Hey James, we talk a lot about optimizing, and you might be aware of this, but many of our team members actually make fun of me.

They'll say, we know Ari's weekend wasn't fine. It was optimized.

Now, it's a silly joke, but the reality is we want you to optimize what you've worked so hard for.

But sometimes it actually makes sense not to optimize because your life would actually be better.

So what we're going to talk about today

is, okay, what could we do in our life that might not make financial sense that would really

add to our quality of life? So my first question for you, James, is when you personally go buy a car,

do you like to get a loan? Do you pay all cash? What do you do? I've done both. So I guess I've

optimized and I've not optimized. Or I guess I would think about it differently. I've optimized

for different things in different cases. I like that. Now, why did you pay all in cash?

The first couple cars I purchased, it was all cash. Part of this was just even growing up, the Dave Ramsey mentality of you buy things in cash? The first couple cars I purchased, it was all cash.

Part of this was just even growing up, the Dave Ramsey mentality of you buy things in

cash, you stay out of debt, you live within your means, which all great things.

And so there's this sense of buying something in cash, you're not having any debt in some

ways you're optimizing for that, but there's other arguments to be made of then

you're tying up some cash flow or you are losing some liquidity. So in other instances,

when I have not paid all cash, I was optimizing for preserving liquidity. I was optimizing cash flow.

I was optimizing for some other things. So I think it's less, at least the way I think about it,

less about optimizing versus non-optimizing, more about what are you optimizing for and taking that approach. I like that because you do not go to the grocery store. For those who are unaware, why don't you go to the grocery store? I don't like it. And your life is better not going? My life is better not going. So yeah, this is just like a fun, funny example, I guess. But yeah, there's something about the grocery store that I, it's like going to the DMV for me. I walk in, my wife will ask me to go pick up something grocery store. I just don't even know where to go. It's, hey, can you go get shredded cheese? And I walk through every aisle twice before I can find the shredded cheese, which is always in the deli section in the back. It just takes me, for whatever

reason, so long, because I don't like being there that I would rather pay for delivery and just

have those, that hour, that 30 minutes, that two hours, whatever it is of my life back to do

something else with my family, with my friends, with work, whatever it might be. Now, we're being lighthearted today, talking about cars and grocery stores, but this is real life stuff, and I'm going to tell you what prompted this episode today. So in our free community, the Root Collective, we go through and we look at what topics do we think might apply to all of you watching

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