Sathish Gajula: $0 to $1 Million + Compounding Health, Wealth, & Wisdom | FRLP 113
Sathish Gajula started tracking his household net worth at zero in 2017. It took six years to reach $234,000 — and only three more to cross $1 million. He's a senior pharmaceutical engineer, the host of the Compounding Project Podcast, and living proof that compounding applies to a lot more than money.
In this episode, Sathish shares the $380 phone call that revealed he was living paycheck to paycheck on a $70,000 salary, how one job change came with a negotiated 50 percent raise and a remote arrangement, why automation beats willpower every time, and why the first $100,000 ended up meaning more to him than the million.
We also explore the 40 pounds he lost and the visible 6-pack he built using a $10 food scale, the parallels between compounding health and compounding wealth — plus the one place they diverge — how he got his wife on board with financial independence using two books and a library, and why he'd rather be a millionaire with a 6-pack in a Toyota than an unhealthy millionaire in a Ferrari.
Sathish and Justin also dig into W-2 careers versus entrepreneurship, survivorship bias in the creator economy, growing your career income as the single biggest lever, and the cost of over-optimizing your life — including Justin's case for protecting your leisure.
Fit Rich Life Podcast Episode 113 with Sathish Gajula is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and wherever you enjoy your podcast entertainment.
Connect With Sathish Gajula:
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In This Episode:
• The year-by-year net worth chart from $0 to $1 million
• Why the first $100,000 took three years and mattered most
• How a single job change produced a 50 percent raise
• Earning a Boston salary while living in North Carolina
• Why he never bought individual stocks
• Automation as the most underrated wealth-building habit
• How automated investing creates dollar cost averaging for you
• Lifestyle creep at $70,000 a year and why raises don't fix saving
• When to stop doing everything yourself and start buying back your time
• Growing up in rural India where the stock market was considered gambling
• The $380 phone call that started his FI journey
• Why a W-2 job may be a better path to FI than entrepreneurship
• Getting a reluctant spouse on board without starting a fight
• Losing 40 pounds and building a six pack with a $10 food scale
• Why protein at every meal changed his fitness results
• The Compound Effect story: 125 calories a day for 31 months
• Identity-based habits in both fitness and money
• When optimizing your life starts shrinking it
Chapters:
00:00 — Meet Sathish Gajula
01:36 — Zero to $1 million: what actually happened
04:05 — The job change that came with a 50 percent raise
07:33 — Which number meant more, $100K or $1M
09:57 — The net worth chart, year by year
13:21 — Why index funds instead of stock picking
16:37 — VOO, VTI, and why index funds are self-cleansing
18:06 — Finding JL Collins and The Simple Path to Wealth
19:31 — Why automation beats willpower
21:13 — What paying yourself first actually looks like
24:03 — Automation as built-in dollar cost averaging
26:23 — Lifestyle inflation at $70,000 a year
28:27 — Time in the market vs. timing the market
34:35 — When to start buying back your time
40:02 — Building the wealth snowball
46:08 — The cost of waiting five years to start
48:11 — Growing up in rural India: land, savings, and taboo
52:16 — The $380 phone call
54:55 — Googling "how to stop living paycheck to paycheck"
56:47 — Justin's own FI awakening
59:02 — W-2 career vs. entrepreneurship
01:09:16 — Career income is the biggest lever
01:15:29 — Getting his wife on board with FI
01:21:18 — Optimizing housing, food, and transportation
01:28:24 — Three years without eating out
01:30:14 — Lifestyle creep is real
01:32:34 — A millionaire with a six pack in a Toyota
01:35:29 — Losing 40 pounds
01:36:33 — The $10 food scale
01:43:04 — Do you still track your food?
01:45:55 — Principles that transfer between health and wealth
01:50:40 — 125 calories a day for 31 months
01:56:07 — Identity-based habits
02:04:26 — When optimization starts shrinking your life
02:06:49 — The case for leisure
02:12:02 — Ted Lasso, Shrinking, and Billions
02:19:06 — Fitness: protein at every meal
02:24:08 — Money: don't quit before compounding kicks in
02:26:44 — Life: never stop learning
02:31:02 — Where to find Sathish
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Full Transcript:
Sathish Gajula: $0 to $1 Million + Compounding Health, Wealth, & Wisdom | FRLP 113
Meet Sathish Gajula: Engineer, Podcaster, and Millionaire
Justin: Today's guest is my friend Sathish Gajula, the host of the Compounding Project Podcast, and a senior pharmaceutical engineer who has built his entire life around one simple idea. Small actions, repeated consistently, produce extraordinary results. Sathish and his household began tracking their net worth at zero in 2017, they reached their first $100,000 in 2020, $588,000 in 2025, and recently in 2026 crossed $1 million. But this is not simply an investing story. Sathish applies compounding to his health, his personal development, his marriage, his reading, his relationships, and his creative work. Sathish and I met at FinCon in Portland last year in September of 2025, became fast friends. and got to spend more time together at EconoMe in Cincinnati earlier this year in twenty six. I'm excited to have him on the show today and explore his journey from engineer to millionaire, podcaster, athlete, and student of the compounding life. Welcome to the show, brother.
Sathish: Justin, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. So thanks for the great introduction. I'm just so excited. I hope it's not downhill from here.
From $0 to $1 Million: What Actually Changed
Justin: It won't be. It's gonna compound through the whole episode into extraordinary results.
So one of the things I love about your story, Sathish, is it took your household about six years to go from zero to $234,000. Then in roughly three years, you added almost $770,000 to hit that $1 million mark. What happened?
Sathish: Yeah, so a lot of things happened since 2022. So 2022 is when maybe I'll back off for a second. So from 2017 to 2023, it was just me working with a single income family. So I got married in 2019. And then my wife, she came from India and then she started doing her masters here. And only in 2022 is when she got a job and we... went from a single income family to double income family. And so that was one of the main reasons why our net worth started exploding. And also in 2023, I switched my job. So I was in my previous role for almost like five years. And then when I switched my job, there was almost a negotiated 50% hike in my salary. So that also helped a lot. Right. And I was waiting, I was waiting for to badly like moved to a different role. And in 2024 is when we got our house, we were saving for our house. then so that 2024 net worth includes my house equity as well. And the last piece is the market. Yeah, since 2023, the market has been going up significantly. I believe it's around, so 20. 23% in 2023 and 22% in 2024 and then 16%, 10% it's always been positive growth. So all this combined to that explosive growth and of course, there is the compounding aspect as well that helped our net worth to grow in the past three to four years. But yeah, we can dive deeper into each and everything.
How Sathish Negotiated a 50 Percent Raise
Justin: Love it.
I have to double click on the 50 percent increase in your income. How did you make that happen?
Sathish: So in 2019 I moved to a different role. I was in New Jersey and I moved to a role in Indiana. At that time it was due to my visa situation I had to accept a job offer which was paying me, at that time it was 75k per year. This was back in 2018, 2019. And then I had to, I thought, I had to stay in that job for five years despite not making big progress in my salary just because of my visa situation. So I’m an immigrant — I came from India and this company was sponsoring my visa so I had to stay with the company until my green card was processed. So that's why I had to stay in that role. happened, you know, when my visa was sorted out, then I was looking for opportunities and then I found an opportunity, you know, in the East Coast in one of the, you know, in Boston, basically. So Boston salaries compared to Indiana were higher and also, you know, since I've been in the role for five years at that time, I had probably close to eight years of experience. And then I, you know, I was falling, I was following some negotiation tactics, you know, and online and then I tried to apply all those things in this new role and I was able to negotiate a remote opportunity as well. So I moved to Boston, I stayed there for one year and then I worked, I could pick any place in the US to work. I picked, I'm currently in North Carolina, so I love this place. I moved just because of my weather, of the weather and also my wife's job as well.
So yeah, that combination of multiple things, but yeah, the high income from Boston that helped a lot. That was a major move. know, in India, the salaries were not as lucrative as in Boston.
Justin: Couple follow up questions for you. 'Cause I don't want to make any assumptions — is North Carolina less expensive than Boston?
Sathish: Yes, 100%.
Justin: Significantly? Is it medium cost of living, low cost of living? What is North Carolina where you are?
Sathish: I would say it's median cost of living. In terms of the numbers, I used to pay a rent of about 3000 for a three-bedroom apartment in Boston. The same apartment would cost me maybe 2000 dollars in North Carolina. So probably 30% decrease in just house.
Justin: That's great.
Yeah. It's I love that you got a high paying job in a high cost of living area and then moved to a lower cost of living area while keeping that high paying job. That's great.
Sathish: Yeah, it's my wife's role also like helped me. She found something here in the North Carolina and then and then you know that also helped me to move but yeah it just worked out that way.
Which Milestone Mattered More: $100,000 or $1 Million
Justin: Yeah. So I'm curious for you, which number along your journey felt more meaningful? Was it $100,000 net worth? Was it the $500,000? Or was it finally getting that $1 million?
Sathish: So if you had asked me this question when I hit the $100,000 mark, I would have said, you know, $1 million mark would be more meaningful. But now that I hit the $1 million mark, I feel the first $100,000, I feel that's more meaningful to me because yeah, that, you know, Charlie Munger says the first $100K is the hardest. And I now understand why, because it took me three years to hit that first $100K and that is like, I'm not too worried about that number 100k but just that in that three years I formed the habits. I understood how compounding works and also it was reassuring to me that okay it's the habits. The habits are the compounding test of self-improvement and also the behaviors. just that first three years I came from a family who said the market is risky, who said stock market is similar to gambling. And then when I started investing in the market, my parents and even some of my friends said, you're going to lose money because they have never come across a person who made money in the stock market. So I was going against the traditional path and then I was trusting something. that will work at that time. Now I realize that first three years is so crucial because otherwise I would have quit. I would have quit and then if I had quit back then and then maybe went with my friends and with my family recommended. Their intentions are right but they recommend a lot of real estate which I don't understand. I don't invest in something I don't understand.
So yeah, that first three years helped me develop those habits. And now I'm more, now that first $100,000 is more meaningful to me now that I reached my million dollar net worth.
The Net Worth Chart, Year by Year
Justin: Yeah. People love to say they understand compounding. But my belief is until you experience numbers compounding in your own wealth journey, you don't really understand it. And I'm looking at your net worth chart from 2017 to twenty-six. And 2017 you're at zero. 2018, you're at $30,000. 2019 you're at 61,000. 2020, you hit that first $100,000 mark. Twenty-one, $148,000. Twenty-two, $196,000. Twenty-three, $234,000. So it's not moving that much. Then in twenty-four, $382,000. Okay, now we're moving. Twenty-$588,000. Okay, now we're really moving.
And then 2026, a million, almost a double in a year. And that is the compounding curve, the exponential growth that people can look at an exponential curve on a graph and say, I understand that, but it is radically different to experience that in your own net worth. Because the same thing happened to me. I hit a million and then Literally about a year later, I was at $2 million. And my mind, I was like, what the fuck? How the fuck did I just double my money in a year? Now I was also earning a lot of money, but the market was moving with me. And man, once you get $1 million in the market, you think a hundred grand in the market is great. Wait till you get a million. So Sathish, probably gonna have to have you back on the show in about a year.
Maybe a year and a half and you'll probably have $2 million.
Sathish: I hope so. Yeah. Charlie Munger says, you know, second million is easy, right? You know, he always says that, but never experienced it. But at least now that I've seen this graph, you know, slightly like compounding, I'm more confident now. But if you ask me, you know, I was always like trusting that compounding would work because I had, I read books about compounding and also I've listened to a lot of stories, like podcasts and You know, even Quit Like a Millionaire is a book that I followed. know, it also helped me. She exactly shared the numbers, you know, how they went from zero to 1 million. And that was assuring to me that, okay, this would work. But still my wife would ask me, are you sure this is going to work? Because it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it's moving. know, and all my friends, they're investing probably like Nvidia, Google, and all these semi-conductor companies, right. And they were making money. And then my wife was like, you know, are we doing the right thing? Even if a few times, even I doubted myself. was like, should I be investing in those companies? But I thought, okay, compounding will work. It has worked. I've seen examples, I've seen data and I thought I just stayed consistent and then it's happening.
Why Index Funds Instead of Individual Stocks
Justin: So you mentioned some stock picking that your friends were doing, Nvidia and some of these other companies. What was the investing that you did? Or do?
Sathish: Yeah. So in 2017 is when I read a few books. That's when my whole journey started after reading this book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. And he talked about this automating framework that I felt is it's like inherently I'm just lazy. just want to do the minimum amount of work and get maximum amount of returns. I'm an engineer, so that's what I think most engineers think. So at that time Ramit Sethi pointed out a study I believe where he said, he mentioned a study where like 90% of actively managed funds don't beat the market over the long term. And I thought to myself, how can that be true? Because all this like, actively managed fund managers, they should be beating the market because that's what they're supposed to do because they went to fancy schools, they earned these fancy degrees, and they are managing this huge amount of portfolio and they're paid crazy amounts of money and still they can't beat the market. I thought that didn't make sense. I did some research. I read a few books. Stocks for the Long Run was one of the few books. that helped me understand how the market performs over the long term and also A Random Walk Down Wall Street. there are several other books like we can, we can double click on that. So all these books were pointing out that if you, it's not about getting short returns, it's not about getting highest returns in short amount of time, but it's about getting average returns for the longest amount of time. And that clicked for me in 2017. I actually I never did individual stocks because I thought it was always like scary. I was always like, what if it goes to zero? What if it goes to zero? So, and after I these books and The Simple Path to Wealth also, it was very reassuring as well. I moved to index funds. So index funds are for people who have never heard of them, they track the, for example, S&P 500 is an index fund.
It's an index where it tracks the top 500 companies in the US. a fund that I first started with this VOO, which was tracking the top 500 companies in the US by Vanguard. So I kept investing all my money at that time into this VOO and then just try to maximize that. I was focusing more on what I could control, which is my savings instead of trying to beat the market because it's almost impossible for an average person to beat the market over long term. So that's been my investing philosophy for the past 10 years.
Justin: I love it. Yeah, so VOO, that is Vanguard's S&P 500 index ETF. And like Sathish said, it's just the top five hundred largest publicly traded companies. And one of the beautiful things that Sathish mentioned in passing is a single stock can go to zero. The company can go to business. But an index ETF or index fund like VOO.
Can never go to zero because if one of those companies of the 500 goes to zero, it doesn't become the S&P 499. They just take the next largest company and put it in there, and it's self-cleansing, as our friend JL Collins likes to say. Self-cleansing is one of the massive benefits you get with index funds and index ETFs, is you don't have to pick the right stock.
Because the right stocks just naturally find their way into the S&P 500 and VTI and VTSAX. And I'm curious when did you read the The Simple Path to Wealth? Cause you and I are both huge fans, JL Collins, and I he's been on my show a few times. He's either been on your show or you guys are about to record with him because I made the introduction. so when did you read the The Simple Path to Wealth?
Finding JL Collins and The Simple Path to Wealth
Sathish: Yeah, and thanks for the introduction by the way, we just recorded JL Collins episode just last week. It's going to be an anniversary special for 50th episode which we're going to release in two weeks. Thank you so much for the introduction. And he's so cool. I've always wanted JL on this show and I never knew how to reach him. thanks for the introduction. And then he's been so great. And his voice is so soothing. even kept, I told him while recording and he said, you know, lot of people say that.
But yeah, it's great. Yeah. Like, yeah, when it comes to The Simple Path to Wealth. So I started my journey in 2017 and I first heard about the term financial independence back in 2018, like mid 2018 is when I first heard about financial independence from reading JL's blog, jlcollinsnh.com. That's the blog that I read first and then cloud is blog and then found this book, The Simple Path to Wealth. And that led me to what actually financial independence is because in 2017 I was just focusing on automating my money and that was it because there was no purpose, there was no end goal but JL Collins, know, blog, his book and also Mr. Money Mustache blog that actually gave me the purpose, you know, purpose behind the wealth building journey.
Why Automation Beats Willpower
Justin: So you've mentioned several times already automation. Tell us why automation when it comes to your money is so important.
Sathish: I believe this is one of the most underrated tips when it comes to wealth building, because most people rely on willpower or they rely on discipline. They think, okay, just like going to the gym, right? People think, you know, I have to go to the gym every day to make it, to, you know, get healthy. And similarly, they think, okay, I have to constantly, you know, invest. money every day or maybe every month, you know, I have to like physically go and go into my account and then, you know, invest that money. But it's actually like automating your finances is one of the best thing that you can do to, you know, build wealth because like, know, I've, I'm still like, I started my automation journey in 2017, all my automation. I'm still using that automation till date also, like maybe I increase those contributions or decrease sometimes based on my you know, situation, but that automation is still running, you know, it's for something that I started like 10 years ago and it's also going to run for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years, right? You know, it's that one simple decision that I took 10 years ago and it's giving dividends, I would say, you know, every year. And that's, I believe it's one of the most underrated hacks in the, in the whole like wealth. space. Most people focus, overestimate on discipline and willpower, but underestimate the power of automation.
What Paying Yourself First Actually Looks Like
Justin: Yes. And what Sathish is speaking of is automating his investing. So every week or every month or twice a month, you can set it up weekly, daily, monthly, bi-monthly. Money automatically is taken from one of his banking accounts, like his checking account, and it goes into his investment account and it automatically purchases.
The index fund or index ETF for him. So he doesn't even have to think about it. And this is what paying yourself first means. So a lot of people are familiar with that term, pay yourself first. I remember before I discovered financial independence, I heard that, but it didn't make any sense to me. But What paying yourself first means is you automatically invest a portion of your paycheck every single month, maybe every two weeks, maybe weekly. And that way the money isn't sitting there for you to spend. And without using any willpower, any brain power, you're investing at least once a month, if not weekly. So when I was on my journey to Getting to financial independence and now early retired for two years, I set up weekly investments. So every week a certain amount would go in. And I got paid every two weeks, but I liked the idea of investing every week. It just made me feel good to know that yes, I invested this week. Yes, I invested this week. And I didn't have to do anything because it took maybe.
Five to seven minutes to set up and you can set up automated investing with Vanguard, which is a brokerage platform, with Fidelity, with Charles Schwab. Those are the three I use and recommend to my coaching clients because they're vetted, they're good, they're legit. Not a huge fan of Robinhood because it encourages people to invest like a it's a casino and gamble.
So, but you can use Robinhood. I just think it there's a lot of distractions in Robinhood that will turn you from an investor into a stock picking gambler. So that's what Sathish means by automated investing is paying yourself first, and it is so easy to set up nowadays, and it is literally the reason that by default Sathish became a millionaire.
Sathish: 100 percent. And also, just to double click on what you just said it's you know when you automate that decision let's say on January 1st if you let's say you're if you're investing maybe thousand dollars per month right if the market is let's say at thousand points you know just for the sake of calculation so you would get one share of that particular index right and let's say if the market were to fall down by 500 points, then you would still invest the same thousand dollars and at that time you will get two shares, which again, you know, you basically you're buying it at a low price. And then also when the price is high, you're just limiting your number of shares. It's basically like, you know, let's say if you were to think about that decision, right? You know, maybe let's say if you don't did not automate and you had to physically go on January 1st to invest. Let's say if the market is at thousand points. and you might feel okay maybe the market is too high right now or too low right now I don't want to invest right now maybe I'll just wait and then you'll come back on February 1st and the market will go on to like 1200 points and at that time you feel like oh my god it has gone it's so expensive now then I'll wait for the market to come back down and then you'll wait for every first of every month and the market would keep going up if it doesn't keep go it doesn’t go up forever — there are market corrections but still like you know that one decision you know you will wait forever you know to invest versus and if you just automate it you're winning because you know you are when the price is low you're buying more shares and when the price is high you're buying less shares which is exactly what you should be doing and that's why I love automation and I highly recommend people who are listening to this who have been automated their finances yet. Yeah. You can not only automate your investments, but also, you know, you can automate your savings. You know, I automate a fixed amount to go from my checking account to a high yield savings account. And I automate my credit card payments to pay in full every month. yeah, you can basically like any decision that I feel like, you know, I'll just ask, you know, can this be automated? If it can be automated, I'll just. automated because yeah, you did the automation side of things and now the beautiful part which you all already alluded to is I when I was a student, I was at that time I was surviving on $1,000 per month. So this was back when I came from India to US to do my masters that time I was living very frugally living with my roommates and I was surviving on $1,000 per month at that time I thought okay, maybe if I get you know, $70K or $80K per year, then I would save a lot of money and then, you know, you know, make more money, right? You know, basically like save more money. But when I started making $70K per year back in 2016, and I was still living paycheck to paycheck because of lifestyle inflation, because, you know, I got a new job. So I thought, okay, I'll just live in my own room.
And then maybe, you know, get a car that I still bought a used car, but still I got a car. you know, your life upgrades, you know, this life inflation, lifestyle inflation will happen, you know, without you realizing it. And at that time I was surviving on $70K per year. And then I thought, okay, maybe if I make a $100K per year, then maybe I would save that extra $30K. But again, like, you know, if you can't save on $70K per year, I think it's very high. highly unlikely to say $100K per year because it's all about that lifestyle inflation, your behaviors versus let's say I was making 70K per year and then I was automating my maybe 10K per year to go into investments and I was surviving on 60K per year and I was still, didn't feel deprived. So it's basically like paying yourself first will also stop you from lifestyle creep to happen and also Again, compounding will work, will do wonders, you when you invest consistently over a long period of time.
Dollar Cost Averaging and Time in the Market
Justin: Wanted to double click on this. You basically told us what dollar cost averaging is by if you set say a thousand dollars is going into the your investments every week or every month and sometimes the market's up, sometimes it's down, sometimes it's somewhere in between those two, sometimes it's somewhere else.
And You beautifully illustrated the mental effort it takes to look at the stock market and see it's up really high. Is it too high? I don't know, maybe I'll wait. And then you come back a week later, the market's down. Is it too low? Should I invest? maybe I'll wait. And this is why people spend years not investing.
And they waste massive amounts of mental energy. And if you just set up automated investing, that creates the dollar cost averaging, which all the research shows that dollar cost averaging time in the market is how you become wealthy. Not timing the market. If you time the market, you're gonna do exactly what Sathish and I.
Illustrated is you're gonna stand on the sidelines, most likely, or you're gonna be investing emotionally, which is a whole nother danger. And you just want to take yourself and your human emotions out of it, set up automated investing, and just focus on never interrupting those automated investments, and whenever you can, increasing them. So as you get a pay raise.
Instead of getting the next fancier car, increase your investment contributions per month. Or maybe get a slight upgrade in a part of your life, but then also a massive upgrade in your investments. And if you just keep doing that, each time you get a raise, focus on taking maybe 50% of that raise and putting that into investments, and then the other 50% of that raise, you can used to inflate your lifestyle, you will become very wealthy. And you'll still be able to buy yourself upgraded things over time. and then one of the things Sathish mentioned is how he automated his credit card payment. And again, people don't recognize how much mental emotional energy it takes to pay bills. And That same mental emotional energy is the mental emotional energy that you need to get a raise, or to start a side business, or to start a podcast, or to become a better pickleball player, whatever it is. And so you want to take anything that can be automated, especially when it comes to your money, and automate it so you can get that mental energy, that emotional energy back.
And you can then use that mental emotional energy towards other things that are gonna move the needle. Whereas paying your bills manually every the month is not gonna move the needle. It's just gonna take away your energy.
Automating the Rest of Your Life
Sathish: Yeah. A hundred percent. Even some of my friends ask me now, how do you manage your nine-to-five and also create content. And on top of that, good, the gym and play pickle ball and all this stuff. Because even when it comes to automation, not only an ordinary automated my investments, I even automated my life as well in areas that doesn't need me. Right. You know, for example, for example, just today, I, every month I have somebody who can mow my lawn for me. Like it will take two hours for me to mow my own lawn, or I could pay somebody to mow it for me. At that time I was preparing for this podcast. Like in the two hours while I have somebody who is mowing the lawn, I'm preparing for this podcast so that we can have a great conversation. just like that I've tried to have my groceries delivered. It may not be complete automation, still that's one less decision. Right. You know, I don't have to go to, let's say Costco to, you know, buy my groceries and that too, like Costco is very good at maybe urging you to buy like, know, they're so good at, let's say like, you know, if I, if I have maybe 10 items in my list and when I go to Costco and when I come back, I'll come up with like 30 items, which I never had the intention of buying them, but you know, that that's maybe a financial habit, right? You know, I hardly go to Costco unless like my wife was like, you know, Hey, you know, I just want some peace. And she wants, she just forces me to go to Costco. But yes, there are so many decisions like this, where, know, if you feel like you can save time, right. And time save time and use that time on also mental energy to spend on something that you love doing.
I think it's a trade-off because no matter if you're Elon Musk or if you're somebody who is from a remote area, you still have 24 hours. How we optimize that 24 hours, it's completely in our control. And that's why we, even you started your own financial independence journey just to take control of that 24 hours to do things that you love doing.
When to Start Buying Back Your Time
Justin: Yeah. And I wanna point something out because this is really critical for people who are just starting out, people who are in the middle of their financial independence journey and people who are at the end, meaning they've achieved financial independence. In the beginning of your financial independence journey, every extra ten dollars that you can save and invest is gonna massively compound over the next forty, fifty, sixty years.
And so in the beginning of if you're at a net worth of zero or in debt, you don't want to pay someone to mow your lawn. You want to mow your lawn. I want this, I want you to understand this because that you know, let's say you pay that person a hundred dollars. That's a hundred dollars every two weeks or two hundred dollars that you could be investing. And if you do that when you're 25, you're putting that $200 in at $25, and then you let that compound for 40 years, it's going to turn into millions of dollars. But as you get that first, and I don't know what the net worth is, we should probably you and I talk about this, but I think once you get somewhere between 500k and a million, you want to start buying back your time.
And this is where at a millionaire, and honestly, I waited until I was a multimillionaire, but we have a housekeeper come to our house twice a month. It's the best investment I've ever made in my marriage. It's ridiculous, but I would I definitely did not do that at the beginning of my financial independence journey. At the beginning of my financial independence journey, me and my wife were cleaning the house.
And that gave us that extra, you know, we probably pay our house cleaner. I'm guessing my wife does it. I don't even know. I think it's somewhere between 400 and 600 a month. So like two to three hundred dollars per time she comes. But that is that, call it six hundred dollars a month, is the best investment ever for our marriage. Because we don't have to fight over who's cleaning the toilets and who's cleaning the bathroom and who's cleaning who's doing the deep cleaning, the house cleaner does it. But when you're first starting, I really do believe every $10, every $100 that you can it put save and put into the stock market until you get to that first five $100K, and maybe it's lower, maybe it's more. I'm actually curious At what point at what net worth number do you think people should start buying back their time?
Sathish: That's a good question. I've thought about it but in my own journey I started doing maybe somewhere between 500 to a million as well because I was back in the day, For the first few years of my journey I used to even drive probably like five miles just to save 10 cents on gas. I used to do that and I thought I was winning and also I used to stay... in the Costco, you know, that gas line, even though if it's, takes me like half an hour to fill my gas, I used to stay half an hour because at that time I didn't understand the value of time. I knew the importance of money and I knew the importance of investing those dollars. So that was my mindset. And only when I started my podcast journey and also when I had my first baby, right.
And that's when I realized, okay, we're trying to, now we are at a point where our investments, have that solid foundation from investments. So that investments would compound, unless we don't interrupt it unnecessarily. So that's when I started trying to optimize for time instead of optimizing for money. But yeah, to answer your question, yeah, somewhere between 500 to a million would be a good starting point and also like people need to evaluate. I highly recommend people to come up with just an hourly rate. You know, let's say currently I value my time maybe around $100 per hour, let's say, right? And then, so if it takes me like two hours to mow my lawn versus, you know, if it takes, if I can outsource it to somebody who can do it for $50 per hour, then I feel like, you know, that's a good investment.
But I absolutely agree with you that, know, should not have this thinking, especially when you are starting your journey, because at that time we all, need all the extra money, any extra money that you can afford that, you know, to go into investing because that will compound, you know, we all people think it's even like minute, you know, a hundred dollars per month, like what can it do when it comes to compounding journey? But yeah, try using a compound interest calculator. just adding an extra $100 per month and then let it compound for 20, 30, 40 years. It will just blow your mind.
Building the Wealth Snowball
Justin: Yeah. In the beginning of your financial independence journey, you gotta build the wealth snowball big enough so it can start rolling on its own. And visually, if you're listening and not looking at this, you wanna think about a snowball that's really small. It doesn't have enough weight to roll down a hill itself. But eventually, as the snowball gets bigger and bigger, then it has enough weight to literally start.
Propelling itself down the hill because of the gravity. And it's the same concept with your investments. Once they hit 100,000, 300,000, 500,000, they start to have enough weight or gravity to grow themselves significantly. You're getting compounding at $10,000 invested, but it's not noticeable because it's maybe a couple hundred.
Bucks a month, but then when you have a million invested and the stock market goes up by 20% in a year, that's $200,000 that just made itself, and that's where our minds don't understand. You know, I've seen my net worth, I haven't worked for the last two years. at a corporate job and I've only made a little bit of money from just working five to fifteen hours a week on things I enjoy. And I've made almost $1 million in two years by making little to no money. Just because I have enough money in the market that it's just continuing that snowball so fucking big, it's just rolling really fast down the hill, getting bigger and bigger, picking up more snow as it goes.
And I think when we can take these financial concepts and put them into visual representations or stories, it allows us to understand the power of the concept. And this is why at the beginning of your financial independence journey, fucking mow your lawn, clean your house, do your dishes, get the cheapest groceries you can, you know, that are still healthy and organic. Now My wife and I maybe go to the grocery store, maybe once every two or three months. And we order Instacart every week. And there's a huge service fee on it, but it's a waste of our time now to go to the grocery store. Because we have a certain level of net worth where it's more valuable for us to rest or do creative work or go play pickleball. or meet with clients or record a podcast than it is to go to the grocery store.
Sathish: Yeah, I absolutely agree with the Instacart part, but I would say actually it costs less to order on Instacart versus going to the store just because you when you order an Instacart, you know what to order and you just place that order, right? You know, there is no, you know.
Justin: Not true, because when you get to checkout, they say, Would you also like this, and this? And so the app is getting better and better at turning itself into a physical grocery store that you know, like you're at the checkout aisle in the grocery store, and there's candy bars and magazines and gum and all these little knickknacks, and now they're doing the same fucking thing on the Instacart app where it's You're about to check out and it's like, you got this. You'll probably also like this, and this. And then you're like, sure, why not?
Sathish: That's true, that's right. I usually like skip, you know, that part maybe, you know, once it becomes so good that I'll probably check it out. But you know, when you go to the store, they'll have like physical samples, right? Especially when you're hungry and you walk by this to buy that sample, right? You know, it's very hard to not, you know, try it, especially when you're hungry and you know, Costco is very good at doing this, right? They keep the all this like. big important items right in the back you know all your milk your groceries and all the stuff so that you'll walk through all these offers and then you know yeah sometimes you know I've seen friends who just picked up a fishing rod and they never fish but they thought the deal was too good right it was like 50% off and so they bought it but yeah this like he never had the intention of picking that up but Yeah, for me, like, yeah, Instacart is just a win-win. I just want to, like, you know, maybe since you talked about how important the dollars, like, know, especially the initial dollars, I recently came across one example where, let's say if you are at age 30, right, and if you want to become a millionaire by age 60, right, you should be investing $400 per month at an average, annual return of 10% per year if you invest $400 per month at age 30. So in 30 years, you will become a millionaire, right? Let's say if you delay that by five years, you delay it by five years. Now you are at the amount you should be investing actually doubles. So you need to invest $800 per month at age to become a millionaire at age 60. They'll say if you, even if you delay even by five years, let's say you were, you know, enjoying your life and then, you know, you're loaning and all that stuff. A delay by even five years, so at age 40, you should be doing like $1,600 per month to become a millionaire by 60, right? And then every five years, you know, you have to double your investments to reach that goal. Versus let's say, I said like, you know, at age 30, you need to be investing $400 per month. Versus let's say if you... start your journey at age 25, you'll be investing only like $200 per month because you only need to invest half at that point. So that initial dollars at age 25, it's more manageable to invest $200 per month with somebody who's just started working for a nine-to-five job, right? Versus somebody at age 60, or sorry, age 40 to invest that $1,600 per month.
At that time, you know, maybe they have a mortgage, have a few car payments and they have to manage kids, know, childcare and all the stuff. So yeah, those initial dollars are very important. Like, you know, what the best we can do to hang on to those dollars and invest it. It will just work wonders for you.
The Cost of Waiting Five Years to Start Investing
Justin: And if you're twenty, start investing $100 a month and you will be a millionaire by sixty.
Sathish: Is it that crazy? I still don't believe all this compounding calculation. Like, you know, our brain is not wired to think exponentially, you know, in The Psychology of Money. Morgan Housel talks, you know, if you ask somebody what is eight plus eight plus eight plus eight, you know, yeah, it's 32, right? If you ask the same person, what is eight times eight times eight times eight? It's very hard to give that number because our brains are not wired to think exponentially. Like even like I've seen so many examples of compounding, but if you ask me any question about compounding, let's say, you know, if you compound this at maybe 20% annual return for 40 years, I, you know, it just, I still can't come up with a number. Even if I come up with a number, the actual result will be way higher because it's so hard to think exponentially. And it's so hard, especially for somebody who's just started journey, who just started the journey. to think how much that money that they invest would compound into it's just so hard. You just have to trust the process and start it.
Growing Up in India Where the Stock Market Was Considered Gambling
Justin: So I wanna rewind a little bit, just 'cause I'm personally curious, but I also think it's helpful for people to understand. When you were growing up, what was your family's relationship with money?
Sathish: So I grew up in a family where my dad had a textile business — a small scale business, but so my dad didn't study after, you know, 10th grade. The maximum he did was like 10th grade. And my mom was maybe like, she went to, she stopped after third grade because at that time, like education was not that important. I come from a very rural background in India, but my dad, and my mom, both were really hardworking. So my dad, even till this date, he's so focused on his business that he’s 62 right now and still he works on his own business because he loves doing that. And I believe that's one of the only skills that I think he has gained over his lifetime. He loves just talking about money.
But growing up money was such a taboo subject to talk about, know, all I knew was my dad, you know, he loves doing this business and then, you know, we have this textile business also, he loves like buying land. Like I believe in India, like coming from India, like we are so attached to like real estate, like, you know, buying lands. And that's what most people used to do back then, whatever savings they have, that's obvious thing to do because stock market was considered gambling. There was no question for somebody at that time just to talk about stock market investing. It was out of the picture. And I was told the same thing, stay out of stock market, it's risky and it's gambling. My dad said he has never seen anybody making money in the stock market.
The most obvious choice at that time was to buy a land and I thought that was the way to go like you know save and then just buy land and that was it. I he did good like he loves doing it. He did good. But when I came to the US my the only money advice that I had until then was just to save and that's it like you know. So frugality is something that came very natural to me because my parents are so frugal. Even till late, I wish my dad would read the book Die With Zero, because he still holds on to that money as very precious. I tell him, can hire a fitness coach because lately he's been slightly into yoga and all that stuff.
He doesn't lift weights though. I've been telling him to lift weights, but he says he doesn't like it. But you know, I can understand. Yeah. He hasn't lifted weights for almost like 30 years of his life. And you know, at this point, you know, it might be difficult for him, but I still tell him, okay, you can use, you know, the wealth that you have created to, you know, probably like hire a coach or, know, maybe travel, but he still holds on to those dollars like a precious gold. That's why I wish he'd read that book. That's the only advice that I received was just to save money. But I didn't know what to do with that saved money. I thought if I have to become a millionaire, I thought I have to physically save million dollars. That is how we'll become millionaires until I read. these books and which helped me start my own journey.
The $380 Phone Call That Started Everything
Justin: So in 2017 when you had your financial independence awakening, how did that happen? Was there a book, a podcast, a conversation? What was the catalyst for you getting on the financial independence path?
Sathish: Great question. Yeah, this is something like very emotional to me. So what happened was in 2017, so I graduated. So I came to the US in 2013 to do my masters. So I my masters in chemical engineering. went to Rutgers University and then I graduated in 2015. So in 2015 until 2017, I got a job which was paying me at that time around $70,000 per year.
And then I thought I was living a good life. And then when I was returning back from work on Monday evening, I got a phone call from a friend and he said, hey, I know it was just chatting about how things were going on. And then he said, hey, do you have $3.80? I still remember the exact number. asked, do you have $3.80? I was like, why do you need $3.80? And then he was like, I have to... pay my immigration fees that he was struggling to maintain his visa status and he had to pay $380 and they said, okay, I'll just transfer you the amount. And then I looked at my bank account. had less than a dollars, believe me, like I had less than a hundred dollars. I did not believe that. And then I was, I asked my friend, Hey, can you use my credit card? And then he was like, you know, I need It has to be a check because I'm paying the government and it has to be a check at that time. I felt so on my way to work after I cut the call, I felt so devastated because I thought, okay, I followed all the advice that my parents, my friends, my relatives, what the society was telling me to do, right? Go to school, get a good job, get good grades and work on a full-time job.
On the outside, I was living the life that people would aspire, right? But on the inside, I was a financial ruin. I was living paycheck to paycheck and I didn't realize that. I felt so bad that on that day, when I went back to my room, I opened my laptop and back then, there was no AI. So I just Googled how to stop living paycheck to paycheck. That's the first thing I Googled.
And then there were, at that time, the blogs were a big thing. But now, know, and there are a lot of other stuff, but blogs are a big thing. So I had a habit of listening to songs, music, you know, when I was driving to work. So I read a few blogs then. There were so many blogs at that time. was reading a few, I read a few blogs and then I didn't realize, you know, the way I woke up next day and I thought I wanted to read those blogs, but still I have to go to work.
So at that time there was this podcast called Optimal Finance Daily. I don't know if you know about it, but that podcast was, you know, they used to read those blogs, you know, for people who don't have time to read, they'll just read it for you. So you can just open an episode and this is for probably 10 minutes and they'll read a certain blog. Right. And so I was listening to that particular blog, Optimal Finance Daily. And then there was this person who kept coming. whose blogs kept coming up very frequently and it was Ramit Sethi and at that time his blog was iwillteachyoutoberich.com So he was reading a lot of articles and then since he was of Indian origin maybe you know I connected with him a lot and then I realized he had a book I Will Teach You To Be Rich and then that was a flashy title but I thought okay maybe you know I want to become rich you know I want to stop living paycheck to paycheck And then I bought that book. I read that book over a weekend. I felt like it was just speaking to me, like, you know, the situation that I'm in, it was just speaking to me. And I immediately implemented that book, all the automation, which I said, you know, I'm still running that same automation. But yeah, that was my financial awakening moment.
Justin's Own Financial Independence Awakening
Justin: Yeah, I love it. It's so interesting how a podcast or a set of blog articles can completely transform your money journey. And, you know, I've shared on the show many times. my, you know, something similar happened to me. I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast and the sky, Mr. Money Mustache, was on the show.
And this was in July of 2017, if my memory serves me correctly. I didn't do anything with it. I just thought to myself, wow, that I've never heard someone talk about money. And three, four months, five months later, I was cleaning up my taxes because I was six years behind on my taxes. And I thought to myself, I need some inspiration to get my Financial shit in order. And so I Googled Mr. Money Mustache and his article, The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement, came up. I clicked on it. It takes maybe four or five minutes to read the article. And my mind exploded when I read it because it basically what happened in my mind was if I had understood this when I was. 25 and just starting out in my career, I would already be a millionaire by now. Because I think in 2017 I was maybe 32. And then I just went down the whole rabbit hole of reading blogs, listening to podcasts all on financial independence, and that was at the very end of 2017. And by twenty, so two years I was a millionaire and it's crazy. So I love that you shared your FI awakening story. And the next thing I want to talk about is The fact that personal finance content often tends and content in general, online content, tends to glorify entrepreneurship. But both you and I have achieved our financial independence through a W-2 career. So I'm curious just your thoughts on entrepreneurship. and W-2 career meaning an a traditional nine-to-five job in regards to pursuing financial independence.
W-2 Career vs. Entrepreneurship
Sathish: Yeah, you know, when I was working in my previous job, you know, I did not like maybe 80% of what I was doing in my previous job. At that time, I was hating my W-2 job, but I actually realized it's even, it's more possible to build wealth using a W-2 job, versus doing, you know, an entrepreneurship. Just, you know, you know, hear me out here. So in W-2 job you have a steady income that's coming to you right and you have you can create that automation that I was talking about using a W-2 job because most people you know they just underestimate how much you know that you know if you're working for a full-time job when it comes to like the benefits right the 401(k) match and you know the bonuses the stock you know let's say the stock option that they give and the health benefits. Yeah. I. At that time I thought OK I didn't like my job but I feel like W is one of W job you know is one of the biggest reasons why like me and my wife both have achieved this one million dollar net worth. But you know let's say if we were to take that entrepreneurship path maybe you know I would have let's say. quit my job, you know, let's say three years ago, right? That's when I started my content creation. But honestly speaking, I don't think I would be making that much in content creation because it's not, it's, you know, it's especially like in W-2, it's a repeatable process, Anybody, you know, who can, who has a W-2 job, let's say who's making, you know, maybe 70 to 200k.
You know, if you control your expenses, right. And then invest the difference, you can become a millionaire, know, it’s just a matter of time, right. And also how much money invest. What's this when it comes to entrepreneurship? No, there's so much survivorship bias out there, you know, because let's say, you know, people take the example of like college dropouts, right. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, you know, Bill Gates, and they say, okay, they have dropped out of college.
And then they built these multi-billion dollar businesses, even trillion dollar businesses. But there are so many people who have dropped out of college and still who are not millionaires. It's just like the survivorship bias. And then even when it comes to entrepreneurship, we all look at maybe Elon Musk or all these entrepreneurs. glorify the entrepreneurs. But if you look at the actual data, I don't have the numbers, but maybe it's somewhere between like 80 to 90% of like, you know, the small businesses, they fail after one year. Right. I could be wrong on the math, but you know, that's what it, right. So, and also for me, yeah, me personally, I used to dread W-2 job, but I realized, you know, how important it is, especially for somebody who wants to become financially independent. It's very hard to make money in the content creation journey, especially if you don't have the credentials. So for me, I've been creating finance content, but I don't have a CPA or CFP degrees, or even I don't have any financial background. So it's very hard to make money in the content creation. you know, to become financially independent versus, know, using W-2 job. think that that's, yeah, I don't want people to, you know, just stay in a job that they absolutely hate and then, know, reach FI, maybe they can switch jobs, you know, to something that they can still, you know, tolerate, but have that compounding engine work, right? You know, getting that 401(k) match, you know, maxing out retirement accounts, HSAs. and also your taxable brokerage accounts, use the W-2 and maybe build that foundation, not necessarily become FI, or you could be doing entrepreneurship on the side. Let’s say I work maybe five to 10 hours on my content creation and then 40 hours job. And then when you entrepreneurship or when your side hustle starts generating money, that's when... feel you know you need to evaluate to see if that makes sense and maybe quit job versus you know it's at some point I thought okay I'll quit my job and start this content creation journey and I wish I did not do that because I knew like you know three years into the content creation journey it's very hard to make money especially you know if you're relying on these algorithms right you know YouTube, Insta and all these algorithms you don't know you're just a slave to the algorithm I feel like And yeah, I mean, since I'm coming from that W-2 background, I lean towards W-2, but it's definitely a personal choice.
Justin: Yeah. I love that you mentioned survivorship bias because no one hears about the millions of people who tried to start a business and failed because no one wants to hear that story because it's a unhappy ending. We only hear about the people who made it. And it's the same thing with content creators. We only hear about the content creators who make a ton of money. And there's probably you a tiny fraction that actually make money. I think I did a research on this one point and someone will have to ask ChatGPT or Claude, but the number of creators that make over $100,000 a year was something crazy. Like I wanna say when I researched this, it was 2 to 5 percent of them. So that means 95 to 98 percent of content creators are not making over a hundred grand and The other thing people forget, because entrepreneurship is so sexy and glorified, is oftentimes you're trading a forty hour work week for an eighty hour work week and less money, less security, spiky income, and just a hundred times more stress.
And for some people it's the right move. But I think a lot of people, unfortunately, there's a bit of a hating on the nine-to-five job in this current era. But I read this book in the beginning of my sales career by Cal Newport called So Good They Can't Ignore You.
And basically that book, the premise is forget about your passions and just figure out what you're really good at naturally, and then get even better at that, and then utilize that to make as much money as you can, and then you develop all this financial capital, social capital, career capital, and then you can translate all the those various sources of capital into all sorts of things. And that's exactly what I did I did because I realized I had this natural knack for being a really good salesperson. And so I challenged myself, okay, let's make as much money as possible as a salesperson. And in my peak earning year, I made almost $900,000 in a single year. And the funniest part, because my job was a commission I had a set base salary plus commission, but it was performance based. So it was really only working three to four hours a day, four days a week, 80 to 90% of the year. And making that $900,000, which is bananas. But this is, I think, you know, within the W-2 world, there's a subsection of commissioned performance based type work like sales jobs.
Which I think are a cheat code because if you enjoy playing the game of performing, which I do, you can do really well. But at the same token, you yourself, perfect example, you realize holy shit, with a little bit of forethought, a little bit of strategy, I can go from $75,000 to $150,000 in one job change. Double. Doubling your income. Which is and I think a lot of people also get lazy about growing.
Their career income, which in my mind is a proactive, never ending, iterative process. You should always be working to grow your income at your nine-to-five or your W-2 because it is the biggest lever to earn more money. You could make, like Sathish, an extra $75,000 a year.
Or you could start a side hustle that maybe makes you $5,000 a year. And which one gives you more money? And I guarantee the side hustle is going to take a hundred times more work and you're going to get $5,000 versus one-tenth, one-hundredth of the work, get a raise and get a $75,000 raise, and that's a $70,000 delta between the side hustle and just.
Proactively growing your career income. So I think I like to say you should love your fucking job because they are paying you to learn, grow, and get better. It's like paid education.
Sathish: For sure. I couldn't agree more and one thing I said previously is like if you feel that your job that you're working is like really toxic, know, I just don't want people to just hang in there for let's say 10, 15, 20 years because you that's time that you will never get back or maybe at that time you could be thinking about like switching jobs, but it's just that most people glorify entrepreneurship words like if you really you know, tap your foot in the water, then you'll understand how difficult it is because for me, like, you know, content creation, I still enjoy podcasting, but I don't think I'd be making like, you know, $200,000 just by doing podcasting. Like, you know, it's, I don't think it's a possibility. Maybe, like you said, like maybe top 2% 5% of people would make, you know, I've been, I've been consistent, right? You know, most people also like talk about consistency when it comes to content creation, but yeah.
Ultimately, we're slave to that algorithm also. I've seen like so many YouTube channels, you know, there are still like they post consistently, but still they don't, you know, they haven't experienced that exponential growth yet. Right. Right. I mean, it's very, it's hard to replicate. Right. But when it comes to like W-2, we have seen it is, you know, there are so many books about it. There's so many podcasts who have shared the real stories. on how it's actually a repeatable process. You can start now and then if you really are diligent when comes to your savings investments, you can become a millionaire probably like in 10 years, 15 years, it depends on how much you save and invest, but it's still like repeatable versus let's say if you still start, maybe you start an entrepreneurial journey now.
We don't know what's going to happen in 10 years. Maybe, I mean, you might become successful, right? You might become a multi-millionaire, but there is no like repeatable strategy that, you know, anybody can follow. but still like, yeah, if we don’t want people, like all the people listening to this, like, you know, to just go nine-to-five, but we need, we need somebody to build also, right? You know, we need that Elon Musk, you know, we don't want that future Elon Musk who's listening to this podcast and then who would give up. on their entrepreneurial dream and then go do a nine-to-five job. But yeah, it's definitely a personal choice. you know, but yeah, nine-to-five gets a bad rap, but I, yeah, it's not as bad as I just, that people portray it to be.
Why Growing Your Career Income Is the Biggest Lever
Justin: Yeah. And I totally agree with you. If you're in a toxic job, go get another job. There's the same version of your job at a million different companies and find one that is a great fit. Or there is a lateral move into a different job that is similar but different that may be more aligned with you. And, you know, I was with my company for 10 years.
Because I actually really enjoyed the work I did. I loved our CEO and founder. He's still one of my best friends. And my bosses were amazing, and I enjoyed my co workers. Now, would I pay to do that job? Absolutely not. Would I do it for free? Absolutely not. But it made great money. I enjoyed the people I worked with. I believed in the company mission.
And I really enjoyed sales. I was really good at it and it was really fun for me. And honestly, paved the way for a lot of what I do now because it was constantly pitching and presenting, speaking in front of people. And then when COVID happened, everything went to Zoom. So basically it's what I'm doing right now on this, you know, riverside recording for this podcast that we're doing. So it gave me it paid me all these. speaking, presenting skills and I'm very grateful for it. So I'm gonna do a slight transition. You mentioned a couple times your wife asking you, Is this really gonna work? Or are is this all gonna work out? Are we are we doing the right thing with our money? I'm just curious because I always find it fascinating How the FI journey unfolds in a marriage. Because usually one of two people in the relationship discover it. And if you want to be open and vulnerable, some of the things that worked and some of the things that didn't work when you tried to introduce the concept of financial independence to your wife.
Getting Your Spouse On Board With Financial Independence
Sathish: Yeah, I love this topic because a few friends have asked me a similar question because yeah, I agree with you that, know, it's most likely it's not, you know, both husband and wife will come across fire at the same time. It's very unlikely. So it's either wife or a husband will come up with the financial independence and then it's very hard for the other person to be convinced, right? So I'll share my own journey. So I started my journey in 2017 and we got married in 2019. so when she was doing her masters, so we had this habit of going to library. At that time we were doing CrossFit in the evening.
And then after doing CrossFit, know, we didn't have much to do at our house. You we thought, okay, we'll just go to library because I'm boring. You can tell me like, you know, I go to library when I'm Yeah. My wife calls me boring, but that's okay. Like, yeah, I love, I love going there. Right. So yeah, we used to go to library and then, so during that time I first heard about Financial independence in 2018. And then I wanted to talk to my wife about, you know, all these like concepts of financial independence, but I was slowly introducing it. And then she was rejecting it in the beginning, right? You know, she was rejecting the idea that like, why would somebody stop working? Like, you know, because our brain is wired to thing that we have to work until 65 like why do we stop working and why? That idea was so foreign to her. So thought okay maybe I'll you know had her exams were done back then and then you know she was just trying to find something to read at the library and then I thought okay maybe I'll give her a book you know Rich Dad Poor Dad because that's something I believe it's for any beginner can read that book and pick up the concepts.
So thought, okay, while I was reading some books myself, I told her, okay, maybe why don't you read this book? know, it's a good book. has changed lives of multiple people. And the best part of that book is it's told as a story and it's not just like, you know, like a prescriptive medicine that, you know, some people say, okay, invest, you know, X amount and all that stuff. But it talks about, it shares a story about a rich dad and a poor dad. and explains the financial concepts of assets and liabilities. And she finished that book in almost, I would say, in five days, in the time that we were going to library. And the first thing she asked was like, why wasn't I taught about this in school? Like, you know, I thought house was an asset. thought, and she didn't even know what an asset was, but she thought, okay, rich life was, you know, acquiring a house, acquiring a luxury car, and, you know, having a lavish lifestyle. She thought that was the rich life.
But that book talked about these assets and liabilities. So assets is something which puts money in your pocket and liability is something which takes money out of your pocket. And then there was such a light bulb moment for her. then she was like, so we were told, you know, a whole life, you know, I've been lied about all this finances and like rich life. And then she was on board. And at that time I was going through So my job was very toxic at that time and then I wanted to get out but still due to my visa constraints I couldn’t get out and then and She understood okay now and I see reason why people leave their jobs because they just don't want to go to work and do something that they don't enjoy and I mean she heard of stories where people go to work and then they just do it because there is an They do it for 65 because they don't know there's an alternate path. And this book, know, after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, I gave her The Simple Path to Wealth. And then she read that book and then she immediately like she was on board. She was like, I absolutely love it. Especially the fact that you are going through this phase. I don't want me to go through that phase in that future and then, you know, do that for the rest of my life. And then that's when she was She was on board like she that that's that those two books reached out for that and The Simple Path to Wealth that just clicked for me because I don't know if you if happens in your family sometimes you know when I say it versus when some other person says it I think you know they would maybe like grasp that idea from let's say a book or a podcast versus like you telling it's they're just like you ignore so you know my wife read those two books and then she was on board. that's when we were just trying to, so she was like, so what should we do? How can we become financially independent? And then that's when we, I was always frugal and then we were trying to optimize our big three expenses, like housing, food and transportation. That was a big, I told her like, we need to build our assets and crush our liabilities, right? So our assets were our investments. So we wanted to maximize our investments. So how can we maximize is what we were trying to apply this 80-20 principle where 80% of your expenses most likely come from 20% of your items, which was housing, food and transportation. So she was on board. didn't, know, that time we were living in an apartment that was okayish, but not a great one. were paying $800 per month.
We lived in the same apartment for like five years. Then after she read that book, actually we were looking to buy a different car. At that time I had Honda Civic and it stopped working. So I had to buy a new car in that time, about a used Toyota Camry. And she wanted a new one. She thought, since you're working for a full-time job and you're in the US, shouldn't we be getting a luxury car? you know, with our goal was to maximize our investments and minimize, you know, our expenses. so we got a used Toyota Camry that I'm still driving today. And we, and when it comes to the third, that category was food. And then we were hardly eating out. We were just, you know, cooking most of our meals at house and she was on board. the greatest thing was that she was on board because let's say if she wanted to change that. apartment right or if she wanted a luxury car or she wanted to eat out this would not have been possible because I don't know where I heard it but one of the biggest financial decisions is actually who you marry that's one of the biggest decisions because you know it's 50% of your I can't put a number on it but yeah it's just the all the habits of the behaviors this component and it's significantly easier it's like You know, when you marry a person who's not financially on board, you're just, you know, moving rock uphill. You know, it's very difficult versus, you know, if you have somebody on board, it's just moving rock downhill. So it becomes so much easier when you have a spouse on board. But yeah, that's how I got my wife to be on board with my, with me.
Justin: Duh, what would any nerd do? Go to the library after you go work out.
So everyone listening, you have to take your wife to the library and just, you know, put the The Simple Path to Wealth in front of her. No, I'm just joking. but I totally agree with you. The worst thing that you can do is try to tell your wife about financial independence. You said they it's better if they hear it from somebody else. And That is in my experience, that was the same thing. I j I tried to get my wife to you know, I told her about it. I was all excited and tried to get her to read Mr. Money mustache articles and that did not go well. and then I finally said, Hey, there's this thing called CampFI, where it's a bunch of people on the financial independence journey, three-day weekend. I'll pay for your ticket if you'll come with me. And I paid for a ticket. She came with me. We made a road trip out. It was super fun. And she met Paula Pant there of Afford Anything podcast, who's a big content creator in the personal finance space. And Paula Pant gave this talk. And my wife totally resonated with her. And then suddenly she was on board with our.
FI journey. Now, I was I am and always have been the main driver pushing for Fi, but my wife supports the goal and the vision. And that's really all you need, I think, from your spouse, whether you're you know, you have a husband or a wife, is you just need your spouse to be on board with the goal.
Of financial independence, you don't need them to be a maniac about it like you are or I am, right? Sathish. Like we can be the crazy one who creates a podcast about financial independence and talks about it all the time and goes to conferences and has all these f nerdy ass FI friends. You don't have to get your spouse to do the same thing, they just need to support the idea.
Of achieving financial independence together, and you can lead and they can support. Now, occasionally there are marriages where both husband and wife, or if same sex wife and wife, or husband are both into it, and that's great, but that is so fucking rare. It's almost always driven by one person who discovers FI and becomes obsessed with it, and then they just need a partner to be on board with the vision.
And that's all you need. So take your spouse to a CampFI or to a local FI meetup and help them find people they can relate to because trying to tell your spouse what to do and what not to do when it comes to money is a amazing recipe for a fight, a breakup or a divorce.
Sathish: Yep.
Yeah, that for sure. And it was always like, it was never like rainbow and sunshine, right? We had some disagreements, you know, when it comes to purchases, because at that time, I was, you know, once you see the math, right, you know, how $1 would compound into in 30 years, so I was holding on to every dollar that I could. you know, now that I'm like looking back at what had happened.
I would have maybe eased out on this small purchases because I don't think that would have like, know, maybe a $50 dinner, you know, with friends would have maybe, you know, would have given some good experience and, know, right. Maybe since I was optimizing my housing, food and transportation, maybe I would have eased out on the other like smaller expenses, but like, you know, there's this saying like Pennywise and Pound Foolish, right? So I was.
Maybe I could have done that, but yeah, that led into a lot of disagreements back then. Right. then it was, but I'm glad like, you know, she just supports my journey. Even till this day, just like you said, I'm one of the biggest drivers to FI and she's on board with it because she understands like what 4% rule is and what, why we came up with our FIER number, which is 2.4 million and how we came up with that number. And you know, even any purchases.
We just discuss any big purchases, just discuss and see if it's really needed, if it aligns with our values. yeah, I'm still maybe, I'm still not, I've eased out on any, let's say under a hundred dollar decisions. I thought, okay, let's not discuss with the other partner, let's make that. Because yeah, I feel like once we have that foundation, I don't think we have to be, very ruthless even when it comes to the smallest expense also. Because that can cause fights for sure, just like I said. Yeah.
CampFI, Paula Pant, and Leading Without Pushing
Justin: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And I've shared this many times on the podcast, but I decided after I discovered f financial independence, I decided I wasn't gonna eat out at restaurants anymore. But I didn't make my rest my wife not eat out at restaurants. I said, You can do whatever you want 'cause, you know, she she earned her own money and I told her I don't mind if you go eat out with your friends. I just am so excited about investing as much of my money that I make into the market. That's my highest excitement. So unless someone else is paying for the meal, I'm not gonna eat out. And I did that for about three years. But those three years she went out and ate with her friends and whatever. And when we would Do stuff. We would just do picnics, make food at home and go together. So it was still fun. And now, you know, it was fun for two to three years to not eat out restaurants. Now at my net worth of three over $3.5 million, we eat out two to four times a week. So it was frugality is a phase, but like we're Sathish and I were talking in the beginning your FI journey, it Pays massive dividends to be very frugal and get as much money into the market as fast as possible so you can build up that wealth snowball so it can start rolling down the hill on its own. And then later in life you can upgrade your lifestyle. there is one thing I forgot to mention when you're talking about your When you have the conversation with your friend who wanted $380 to help with his immigration application and you were making $70,000 or $75,000 a year and you were unknowingly living paycheck to paycheck, and this is the thing people don't get, and I didn't get either, 'cause it happened to me just like it happened to Sathish is lifestyle creep is real.
So lifestyle inflation, it creeps like a slow vine that you don't notice it's growing until you're like, holy shit, there's this giant fucking creeping vine all over the place, aka all my money's gone. And I make more than I've ever made in my life, but I have nothing to show for it. And so this again is why it's so important once you discover financial independence.
To stop the lifestyle creep, the lifestyle inflation, and get as much invested as possible in that beginning so that money can compound for 30, 40, 50, 60 plus years. And then once you get to a decent size snowball, you can slow down on being hyperfrugal and start to buy back your time, upgrade your lifestyle, and really enjoy your life. And if you approach that initial kind of zero to a hundred, zero to five $100K.
Phase of frugality with a sense of fun and adventure, like, my god, it's so fun to figure out how to live for as inexpensive as possible. It will be a fun journey. If you think you have to sacrifice that your life will feel like a sacrifice. So I never felt like a sacrifice when I didn't eat out for three years. It was this hilariously fun experiment that I just found.
So enjoyable. I would literally take leftovers from work meals home to eat them at home because I was having so much fun saving as much money as possible. So sorry, go ahead.
Sathish: No, I was going to say I thought I was the only one doing that so I have somebody who just confessed to me that yeah, you have done the same thing. Yeah, go on.
A Millionaire With a Six Pack in a Toyota
Justin: So you said you'd rather be a millionaire with a six pack in a Toyota than an unhealthy millionaire in a Ferrari. What do you mean by that?
Sathish: Yeah, this hits me hard. I wrote that sentence probably in 2022, I believe that's when I started writing on my blog, CompoundingProject.com. yeah, so prior to that, I thought the success, what success meant to me was having the most amount of money, right? know, having the luxury car, luxury house and expensive vacations. I thought that was success to me. until I started my own personal development journey, self-help journey. That's when I realized aligning spending with values is most important. So for me currently, success to me, let's say if you have, I 10 million dollars, but if you are unhealthy, like you're the worst shape ever, in my personal opinion, that's not success to me. That's not considered success to me. that definition varies based on the person. for me, I don't consider that a success because health is a foundation of everything that we do. And I heard a quote somewhere, a healthy person has thousand wishes, but a sick person has only one wish. it speaks to the fact that we just totally underestimate our own body, which we...
We can, let's say if we lose money, can get that money back. But if we lose our health, it's very hard to get that back. So I learned the importance of around the same time frame. I thought, okay, let's say even if I have, let's say once I reach my financial independence number and I buy a Ferrari, but if I'm the worst shape of my life, that is not success to me. And I thought, okay.
I'll try to optimize my life not only when it comes to wealth, but other areas of life as well, which, you know, like the core pillars of Compounding Project are health, wealth and wisdom. And so that's when I thought, okay, I would rather be, you know, a person with a six pack, which, you know, maybe I was too aggressive at that time. Maybe, you know, if you are in a good, healthy condition, it's still a success to me. and I would rather be in that healthy condition and drive my Toyota. I'll be more happy at that success to me versus driving a Ferrari and then being in the worst shape of your life.
Losing 40 Pounds and Building a Six Pack
Justin: So let's talk a little bit more about your health and fitness journey. So in preparation for this podcast, I was listening to an interview you did on Cody Berman's show, The Financial Independence Show, and you mentioned that you lost 40 pounds in a year. Which is pretty amazing. That's great. And you're not a huge person. I've met you in person. My guess is you're 5’7” to 5’9”. And
5’8”, right, nailed it. but you're not 6’5” and whatever. So 40 pounds on a 5’8” frame is a lot of weight. So tell us about that journey to losing those 40 pounds, and then I know you did ultimately get the six pack, I believe.
So tell us about the journey of losing 40 pounds and then getting the six pack and anything else related to that health and fitness journey that you want to share with us.
Sathish: Yeah, sure. So when I first heard about the importance of compounding, I first heard its importance when it comes to wealth. know, most people when they hear about compounding, they understand how wealth compounds, right? But there is this book called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, which actually talks about how compounding not only affects your wealth, but it affects almost every part of your life.
There is this quote by Naval who I'm a big fan of. said, I'm paraphrasing this, but he said, you know, most of the results in life come from compound interest, it health, be it knowledge, be it relationships, be it wealth, you know, it comes from compound interest. So at that time I was not very diligent when comes to my health and I was without noticing it putting on weight, which I didn't realize until one day.
I saw myself in the mirror and I was like, holy cow. I'm like, you know, I gained 40 pounds. I don't know how it happened because you know, this compounding, you wouldn't know, right? You just don't wake up with like 40 pounds of overweight in one night. And the same thing, like you just don't wake up with a six pack abs, you know, on one night, right? You know, it just like the slow progress or slow decline that you will not notice.
So when I noticed that I and at that time I was a lot into like health and fitness. And then I realized, so at that time my thinking was, you know, in order to lose weight, all you have to do is go to, go to the gym just to go on a treadmill and then just, you know, walk or run for one hour and go back home and eat salads. I thought that was a recipe to lose weight. And I did that. And after two weeks, I quit that, not only quit that, but actually gained even more weight because I was craving so much that I, you know, I just couldn't, it was not sustainable anymore. And that's when I was like, doing a lot of research and I thought, you know, best way to lose weight is to be on calorie deficit. And that's that was it. That was that light bulb moment, you know, when it just made sense to me because you if you let's say if you, if you survive on 2000, if maintenance is 2000 calories and if we 2,500 calories, the mass balance, it's real, right? You know, it just, can't just out of thin air lose that 500 calories. You know, it has to come from a deficit. If you want to lose weight, it has to come from a deficit. And that's where I started tracking my food and boy that changed everything that, you know, I, The best investment that I've made so far in my life is a $10 food scale that I got from Amazon Basics. And I don’t know if you’ve had that moment where once you realize how much one serving of peanut butter is. That's when I realized my whole life I was bulking. My whole 28 years I was doing, I was in a bulk. I didn't realize that.
That was my light bulb moment when I started weighing my food, tracking what I was eating. In the beginning, I was not that diligent. I was just focusing on eating real foods and not feeling hungry. feel fitness is lot of people over complicated, if you just like compounding, just a The Simple Path to Wealth, there could be a simple path to fitness also.
You know, it's the small repeated actions done consistently over time will yield big results What the only catch here is like you have to trust the process and be patient and which we can talk about it later how we can do like try to optimize that but yeah It was the biggest thing was, know measuring my food like tracking my food and also Lifting weights. I hardly do any cardio But after I speaking to you, I you know, I started my VO2 max training, which we can save for a different episode But yeah, that was that was my two biggest levers, know, lifting weights and tracking food.
Why Everyone Should Track Their Food for Three Months
Justin: Yeah. I think everyone who is carrying more body fat than they would like to track your food for three months.
And do a Sathish did get a $10 food scale and weigh everything and enter it into an app like MyFitnessPal or MacroFactor or one of the other ones, Cal AI, doesn't matter which one it is, and just do it for three months and you will learn so much about food and calories and why you're doing that.
If you want to make it even more valuable, is get a body scale that tracks your body weight and your body fat. So I use the Withings scale. I've been using it for I think thirteen years now.
At least twelve. I got in twenty fourteen. So it tracks my body fat percentage and my body weight. And I'll put a link in the show notes. But if you start tracking your food and your body fat percentage and your weight, it's only a matter of time before you figure out how to get into a calorie deficit and then start losing weight.
And you'll know if you're in a calorie deficit, is the scale is going down. Your weight is trending down, your body fat is trending down. and it's so powerful. But I'm curious, Sathish, how long? So I tracked my nutrition religiously for 10 fucking years, which is insane, I know, but I'm kind of a crazy person sometimes. I have not tracked my nutrition for the last two years.
And I've just been intuitively eating, but I did spend ten years tracking. How long did you track your food and are you still tracking it?
Sathish: So yeah, when it comes to tracking food in the beginning so I started in maybe around like 2022-23 in that time frame and I tracked for two years, you know And I admit I was not religiously doing it for two years. I in that two years span I did that did religiously for six months because when I was tracking I you know we I was tracking the raw weight like you know the when it comes to rice, the raw food versus cooked food because at that time if you really want to track to the extreme, so I did that. I did that for six months and then it was that's when I got my first visible six pack but since then I've been once understood the power of tracking but it was getting like at one point like too much because I had to cook my own food and my wife has to cook her own food and then we have to cook food for my kid and it was getting too much and we were having a stressful life. And now what I have been doing is I still track but I just track the cooked food. So let's say, know, maybe 150 grams of rice and then 100 grams of chicken and you know, maybe 250 grams of vegetables. And then, yeah, I try to... maintain that and depending on how my weight is going I'll just try to decrease or increase the amount of carbs and that's one thing that I vary but yeah I am NOT doing it religiously lately it's just that is you know we are expecting a baby which I told you right and it's just becoming too much so yeah we're just cooking in bulk and then like weighing the cooked food, so yeah, it's still keeping me on track, but only thing I didn't figure out was I could I was able to automate my investments, you know, the same investments that I automated 2017 I was able to do that, but it's when it comes to health, like I can't automate it like, you know, you know, it's like I heard somewhere I think Sahil Bloom says, you know, when it comes to health, you can't own it. It's not a house that you can own, but like rent. It's like, you know, it's rented and then the rent is due every day, like, you know.
Let's say if I have six pack now and then I can't just eat whatever I want and not work out for the next 20, 30 years. It's not possible. that, yeah, I love that. It's very hard actually to be consistent when it comes to health versus wealth. I mean, there are so many parallels between health and wealth, but I believe in this aspect, there's so much different. can automate my investments, but I can't automate going to the gym.
Principles That Transfer Between Health and Wealth
Justin: Yes. So let's talk about some of the financial principles that transfer best to fitness and vice versa, the fitness principles that transfer best to money. Cause I know just like me, Fit Rich Life, Wealth, Health, Wealth, Wisdom, Compounding Project, we're just very into the same stuff. So I'm curious in your mind, what are some of the principles that transfer?
Transfer between money and health.
Sathish: We spoke about automation and spoke about dollar cost averaging, where you're investing certain amount every month. In the same way, the compounding works, when you invest consistently and over a long period of time would give massive results, the same principle would apply when it comes to fitness as well. you know, going to the gym, know, tracking your food and tracking your sleep and also tracking the key metrics. There are two major metrics that I track like muscle mass and VO2 max. These are the two major ones that I keep tracking. previously I used to always have the mindset of all or nothing. So I thought, okay, like if I had one hour to work out, I would just work out for one hour. And then if I didn't have one hour, I would just skip that day. versus after I read Atomic Habits, every small action that you do every day that matters more. It's just that don't put a zero on a particular day because as Charlie Munger said, never interrupt compounding unnecessarily. So recording a zero would interrupt that compounding process. yeah, that consistency is one of the parallels. that I took from wealth and started applying to my health as well. Because most people think, know, especially when it comes to fitness, most people think like, okay, you can get six pack in six weeks and you lose, you know, 10 pounds in a month, you know, and just like in wealth, people say, you can become a millionaire in one year and you can double your money in a month. So there are all this like fancy stuff that most people would get attracted to, but Actually what works is you know all these small actions then consistently you know will produce massive results over long periods of time. So that's that those are the parallels between health and fitness. Sorry health and wealth.
Justin: Yeah, I love it. So I was thinking about it, you know, the automation and the dollar cost averaging, and kind of what came to me is if on average, say eighty percent of the time you sleep eight hours a night, and eighty percent of the time you get 10,000 to 20,000 steps a day, and eighty percent of the time you eat whole foods.
And 80% of the time of the year, you work out three to five times a week, some sort of strength training and/or cardio, you're gonna be in great shape. And that's the if you can automate that as just part of your identity, like who you are, what you do, what I do is I sleep eight hours a night most nights. I walk 10,000 to 20,000 steps most days. I eat mostly whole foods, I work out.
Every week, three to five times a week, most weeks, and you'll be incredibly fit over a lifetime. This will compound into greater and greater health. And it's when we start sacrificing our sleep or start, you know, eating a bunch more processed food. We stop working out, and then the compounding goes in reverse. It goes it cuts the other way. We start getting fatter.
Every month and less healthy every month. But if you have those right things automated, the ones I just mentioned, because they are a core part of your identity, then you just keep getting fitter and fitter year after year, and you compare it to the average person is gonna the contrast is gonna get bigger and bigger.
Share the story about the person in the compounding effect about the two people. You know what I'm talking about? Share that story real quick, 'cause it'll illustrate exactly what I'm talking about.
The Compound Effect: 125 Calories a Day for 31 Months
Sathish: Yes, exactly. So yeah, I still remember that example till today. I read that probably seven or eight years ago. yeah, Darren Hardy, his book, The Compound Effect, talks about this beautiful example, let's say talks about two people, person A and person B. So person A, he tries to take care of his health and then he starts doing some minor changes where he cuts 125 calories per day you know maybe by switching from mayo to mustard on a sandwich or by going from a regular coke to a diet coke right or you know maybe adding 10 grams less of oil like no herculean efforts just like small one minor change where he's cutting his calories by daily calories by 125 calories versus person B who just starts enjoying his life and he eats 125 calories more. Maybe one extra soda per day or one extra processed food like chips or maybe one extra spoon of oil. No massive change, but just like 125 extra calories per day. And then after five months, and then if you were to see both people, almost the same. know, if you would, if somebody tells that, you know, they're making some changes, you would hardly believe it because they look almost exactly the same. And, you know, and then after like 10 months, you know, they even still look the same. Like, you know, nobody would believe that they are doing something consistently. Like one person is eating 125 calories less and one person is eating 125 calories more. Like nobody would believe that after 15 months, still no difference. After 18 months, they start slowly start seeing some noticeable changes. After 25 months, the results are visible and after 31 months, person A has lost 33.5 pounds and person B has gained 33.5 pounds. And both persons after 31 months are 67 pounds apart, which is insane just by 125 calorie difference. and that one habit has just compounded because you know in the initial phase it's very hard to ignore that small choices but over that 31 month period it's just you know compounded because that's when that's why you know when you see your friend after maybe one or two years you know you immediately notice the difference maybe they've lost weight or they've gained weight and you also spoke about this like compounding working in a different direction. And that is even true because when I talk about compounding to my friends and some people say, Hey, you know, this compound is, this concept is too complex for me. Maybe I'll start something later, right? But believe it or not, like compounding is working in everybody's life right now, right? You know, it's either working for you or working against you. You can't just pause it. So, and that speaks to the fact that Yeah, of course, like it's very difficult to, you know, be consistent, you know, for that amount of time, you know, be religiously tracking your calories and, you know, it under reading by like one to five calories. But it is like, once you understand that concept, then you realize, you know, how the small changes in your daily life can compound your life. And you don't have to like, because I thought, always thought like, you know, when to achieve like massive results.
I thought you have to put massive action, but Atomic Habits by James Clear, it talks about this concept of, know, just small actions done consistently will lead to massive results. And that was such a light bulb moment for me. You know, I started applying that to all my areas of life. yeah, it's hard to actually, you know, be consistent because you're not seeing immediate results. because we're so used to looking at, you know, doing something and then getting that initial results like instant gratification. But yeah, it's the opposite. Like, you know, be consistent, let that small actions compound.
Justin: Yeah, this is why I think identity is so important because especially when it comes to both money and fitness, because if you see yourself as somebody I just lost young.
Sathish: My camera just died, that battery. Yeah, I'll just have a backup.
Identity-Based Habits in Fitness and Money
Justin: No worries.
And we’re back. Sathish’s camera died, and we used an excuse to fill up our water and use the restroom. But we're back, and what I was saying is this is why I think identity is so important when it comes to both your fitness and your money. Because When you see yourself as someone who is fit and you live a lifestyle that is a fitness lifestyle, then all these things like sleeping eight hours a night, getting 10,000 plus steps, eating mostly whole foods, working out three to five times a week is just a part of who you are. It's not something you have to do, it's something that you get to do because it is a part of your identity.
And it's the same thing with the money stuff because if you say, I am someone who's on the path to financial independence, then by default, you're investing every month. And even better, you have your investments automated so you don't have to think about it. And this is one of the things I really try to share with people who are trying to get in shape or trying to turn their money situation around.
Is you have to choose a new identity proactively saying, Hey, I'm on the path to financial independence now. And by claiming that as who you are now, you set in motion the set of habits and actions that are a part of that identity.
That then one day will make you financially independent. And it's the same thing with your fitness. If you say, I am a person who lives a fit lifestyle, then by default, you sleep at eight hours a night, you work out every week, you eat mostly whole foods, and your life is built around fitness activities. And this is I think a lot of people who struggle, especially with fitness.
Is they just don't see their themselves as a fitness person. But there are millions of versions of fitness. There's the cyclist, there is the rollerblader, the pickleball player, the weightlifter, the CrossFit person, the HYROX person, the hula hooper, the dancer. There's a billion different versions, and you just have to find the one or combination of ones. that light you up, that make you excited. And when you attach your identity to those physical pursuits, then the default is you live a fit lifestyle. And the byproduct is you are fit.
Sathish: 100% agree. I believe James Clear talks about this concept in his book, Atomic Habits, identity-based habits versus a goal-focused thinking. I believe he has these three circles where most people would first focus on the goal, and then they realize, OK, it's not working. Because James Clear gives us an example of, let's say, if you If you want to lose, if two persons want to lose 40 pounds and then one person lost 40 pounds and the other person did not lose 40 pounds, then it's not the goal that made the difference, right? Because both of them had the same goal of losing 40 pounds. Then there is something else which he talks about like systems and then identity. So yeah. He said, it's like, you know, let's say if you want to run, you know, instead of thinking about, I want to run a half marathon in the next six months, focus that thinking to becoming a runner. Like that's an identity based habit. know, become when you identify yourself as a runner and what does the runner do? Runner runs and then, know, and what, and then you can come up with the goal then, right? You know, first identify, you know, come up with the identity and then develop systems around it and then which will eventually lead to goal or select people just focusing on goal and not focusing on the systems and identity. Yeah, we can talk about this concept for hours, but I think it's good that you brought that up that identity based habits because most people will also have unconsciously had this wrong identity tied to them because some people might say when it comes to wealth, they might say, hey, I'm not a saver. Like, are you really not a saver or you're just tagging yourself as somebody who doesn't save but can you question that limiting belief when somebody says I'm not a runner, I'm not good at math, I'm not good at names it's just that we unconsciously tie our identity to these habits but it's just that self-awareness and then tying your coming up with that identity based habits it's probably like best shift of thinking or mindset.
Justin: 100%. And words have so much power. And the words we tell ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves have so much power. I have this great example related to this. So a couple of years ago, I was working with a fitness coach and I was talking with him. And I said, I tend to overeat. That's why I always track my food. And he said, Stop, Justin. That's a limiting belief that you tend to overeat.
And so ever since he pointed that out, my new belief, and I had to instill this, is I eat in accordance with my optimal fitness and physique. And when I first started this, it felt a little like a stretch. So I used a bridge, which is I'm beginning to always eat in accordance with my optimal fitness and physique.
And then eventually I backed that up with habits where I do eat in accordance with my optimal fitness and physique. And then over a course of a few months of repeating the new belief and backing it up with the new actions, it then became my reality. And so I love that you pointed out some of the common ones. I'm not a saver. I'm bad with my money. I'm not a runner. I'm not a weightlifter. You get to be whoever you want to be. You just have to choose and then you start to do the actions of whatever that identity is and then you start changing the language or the affirmation around who you are and what you do and the affirmation about who you are and what you do has to be paired with the action and then eventually the mind and body Create the physical expression of whatever this thing is you want, whether that's being a runner, being great with saving money and investing or you know, getting eight hours of sleep, reading books every day, being a runner, a pickleballer, whatever you want. You get to choose.
Sathish: Yeah, there's a book called Mindset by Carol Dweck, which talks about, you know, in detail about this concept, like, because even I thought the same, like, you know, I thought a person, you know, whether he has a talent, you know, it's just by nature, like, you know, it's just like in genetics, and then there's not really much you can do. But that book taught me that growth mindset where if you really want like, it's like nurture, like, you can, you can become a runner, you know, you can be good at math, you know, you can become great savor. It's just how consistently you do it and how bad you want it but it's just limiting belief that we impose on ourselves. Yeah but I highly recommend reading that book for somebody who wants to explore this idea more.
When Optimization Starts Shrinking Your Life
Justin: Yeah. So before we start to wind it down, there is one thing I want to talk about because both of you both of us have suffered from this at some point and probably still do. And the question is, at what point does optimization stop serving your fit rich life and start shrinking it?
Sathish: Yeah, this is a daily struggle for me. For me, one of my, I would say, I don't consider it as a bad habit, but you know, what happens is like, I tried to optimize this 24 hours that I have. Let's say if I just watch TV for one hour and then I feel like that hour is wasted. you know, I just need to get out of the habit. It's just, feel so much. guilt and then you know I I'll think maybe I could have recorded a podcast in that one hour or maybe you know I could have played pickleball in that one hour or maybe I could have gone to the gym in that one hour you know I just start coming up with all these you know thoughts in my mind and then I just feel that not in a one hour but that one day is wasted I this I believe it's a good problem to have but still I'm gonna try when I try to over optimize I feel like it's backfiring on me because it's okay like you know you can't just optimize 24 hours it's not sustainable at all but I don't know maybe I could like you know take your advice on how to you know stop these thoughts from like tickling in because yeah that's how I feel when I feel like you know an hour is wasted But yeah, when I'm trying to over optimize and sometimes it just backfire and then I sometimes I ruin my rest of the evening just because I wasted that one hour and it just adds so much stress to my life and not only me, to my wife and my, unfortunately my kid as well. And he thinks that he made some mistake, but yeah, it's just me trying to just over optimize and that's just backfiring.
What are your thoughts? I'm just curious to know your thoughts.
Justin: Remind me your age.
Yeah, so I think a part of this comes with age, maybe. And I think there is a lot of truth that wisdom comes with age because we almost have to go through these ridiculous things like over optimizing, like beating yourself up for watching an hour of TV, so that later you can realize how ridiculous you were being.
So that's part one of my answer is you almost have to go through this. Second piece is as you get older, you also, if you're, in my opinion, doing a good job of growing, is you develop more self compassion. So you stop beating yourself up over trivial things like watching an hour of TV. And then the third part to my answer is As you get older, you start to realize that there is this balance of doing constructive things like recording a podcast and consuming things that are enjoyable and just doing them for the pure enjoyment. They don't do anything necessarily, they don't grow your business or Grow your podcast, but they feed parts of yourself that need to be nourished. So I love watching TV. I love a great fucking 10, 12 episode TV show. Love them. And I will watch one to three hours per night. And happily. Or I'll take a full fucking day. I've, you know, maybe I record a couple podcasts, played 20 hours of pickleball, and I'm just beat to shit physically, mentally, and I'll just spend a whole afternoon and evening watching shows and movies with my wife. And it's bliss. It's just like, hey, I deserve this. I worked my ass off on the courts. I recorded two podcasts. I wrote a fucking email newsletter. I post it every day on threads. I'm gonna give myself five hours to just Veg out on art that I think is beautiful and enjoyable. And I, if it makes you feel better, JL Collins loves a good show too. We every time we talk on our one-on-one meetings, we talk about the sh TV shows we're really enjoying. And we also both read books for fun. I read science fiction and fantasy every night before I go to sleep.
So I'm very optimized in many areas of my life, but I've also loosened the grip on everything having to always be productive and realizing that there are various different forms of recharging, and they come in the form of leisure. So that could be leisurely enjoying a good TV show, and you're learning in that too because I've watched so many shows where the acting, the storytelling, the lessons, the parables that they're billif beautifully illustrating through cinema, and they're amazing, and they may make me think about life, family, love, struggle, wins, losses, and it's so enjoyable. And so, you know, I really want to invite you.
Sathish to embrace leisure in a healthy, like manner, you know. So if 80% of your time you're productive, cool. 20% of the time you can be at leisure and let your mind, body, spirit, and heart rejuvenate, and then you can give even more during that 80% because you're not beating yourself down constantly.
For taking a break from producing.
Sathish: Yeah, that makes sense. Now that you're saying it, I think it takes, you know, person, other person just to give that suggestion because you know, I sometimes I'm very bad at, you know, my self-awareness, like introspection, right? I think maybe it comes with age, but now that you pointed it out, it's okay to loosen up because you'll be more productive in that remaining 80 percent. you know, that makes sense. Yeah, it's something that it's an active thing that I should work on. But at least it gives me now that I spoke to you gives me some confidence that it's possible.
The Case for Leisure: Ted Lasso, Shrinking, and Billions
Justin: Yeah. And you know whether the show is a comedy like what's the one about the soccer team it's escaping my mind right now. It's huge. Everyone's shouting at me right now. Ted Lasso. Have you watched Ted Lasso? I'm gonna reach through the screen and slap you.
Sathish: Okay, I've heard about it but I'm very bad at watching even episodes.
Justin: It is such a funny, heartwarming show that your spirit will be nourished just by watching the show. And it is done so well, you will laugh so often. You will ask yourself why isn't more TV like this? Cause it's so fucking good. Then they the same producer did the show called Shrinking.
Which is I've never laughed so hard. My wife literally during after one of the show's episodes, she said, I've never heard you laugh so many times during a TV show. And laughter is medicine. And then there's also all these amazing science fiction and fantasy shows, if you like that kind of stuff like I do, which I absolutely love, that just let me dream and be a child and yes, there's magic and there's you know time traveling and all these different things and just lets my imagination like get crazy and big like it was when I was a kid. And there is something about getting plenty of laughter in, getting things that allow you to tap into that inner child imagination that many of us adults have lost that is going to serve you in Ways that you just can't foresee that will add to your creative work, your career work, your relationship, etc. So hope that helps.
Sathish: Yeah, I've never, you know, I've even made some notes as well, you know, I'm going to watch because if it's coming from you, I'll take it seriously. Yeah.
Justin: Sathish never watched TV and now he's like, wait a minute. Justin's a millionaire, and he has a six pack, and he watches TV. Okay, I can watch TV now.
Sathish: Don't get me wrong, I still watch TV like movies and documentaries but never into this TV series. think the last one I watched was maybe Breaking Bad before I started my FI journey but yeah, it's good.
Justin: Yeah. And one of the things to ask yourself when you're consuming stuff like TV is do you feel like at the end of it added to your life? So when I watched Ted Lasso, it's just so heartwarming and so funny and fun. It felt like a good use of my time because it literally warmed my spirits. It made me laugh.
And then there's other things. I couldn't watch Breaking Bad because one of my family members was heavily into drugs. So when I watched it would stress me out. So I can't I've tried to watch that show a couple different times and just can't watch it. and then there's some guilty pleasure shows that I know they're a little intense, but I just really like so I'll give you an example Billions. Have you ever watched the show Billions? Bro.
Sathish: Nope. I'm very bad at this.
Justin: You're terrible. You need to watch Billions, Ted Lasso and Shrinking, and then when you finish all those, come back to me and I'll give you some other good shows to watch.
Sathish: Yeah.
So if you want me to start with, out of these three shows?
Justin: Watch Ted Lasso 'cause it'll be a show you and your wife can enjoy together.
Sathish: Okay, yeah, sounds good.
Justin: It's family friendly. It's so good. Billions is gonna be more just like you enjoying it, most likely. and shrinking is also a show you could watch with your wife. Your wife may like Billions. It was too intense and too much one of the things I really like is power dynamics where very strong, powerful people are struggling against each other and there's a lot of that in Billions and that stresses my wife out where for me it's energizing and it's kind of that's what I meant by a guilty pleasure is I don't want to go out there and you know get in some power struggle with somebody but I find it fascinating the tension and the you know the outmaneuvering and the strategy and the backstabbing. It's just fun for me to watch. So anyways, enough about TV.
Stop over optimizing your life Compounding Project, man. and unoptimize some of it so that you can give even more in other areas of your life.
Sathish: Yeah, that's definitely a skill. It's also a skill to master.
Fitness Tips: Protein at Every Meal
Justin: Great. So we've gone on for well over two hours. So I'll definitely have to have you back on the show 'cause there's two things I want to talk about, but maybe we make it its own episode. because both of us are podcasters. We're both very passionate about podcasting. So I did want to talk to you about building Compounding Project, you know, some of the impactful guests you've had on the show. But I think we should just save that for another show because one the things I love to do is bring a guest that's on been on before and do what I call Fit Rich Life upgrades where we think through all the different things that we've done to upgrade our life over the last six months and it could be supplements, books, movies, TV shows, apps, etc. And we can just do another hour or two on all that stuff. Plus we can talk about podcasting and that whole journey, content creation, because you and I are, you know, we met at FinCon, which is a it's a conference for creators in the personal finance, wealth and money space. So let's do a follow up there and wind the show down. And you know what I'm gonna ask you. And I want you to share your tips, tools and strategies for fitness and health, money and wealth and life and happiness.
Sathish: Yeah, I know I'm going to be getting that question because I listen to your podcast and I love I sometimes go to just that part revisit that part and see like what people have and told about that those tips tools and strategies. Right. So yeah, when it comes to health and fitness, my biggest difference or change had been with adding protein to almost every meal, like not almost like every meal adding protein. It's just, you know, coming back from, you know, from an Indian background, like, you know, we are, I believe every culture has got its own, like, you know, maybe good and good side and bad side. But this, me, growing up, we like, I realized, you know, we are just more like carb heavy. Like, you know, we would add maybe rice with some lentils and vegetables, you know, that's if you, if you look at that meal, it's mostly a When I started learning about nutrition and what I realized was, it's very hard to get clean protein. You can't accidentally meet your protein goal. It doesn't happen. You can overeat carbs and can overeat fat, but it's hard to overeat clean protein. One thing I made sure after I started my fitness journey was having at least 20 grams, 20 to 30 grams of protein, like clean protein in every meal. And what it actually did wonders, know, especially when it comes to my calorie deficit, like protein, it's very satiating. And it also has got, maybe we can geek out about it, but yeah, it also has, I believe it's called the thermic effect of food where, know, the amount of calories it takes to burn that particular macronutrient, it's high for protein. yeah, that's one of the biggest upgrades that our strategies, you know, tool, whatever you call it, I've done for my fitness and that has significantly impacted my fitness journey.
Justin: I love it. So good. And it's every coaching client I work with, I have to teach them how to include protein with every meal. I'll teach you one other really easy trick that has really changed my life and a lot of other people, and you might do it already, is just before you even have breakfast, have one or two scoops of protein, which is 20 to 50 grams of protein right there.
And it makes it so easy to hit your protein target for the day if you start the day with 50 grams of protein. And you can make yourself a nice breakfast, whatever you enjoy, and have just water mixed with protein powder before you even eat that breakfast. You'll eat less on like less of the breakfast, and you'll already have call it 20 to 50 grams of protein working towards your Total daily target. So it makes getting in more protein at each successive meal less challenging. So if you only get 15 grams at the next meal, you've already got fifty that you started with in the day. And what that it has this trickle down effect where if you start the day with a lot of protein like that.
You will just naturally eat less throughout the rest of the day. So that's another trick. But I love what you're saying. Every single meal should have a main protein source, and the meal should be built around that. So your number one focus is the protein, and then get plenty of vegetables and then look at the carb and the fatty, say d dressing or sauce.
Sathish: Yeah, most people totally overestimate their diet. They think like, you know, they have an eating problem. But actually, like even I feel like I have an eating problem if I don't have protein, like, you if you give me some rice and lentils and I can I can eat that, you know, like even, you know, processed food. I'm human, right? I have cravings also. But that's why when I add protein, it's almost like impossible to overeat protein. Have you ever seen somebody, you know, binging like grilled chicken breasts or boiled eggs? It's very hard, Your stomach, your body would just reject, you know, after maybe a couple chicken breasts. yeah, that's it's done wonders. I love that tip that, you know, start your day with maybe one to two scoops of protein. That's a good one. I love that.
Money Tips: Don't Quit Before Compounding Kicks In
Justin: Money and wealth.
Sathish: All right.
Yeah, I would have said automation, but we spoke about automation for the whole almost for the whole podcast. So I thought I'll just give one more strategy apart from automation. It's just that one tip is to not quit in the beginning of your compounding journey because most people like, you know, the first $100K took me about three years. to hit my first 100k but if I was just chasing returns and maybe looking at my friends and see how maybe I would have fallen for more I would have given up and then I believe it's the patience is the price that we have to pay to build wealth and there is no free lunch like here we are just the amount of time that you said like time in the market is more important than timing the market. yeah, the one tip is to not give up if you feel like the compounding is not working or the compounding has not started in your life yet because it will eventually happen. Just give it enough time and if you're consistently investing, that number will explode.
Justin: So good. 100%. You gotta give it the time. You gotta start and not stop. And it can take years before you really feel anything. But you just listened to a story of a man who went from zero to a $100K in three years, but he got very focused. And then it kind of grew pretty slow for the first.
Six seven years and then it exploded. So that's the patience. He paid the price of patience and then his net worth exploded in the last two to three years. And I guarantee you in another two to three years it's gonna be an even bigger explosion. So that's the price you have to pay. I really love that because I think getting started is the hardest part, but the second hardest part is not giving up.
Before the compounding effect starts to work in your favor.
Sathish: Kicks in. Yeah, it's very hard but yeah, I love that. Love that. And then you said—
Life Tips: Never Stop Learning
Justin: Life and happiness. What do you got for us?
Sathish: Wow, yeah, I thought about it. I already talked about this all or nothing, that thinking, right? All or nothing to all or something thinking. But maybe since I already talked about it during the episode, something that we didn't touch upon is lifelong learning. So that piece is very crucial for life and happiness because even my wife loves...
Like learning, right? And then I'm a big fan of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and both are lifelong learners. So yeah, that compounding, we talked about compounding in health and compounding in wealth, but also applies in wisdom as well. your knowledge compounds and Warren Buffett has this quote where he said, you know, read 500 pages a day, knowledge builds up like compound interest.
Of course, yeah, reading 500 pages a day, it's almost impossible task. But yeah, at least if we get that idea, right, you know, maybe you can start with like one page a day. One page a day is 300 pages per year. And you could be finishing maybe anywhere from like one to two books, depending on the length of the book. But still that lifelong learning, I've always had that habit since I started my first, you know, since I first read my book in 2017. And since then, Now I'm actually like starting more books, but that I'm not finishing, which sometimes I regret, I always have that thing in my mind. Like, you know, maybe it's listening to a podcast or reading a book or, you know, maybe talking to, you know, friends like you and then learning something and implementing a real life. And that gives me joy. So that's one tip on life or happiness is to never stop learning.
Justin: So good. And if you look at all the most successful people in the world, they have the habit of lifelong learning. And I do want to, in case people missed it, the all or nothing versus all and some or something, because it works in money and fitness. So if you mentioned, if I don't have time for a one to two hour workout, I won't even work out. And then later you learned, hey, maybe I don't have a time for a one to two hour workout but I could do quick fifteen minutes and then that compounds over a year into those 15 minutes compound into thousands of minutes and hours of exercise that you wouldn't have gotten and the same thing with your money. Maybe you can't invest the full thousand this month but you can put 200 away. Maybe you can't put 200 away this month but you can put 50 away and all of that adds up over a lifetime into extraordinary results. So The all or something is amazing. I'm really glad you brought that one back up because you kind of glazed over it and I was just like, wait a minute, that that's really good. So both of those are good. Lifelong learner and all or something instead of all or nothing. Sathish, host of the Compounding Project, great friend of mine. So glad you came on the show. Any last words before we shut this down?
Sathish: Yeah, I want people after listening to this, just take one small action. It could be in any area of your life It doesn't have to be in wealth but in any one area of your life that you're just trying to just get a hold of just take one small action and be consistent it could be anything and you know that will just trust the process trust that compounding would work and It's just a proven concept. It's not something that you know that just happen that we found out just last one year. It's been working for, since the beginning of life or before that, like compounding is just amazing. It's been working for a long time now and it's going to work in the future. just, I would highly encourage people to just start one small action and then be consistent with it.
Where to Find Sathish Gajula
Justin: Amazing. Compounding Project on Instagram is the best place to send people if they want to connect with you online.
Sathish: Yes on Instagram Compounding Project and we also have a YouTube podcast channel on YouTube the same name Compounding Project as well. But yeah, I respond to HMDM's every day. So if people want to reach out to me Compounding Project on Instagram is the best way.
Justin: Great. And his show, Compounding Project Podcast, is on Spotify, Apple. Everywhere you enjoy your podcast entertainment. It's an awesome show. I've been on it twice. It's so awesome that's I had to go back again. So thank you, brother, for being a great friend. Thank you for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom when it comes to health, wealth, and wisdom. And we'll have you back on the show. We'll do an upgrades episode where we Cover our recent upgrades as well as dive deep into content creation, podcasting, and more. So good to see you, brother.
Sathish: Thanks for having me. I can't believe I spent more than two hours, but yeah, I love having these conversations.