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).
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 her bags, took her kid
and just left -- went back to Japan.

I don't want to get too much into the details because I think this would be
disrespectful for her; it's just too much information.  Just random personal
small detail information that doesn't help anybody.  But first of all, I want
to say that the biggest victim in all of this is my son and I strongly believe
that children should be growing up with two parents, so it's just an absolute
shame that this had to happen.  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 it
would just be a great family.

There were differences in culture, value and 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 decided to
leave without really talking about it anymore and broke off communication.

The whole story is super complex and I might get into it over time, but in this
episode I specifically want to focus on the money portion of this since
sometimes I talk about personal finance.  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.  It did this in ways that I did not expect.

Firstly, money acts as an escape hatch.  Anytime you have the slightest
disagreement, you can just press this button and be given buttloads of money
and be on your way.  You can get out; you can travel or do whatever you want.
You can decide to become a single parent, which is normally very difficult, but
is actually quite easy if you have sufficient funds such that you don't need to
work; you just stay home and watch the kid.

For example, my parents they came into the US they were broke, and that
struggle became a bond for them.  There was no quick, easy escape hatch for
either of them.  They had to work through everything together and that
strengthened their relationship.  But not so much if you have some level of
success.  I feel like I've been climbing Mt. Everest and halfway up with my
partner she decides to bail on me.  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.
That helicopter will take you out.  You don't have to do that struggle, you
don't have to mess around there.

That leaves me stranded there, like I don't know if I'll be able to get to the
top anymore

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 restaurant, getting here to her favorite bakery, getting her
some chocolates, buying her a Tiffany necklace.  But she did not appreciate any
of this stuff because when you have tons of money all of that just pales in
comparison.  It just doesn't really matter anymore.  On her birthdays I would
get her 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.  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 through small acts of kindness.  It
needs to be at the scale of success that I have 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?  It depends; for me my personal value of money has not
grown in proportion to the success that I may have reached, such that $30 still
feels like a lot to me, but for other people who maybe come in and take a look
at the wider picture, they think "That's nothing to this guy, he doesn't care
about that; he doesn't care about me"

It makes apologies extremely difficult, if not impossible to do because small
acts of kindness, words just carry no weight at that point.  The other thing is
that it makes the best thing about me -- the defining factor about me -- my
financial success.  It's very difficult to ignore -- it's the elephant in the
room.

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 when it seemed my funny
personality, my charm, it just carries no weight next to 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 "why are they
together" and they will think back to  the good times, the good old memories
and they will say, yes that's why they love this person.  When there's
something so big like an elephant in the room, which is the financial success
of this person, then you just immediately think to that.  This person is
successful, they are providing my livelihood.  When it's better if you didn't
have that and you force people to think a little bit more and think about why
the relationship may be valuable.

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.
It's just so easy to say "Hey, we're going to give this another chance, but
you've got to buy me a new car" Or like "Hey you got to take me to a fancy
restaurant" and it just became a way to solve problems.  And then people start
comparing themselves to stuff frustrated when they see "How come everybody else
is going to this $100 restaurant, but we aren't 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 start feeling like maybe they're not being loved
because there's so much more that we can afford and we're not spending to the
maximum amount.  Whereas in reality, in my mind, there's so many things that may
prevent people from spending.  It could simply be that a product is not that
good.  Sometimes money is not the solution to your problems.  Sometimes there's
things that you cannot buy and that's why you can't go to a nice restaurant.
Maybe you're just limited on time, maybe the kid can't go.

My fourth tip here is that success goes hand in hand with good
intergenerational relationships.  So this is kind of a tricky one.  Let's put
it this way: my wife and my parents did not have the best relationship.  But, I
knew that any wealth from my parents would flow to me and then flow into my
wife and my kid.  I may die earlier.  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, if they were treating her poorly.  So I
would always say we gotta at least treat each other well, and it kind of became
a requirement for me, so I said how can I setup a proper financial instrument,
like some sort of living trust, so that 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.

It's funny, 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 in your life goes to people that you love and 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 out of your family, you're just not really interested in
developing good relationships with people, then that presents a barrier to the
flow of money across generations as people build up wealth.  If you have no
wealth, if you have no money, you can just cut your parents off and it's okay.
Go off and be your own person and that works out okay, but it doesn't quite
work if there's some sort of money that ends up flowing from your parents to
you and you're going to feel kind of bad; kind of guilty if you get money from
people you have been mistreating the whole time and maybe they wouldn't have
wanted you to have that

The fifth and final point here is 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, 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.  I don't want to make it sound like
I'm the good guy here because this is just one side of the story.  Frankly I
don't think it does anybody any good 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.  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 the saddest thing is
actually about my son, my child.  I just really wanted to be there for him.
He's only 3 and we had so many plans.  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.  There seems to just be no strong reason in my mind why we
couldn't get this done.  I just wish we had gotten that done for him.  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'll see you next time.  Bye.