Hey, Tech Lead here and welcome back to another episode,
now I have a bit of funny news to share with you guys.
It's not that funny actually,
my wife left me.
Now, I know that some of you guys may be surprised
that I have a wife,
or had, and
I have a kid as well, a three year old child, he's great.
I love that guy,
But one day she just
took all of her stuff,
packed all of her bags,
took my kid and just left,
went back to Japan.
Now, I don't want to get too much into the details
because I think that this would be
disrespectful for her
and it's just way too much information, right, like
it's just random personal, small detailed information that
doesn't really help anybody,
but, first of all I do want to say that
the biggest victim in all of this is my son, and,
you know, I strongly believe that children should be growing
up with two parents,
so it is just an absolute shame that this had to happen
and you know we did have some issues,
I did not expect it would get this bad,
to this point.
I had always envisioned that I would be living
many, many years, to the end of my life with this person
and my son and that it would just be a great family,
but there were differences in culture,
in value, in where people wanted to be.
Her family was mostly over in Japan.
I tried my absolute hardest to get this to work
and I loved both of those people to the very end,
until they just decided to leave,
without really talking about it anymore
and broke off communications.
So,
(sharp exhale)
and the whole story is super complex and I might get into it
over time, but in this episode I specifically wanted to
focus on the money portion of this,
since sometimes I talk about personal finance,
but yeah, you can see that this whole apartment is empty.
It has been empty for a while now.
Let's talk about how money affects a relationship,
because I feel that success played a big role
in the destruction of our relationship
and it did this in ways that I did not expect.
Okay, so, firstly money acts as an escape hatch,
anytime you have the smallest little disagreement
or argument you can just press this button
and you'll be given boatloads of money
and you'll be on your way, you can get out,
and you can go travel or do whatever you want,
you can decide to become a single parent,
which is normally very difficult but,
it's actually quite easy if you have sufficient funds,
such that you don't even need to work,
you can just stay home and watch the kid and you know,
like for example, my parents, they came into the U.S.,
they were broke and that struggle became a bomb for them,
and there was no quick, easy escape hatch for either of them
they just had to learn to cooperate and work together
and that strengthened their relationship.
But, not so much, if you have some level of success,
and I feel like I have been climbing Mt. Everest
and halfway up
with my partner,
she decides to bail on me, and,
normally there's no way to bail on a mountain like that
you have to get to the top or keep struggling to go up.
But, when you have funds, you can just call in a helicopter
and say you want out,
and the helicopter would just take you out
and you don't have to do that struggle,
you don't have to mess around there
and then that leaves me stranded there,
like I don't know if I'll be able to get to the top anymore.
Now the second point here is that money makes
small acts of kindness,
trivial,
garbage,
like when I know I've messed up I will try
to apologize by taking my wife to seafood restaurants,
getting her to her favorite bakery,
getting her some chocolates,
buying her a diamond Tiffany necklace,
but she did not appreciate any of this stuff
because when you have, like, tons of money,
all of that just pales in comparison.
It just doesn't really matter anymore.
On her birthdays I would get her, like, a $30 item,
or something and then she would say that I did not
get her anything for her birthday.
Like, I just forgot it,
it's like,
well no,
I spent very hard coming up with this item,
but essentially what happens is that,
when I mess up,
It's just very difficult for me to apologize,
right?
Through small acts of kindness.
It needs to be to the level
on the scale of success
that I've reached,
like if Bill Gates were to buy you
a $20 dinner
you would think he doesn't mean it,
does that mean anything to him?
Well, it depends, right?
Like for me, my personal value of money has
not grown in proportion to the success
that I may have reached, such that,
you know,
$30 still feels like a lot to me, but,
for other people who maybe come in and
they just take a look at the wider picture
they think, that's nothing, that's nothing to this guy,
he doesn't, he doesn't care about that,
he doesn't care about me.
It essentially makes apologies extremely difficult
if not impossible to do, because,
small acts of kindness,
words, just carry no weight
at that point.
You know, the other thing is that
it made the best thing about me,
the defining factor about me,
my financial success, right?
It's very difficult to ignore,
it's the biggest elephant in the room
and I don't consider my wife to be a gold digger
by any means, I wouldn't have married her otherwise,
but there would just be moments where it would seem like
well, my funny personality,
my charm, it just carries no weight,
next to the biggest,
the best thing about me, which is that I'm successful
and I'm sure many other couples will experience this,
especially after an argument,
they may say
Well, why are they together? And then they may think back
to the good times, good old memories
and then they'll remember, yeah,
that's why they love this person, but,
when there's something so big, like a elephant in the room
which is the financial success of this person,
then you just immediately think to that.
It's like, oh yeah, right, this person is successful,
they're providing my livelihood
when,
it's better if you didn't have that
and then you force people to think a little bit more
and think about why the relationship may be valuable.
Now, the third point I have for you here is that
money just makes it extremely easy to solve problems,
it becomes the way that people start solving problems.
Right? Like,
it's just so easy to say,
hey, we're gonna give this another chance,
but you gotta buy me a new car,
or like, hey, you've gotta take me to a fancy restaurant
and it just became a way to solve problems
and then people start comparing themselves
and getting frustrated when they see, well,
how come everybody else is going to this $100 restaurant
and then we're not going there,
are we valuing each other?
Do we still love each other,
if we're not taking each other
out to the biggest, best experiences
that people at our level of success are attaining?
And then people just start feeling like,
maybe they're not being loved
because there's just so much more that we can afford
and yet we're not spending that to the maximum amount.
Whereas in reality, in my mind
there's just,
I mean, I think there's so many things
that may prevent people from spending, right?
It could simply be that a product is just not that good,
sometimes money is not the solution to your problems,
right?
Sometimes, there's just other things that you cannot buy
and that's why you can't go to a
nice restaurant, right?
Maybe you're just limited on time,
maybe the kids can't go.
Now, my fourth tip here is that success
generally goes hand in hand with
good intergenerational relationships.
So, this is a kind of tricky one but,
so let's put it this way, my wife
and my parents did not have the best relationships.
But, I knew that any wealth from my parents
would flow to me and then it would flow into my wife
and my kid,
I may die earlier, right?
So, it became kind of a concern,
if my wife and my parents
did not get along, then it would not
sound fair if the money would somehow flow into her
at the end, right?
If they're treating each other poorly.
So, I would always say, like,
we've got to at least
treat each other well and
it kind of became a requirement for me
and I started thinking, well, how can I set up
a proper financial instrument?
Like, some sort of living trust
in which I can ensure
that my parents could pass down their wealth to me
and yet it would not flow to my wife
because they did not have a great relationship.
So, it's funny, right? Like, I think that
when you get to a level of success and you really want
the money to flow to the right people,
such that, all of the hard work that you've earned
over the years of your life, goes to people that you love
and who love you back.
That level of wealth requires good relationships
among family
and if you just decide,
you know what, you don't like certain family members,
you're going to cut certain people off of your family,
you know, you're just not really interested in
developing good connections with people,
then that presents actually a barrier, to,
the flow of money across generations as people
build up wealth,
and, so, if you have no wealth,
you have no money, then you know, you could just
cut your parents off and it's okay.
Go off and be your own person and that works out okay.
But, it just doesn't quite work, if there's actually
some sort of money that ends up flowing,
from your parents to you
and then you're going to feel,
kind of bad actually,
probably guilty if you're getting money from people
that you have been mistreating the whole time
and maybe, you know, they probably wouldn't have
wanted you to have that.
And then the fifth and final point here
is that, to understand that money,
financial success does not bring you happiness.
If you take a look at us,
we had it all.
We had the life.
We had money, health, time, energy,
everything
and yet,
it's like all we had to do was enjoy it.
Just enjoy the life,
go on some fun family vacations,
use the money to love each other and be loved.
And I don't want to make it sound like
I'm the good guy here,
because, this is only just one side of the story, right?
And frankly,
I don't think it does anyone
any good to start trying to judge other people,
to say whether they're good or bad
and that's not what this video is about.
So there you have it, and as for me,
I think I'll be okay.
I know I was really depressed and bummed out
over the past few months, but,
I'm mostly recovered by now and
I'm starting to move on with my life.
I think that, you know, the sadness thing is actually
about my son, my child, and I just really
wanted to be there for him.
He's only three
and like, we had so many plans,
like, we wanted another kid, I wanted him to have
a brother or sister to grow up with.
I wanted him to have a great, happy, healthy family,
and there seems to just be no strong reason
in my mind, why we couldn't get this done.
Like,
I just wish we could have gotten that done,
for him.
(exhales)
(rhythmic somber music)
I just think it's a shame
that things had to turn out this way,
because we had everything.
That'll do for me and I will see you next time.
Bye.