensive sense of experimental and possibility. And he mentions there are boring psychological and neurological explanations for why, that is that an overtax brain can harm our thinking in our creativity. But always working at our mac x mum capacity, but stepping back and leaving those blocks of time and be at walking reflecting can be incredibly productive. And i've seen that certainly over the past couple decades, especially in the last ten years, Carrying out big chunks of time for creative endeavors is one of the things that helps the show continue, often as I walk.

Recently this year, i've been studying dw, tex, principally the janzen chapter twenty one zog says to practice the course requires daily diminishment, diminish again and yet again until you not doing doing nothing yet leaving nothing and done this concept of, uh, which i've talked about, just waiting for the right time to act, to follow intuition as to what we work on when we pursue particular activity. Chapter six has to cern, the simplicity of everything like raw silk embraced the uncomplicated and unvarnished ed nature of things like an uncarved block of wood. Become smart by reducing self interest in control, practice wise self interruption and break the complication habit.

My take away from that is is just keeps trying to simplify, removing the clutter and freeing up these blocks of time or ideas to service and then work on those ideas and let things take time. They naturally take, don't hurry things along. We recently last week, we had dinner with some friends.

When we have dinner, we we try not to just sort of rush off to the next activity because usually there isn't one other than to go home. So this dinner lasted a couple hours. And after a couple hours, I was Frankly getting a little restless.

My bottom was sore, but we didn't rush because his friend had had chemotherapy that morning, and he is his spouse wanted to visit. And so we stayed and continue to visit. So we let things take time, take the time they take.

So as I went through and and looked and the articles i've saved over the last several months, they they were essentially lifetime le articles. Only a few were on how to live longer, but they were a theme, and how to organize our life for greater satisfaction, greater health and greater longevity. So we here then are seven things that can help us live a longer, more satisfying life from research i've saved just over the last couple months.

Before we continue, let me pause and share some words from this week. sponsors. Knowing where are monkeys going and how it's being spent helps us feel more at peace.

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That comes last, David, that's M O N A R C H M O N E Y dcom. Last, David, for your extended thirty day free trial. The first is the walk. Oh, we can call the exercise.

My preferred form of exercise is just walking, although I will occasionally ycl and then lift weight a couple of times a week. But the most consistent and form walking, I used to count my steps. I still have an APP that count my step. IT will range from ten thousand to twelve thousand steps a day. But now I don't worry about IT for while.

I wanted to get my twelve thousand five hundred and and did they there for a year and it's like i'm just gonna walk and and stop counting IT but I still speak can see a alam doing there was an article in the economist that pointed out why citizens of southern europe will soon have the highest life expectancy of anywhere else on earth. And one of the reasons that gave potentially is spaniard walk more than anyone else in western europe they ever done, around fifty, one hundred steps a day. They were referring to an academics study.

And all these articles are list in the show notes. They use the term that I hadn't heard of, activity inequality, where some people in a given country are very active and most or not to be inequality. And those countries, which would include the U.

S. And sad abi, attend to have higher obesity rates. Where is countries where there's activity quality, where most people move around, they tend to have higher life expectancy, mainly because they they have less obesity related diseases.

And spain happens to be one of those. And they think that one of the reasons certain areas are like that is just the design of the city. The city just promotes walking because it's easier to walk.

Then IT is to take any other former transportation. Tokyo like that. Tokyo is it's just easier to walk and take the train to ride a bike than anything else.

I was surprised in tokyo IT been I hadn't been there in five years. I was there last month. Unlike other places, you don't see a lot of e bikes or mother bikes. really. There are a lot of bicycles.

But the ini peddle principally, I believe there might have been some e bike hidden in, but people in in tokyo, you would just walk and ride a bike and then they have a fantastic train system. So the first thing is, is just a walk to move. Second is we already referred to that joan Kelly talked about is participating in nature walking the same stretch road like we do when we hear and night to home.

We become very tuned of what's changing natural cycle, the clouds, the sky, how the light changes on the tea tons, which wild flowers are blooming and when did they bloom throughout the season? You've on this place seven years now. And so you become a tune to what blooms when we have the same thing down in two sun, when the cat I bloom, looking at the wildlife, the foxes, the elk, deer occasion bear, but participate in nature fees or brain, and apparently helps us live longer.

My third thing is to eat good food, healthy food, and to eat slowly with simple ingredients, less processed. Now that's changing in many areas, including southern europe, because there's more processed food. But then whitner, who is written a number of books on areas where people live a long time, point IT out that those that are living a long time now, that are in their eighties and nineties, often where people that what the article described as present food, grains, beans, tatoes.

Or I guess there was a study in sardinia, they called IT famine food. So bread made from a corns and cheese made from insecurity. But the idea is simple food, real food, and eating IT slow.

Article in the financial times taken from a new book by Simon Cooper, and the article is what i've learned from two decades, eating in pairs. This was, I think he's british. He's lived in paris for two decades, working for the financial times.

And IT was a fascinating essay on the eating culture in france you mentioned early this century. So year two thousand IT was typical still in paris, that lunch would take ninety minutes. And that one reason the food at restaurant is so good in paris and other places in france is that persians have eaten the same dishes at home since childhood.

And so they know whether the dish is good or not. That is onion soup. And it's if it's not, then they goes to a restaurant down the street. But in Francis and other places, sharing a meal is how we build trust in paris that they're very good at very length, thy meals taking their time as they eat.

They they rarely talk business at dinner even if it's it's with business associate maybe in the last few minutes, but having spent several hours together a dinner, then that kind of earns you the the right perhaps follow up with the call, there's a business endear you want to pursue IT. So the third thing to living a long and satisfying life is to eat good food and to eat IT slowly, and to eat IT with other people, with which lead into our forth item, the importance of friends and ongoing social contact. The economist article mentioned with spain and their walkability was good for social life because the cities are built around plazas, and friends and family and co workers meet up, they can sit, they can eat, drink and and talk.

A pull by gala found that seventy six percent of spaniard say that they feel very or fairly socially IT academic studies. And there's one that was discussed in an M P R article that quoted Williams topic, the professor of psychology at michigan state university. They did a study on friendships.

Topics said, friendships are often the first relationship of choice that we have in our lives. And because that's why they decided to study friendship and found that those that have high quality friendships live longer. They did a study of individuals.

They took a specific survey three times over eight years and found that those with good friends were twenty four percent less likely to during that study period. Now obviously, these type of studies are chAllenging to do because there could be other factors, but there even a number studies. The loneliness can be a killer.

And so it's incredible important to make time for friends. What the prony have found is the way to do that is not to sit around hoping somebody will invite us over. We have to do the inviting I reached after this friend, this couple we had dinner with last week, and invited in the dinner.

We just invite, invite, so that we actually spend time together with people. IT was a human article by tom hotch, concerns in the financial times tied to why i've hung g up my wallets and giving up the country cottage. They used to have two homes, one in the country and one in the city, and they gave up the country cottage age.

And he said, one advantage of living in a small, cheap to run house in the city is you're free to accept invitations from rich friends with second homes because he says they can invite the other rich people because they're all busy working on their second home, moving the lawn or fixing the fairness. So he's found that they have more flexibility to go out dinner, be with friends and visit their second homes. Now we, we still have two homes, this small cabin, and in our place, some, we sometimes talk about, what if we sold one of the houses, the place in two sun, and just had a place and I to home, and what would that look like? And sort of prototype different lifestyles.

And we need to do that just to think about how we're spending our time. And are we being run ragged red by having too many commitments, which could include too many houses? So the fourth side of them for to live a healthy, long life, is to maintain our friendships.

And IT takes time to be able to do that, and they make the time to do that. A fifth item then, is to get enough sleep, we choke at money for the rest rest of an APP culture. I've taken a nap most days ever since I was in my late teens living in mexico. I like how IT breaks up the day into a morning session and an afternoon session. If with this podcast is because I didn't have already topic IT took longer than Normal twenty four hours to prepare and by then I was tired, I took a nap and now was in the afternoon and i'm recording the podcast.

And much more of the study, a linked to or researchers looked at five different factors of quality sleep factors, including ideal sleeping ation of seventy eight hours, not having difficulty falling asleep no more than two times a week there would be trouble staying a sleep no more than two times a week, not using any sleep medication and feeling well arrested after waking up at least five days a week. Now, sometimes we have, in some a, sometimes we can go asleep, but they're looking at these five facts, and it's not going to be perfect sleep every day. But they found, the author says, if people have all these ideal sleep patterns, they are more likely to live longer.

And they found that those individuals that had reported those five quality sleep measures, their expectancy was four point seven years greater for a men and two point four years greater for women compared to those that. Had none, only one of those five elements of quality sleep. So getting good sleep is important for living a long time.

And their other studies that support them, a six elephant, is to have a sense of purpose, including making time to create something. I have had a number of friends retired recently. One of the articles I save was a battle by colonist IT was a guest colonies, the economist, why you should never retire? Sub tittle was pleasure cruises, golf and traced in the family tree, or not that fulfilling? Now some people have an incredibly fulfilling retirement.

Their model retirees is one friend of mine that just retired. He's incredibly purpose, but the the key is to make sure we have a sense of purpose. When we wake up each day, they were were not bored.

The article mention a number of individuals like George, your money that still is the C E O of his fashion house at the age of eighty nine and and charlie monger or buffet raw flown in his eighties and runs his fashion empire the the author of the article, she's forty eight and doesn't plan to retire. This still has twenty one years to go. But if we're going to retire, we want to make sure we have something we are retiring to.

We have activities outline or things we want to pursue, not just quit our job and then not have anything. That's a recipe for an unsuccessful retirement. And IT can take time, I find, looking for role models, individuals in the seventies or eighties that are still very much engaged.

I met one last week. He's eighty six, very involved. He also has a cabin here.

And I hone, he's out cutting assets for firework and doing other things to maintain this, the cabin. Now you get older. Maybe those things slow down. He mentioned he can't do as much as he used to, but he wouldn't think he was eighty six looking at him because he has maintained that activity level, that mental engagement and genetics to play a role.

We we have to recognize that, but we need to do everything we can on our own, and hopefully we can stay as active and alert as our genes allow us. The seventh final thing then is to ignore the negativity. I linked to a piece by Arthur Brooks in the atlantic.

He was sharing his views on rough auto emerson's essay, self reliance, that was written in eighteen forty one. And IT. This is always been one of my favorite essays.

In fact, after reading this piece, started rereading self liance, because it's probably been over ten years since i've read IT. Two things that books mentioned from the sa, at least his interpretation of that is the importance of maintaining privacy. Emerson, rote, in self reliance.

Es, my life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that IT should be of a lower train, so would be genuine and equal, then that IT should be glittering and unsteady. And books mention, what would emerson think of the over sharing on social media, the doom scrolling that people do, both the consumption and the production of social media.

There's value in maintaining our private cn. And I have shared less about my private life as the podcast has progressed. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's just what I i've chosen to do.

So one under are heading ignore the negativity is is spend less time on social media, careless, don't view things through? What's are gonna look like as an instagram real or an instagram photo? The second concept that books mentioned is to admire virtue and pay no attention to vice works, right? You might be tempted to think emerson advocates abandoning all admiration of others.

He does not. He simply argues for hard headed discrimination between what is good and true and everything else. There are studies that have found that admiring novel people having these role models, like i've mentioned, seeing how people several decades living modeling that behavior, admiring them that can help spur those positive qualities in ourselves.

But Brooks says, anything that is trivial in moral or silly is not even worth ming. You should raise IT utterly from your life. We are in an election season in an, irrespective of your politics, the negativity that we can feel because of that or the Better than to let you go and not let IT consumers.

One of the key concepts in dalis m in the swan zy is that we have all of these ongoing make things just keep changing and that we should delighting them and accept them rather than spend time fretting over them. But to delight in the change itself changes seasons, accepting how the of all now do our part to make IT Better, but not be consumed when things aren't going the way we expected. And lamont and author rode a piece in the washington post.

SHE says, I think i'm only fifty seven, but the paperwork does not back this up. I don't feel all because your inside self does an age. And that's something that is fascinated me as i've gotten order is I don't feel any older. I know I look older, but is is interesting paradox.

We don't necessarily feel old, but he continues when Younger people asked me when I graduated from high school and I say one thousand hundred and seventy one, there's a moments passes if this is inconceivable and I might as well have said twenty bc, that's when I feel my age. But he says SHE would not go back even one year because now that she's old, she's more humble and he knows how little SHE knows and he says that's a big relief and SHE knows that everyone is a little screwed up to some degree. And we all make mistakes.

And he says, few. I thought for decades, IT was just me and everybody else knew what they were doing in the reality, as we all are just influx, trying to figure IT out. So here's seven things we can do to hopefully live a longer, more fulfilling life, to walk, to move, exercise every day, spend time in nature, eat good food, eat IT, slowly, eat with others, develop and maintain friendship, get plenty of social contact.

Just seeing people out in environment, even out here in the wood's amounts, typically unable to talk to at least one neighbor once a day, often the same people, because is not that many. But it's just good to have that contact. Fifth is get enough sleep.

Take a nap if you can, if that fits with your schedule. Six is, have a sense of purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, a creative project that you're working on and seventh is, ignore the negativity, get IT out your life release IT. That's episode forty four.

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If you're not on the list, go to money for the rest of us dot com and subscribe with to become a Better investor signa box. Everything i've shared with you in this episode, men for general education and not considered your specific risk situation, definitely haven't provided investment advice in this episode. This was simply general education on money investing, the economy and how to live a long life. Have a great week.