Whether it’s needing more money or more time to accomplish everything, the constant pressure for more can become overwhelming. In this insightful episode, Annie explores the surprising power of subtraction and how removing the unnecessary can create space for what truly matters. Annie dives into the art of decluttering both physical and mental spaces and introduces practical subtraction strategies to free up time and energy. Discover how doing less can lead to more meaningful and intentional living.
Three Key Actions for Financial Freedom:
1. Clarify Your Vision: Define what financial freedom and a life by design mean to you.
2. Daily Check-In: Ask yourself if you're closer to your vision today than you were yesterday.
3. One Action a Day: Identify one thing you can do each day to move closer to your vision.
The Art of Simplifying
[00:02:48] We're all conditioned to add more, to build bigger as a business owner, to scale faster, to add more team members. But sometimes the solution actually lies in subtracting and taking things away.
[00:28:09] Start keeping a stop doing list and just start putting some things on there that you know you don't want to do anymore. Maybe you don't know how to stop doing them yet, but you can start strategizing about how to get them off your list.
[00:38:09] Nobody goes from zero to financial freedom like that. Everybody does it step by step by step. And the more that you do it, the bigger those steps will get, that you'll be able to make bigger strides faster because you'll have that momentum behind you.
Mentioned in this episode:
Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, by Leidy Klotz: https://www.amazon.com/Subtract-Untapped-Science-Leidy-Klotz/dp/1250249864
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Annie [0:04 - 31:38]: Hey there. Are you frustrated by all the stuff in your life? How busy you feel, how it seems like you're on an endless hamster wheel? I know I am. I know there are apps these days that can help you with time management tools to help you organize your finances. And now there's even AI to throw into the mix to help you kind of filter through things and discover new things. But is more truly the answer, or should we be considering less? I know it's not a common thing to do, but that's exactly what we're going to explore in this episode. My name is Annie Dickerson, and I wanted to welcome you to this episode of the Life and Money show presented by good egg investments. Before we jump in, I wanted to share with you, those are real frustrations of mine. And if you're nodding your head too, I'm right there with you. There's so much stuff in today's life. There's a lot of clutter. And the tendency is to think, okay, well, I gotta solve this problem. So I'm gonna add another thing. I'm gonna add this tool so it can help me with this thing. You keep adding, adding, adding. At a certain point, it just becomes too much. So in this conversation, we're going to talk about a few key things. And if you want just the highlights, here they are. First, we're all conditioned to add more, to build bigger as a business owner, to scale faster, to add more team members. But sometimes the solution actually lies in subtracting and taking things away. Next key point is, when approaching a challenge, it's just as important to think about subtracting as it is to think about adding. It's not either or, but it's both. And. And we'll talk about that. And finally, with your life by design and your financial goals, subtraction is just as important there, too. And we're going to talk about that. I've got some personal stories to share as well, so let's go ahead and dive in. A lot of what we're going to talk about here today is based on concepts in a fantastic book. It's called subtract. Very minimalistic title and book cover. If you take a look at it, it's called subtract. It's by a professor named Leidy Klotz, and it's phenomenal. It talks about all these studies, about how our brains are wired to think about more and not less. But in today's society, in today's world, where things are moving so fast and there's so much the value of taking away and stripping things down to their essence can really make that difference that you're looking for. Speaking of which, if you're looking for a like minded community of people who are also on the path to financial freedom and creating a life by design, I wanted to personally invite you to join the good egg Investor club. It's our community of investors, financial freedom seekers, people who are looking to go beyond the typical path, which is exactly what we're talking about here today. Because adding it's the typical path, you're taught to do more, add more to your day, bring in more tools, meet more people, scale faster, grow bigger. But to go against the grain and to think about, oh, is that truly the right path? Or do I want to go the other way, a different direction that involves going against the green. And that's what so much of financial freedom, the fire movement, financial independence, retire early, and building wealth through real estate is all about. So if you are in that camp and you are on that path, we invite you to join the good egg Investor club. You can go to goodeginvestments.com slash invest with that. I want to dive into a story I think you'll find fascinating. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm actually in Kensington, which is a tiny little town just north of Berkeley. And from my windows I can see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, the San Francisco skyline. We are so blessed and grateful to live in this house. So from where we are, we can see Embargadero, which is this area of downtown San Francisco, kind of near the water. Now, I've only lived in San Francisco for the last ten years or so, but you probably at some point in your life have heard about the big earthquake of 1989. Now here's why this is important. At the San Francisco, along the pier there, along the water, there used to be a double decker highway. Now there's still some of these in other parts of San Francisco. But imagine this double decker freeway, the Embarcadero Freeway, and people can't see the water. Well, there was a woman who lived in San Francisco. Her name was Sue Biermann. This was many decades ago, but she had this vision. She was like, if we could just clear that highway, we could bring more people in, and people would love to be right there on the waterfront. So she joined the planning commission. She then commissioned all these studies. Because it's a big deal to take down a highway. You've got to do lots of studies about the impact to the local infrastructure. To the businesses, to tourism. So she and her team did all of these studies, and all the studies said it would be either a neutral or a positive impact locally. So she's got all this data. Imagine sue going, and she's saying, okay, this is going to be a really good thing. But of course, you have to put it to a vote. So they put it to a vote to the residents of San Francisco, and I'm sure you can guess what happened. They shut it down almost unanimously. People were like, no, we need that highway. I drive on that highway all the time. My business is right there. How will people get to my business? So people had this fear of loss, and they said, absolutely not. We are not doing away with that highway. We need that. So what could sue do? She had to say, okay, well, moving on to other projects. And then, of course, in 1989, with that earthquake, that double decker freeway, it collapsed. And even then, after it collapsed, when they were deciding what to do with it, people wanted to rebuild it. Think about that. This thing had collapsed. It was clear that this was not structurally sound, and it was kind of an eyesore, but people still wanted to rebuild it. But finally, after lots of discussions, they finally decided to take it down. And guess what? In the months and years that followed, not only did it not have a negative impact, but it had a huge positive impact on that area as well as the whole Bay area. And now it's one of the most popular tourist destinations is that embarcadero area, that pier area, where people can go. They can picnic right by the waterfront, they can walk along there, jog along there. It's a beautiful strip of land. So I wanted to open with this story because it's such a great example of what we're caught in this cycle of thinking. We need this. We need more. Let's add on to it. Let's build more. Rather than thinking critically about how can we take something away? Do we really need this? How can we optimize this? We've seen this in lots of other areas in life as well. You've probably heard of Marie Kondo. I know there's some controversy around her now. She's got kids, so she's a real human now. And she can't be as tidy as she once professed. But she's got really good points around when you tidy and you get rid of things. They've done scientific studies on this. It actually brings you more joy. She talks about sparking joyous. And when you declutter your desk or when you clean out your closet, that sparks more joy. It brings more energy, too, to that space. I'm sure you've done it before. You go back to that closet or you look at your desk and you just feel this sense of, oh, yeah, this is different. This is a new energy. And that's from taking away, not necessarily from adding more. Same with the strider bike. This was invented by a dad. He was a passionate biker himself. He was watching his two year old and thinking, well, most kids don't learn to pedal until they're five or six years old. To develop those muscles. He's trying to design a bike that would allow his two year old to bike with him. He went through all these different prototypes, thought about adding all these things. Then finally, he had the aha moment. Guess what it was. He took the pedals off the bike. By subtracting that, he created a whole new category. I mean, previously, two year olds wasn't really accessible to them to bike because there was no coordination to pedal. I mean, they're barely just toddling around. But with the strider bike, now, you see two year olds, three year olds zooming up and down the sidewalk, and then by the time they are ready for a pedal bike, let's say, then they've already mastered that balance. So that one thing now, one little subtraction piece, led to this whole new wave of opportunity and serving new kids, new families. So that really is the power of subtraction. But the thing is, that addition is ingrained in all of us. It's synonymous with more and more value. If you add something, you must be adding more value. If you do an extra thing, you cross an extra thing off your to do list. That must mean that you're providing more value. It's this whole productivity trap, and it's also in our lives, too, right here. We're real estate nerds. We love real estate. So think about real estate. When you think about a house and you think about making a renovation to your house. If you were to remove square footage, that would actually, in most cases, decrease the property value. Like you want to add more square footage, you want to build on more additions, that's going to add to the overall value. So it's ingrained in us this concept of adding to create more value. In fact, Daniel Kahneman, the economist, he did these very well known experiments with college students. As an aside, I used to love participating in those experiments in college. I used to sign up for all of them because I was a psychology major. So it's fascinating to me how they were getting to these big questions that they were asking about human behavior. So this particular study Daniel Kahneman did was on loss aversion. What he did was one day his students came in and at random seats throughout the classroom, he had placed a mug from the university. So with the logo and everything. All right. Very coveted, but, you know, like a $10 mug, let's say. So random students had gotten these. Then he says, well, those of you who have a mug decide how much you would sell that mug. For those of you who don't have a mug, write down how much you would buy a mug for. The fascinating thing about this is the people who had randomly gotten these mugs, they came into the class not expecting anything, and they had gotten this mug. They wrote down these really high prices for their mugs because it now belonged to them. They didn't want to lose that thing they had just gotten. And the people who didn't have a mug, they were like, yeah, it's just a mug. I don't know, pay a couple bucks for it, right? Then he opened it up, and he said, well, let's see if we can barter. We can trade. You can sell your mugs to each other. But because there was this big discrepancy, very few mugs traded hands. I don't know if any mugs traded hands. And what it demonstrates is that psychologically, it's ingrained in us that if we have something, oh, you better believe we're going to put up a fight before we're willing to part with that thing. We'd rather add more on top rather than get rid of that thing. So you have to keep all of this in mind, because this is what we're, quote, fighting against when we're going against the grain and considering something radical like subtraction. Most people are not thinking about subtraction. Most people are thinking, you've got a problem. Okay, how can I add more things, more tools, more ideas to solve this problem? But what we're talking about here, and as we've seen in all these stories, sometimes there's value in not only adding, but taking away, but it involves courage. It involves awareness, mindfulness, and going against the grain. I want to tell you about a personal story that I have around subtraction as it relates to my personal real estate portfolio. When I first started investing in real estate, I was like many others. I had read all the blog posts, listened to the podcasts, and I was like, okay, my goal is to build a portfolio of 100 doors. And if I get to that point, I'll be set for life. So I started accumulating it. Was this almost like a game of, okay, this property has four units then this one has eight units. Now, what's my total tally? I started getting more, more, and at first, because I hadn't gone very deep in it, it seemed very easy. And I thought, this is great. I just keep buying these properties. This is amazing. This is exactly what I was looking for. But then, of course, just like when you build a business, just because you have more employees doesn't mean that you're doing any less work. The work and the challenges might become different, you might scale up, but it's not like your responsibilities grow less. So that was the same with my rental properties. I built a portfolio of about 25 doors in Huntsville, Alabama. This was back several years ago. And I thought, okay, well, I'll just keep going. But all of a sudden, things started breaking down. We had things like theft, vandalism, we had to deal with evictions. It was just a lot of not only headaches, but heartaches. These are people's livelihoods. And I didn't feel like I was the right person to evict somebody or to decide if somebody should live in one of these units or not. So it got to be a lot. And I don't know, maybe this has happened to you, too. But sometimes I would be really on top of my property management team and I'd say, let's schedule weekly calls. I'm going to look over the reports and we're going to have a call and talk about all of the issues. We do that. And I'd see improvement over a period of weeks, maybe months. But then after a period of time, I'd say, you know, these look pretty good. Let's go to every other week now. And then I'd say, okay, let's just do a call every once a month, and I'll just look at the reports in between. But of course, other things slide in. Those things became less of a priority. Then the performance of those properties suffered. So I tell you this because it became an additional thing in my life. Here I was at that point, my kids were pretty young. They were, I think, three and newborn when I just started really building this portfolio intentionally. So here I was trying to figure out how to be a mom, and then over here I'm trying to figure out how to build my real estate portfolio. It would have been easy to say, okay, once I address these issues, I just need a better property management team, or I need more properties, maybe it's the scale, the economies of scale that people always talk about. That's how I'm going to get the cash flow. Or maybe I need to expand to other markets so I can diversify. So it's very easy to think about it that way. But ultimately, I really sat down and I thought about my priorities and what I was trying to do. Ultimately, through building this real estate portfolio. And I went a different direction, especially after I discovered the power of real estate syndications or these group investments, I realized that I didn't have to do it all, that I didn't have to do it myself. In fact, I could invest in these group investments and have other people do all that hard work. Those weekly property management meetings, I didn't have to do those. Somebody else could do those on my behalf, make those decisions for me, and then I would get to share in the returns. I thought that was a fantastic way to continue to build my portfolio. At that point, I decided to subtract. Over the last few years, I sold off all of my rental properties. And I got to tell you, what a relief. Oh my goodness, it was such a relief. There's a lot of tax reporting that has to happen with each rental property. The property management calls, the decisions about repairs and maintenance, having reserves on hand, it was a whole thing. And to have that off of my plate cleared the way for so much more. And in fact, I don't think that we could have built good egg to where it is today had I continued to be buried under all the weight, the responsibility of all those rental properties. So for me, that was the right move. Obviously, for you. You'll have to decide for yourself. But I just wanted to share that story as an example of how subtraction has been a huge component of my journey and my success, particularly as it relates to financial independence and real estate investing. To add on to that, here's another area. So finances is a big challenge in a lot of people's lives. Another area of challenge is time. A lot of people say they don't have time, freedom, that they're too busy. And believe me, I fall into this trap sometimes, too. There's this feeling of time, famine, like you've got too much to do and just not enough time to do it in. So if you're feeling that way, there's another concept that I stumbled across that I think might be helpful that I've started as well, is, you know how we all keep those to do lists, got to do the laundry, got to do the grocery shopping, the meal planning. Got to work out this carpooling situation with so and so's parent. Got all these things on your to do list. But most people don't have a stop doing list. And this comes from Jim Collins, author of good to great, among many other great books. But in good to great, he talks about this concept of a stop doing list. Just like you have a to do list, you can create a stop doing list. And even if it's something you can't stop doing right now, meaning you don't have the systems or the support to completely let it go. But if you put it on your stop doing list, let's say laundry, you put laundry on there, then you start to think about, well, how do I get that off my list? Do I pay to have somebody else do my laundry? Do I delegate that to somebody else? How can I get it off my list? This is actually pretty timely because laundry is part of my stop doing list. Not so much for myself, I don't mind doing my own laundry, but for the family, it's a lot of socks, a lot of underwear, a lot of shirts and random pajamas. Oh, my gosh, so much stuff. So I read another great book. Actually, my business partner Julie recommended the book how to raise an adult. I'm in the middle of reading that, but I've already implemented some of the ideas in there. And among them is this concept of teaching your kids and empowering them to do things for themselves rather than doing things for them. As a mom, I've done a lot. I mean, when they're two and three, you do their laundry for them because that's just what you do. And then it just becomes a habit and you just keep doing it. Now they're four, five, six. Suddenly they're twelve years old. They're still doing their laundry. So that was my wake up call. And very recently, I showed my kids how to do their own laundry. And guess what? They do great. They're folding it themselves. They're putting it back themselves. Is it perfect all the time? No, but it takes one thing off of my list. So there's a little strategy there for you is start keeping a stop doing list. Just start putting some things on there that you don't want to do anymore. Maybe you don't know how to stop doing them yet, but you can start strategizing about how to get them off your list. I wanted to share one more example of this, this whole concept of going against the grain and stripping things down to their core essence, because something like time and planning your schedule it might seem fairly simple, right? You just move meetings around. You plan the carpool, you plan the dinner and the activities and all this stuff, and you kind of move things around. But what about more complex things like building a business or in this example, an emergency room? Think about how complex that environment is. I'm not a physician myself, although as an asian American, definitely my parents were like, you will be a doctor or busta. So I definitely was on the pre med path. Then I went a very different direction. So the emergency room, you can imagine the emergency room has at any moment, all sorts of different cases come in and you never know. It could be as small as a broken finger or as big as a massive shark bite, let's say, or any number of things. So in the book, he talks about how they've distilled this down because if you just say, okay, there's so much going on, all hands on deck, everybody's going to be overwhelmed all the time. So they've distilled this down the ER, down to three main questions. And this is the essence. So every ER physician will go and ask these three questions. Now, it may be different at different medical centers, at different hospitals might be a little bit of a different process. But the one that he shares in the book includes just three simple questions. The first question is, does this patient require immediate life saving intervention? Number two, how many resources will this patient need? And number three, what are the patient's vital signs? It's so genius, because it's so simple. It doesn't have to be a 150 page document to say, oh, my gosh, we've got a new patient coming in through the ER. Okay, step one, step two, step three, step 5000. Often we complicate things and we just keep adding, but what's so genius about this is that they've said, yeah, this is a very complex environment and there's a lot of things that could come through that door. We may not be able to catch every little thing, but here's the essence of what we need to do and what we're trying to do immediately when a patient walks in the door or sometimes, I guess, is wheeled in the door. So they've distilled it down to those three questions. So I wanted to share that as we wrap up because I want you to think about how can you take this complex thought of your vision of a life by design or your financial freedom goals, which may seem very nebulous and very complex. How can you take that and distill it down to its core essence and maybe you create your own version of the ER triage checklist. Maybe it's only one question, maybe it's only two or three questions, but it gives you a checkpoint as something actionable where you can start to make a dent in your overall financial freedom journey. So if this sounds good to you, I'll put in my two cent around this, because financial freedom is such a big topic. There's all sorts of people out there telling you all these different formulas and different pathways, different investments, is very easy to get overwhelmed in the process. So here's what I would recommend. We're going to wrap the show with this, so you can write these down, take these with you, and hopefully refer back to them again and again. So the first thing is, of course, you've got to get crystal clear on where you actually want to go. What is your idea of financial freedom and life by design? Well, it's not a one and done, because you create that vision and then you'll revisit it at certain points, maybe once a year, let's say. But you have that vision in mind, and that might include a lot of things like luxury travel, a certain car that you want to get, a certain house that you want to buy, a certain neighborhood you want to live in. Maybe freedom from not having to work or freedom to give to charities and nonprofits. Freedom of time to be able to volunteer or be at your kids school. So thinking through what that life by design looks like for you, that's the first step. That's 80% of the hard work. Most people don't even do that. So start there, get some clarity. And again, this is about stripping things away, right? It's not about adding and saying, I want everything. I want all the luxury stuff. I want all the clothes, I want all the luxury, the watches, the cars, all that stuff. It's about distilling it down to, okay, what would really give me that sense of joy? What am I really after in this? What does financial freedom really look like for me? If I just had these three things in my life, I would feel financially free and I would be living my life by design. So I challenge you to first come up with that vision. And even if it's right now, you just write down three things. I want to be able to travel first class at least three times a year. I want to be able to send my kids to private school. I want to be able to quit my job and have passive income. Simple. It doesn't have to be complex. So figure out that vision then. Now, here's where we're distilling it down to the essence, because then the long term is about this journey to building toward that vision from where you are now to getting to that vision. How do you get there? So it can be very overwhelming. Like I said, lots of formulas, lots of charts, lots of tools, lots of trackers, lots of gurus, lots of investments, lots of warnings. There's a lot of overwhelm. So you've got to distill it down for yourself so that it's doable, so that it's manageable, and so you can see your progress, so that you stay motivated to continue to work toward that vision. So here are my recommendations for the three questions you should ask yourself on a daily basis. The first thing is not so much a question, but is to anchor into one aspect of your vision. It could be just like those examples I just said, the luxury travel, the first class travel. Close your eyes and just imagine yourself sitting in that seat where you have a button for everything, your seat going back, your lumbar support, your legs going up, you've got cubbies to put your stuff in, and the flight attendant is coming up with a tray of champagne. Just feel into that. Envision that. Just one thing, just one aspect of that life by design and make it really real. I mean, what did that take, like 10 seconds? Just take a minute to feel that and really feel the emotion of that, because that's what's going to anchor it in for you. So that's the first thing is to think of one aspect of your life by design and anchor it in emotionally. Second thing is to just ask yourself, am I closer today to reaching that vision than I was yesterday? Simple. Yes or no, am I closer today than I was yesterday? Then third thing is, what's one thing I can do today to get closer to that vision? That's it. You picture one thing, you ask yourself, am I closer today than yesterday? What's one thing I can do today? And what that does is it strips away all of the fluff, all of the overwhelm, and it makes it very bite sized. So today, you're just focusing on this one thing to get you one step closer. So tomorrow when you revisit and you say, hey, am I one step closer today than I was yesterday, yes, I am. Because yesterday I did that one thing. Great. Today I'm going to do this other thing. And that's how you get there is one step at a time. Nobody goes from zero to financial freedom like that. Everybody does it step by step by step. And the more that you do it, the bigger those steps will get, that you'll be able to make bigger strides faster because you'll have that momentum behind you. So all that to say, let's now go back to what we opened up the conversation with, those key points. We talked about the Embarcadero freeway, that example. We talked about Marie Kondo and the strider bike. I shared my example about selling off my rental properties. We talked about the idea of a stop doing list. We talked about the, er, triage and how they distilled it down. And now you've got three key actions or questions to take with you for your everyday so that you can start to get closer to your concept of financial freedom and a life by design. By doing not more, but by doing less. All right, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening to the life and money show. The show all about helping you create a meaningful and intentional life by design. Till next time, remember that your financial journey is a life, lifelong adventure. And we're here with you every step of the way. Thanks for listening.