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A short conversation with Jillian from Montana Money Adventures

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As I mentioned yesterday, Get Rich Slowly is making the leap to video. It’s a brave new world! I’ve been skeptical about this for a long time, but one of the things that convinced me to give it a try was an interview I did with my pal Jillian (from Montana Money Adventures) a couple of months ago.

For those unfamiliar, Jillian Johnsrud (and her husband Adam) are from Kalispell, Montana. When they were married fifteen years ago, they had $55,000 in debt. After deciding to get better with money, they paid off that debt, then started to save for financial freedom.

What makes Jillian’s story unique is that she and Adam are doing this with a family. And not just any family. They’re doing it with a large family. They have six children — two biological and four adopted — all of whom are relatively young.

This summer, Jillian’s family took a ten-week “mini retirement” during which they traveled around the western United States. They passed through Portland in mid-June, so I drove out to their campsite for a breakfast of (burnt) pancakes and some lively conversation. It was a fun time. (That meeting became the basis for my article on passive income vs. passion income.)

After breakfast, Jillian and I sat down for a twenty-minute conversation about money, mini-retirements, and finding your passion. This format was super simple and made me realize that yes, even I could do video. Not every channel (or every video) has to have slick production.

To start, we talked about travel. “Why are you on this trip?” I asked Jillian.

“Because my kids are little,” she said. “Some things in life have an expiration date. Putting seven people in a pop-up camper and doing ten national parks has an expiration date.”

I talked about how Kim and I explored the U.S. by RV in 2015 and 2016, and about how visiting Jillian’s family made me miss life on the road. Some of the things that Jillian and I have both learned from our respective trips include:

  • Exploring the country by RV isn’t as expensive as you might imagine. In fact, we found it’s no more costly than day-to-day life. When you factor all costs, Kim and I spent about $5400/month combined to live on the road. (If you ignore the cost of the RV, we spent less than $100/day.)
  • After living in a small space for an extended period, you realize you don’t need all of the crap you have at home. “It redefines the line between want and need,” Jillian said — and she’s right. In our case, living in a small space made us realize we didn’t need the large home we had…so we downsized from 1800 square feet in the city to 1200 square feet in the country.
  • When you’re on the road, you spend far more time outside. In everyday life, it’s easy to fall into a trap where you spend all of your time in your house, in your car, in your office. But RV life forces you to spend more time out of doors, and it’s amazing.

Jillian and I then talked about the difference between a normal vacation and a mini-retirement. Many people feel trapped by their jobs. Some get “burned out”. A sabbatical is an excellent way to pause, take a break, and gain perspective on life. In some cases, a career break might lead you to change jobs. In others, it might actually give you a greater appreciate for the job you already have.

We also talked about taking risks and the fear of failure. “If you feel like you might want to try something, do it,” I said. People tend to regret the things we don’t do more than the mistakes we make. Don’t live a life of “what might have been”. Take chances. Try new things. Explore the world!

Spare change: Awesome articles from elsewhere

It's easy to become obese in the U.S. These seven charts explain why.

The value of simplicity in personal finance

How to change somebody's mind about investing

What growing up poor taught me about minimalism

How to get the most out of college [New York Times]

Youth unemployment hits 52-year low [Wall Street Journal]

What every successful person knows but never says

New research: Performing meaningless rituals boosts our self-control by making us feel more disciplined

The fundamental problem with financial goals

How to get a world-class education for free on the internet

Find an archive of all past spare change links on Pinboard.

Get Rich Slowly enters the video age (and a small request for help)

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Slowly but surely, GRS is entering the modern era.

It’s taken nearly a year, but the site redesign is nearing completion. I don’t want to get your expectations too high for what’s coming — this is just a blog, after all — but I think the new layout is an improvement. It certainly helps organize things better! (And yes, I’m hoping that we’ll be bringing back the forums — or a new forum, if we can’t repair the old database — at the same time.)

Meanwhile, I’ve finally made the leap to video. I’m not much of a video watcher myself (except that I do like the various movie lists from CineFix), but I know there are tons of people who prefer the format to reading. To me, that’s an opportunity to reach a wider audience and help more folks get better with money.

To that end:

  • Kim and I are experimenting with a four-week series of Saturday Morning Money Talks on Facebook. If these go well, we’ll probably make this a semi-permanent feature. (The first installment last week was fun, if a bit scattered. You can join us tomorrow at 8 a.m. Pacific on the GRS Facebook page for our second conversation, which is about homeownership.)
  • I’ve begun creating playlists of money videos on the GRS YouTube channel. These playlists mostly mimic the various categories here at the blog. So, there’s a playlist about getting out of debt, a playlist about earning money, and so on. Right now, these playlists are pretty small but that will change with time.
  • I’m going to be creating two types of videos for the YouTube channel. One smart reader suggested I create video versions of the best articles from here at the blog. I love that idea. That’s the first type of video I’ll be producing. The second will be sit-down conversations about money with various people I meet. I know that most channels like this focus on gurus and celebrities. While I’ll probably interview some financial bigwigs, I’m actually more interested in filming conversations with average everyday people.

Here’s where I need your help. I want for the playlists on the GRS YouTube channel to be filled with useful material. Plus, I want to follow high-quality YouTube channels that are producing excellent material about money.

I would love if you all could point me to:

  • Individual videos about money (and related topics) that you think other Get Rich Slowly readers should see.
  • Entire YouTube channels about personal finance that I should subscribe to in order to find more material to share with the community.

Finally, I want to assure loyal blog readers that I’m not about to stop writing articles for this site. I am a writer. Writing is what I do. It’s what I love. I couldn’t give it up even if I wanted to. The video stuff is just a way to take what I’m already doing and reach a new audience.

Are you a shopaholic? How to fight a shopping addiction

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Yesterday, I mentioned that because I grew up poor, I inherited a faulty money blueprint from my parents. They didn’t know how to handle money effectively, so they couldn’t teach me how to handle it effectively. I entered adulthood with many of the same bad habits they’d had when I was a kid.

I was a compulsive spender, for instance. I had a shopping addiction. I had no willpower, no impulse control. Even when I had no money in the bank, I still found ways to spend. I took on over $20,000 in credit card debt before I turned 25!

How to Fight a Shopping Addiction

Nowadays, I mostly have my spending under control. I’m no longer in debt, and I force myself to make conscious decisions about what I purchase. (Conscious spending is one of the keys to overcoming emotional spending.)

Having said that, I know that if I relax for even a moment, I’ll be right back in my old habits. I’ll find myself at the grocery store buying magazines to soothe a bruised ego, or shopping for music in the iTunes store because I had a stressful day.

How do I know I’ll relapse if I’m not careful? Because I do from time to time. When I was prepping for my big talk at the end of June, for example, I felt super stressed and my shopping addiction kicked in. I spent an afternoon browsing on Amazon, putting things in my shopping basket. (I even ordered a few of the things, although I knew I shouldn’t.)

Emotional spending is comforting — not just for me, but for a lot of other people too. Though I’m a recovering spendaholic, I’m still a spendaholic. I’m always one step away from compulsive spending.

My story is not unique.

What Is a Shopping Addiction?

People who have a shopping addiction suffer from what’s known as “compulsive spending”. According to the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery:

“Compulsive shopping and spending is described as a pattern of chronic, repetitive purchasing that becomes difficult to stop and ultimately results in harmful consequences. It is defined as an impulse control disorder and has features similar to other addictive disorders without involving the use of an intoxicating drug.”

The organization offers the following list of warning signs of a shopping addiction:

  • Shopping of spending money as a result of being disappointed, angry or scared.
  • Shopping/spending habits causing emotional distress or chaos in one’s life.
  • Having arguments with others regarding shopping or spending habits.
  • Feeling lost without credit cards.
  • Buying items on credit that would not be bought with cash.
  • Spending money causes a rush of euphoria and anxiety at the same time.
  • Spending or shopping feels like a reckless or forbidden act.
  • Feeling guilty, ashamed, embarrassed or confused after shopping or spending money. Many purchases are never used.
  • Lying to others about what was bought or how much money was spent.
  • Thinking excessively about money.
  • Spending a lot of time juggling accounts and bills to accommodate spending.

I’ve experienced all of these. In fact, I used to suffer from many of these at the same time. It felt awful. An addiction to spending is a scary, dangerous thing. As with other addictions, victims feel lost and out of control.

People who have never suffered from a shopping addiction can’t understand the problem, and you may have a hard time explaining it to them. They don’t know what it’s like to see something and feel the urge to buy it now. They don’t know the lure of the shopping “rush” — and the subsequent nausea from the guilt have having spent too much.

“Overspenders…have confused and confusing relationships with money,” write psychologists Brad and Ted Klontz in Mind Over Money. “On one hand, they’re convinced that money and the things it can buy will make them happy; yet they’re often broke because they can’t control their spending.”

Fortunately, I’ve learned some ways to cope with emotional spending. Though I’m still tempted, I don’t spend nearly as much as I used to because I’ve developed habits that help me do the right thing, even when the right thing is difficult. [Read more…]

What the marshmallow test can teach us about money

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By now, you’ve probably heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. Most folks are familiar with this fifty-year-old study and its conclusions. In case this is the first you’ve learned of it, however, I’ll give a quick review.

During the late 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel tested the willpower of young children (roughly four years old). A researcher would bring the children — one at a time — into a room where they had access to a selection of treats, including marshmallows. The children were told that they could eat have one treat right away or, if they waited fifteen minutes, they could have two. Then the researcher left the room.

While this study gave researchers an immediate glimpse at how children handle delayed gratification, it also yielded some interesting long-term results. In 1990, Mischel (and colleagues) reconnected with some of the kids from the marshmallow test to see how life had turned out for them.

This second study revealed that the children with the best self-discipline at four years old grew up to be more popular, more successful in school, and better able to handle stress. The kids with patience and willpower were less likely to turn to drugs and they were more physically fit. In short, the ability to wait fifteen minutes to earn an extra marshmallow as a preschooler seemed to be an excellent predictor of how well a child would be able to delay short-term gratification later in life in order to pursue long-term goals.

That’s it. That’s the marshmallow test. Seems simple, right? Yet this simple experiment has become one of the most oft-cited studies in the world of pop psychology. You’ll find it in books about entrepreneurship, habit formation, decision making, and — yes — personal finance.

There’s just one problem. [Read more…]

How to refinance your student loans

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This is a guest post from Travis Hornsby, founder of Student Loan Planner. I met Travis last year and realized he knows a lot about something that’s a blind spot for me. I asked him if he’d be willing to whip up an article for GRS readers about refinancing student loans. Here it is!

How would you like spending $4000 each year and have nothing to show for it? Sounds crazy, right? Yet that’s exactly what happens when you find yourself buried in debt — whether it’s credit-card debt or student loans.

Let me give you an example.

I had a friend who owed about $200,000 of student debt. He was paying everything back on the standard ten-year plan with the federal government.

He knew there were other lenders out there that would allow him to refinance to a lower interest rate, but he wasn’t sure there would be much of a benefit. After I convinced him to explore his options, however, he locked in a rate of 5% instead of 7%. In other words, he cut his annual interest costs by more than $4000.

What could you do with an extra $4000 per year?

Another buddy of mine got a letter in the mail from a major bank that convinced him to refinance his federal loans to a 4.8% variable rate. Not bad. But since he didn’t shop around, he didn’t realize he could have found a much lower rate! After some research, he went with another lender that gave him a variable rate in the low threes. Because he owed so much, he was able to save about $10,000 per year!

Maybe you have only a modest five figures in student loans. Maybe you’ve got six figures that you need to pay back. Or perhaps you owe so much you think paying all your student debt off is not on the table. In this article, I want to give you a framework that will allow you can save thousands of dollars by not paying any more interest than necessary.

Are You a Good Candidate For Student Loan Refinancing?

The main reason to refinance student debt is to get a lower interest rate so you can pay it off faster. There are other benefits, though, like reducing the number of loans, getting a better student loan servicer, and committing to a clear plan of becoming debt-free.

You can accomplish all of these secondary objectives while staying under the federal umbrella; the only thing you can’t get is the lower interest rate.

The first thing you need to find out is if it’s smart to refinance your student loans.

If you owe less than two times your income and work in the private sector, congrats! Refinancing is something worth considering. (If that doesn’t describe you, then you might be better off considering student loan forgiveness as an option for paying back student loans.)

Besides having the right amount of debt relative to your income, you also need to be in a solid situation financially to take on a required monthly payment with fewer borrower protections than the federal government provides.

Refinancing a student loan right after graduation isn’t a bad idea. You should have at least $5000 cash in the bank and $0 credit card debt. If you aren’t there yet, wait on refinancing until you’ve accomplished this. You’ll also want to have a credit score of at least 650.

Where Should You Shop For a Good Deal?

Although it might seem strange, each lender targets a different demographic. Because of this, one lender might look at you favorably while another one might give you a worse offer because you’re not their target customer.

Some lenders prefer high-income borrowers so much that they’ll intentionally offer a less attractive deal to anyone with lower than a six-figure income.

The only way to know for sure is to shop around and compare at least three options. Some sites (like my own) will give cash-back bonuses from student loan refinancing companies if you apply through their referral links. Since the alternative is getting $0, you might as well pick up a cash back bonus if you’re going through the trouble of searching for a rate. (I don’t care if you do it through me or somebody else — but you should take advantage of this!)

If you’d rather just get a single option to search based on your circumstances, I also built a student loan refinancing quiz to help narrow things down.

When you apply to any lender, you’ll get an answer within a couple minutes if you’re pre-qualified.

That said, you still have to submit income documentation, answer questions about your savings and assets, and submit to what’s called a hard credit check. This allows the lender to search your credit history for any negative events that could prevent them from extending you an offer.

A hard credit check has a temporary impact on your credit score by knocking that score down a few points. It’s similar to opening a credit card. If you shop around at multiple places — as long as it’s done within a 30-day window — it’ll only count against you once.

The only reason to worry about the hard credit check is if you’re about to buy a house within the next month. Other than that, you shouldn’t worry.

What Terms Should You Choose?

Choosing a student loan refinancing term is similar to choosing between a 15- or 30-year mortgage. Student loan companies offer more options. The shortest term is 5 years, followed by options for 7-, 10-, 15-, and 20-year terms. (Some companies will even let you choose your monthly payment instead of limiting you to those terms alone!)

The shorter the repayment period, the lower the interest rate.

While I like the five-year term because it ensures you’ll get out of debt quickly, you should choose the term that gives you a monthly payment you’re comfortable with.

And here’s something else important to remember: You can always refinance again if you find a lower rate.

Many borrowers don’t realize this, but I have a lot of friends and readers who take the approach of starting off with a 10- or 15-year fixed rate. This gives them a lower monthly payment. Then, once they’re in a better financial position, they refinance to a shorter term (with higher payments).

To illustrate, pretend Jimmy has a $50,000 loan at a 6% interest rate with the government. He makes $60,000 a year at a Fortune 500 company, so he owes less than two times his salary. That means he’s a good refinancing candidate.

If he chose a five-year term with a 3.5% interest rate, his monthly payment would be $910 a month. But maybe Jimmy isn’t ready for that kind of monthly commitment yet. He could refinance instead to a 5% rate for a ten-year term at a monthly payment of $530 a month, which he feels like he is more psychologically comfortable with.

After a couple of years, Jimmy could probably refinance again from a ten-year to a five-year loan. Pretend he made prepayments and now owes about $30,000. His new refinancing would be based on this new principal amount and thus he’d have to pay about $546 a month.

My preference is that you’d get insanely aggressive right away, but I just wanted to mention this since many borrowers leave money on the table by not refinancing more than once. (You can also pick up multiple cash-back bonuses this way similar to credit card reward hacking.)

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of folks out there who could save big bucks if they were to refinance their student loans.

But remember: You only want to refinance if it helps you get a lower interest rate, not just to consolidate loans. A lower rate means more of your payments will go to principal and thus get you out of debt faster.

Be sure to have your financial house in order first before signing up for big monthly payments with a private lender as the government is far more flexible. That said, you shouldn’t pay extra money on interest without a good reason.

How to retire young

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How to Retire Young by Edward M. TauberI am both a money nerd and a book nerd. Naturally, I get a little giddy when I find old books about money I’ve never heard of before.

While browsing Oregon’s best used bookstore earlier this year, I stumbled on a 1989 book called How to Retire Young by Edward M. Tauber. Tauber retired at the age of 43 from a tenured full professorship as Professor of Marketing at the University of Southern California. He’s written a number of marketing textbooks, but this was his first (and only?) foray into the realm of personal finance.

How to Retire Young is one of the oldest books I’ve found on the subject of early retirement. It’s fun to see how much of the modern financial independence movement is foreshadowed in the book’s pages.

It’s also fun to see how closely How to Retire Young adheres to my own “get rich slowly” philosophy. “Much [financial advice] is oriented toward the quick buck,” writes Tauber, “taking paths that often have a low probability. In short, you might as well play the lottery.”

Tauber has a different philosophy. He urges readers to “take the high road”. He wants them to follow the path with the greatest odds of success, even if that path might not lead to quick wins. He also cautions that “there’s no best way for everyone”, just as I say “do what works for you“. There are certainly best practices and mathematically optimal options, but there aren’t any right options.

You Can Retire Young

Tauber’s premise is that many people can retire early — if they plan and remain dedicated to the plan. He writes:

“If you want to retire early, there are no magic formulas. It requires hard work to make money and requires smart work to learn how to invest on a pretax basis. If you invested 15 to 20 years in school to learn how to make money, why not spend a little effort to plan how to capitalize on your earning power to be able to enjoy it for a third of your life on your terms in early retirement?”

“Think of life has having three periods: schooling, working, and savoring,” he says. Most folks spend the first 20 to 25 years of life in school, work for 40 to 50 years, then leave what’s left for “savoring”. He suggests shifting our perspective. “Why not plan life in three equal installments?” he asks. Spend 25 years in school, work for 25 years, then savor another 25 years — or more.

The issue, as you know, is that there are trade-offs. The opportunity cost of retiring young is the stuff you could have had (and the things you could have done) during your working years. “Early retirement is like anything else that you can purchase,” Tauber writes. You probably won’t have as much discretionary income while you’re saving or when you retire, but you will have the time to enjoy what you do have.”

Tauber says the reason most people don’t retire early is they don’t think it’s possible. More than that, they’re not willing to wait to spend their money. They want to spend it now. They’re working hard, earning money, and they feel like they deserve to indulge themselves.

What’s more, the average person “cannot visualize the possibility that [work] might slow or stop”. People fall victim to the forever fallacy. As a result, they get trapped in what Tauber calls the work-spend cycle.

When you want everything now, you get it now — but that means exactly what it implies: having it now, not later. “It’s a prescription for a lifetime of work and spend,” Tauber warns. It’s also a prescription for living on less when you’re older. If you want money now and later, you have to plan for it. You have to want it badly or it won’t happen. And “if you want to retire early, you have to do it yourself, using the system to your best advantage.” [Read more…]

An experiment: Saturday morning money conversations on the GRS Facebook page

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The world of blogging has changed since I started Get Rich Slowly in April 2006. For one thing, “blogging” now encompasses other media. Some folks prefer to get their info via podcasts or video. (Me? I’m a reader.)

J.D. during a podcast interview [wide]

As an experiment — and to prove I’m not that old — I’m going to try a series of four weekly Facebook Live discussions. For the next four Saturdays, Kim and I are going to have a Saturday morning conversation about personal finance in front of dozens (hundreds?) of other folks.

That’s right: My girlfriend is going to join me for this project.

After a lot of discussion about what format would work best, I realized that Kim’s voice would be a welcome addition to these videos. For one, she’s nicer to look at and has a more engaging personality. For another, she’s not as far along the path to financial freedom as I am. In fact, she has some very real concerns about whether or not she’ll be able to save enough for retirement by the time she wants to retire!

Adding Kim to the mix will make these conversations more interesting (we can interview each other) and allow viewers to get more than one point of view.

For now, we’re only planning to do four of these. If people like them — and they’re not too difficult — we’ll make this a regular feature. (And, in the meantime, I’m preparing to create other video material for the GRS YouTube channel.)

Here’s our tentative schedule:

  • August 11th: Managing money in a long-term relationship
  • August 18th: The pros and cons of homeownership
  • August 25th: Choosing the best bank accounts and credit cards
  • September 1st: Discovering ways to earn more money

We’ll be sipping coffee and talking about money on Saturdays at 8 a.m. Pacific (which is 11 a.m. Eastern). You can join us at the Get Rich Slowly page on Facebook. I look forward to trying something new — and to interacting with an audience in real time!

Which New Car Would You Buy?

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Last week via email, reader David Hatch asked:

If you were going to buy a new car, what would you get do you think?

I wrote a short email reply…then decide this topic is worth a deeper dive (of only for my own personal edification).

You see, Kim and I have been talking about cars lately. Mine is fifteen years old and hers is over twenty. Although both are running fine, we realize that we’ll have to replace one (or both) of them in the near future. When we do, what will we buy? What kind of new car is right for Kim? What kind of car is right for me?

Let’s start by looking at the cars I’ve owned in the past.

Every Car I’ve Ever Owned

I am not a car guy. Even though I can appreciate nice cars, I don’t have any desire to own them. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because my parents never had nice cars when I was a kid. They had practical, serviceable vehicles that got the job done.

During my 33 years of driving, I’ve owned five cars.

In high school, I inherited my father’s 1980 Datsun 310 GX. I drove that little red beast until it died during my senior year of college. I had a lot of fun with the Datsun, but I treated it poorly. The best part about this car was that I could perform a lot of the maintenance myself — even though I don’t have much mechanical knowledge. (Driven from March 1985 to March 1991 — six years.)

After the Datsun died, Dad bought me a $1000 Ford Tempo as a college graduation present. It was a POS from the start. I drove it for less than six months before giving up on it. (Driven from March 1991 to September 1991 — six months.)

When I landed my first job (which turned out to be the worst job I ever had), I also bought my first new car: a 1992 Geo Storm. Naturally, I bought it on credit…before I’d even received a paycheck. I loved that $12,000 car the entire time I owned it. (Driven from September 1991 to December 2000 — 9.25 years.)

On 01 December 2000, a semi sideswiped my Geo Storm on the freeway during morning traffic. The car spun 360+ degrees before striking an overpass guardrail, deploying the airbag. The car was totalled; fortunately, I wasn’t hurt.

The left side of my Geo Storm (after accident)

After the accident, I purchased a brand-new 2001 Ford Focus from a friend who worked at a local dealership. I paid $15,000. I hated that car from Day One. It was awful. (I should have read the Consumer Reports reviews before buying; I would have steered clear!) I bought that vehicle with a loan too. (Driven from December 2000 to April 2009 — 8.25 years.)

In 2009, after years of dreaming about it, I realized I could afford to buy a used Mini Cooper. By this point, I’d been writing GRS for three years, so I put my own advice into practice. I shopped around. I bought used. I paid $15,000 cash. I’ve owned that 2004 Mini Cooper for more than nine years now. In fact, as of this month, it’s the car I’ve owned longest in my lifetime.

J.D. and his Mini Cooper

As you can tell, when I buy a car, I tend to drive it for a long time. I rarely (if ever) get the new car itch. I wish I could say this was because I’m rational about my car-buying decisions, but that’s not it. I’m just not a car guy. (Computers, though? Well, I want to upgrade my computer every year. I am a computer guy.)

But David didn’t ask about the cars I’ve owned in the past. He asked what car I’d buy new. [Read more…]

What it means to be rich: The difference between income and wealth

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I’m generally a pretty laid-back guy but, like anyone, I do have pet peeves. Because I write about money, I have lots of trivial personal-finance pet peeves. (It’s “saving rate“, not “savings rate”. Dave Ramsey did not invent the debt snowball, and his version is but one kind of debt snowball. It’s not the only debt snowball. See? I told you these pet peeves were trivial!)

It’s silly that I’m bugged by this stuff, but I am. I’m sure you have pet peeves too, especially when it comes to your work.

One of my top pet peeves in the world of personal finance is when people who should know better conflate income and wealth. A high income can lead to great wealth — although it doesn’t always — but they’re not the same thing.

I see this error frequently — even in high-profile articles at major media outlets.

This morning, for example, I read an article at Vox about income inequality in Europe and the United States. The piece opens like this:

Income inequality is a growing problem in the United States. The richest Americans have reaped a disproportional amount of economic growth while worker wages have failed to keep pace.

The author elaborates: “From 1980 to 2016, the poorest half of the US population has seen its share of income steadily decline, and the top 1 percent have grabbed more.”

What bugs me here are the logical leaps from “low income” to “poor” and from “high income” to “rich”. But I can’t blame the author of this article; the source material makes the same mistake.

The Difference Between Income and Wealth

Now, I’m not here to explore income equality — that’s a subject for another day — but I want to talk about the difference between income and wealth…and why they’re not the same thing.

First, let’s define our terms.

  • Income is earning money. Yes, it’s the primary piece of wealth creation, but income itself is not wealth.
  • Wealth is having money. If you have a lot of money, you are rich. If you don’t have much money, you’re poor.

Income and wealth are related, but it’s a complicated relationship. [Read more…]

The big fat truth: J.D. Roth interviews JD Roth

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I’m not the only semi-celebrity J.D. Roth. For more than fifteen years, I’ve been receiving email and tweets and Facebook messages intended for the other JD Roth, the former executive producer of The Biggest Loser — and tons of other television shows.

Apparently the other JD Roth has a lot of fans. Actually, I’m one of them. I’ve been watching his shows since 2009, when season seven of The Biggest Loser inspired me to start my own weight-loss journey. When he published his book The Big Fat Truth in the spring of 2016, I read it the day it was released. I thought it was great, and wished that I could interview the author, but Kim and I were in the middle of our 15-month RV trip across the U.S. and I couldn’t make the logistics work.

In 2017, when I learned that Roth had created a TV version of The Big Fat Truth, I knew the time had come at last: J.D. Roth was going to interview JD Roth. Last August, we made it happen. (I originally published this interview at Money Boss a year ago; today, I’m moving it to Get Rich Slowly.)

Note: It can be tough to tell the two of us apart. We’re both 5’8″. We both have the same facial hair. We both have beautiful wives/girlfriends. And we both share similar underlying philosophies regarding success and personal development.

That said, there are some subtle differences between the two of us.

  • I spell my name J.D. Roth; he spells his name JD Roth.
  • I live in Oregon; he lives in California.
  • I have one producer credit on IMDB; he has 51 producer credits.
  • I have 22,030 followers on Twitter; he has 848 followers. (You should follow both of us, by the way!)
  • When I was younger, I looked so much like Star Trek‘s Commander Riker that some of my friends actually called me Riker! The other JD Roth was actually one of the final candidates for the role of Wesley Crusher.

For the purposes of this article, here’s how to tell us apart: When I write about myself, I won’t do it in the third person. I’ll say “I” and “me”. When I write about the fitness JD Roth, I’ll use proper journalistic form and refer to him by his last name.

The Big Fat Truth

“I’ve been watching your new show [The Big Fat Truth], and I really like it,” I told JD Roth at the start of our phone conversation. “I like that it’s less of a game show and more about helping participants address not only their health, but the other things they’re struggling with in their lives.”

“Yeah, it’s all interconnected.”

“Plus, The Big Fat Truth feels less produced than The Biggest Loser. There aren’t any weekly weigh-ins and there’s not dramatic music. It’s you sitting down and helping real people living their real lives facing real challenges — but still achieving real results.”

“Thank you.”

“In one episode, for instance, you have a couple analyze how they allow words to hurt them — how they use what others say as an excuse to make bad food choices. Or there’s the mom episode where you go over to Nancy’s house and it’s a mess. Her basement is a disaster, so you ask her to clean it up. I think you say something like, ‘Fix your mind and the body will follow.’ I love that.”

“All of these things in your life — your basement, your bank account, your belly — are a microcosm of what’s going on in your mind. Being ready to assess your inner life is probably the hardest part of losing weight. But it’s also the most important.”

“Here’s an exercise I’ve used in the past,” Roth said. “I tell participants to go home and clean out their bedrooms. If you want to lose weight, empty out your bedroom. Let yourself wake up to peace, organization, and calm. Give yourself this one oasis to escape from the chaos of life. This small step is a great place to start.”

From Desire to Transformation

“How do you help people move from desire to transformation?” I asked. “Many people want to lose weight, just like many people want to get out of debt. How do you move them from wanting to doing?” Before Roth could answer, I explained my own approach. [Read more…]