Jordan Grumet - Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctors Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life

Taking Stock

A Hospice Doctors Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life

Jordan Grumet, MD

Doc G, host of the Earn & Invest podcast

Text copyright 2022 Jordan Grumet. Design and concept copyright 2022 Ulysses Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized duplication in whole or in part or dissemination of this edition by any means (including but not limited to photocopying, electronic devices, digital versions, and the internet) will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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ISBN: 978-1-64604-354-5

ISBN: 978-1-64604-376-7(ebook)

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For Harriet, Alan, and Gerald.

Not everyone is lucky enough to get three great parents.

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Jordan Grumet discovered the secret key to the financial independence retire early (FIRE) movement. This secret key has little to do with money. It has nothing to do with retirement. It has nothing to do with freedom from work. And while it is definitely about time, its not about being early or late.

I met Jordan in the summer of 2019, when he invited me to be on his Earn & Invest podcast. Reluctantly, I agreed. While Ive liked FIRE podcasters and bloggers, I have had little to offer on their passionate interestsbuilding wealth through investingbut a lot to say about my environmental and social values, which often seemed off topic. But Jordan was different. He set up the conversation talking about justice and privilege.

When he offered me a chance to write this introduction, I gladly said yes.

Jordans book introduces you to a man who had the courage to exit the dominant paradigm of making a living to spend his time looking at living and dying through the eyes of his hospice patients.

He appliedand teachesthe techniques of the FIRE movement, but this is not a financial independence retire early book.

While Jordan talks about his financial decisions, his message is that money is a poor way to meet our needs for love, purpose, personal growth, introspection, and service. Meeting those nonmaterial needs, it turns out, determines how deep and satisfying our lives become. While Jordan had it made financially as a medical doctor, he was impoverished until he let go of his practice and focused on the most meaningful part of his work: serving hospice patients in their last weeks and days. He managed his money wisely and does teach about his methods, but his teaching is about putting money in service to his values and true happiness.

The dream of independence, of saying take this job and shove it to a dead-end job, is very attractive. Its what gets most people into the FIRE movement. Leaving a job thats killing you, though, doesnt make you free. It just gives you free time, which you then have to figure out how to fill. The empty canvas of time requires you to ask, What is truly worthy of my time and attention? As a hospice doctor who serves people for whom time has just about run out, Jordan considers this question every day. How shall I live? Where shall I lay up my treasure? When I am the one in that bed, struggling to breathe, what will make me feel that my life was well spent? Such questions have nothing to do with bucket lists, yoga classes, or destinations. Instead, these questions have to do with introspection, humility, and caring for more than me and mine.

Retirement is an artifact of industrialization. We have become cogs in a machine that leaves people more dead than alive at the end of the day. Joe Dominguez, originator of the program in our book, Your Money or Your Life, used to say, People arent making a living. If they were, theyd be more alive at the end of the day. No, they are making a dying. Our book, and the FIRE teachers, show a discipline that, followed loyally, leads to a way out of this grind.

Buddhist economics considers that there are three purposes of work:

1. To provide for your material needs
2. To develop character
3. To make a contribution to the community

We are social animals, not just self-improving individuals. We want to contribute. Our work may change from earning money to activism, volunteering, the arts, inventing, a new career, or helping others, but we still work, and the work makes us whole. Retirement conjures a life of relaxation, playing golf perhaps, being a snowbird in a motor home, or babysitting grandchildren. All of these activities can be funbut in moderation and not as the whole meal. We want to apply ourselves to things that matter not just to us but to others as well.

Amartya Sen, Nobel Prizewinning economist, said: Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize ones full potential as a human being.

Freedom isnt entitlement to do as you please. Its agency to do as you value.

Jordan retired from a way of life that had no real joy in it and reinvested his life energy in what lit up his heart and soul.

For me this reinvestment came several years into my own financial independence, when I learned about the ecological principle of overshoot and collapse: any species with an ample food source and no predators will grow in numbers and eat through the food until there isnt enough to support the population of the species. Then the population collapses. I saw clearly, nearly fifty years ago, that our human community was headed off such a cliff, and its been my privilege to use my freedom to create, write, organize, volunteer, speak, and influence others as much as I could to change our course. Every minute has challenged, stimulated, and grown me toward my full humanity. No minute was aimed at earning money, as Id learned to live within the income I had from cautious investments.