Ep 3 - Resilience in Financial Adversity: Fred Gold's Recipe For Lasting Happiness After Catastrophic Financial Loss

• Cognitive biases, such as familiarity and recency, can distort financial decisions. To minimize risks and regret, evaluate decisions objectively, consider worst-case scenarios, and diversify investments.

• Biases like familiarity, recency, and regret aversion can skew financial decisions. To avoid pitfalls, evaluate risks objectively, consider outcomes, and use strategies like diversification or stop-loss measures.
• Living by internal benchmarks fosters authentic happiness and meaningful success. Prioritizing family, values, and character over societal metrics leads to fulfillment. Treating everyone respectfully highlights the timeless importance of integrity in life and work.

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Voiceover: Welcome to the Crazy Wealthy Podcast with your host, Jonathan Blau. Whether you're just starting [00:00:30] out or are an experienced investor, join Jonathan as he seeks to illuminate and demystify the complexities of making consistently rational financial decisions under conditions of uncertainty. He'll chat with professionals from the [00:00:45] advice world, entrepreneurs, executives.

Jonathan Blau: Hello everybody, this is Jonathan Blau [00:01:00] coming to you with another episode of the Crazy Wealthy Podcast. Thanks for joining us today. I have a very special guest who is someone who is near and dear to me. It's my father in law and his name is Fred Gold. Fred was a partner for [00:01:15] many years at Arthur Anderson who was Both in charge of the, the long Island what was called enterprise group, middle markets practice.

And also he was a a divisional head. So we're going to talk about his money [00:01:30] story, his history. Some of the things he experienced professionally and personally. That may have influenced his outlook as he succeeded and had some disappointments as we all do through life. And with that, I want to introduce Fred Gold, Fred, [00:01:45] dad, welcome to the crazy wealthy podcast.

Fred Gold: Thank you, John. Pleasure to be here. Looking forward to it.

Jonathan Blau: Thank you. So when you joined Arthur Anderson which was one of the, back then, I guess, one of the big six accounting firms, there were [00:02:00] six of them, or were there more when you joined?

Fred Gold: This, this was circa 1969. And at the time they were, the big firms were called the big eight, which evolved later on to the big six, and [00:02:15] ultimately to the I think they

Jonathan Blau: call it now the final four.

The final. Could

Fred Gold: be. That could be.

Jonathan Blau: So when you joined Anderson, I joined my second year of life.

Fred Gold: Long time ago. For sure. [00:02:30]

Jonathan Blau: And so tell me how, tell me how the job opportunity came about. I think you went to school, the University of Bridgeport.

Fred Gold: Went to the University of Bridgeport studied accounting.

And when I graduated. At the [00:02:45] time it was 1967 and our country was in a tremendous buildup of the Vietnam war and most fellas coming out of college was subject to the draft. [00:03:00] It was a draft in place. And ultimately four months out of college, I was drafted in the army and I spent the next two years in the army.

And when I came out. I got, I started [00:03:15] interviewing with some of the big eight accounting firms, but in particular, my father who owned a gas station in Whitestone, Queens had customers he was pretty close to. One of which [00:03:30] was with Arthur Anderson for about a three or four year period at the time. And my dad mentioned to him, my son's returning from Vietnam.

He's looking for a job. He's got a degree in accounting, University of Bridgeport. [00:03:45] Do you want to give him a shot? And one thing led to the other and I got an interview and I guess I did. Okay. And I started with Anderson in October of 1969 and enjoyed a 31 year career [00:04:00] there. And learned an awful lot about people and money and accounting, obviously.

But, you know, that's a thumbnail sketch of how I got to Anderson. No,

Jonathan Blau: that's, that's, that's, that's a great [00:04:15] a great story. So, I know, you know, having, having the, the good fortune of having you as my father in law and knowing you for so many years, I know a lot of a lot of the internal stories that, that Followed your career and [00:04:30] one, a couple of things I was always impressed with is no matter who I ran into as I was building my career also on Long Island, whenever they learned about our relationships, they're all Fred gold, what a great guy.

Or he was my mentor and he was just always so good to me or the [00:04:45] clients. One guy said, oh yeah, he was, I used to call him the gold standard, my accountant. So those things were always very very impressive and impactful to me. And I always try to, to kind of guide myself and my behavior to, to help people would think of me the [00:05:00] same way.

I know during your career toward, toward the well you were 57, I think, and Anderson had an early retirement program that required people to retire. And and I know you, you, part of the retirement benefit that you were entitled to was, [00:05:15] was a a lump sum payment based on your, your Best earning years or something like that.

And I remember you calling me one day, I was a young advisor at 29, I think, or so at Sanford Bernstein or somewhere, somewhere in that age range. And [00:05:30] Even though I didn't have a lot of experience, we respected each other enough that you asked my opinion as to whether or not you should make the choice of leaving the retirement benefit for about 10 years as an unsecured creditor of the firm meaning that you're at risk if they would go [00:05:45] out of business of losing the, the entire thing.

But the benefit is you wouldn't have to pay the tax on that money if you had take chosen to take it right away. And then they would pay you a percentage of that money for the 10 years. And at the end of the 10 years, you'd get the lump sum and then pay the tax. You will deferred that tax for [00:06:00] the whole time.

And, and one of the things I remember discussing is is try to, we try, try to today, I maybe didn't, didn't term it the same way, but I tell people who have that decision tree to, to address is try to make that decision one where [00:06:15] there's big potential benefits. Of going one way with the decision, but there's also big potential detriments of going that way.

So if you leave that money all in for the 10 years, you can't change that decision. And [00:06:30] then something goes wrong, you lose your whole retirement potentially at some point. But if you didn't if you left it all in, you would defer that tax for 10 years. So whenever I see a decision tree like that, where the future By definition, the one characteristic about the future is that there's no facts [00:06:45] about it, that we try to make that decision in a way to minimize regret.

So my, my advice was something like, why don't you take half of the money now and leave half of it as an unsecured creditor. But to your, you know, this happens as a human nature kind of response [00:07:00] is something called familiarity bias. And when we Are familiar with, with a company or, or, or, or an entity that we're looking to invest in or, or, or associate with.

We feel like we'll be helped more and hurt less by associating with things [00:07:15] that we're familiar with than that we're unfamiliar with. And so that familiarity bias leads us to blind be blinded by things like over concentration. Whether it's in a particular investment, we put all our money in one company because we work for it and we think we [00:07:30] know it and therefore we're not going to lose because we say, yeah, this company is going to always do well.

I know what I've worked here for 30 years. Tell me how that relates to, in your mind, the decision that you made that unfortunately didn't have a good outcome for you, but, [00:07:45] but to, to, to leave that money in, in the firm at 57. Okay.

Fred Gold: Yeah, that's interesting. There's a couple of factors. Well, one was that at age 56 Arthur Anderson encouraged partners to [00:08:00] take an early retirement benefit, which was a sizable amount of money.

And they gave you the option of taking it all. Of course, if you did, you'd have to pay. Tax on it or leaving it in and receiving, and I think at the [00:08:15] time a 9 percent interest factor. So over a 10 year period, that sum of money would grow substantially. And I sat at that point in time, looking back at history, knowing [00:08:30] here's a firm with 85, 000 people worldwide with over 2000 partners with a history of, I don't know, about 80 years at the time.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think a firm. [00:08:45] Would wind up having to close its doors because of a lawsuit and government action. And so I felt I was pretty secure Looking back now on it, I guess maybe taking half and deferring half [00:09:00] would have been a much better answer. But you know like in life you you do what you think is right at the time you have certain biases you have certain comfort levels You know I felt very secure that Anderson would be around for another, not only 10 years, but [00:09:15] for a much longer time than that.

Jonathan Blau: Yeah. And by the way, your, your decision and that bias is, is not uncommon. It's more common than not. Most people make those decisions motivated or influenced by familiarity bias. And,

Fred Gold: exactly. [00:09:30] And, and the other, the other factor is I knew a lot of partners who had retired and had taken this benefit, and I talked to quite a few of them about their decision, and almost to a man, they said that you can't, you shouldn't give up a 9 percent return [00:09:45] on a firm that's financially stable and it's going to be around a long, long time, and that drove my decision that, yeah, I guess it's a comfort zone.

That other people That's what, look, if,

Jonathan Blau: if someone had phrased it to you or offered you [00:10:00] something different saying, Hey, Mr. Gold, you can either take this lump sum and pay tax on it, or you can leave it for 10 years with XYZ company that you've never worked for as an unsecured creditor, meaning if something happens to them, you're gonna [00:10:15] lose your money.

I mean, the odds of you saying yes to whatever XYZ company was is probably slim to none. Right? Yet, yet with the, the challenges we have with familiarity biases, [00:10:30] extrapolation, which is a big a big destroyer of wealth investing in other ways, we, we look at a pattern because our minds are attracted to patterns.

So your pattern was a number of them. Look, I've worked at the company for, for over three decades and that pattern of, of growth and success and [00:10:45] stability, I'm, I'm going to extrapolate that as a future predictable pattern. where there is no future predictable pattern based on a past pattern of any kind, because there are no facts about the future.

But I'm also going to talk to the partners who [00:11:00] have retired in the past, and they've been getting their checks, like clockwork every month, and everything's great. And I'm going to extrapolate that. Into the future as a future predictable pattern. And so that's what familiarity bias and recency bias does.

We look at recent patterns, could be 5 years, [00:11:15] 10 years, 20 years, recent in a lifetime, and we extrapolate into the future, a future predictable pattern. So I just draw that out for the audience as, as one of the lessons. You know, hoping that, that they, that they can take away from the story that we're talking about.

And the [00:11:30] other one is, is, you know, what I call regret aversion bias, where long term regret is one of the most painful emotions because long term regret never goes away. And when we make a decision. That causes us to regret it. Oftentimes what will happen is people [00:11:45] will revert to status quo bias. So in other words, if I made a bad investment in the late nineties, I bought all technology stocks and they blew up on me in order to avoid that potential outcome and that regret that I still feel today of having thrown away that money in the nineties.[00:12:00]

I'm just going to leave status quo bias, leave my money in cash. If I leave it the way it is, that. Can never happen. Do you find that the experience you had from a regret aversion standpoint has led you to react that way as a result of, of what happened or [00:12:15] not?

Fred Gold: I have not. I mean, I, I, I felt that this was such a, there was such a slim possibility of this happening and okay, it happened, but you know, as [00:12:30] many things in life, you try to evaluate And you know, now that I'm in retirement, I'm doing more trading of stocks and you know, I evaluate risk and I do put in certain stop [00:12:45] loss triggers to minimize my loss.

My loss. I wouldn't want to. You know, make an investment and lose 50 percent of it.

Jonathan Blau: And you would have done that anyway, without that experience. I think, yeah,

Fred Gold: probably, probably, but, but it's really enhanced. You're [00:13:00] more

Jonathan Blau: sensitive to it. So I get it. And

Fred Gold: it didn't impact the experience of what we're talking about.

Didn't impact me to the degree where any, any. Savings. I'm [00:13:15] automatically going to put into, you know, cash, treasury bills or something, which

Jonathan Blau: is, which is good. Right. And one of the things I always admired about you is your temperament. In other words you, you faced what I call for most people, a catastrophic financial loss [00:13:30] and, and I've known you your whole life after that, right?

Post, post that loss. And I, all I've seen is someone who's enjoyed life. You found a way to build a different career as a CFO of a company out here on an Island, which you were congratulate, congratulations to you [00:13:45] retired I think a year ago and enjoying retirement deservedly so but, but your temperament in many ways.

So when you were a senior partner at the firm from, from, from a, from a standpoint of of success as, as we all measure it in our [00:14:00] country as it relates to work is you achieved a lot of success. And that never really tainted you from my perspective where you never judged other people who might not have achieved the same success.

You weren't really influenced by envy and greed and, [00:14:15] and even fear in certain cases. You just always had an even temperament. So what I want to learn is, what do you think are some of the key reasons that you were able to approach such a catastrophic loss [00:14:30] in such a way where to this day you still enjoy life and you got through it really with flying colors?

Fred Gold: Yeah, I'm gonna answer that in two directions. [00:14:45] One, if you're fortunate in life to have a good teacher. And I'm referring to my dad. He was my teacher. He taught me that do unto others as they would do unto you. Treat people with respect. And [00:15:00] always be careful about what you're doing. And do the right thing.

And always tell the truth. And be honest. You know, all the basic principles that I guess take stress out of your life because there's nothing you're hiding. Or nothing you've [00:15:15] got to cover up. So he and he was and by his example of working hard and focusing on his family, I learned a lot and I learned that, you know, you've always got to make a decent living.

You can work [00:15:30] as hard as you have to work. You've got to do it. You do it. And you take care of your family. The second big factor, I guess, in my life that shaped my behavior is I mentioned earlier, I spent the year in Vietnam. I was in combat and [00:15:45] I, and I got very close with fellas who came from very different echo, sociological, socioeconomic backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, [00:16:00] and I really learned that it's not how much money a person has.

It's, it's what's in his character. If you can depend on them, if they're honest, you know, and you try to draw all the good qualities that other people bring to the table, [00:16:15] try to incorporate it in yourself. And it was a learning experience. And when I joined Arthur Anderson, I was fortunate to have excellent people working.

And teaching me and guiding me. [00:16:30] And as I moved up I wanted to do the same things for people who work for me. And that's why mentoring people became at the top of my list. You get out of people, what you put into people and particularly in, in the business I was [00:16:45] in public accounting, the trust factor clients, you, you know, you tried to do the best thing you could for clients, you had the care you had to teach.

Your staff behave the same way you were and think the same way you were. [00:17:00] And, you know, all that really shaped me over my 31 year career with, with.

Jonathan Blau: Yeah, and learning that from you, you know, cause there's a people we are listening to my first podcast introducing the episode. I lost my dad when I was [00:17:15] 13.

He was paralyzed when I was 11 and my mom was sort of an absentee mom. And and one of the nicest things is when I went with you and Amy. To Aruba early on in our relationship and used to walk on the beach. And I grew up in, in [00:17:30] a, in a society where it seemed like any time you were getting serious with, with someone you might marry, if you were the male in the relationship, the parents of the female would say, so what does your dad do?

What does your family do? And how much do you want, where do you come from? And I didn't [00:17:45] have the, the the most obvious. Obviously desired answers to those questions, and you never made any judgments, you know, you always accepted me and, and respected me and, and tried to teach me and so forth.

So, so that, that went a long way. But I do remember [00:18:00] one story that I'll interject that was funny. You might not remember it, but I remember when I joined Arthur Anderson for the audience, I coincidentally, when I was getting my master's in tax and MBA in accounting, I had five offers from then the big six firms and I chose Anderson.

And I [00:18:15] met Amy after I made that choice, but you were a partner there. And I was going into the tax department, you were in audit, and I remember we used to go to Long Beach on the weekends and there was one weekend and you see, you talked to me in the garage on the way back from the beach and we got back and you said, we may have a little [00:18:30] problem because you know, Anderson has very strict nepotism and they're talking to me about our relationship and, and and there may be an issue.

And I don't know if you remember how I responded to that. You probably don't. I

Fred Gold: probably don't.

Jonathan Blau: What [00:18:45] I said, what I said is, I, I completely understand that there may be an issue with us working together. If I were you, I'd start to sharpen up your resume. That

Fred Gold: I, now I remember that and I think I laugh pretty hard.

Yeah,

Jonathan Blau: exactly. Yeah, but it all worked. It [00:19:00] all worked out. We, we agreed not to talk about it and so forth, but but I remember that story. And one of the, one of the other things that that I, that I always talked about with you is how you go through life again without envy, without. You know, material things weren't always that [00:19:15] important to you.

I don't think that you achieve success materially because you look too. I think you achieve success materially the same way I think I do. I love my clients. I learned that from you. I learned that from Anderson. We treat everybody like family, our employees, our clients. And then [00:19:30] it just happens, right? You put in the hard work and you have the right.

Approach and it, and it just all works out. But what, what's interesting is one of the things I talk about and I will talk about on the podcast relating to relating to happiness and money [00:19:45] is internal versus external benchmarks. So one of the examples I give is if, if I'm going away with my family on a vacation and we want to have the family for enjoy our space and have a couple of separate rooms so we can be comfortable, I might go to the Marriott [00:20:00] hotel and get a suite.

Because I'm not interested in telling people I stayed at a Four Seasons. I'm applying, I'm appealing to my internal benchmark, what's important to me. So many of us in our society, unfortunately, always appeal to the external benchmark. They'd rather stay in a, in a, in a [00:20:15] one bedroom at the Four Seasons so they can say externally, Hey, look, I, I took my family away for the holiday, stayed at the Four Seasons.

Even though they would have been better off staying in a Marriott in a more comfortable room. And so you always, I saw live your life. In that regard, and then [00:20:30] another Another related analogy I like to use is eulogy versus resume virtues. So many of us in our society spend our life pursuing what I call resume virtues.

We want a bigger house so we can save, want to donate money and get our name on the [00:20:45] building. We want to become a CEO or president and so forth so we can say that. And, and then when you go to someone's funeral, what you really want to hear about is how wonderful person they were to their family.

And their communities and how charitable they were. So we spend our whole lives [00:21:00] pursuing these, these resume virtues. When really what we want is the eulogy virtues. And I think it's related to the whole internal versus external bias situation, and I think, or benchmark situation. So if you could talk about that a little bit.

In [00:21:15] terms of how, why are you, why are you able to have such a great temperament outlook? And not, why, why don't you worry about those things? You don't, you don't seem to care too much about what other people have. You live your life for absolute happiness, the internal benchmark. And, and no one [00:21:30] really teaches you that or maybe lessons from your dad and so forth.

But there was one other story I want you to share. So the, the, the, when I said you don't judge people. Related to this you told me a story about your dad who worked in a garage. He was a mechanic. He had a greasy [00:21:45] suit at the end of each day. Tell me about that story that influenced you and why you don't judge people that way.

Fred Gold: Yeah, it it was interesting. My father he learned to become an auto And at 21 years [00:22:00] of age, him and his best friend bought a service station, and he became somewhat of an entrepreneur that way, and he obviously served in World War II for four years, but as time went on, he became successful. [00:22:15] And he always watched his money, but he, he created a balance between, you know, saving some money, but spending some money, if you know what I mean.

And he gave his family everything we needed [00:22:30] without being. You know, overboard on spending. And when we moved out of Brooklyn to East meadow and this was about 1954 and I was 10 years old at the [00:22:45] time. My mother had to learn how to drive. So she did and she got her license and it was time for my dad to buy her a new car.

So one day, one night after work, he picked her up, went to, I think it was a Pontiac [00:23:00] dealer. Pontiac is no longer around, I think. But And he still had his uniform on. And he had a lot of cash in his pocket and he saw a car on the showroom floor that he felt was perfect for my, my mom. [00:23:15] And a salesman came over and my father said you know, how much is that car?

And the salesman told him and, and my dad said, I think I'd like to buy that. And the salesman almost didn't believe him and [00:23:30] started asking him some embarrassing questions. And my father dismissed them and said, go get your manager. He did. The manager came over. My father explained what he wanted to do.

The manager said, let's sit down, fill out [00:23:45] some paperwork. He bought the car. Cash. It was done. But it, you know, it all gets, and my father tells me this story because never judge a book by its color, right? You treat a man the way you want it or a woman, the way you want to be [00:24:00] treated regardless of what they look like.

And it's it's one of those life lessons that you never forget. And you obviously still remember the story.

Jonathan Blau: I remember the story, yeah, it impacted me because I see you also live, you know, people can talk about these things, but I [00:24:15] see how you've always lived your life and continue to live your life based on, based on the lesson.

So I'd like to finish up by asking you, and, and again, this is not whatever comes to mind, but it's, if you had to think about a pivotal, a pivotal event, [00:24:30] either professionally Personally, that influenced positively your, your career or, or, or your life most memorable has anything come to mind?

Fred Gold: Yeah. I think on a very positive note, there was a time in my career [00:24:45] where many companies were going public, selling their stock on the, on the market. And I became pretty good at it. And I helped three or four different companies that were private companies go public, raise [00:25:00] millions of dollars. And expand their business.

And I took a lot of enjoyment from that. And I got very close to the principal owners in the company. And I think the, the joy I got out of that is that I was [00:25:15] part of a team that helped create success. Not only for the owners, but for the many employees and their families that depended on a livelihood.

And now they were in a much more financially [00:25:30] stable situation because of going public and raising all this capital to grow the business. The other part of it is that in that whole process, there were people who worked for me, who I took a lot of, a lot of pride in, I [00:25:45] saw their growth. I saw their development.

I tried to do the best I could to lead them, to teach them. And to this day, there's a number of folks who work for me who have become extremely [00:26:00] successful in running corporations or starting their own businesses or whatever, but, you know, I take pride in that. It's, it's almost like you know, you have a lot of pride in your kids.

You put, you invest a lot of yourself in your kids. And if [00:26:15] you're lucky and things turn out well you feel really good about that. And then, and that's, that's true in my case with my kids and with a number of the people who work for me.

Jonathan Blau: Yeah, and I, and I've heard from some of those people who credit you with a lot [00:26:30] of responsibility for their success and and so that's something to be very proud of and and I'm always very proud when I hear that about you.

So, so with that I'd say, just to summarize, so when we talk about your outlook the, the financial crisis you were faced with. So [00:26:45] when Anderson went bankrupt and all of these things and how you've dealt with it, I summarize it by saying you, you know, one is you're not someone who lives with envy as someone who lives to enjoy seeing other people succeed, particularly if you could have a hand in it, which is the opposite of how.[00:27:00]

Human nature often works. You also appeal mostly to your internal benchmarks. You want to do what's good for you and your family, you don't really care at all what other people might think about what what you're doing relative to what they're doing, or what you have relative to what they have. [00:27:15] And then the last thing I always say is, One of the things when I talk about money and happiness is, there's an equation, it's, it's what do I have in life financially speaking, minus what I want.

And if that equation doesn't lead to a positive number, there's a lot of unhappy [00:27:30] billionaires, right? So, you never move the goalposts like that. You kind of you kind of always your wants weren't always based on materially having more than either you had today or than anybody else had. So I, I summarize with that because I think it's [00:27:45] a great life lesson for those who are listening for practical outcome in life relative to the things I think are so important about money

Fred Gold: exactly.

Yeah, we, we, we just recently moved. [00:28:00] Actually to an apartment and there's no stairs, which are important to us as we grow older. And you know, at this, at this point in my life, I'm just you know, it's, it's not a mansion. It's, it's not on 10 acres of land, but I feel so [00:28:15] comfortable. with where my wife and I are in life now, and how really happy we are.

And I'm looking forward to the remaining years that the man upstairs wants to give us. And, [00:28:30] uh, no regrets. No regrets. No, that's, that's terrific. I've lived my life the way I hope a lot of people can live it, you know, just

Jonathan Blau: No, well, you're, you're a good example for a lot of people and I call anti human nature your, your, the way you've [00:28:45] lived your life.

So so thanks again for, for agreeing to be on the podcast today. It's great to great to have this conversation with you. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Crazy Wealthy Podcast. You can access our podcast anytime on all your favorite [00:29:00] venues, including Apple, Google iHeart Radio, Spotify, and anywhere else that you like to get your podcasts generally.

You can also access it on crazywealthypodcast. com and our website, fusionfamilywealth. com. [00:29:15] And thanks again. Until the next episode, this is Jonathan Blau. Hello everybody. This is Jonathan Blau, the host of Crazy Wealthy Podcast. At the end of the Fred Gold interview I usually accept a phone call from my [00:29:30] wife Amy.

But we decided today, since we're on our brief winter retreat in Boca Raton, Florida, we're gonna have a conversation just in our morning walk. Live,

Amy Blau: live, live from Boca.

Jonathan Blau: Live from Boca.

Amy Blau: It's Thursday [00:29:45] day live.

Jonathan Blau: So Amy, what do you have for me?

Amy Blau: Well, I want to know about how that conversation with my dad went.

Jonathan Blau: I thought it went well. I thought that it's a unique interview for me, obviously, because as you know, I lost my dad at 13 and he kind of [00:30:00] became my dad. So in that way, it was very unique, but we also talked about some pain points in his financial life that most people not only couldn't talk about, but wouldn't want to talk about, but given.

His nature, temperament and humility. He did a great job, was [00:30:15] eager to talk about it, to kind of share some of the some of the biases that led him to unfortunately fall into a bad financial position at a high, at what was the end of his very successful career.

Amy Blau: You know, what's so interesting to me is that, you know, coming at [00:30:30] it as someone who's seen this happen live, I saw the same thing happen with my grandfather and he unfortunately had a terrible accident.

He was a mechanic. And he lost the sight in one of his eyes and at the age of 50, instead of staying on and [00:30:45] working for many more years, he decided to sell his gas station and kind of hang it up and that kind of led to a financial downfall for him that my father had to pick up the slack and then I watched it happen to him also.

So, [00:31:00] A, I'm hoping I broke the curse and having you as my advisor, I'm sure I have broken the curse. But, you know, what I learned about my dad is that he's the most resilient man I know. And I don't know if it's, all [00:31:15] stem from his time in Vietnam, or if it stemmed from his time married to my mom, or if it stemmed from his time.

Well, from my

Jonathan Blau: perspective, nothing could lead to resiliency more than 50 years or more married to your mom, but that's a whole other story.

Amy Blau: Or if it's, you know, [00:31:30] resiliency from having to raise my brother and I, I don't know, maybe it's just a combination of everything. What I

Jonathan Blau: can share with you is he didn't mention a word about resiliency being born out of his exposure to your mother for 50 plus years, so.

I'm going to share that with you now. What, what he [00:31:45] did say is that one of his greatest teachers in life was I asked him about how he was able to cope with these things. How he always, whenever I meet someone who knows him, who worked for him or was a client of his, as I said, they call him the gold standard.

He was the best. [00:32:00] And I said, you always cared about others. He just has that temperament. But he also said my greatest life lessons came from my dad and he almost was tearing because as you say we call him poppy. He was a mechanic, but your father didn't let him know he was running out of money. He just [00:32:15] kept sending him money and telling him, no dad, you still have money in the account I'm managing.

And that's, that's the kind of person he is. But he also talked about his experience in Vietnam. And how that also led to his resiliency. So all in all, you know, his temperament his selflessness, [00:32:30] his ability to not want more and be envious of others, but rather want to help people and be happy for them as he helps them succeed.

That's, that's unique about him. And that all came through in the podcast. One

Amy Blau: of the things that I know we talk about a lot is that money doesn't make [00:32:45] you happy. It just makes life easier sometimes. But it will, if you're not a happy person, money won't make you happy and it could make you unhappy at times.

And that's one life lesson I've learned from my dad. He is no more or less happy [00:33:00] than he was when he was making a million, you know, a million dollars a year.

Jonathan Blau: That's right. No, he's someone we talked about. So my recent podcast, I talked about internal and external benchmarks. So we want to show the world that we're staying in a fancy place.

We stay at the four seasons in a one [00:33:15] bedroom with our family of four, even though our internal benchmark wants to be comfortable. It doesn't want to have the fancy place, but he doesn't succumb to the external benchmark. He always lives his life with the internal benchmark. So that was some of the examples in our recent fix it Friday with money, can't buy happiness.

But he, [00:33:30] he summarized what he illustrated through real life experiences is Familiarity bias, which leads you to make decisions to concentrate on things because you know them. Even though the risk is the same as if you didn't know him, that caused him to make that decision that Anderson [00:33:45] to leave his pension there regret aversion, which most people get impacted negatively because in order to avoid the regretting something from an action they took, they just never take any actions.

He didn't let that happen to him. So there's a lot of valuable information related to how we help [00:34:00] people that podcast. And I enjoyed doing it.

Amy Blau: So I'm going to end this by saying that when you said he's the gold standard, as far as Oh. accountant was, he was the gold, he is the gold standards as far as a man should be.

And, you know, I love [00:34:15] having him as my dad. I'm so happy. that you married into this family so that you can enjoy him also. And buddy, if you don't start walking faster, I'm going to have to slow down and that's not going to be good. Honey, you don't even know

Jonathan Blau: that guy you just yelled at. What are you doing?[00:34:30]

Amy Blau: Everybody, if we don't hear from you or speak to you before the end of the new year, Happy holidays. Happy New Year. We wish all the best for you and your family.

Jonathan Blau: All right. Until next time, everybody. Thanks for listening. [00:34:45]

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com. Until then, stay crazy [00:35:00] wealthy.

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