The best time to spend your money is probably not when you think. It's not at retirement. It's not when you hit financial independence. It's actually much earlier than that. And if you wait too long, you'll have all the money, but you'll have missed an important window. So in this episode, I'm going to show you exactly when and why the timing of spending your money matters more than the amount. Welcome to the podcast Real Estate Investing with Coach Carson. I'm your host, Chad Carson. You can also call me Coach Carson. And in this show, I teach you how to use real estate investing to achieve financial freedom so you can spend your time doing more of what matters. This is a special Friday Coaches Corner edition of the podcast where I'm a little bit more informal, have a conversation with you about a topic that's been on my mind. And in this case, I read a book called Die with Zero that challenge me. It made me think about a lot of things. And I wanted to share a few ideas with you. And I'm going to start with a story. So the story I want to tell you is actually a fable from ASAP's fables. And there's really a metaphor for the whole book that's really important. It's about the ant and the grasshopper and you might have heard of this or seen the old

cartoon on Disney. The story goes that there's a grasshopper who loved to enjoy life and instead

of preparing for the future and saving for a rainy day, he knew how to have fun. He enjoyed

himself and all summer long he played, he enjoyed himself. He had a good time.

Meanwhile the aunt and all the ants sisters prepared for the future. enjoyed himself. And all summer long, he played, he enjoyed himself. He had a good time. Meanwhile,

the aunt and all the aunt's sisters prepared for the future. They saved for a rainy day.

They stored food. They had delayed gratification to make sure they could survive when the winter came, which was going to come. And the grasshopper in the end of the story, depending on which

ending you have, the Disney ending or the non-ending, did not prepare. And during the winter, was cold and couldn't survive. And, you know, sometimes the ants took the grasshopper in. In other cases, the grasshopper just died. And so the hero of the traditional story, the moral of this story, is the aunt. The aunt was the one who delayed gratification, prepared for a rainy day, and how virtuous is that?

How good is that? And how silly or how ill, ill, unwise was the grasshopper who didn't save.

So there is definitely some wisdom to that story. But the author of Die with Zero pointed out that,

what about the ant? We don't talk about the ant much. It's clear that, yeah, the grasshopper should have saved Zero pointed out that what about the ant?

We don't talk about the ant much.

It's clear that the grasshopper should have saved a little bit and thought about the future.

But the ant, when does the ant actually get to enjoy life and have fun?

Is the ant's entire life all about survival?

And that's it.

And then you die.

And the metaphor here is that he wrote this book for the ants of the

world. And I'll raise my hand here. I'm the one of the people who prepares for the future and plans. I have

this YouTube channel about financial freedom. And so those of you who work pretty hard, who are able to

save money, you fall into the ant category. And so the book is written for you because there is this idea that there's a happy medium

between not enough saving and not left delayed gratification and perhaps being too much of a

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