Meet The World's Cheapest Dogecoin Millionaire

welcome to the iced coffee hour this is beat the bush and uh yeah let's roll with it i like it thank you so much for coming all the way to las vegas coming on our podcast i am glad to be here this is a really special episode for me because uh it's weird for me to see you in person because i've been watching your channel before i even started youtube five years ago you were one of the first people to make videos about financial independence retiring early investing you were like to me the pioneer of the space why thank you i look to your channel but i looked at your channel when i first started and i looked at the videos you were making and like that was my goal i loved your videos thank you thank you and and those are all about everything though so that's not your goal right you know what you're not thinking of like doing like random videos like i do no but your your original uh fire videos your financial independence retire early videos inspired me to talk about the topic too and i looked at your videos because i saw back then you were getting like 20 30 000 views on some of those videos and i was like wow there are 20 000 people out there who want to watch videos on youtube about retiring early so in my mind i was like well if you're getting 20 000 views i would have a chance to then get uh let's say even 25 of that so like if i could get 5 000 people to watch my video on that uh you kind of paved the way for me to follow in your footsteps in the very beginning and make videos about that topic i appreciate that wow um the one question i've always had i just want to start here because you have i think just such an interesting story and you've taken a path that that most people don't take you retired at a very young age you were in the tech industry you decided to go youtube full-time you decided to work at an amazon facility uh doing some odd jobs here and there but you've remained somewhat retired this entire time in your 30s the biggest question i want to know is why did you come up with the name beat the bush when you start a youtube channel um well at least when i started it it was not as a finance channel i i decided to just create something um that is easy to remember just a couple syllables and you know why it's three syllables because pewdiepie oh my god it's like hey pewdiepie oh okay you know let me make something that is you know very short right so you know it's either be around the bush okay let me shorten it beat the bush right but then but then later on you know people are like hey wait a minute yeah that kind of has different meanings here right i never thought about that that dirty meaning right i never came to my mind until like until it's too late and then by the time i had all these finance videos and stuff people kind of got attached to those they want to watch those more yeah then it's like okay i gotta i gotta run with that and that's the channel name so like it wasn't like oh let me create a finance channel let me let me think of a name that is like fire uh bush or something right like that right but it would also have another meaning to it fireballers firebush so it's like man i think many youtube channels are kind of randomly named like that and and you know not not started from the very beginning so at what point did you realize it's too late because i remember i subscribed to you maybe it you you were at like maybe 10 000 subscribers oh wasn't it oh yeah at the very beginning uh and it was some of the early i think it was maybe either the fire the credit card videos that you had posted way back it's like five years ago and i remember thinking to myself eat the bush i i knew you didn't have that that meaning to it but i was like what meaning what you guys keep pointing out do you not understand i don't understand are you serious i don't i know when you then you could think dirty yeah jack beat the bush think you could beat you could beat the bush okay i feel like that's a stretch it's like of course he wasn't like implying something obviously like i've seen your channel like i knew that but then the name itself kind of makes you question well beat the bush okay that makes sense that has gotten me into kind of i i think it it has prevented me from kind of being more public i guess right just the name itself because it's like if someone mentions the channels like what are you talking about you know some sometimes people chuckle and stuff right yeah i totally get that but you know it's there it's hard to change you know i could change it we'll see it wouldn't be the same give us a little bit of your backstory here because i know you retired early retired we'll say in your 30s but walk us through like how you're able to do that you were living on almost nothing every month you saved the vast majority of your income earning a engineer's salary right in the bay area that sounds worse than than it is because you know i live comfortably you know i i spend an amount where you know i'm i'm eating i'm paying the bills it's it's not it's just that i'm not living an extravagant life i don't like jet everywhere i still i still do like back when i was an engineer maybe like two international trips a year still okay i still keep my expenses really low so what were you what was your process like through like uh let's say college did you go to college how were your grades how did you land a job right afterwards i went to ucla okay uh i got really good grade straight days for master's program i got pretty pretty good grades and uh that's a double e program uh you have to do um internships a lot uh throughout college in order to land a job afterwards so that's what i did i worked for i think it's around 10 years as an engineer before i uh started youtube probably two or three years before i quit the last job got it how much were you making throughout that process how much uh anywhere between 80 to 100 base salary okay and then you know there's there's rsus and stuff that you add on top of that and you started making that money right after getting out of your master's program so you're probably what like 25 yes 25 how were you paying for college at the time um see my parents they didn't earn a lot so i got uh student loans and student aid i think um to put things in this perspective i owed about uh twenty thousand dollars from undergraduate it's not bad yeah from ucla yeah for the entire thing so this so then the rest of it is subsidies about 20k was subsidies and for master's program 20k was out of my own pocket and i had 20k more debt just from the master's program so uh at the end of it i had about 40k of debt okay how long did that take you to pay off and when you started working did you go straight to the bay area because that's expensive it's uh not cheap to live there uh yes i mean my my parents lived there so then i just automatically moved back oh did you live with your parents then until you were able to pay off your debt yeah and then you that's smart i think more people and uh i pay i i didn't really think about paying off debt like at the time i was like okay i'm just gonna i actually um there's a program where they they allowed you to pay minimum for four years and then they ramp it up so uh that's what i did and i didn't really like tackle that until years later where i'm like hey i got i got a bunch of money now let me just put some in in the student loan so i got i had this habit where like if um i come back from a bar or something and then i'll be like hey i'm a little buzzed let me pay my student life i'm like yeah so then you know when i do that enough it's like oh okay it started getting really little and then in the it lasts like ten thousand dollars i'm like whatever just put it there just to make it go away and because it's really mentally taxing i guess to have a have a bill come come in every single month so i understand that so when you moved out then how did you balance a frugal lifestyle did you were your parents frugal or where did this come from i try to think about where this all came from i i i really don't know like i got an allowance when i was little and i tended to save about 95 of it like it was a small allowance uh in hong kong it's like you get they gave me two dollars two hong kong dollars and you can buy one drink one soda right and save most of that um my siblings are not frugal like i am my parents are not so i think it's just mostly based on um kind of like a relatively low income family and then i'm like okay i need to i need to save and not splurge on yeah maybe it's like a asian thing i don't know i was the same way i like neither of my parents were necessarily like big savers but uh for me i just i always like saving any christmas money i would get uh holiday birthday money whatever i wouldn't spend it i purposely i put it in an envelope in cash and i would just count it like every week or so and then i'd be so excited to add like a five dollar bill to that and uh and i would just sit there and just count i just i liked it i did not want to spend it i do the same thing now yeah right like instead of counting money i have a spreadsheet that's interesting growing up as a kid my parents always had to tell me to not spend my money because i would want to spend my money up until i was like let's say maybe like 14 then i started becoming pretty frugal but up until then yeah i was like i definitely wanted to buy the newest video game always have like the best video game console stuff like that but by the way guys for everyone to understand everyone knows how frugal graham is right extremely frugal graham looks up to mr bush beat the bush for his level of frugality and i see you going through these these obstacles to save like what what i would like five six dollars and i look at that and it's like i i wouldn't i used to i used to follow that and i would do anything uh now and not necessarily but i still look to those videos because i find the uh the sense of adventure adventure and like uh trying to save that extra like five six dollars i like that i like watching it okay it's funny it's like entertainment it's like that's pretty fun looking like i'm not gonna do that myself it's too much for me but i could live vicariously through you i look even i have rea this is just a recent development i'm i'm like but first guys this is huge we got a sponsor coinbase hey alex do you identify as crypto curious basically meaning you've heard all the hype around crypto it gets you excited but you're a little too nervous to go and buy some for yourself yeah actually i think the biggest thing that stops me from buying crypto is just all the complexity around it it sounds very complicated to go and get some crypto but coinbase makes it extremely easy and it is the best buying and selling platform for everything crypto coinbase has some of the most popular cryptocurrencies on the market and they make it super easy and accessible to everyone on a personal note guys i actually started investing in cryptocurrencies probably back in 2017ish and i actually got started on coinbase four years ago and it has been my main trading platform ever since and i still hold all my coins there today and i heard it's also super secure too i heard that millions of people in over a hundred different countries actually trust coinbase with their digital assets and i know you guys like free stuff just like alex and i so coinbase is here to help if you guys actually go to coinbase.com ich they will give you ten dollars in free bitcoin super exciting wow i love free bitcoin me too alex me too so sign up at coinbase.com ich to get your ten dollars in free bitcoin this offers for a limited time only so sign up today that's coinbase.com ich for ten dollars in free bitcoin thank you so much coinbase for sponsoring this podcast and back to the podcast okay i have a video on uh making uh almond milk right i'm like hey everybody make all make your own almond milk and then you know recently i'm like okay this is too much work so then i started buying you know like the commercial stuff so then i saved that time how long would it take for you to make like a pint of almond milk uh i think it goes by two cups and it takes me about five ten minutes or so but then it's it's a lot of hassle because you gotta get your hands wet and you gotta yeah squeeze so now it's a life of luxury for you is what you're saying you're buying i'm i'm only like picking out the the really really cringe-worthy frugal stuff right and uh generally i i i think in retrospect it might have been a mistake to to to push that hard like you know i'm sure it's some like character development right like yeah like i mean i'm changing character development yeah so it's like kind of like a like a morphing of myself i guess yeah we'll come back to that i'm curious though when you moved out on your own do you you must know what your expenses are i mean i've seen your spreadsheets before we go over them on youtube you're meticulous with your spending and your expenses what were your expenses like when you first moved out 40 000 about 20 24 or 25 000 was the mortgage and then the rest was expenses yeah and you wait so you bought a place you never rented you went straight to saving bought a place yeah that was the whole idea smart that's the whole idea with my parents i think they're they're the one that goes you gotta buy a house you gotta buy house you gotta buy a house and uh so they're like stay at home stay at home uh save money give you great advice save save for the down payment and that i did and you know i did have to pay for rent in college for like you know a few years and stuff so but right after you know you get the house and yeah and then you get you get a head start yeah that's what i did with uh my son jack i told him live at home and uh i gave jack free rent no you didn't well three hundred dollars a month for 300 months but yes for basically for utilities so whatever jack was using up is basically just like that's what i'd want back uh yeah so minuscule minuscule right but i was just like you got it to save save save so i did that and i've never officially technically kind of rented my own apartment or place so now i've just went straight into buying yeah it's a good it's a great thing to do yeah yeah like i mean especially um i mean it worked for the past 10 years at least for with real estate prices going on yes so when did you buy 10 years ago 2011 2010. that's like the bottom of the market so that's why i say i'm lucky you know wow that's like that was right at the time where i saved just enough to buy but because right before the the downturn i didn't have enough to to to buy a house wow so like it came down and then i'm like yes now it's my chance and then i jump in and and then you know it it it only went up from there so what price did you buy it for uh five five ten twenty or so now yeah now it's double wow i would imagine it would be worth because it's a town house right it's yeah yeah so it's like uh two two units with the same wall yeah i don't know what you call that yeah like kind of like a dupe yeah well townhouse but uh that's incred i would imagine it would be worth more like one one right now one two around there depending on the on the uh what do you call the the estimate of yeah you know the i use zillow and then it just kind of goes up and down in in terms of their estimates got it okay um is the mortgage paid off right now yes it is geez wow and what age did you said to retire because i that was the big thing for me when you decided to be like you know i'm going to quit my job i have enough in investments what age were you what prompted you to take a step back because i would say at the current trajectory if you were making 120 plus rsu's keep that up a little bit longer than it's that you're at 200 pretty quickly um 250. how do you walk away from that because i saw that youtube could could replace an engineering income completely and for a while it did and then i decided to like i only realized that i could retire uh sometime after i did full-time youtube so it's like and then and then you know that that's like a dangerous thing this whole fire thing i i'd say it's people really have to take that with a grain of salt because i kind of use myself as a as a guinea pig of sorts right because i'm like oh i'm i'm working i need to retire retire retire and i'm after i retire i can do nothing and and just sit around and and be lazy do whatever i want right and that's that's essentially what i did and uh i'm glad to say that i've been through it yeah and and i can say that it's not that fun to do whatever you want i want to hear about that experience how old were you when you decided to do that okay so now i am how am i it's 2 000 i am 41 right now i would never have gotten man you look young thank you sunblock that's amazing keep selling sunscreen and now it's bad because now i'm getting the uh i don't know if you could see it yet like when i when i do this point lines yeah i see the squint lines like they they last longer like before when i was young like when i was 20 i could do this and they'll go away immediately but nice oh no it's bad i don't like it so uh that must have been about two years ago where a year and a half or ago where like um i decided hey you know i'm just going to try to um i i caught myself doing trying to do as little as possible on youtube that's i'm guilty yeah it's charged you might you might have noticed you're like yeah everybody has noticed they're like hey how come what are you doing you know how come there's less videos how come the quality and all that you know yeah well i'll tell you from my perspective i think uh you went full-time youtube and you were posting a new video every day right yes so so then i hustled like crazy while i was at work uh engineering job for the uh one year before i quit yeah i hustled about a year after and then afterwards i'm like hey look you know i could i could do nothing so then i think that kind of got into my head what did you do all day when you were doing nothing think about life uh at first you know you can do whatever you want so you know watch a bunch of shows yeah i love i watched star trek it was fun i watched all of them nice all of them that i wanted to watch right and uh and then and then you i i i think about like minimalism yeah right trying to declutter trying to think about you know what's the meaning of life you know you get kind of deep into that and then i think i think if you can listen to someone else you know it's probably better to to to like go oh i want to retire and go do it yourself for two years and then realize that it's kind of kind of boring kind of sucks and then but first we want to thank grammarly for sponsoring this episode of the iced coffee hour podcast recently graham has been looking for ways to save some time around the office here and he quickly realized it's actually the little things that add up especially in the long run so in light of this he's gonna actually be banning bathroom breaks water breaks and that was a joke right i i think so i hope so all right guys we're just kidding about that but seriously something like writing can take up a lot of time especially if you want to be the best it can be graham is always writing scripts for the main channel and recently we installed grammarly on his computer now he can right away to his little heart's content and get real-time feedback it's like having a professional writer look through your work whenever you want with grammarly premium you can get clarity suggestions which will help you get your point across quickly without using unnecessary or redundant words and they also provide vocab suggestions to replace overused words and phrases and they have tons more amazing features that make writing easier than ever so hit send with confidence and get your point across more effectively with grammarly premium get twenty percent off grammarly premium at grammarly.com iced coffee that's g-r-a-m-m-a-r-l-y dot com slash iced coffee so thank you so much grammarly for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast my impression was that you were more like a homebody who i am and i'm yeah i don't know how much introvert you are but like i am i'm more i'm probably more introverted than both of you combined i don't know about that i don't know about that i if if i don't have to leave the house for a week straight i i don't think it would be one yeah you can't be because you you're inviting me over to yeah you have this that's true i guess so yeah but but you know um i'm i'm so much so that um i haven't done these podcasts before yeah i know this is the first one i think right one like yeah yeah i think i did i i did one other not really a podcast was more like a collaboration but that's like a rare rare thing and i've got um and and and if anybody's watching that have invited me i'm deeply apologized because i'm super introverted i'm like i just want to stay at home i don't want to talk to anybody we tried doing this two years ago i mean it didn't work oh yeah but that was that i didn't see that as your fault i think our timing was just kind of off that time i think you were out of town for one weekend that we were going up to the area to visit a house nearby uh yeah um i i chuck you i would chuck cut that towards me being kind of in like two introverts it was like like yeah that's right now i could tell because uh right before covet hit i saw your video of you prepping you called it by the way you said that like a few months before yes you said i think it was about a month before you said there's no way we're not going into lockdown they're gonna do this so i'm gonna prepare myself ahead of time so you locked down two weeks prior to everyone else and you called it people are like you're crazy yeah but you were right now i don't know of like uh you know that extra two weeks on top of everything else but i guess it didn't matter but you know at least it lets you buy supplies but in the end the supplies didn't matter too much yeah because it didn't it didn't pan out to be as crazy as i thought right so about a year and a half ago two years ago is when you said that you decided to go like take it easy off of youtube and then you weren't working at the time you wanted to just basically full-on uh retire uh i i think it's more it's not something i decided it was kind of like i i my mind just kind of fell into it you know like i was kind of like why am i hustling so hard why am i you know doing this doing that you know i just got i just got lazy it's like when you have when when the when your retirement number reached its point your goal right you're like oh i'm there let me let me take a break you know what it is it's diminishing returns it's like in the very beginning going from like one to two you doubled going from two to four you doubled but when you have a hundred going from 100 to 101 not quite the same enjoyment is going from one to two once it reached there it's like oh i don't have to do anything i just let the you know just try to invest it and let it ride and i can i can just scoop off yeah now you've had some really good investments and some really bad investments uh the one investment i remember you making was in bitcoin yeah can you tell us about this um that was just more of a coincidence again um because when i was because a lot of subscribers just kept on asking me for bitcoin bitcoin bitcoin so like at you know after like months of this right i'm like okay fine i'm gonna look into it so i finally looked into it and i got some and then it turns out um you know it skyrocketed what price did you find after it was kind of like gradual like i forget two thousand 3 000 or something but then i ended up selling at like 1750 right but that was a i don't know five five i remember it was a 5x game yeah so um you know it's a nice chunk of change because the the total i made wasn't that much i didn't put like you know multiple tens of thousands or something i think i i made a total of 20 30k or something like that that's still fantastic though that's a good return yeah wow you know did you ever buy back in bitcoin uh no what do you think of it now um it's kind of high you think so it's kind of i don't i don't know i don't know like i i um uh it's kind of stable so then it's not something i i want to put my money in for huge returns uh yes because because there's the other cryptocurrency that i bought into but yeah yeah so what prompted you put a lot of money in dogecoin um what prompted me why it was i think it made the headlines in the news when it did the first ramp up to around five cents it went from one cent to five cents and then that was also a coincidence because i was like i need i need something that will get me a roadster do you want a roadster by the way i would if he's ever gonna release it but i don't think he's gonna release it listen i think i think the roadster was always this little carrot he was dangling in front of all the tesla owners and here's the thing i think the roadster came out what like seven years six years ago like the first designs of it it was a while ago and i think now the car looks outdated unfortunately i think the entire car has to now be redesigned and i don't think there's any way he's gonna sell that car for 250. i don't think so not when the plaid is selling for 150. i don't think i don't think he's able to manufacture this car for 250. not a hundred thousand that's the that's the founders edition that's the founders edition but even 200 i just i think it's got to be more than that i don't think the battery is capable of doing 500 miles i don't think uh uh i don't i i think he has to improve the car in so many ways because right now the plaid zero to 60 in under two seconds this roadster has to do that in one point seven it's it's got it's gotta be now what they're gonna do they're gonna sprinkle some magic on it my guess is my guess is at some point they're probably gonna cancel the roadster um refund money which is gonna be a nightmare but they're going to come up with something else or they're going to say if you put a deposit down on this we'll offer you either the money back or you could get first in line on this next car that we're coming out with i think it's got to be it has to same with the cyber truck i've been saying this for a while i i think the cyber truck is such a long way from actually being a road worthy car and i put down a deposit on that just for fun if they if they come out with a cyber truck i'll get one but i just don't think it's going to happen same with the roadster yeah so so about the roadster i was like i really want one so then i decided to find somewhere to invest that would have huge gains and dogecoin uh kind of fit the my criteria that's why i put money in it and i and i'm like okay dogecoin it looks like uh you can do what was it it can do like fivefold reasonably or whatever number of fold right so i'm like that that has a good chance of of doing what i wanted to do so that's why i invested in that how much you put in initially what was it like 50k right now i have about 72k in it so i have a even number of around a million dogecoins wow but what prompts you to do that's a because that is a risky investment and it could just as easily go from five cents down to a penny why why risk so much money i didn't see it as a risk it didn't i saw i saw it as i saw the risk as highly reduced because i i saw all the things match up is like elon musk but you know and and that's probably the main thing yeah and uh i don't know i looked into it and i mean it it worked out right now it's still like plus 200 or so so you have not sold it do you have plans to sell it or are you waiting for that one year and you get long-term capital gains one year and then i'll see what happens i i i feel like if i wait long enough it might do another another um what do you call skyrocketing sure thing whatever whatever ramp up that it does it might happen and if it does then i can be there to receive do you think it'll reach a dollar i i uh maybe okay but i think i i don't know like i can't predict the future right i don't know if dogecoin is gonna it's gonna do that but i always think that you need to put something somewhere to to to get lucky right you gotta you gotta put your what do you call it like place your bets kind of yeah sure if you don't if you don't have a couple things everywhere you know just so that you have the possibility of something like that happening then you're it's never gonna happen so why don't you put a little money in bitcoin right now because it's i know i know it did really well okay like like it went from what was it is it like 30 40k or something not 60 yeah one in 35 days sometimes you can't catch them you can't catch them all right i i miss the sheba yeah oh yeah like what do you think of that yeah oh yeah well maybe if i like put all my doge point at the time into sheba oh my gosh and then then i have a yacht or something yeah you would have probably 20 million dollars had you just moved doge going to sheba three weeks ago yeah or like even longer it's ridiculous right um yeah so you there's a lot of misopportunity but the hard thing is to find find out which one and sometimes something that you would actually follow through and and actually invest yeah so far every bet that i've made on that i call them bets because that's what they are they're bets uh everyone has lost money so usually i'll tie these bets to how many likes a video will get and so i did this with dogecoin i did this with amc and i did this recently with sheba you know and so i bought uh one was i think ten thousand dollars of amc i bought that that's down like 30 but i'm just gonna hold that i don't care uh the other one was ten thousand of dogecoin i think i'm down thirty five percent of that too and then uh i bought shibuya guess how many shiba inus they bought ten thousand dollars worth of like how many how many of them like a billion one billion not quite i'll just tell you i'll just tell you 260 something a million shiba inu coins it was like 75 000. that's a lot of call 260 million how has that treated you uh i think i'm i'm down a little bit like briefly but i said i was gonna hold it for a year and i'm intending to hold it for a year but i also set a limit order to sell just in the event those are honest so that way i don't have to think about it but i set a very high limit where i'd essentially like if i double my money i'd be stupid not to sell it so it's like it's there i'm not going to sell it but you know it could happen it could very easily happen yeah so because i've lost money on everything else and like at least if this does well i don't want to lose money on this i need something to just hold me over on the others now i might tax loss harvest uh dogecoin at the end of the year because if i'm down i could use that to at least offset something else and buy back in lower my cost basis on that same with amc but uh yeah they've not gone well for me i'm sorry to hear ah it's okay it's okay the other thing i want to bring up to you you got a job working at an uh amazon facility yes that was fun and how about a waste of time don't ever do that what made you do that that's the whole that's the whole look i i think i've come to the realization that uh i don't know i don't know why i did this but i i felt like i've wasted a lot of time like uh this this has to do with like the whole whole being too frugal type of thing well that that's a waste of time too uh so i never thought i would hear you saying this is new you got it you got it you got to make a video on this if if you talked to me maybe a month ago this is not what i would say what changed it's the job really yeah like like i guess maybe it's like it's kind of like uh what do you call those things pilgrimage to those guys that goes to yeah sure the temples and stuff whatever that is right is like going to the amazon job is is like a transformative experience i guess tell us about that if that is if that is the case then it is worth it right i would yeah i would start to interrupt i would have the opposite experience because how much were you making at amazon 15.25 that would make me more appreciative of like not spending money because i'm like if if this is the alternative of working really hard for 15 an hour that means that me going and getting chipotle with guacamole and extra meat is 15. that's an hour of my life now that's not how you think about it but that's how i thought of it this is how you i thought about it which is um this is this is so such hard work i worked three shifts of four hours each before i thought this is not fun anymore because you know i don't i don't know if you want to know the details i just scanned stuff yeah i do i want to yeah what do you do um you you um you either do a thing called ambient or a thing called chilled which is in in the refrigerator right what you basically do you have a car you open up some bags and then the little scanner tells you where to get the item so you go you go you go to the location because it tells you exactly where it is and then and then you scan the location and it goes okay you got to get this these three items of the same thing so you pick it out you scan those and you put it in the bag repeat uh until everything is complete you close the bag and put it on the shelf uh all this is you know it goes step by step if the scanner tells you what to do um but after doing this for what three shifts i think i started feeling feeling like this is this is really hard work this is like getting me like sore like after after every shift right i'm i'm like i just can't do anything else the rest of the day i'm just kind of like i i needed that reminder of how hard it is to to earn money now i'm curious why can't that be replaced with a robot it seems like if all you're doing is grabbing one item putting it over here why haven't they developed that that's got to be automated uh i think that partly is because the the items themselves are in strange shapes and it's really hard to do robotics to grab things like like chips that might be hard because you might crush chips uh if you if you do eggs you need to somehow open the eggs so check all the eggs and put rubber bands on them and got it okay right the the handling i guess maybe they just haven't gotten the the robotics for the hands figured out so you said you worked three shifts right three or four shifts to the side in total i worked eight eight shifts and how long were was each shift four four hours each so you weren't 32 hours and i had two training days of four and a half hours before i started this shift and then you realize this is not for me and you just said after the third shift i'm like this this is really this is really not for me so uh i'm not sure how if i'm gonna do something similar like that again yeah right but why why take that job versus i'm gonna make a youtube video and in the same time we'll make five times that that amount um why take that job instead um because i thought it was interesting like the first three shifts was very very interesting for me i think it was worth it but after that it was a waste of time right because see look i learned all about it right i get to go there i was actually happy and excited to go and get interviewed or was there an interview i forget there's basically not much you just take your picture and stuff right and make sure um do a drug drug test yeah and uh yeah after after uh the learning about it is is is worth the time got it so i i i really wasted five shifts 20 hours and during the application process when you i'm sure you spoke to somebody right like did they see your resume and think that maybe like hey this guy's a little over qualified i was literally i this guy's a master i only retired i only graduated high school on my resume so i no way so i omitted it omitted everything why do you think that they wouldn't have hired me no they would definitely uh just in case they didn't you know i cuz i wanted to go have some fun so that was it so what was your like objective with going and getting this job it was just to learn a new experience spice up your life a little bit and see what happens yes i remember i did i did the same thing with a couple of other jobs too what were some of the other jobs amazon warehouse yeah uh uber door dash and i worked at my friend's these dumpling place where they wrap glutinous rice with uh leaves yeah it's really hard to do yeah so it took me two full days of to learn this and how long i learned it how long did you work each of these jobs was it still like quick turnover like you know eight shifts yeah well the history here yeah so so the the dumpling take place is uh two days uh uber i did it for a week doordash couple days and it's all just for the experience nothing has to do with the money or anything uh well it's nice to get paid a little bit but yeah mostly to try it out and how does this give you a new appreciation for money seems like your mentality towards this is completely different to grams uh how does it how does it make you make you want to spend more and live a little more luxury um it made me realize that i was wasting my time because because i could be earning more um either engineering if if they would hire me back i don't think they will now by the way why because i've been out of the job workforce for too long it's been like three years is that really that long three years even four i'm sure you could do an entry level something i mean it's three it's at least three that's that bad i don't but i don't know engineering they don't like people that that kind of start a youtube channel and went rogue got it right yeah so um yeah so you realize that you could be making a lot more money doing another job and that's somehow how you realized you should spend more money correct um so then i realized that it was a waste of time to do that if i wasted my time packing groceries what else am i wasting my time on right so that that kind of like translated to other things where like you know if i'm like pinching pennies and stuff that's wasting time too so like that kind of got me like that kind of flipped the switch this is like a whole new no i now i understand that right yeah so it's basically upon choosing to spend your time on more things that you really enjoy doing um no it's more about the most effective use of your time i think like not really like most enjoyment but like you know i i i could be i could be doing something else earning you know 50 an hour right and i can use that money to pay for whatever instead so why why would i waste my time doing something that that only saves let's say 30 dollars an hour but with this newfound like idea of money are you going to go and get a high paying job and then start paying for these smaller like luxuries no i don't have to right because i'm i'm still retired but um but i might make more youtube videos so i am curious what sort of youtube videos you want to make i have to say a few of your videos that were my favorite were the ones where you would post them and i'd look at this and be like i can't believe this is a video and a few examples of that would be uh one putting on pants without you without using your arms [Music] wait put on your pants with no hands yes i gotta show you this jack uh i don't even know if it's still uh public basically it's it's like this viral trend a couple years ago where um this guy he he have these pants that's are just kind of scrunched up on on the floor that makes it easy for him to put them on so he's like just with his boxers on you know and and then he and then he puts his leg in to to put the pants on you can't use your hands and so you kind of just kind of like you know kind of move wiggle around until the the pants needs to get above you know get to your waist so that's i don't know that's fun it was like a seven minute video of uh struggling of you putting on pants without hands and this is like you would go from like investing bitcoin financial independence and then i think and what was really funny is that you posted a video like a few days prior to this being like i retired or like quit my job or something like that and this is like the second video after that we got his pants for seven minutes and someone commented like the top comment was like this is what early retirement is like i loved that video there were a few others that i really liked and i want to go to your channel right now to talk about them because i thought some of these were so creative uh videos like how to fix a hole in your jeans oh yeah that's like a diy one yep uh i like this one uh how i saved a hundred percent of my job income beat the bush and i that inspired one of my videos of uh i think it was how i save a hundred percent of my income it was an old video i think a few years ago but but your video inspired that one and uh i like this how to fix a zipper 50 seconds long uh i like it this one a seven minute video explaining urinal etiquette and look at this there's a there's three urinals a b and c and if someone's using a you never use b this is something what are you serious jack no there's always serious dude we gotta give you the quiz yeah it's like but it's like first of all i would never think that this would need to be explained it's it's just i think men are known does this result from some poor experience that you may have had like well that resulted from some stuff i've saw somewhere else with a similar idea but and i decided to make it into a video there's there's a harder one right you need to get into the more advanced questions right if you have four urinals right and then and then there's there's a big guy on the first one and then there's a skinnier guy on the on the last one which one do you use i wait believe it or not i i do not usually use the third one i don't do that you probably go next to the skinnier guy honestly yeah yeah yeah but here's the goal no the worst part the worst part is because i wear a lot of flip-flops and uh if you use a urinal next to someone and you're wearing yeah nasty i'm just saying believe it or not the top of your shoes may have some residue on them particles yeah and i i've had it a couple times where i went flip-flops next to someone and i did feel something so now i i no longer i i will wait if i'm wearing flip flops did you like it well i think that's i should answer that on a different form of media you're wow did i like it i can't believe you yeah i purposely waited the question i keep emergency flip-flops uh in my back pocket just to switch into you can just put some paper towel on and then go in so i shield i try to avoid ever using your urine i do not like urinals so you use the stall yes dude come you put up the seat though right most of the time but here's the thing dude i'm going to be honest with you if the seat is disgusting then get toilet paper and grab the seat and move it off listen it's not my i'm not going to clean someone else's mess everywhere like something so what if everyone was like you though if okay so here's the thing if if the toilet's clean i leave it spotless but if there's already something on there i don't clean it because they're not some of them are nasty like really disgusting i do not want to flip up a urinal where there's toilet paper and like just just matter on the seat itself like i'm not gonna touch that thing i'm not getting anywhere close to that i just want to get in and out in private i don't know i think that there is a net benefit and you have to leave a net positive there graham you have to lift up that seat you got to put it up i leave the same position yeah you have to have a net positive i leave your action i leave it the same as i go in no you leave it worse because obviously if the seat's down there has to be some splatter damage on the seat alright maybe um a few of your other videos i liked this one the importance of looking poor yeah that was popular one that was one of your most uh uh viewed videos so people like that one i don't know why is this it turned out to be a comedy but it wasn't meant to be one yeah it was it was serious but i think that's why people liked it was because you approached this topic that people first of all wouldn't think about but it makes sense when i see that i'm like it it makes sense to me not to in certain situations not to overdress or not to appear wealthy and you approached it with a very uh uh tactile approach uh that to me made made sense but i think for people who didn't know you or know the context they would go into this being like ah then just dismiss it the other video i liked of yours is that uh going back to the frugality aspect is that uh you went on a trip with your tesla and it was you didn't want to spend i think the fifty dollars a night for a hotel and so you i think you spent a few nights in the in the car um that was uh did i do that in the tesla yeah oh maybe maybe it wasn't the tesla um i did did i did some experiments in the tesla since but then i think the that video must have been in a white bmw where i kind of like toured went through grand canyon and all that and i just kind of slept in the car the whole time yeah uh now how much of that was to save money versus how much was just this is good content for youtube i think probably i don't know 80 to save money i think it was like mainly like i wanted to do it and because because it's a really long trip it was like you know the longer it is the more expensive it gets if you stay at hotels and um staying in your car is also very convenient yes and uncomfortable true uh i did one i did one when i went to maui i stayed in the car i don't know if you know about that one but uh it got a little dangerous because because i had to roll the windows down and uh uh a random person uh came and stole my food that was uh in my car no wait came and robbed me you you were in the car when the food was stolen i was asleep and because it was really hot in maui and the window was down he kind of reached in and then after after he took the stuff i don't know why i'm talking about this yeah i know it's interesting but uh but but he woke me up and then he's like hey you know i got he has my bread and peanut butter and then i got really angry and got out and like confronted him and took it back no but but he woke you up like you were sleeping and he so he took it and then woke you up to show you what he's doing yeah wait what yeah yeah yeah he woke me up and then i don't know what he he wanted some water on top of that so he's like this peanut butter and bread isn't enough but obviously the guy's not have sound mind why he was why why get it back why not to say it's peanut butter and bread i'm gonna give this guy the thing just to go away because what if what if he was like wanted to fight you or you got in a fight or like he had a weapon or like i think part of the reason that made me go do it was because he didn't look that threatening to me okay like i i felt like i you know if it comes down to i might be able to take him on is it worth it i don't know like if if he showed some kind of dangerous things i might have backed off right but he didn't look threatening and yeah probably not the best decision at the at the moment but uh but anyway he slipped in the card there too um all that was an experiment and i i if you anybody slept in the car before yeah oh yeah i i think on uh i've probably taken a nap in the car but never like overnight it's very uncomfortable because it's not flat so you learn a lot about flatness you know if you if you park your car on a steep hill or something like you can't sleep very well and then like the the incline of the back seat if they're if it's slightly tilted you can't sleep well either so not very comfortable maybe in the tesla's okay i the tesla um the back seat also it has like a few degrees so you gotta like make it so what are some of the frugal things that you used to do that you think now would just be a bad idea uh one time i try to uh not have internet how do you do that being a youtuber right but um i use some sort of like back then they had some kind of like ymax thing so then i had like multiple um uh accounts and then you can add up to a lot of data because each one does like i don't know how many megabytes 200 megabytes yeah or one gigabyte is like okay i use this one okay i finished using this one okay i'll switch to the next one bad idea but um and another one is like i tried unplugging the microwave for a while did you did it did you see anything like like for for i think i did it for like a couple weeks or something and then i realized this is like i hate doing that it's too much time what is the energy that it's doing is it just like that clock on it yes it's like a standby power so it's one watt for continuously over an entire month i forget what what the what the numbers are is it a watt an hour one watt an hour uh one watt uh so then if it's for if you have it on for an hour it's one watt hour so 24 watts a day times 30 so 600 so how much would that cost all right so that's about let's say that's about one kilowatt hour one and that costs about 25 cents yeah so you're basically you're basically getting paid a penny per day no per day because you probably have to do it a couple of times a day oh yeah so each time you do it is less than half a penny so i didn't really do that for very long like i just tried it but there's there are there are many of these things i i think you know you you gotta push too hard if you want to save a lot of money you gotta push a little too hard and then when you and then and then and then you realize that you pushed a little too hard it was it's too much then you come back a little bit you know what i loved those videos that you did because i'm always curious in the back of my mind how much you would save by doing that and you've done these videos you've broken them down a perfect example of this and there's so many videos of yours that i'd like i sincerely really like a lot and one of them was uh the shower video how much you would save by not taking a shower at your house and instead using water at the gym and i think you calculated yeah i think i think you calculated it was about 25 cents a day is how much you would save if you took one shower a day at the gym oh yeah i think i had to add in the cost to heat the water because that is the major cost and then you got to look at um the cost to heat the water i think it comes in like therms or something right and then you gotta do like okay what's the typical ambient temperature of the water to the water temperature that you're using the engineering degree right and then and then it flows through the pipes and it drops several degrees i love those videos and i think if you made more videos like that on topics that people would just be curious about not necessarily do right but that's always been in the back of my mind if uh when i was going to the gym i used to go to 24 hour fitness and i'd go every single morning i was thinking well i'd never really use the gym there what happens if i just use the shower there how much would i save by doing that i wouldn't probably do it but i would just be curious what that would add up a lot of people do that yeah i think in my uh when i was in engineering some of my coworkers would shower at work um yeah and some people shower at the gym the one i'd be curious about you might have a video about this is how much you would save if you waited all day to flush the toilet like only one flush a day like i told i told jack jack was flushing that when uh when he was in the guest house he's flushing the toilet too much there's no such thing as flushing the toilet two minutes you never you never calculate how much it costs to flush once i was i i calculated that i think it was about a penny a flush i calculated it first of all and it was just under a penny perfect it was under because because we had a three gallon flush so i'm like it's three gallons of water perfectly it wasn't a low flow it's about i calculated about half a penny per flush or per gallon per gallon that's what i i calculated as well so that's so one and one cents yeah was it three gallons but yeah that's not a that's not a love float you can you can flush all day long and it won't dent anything right so he he told me this while he's still making like five million dollars a year i mean he's and and i walk out of the bathroom he's all hey man i you know look is there any chance maybe you can just like tone it down with the flushes maybe like if you're peeing just don't flush it because that's what i do i mean i i guess you could but dude if you pee it sometimes it leaves a ring around the toilet and then like don't wait that long yeah yeah it causes a smell no there's no but there is an odor but how much you drink like uh like macy makes these these smoothies and i have one of these smoothies and i swear i have to go like every 20 minutes after that for the next two hours and so now i've purposely um i had to drink i wait to drink the smoothies during a time where like i'm not as busy because i just have to mentally like i have to go every 20 minutes afterwards i don't know but but during that time i'm not gonna be like flash flash flash flash but it seems like a waste i saw i saw a video he did where he turned a reusable uh to the flosser into a or he yeah he made a one-time flosser into a reusable you and that's how i knew that i liked you bring up these embarrassing things now i look back at them and i'm like you know that that might have been i like all of those videos you really like them you have to understand i think for your audience that's what makes you you and when i see a video like that i watch it from beginning to end because these are all things that like people kind of think about in the back of their mind but they don't do it but they're not going to do but you do it and we could experience that it's like extreme cheapskates those videos get millions of views everyone loves it i love it especially i get ideas see but people some people make fun of it i get i watch those videos and i get ideas like the person who uh reused their uh their not their toilet paper but the uh the the paper towels makes sense they dry out they're just as good if it's just water it's true sure yeah seriously no with paper towels i mean it's a lot of time with paper towels if i do a whole thing of paper towel and i'm just cleaning off water i usually leave it i don't throw it away because yeah but you know what that means macy's gonna walk or i'm gonna walk in there i'm gonna see a paper towel i'm like well i don't know what this was used to clean up and i'll throw it away just leave it just leave it alone okay now for water and stuff like that it makes it if i'm just cleaning up water and leave it there but another few hours it's dry i'd do it again dry your hands after you washed your hands and you dry it with water oh yeah i don't use paper towels to dry my hands i use that towel yeah don't even dry him oh i just wanted to bring up the whole idea of like when you finally decided to quit and he's a little bit off of youtube all of this free time that you had you spent it you said thinking about life and just kind of like sitting around and not doing much and you said it wasn't very fulfilling it it always it always feels like i'm about to come up with something like i'm i'm coming to a new epiphany kind of right it's like oh i'm i'm gonna it it feels like you're almost there but then nothing really happens i guess right um like if you ask me you know what what's the result of all of that it's just like well it's it it might be because it might be that if you retire you're going to have too much time to think and it's it's just going to drive yourself crazy it's better to to have something to do i'd say so your average day nowadays is kind of just like can you walk me through it um average day i wake up i drink milk tea that's my drink of preference and i read some news i uh i might jot down some ideas for videos um because because i i i suddenly became a little bit more active in in making more videos now so so then i've changed but if you're asking about what i did you know when i was lazy that's that's that's much different i think you're asking about that right um being lazy means uh scrimping on stuff that because because when you're lazy and and you don't do much then you end up not earning much and then you also um kind of i guess my hobby is kind of like scrimping i guess you know saving money here and there like ooh um uh this this deal whatever deal i go go and get that deal and you know i can like be really on top of it it's like they have something and you have to like sometimes you have to like get it right away right or else it disappears so you know i can be on top of that and just kind of do small money things which i would say many of my subscribers hate yeah but you spent all this time thinking about the life and like and the purpose of life what what what is your what have you figured out about that meaning of life yeah what's the meaning of life um you know i guess i'm not gonna have like you know an answer for that like right off it's like you know i can allude you to the maslow's uh hierarchy like uh self-actualization but then you know do doing something that that that you're good at that can uh provide that can help other people that can make you money and all that then you know if you if you if you do that then you can feel fulfilled it's more about like it's also about like what are you happy doing right but you you can't be happy just doing entertaining things you can't like entertain yourself and and like go on vacations all the time um just indulging in stuff like it's it it's much better to kind of work at something i think like it there's a longer you can do it for a longer duration you can do it for really long if you work at something because it's satisfying to to to work at something versus you know if you're a tourist if you i don't i don't know what kind of leisurely things right like go fishing right go bowling whatever whatever sport activities i don't know it's like it it doesn't it just doesn't cut it you gotta you gotta you gotta do what's what you're good at what you love doing what you're you know all of that in in in one thing and and if you can go do that and i think i think uh that would make things meaningful it's it's it's like meaning of life is what's meaningful to you you can anybody can make meaning out of anything like it it only matters to you you know what i mean like that makes sense and and right now would you say with everything going on would you say you're pretty fulfilled um i'm okay i think i i would say after after retiring i think i kind of like went down in the toilet yeah like it i think i might have been like i might have been a bit miserable at work because of my job but then at least at the time i was like happy kind of like uh what do you call uh what you're just hustling yeah hustle working yeah that was that was that was a fun part and and sometime afterwards but then i i think i think right when i decided to to uh retire quote unquote retire that was when uh things things kind of went downhill it wasn't it wasn't fun it it's fun for like you think it's fun right for a little bit but everybody would think it's fun yeah for like what would you do if you don't have to work for money right like you know for me i you just do whatever you want right you have you might have a huge to-do list you just i i like knocked every single item off it's like oh i'm done with everything i ever need to do and that and then it's like okay now now what do i do okay i'm going to twiddle my thumb i'm going to paint paint the paint the walls yeah i guess i found found some stuff that would occu might occupy my time that thing that takes a long time to do but then ultimately it is like why why are you doing that or why why was i doing that oh do you have any hobbies yes what are they um i had too many before i've kind of narrowed them down because uh i don't know i guess i wasn't interested in them as much anymore but uh they include uh top of the list is fixing electronic gadgets i love doing that like i have a little lab at my house with uh you know electronic gear okay uh i like uh to go to the driving range that's fun uh like going camping uh yeah do you think that this feeling that you had after retiring is a is like a causation of early retirement or do you think this is just how you treated early retirement that led to you feeling like this like not emptiness or anything to be dramatic but just like this unfulfillment uh i think it's probably my fault i guess um because i think when you retire you actually need something to retire too you need a plan to keep you busy very busy like i guess maybe i didn't have a solid enough a plan like uh it just kind of fell into fell into doing a little bit of youtube and then a little less less less less and then and then uh you you end up well i end up doing just whatever it's like there wasn't any any set goal or anything and i think that's the that's the drawback maybe if if you plan on retire you have some side project that you like a really big one that would take up all your time i think that would that would help a lot what would you say your next goal is do you have like a net worth goal do you have a youtube goal i wish i guess i wish to to further my my channel i'll tell you how you do that finance content more financial i think the frugal stuff the finance stuff is all covered you've got that covered kevin's got that kind of no but not in the way that you do it that's what i'm saying i think it's finance early retirement frugal living i kind of if you posted two video two to three videos a week on those subjects or calculating out how much you could save by making small changes that everyone wants to know about but they don't do it like let's say uh doing a garden like instead of going and buying a salad you now make your own salad in the garden buying a two-ply and then separating versus doing one that's a great one yeah and you like that one yeah you want me to do that now well i'm sure yeah yeah you know be hilarious you've got ideas like that that people are curious about but wouldn't want to try on their own ridiculous things that that uh yeah yeah people might do drinking tap water instead of bottled water i'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff that uh buying generic instead of name brands but the thing is i think the the the the very scrimping kind of videos are are the ones that it doesn't do too well actually for my my channel could be i'm interested in this you but maybe that's true the broad financial topics i think if you did that uh five hundred thousand you could probably do that i would say within the next uh six to twelve months just posting three videos a week finance and the rewards i love the credit card rewards videos you did a video about google pay i liked that one where you get like a instant twenty dollars for free i love those videos alex is a long term subscriber and he said he was extremely excited to meet you today do you have any input on this subject alex was a huge fan by the way so when i said we haven't beat the bush coming else no way yeah yeah why thank you alex thanks yeah i mean we have a lot of uh similarities i also repair electronics oh yeah awesome you know sometimes i do i fix things that cost too much like i'll sit there for two hours when i could have bought it for like 15 you know yeah well that's the most satisfying fix anything really keep it from the landfill exactly i agree did you have any idea on where what direction he could take his content in i i mean i think i'm one of the odd viewers because i i watch him because of the personality like when he attached a cup to a gimbal i thought that was the funniest thing i've ever seen i like that one a lot running with it exactly so like i'm not the right to be honest for success you know i'm not the right guy to ask but i just i value the content alex will watch anything thanks graeme so what questions do you have for us do you have anything for jack or i or alex this is your chance to ask us any questions if you have any i guess when i make the finance videos i kind of um get bored of it but you you have this this um drive to go at it to keep on hustling i don't know how you do it yeah uh i don't know i have so much fun with it though there are those videos where i'm talking to jack i'm like i don't want to make another passive income video but they do well so there are times i would say one video a week is usually one of those ones where i'm like i have to make a video on something what's the most interesting that i could do that honestly but you do it anyway oh yeah you're like uh i don't know you got you got the got that drive oh yeah yeah where does it come from i don't know i won't let myself miss a an upload part of it could be a minor like ocd there could be like something in my brain because because i cannot miss an upload i get panicky if i if i ever get close to like being behind or not posting i i lose it like i will get an upload done i i know i know the feeling and i used to do yeah i think yeah yeah it's i think i think it's after after um uh reaching the retirement goal it's like oh i missed one oh i missed another one so that's what i've i've been telling jack this too i am so afraid because i've seen so many people go down that path of just it all starts with just missing one nothing bad happened all right things are pretty much the same not a big deal it's easy to miss another one nothing bad happened then it's like more frequent more frequent than you know what and once you're off that uh i don't want to call it a hamster wheel but once you're off of that it becomes that much harder to get back on i think it's the same thing going to the gym if you're at the gym every day you're gonna keep going every day but as long as soon as you give yourself that excuse if i don't need to go today it's easy to fall off and i know i i can't keep up my current schedule once i once i stop i i i'm going to look back at this because i don't know how i did it i have no clue but you must have had some kind of goal right and and you found huge success so far you must have it and beat it long ago oh yeah but after you beat it then but then you kept on going i just enjoy it i just enjoy it yeah um so i mean yeah there's a little bit of diminishing returns at a certain point but i have so much fun and uh i i just now it's become more of like not like not a game but uh i just i i enjoy it i think it's fun i just think it's really cool i think that's the thing and uh yeah to to really be good at what you do yeah you gotta you gotta really enjoy it yeah but then it's also like the other benefits that you get from it just um getting to meet all these other people that i wouldn't ordinarily get exposed to and uh learning different industries like i'd have no idea about startups like i'd have no clue how to get into that but now i'm i've started to get introduced to people who are doing that and like creating their own businesses and like that wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for youtube so now the benefits of youtube are like you're extending beyond just how much money you would make but just also than the connections and the outreach that you could get plus i just i have fun with it thank you so much for coming on the podcast it is an honor to meet you we really appreciate it and yeah this is really good you have no idea because i i swear i've been watching you for like five five and a half years the very beginning you were under 10 000 subscribers it's this weird thing on youtube right where like i'm on i'm on i see my videos and i see your videos they're like oh there he is and you must be like oh look yeah it's like you know you're on the internet and you kind of see each other's stuff once in a while yep no no so now we're here it's cool and this is what i love about youtube is that like i feel like i knew you instantaneously like when you when you showed up at the front door it's like i already know who you are yeah and like i feel like we're already friends even though we hadn't ever met before and it was just from seeing you on youtube for like five years thank you very much we appreciate it a ton and uh yeah until next time guys until next time thanks cool thank you so much that was easy thanks for doing this