Bill Perkins on Living Richly Rather Than Just Getting Rich

Perkins says he does not want to become the author-guru type that many people write books to become. He jokes that he once wanted to be like Jesus and go out to build a church, but he said he does not want to be 'the guy' and wants instead to live his own life.

Shaan Puri said the show is called My First Million, a name he picked six years ago and kept after the show grew popular. He acknowledged that people come expecting to hear about getting rich.

Puri said that as the hosts got rich, their attention shifted to 'living a rich life versus getting rich,' which he described as the subject of Perkins's book and how he discovered him.

The conversation then covers both how money is made and how it is used.

Puri described three ways great investors win: superior temperament, such as Buffett's approach of being greedy when others are fearful; an informational edge, meaning understanding a technology or market and where things are heading before others; and straight arbitrage, such as exploiting a gap between an ETF and its underlying stocks.

Perkins said he would put his own approach in the first two categories. He said the market includes people gambling, people who need to hedge, and people who deeply study supply and demand, and that his position came from the last group.

He added that regardless of knowledge, a trader who cannot stay stoic about losses will struggle, because the emotional response to losing money interferes with clear thinking.

Asked whether he would advise his younger self to pursue his field or build a product company, Perkins said he would have gone into equities. He said equity funds are much larger, with $6 billion and $10 billion funds, and that they have track records he considers acceptable, plus positive drift from the stock market.

He also pointed to fees, saying a $6 billion fund charging around 1.5% produces large revenue even though he doubted such funds cost that much to run. He said this would have made him much richer.

Perkins said he now does this with his personal money, but noted he is 57 and is not trying to build wealth for a party at 85.

Perkins said his change did not come like a sudden vision. Instead, he read a book called Your Money or Your Life, which introduced the idea that the best definition of money is something you exchange hours of your life for.

That led him to ask what the capital was for and what his values were. He said he began to see that the purpose of life is to be fulfilled according to one's own values, and that working out how money, health and time fit together took place over a long period.

He described the process as considering when certain experiences belong in life, such as travel or family, and how that arc should look.

Asked how to balance career ambition with ego, Perkins said that to live a non-standard life, you have to constantly crush your ego. He said some high-ego people succeed in a narrow lane but tend to suffer in other areas of a fulfilling life.

He argued that most people who do not start a business or pursue an opportunity do not hold back because of money risk. They can handle losing money or a job, but cannot handle a drop in status or looking foolish to peers.

Perkins said people often offer motivated reasoning, such as saying it was too hard, to explain their choices. When talking with close friends, he said, the honest reason usually comes out, which he described as ego and fear.

Perkins said changing his values took time, and he did not erase more than twenty years of programming in a day. He said the process required reflection on what kind of life he wanted and whether his values were the right ones.

He gave an example: he used to react to someone stepping on his sneakers in a crowd, but he no longer punches people for that. He said he judges responses by whether they work for his goals, not by a fixed sense of right and wrong.

A host said he never wanted the traditional family setup, but after having kids he came to enjoy being home at a set hour and was not keen on traveling as much. Perkins said he balances work and family by swinging between periods rather than dividing each day or month evenly.

He said his kids, now 22 and 19, went from calling him strange to wanting to hang out with him. He said his daughter now wants to spend time with him, which he said was a change from when she thought he was odd.

He and his wife are planning a period living in Japan with their young son, weighing how long it should be.

Perkins said he now sets aside three days each year to think about how to spend the year. He said it seemed crazy not to spend a small share of his year planning how to spend the rest.

He and his wife plan their life in time buckets, such as deciding when a stay in a different country like Japan fits, and whether it should be a summer, a year or two years. He described it as a multivariate experiment of how the pieces of life fit together.

Perkins said he is 'completely screwing over future Bill' right now, describing his health and fitness as going in the wrong direction. He said his VO2 max is trending down, and that he is trying to fix that.

He said he has used some of his capital to hire another trainer, and is evaluating a trainer who could travel with him, since travel is often his excuse. He said if he cannot be accountable himself, he needs to outsource accountability.

Perkins said a common change among readers is giving inheritance earlier rather than waiting until death. He said people in their sixties do not need to wait, and that many older readers have started taking estate planning seriously.

He also described readers who shifted retirement dates or retired their parents so they could spend time with grandchildren. He said he wants his own time to be spent with family and the simple pleasures of life.

Perkins framed money as one of three tools in a toolbox, alongside health and time, and said most people focus on money only.

Asked about his future plans, Perkins said his farming years would cost less, but that he also wants to keep up activities such as yachting and private travel. He said private travel saves time because the party starts on the plane.

He said deciding whether a future luxury is worth giving up present life is something he measures constantly, and that the outcome is probabilistic. His farm vision, he said, is a hobby-sized garden with a few acres and some tomatoes, not a large ranch.

Perkins said that when younger, people seek adventure and create stories, and when older they have stories looking for friends to share them with. He expects his world to shrink as his physical abilities decline, so he wants a stock of memories to retire on.

On work, he said he no longer goes into an office and that his phone lets him trade from anywhere, which he called both a blessing and a curse because it keeps him tied to work.

Perkins described the Sugar Shack painting as culturally significant, depicting a party house of Black joy in the segregated South. He said the subject is uniquely American and that jazz is the only original American art form.

He said the painting was featured on a Marvin Gaye album that won a Grammy and at the opening of Good Times, which he said Norman Lear produced. He said he had seen it since childhood and that many Black people his age know it.

Perkins said he tried to buy the painting from Eddie Murphy, received no response, and then learned it was up for auction. He said it was a live auction at Sotheby's, and the final price was about $15 million, though he had expected to pay $3 to $5 million.

Sam Parr raised a story about Sylvester Stallone, who he said bought a Monet called Haystacks for about $110,000 in the 1980s. He said Stallone later sold it for about $3 million to cover bills, and that years later the same painting sold for about $130 million.

Stallone reportedly said he was foolish to sell, because art requires no upkeep. The hosts used the story to illustrate that people are multifaceted.

Perkins said he tells people he is not a role model, though he can be an inspiration, and that he does not want to be too famous. He said fame makes it hard to live ordinary life, and that a famous person cannot get naked at a party without being in the paper.

He said that once someone becomes a known persona, they must keep playing it. He said fame shrinks a person's world, leaving them in a bubble.

Perkins said he had earlier become popular through poker and a hedonistic lifestyle after his divorce, which he later moved away from. His wife has a rule against new projects to keep him focused on a fulfilling life, and he admitted that writing books is a seductive temptation.