Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Trad Dads and Dad Guilt

00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. It is gorgeous in Philadelphia right now. Is it gorgeous where you are? Like

00:00:12.060 it is sidewalk cafe rosé sippin gorgeous here. It is also the kind of weather where

00:00:18.620 men take off their shirts to go running and I just... I don't entirely understand that

00:00:26.240 impulse. Put your shirt back on, bro. Put it back on. I just, just wear a shirt. Wear a shirt.

00:00:35.020 But it is nice that everyone is outside. It just, this winter felt like it was five winters long,

00:00:40.940 and the sunshine is doing amazing things for my soul. It really is. One really quick housekeeping

00:00:47.760 thing that I want to say. First, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who

00:00:53.580 has bought The Sicilian Inheritance. It is flying off of the shelves. Bookshop.org is actually sold

00:01:01.300 out right now. A lot of indie bookstores are also sold out, and many more tell me that their stock

00:01:08.440 is running low. There will be another printing. There will be more books. But if your book club

00:01:15.200 wants to read The Sicilian Inheritance, I would get your orders in now. They are still available

00:01:21.620 at a lot of indie bookshops. You can find them at Barnes & Noble and, of course, on the Amazon.

00:01:27.920 I do not want any of you to miss out on the book of the summer before the summer even begins.

00:01:34.040 And don't forget that I am zooming into book clubs all over the country to make you a very

00:01:40.520 authentic Sicilian Negroni. Yeah, that's a thing. It's just like a regular Negroni,

00:01:45.900 but stronger and a little sexier. Now on to today's episode. We talked to a lot of women 1.00

00:01:53.000 on this show. So many brilliant and brave and funny women, all of them doing interesting things 0.94

00:02:00.900 in the world. And the other day, Nick Astor, my sweet, sweet husband, asked me,

00:02:06.580 why don't you have more men on the show? And my answer was, I just like women better. 0.99

00:02:11.780 I do. Sorry, Nick. 1.00

00:02:14.100 And while that may be true, I do actually have some interviews with dudes in the hopper.

00:02:19.300 And in fact, we have one of them today.

00:02:23.000 Sam Dogen offered himself up to me as a sacrificial lamb. 0.91

00:02:27.620 Actually, he wrote to me and told me that he was the male equivalent of the trad wife.

00:02:32.540 well one of the reasons why i wanted to reach out was because y'all said you were looking for the

00:02:39.680 male version of the trad wife and i and i offered myself up to you as the male version of the trad

00:02:46.020 you offered your you offered yourself up as a sacrificial lamb you are a stay-at-home parent

00:02:51.300 and i want to hear a little bit about your journey to becoming a stay-at-home parent a stay-at-home

00:02:56.580 dad and what that's been like for you. How did you get here? Well, so I didn't know I always

00:03:02.960 wanted to have children. We tried for several years when I started at 34 or something, and it

00:03:09.740 didn't really work because I was so focused on my career. I worked in banking for 13 years,

00:03:15.460 60 plus hours a week. And in 2012, at the age of 34, I decided I had enough. It was just too

00:03:22.320 stressful. I wanted to do something else. I enjoyed writing. And I had finally, I started

00:03:26.700 Financial Samurai in 2009. And it was something that I really, really enjoyed doing. And it started

00:03:32.200 making a little bit of money. So I said, Oh, okay, maybe I can, there is life after banking.

00:03:38.720 And so there's always life after banking. It's just, you know, it's, you probably will make

00:03:43.940 less money. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely made 80% less money the first year. It was a little bit

00:03:48.400 shocking, not getting that steady paycheck that I've been receiving for 13 years. But we had

00:03:54.900 enough. We were frugal. We had our expenses down pat. And it was interesting. Once I left banking,

00:04:02.680 the stress melted away. The white hairs went away. The weight stopped increasing. The sciatica,

00:04:10.440 the lower back pain, all of that stuff went away. And we were actually able to have a child

00:04:14.940 after I left work and after my wife left work, also at the age of 34. And so something to be

00:04:21.820 said about less stress when you're trying to produce life, there's like a positive correlation

00:04:27.640 there or inverse correlation there. And so I decided after our son was born in 2017, that

00:04:34.640 I was going to be a stay at home father for at least five years, or at least until he went to

00:04:39.360 school full time. And then we had a daughter in December 2019. And I wanted to make the same

00:04:44.520 promise. So I'm six and a half years into being a stay-at-home father. And the reason why I did it

00:04:50.240 was all the books said the fastest and most important development is in the first five

00:04:54.640 years. So I figured, well, I already gave up the money back in 2012. Might as well not give up the

00:05:00.600 time I spend with my children because we all know that they grow up so quickly. So that's where I

00:05:05.940 am. Did you find it hard to find a community of other stay-at-home dads? And how do people

00:05:12.920 respond to you when you say that you're a stay at home parent? Yeah, it's really hard to find a

00:05:18.060 community of stay at home dads. I couldn't find one. So what I did was I went to a new mother's

00:05:25.000 outing at Golden Gate Park one day. And there were six moms. And then after about a 45 minutes

00:05:30.440 stroll, we all sat down in the garden with blanket. And then all the moms started breastfeeding. So I 1.00

00:05:37.080 was like, well, this is a little weird. So I decided to give privacy and walk away for about

00:05:41.200 half an hour. And so I looked for dads and there's this dad's group once a month, but I could never

00:05:47.520 meet up at the time that they wanted to meet up. And so what I ended up doing was just figuring

00:05:53.520 out on my own online. There's really no community that I see of online stay-at-home fathers. And so

00:06:01.400 it's just, I had to figure it out on my own. It was like my dads don't seem to share their stories.

00:06:07.160 They don't seem to share their dad guilt because I think there's a huge amount of dad guilt out there.

00:06:14.140 Talk to me about that because I talk to so many women who say they don't think that their husbands have any guilt whatsoever.

00:06:19.260 What is dad guilt for you?

00:06:20.940 So dad guilt I think is just like mom guilt.

00:06:22.900 dad guilt might be even more powerful than mom guilt in a way because if the traditional role

00:06:28.980 is for the dad to make the money if that is the traditional role then dad not making the money

00:06:36.320 and being a stay-at-home dad is feeling it creates more guilt because the dad is not out there trying

00:06:43.900 to like you know hunt for food and make the big bucks to provide for his family and so that is

00:06:49.940 something that I dealt with. I know other men who are stay-at-home parents deal with that as well

00:06:55.120 because also it's really hard to be a stay-at-home dad because in the first one year of life,

00:07:01.300 especially the baby latches on to the mother because the mother is the food source. And then

00:07:06.180 in the second year of life, as the baby becomes a toddler and starts knowing what to do, the baby

00:07:14.400 will also often – or the toddler will also often rebuff the father for the mother because

00:07:19.360 the toddler has been so connected with the mother for so long.

00:07:23.280 So it's almost like an evolutionary push for dads to get out of the house and go back

00:07:28.460 and hunt for food and make money after the first year.

00:07:32.400 Right, right.

00:07:33.240 No, I can see that.

00:07:36.480 It's interesting because I push back on that so hard in my own family.

00:07:42.480 yes the kids constantly come to me like mommy mommy this um when they fall down or they need

00:07:48.500 help with something and I did not do this in the very beginning in the beginning with the first

00:07:53.420 kid I just accepted it as gospel I'm like oh it's it's me they just it's a mothering instinct and

00:07:59.340 now I push back and I'm like no go to daddy I'm busy or in the middle and I don't wake up in the

00:08:05.800 middle of the night anymore this is a third baby thing because I'm a psychopath if I don't get

00:08:10.800 sleep. Like I, my anxiety goes up, all of my body and back pain goes up. I can't make good decisions.

00:08:17.640 I can't write books. I can't do anything really. And I'm a crap parent. So Nick is the one that

00:08:23.940 gets up at night whenever any of the children cry. And I think that that has made them go to him.

00:08:31.200 not more maybe not even equal but you know definitely more than before um and it's getting

00:08:41.160 it's getting closer to equality uh but I do think that that is something that couples have to work

00:08:50.560 on uh because the baby is is definitely you know attached to the mother for food um physically

00:08:58.520 attached to her for nine months. But yeah, it is an uphill battle. And I can imagine that uphill

00:09:03.420 battle had to be hard for you with no one to talk to about it. My husband has never talked about

00:09:09.060 what we just talked about with anyone, any other human. Well, you know, yeah, there's, I guess,

00:09:14.980 men don't really open up about their struggles of being a stay-at-home father, maybe because

00:09:19.020 there's fewer of us. I'm not sure. Do you, would you? Or being a father at all. That's the thing.

00:09:25.740 I mean, just being a dad, I don't see, I count myself very lucky that I have so many amazing mother friends and female friends that I talk to all the time.

00:09:40.100 But I don't think we've created a culture where dudes talk about this.

00:09:45.380 No.

00:09:46.100 So I hope, I mean, regarding the FIRE community, for example.

00:09:50.220 Oh, yeah.

00:09:50.680 So you were part of the FIRE community.

00:09:52.980 Explain to our listeners what that is.

00:09:54.840 Yeah. So in 2009, I helped kickstart the modern day fire movement, which stands for financial independence, retire early. And the idea was to save as much money as possible. So you can get out of your corporate gig as soon as possible. So you can have as much passive investment income to cover your desired living expenses. And if you do that, you're financially independent.

00:10:16.520 And that is what I did in achieving that. When I left my day job in 2012, I had about $80,000 in passive income. It wasn't huge for San Francisco, but my wife still worked. And I told her she's three years younger than me. So I said, if you can get to 34 years old, like me, retiring at 34, you too can leave your day job and we can go live a crazy wildlife together.

00:10:39.760 And so what's interesting about the FIRE movement is that I still think there's probably 70, 80% of the participants or enthusiasts are male.

00:10:48.780 And there are many males actually who say they've retired early.

00:10:54.100 But really, they're just stay-at-home dads because their wives still work, provide health care, and bring home the money.

00:11:00.820 And so it's an interesting, curious, psychological case where men aren't willing to say they're stay-at-home fathers.

00:11:07.080 They'd rather say they are retired early, early retirees than the other way around.

00:11:14.320 And so I think men just need to just accept realities and be okay and treat the other

00:11:20.640 partner as equal and accept their situations in life.

00:11:25.280 Yeah, no, I mean, look, from your lips to goddesses ears.

00:11:31.400 Yes, men do need to treat their partners as equal.

00:11:34.760 I say that all the time.

00:11:36.240 It's amazing to me that it's something we still have to say out loud, but what I do

00:11:44.160 have a question because this podcast is about social media.

00:11:47.800 When you look at social media, do you see anything supportive for you for dads?

00:11:53.700 I mean, for a stay at home dad, but also just for dads.

00:11:58.000 I don't, maybe it's, I'm not looking hard enough.

00:12:00.680 I'm not on Instagram.

00:12:02.140 I'm not, I see TikTok, but I don't, I don't see any support groups for dads.

00:12:05.880 I'm on Twitter, but Twitter is more – I'm just focused on investing and finances and career and stuff like that.

00:12:11.840 So not really.

00:12:13.520 Not really.

00:12:14.240 And I'm interested in hearing from you, would you like your husband to be a stay-at-home dad, the male version of a trad wife?

00:12:24.640 And do you think other women would like more of their husbands to be stay-at-home fathers?

00:12:30.780 Because I hear, what I do see is, you know, maybe jokingly or not jokingly, complaints that men aren't doing enough around the household. 1.00

00:12:39.140 And that's probably true. 0.99

00:12:41.120 So that's a really interesting question because my husband and I have gone back and forth between, you know, who is the breadwinner, who makes more money, who brings home the health insurance, which is a huge, totally annoying thing in our country.

00:12:57.420 yes i think that i would love it that said

00:13:03.520 i do think there is an enormous pressure of being the sole breadwinner of being the person

00:13:13.320 who is providing all of the income for the family so if you're the person providing all of the

00:13:21.420 income for the family and you can have a stay-at-home dad and the roles are very set where

00:13:28.640 he genuinely is taking on on all of the things that a stay-at-home parent would be taking on

00:13:35.440 and taking that off of your plate yeah that sounds great but i i do think that that is tricky and i

00:13:42.780 don't know how often often that happens um tell me how your setup works well so i'm glad you

00:13:51.240 announce the other side of it because you know if you're a stay-at-home parent you have to rely

00:13:57.600 potentially on the other one for all or most of the income and if you're the provider of all the

00:14:03.380 income it's really stressful it can be really really stressful as especially as your family

00:14:08.480 size grows you're going from zero to one child is pretty stressful it's shocking your your new

00:14:14.600 parent all these expenses and then going to two is not maybe not as stressful but you know there's

00:14:21.640 like oh you got to think about two college educations now oh my god try thinking about

00:14:25.860 three man oh yeah if you have three college you know that's crazy absolutely crazy i can't even

00:14:32.720 think about it i'm pretending college isn't gonna happen at this point yeah it's like eight hundred

00:14:37.180 thousand dollars for four years in 15 years it's like the worst case scenario four years private

00:14:42.800 school right no scholarships nothing and so yeah you're gonna have to have like two and a half

00:14:47.460 million plus for college education joe and with that we are gonna take a quick break so i can

00:14:53.280 bang my head against the wall i mean i kind of want to just tell my children that college is

00:14:59.640 for suckers and they should learn a trade because first off they'll always have a job and secondly 0.90

00:15:06.200 those numbers are gonzo and i'm never gonna save that much money gonzo so all right i'm 0.99

00:15:12.720 going to go bang my head against a wall, listen to this word from our sponsors. I'll be right back.

00:15:27.800 And we're back. I've been talking to a lot of women about their career pauses 1.00

00:15:32.000 and about getting back into the workforce after taking a pause to care for their children.

00:15:38.040 That's something that Sam is actually grappling with right now.

00:15:42.720 I see the light kind of at the end of the tunnel because our daughter will be going to preschool full-time in the fall of 2024.

00:15:49.040 And so that frees up two more days that I can actually do something to make money, for example, if I need to.

00:15:57.140 And I think I need to.

00:15:58.960 And so it's going to be there where, okay, when they're both in school full-time, it's time to go back to the grind a little bit.

00:16:07.200 You know, I think that's the responsible thing parents should do.

00:16:10.200 Yeah, no.

00:16:10.660 Well, I also have this view that in a perfect world, and so a lot of these ideas are if I could create a perfect world that we lived in, is that different seasons of life for careers and jobs and parenting, we don't live in a corporate world that accepts those right now.

00:16:32.220 because for so long, we lived in such a male-dominated, still male-dominated corporate

00:16:37.300 world where it was just dudes going to work at 8.30, coming home at 6.30 and not worrying about

00:16:45.040 what happened in the home. And they didn't have to worry about taking off because they literally

00:16:49.660 had to push a baby out of their vaginas. But in my ideal world, you have a situation where one 1.00

00:16:57.020 parent can be either the fully stay-at-home parent or the flexible parent, which is a different thing

00:17:03.560 too, right? The parent that doesn't have to be in the office or be on calls all day long and can be

00:17:09.080 there to do pickup and drop-offs and things like run to doctor's appointments. And then you can

00:17:15.380 switch. Then you can switch over to, all right, I did this for these four years. Now I want to go

00:17:21.200 back and do this work thing. Now you do this. And that would be the ideal situation for me because

00:17:27.500 I also get twitchy if I'm outside of a real job. Actually, I don't want to say real job. If I'm

00:17:32.400 outside of kind of an office corporate job for too long, I just started doing some new consulting

00:17:37.380 and I'm using Airtable for the first time in a couple of years. I'm like, oh my God, but it's

00:17:43.620 nice, right? Because I get to like, remember what it is like to work with other humans and to use

00:17:48.720 the platforms that are being used right now. So if we had that kind of flexibility to come in and

00:17:54.260 out of the workforce, but that would require a much more benevolent government that actually

00:17:59.380 cares for people and a corporate world that actually cares for people. So that's not happening.

00:18:04.500 I'm trying to anticipate the future 2024 and beyond. And what am I going to do filling my time?

00:18:10.760 And so I've really zeroed in on consulting, maybe not full-time work because it's so foreign,

00:18:17.680 but consulting seems like the proper balance, maybe 20 hours a week to fill that time to do 0.54

00:18:23.280 something productive, to feel part of a team, to make some money, but also to still have enough

00:18:28.600 time to do other things like, I don't know, play pickleball or tennis or hang out, go for walks.

00:18:35.160 I think that's the right balance, consulting. Well, I mean, and that's what I do now, right?

00:18:40.740 It's some consulting. But one of us does have to have a full-time income and make no mistake, like I have a

00:18:47.680 you know, income coming in from these podcasts, not as much as when I was with

00:18:52.240 a major network, but I'm growing it. So now I consider myself an entrepreneur,

00:18:56.680 which I don't really like, but I think that's direction of the direction a lot of us are going

00:19:02.240 in. And my books, right? So as long as I can keep writing books, that is a major, major source of

00:19:08.580 our income. That's a nice plug for everyone to pre-order The Sicilian Inheritance, the greatest

00:19:12.500 book I've ever written. I have a couple of fire questions for you. Can I throw those out there?

00:19:17.160 Sure.

00:19:18.260 What kinds of things do you invest in to generate a consistent income?

00:19:25.360 Yeah.

00:19:25.840 So about 50% of my investments are in real estate.

00:19:29.280 Yeah.

00:19:29.620 So owning physical rental properties.

00:19:31.980 I've been, since 2016, slowly investing more in private real estate syndication deals.

00:19:38.560 So you can basically crowdfund and invest in other properties around the country.

00:19:42.660 It's for diversification and also for more passive income.

00:19:45.500 because after owning I would say like three rental properties for myself it's a lot and

00:19:52.320 managing it starts becoming a pain right yeah and so you just want to focus more on passive I

00:19:57.780 at least I do as the older I get yeah and then there's dividend dividend income you can just

00:20:02.940 invest in the S&P 500 or any dividend stocks generates two to five percent in dividends

00:20:09.860 And then now, treasury bonds yielding 5% plus risk-free.

00:20:15.820 I mean, it's amazing because it's all relative to inflation, but inflation is now at about 3.5%.

00:20:21.260 And it seems like it's heading down to 2%.

00:20:23.460 If you can lock in 20 years of a 5% treasury bond, that's a real inflation rate.

00:20:31.140 What else?

00:20:32.980 Those are the main things in terms of income production.

00:20:35.760 I think that's so interesting because when I talk about trad waves, I heard from a lot of stay-at-home moms that, again, they felt badly because I said, I don't think anyone should be completely financially independent on another person.

00:20:55.160 I agree with that.

00:20:56.500 I don't. And I'd like to say a man is not the plan. And I do think that investing and generating passive income, again, something very hard to do. It's hard to make money in this country, but especially enough to be able to invest. But that is another way that stay-at-home moms can have their financial security if they are choosing to invest on their own, separate from their husbands.

00:21:23.020 oh absolutely i i don't i think depending on someone no matter how much you love them is

00:21:29.320 is really risky because think about obviously divorce 30 to 50 divorce rates think about

00:21:35.600 untimely deaths everyone needs to figure out what they're going to be able to do how can they make

00:21:42.380 money just in case you know the the worst happen right absolutely i someone close to me was a

00:21:49.100 stay-at-home mother for 12 years 13 years and then they divorced she had alimony but she wasn't able

00:21:56.400 to get a job for more than minimum wage because she had let her skills atrophy over the past 12

00:22:02.880 13 years so i hope everybody has their own pot of money is investing separately as well as together

00:22:11.160 and keeps up their skills so that they don't find themselves on a deserted island one day

00:22:16.180 trying to survive. Yeah, which is which is what will happen. We actually, tomorrow, I'm talking

00:22:22.140 to a woman, a trad wife, former trad wife, who really regrets that she did depend on her husband

00:22:30.620 for so long, because when they got divorced, she found herself really, really struggling. And she

00:22:36.640 wants to send the message to young women, again, that a man is not the plan. Yeah. Well, tell me

00:22:43.220 about your household how so you work uh writing podcasting what does your husband do um okay so

00:22:49.740 i work writing books podcasting uh and some years it is wildly lucrative and then i have no idea

00:23:01.000 if i will have any income in the future and the media landscape is that much of a wild west

00:23:08.520 right now. It was not always like this, but it is right now. And so some years I am the breadwinner

00:23:14.420 in our family. My husband has a very steady, very traditional job. He sells carbon offset.

00:23:20.900 Well, he works for a company that sells carbon offsets and does climate sustainability consulting.

00:23:27.460 And so he is a person who is typically on Zooms in our household from about nine to five and

00:23:33.860 sometimes outside of those hours too, because they're a global company. So I am the more

00:23:40.740 flexible parent. That said, sometimes I have the quote unquote bigger job, the job that makes more

00:23:49.720 money, because you never know what a podcast deal is going to look like. They look much worse now

00:23:56.420 than they used to, I can say that. Or a book deal is going to look like. I have a new book,

00:24:01.600 uh the sicilian inheritance i personally think it's the best book i've ever written it is a novel

00:24:07.460 it is an adventure uh i think it'll be great for book clubs and also fun just fun for people i'm

00:24:14.200 sick of reading books that are not fun um and it's based on my own great great grandmother's

00:24:19.560 murder in sicily many years ago um and it's filled with food and non-smutty sex and wine and cheese 0.99

00:24:27.600 and just the right amount of feminism. 1.00

00:24:29.720 That said, if it doesn't do well, 1.00

00:24:31.700 I won't be able to write another book.

00:24:33.540 So we don't know what my income looks like

00:24:38.540 after, say, June of next year.

00:24:43.980 And that's a scary proposition,

00:24:45.760 which is why now I'm looking so much more intensely

00:24:49.440 at investing and creating passive income.

00:24:53.340 And I think that's where a lot of us are at. 0.89

00:24:55.780 And I wish there were more places online for women to look to for that kind of advice,

00:25:02.780 much like how there's not enough places for men to look to for parenting advice.

00:25:08.160 I'm only just discovering a lot of the places online for women to look to for advice.

00:25:13.480 I will say it is hard to navigate this world because much like everything with Instagram

00:25:19.120 and social media, someone is trying to sell you their package of advice and you have no

00:25:22.980 idea how to vet who is actually useful and who is not got it and what if like goodness forbid

00:25:30.480 there's no more book deal no podcast supporters how do you think your husband will feel

00:25:36.860 and and in terms of the finance not good not good um what would be this plan though like let's just

00:25:47.440 say you just couldn't make any money let's just like think in extremes if i can't make any money

00:25:52.700 like if I can't even do something else so the thing is I'm constantly looking for like my next

00:25:57.020 job too I'm like I'm like oh am I too old to become a commercial airline pilot or I think

00:26:01.620 maybe I'll go back and get a PhD and become a professor which also seems to be a career that

00:26:06.600 is waning these days um I'm constantly thinking about what can I do next and what skills can I

00:26:13.740 apply to another job but say I was completely taken out of the situation and it was just my

00:26:20.180 has been supporting our entire family yeah we could make it work but our lifestyle would be

00:26:28.080 drastically changed and we're also not a big spendy family we have one modest car that we do

00:26:34.860 not drive a lot we live in a city we chose to live in a smaller city we live in philly

00:26:38.660 and we bike everywhere we would definitely travel less right because a lot of my writing

00:26:44.200 involves travel. And so that is part of my job. And we love to travel. And we would tighten our

00:26:51.420 bootstraps. And I think we could get through it, we could do it. It would be very difficult.

00:26:57.460 I think one of the things that I'm experiencing is, so so much of my time has been spent trying

00:27:03.520 to take care of my children for the first five years of their lives. Then when it's done, it's

00:27:08.640 like oh now what i mean i had that experience after publishing my book buy this not that

00:27:14.120 two two and a half years writing it editing it marketing it um it did well and then there was

00:27:20.320 a trough of sorrow that i felt where oh now what what's that voice there's like this the the bigger

00:27:26.380 you deeper you dig the bigger the hole the bigger the void and so i think it's probably wise and

00:27:34.380 good for parents who are stay-at-home parents to think about that what next before that what next

00:27:38.960 happens. Before that what next happens, yeah. And, you know, I do think that being a stay-at-home

00:27:46.660 parent shouldn't be a default. It should be a very conscious strategy. So, okay, I'm going to be the

00:27:53.120 one who does this, but then when we move into a different phase of life, this is what I'm going

00:27:59.080 to try to do i think a lot about i used to do this podcast called committed which was about

00:28:04.500 marriage and how people made marriages work and i interviewed an astronaut and his wife uh chris

00:28:13.000 was it chris hadfield i need to look up his name um and i always get his last name wrong and so

00:28:18.820 you know she spent a lot of time being an astronaut's wife getting him to freaking space

00:28:26.300 right you can't it's it's not and they had they had kids too so yes she was a stay-at-home mom

00:28:32.940 and she focused on like the home and parenting and getting that done so he could literally go

00:28:38.860 to outer space okay it is chris haffield i looked it up um and then he went to outer space and he's

00:28:44.460 a very famous astronaut and then what he told me is he was he was like it's her turn and i'm i'm

00:28:51.600 We're going to do what it takes to build her up and help her start a new kind of career now.

00:28:57.400 I think that's a great strategy.

00:28:59.540 My worry is that the window of opportunity that we have might not be as wide or as open as we think it will be.

00:29:08.600 And the reason why I say that is, for example.

00:29:10.680 Because society is not set up to give us other windows of opportunity in the corporate workforce?

00:29:16.680 Maybe.

00:29:17.380 One, there's ageism.

00:29:18.780 That's definitely one.

00:29:20.260 Two is health.

00:29:21.600 yeah so for example at 46 for me I feel like my eyes can't stay open in terms of looking at a

00:29:28.240 screen for longer than a couple hours before they get really dry and so as a result my ability to

00:29:33.860 write for let's say five six hours has waned and so I was like okay well maybe I won't write as

00:29:39.680 much maybe I'll do some more podcasts and then maybe one day my voice will go away or my mental

00:29:44.820 capacity will go away and you know when I was competing in league tennis you know I was feeling

00:29:50.540 pretty good in my thirties, but now in my forties, not, not as good in terms of recovery and all

00:29:56.000 that. So I like the seasons. I, that's a good analogy. I think folks should maybe just maybe

00:30:02.940 think about shortening the seasons a little bit, because if it takes 20 years for your spouse to

00:30:07.540 become an astronaut and go to outer space, that's a long 20 years. Well, that's why I wouldn't marry

00:30:12.540 an astronaut. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounds cool, right? Like, Oh my God, I married an

00:30:17.860 astronaut but that is a lot of work as the spouse of an astronaut have you seen the show selling

00:30:25.080 sunset on netflix no i haven't seen it is this something i should be watching no it's really 0.98

00:30:31.100 trashy tv okay i like trashy i'm in the trash and shit well it's really trashy tv that my wife and i 0.97

00:30:39.080 enjoy um but what we noticed was that so all the real estate agents are female and there's a lot 0.98

00:30:46.260 of fighting a lot of fighting and then the guys the the really rare guys who are on the show

00:30:52.640 they're not fighting too much they're just like oh whatever and I'm trying to understand because

00:30:57.980 I see this on social media as well what is your opinion on the fighting between women versus the

00:31:04.700 fighting between men and do you think women fight more than men or are meaner than men no I think

00:31:12.280 that society really loves to talk about women fighting. I think culture and media love to talk

00:31:16.900 about women fighting. And I can say this, as a person who created a lot of media for a long time,

00:31:24.400 who created trashy tabloids, literally created them, who wrote for very reputable newspapers

00:31:31.880 and magazines for a long time, our media loves the idea of what they like to call a cat fight. 0.93

00:31:38.400 and so for example sex in the city the women who work on sex in the city they love nothing more

00:31:46.820 than headlines about how they're in a cat fight they hate each other they're fighting you would

00:31:51.800 never see a story about the cast of say oceans 11 getting into a bro fight we just don't the

00:32:00.100 media does not talk about male ire or male confrontations that way we love to portray

00:32:07.680 women as bitchy as hating one another and that merely perpetuates the stereotypes such that

00:32:14.520 young girls grow up thinking that that is the way to behave to one another 0.99

00:32:17.980 okay so i'm not okay so maybe i'm being manipulated by the media oh you're definitely

00:32:26.120 being manipulated by the media we all are on a very very regular basis okay okay good to know

00:32:32.620 Good to know. I'll be more cognizant of that bias going forward. Because when I think about the trad wife, you talked about how it seems like trad wife influencers pit or make other non-trad wife women feel bad.

00:32:49.800 They do. They absolutely do. But here's the thing that I think a lot of non-trad wife women didn't realize, that then often at times trad wives and stay at home moms feel bad looking at posts about women who work outside the home and, you know, talking about their professional successes.

00:33:11.240 I do believe the Instagram algorithm sends us things to get us riled up. And so you can't win.

00:33:19.480 You just can't win. You feel bad if you're staying at home. You feel bad if you're working

00:33:23.060 outside of the home. I feel weirdly bad right now that I'm working and my kids are with our

00:33:28.940 babysitter watching TV because they're all homesick. I mean, they're freaking happy. They

00:33:34.240 don't care that I'm not sitting down with them. They really don't. They're like, okay, great. I'll

00:33:38.240 see you later thanks for letting me watch jurassic world lego version or whatever so i think that as

00:33:45.360 parents were swamped with guilt and shame and letting go of that would be really healthy as a

00:33:52.360 dad do you feel as much guilt and shame as i think a lot of moms feel oh absolutely that makes me

00:33:59.300 happy you're welcome i've written a lot about dad guilt um you know they talk about mom guilt but

00:34:08.440 here's the thing if if there's traditional roles where the dad goes to work and the mom stays at

00:34:13.440 home who do you think would have more guilt i would think the dad has more guilt because the

00:34:18.560 dad is away for 10 plus hours a day not raising their child they should but i don't think they do

00:34:24.820 but I think they do because I'm telling you they do I do okay I mean because if I'm gone for 12

00:34:31.280 hours a day I'll feel like well why did I have a child in the first place not to see them and I

00:34:37.060 feel guilty like why am I grinding away 10 12 hours a day trying to make money well I'll tell

00:34:43.060 myself well it's because I want to provide for my family give them the best life possible

00:34:47.240 but I feel guilty not being with them because time is more precious than money because time

00:34:53.340 is finite. And so I say that there's a huge debt guilt epidemic, but nobody talks about it.

00:35:00.460 And I hope more people do. And it's just one of those things where I sometimes think maybe it

00:35:09.860 would be nice to not have that financial responsibility placed on my shoulders. Because

00:35:14.380 I think not only is going to work and making money a job, right? It's a lot of responsibility.

00:35:20.560 you don't want to get fired you want to get promoted you want to get paid but once you've

00:35:25.140 accumulated enough money it's another full-time job it can be to manage your finances in a way

00:35:30.620 that it doesn't blow up during the next recession right you always have to be a little bit paranoid

00:35:34.900 you have to diversify your investments so that like 2008 doesn't happen again where you lose

00:35:40.500 30 to 100 percent of your net worth and have to start all over right so i would say the dad guilt

00:35:47.380 feeling is strong. It's just not talked about. Well, now we're talking about it.

00:35:53.780 Now we're talking about it. I want to see more dad guilt on social media. That's what I want.

00:35:59.700 I just want guilty dads. I want like shame face dads, the same kind of look that you see on like

00:36:04.860 a dog's face when they're moving. I want guilty dads, guilty dads on Instagram.

00:36:11.560 Guilty dads on Instagram. That's interesting. Okay. So I think we could make a lot of money

00:36:15.400 on that account should we start it together okay yeah let's do it done easy peasy so so if okay so

00:36:22.800 here's here's the flip side of dad guilt so to to cure the guilt is to spend more time with your

00:36:29.380 children yeah right because then hopefully okay i don't feel as guilty so you're doing spending

00:36:34.180 more time with them you're taking them on three hour play dates taking them swimming taking them

00:36:39.520 to random faraway places for soccer camp, whatever.

00:36:43.860 But here's the problem.

00:36:45.240 The problem is, well, the more you spend time

00:36:46.940 with your children, then maybe the less money

00:36:50.340 you're going to make.

00:36:51.540 Fair, true.

00:36:52.480 And so then it requires the partner, 0.97

00:36:57.960 let's say it's the wife, to step up 0.62

00:37:01.060 in terms of the financial responsibility. 1.00

00:37:03.320 Yep.

00:37:04.560 And that's like something that I've encountered

00:37:08.260 where it can be difficult because let's say you have a spouse, you have a wife who's been

00:37:13.800 stay at home for five, seven, 10 years, and they're comfortable with their lifestyle,

00:37:18.660 right? They're comfortable with the dad going to make the money, doing all that.

00:37:23.440 Transitioning is hard. So what would you say to that?

00:37:27.320 Transitions are hard. Transitions are impossible. And we don't live in a society 0.99

00:37:31.200 that makes them possible, easy, smooth, any of that. And so I don't have an easy answer.

00:37:43.040 I really don't. And I think that we're going to experience so much more of a shakeup now.

00:37:47.040 And I hate to be so doom and gloom about what AI is going to do to a lot of jobs,

00:37:51.900 but we're going to see a lot of people very shaken up in quote unquote white collar jobs about

00:37:58.260 what will be available to them. And so this is a conversation we need to be constantly having.

00:38:05.060 What will you do next? What can you do next? What are you qualified to do next?

00:38:10.440 We're qualified to do very little, to be honest. Could I be a dog walker?

00:38:18.900 Yes, you can.

00:38:20.220 I could. I could. Absolutely. And it's also, I genuinely believe,

00:38:24.600 getting rid of some of the stigma around certain jobs hollywood is really terrible at this because

00:38:30.500 hollywood mocks a lot of jobs they lock they mock a lot of gig jobs they mock a lot of hourly wage

00:38:36.840 jobs as not being as good as other kinds of jobs and i think that absolutely yeah yeah i mean if

00:38:45.580 you just look at how they treat people like plumbers in movies right when plumbers are really

00:38:52.040 good job you like do 150 grand exactly uh um or how in a lot of if you're watching like romantic

00:39:01.320 comedies or let's let's actually just talk about how like christmas movies all of the lifetime and

00:39:06.680 hallmark and now i think they're on everything all of the christmas movies it's always some 1.00

00:39:12.200 high-powered lady who works in a shiny office building going home to meet a working class 1.00

00:39:20.380 former boyfriend. And working class people are portrayed very badly in most Hollywood

00:39:25.680 productions. They really are. They're looked down on. Hollywood is very condescending to

00:39:31.460 working class people. And I think that we have to stop being condescending about a lot of different

00:39:36.680 kinds of jobs, because we're going to see a massive shift in how people work and what they work at.

00:39:44.060 Yeah. I'm glad you brought up AI, because definitely I am a little bit paranoid about

00:39:48.660 all the jobs that will be taken away or eliminated in the next 10 to 20 years for our children

00:39:53.700 because look college is getting more expensive yet the value of college is declining because

00:39:58.960 everything can be learned online for free and then the jobs are going away as well so in my

00:40:05.620 in my opinion there's there's several ways to counteract AI one is to learn physical skills

00:40:13.080 that you can use with your hands like plumbing electrician landscaper so forth and the other

00:40:18.000 one is to invest in AI. Because if you invest in AI, and it becomes a huge revolutionary technology,

00:40:27.340 then you're going to get rich in 10 to 20 years. And if it becomes a dud over height technology,

00:40:33.520 then you're not going to get rich, but at least your children will still have

00:40:37.640 those jobs that they want. So that's what I plan to do.

00:40:41.920 Okay, what are you and how are you investing in AI? Tell me.

00:40:44.360 well you can invest one in public companies this is not investment advice but you can invest in

00:40:50.340 public companies that invest in ai so for example microsoft anybody can buy msft that has a 10 plus

00:40:59.220 billion dollar stake in the ai company right open ai which is a private company yeah you can invest

00:41:05.480 in nvidia which makes the chips that power a you can invest in google any any of these public

00:41:13.540 companies. And then from a private company standpoint, you can invest in private AI companies

00:41:18.660 that are only investable if you know the person, have connections, or you invest in a venture

00:41:25.860 capital fund that invests in AI companies. So that's something for folks to look into.

00:41:33.540 Personally, I'm going to allocate a good chunk of money to private growth companies and AI companies

00:41:39.460 over the next three years, because I want to hedge. I want to hedge for what is potentially

00:41:44.100 a bleak future. Because it's been really clear to me from the open AI debacle when they fired the

00:41:51.220 CEO, that they are very profit driven. They're supposed to be a nonprofit company, but they're

00:41:59.300 for profit company. And when you're for profit company, and you have this quote, cap profit of

00:42:04.400 100x which is total bs yeah you're gonna crush industries and for the sake of your own financial

00:42:12.060 gains yep and so it's either you're gonna get crushed by it or you're gonna try to invest with

00:42:16.220 them and so unfortunately i think you have to join them we have to join them oh the worst the worst

00:42:24.900 um but but yes i actually that is that is good advice and again i like talking about this advice

00:42:31.420 on this show, even though we are a show that focuses on influencing and motherhood. Again,

00:42:37.680 because I think talking about finance gives women so much more agency over our lives, right? 0.99

00:42:43.400 Yes. Please, please read as much as you can about personal finance, investing, asset allocation,

00:42:50.960 retirement planning, because the more information you know, the more you're going to actually

00:42:54.640 take action to shore up your finances. And the more you're going to think about multi-variables

00:42:59.720 that you probably weren't thinking about in the past.

00:43:03.680 And the more you think about it, the more protected you'll be.

00:43:06.900 Anything can and will happen.

00:43:08.840 It's like Murphy's Law, right?

00:43:10.000 If you don't think it's going to happen, it's going to happen.

00:43:11.860 Exactly.

00:43:14.200 And that is all we have for today.

00:43:16.100 You can find Sam at FinancialSamurai.com

00:43:19.860 and you can listen to his podcast, The Financial Samurai Podcast,

00:43:24.160 wherever you get your shows.

00:43:29.720 I learned a lot from Sam about dad guilt, even though I will tell you, I do not think that dads

00:43:38.600 have the same guilt that moms do. I don't. I just... I don't. I don't. But I do think that

00:43:50.740 the stigma against stay-at-home or work-from-home dads is real, and I do think that these dads are

00:43:57.520 really hungry for community. Also, I want to learn more about fire, because who doesn't want to retire

00:44:03.580 early by friends? Or save two million dollars for college? Now, since I am paying for three

00:44:09.660 college tuitions, if my children hoodwink me into letting them go to college,

00:44:15.180 please buy the Sicilian inheritance. Or seven of them. 0.56

00:44:20.480 Thank you for listening today. Go do something nice for yourself. You deserve it.

00:44:27.520 Thank you.

00:44:57.520 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - April 16, 2024

Trad Dads and Dad Guilt

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