5 Luxury Purchases That Are Actually Worth It

(upbeat music) There is one thing that pretty much every single founder we have spoken to, as said, once they have bought it, they could never go back. You see, making money is one thing. And for a lot of people in our community, it's actually kind of the easy part. The hard part, or the weird thing, is what happens next, which is figuring out what to do with it. From the outside, it seems obvious. Get the car, get the designer clothes, deck out the house, maybe the boat, or the watches, God, the watches. The problem, though, is that everything that you buy is another thing that you're responsible for, and everything that you're responsible for, is, well, another thing that you're responsible for. And not only that, but the things that cost money, they might not actually make you feel good, or like yourself. We had one guy in the show who talked about, he bought a souped-up Tesla, and he was driving it around, and he just felt like such a tool, so he eventually just got rid of it, and bought a regular pick and trick, which felt way better for him. That doesn't mean that there aren't things that are worth spending on. In fact, there are a few things that have consistently come up on the show, where everybody has said, yeah, that, 100%. But if you're new here and you're wondering who those people are, might make sense if I explain it a little bit. This is my wise podcast for, "Hine Out With Founders" over at joinhampton.com, and that means it's a podcast, not four people who are trying to break into business, or get rich. This is for people who already have, and what comes next. And I am Jackie Lamport, the producer of the show, which gives me a funny perspective, because I have outsider objectivity, and also insider access, in the form of over 150 interviews I've done with Founders for the show, and also the network of founders of over 1,000 people at joinhampton.com, which means that I can kind of act as the collective perspective of these things. And in this episode, that collective perspective, has decided on five luxury purchases that are actually worth spending your money on. (upbeat music) Starting with something that sounds physically impossible by time. And yeah, I'm not talking about the watches. You might feel the tell, how I feel. What I am talking about is buying back the time that you spend doing things that are tedious, or unenjoyable, so that you can spend more time doing the things that you do want to do. That means the housekeeper, the private chef, the personal assistant, that kind of stuff. There are obviously a lot of benefits to that, personal enjoyment. I would spend all day playing guitar if I could, or spending more time with your family. That's also probably a good idea. Also maybe just like putting it back into work so that you can really up that financial ROI. And there's also the benefit of removing friction in your household. So there's no conversations about, did you do that thing yet? Or you should have done that thing. Or why are you doing that and not me? That kind of stuff. And on the chef thing specifically, if you're anything like me and you hate cooking, it means that you get to have three healthy meals a day, which is healthy. I know that it can be a really fun thing for some people, and food can be great, but I swear to God for some of us, it's the most annoying thing in the world because you can never stop thinking about it, which means that you are also buying back some mental space. Now if you thought that I was going to go through this whole list and not also list the caveats, then you clearly don't know me very well yet, because there are always trade-offs. The first one here being for the people who aren't like me and do enjoy cooking, because somehow there are a lot of you. So yeah, there are two risks here. One is that you accidentally end up getting rid of the meditative time that you didn't realize was meditative or restorative because it doesn't sound like it should be. Like cooking or honestly for me, cleaning the bathroom. Getting more time back means that you also have the potential opportunity to push yourself maybe a little bit too hard because you still want to make something of that time. Restortive and easy things are important. So if you're buying your time back, just make sure that you're also still making room for that kind of stuff. The other risk is that you make life a little bit too easy. Being low-rounded person does mean being disciplined and doing some things that maybe you don't want to do sometimes. Take it from Tommy Mel. This one's one of those things that just, I feel like it's a massive, massive dopamine release when you do something hard. And it's not just about you. It's also about your kids because if they don't see you do hard things, then why should they? And I realize that I just spent maybe more time arguing against this and for it, but I think the pros are just a lot more obvious. The reason that it's on this list is because it is worth it. And so yeah, but let's move on. You know what else buys time and maybe a little bit more of a real sense being healthy so that you can live longer, which is why the next item on this list is personal trainers and some high-end health investments. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you have to be Brian Johnson because I mean, who can compete with that? I have the best biomarkers of anybody on planet earth. I'm the healthiest person out of eight billion people. Brian's mission is in a whole other league though, so we're not gonna worry about that. But there are actually a lot of biohacks and money grabs that are advertised as cheat codes that you gotta watch out for. Good health requires his glyphorid. So maybe a good rule of thumb is if you don't have to put effort in. It's probably not worth it. But something that not a single person on the show has said wasn't worth the money is a personal trainer. Somebody who can set up your workouts, know what's actually needed for you in your body. And more importantly, hold you accountable. And on home gyms, there are yes, some people who maybe spend a little bit too much money on the big fancy machines and don't know how the big fancy machines work. But it actually, supposedly, is pretty much always worth it to invest in a gym at home. And that's something that even some of our most modest spenders have said. - So we do have a home gym. My husband loves to buy the most weird random workout equipment. Like he gets into these little, he'll be doing this program and he's like, I have to buy this thing to work my ankle. Like he had this special thing where you move your foot up and down with like a weight on time. Like what is this? (laughing) The most single use equipment I've ever seen in my life. So we're like, okay, yeah, any kind of workout thing, health thing will spend unlimited on. I spoke to Anthony over at Daily Body Coach, which is a fitness service for busy founders and also a frequent sponsor of the show, though he doesn't know that I'm plugging him right now. So, hi, Anthony. I asked him about home gyms and he said that the people who invested in home gyms were actually the people who were more consistent and committed because they were creating less friction for them to actually do their workouts. So yeah, worth it. And as much as muscles and mobility are awesome, the physical health isn't the only thing. Mental health also matters. And there has not been a single founder on the show who was spoken against therapy. It's a no-brainer. That's a, look, there's a pun there. Hi, yeah. I'm sorry. All right, money wise listeners, here's the deal. On this podcast, we talk about money and that's great. But the one thing that's even more important than money is your health. And a few years ago, I made a change. So I made a change to get fit. I wanted to get fit for vanity reasons. I wanted to look good, but I also wanted to feel awesome and hopefully live a long time. And the way that I made this change after years of struggling was I hired a coach. And it changed my life. I went from being like 25% body fat to 13, sometimes 12% body fat. It changed my life. And that's why today's sponsor is Daily Body Coach. It's a premium online coaching service for ambitious entrepreneurs and executives looking to achieve their dream body and perform their best. Daily Body Coach is run by an exited software entrepreneur and Hampton member. And in fact, a bunch of other Hampton members are using Daily Body Coach. And they hook you up with a super personalized exercise and nutritional roadmap to help you achieve your goals. Their expert coaches are available seven days a week. So you can rest assured knowing that you have someone to hold you accountable every single day and to keep you on track. You can have it all. They offer a 100% money back guarantee within 30 days no questions asked. Make a change, check them out, dailybodycoach.com/moneywise. Again, that's dailybodycoach.com/moneywise. And then there's preventative health care. Nick Cuber might be one of the most frugal guests that we've had on the show relative to his net worth. And he has absolutely no problem spending a lot of money on high-end health care for both him and his family. - I spend three grand a month on health insurance for my family. But I've probably spent 100 grand on consier health. For me, my wife, my mom, my dad, my wife's mom, my wife's dad. And I'm going to keep spending that money on additional family members because preventative health and things like that are just not a focus in the United States or anywhere in the world. So if you're serious about that, there's a lot of options and things you can do. - And Jay Barard goes even further than just premium regular care. - We get certain health tests that cost a couple thousand a year that we think is really valuable to us. - I know that those last two things were in the boring, when it was responsible, optimized your life kind of categories. But then not exactly the things that you might think of when you hear the words luxury purchases. So let's talk about some of the luxury purchases. Though I will say that the list has kind of worked out the way that it has because those boring things are the things that are consistently worth the money. And you would be hard pressed to find as many people argue that a Ferrari was. Part three, dream homes. On the dream home, let's some of our guests take lead on this one, starting with Mike Brown. - Building my dream house was one of the greatest experiences of my life. And by no means was this the best investment of my life from an ROI perspective, but how I try to frame investments now is for turn on happiness. And investing in building my dream home, it's become a gathering place for, we have monthly founder dinners, I host your treats here. And that has brought me a tremendous amount of joy. So what I try to think about now is aligning our wealth with our values and creating that life that we actually want to create. And to me, this is the pinnacle of that. - And I say dream home, but in Travis's case, it was a dream cottage. Travis and I are both Canadian, so I can describe it as cottage. Though for everybody else, maybe I'll say, like, yes. I should be able to sleep easily 45, 50 people at this property. - Does that change your happiness? - Yes. - You could tell like smile when I say that or? - That's why I'm asking. - Yeah, 100%. I mean, I never wanted wealth for things. I wanted wealth for memories for-- - And that creates them. - Yeah, and it's a way to share, you know, my cousins, my friends, my, you know, I want this place to use. If we're not there, it's not gonna be, like, locked up and like, no, you can't go, like I want people to go down there, use it. It's a way for other people to be able to experience or get some joy out of the money we've been able to make, right? And share that. So that was kind of our dream. - You can hear it when he talks about it. It's not just a flex. It's something that genuinely brings a lot of joy to his life because it's not about checking out a box, big house, because I got the big monies. It's about what enables, which is quality time with your family and your friends and maybe creative memories for your kids or having founders over for dinner parties and stuff like they do at joinhampton.com. It's maybe not the best financial ROI, but emotionally it is. You knew this was coming. There are caveats because a dream home can very quickly fall into a, the house owns you now kind of situation. Especially if you go too big, which you don't have to. Affording a big house is more than just the upfront price tag. There's also insurance and maintenance and property taxes and furnishing and on and on and on. We spoke to a guy named Hank who has a 24,000 square foot home and he said that that actually kind of turned into a part-time job. - How much time per week are you spending or per month making sure everything's taken care of? - I mean, it depends. It's whether it's hiring contractors, evaluating their proposals and trying to oversee what they're doing. I probably spend 10 hours a week doing it, maybe, five to 10 hours a week. - For him, it was worth it to provide a space for his kids and his grandkids to come over and make memories. But he did say that if he wasn't already retired, he wouldn't do it because even if he pays somebody to take care of things, it's a lot of time taking care of things. And kids, that's another caveat here because you don't necessarily want them to grow up thinking that a home that sleeps 45 people and has a private chef and basketball courts, that that'll be awesome, is normal. In fact, if I did an episode about the top anxieties that all of our founders have expressed, not raising spoiled kids would probably be at the top or at least the top two. For the next part, I'm gonna move back to Coppets sort of. Don't blame me for reality. It's not my fault that expensive items don't really move the needle. Now we're gonna talk about experiences. Not only do we hear time and time again that this is the best way to spend money, we also have the data to back this one up because we did a wealth report and we asked a lot of founders how much money they're worth and what they spend it on. And the majority of people reported their number one personal spend item to be travel and experiences. For this list entry, I'm actually gonna start the caveats because doing experiences just for the sake of them, things that don't actually line up with your personal values or what you want from life, that isn't worth the money. Brian Johnson learned by doing just that. - I did a few adventure trips. Like I drove a dog sled across the Arctic. I did sweet and sweet and I didn't do an act of volcano in Iceland, but outside of a few adventure things that I always wanted to do, it was entirely focusing on the 25th century. It just didn't appeal to me to do other stuff. - It's because what Brian Johnson values most is pushing human boundaries and more important being remembered for it, which you can't do in Iceland. Although maybe, Jules Fern. The eye search is quickly becoming one of the easiest ways for companies to get in front of customers right now. And the best way to take advantage of it is with mentions.so. It was built by a Hampton member and it gives you one simple dashboard that shows you exactly how your company ranks inside LLMs like Chachi Petit. And more importantly, what you need to do to get Chachi Petit to recommend your product or service to potential customers. Every 10 years or so, a new growth channel is born. And for a small window of time, companies are able to get attention for cheap and drive massive growth. Imagine being able to go back in time and buy Facebook ads in 2007 with all the knowledge that you have now or even being able to go back and create TikTok content in 2017. 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That's Mensions.so code MoneyWise for 50% off your first month and a free search audit. The obvious thing here that makes experiences worth it is creating memorable ones for your family and your loved ones. And in a particularly emotional example of that Mitch told us about how this has become his soul-spending priority following his wife's illness and recovery. Our style as a family since the cancer has been pretty much two big values that we live by. The first is we believe in experiences over comfort which means that like how many times would you do something really amazing, but you sit on the couch and do Netflix or you say I'm tired or life is too busy. But like experiences or everything and rights holder listen to us in 24, we are going nuts on trips and things and I bet you by the end of this year, it'll be close to half a million on experiences. Post exit one of our earliest guests, Ryan, he made a huge splurge that included his extended family also. We went to Antarctica last year looking at Kenya this year. So we're able to like create these experiences. We hosted our whole family. There was like 30 or so people. We had people set up tables and brought in food and like had all these activities rented out of pickle ball core. We took everybody for surf lessons. Those memories and those pictures, I look at them every time and I think wow, it's crazy that we can create situations like this to happen. The experiences don't always have to include your family. In fact, sometimes they're better not to. Jay Barard talked about how he values connecting with other people and learning about the world and therefore his experiences looked a lot different, but they were also super worth it. Culturally, you're present, you're in the moment, you can take these experiences, these stories, these memories, right? And I've also done the party trips where we're at a club till six in the morning and having like an amazing time and like that memory is amazing to take for. As you do more and more of those experiences, I'm not a car guy, I'm not looking to like acquire a bunch of stuff. So for me, it's experiences. Oh, and there's not a caveat. Sometimes the big experiences aren't worth it, especially when you're considering your family as well, which is something that Chuck learned. So we decided to take our kids to Europe for a month. So we have kids from six to 14, okay? So we take them out of school, we're going to Europe and everyone, if I told you right now, and we're going to Europe, you're thinking like, "All man, that's so cool." Like that's right, you're rich. You're rich kids, like I know people are like all the rich kids get to go live in Europe. Here's what I learned in that four months, our four weeks in Europe. One, you know what kids really, really want? Just, I don't know, hang out with their buddies. They want friends in Fortnite, that's my joke. They wanted their friends, they didn't care we were in Paris, didn't care we were in London, they didn't care we were in Prague, like they have glimpses of fundembers that they just wanted to be with their buddies running around the neighborhood. So frankly, we did even make it a month. So how do you make experiences worth it instead of just hollow situations that you put yourself in? In speaking with founders, there have been two recurring patterns. One, is that you design it around caption and curiosity is opposed to the status or being flashy. And two, there's intention behind why this place, why these people, why this time, all that stuff matters. And now for the final item on our list, the thing that I tease at the beginning where I said once you start buying it, it's very hard to stop. So if you can't always afford it, maybe don't start? It's business class or a more elevated version of that. Private travel. Ali of Dahl was actually a pretty frugal spender, but listen to what he said when we asked him about his spending. I really like flying business class. Whenever I do, I try not to take it for granted. I try and do the whole gratitude stuff because I'm like, this would have been, I wouldn't even have even entertained the possibility I'd be like, how fucking dumb do you have to eat fly business class? Economy takes you in the same direction. Everyone's getting the same destination. I just absolutely love flying business class. And let's go back to our buddy, Jay Barat again. I can in Will Fly business class any time I want to. I still don't care if it's a short flight. If it's an overseas flight, I'm always going to fly business class. That's probably the highest level of the feeling of wealth. For a lot of people in this community, this is the ultimate. I made it. It's not the big house. It's not the nice fancy car. It's being able to get on a plane, lay down on that plane, then get off said plane without any back or knee pain. That is the ultimate luxury. There are only two downsides, really. One, the thing that I already explained, which is that, if you start, make sure you can afford not to stop. And two, the kit thing. Because yeah, raising spoiled kids. We had a parenting expert on Dr. Becky. And she told the story about why it's important not to forget that part. I've told this story before, but to me it's so compelling. Because these are the, like, loveliest, most well-meaning parents. And the dad had become very successful. And 16-year-old had a full-blown temper tantrum in an airport when he found out he wasn't flying first class. So there you have it. That's the list. The five luxury purchases that, according to the people who can afford them, are actually worth it. We have buying back your time, investing in your health, making that dream home a reality, meaningful experiences. And then, yeah, of course, just flying in a way that doesn't destroy your body. The pattern here is that the things that are worth it are the things that give you time and make you healthier and make your life feel more memorable and calm. And the things that aren't worth it are consistently the things that you just bought because you could, the items, the things that actually just Over. complicate your life instead of adding anything to it. ♪ I swear you've had gold I've been running for ♪ ♪ Honey, back up, open one to top, bro ♪ I'm Jackie Lamport and this is MoneyWise and again this podcast is made for the founders over at the community of foundersover at joinhampton.com So if you're a founder doing at least three million in revenue go check it out totally worth your while. Again joinhampton.com and if you're interested in a podcast like this you want to work with me with my team then check us out at lowerstreet.co 'cause yeah that's what we do. We make podcasts. Thanks for listening. ♪ I swear you've had gold I've been running for ♪