Many of you know, I grew up in Malibu, California, a very affluent area. James went to college in Malibu, California, at Pepperdine. And my dad grew up watching his dad as an accountant, and then he once saw the movie The Endless Summer. And he went, my dad's an accountant. I'm watching the endless summer, and I'm seeing people surf, and he thought they made the same money. So he went, why would someone choose to be an accountant over a surfer?

I'm going to be a surfer.

Little did he know that didn't come with a ton of financial benefits, let's just say.

Regardless, my dad fell in love with surfing.

And the reason I'm telling you this story is I grew up in Malibu and my dad said I'd rather live in a shack in Malibu

than anywhere else in the world even if it was a mansion. And my dad gave me great advice

along the way of my journey and he used to always say, Ari, anytime you want something,

it doesn't mean you're going to get it and I would get upset. And I'd say, why are you telling me that? He goes, because I'm the meanest dad in Malibu. Now you can imagine, I grew up in Malibu, a lot of characters. That's me being nice, James. A lot of characters in Malibu, and these characters could be 16, 17 years old, driving the nicest cars, telling teachers, I don't got to do my homework.

There was a lot of attitude, a lot of great people as well, of course, but there was attitude. So I even regret to this day a little bit, but I will joke on YouTube and say, I'm the meanest financial advisor because I'm trying to allude to my dad to say, hey, I'm not just going to tell you can retire unless you're in a a good spot. I'm not going to – I also don't want you mad at me if you're 85 with $10 million going, hey, Ari, what the heck? You told me I was in a good spot. Like, why didn't you give me more confidence to retire earlier when I had my health, when I had my energy? So my dad's told me a ton of life lessons. So have other family members and friends.

But what I want to talk about today with you, James, is specifically what advice have we been

given that have put us in this position where we have, I don't want to say, reached success,

because there's never a high enough point for that. But why are we where we are? And I'm asking

all of you to contribute as well. I put this as a

thread in our community, the root collective. So if you're in the description of this YouTube

video or podcast episode, you're going to see a thread that is a photo of me and my dad. You can see

we're both not very tall. and I'm talking about some of the

lessons that my dad shared with me that I'll be getting into today. But I encourage you all,

please, it's one thing if you're hearing from James or I in a YouTube video or podcast talking

about, you know, Roth conversion or donor advised funds or whatever it may be that lights us up

in our financial nerd brain.

But can you all go share with each other? Hey, this was something that I never knew, but

turns out my dad wish he retired earlier and he passed away with too much money. Or they just

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