Episode 2: Everything is an Investment

Rosanna
Hello, and welcome to Episode Two of the relentless pursuit podcast. Today’s episode title is called everything is an investment. If you’ve read or heard the title of this podcast episode, we might have you thinking this that this conversation is all about financial investments or planning for retirement. So if you were hoping to hear the secrets of investing in the stock market or real estate, you’re not going to find him here.

Jordan
No, not us.

Rosanna
Have you ever noticed though, that you’re always investing your time and your energy into something? Think about your days. What are they filled with from your career and your hobbies to your networks in your communities. Everything you say yes to and are a part of is an investment. It’s an investment of your time, of your energy and of your resources. If you have to make sure that the things you choose to allocate your time and resources to are indeed the right things. So let’s talk about how to invest in your life and not just in your portfolio.

Jordan
What’s wrong?

Rosanna
Just tripping over my words a little bit today.

Jordan
I remember being I don’t know if you remember this, but I remember when we were newly married, I’d go over the monthly budget. And I would just be like sweating over how much we were saved or how much we weren’t saving and how much we were spending and I wanted to just kind of accumulate this little pool to eventually like, invest in something and then I slowly learned about investing and the fact that like, once you have some sort of a resource, you can, like allocate that so that it grows in some kind of way. And I wished I’d learned a lot of those lessons financially speaking when I was even younger, but I feel like after I understood money in that way, everything else started taking on the same sort of you know, like metaphorical significance. There are so many resources that we have beyond money. And we’re constantly investing those kinds of things. So I heard something interesting not too long ago, that we we all have time and time is one of the biggest things we’ll be talking about today. But do you know how long 1 million seconds is?

Rosanna
No, I was an English major. I do not know how long 1 million seconds is.

Jordan
1 million seconds is about 11 and a half days. So do you know how long 1 billion seconds is?

Rosanna
I do not.

Jordan
To put in perspective, the difference between a million and a billion a billion seconds is almost 32 years. Okay. So one thing that got me thinking is I heard someone talking about our time, according to the number of seconds that we have, and in a sense, we’re all time billionaires. We have we hope, at least 1 billion seconds ahead of us that we can invest. So if we thought of those seconds like dollars, how would we invest them or spend them wisely versus foolishly? And so I think the thing that hit me and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this, like so early in the podcast is that we are going to invest in something we’re going to be spending these time dollars that we have in something, whether we want to or not. And I think it’s wise to make sure that we are investing in the right things. So we’re going to be spending our time and energy to what are the best ways to allocate those resources that lead to the kind of growth and outcomes that we would like?

Rosanna
That’s, um, that’s a pretty intense way to look at your life. I mean, if you’re looking at seconds as dollars, right, so we’ve already we’ve already gone through a billion.

Jordan
We flew past our first billion

Rosanna
Seconds, right? And so we’ve got like, how many more 2 billion, 3 billion more seconds left? So how are we going to use this time, that time moving forward to invest in the right things?

That’s a lot to chew on.

Jordan
It’s a lot to think about few thoughts to get started.

Rosanna
Yeah.

So when we were coming up with the idea for this podcast and everything being an investment, it was my job to kind of research some interesting investing statistics. And so when you look at statistics and investing, there’s not all of these articles about time investments or you know, investing your time wisely. So I’m going to utilize investment statistics and kind of show how those could translate into the investment of our time in our lives have what we want to kind of create moving forward. And so one of them has to do with kind of like retirement savings. And it says if you do not start saving until 45, you will need to save three times as much as if you start at 25. And so I remember being married. We got married, how old are we? We were 23. So we were young when we got married. And I remember we were married just like a year or two. And like you had a very strategic saving plan. And then you were getting information on like life insurance, and then IRAs.

Jordan
And at that time, like, we should have been doing this sooner.

Rosanna
Yes, I knew at that point, you were like, we should, yeah, we should have been doing this sooner. And then you kind of had me panicked. And I’m thinking, I don’t want to use the money I have now to prepare for something later. And it took a long time to shift to that. But if you look at it strategically, in terms of investing in savings, right, if you start saving at 45, like how much more time are you trying to make up for when you get there. And so I know that’s something that you and I have been talking a lot about, is that we want one of the things that we’ve chosen to invest in is each other. And so investing in each other means when our kids are grown and out of the house at some point we want to still like love each other and adore each other and admire each other and the…

Jordan
fruits of those investments…

Rosanna
…right but we can’t put our kids in front of that and ignore each other until then, and then hope when we’re 65 and everybody’s out of the house that we’ll still know each other, love each other, understand each other and move forward, we would have to backtrack to kind of like, build into that. So when I was thinking of investing, and starting now, and we’ve talked a lot about investing in our relationship from early on, but it always has to be a priority and that it always has to be important. So that was kind of one of the kind of like, light bulbs that went off and kind of the wake up calls, like maybe we are making the right decision that our kids are important to us and they’re amazing and wonderful, and we do as much as we can with them and for them. But we also want to prioritize each other. So that was kind of one thought I had another thought I had had to do with another investing statistic and it said this, on average women invest more conservatively than men. I thought that was interesting. I’ve been talking to a few other ladies about kind of just the role of women in shifting and wanting to be out of the house, but also wanting to be a mother. That’s a financial statistic. But financial statistics in our analogy, but within the analogy of investments, right, like, women do need to invest in themselves and not conservatively, like we need to, like better ourselves, whether it’s health, wellness, personal growth, development, learning, like I think sometimes women, although we do those things, we do it in very small increments, because we’re maybe a little more. Yeah, we’re just kind of maybe risk, what do you call risk adverse, where we kind of want to control everything. And so we don’t take the risk to invest bigger in ourselves. And so I think that maybe has some implications for kind of the now and investing in yourself.

Jordan
Yeah, maybe I’m more conservative. It just is more conservative in like certain arenas of life.

Rosanna
Right. Okay. Yeah.

And then the third statistic I thought would be interesting to bring up now, as we’re kind of all dealing with kind of like this question. COVID-19 and worldwide pandemic, “it says the greatest returns seem to be when most people expect the biggest losses.” So it says the greatest three year period of owning stocks was during the Great Depression. And the next best return was in the three years starting in 2009. When the economy struggled…

Jordan
It goes down, then there’s a rebound.

Rosanna
There’s a rebound. And so it’s during those times when things are bad, that investment needs to be greater. So if you’re investing at that time, then as things rebound, there’s more kind of like fruit from it. And so I think that has to do with all of our lives now, because I think a lot of people have put their life on pause, or are just waiting for this to be over, right, they’ve kind of like waved the flag. They’re not in their normal routines, they’re not hitting it as hard as they should in multiple arenas in their life, waiting for it to be over. But this is the time that we kind of like dig in.

Jordan
When you make the investment and you’ll see you’re gonna see greater rewards from that after this is all over.

Rosanna
So those were some of the statistics about investing. They got me thinking about how we’re investing in our lives now.

Jordan
Their time and energy because I don’t think it works a lot different. I think that you make those kinds of investments with your time and energy and your talents and in different arenas, and there’s dividends that you’ll reap as you go and eventual outcomes that you’ll get to that I think are worth the time that you put into it.

Rosanna
Agreed. So although it’s not a podcast about investing in your portfolio, some of those same truths and kind of investing tactics, I think can be applied to how we’re investing the time in our lives towards what we want and what we’re pursuing.

Jordan
Okay. All right. Well, let’s get into some of our questions then. And I’ll fire off first with a question for you that I think will be maybe just a good place to start and applicable to most folks listening and that is what would you consider to be your biggest investments?

Rosanna
I think right now the biggest investment would be our kids.

They’re one of those slow growing investments where it’s just, it’s every day, day after day, over time where we only have so many minutes with them.

Jordan
And you could like I know, like people have done the math, you can add up the number of minutes from the time they’re born till the time they they turn 18 or whatever age they end up, you know, become an adult and moving out and truly being on their own. And it is scary. It is a finite number of minutes that you have with them.

Rosanna
Yeah, I think I’ve seen it in hours. And I forget, like how many hours it is you have with your child before they like turn 18 and go off to college if they choose that path. And when you look at it like that, and you’re kind of like we were talking about in our last episode, like, you know, waiting, you want to fast forward through all of this to get past that you think wow, there’s there’s only so many precious minutes and hours and we can’t wish them away that we need to make that investment now so that when they’re 18 they’re responsible and they’re self sufficient, and they have good hearts and they’re, they’re doing good for the world. So I think that’s especially as a mom I think that’s one of my biggest investments, even if I’m running a business, or if I have other priorities, like, they’re my biggest investment, what I do with them and for them is where we’re going to see those returns. And those are long ways off.

Jordan
Sometimes it doesn’t always feel like we’re getting what we thought we were, I know out of the the investment so to speak. But we know like the the time and energy that we pour into those relationships and those the things that we try to teach them go a long way towards who they actually become. So I would, I would, I would say the same thing to that parenting is the biggest investment. But also it struck me too, like it’s, it’s a it’s a commitment. I mean, you could you could have kids but not be investing in them in theory, right?

Rosanna
Sure, you could, you could outsource your investment,

Jordan
Right. So we’ve kind of like we’ve not only committed to starting that investment, but also committed to maintain continuing to contribute to it as we go.

Rosanna
Well I think contributing makes it sound like the savings plan we have set aside for them for college we’re like monthly you contribute just like a donation into the pile. But we’re we’re doing more than that with when you talk about investing in your kids were cultivating something there. And the image that comes to mind if we are committed to our families and to raising our kids is we’re cultivating It reminds me of when I go out front and dig out the weeds. You’re like cultivating the yard you’re cultivating the soil you’re cultivating the garden right? You’re like you’re digging through the soil you’re taking out what’s bad you’re putting in what’s good. You’re constantly pouring water.

Jordan
One of my favorite analogies for life is the garden and so we don’t get too many analogies at once. We should do I go episode our favorite metaphors for life. Here we go. But I agree like trying to yeah, like take out or literally like weed out the bad and help something beautiful blossom over time.

Rosanna
Yeah, I mean that’s that’s like a I mean, it’s an investment. But it’s it’s a hand all hands on deck investment, like you’re rolling up your sleeves and you’re getting dirty, as opposed to just, you know, you’re like a contribution that you’re just putting pennies in the bank and watching them grow. This is very different.

Jordan
All right, so what what are your other big investments?

Rosanna
Gosh, I don’t know that I’ve…

Jordan
What are some of your biggest investments and it doesn’t have to be all now like even over time, like I would consider education to be an investment and we’ve talked to a lot of youth currently in their education. And looking at how the whole point of education is not so you can complete an assignment and get a grade but that’s to like use your word cultivates to cultivate your mind and your understanding of the world, your ability to think so that years and years down the road, you have a foundation of using your mind well so that you can use it in new arenas and new ways and continue to learn.

Rosanna
But I think that for me like that That almost seems like a newer mindset like growing up as a kid I don’t remember like education being talked about in that way that you’re, you’re learning this you’re cultivating your mind so that at some point, you can use that to contribute in this way. You know, it was more of like a means to an end like this is what you do. This is what you learn. This is your kid, you go to school, right? You go to school that’s supposed to do what you’re supposed to learn. You’re supposed to then go to high school, and then maybe college and then and then get a job. Where I feel like now the shift is a little bit more of like, this mindset of Yes, you’re, you’re cultivating who you are, you’re investing your time and your education and your knowledge to become anything you want to be. Yeah, so it’s a little bit different.

Jordan
I think it’s different to I mean, when you’re a kid, you just kind of have to go and that’s the story that’s outlined for you and you follow along with it. But once you don’t have to be in school anymore, you realize the real value that you do get out of it. And many people do choose to continue with their schooling in order to find some way to get educated in some new arena that’s interesting to them.

Rosanna
Well, on that same question you asked, What else are you investing in? And I think one thing for us that’s been important is investing in our community. Where we live about a year ago, we moved, and we moved from the town we live in to the town we live in, we like eight blocks away. We had lived in this town for nine years. And we felt very well rooted and planted here. The connections that we made, were very important to us. And it made us not want to move and so and I think that has to do with the investment of like, who we are, and what we’ve done within the surrounding community that was important to us.

Jordan
I’d say like all relationships are an investment and we we’ve put our roots down in this town. And same with our children as well, like they have their own connections. So it’s difficult to difficult for us to just uproot and feel like you’re starting afresh somewhere else, but I feel like at least I can learn a lot from you but just continued to, like maybe invest more intentionally then not just in like relationships or friendships but like in the community. I feel like I can give more than maybe what I’ve had the mindset for over the last several years.

Rosanna
Like, how do you mean exactly?

Jordan
Even I think of our neighbors on our streets, I feel like I can be just more cognizant of who they are and having intentional connections with them. Giving to our community like I’ve coached the soccer team a handful of times, and I think that’s a cute and appropriate way of like having some connections beyond just our immediate household or our street and like I would see it as something like that where if I have something that I can give to my community, and I think of community like the town, then I would like to find ways to contribute whether it’s through donations or volunteering or just to stay issue more connections or, you know, anything along those lines.

Rosanna
Yeah, and I think those are the things that people maybe often miss when someone is having a food drive. You know, it’s, it’s easy to just kind of pass by that sign. But like if you know that you’re feeding other people in your neighborhood who don’t have those resources, like, that’s a way to show up, to be present to invest in the area that you live in to take care of others who, you know, can’t, even with me, being registered in the local Bloomingdale Chamber of Commerce, you know, connecting with other business owners in the area, seeing what they’re doing, supporting one another has has been eye opening for me, whereas you can live here, but if you think about the businesses within the confines of the local town and the community and what they do for the community, and with each other, it’s it’s interesting to see that, you know, unfold.

Jordan
And so I have another question too. And I think it’s your turn, but I’m going to take it.

Rosanna
That’s fine.

Jordan
I have a few interesting questions I’ve been thinking about ever wanted to ask you, so I’ll go with this one because I don’t want to miss it. At our first episode we talked about these are the days and the focus was of contentment and focus on the present moment. So there’s a bit of an irony that our second episode is talking about investment, which I think by its nature is putting time and energy into something now that has its fruits and pay off later on down the road. So how do we strike that balance between finding contentment and the focus the “these are the days” mentality versus the everything is an investment and we’re looking towards the future kind of approach?

Rosanna
Well, if we go back to the billions of seconds that we have, right, there’s, within a day we have 24 hours, we often say that there’s not enough hours in a day. Now that things have slowed down there seems to be plenty of hours in the day. So I think it has to do with prioritizing, so you know, kind of chunking your day where there’s there’s hours allocated to our kids and enjoying them and living in the moment and being carefree. But you know, today you can plan for tomorrow to step outside of yourself and your immediate needs and your wants, and doing something for someone else, right? And we can do that by getting the kids on board and doing something for our neighbors with them. You know, kind of just you can you can enjoy what you have and be content, but you can also be forward focused and minded. I think there’s time for all of it. As long as we’re strategic about it, and I think that’s the biggest thing is being strategic with an investment, it would be the same. It’s being strategic, knowing when to allocate time and funds and efforts towards putting more in you can’t always but there are times that will allow you to do that and you have to take…

Jordan
A lot of people do that like at the end of the year they’ll they’ll rebalance their portfolio. And maybe that’s something that some sort of a basis, some sort of a timeline, there’s this sort of rebalancing this question, you know, if Am I doing everything it’s do, am I investing towards my values, and making adjustments if need be.

Rosanna
Well and you and I do that every year, we either do it at the end of December beginning of January, where we look at our lives kind of where we are financially as a family, what our goals are, and we try and realign those things with where are we going to allocate our time, our intentions, our interests, our you know, our, our giving, like, where are we going to put those things? And I think that’s something that couples, families, individuals have to cultivate this mindset of stepping back, kind of putting it all in front of you looking at it, and then being intentional about where you’re gonna where you’re going to be.

Jordan
You got a question?

Rosanna
I’ve got a question.

Well, I’ve got three. I’ll start with one.

This I think this has been really important to me in the last couple of years. But I want to get your take on it. How important how important is it to invest in yourself? If there was a top five list, how important to you do you think it is for to invest in yourself?

Jordan
I mean, I think you have to. To me that that makes the investments that you put towards everything else that much more valuable as well. I mean, there’s a lot of different areas in yourself that could be included I was thinking about even just your your health is an investment in a way that’s maybe the only thing you can ever invest in that could increase the number of the amount of time that you have, you know. Remember my dad told me before my resist, but he told me when he was trying to teach me as a kid how to eat healthy and I wanted nothing to do with it. He told me it’s like your health is like putting money in the bank. And it that has sunk in with me over the years, as I’ve finally understood, like I probably should eat vegetables and exercise and sleep and do things that create a healthy life and I think that that is an easy foundation to look to, that allows me to have the health that I want to have to be able to give the time and energy to other things, I would consider education to be another area of investment in yourself. And there’s probably other domains that we could look at too, like recreation, and hobbies and skill development, like any of those other things that are really focused on yourself and make your own life into living and thinking better, but can also make you a better parent or a better spouse or a better colleague, or you know, better in all kinds of domains.

Rosanna
And I think as life gets busy, and you know, we’re pressed for time, I think that might be something that’s overlooked this first one, that’s the first one that goes right, like, I’ve got to deal with this at work, or my kids need me here or I’ve made this commitment to the community or I have so we don’t take care of ourselves or we’re not investing in long term health for ourselves, which you know, brings kind of like stress and being tired and you know, not feeling well which does not Put, you know, make us at our best. And so I would agree that it’s investing in yourself is important. And sometimes we forget to do that. And I think there are seasons that that happens. Like when you’re starting a family and kids are small, it’s sometimes that goes by the wayside. And then we kind of, you know, muster the strength that kids are a little bit older, we can balance a little bit more. But I think it’s something long term if you’re, you know, single or recently married, it’s something that you have to continue to do.

Jordan
Yeah. So going off of that, and also referring back to one of the stats that you had found was, is it ever too late to start an investment? So like you said, when you’re 45, like financially have to contribute three times as much as when you’re 25 to I’m assuming that was like a retirement funding or something like that. So in the same vein, like is it ever appropriate for someone to say like, I’m too old, really my prime for investing in this area or that area of my life has passed?

Rosanna
I would say no, because like an investment like where you can’t really rewards until you know, 30 or 40 years later, right? Like whether it’s a rental property or portfolio, that’s a long term investment. There are other things that are that are shorter term. And it just reminds me of a quote that says it’s never too late to be who you want to be. You can start now, like, and I think that’s a great way to look at it. Like, okay, I maybe I won’t be a concert pianist ever, but why should that stop me from learning to play the piano if I want to play the piano?

Jordan
What about a bad? Is there any such thing as a bad investment?

Because I was thinking about that tonight. Like, I think about even the bad times are the mistakes are the things that I’ve regretted, you know, there’s a lesson to be learned from it. And I feel like that in itself is a good outcome. And we can learn from even a negative experience.

Rosanna
Well, I don’t think we would willingly go into something thinking I’m going to start this relationship with the hope that it fails so that I have a great experience someday to you know, to tell you about. I don’t think like that’s the, you know, in that way, that would be a bad investment, right? Like, I’m gonna enter into this relationship or try this that I know will be bad. But I don’t think I think we always need to take there needs to be a sense of risk too, that not everything that we do is going to be safe or comfortable. I think it has more to do with, like the trying and learning from it. And so even if it doesn’t turn out the way that we hoped, or you know, you know, kind of like, here’s another one baking, right, like we follow the recipe, we hope it turns out well, and then it’s, you know, like a Pinterest fail that you take a picture of and send to your friend. You know, we don’t hope for that. But the intention is to go in to learn something to do something to master something, you know, to make something and sometimes it doesn’t work out and that’s okay.

Jordan
Yeah, I think that’s that as I looked at experiences, I know there’s plenty of bad ones in our past, but at least we’re able to glean a lesson from it and make the future choices that will make stronger so in that way, there is a positive outcome from the investment.

Rosanna
Do you have another question for me?

Jordan
I got a bunch.

Rosanna
Oh, go ahead. Can I get a little nervous? cuz sometimes they’re so deep and then you want me to answer him on the spot? I’m not sure. Yeah, how to answer.

Jordan
Yeah, I do like this putting you on the spot. You’ve heard the phrase diversifying investments? Is it better to like diversify your investments can spread your time and energy over a number of areas? Or is it better to have a more narrow focus?

Rosanna
I mean, is there a wrong answer? I mean, I have an answer. And mine would be to have a smaller focus. And this is just based on like me in the last 10 years and what I’ve tried where I’ve had my hand in probably two dozen things, and I think sometimes long term that’s hard to maintain and it’s hard to manage. And really the only one that suffers is me because I’m giving of myself to too many different things. So like this last year, I did like an assessment of like, what are the most important things to me, and really digging in deep to those things, and not that I’ve shut myself off to other opportunities or to other people or relationships, it’s just there are a finite number of minutes and seconds and time. And so those priorities that need the most cultivation and the most investment like I need to be more focused with, especially at this time. I might be able to open myself up to more later or to change the focus or the scope

Jordan
Like parenting is time sensitive. Your kids are gonna grow up one way or another, but maybe it’s good to look at like, after when you’re in the empty nester phase is a great opportunity to change your investment, you have more time available now to put towards something else.

Rosanna
Right, the traveling is gonna happen then it’s a whole lot of traveling. I mean, we still go places with the kids, but the traveling that I picture in my mind isn’t going to happen in our 30s and 40s. So it’s just knowing that like, I will get to some of those things or be able to like be deeper into those things later on. So let’s Let me focus on and you know, A through F right now. But I think every year I also reassess like, like what has shifted. If my business shifts a little bit like what how do I refocus that towards like new investments of growing it one way or another, even with relationships with people those you know change over time and and what does this relationship need? So I think it just, you know, life living in the moment and like letting things come to you to like just the way that life kind of happens then kind of shifts kind of where you prioritize those investments.

Jordan
Well, I have a bunch more questions here. But I do want to get to some of our takeaways as well. And I know like these, these conversations always lead me to think a little bit more precisely, maybe just a little bit more accurately about some of the best ways that we can live and make these decisions together. So I’m sure we’ll be talking about this a bunch even after we press the stop button on the recording. But for me, like the biggest takeaway in talking about this is recognizing first like, just realizing and remembering that there is a finite number of minutes and seconds and of energy that we can put towards things. So being intentional with how we are expending that is something that definitely comes to the forefront of my mind. But I think what also comes to my mind too, is that I can’t almost like the opposite of some of where our conversation has gone. I, there’s a lot of pressure when we think about how, what we’re investing in what we’re not investing at this moment. And I think it’s good to to, at least for me, like take my foot off the accelerator, and enjoy the things that we are have already invested in that are like we’re right in the midst of the fruit of you know what I’m saying? So instead of thinking I have to be producing something or I have to be learning something and you know, that’s one of my, one of my problems is I feel like if I if I’m not making something or improving in some way then I’m just wasting my time. But I think that that’s that’s not the case either. That’s not that I’m encouraging wasting time or I want to get better at that. But I do want to get better at enjoying the things in life that don’t lead to an obvious, like, you know, quantitative outcome.

Rosanna
Yeah. And I think you know, one of the things to remember too is there are good ways to invest your time and what’s good for you isn’t necessarily good for me. And what’s good for us isn’t necessarily great for another family. So it’s really just that intentional, stepping back and assessing like, Where are our strengths? Where do we wanna, like put our time or energy and effort to choosing those things, and then to being consistent because I think it really comes down to consistency.

Jordan
Yeah. So it makes a solid investment is like believing in it and then pouring that resource into it more, so it grows. Great. Well, we’re glad you all could join us for this second episode of relentless pursuit. Now if you haven’t yet, please check out our website. It is at the relentless pursuit podcast calm and you can find some ways to give us some feedback and to reach out to us there. And please, if you haven’t subscribed, subscribe to our podcast and leave us a five-star rating and a raving review. love to hear from you. We’re looking forward to sharing more episodes with you in the future.

Rosanna
Thanks, guys. See you later.