119: Vicki Robin — Embracing Enoughness: Vicki Robin on Financial Independence and Sustainable Living

[00:00:00] Vicki Robin: The dominant narrative is always more because it feeds the capitalist system. Frugality, enoughness, enoughness is an anathema to the growth economy, and the growth economy is necessitated by how money is loaned to being by banks. So it really is literally for capitalism, not for humans, grow or die for humans. Efficiency is really the intelligent choice.

[00:00:29] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energy spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan DeYoe, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of life.

[00:00:58] Jonathan DeYoe: Hey, welcome back on [00:01:00] this episode of the Mindful Money podcast. I’m chatting with Vicki Robin. Vicki is a prolific social innovator, writer and speaker. She’s co-author with Joe Dominguez of the international bestseller and classic Your Money Or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence. Author of Blessing the Hands That Feed Us: Lessons from A 10 Mile Diet. She’s co-founder of Conversation Cafes and of the 10 Day Local Food Challenge and hosts the podcast/YouTube interview series What Could Possibly Go Right?, inviting cultural scouts to shine a light on what’s emerging as the pandemic, climate, the economy and polarization unravel old normals. Currently, she blogs on aging on her Coming of Aging Substack. I wanted to chat with her because she was probably the first person in the modern financial landscape to bring consciousness. I. To our spending, authenticity, to our living, and apply the concept of enough to our asset levels.

She wrote the book with Joe Dominguez, Your Money Or Your Life, and this was originally published in the very early part of [00:02:00] my career, and so I’ve wanted to speak to her ever since, and this is just a great opportunity for me. So Vicki, thank you for being here on the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:02:06] Vicki Robin: Yeah, thank you. It’s my pleasure to meet you and to discover what we’re gonna talk about together.

[00:02:12] Jonathan DeYoe: First, where do you call home? Where are you connecting from?

[00:02:16] Vicki Robin: I am on Whitby Island. As I sit here, I’m looking out a huge glass door onto Saratoga Passage in the Puget Sound and the North Cascades Whitby Island is off the shore on Everett, Washington, north of Seattle.

[00:02:33] Jonathan DeYoe: And where’d you grow up?

[00:02:34] Vicki Robin: I grew up in Long Island.

[00:02:38] Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t, I

[00:02:38] Vicki Robin: don’t hear it. Yeah, I grew up, yeah, I grew up in Hempstead and m Hasset, long Island. Uh, so I’m a. East coaster transplanted, definitely slowed down and expanded from the West coast. Very quiet vibe here.

[00:02:55] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m curious, growing up in Long Island, uh, what did you [00:03:00] learn about money in entrepreneurship?

[00:03:02] Vicki Robin: Nada,

[00:03:04] Jonathan DeYoe: nada,

[00:03:04] Vicki Robin: you know, I mean, in a way. I lived in a, on a family, it would be an upper middle class family. My father was a doctor, my mother was a, ultimately a therapist, so two professionals. Um, my father came from a family that sort of skimmed the depression, and my mother came from a family that was completely ruined by the Great Depression.

So it was an odd combination of there’s always enough money and we gotta shop like at the the Bargain basement stores because that’s all we can afford. I learned frugality at my mother’s knee. I guess you, that’s where you learn things and I learned sort of an expansive entitlement, I guess, from my father’s family.

They were very successful people in whatever they touched. So entrepreneurship, I didn’t, you know, the thing I did was I, you know, in terms of entrepreneurship, I’ve always been a social entrepreneur. [00:04:00] I was a club starter from like the time I was seven. And so I was always member of like many, many clubs.

So that’s the habit I developed is that I do clubs. I don’t do like moneymaking enterprises.

[00:04:15] Jonathan DeYoe: I that, I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive necessarily, but No, no, they

[00:04:19] Vicki Robin: not. But that was in my focus ever.

[00:04:21] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. How did the lessons of frugality from your mother, how did those come across? Like in what, you know, experiences did that come across?

[00:04:29] Vicki Robin: I figured out early on, you know, something I used to say with your money or life, which is I buy my freedom with my frugality every day. My basic personality is, is entrepreneurial, but not necessarily for money, is experimental, adventuresome, curious. So I went to Europe for my junior year in college and I parlayed the fixed amount of money I had into a year and a half.

And so I was hyper frugal so I [00:05:00] could go and do more things, experience more things. So I’ve been a, if you will, an experiential shopper. So that’s how it worked, you know, and I, I just, it wasn’t that I, I loved hyper frugality, it’s just that I realized that it bought me time, which is really part of the basic message of your money or your life, is that.

The money you’re spending is basically the hours of your life.

[00:05:28] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, for sure. You were in, I think you were in your early mid forties when you wrote the book and it became

[00:05:34] Vicki Robin: Yeah, I was in my mid forties. We had already, uh, spent a decade teaching over a decade. We first did live seminars. I produced them and Joe presented them.

I mean, it was basically his engineering genius to create this program. I came into the project. As I said, like these really incredible skill as a writer and promoter just because I love to be with people and talk [00:06:00] about ideas and make the world a better place. And then we spent about five years, we turned it into.

An audio cassette. There’s like where audio cas the audio cassette work for Port that that also, I think we sold 10,000 copies of those and that’s when the publishing industry finally found us and, and encouraged us to write a book, which. I did and it was published and the publisher got us on Oprah, and then that’s the,

[00:06:27] Jonathan DeYoe: yeah, that’s your ticket.

That’s

[00:06:29] Vicki Robin: the story. You know, that’s like, that started the whole, you know, that was a big important step in the spread.

[00:06:35] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m curious, before the book, and I guess maybe even before the courses classes, what made you begin to question our dependency on money and buying things, you know, at that point in your forties?

[00:06:46] Vicki Robin: Well, you know, I figured I got got out of the care of my. Parents and onto my own in the world and I realized I was helpless in every which way other than, you know, being smart, [00:07:00] academically smart. I mean that’s, that was the coin of the realm when I grew up is that’s how you get things is you’d be really smart.

So for me, a lot of it, a lot of the frugality in the early days was the discovery. It sort of. What do you call it? Deconstructing the necessity for being a consumer and so everything I could learn to do for myself was of interest to me. Hmm. Everything I could learn about the lies that advertisers in the consumer culture tell us was interesting to me.

You know, as much as I could do that, you know, as much as I could question what I was told and discover for myself and learn skills. That was incredibly interesting. I mean, all the way from like, people don’t even ask where their poop goes when they flush the toilet. They have no idea. People don’t have any idea, they don’t have any idea what, what other options there are for refrigeration.

They don’t have any idea. We don’t have any idea about [00:08:00] other options than the ones we’ve been fed, like living in boxes that are made out of, you know, wooden now plastics and no idea. Like there’s so. Much out there that’s outside of the box of what we’re told is necessary to live a life. And I was curious about it.

[00:08:19] Jonathan DeYoe: You just, you just went on a, on a discovery rampage.

[00:08:22] Vicki Robin: You could call it a rampage.

[00:08:24] Jonathan DeYoe: I think it’s been, yeah. It’s been your whole life. I just, just looking at what you’ve written and the different areas you’ve thought about a. It’s pretty broad. Like it’s, you’re, you’re not just, it’s

[00:08:33] Vicki Robin: totally broad. I mean, that’s, it’s all over the place.

That’s the value of not getting an advanced degree in a certain field. You know, I’m a generalist, right, right. So, um, by, by necessity I just, I’m self-taught in most things that I am interested in, and I’m an experiential learner. Like when I became interested in the limitations of the industrial food system.

While living on an island and realizing that 95% of our food, despite being semi-rural, [00:09:00] comes from off island, the first thing I did was I did an experiment per month of eating within 10 miles of my home. Like, just let’s find out about it. And so I don’t go to research papers, I go to experience, and the experience teaches me, and then I go and do the research.

[00:09:20] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m wondering if do, do you think we’ve made any. In the, I guess, 40 something years since the book was published, do you think we’ve made any cultural headway in understanding that enough is enough? Or do you think, you know, we’re just chasing more constantly?

[00:09:33] Vicki Robin: I think we’re a culture of subcultures.

[00:09:36] Jonathan DeYoe: Mm, fair.

[00:09:36] Vicki Robin: And so the dominant narrative is always more because it. Feeds the capitalist system. Frugality, enoughness. Enoughness is an anathema to the growth economy, and the growth economy is necessitated by how money is loaned into being by banks. So it really is literally for capitalism, not for humans, grow or die for humans.

[00:10:00] Sufficiency is really the intelligent choice. So if we were not being pumped with consumer messages from every corner of our world. We have no idea what kind of life we would have. We have no idea, no idea what our assumptions would be, but there are subcultures, more and more. Number one, millions of people on financial independence subreddit.

Millions of people in the, especially millennials in the financial independence, retire early subculture. All of them, you know, aiming for enough, all of them having at least gotten a message that they buy money with their time and that they wanna buy their time back by spending less money and investing it in a way that they have a steady income.

So there’s also, I. What would be called what I’ve, inside the community were called collapse aware. People aware that now collectively we’ve transgressed six of the nine planetary boundaries. We were [00:11:00] just using too much at a global level and you know, it’s just having, having kicked the, the pilings out from under us.

And so that’s what collapse aware is that things cannot continue as they are and they are already collapsing for many people. Because of deforestation, mining, climate change, toxins, you know, every which way from Sunday. So among these people, which is a really large number of people who don’t say it out loud because I just said it to you, and everybody’s kinda like, what?

Everything looks fine out my window. So yeah, among these people. Sufficiency among survivalists, sufficiency among some sets of Christianity. Most religious and spiritual teachings talk about enough now. Yep. They really do. So when you look at it, it’s sprinkled [00:12:00] everywhere, but the dominant story that comes through the channels that we pay attention to with social media or like.

Even podcasts, you know? But I think, I think in the podcast world, there’s a lot more intelligence about. About why she’s the resources and, and liberation of your time for something more important than money.

[00:12:18] Jonathan DeYoe: Do you know who George Kinder is? Uh, no.

[00:12:20] Vicki Robin: Collectively, I don’t think we made any He headway. I’ll just say that.

[00:12:23] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Collectively we’re, well, there’s, there’s a large group that’s, there’s a large and growing group, but the other group is also largely growing. Like it’s, you know, there’s sort of pacing each other.

[00:12:30] Vicki Robin: Well, it’s, it’s, you know, we’re, as I say, I think we’re at the end of the Roman Empire, you know, and it was BR and Circus, you know, keep the price of, you know, basics pantry items low so people don’t.

Rebel and entertain them to death, and they won’t notice that it’s a kleptocracy. See, see, they have a whole full sentence of opinions right there. But that’s what I think is going on top of the food chain financially is figure it out how to take candy from the baby and they’re [00:13:00] doing it.

[00:13:00] Jonathan DeYoe: So, I’m j I’m, I’m gonna pull on a little bit.

So I think that there’s been always a, a sort of a super class that’s always existed and, and it’s, you know, whether you go back a hundred years or 200 years, or 500 years or a thousand years, there’s always been. A group that’s been super powerful relative to everybody else. And I think that that group today is they, they’ve distanced themselves from everybody else.

Do you think it’s horribly worse today than it was a thousand years ago? Or do you think it’s, the difference is a similar difference? Like somebody’s gonna try to take for their own, they just have more power today to do so.

[00:13:31] Vicki Robin: I think in the history of the United States, there’s been populist movements

[00:13:35] Jonathan DeYoe: Sure.

[00:13:35] Vicki Robin: And progressive movements that have clawed back. Money and power from the super wealthy. I think it’s, it’s a quality of our democracy, however shaky it is, that the people feel empowered to stop that. And supposedly, we’re not supposed to have a king. We’re supposedly, we’re supposed to have the ability to make laws for ourselves.

And so there’s a whole system for people who [00:14:00] are disenfranchised to find their way in.

[00:14:03] Jonathan DeYoe: I feel like generationally we’re sort of on the cusp of that happening again, I think. I feel like we’re on the cusp of,

[00:14:08] Vicki Robin: yeah. Since

[00:14:09] Jonathan DeYoe: 1982 to today. You know, it’s been a huge wealth gap. It’s grown and grown and grown and grown, and I feel like we’re pretty much at the peak and it’s gonna turn the other way.

No thoughts on that?

[00:14:18] Vicki Robin: I have no idea.

[00:14:19] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:14:20] Vicki Robin: But I do think that, you know, millennials and Gen Xers are like mad disgusted. They know the score. They know. That we’ve taken it all.

[00:14:29] Jonathan DeYoe: I think that your message from 1992 with all its updates and revisions still resonates, and I’m sure that copies of the book are still selling more than the copies of my book that was published five years ago.

So if, if anything, it’s probably the message has probably been more important today than it was back then. I don’t know if you know this guy, but I think JL Collins book The Simple Path. Oh, of

[00:14:49] Vicki Robin: course I do. Yeah, I know him.

[00:14:51] Jonathan DeYoe: I think his book is described as like as the most important personal finance book out there in terms of how to.

Right. Yours is probably the most important in terms [00:15:00] of like happiness and wellbeing, and I just, I just wanna say I read it 40 years ago, 35 years. I just wanna say thanks for writing it. I, I joined this business in, in, in the financial services business in 1996 as a broker, you know, completely in the more, more, more camp I.

And it was your hoist, along with a few others, George Kinder and some others that sort of put enough sort of in my phrasing, and a lot of time has passed between then and now. You’ve written about sustainability and local food and slow food movement. You’ve pushed us to live the solution, not just think about stuff.

I get the sense that you’re trying to save the world. Is that accurate? I mean, so many, so many things.

[00:15:35] Vicki Robin: I used to. I used to, but I think it was, you know, it was sort of like. A sweet version of megalomania. You know, I, I really thought, you know, I really thought I and my little team and your money or life could puncture the thick hide of society and change the operating system.

Recently I was at a, at a [00:16:00] workshop and some woman said she’s committed herself to playing an unwinnable game. But what I realized is I committed myself to playing an unwinnable game like Don. I call it Donte, but I expected to win it. I didn’t expect to just play it, fall out and see what happened. You wouldn’t.

So I was attached. Yeah, I was attached to the results, and that sort of led to a lot of

[00:16:23] Intro: pain

[00:16:24] Vicki Robin: and anguish and confusion. So it’s not like I’m trying to make the world better. I think my job now, for a while, I think my job was to develop. You know, minor protocols that people could apply to their lives, like your money or life, or, I developed with some friends, something called Conversation Cafes.

A very simple methodology for people of differing opinions to sit around a table and have a really illuminating conversation that comes to know agreement at all. Yeah. And then, you know, the 10 day local food challenge and trying to alert people, you know? So I developed a lot of things like [00:17:00] that. That’s why.

I’m called a serial social innovator. I think at the beginning of the pandemic is when I, I realized finally it’s a whole bunch of other stuff I did in there. But, you know, I finally took stock and I realized, whatever this is, it’s way bigger than me and it’s not gonna budge. That’s what it mean by collapse, aware that I’m not trying to change things.

I’m trying to mitigate, trying to maybe change some minds. To make better choices, to preserve at least one tree, one forest, one part of a beach. You know, like, not because I’m, I’m doing beach restoration, but because I’m trying to bleed out like a mindset that you could call cooperative solidarity. Like we’re all in this together.

Common sense and rethinking, you know, the stories that we’ve been told, so. That was like, you know, what could possibly go, right? That podcast was really about the [00:18:00] dominant story of the pandemic and uh, is one thing, but when things are starting to fall apart, there’s, as I used to call it, I said, there’s lots of bricks.

Like laying around now. So if the old structures are coming apart, there’s opportunity.

[00:18:15] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:18:15] Vicki Robin: And I’m just, that’s be a social entrepreneur, not, you know, like, okay, fine, I’m gonna go selling bricks. And now, you know, I thinking a lot about aging. I think about it personally, you know, that I’m actually doing that.

And that our society, this is a metaphor coming of aging, is a metaphor for our society. We are in our. Final years of this western civilization, colonialism, you know, domination, consumerism, capitalism, this whole idea that we could consume the world without regard to the other living beings who are here.

So I think that I’m interested in a possibility of [00:19:00] social maturation, not social change, and being. In my own little way, a sort of storytelling agent of that realization that just like with life, we realize there’s limits we’re gonna die. That’s not always apparent in the middle of life, but you know, it gets clear and clear as you go on and that civilizations die.

There’s like at least 23, according to one teacher, one researcher civilizations that have come and gone. Civilizations die.

[00:19:33] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep.

[00:19:34] Vicki Robin: And there is a possibility, just like there’s a possibility of a legacy, of wisdom from an individual. There’s a possibility of a legacy of wisdom from this culture if we choose to do the work.

And the work really is not about anything material. The work I feel of coming of aging is facing yourself. We can tell the [00:20:00] shiny stories of our lives. You know, we have a very edited versions of ourselves. And when I started to look at the outtakes of my life, the things I never wanted anybody to know, that was the beginning of wisdom.

And so, facing things, making amends, reconnecting, developing some humility. That’s why I said, I’m not changing the world anymore. These are all the tasks of aging. So it’s simplifying, but simplifying at the level. Of the soul, perhaps of the personality.

[00:20:32] Jonathan DeYoe: It, it’s interesting to me in the context of my own, in my own life and the, and the striving and the hoping and the trying to make a difference and trying to make a change and trying to move people in a direction and all this kind of stuff.

And hearing you talk, there’s a little bit of, um, with, with respect, there’s a little bit of a wisdom of age. And I, and I, and I totally,

[00:20:50] Vicki Robin: no, it’s okay. I’m old.

[00:20:51] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:20:53] Vicki Robin: I’m, I’m officially old.

[00:20:56] Jonathan DeYoe: But you’ve touched so many different categories and to [00:21:00] say, you know what, just to sit back and say, I’m not gonna fix anything as you said, I’m gonna, I’m gonna bleed this out into the world, and maybe there’ll be a swelling up of additional commentary or additional people thinking it, or that will then.

Push back a little bit on this huge, enormous, massive force in one direction. And maybe there won’t be like, maybe we go the way of Rome. Maybe we go the way of the Mayans. Like we don’t know what’s gonna happen to our civilization and. Acceptance kind of rules the day and it’s, you’re sitting back saying this stuff and it’s kind of a beautiful statement.

I think you, I think you wrote it, wrote this on the website like this is you a commentary about aging, decline, disability, dementia, unwelcome, aloneness, sagging, everything, invisibility, wills, warehousing, a litany of things you can’t do anymore. Death. Is the goal to promote awareness or is it acceptance?

[00:21:53] Vicki Robin: I think the goal is to promote.

Yeah, awareness is a good thing, but I think [00:22:00] what I do with my storytelling is I do awareness with that sense of opportunity, like enoughness, that sense of, oh boy, you know, some things are going, but some things are coming on stream and they’re really delicious. You know, it’s coming of aging is like everything else I’ve taught.

It’s like, well, no, we’ve been taught that aging is is a bunch of miseries and distractions. But I don’t think that’s true. It’s maybe part of it. I may be so sick at some point that I actually wanna turn on the TV in the hospital room and watch game shows. I doubt it, but maybe

[00:22:34] Jonathan DeYoe: I just wanna check out for a little while.

I just wanna check out for a little. Yeah,

[00:22:37] Vicki Robin: exactly. So. I’m thinking of this as an opportunity and it’s possible out of recognizing it as an opportunity that you participate in things like the Elder Action Network or Third Act, or you know, that you become Grandma Moses. I’m trying to become Grandma Moses’s storytelling.

You know, it’s like, I feel like the excitement inside myself, like somebody in college who’s [00:23:00] just discovered what they want to do with their lives. Hmm. I feel unimpeded. Because so many of my ideas of myself are falling away, good ones and bad ones, and, okay, so here I am on this day. You know,

[00:23:15] Jonathan DeYoe: it’s, I love

[00:23:16] Vicki Robin: writing.

I just love it. I love it, love it, love it. And I’m not being at all careful about it. I just splat it out there. So I think. You know, it’s like during wartime, very often comedians do better than they do during peace time. I think that the arts become more important during collapse. I think social connections become more important.

I think singing and dancing and fires, you know, in the evening, I think a lot of things, people relying on one another ’cause they realize that the, the great tit in the sky dried up. I’ve been very, very concerned and sorrowful about this world, and I still am, and I’m not pace [00:24:00] covering over it, but I’ve realized it’s like the serenity prayer.

If there’s things you can’t change, some things you can, and then you work on those and some things you can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. I really think that’s sort of where I’m. Coming in my life and when as I let go of that, I should do something else of my life to stop this thing. I’ve done a lot of different things that we’re supposed to be like, no, this is, this is gonna be, as I let go of that and allow my life’s energy to go where it will, I am perhaps finding my, you could call it my new role in society or my true role in society.

I don’t know.

[00:24:39] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s super interesting to me because I, I, before I was in finance. And a lot of the audience right, knows this, but a lot, before I was in finance, I studied at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. I spent a three year in a, in a master’s program studying, you know, basically Buddhist mindfulness from a Tibetan perspective.

Um,

[00:24:54] Vicki Robin: wow. Exactly.

[00:24:55] Jonathan DeYoe: And that’s, that’s informed my entire career. I took 15 years where I fought with it, right, where I [00:25:00] said more and more and more, more. And I sort of came back to it, renamed the firm and started sort of speaking from that same place. Now I’m a mindfulness teacher, and I, I do, this is like the core of who I am.

Bring these two things together. So this idea of accepting. Is, I think so important. I think with acceptance comes greater wisdom comes greater effect by you. The way you’re presenting yourself makes your message that I don’t like, makes me more accepting of it the way you present it. It’s like I’m not battling for it.

This is just what it is. Like you’re not right. It’s a beautiful thing. You’ve over thoughts on social. It’s Buddhist.

[00:25:33] Vicki Robin: It’s very Buddhist.

[00:25:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, for sure.

[00:25:35] Vicki Robin: But all truth is, is the same at certain level after the Trump years. And sorry if some of your audience just adores him.

[00:25:43] Jonathan DeYoe: No one does. I was

[00:25:44] Vicki Robin: so angry that whole time.

I was just like furious because he was like, no, you can’t give away the Arctic. You know, you, this isn’t yours to give away. This isn’t yours to do. I was just furious. And even after Joe [00:26:00] Biden took the helm, I was still quaking and you know, I mean, Biden’s been way better, but they’re all part of the dying civilization.

They’re all part of managing a system that. Is unworkable, but I came to this phrase, I think a friend helped me on the way I can accept the unacceptable. Not because it’s acceptable, but because it is. And it’s like, oh, okay. Somebody said Rocks are hard, waters wet and Trump’s Trump. You know? It’s like, you know, and this is just my time.

The older you get, the more there’s an opportunity to realize. You’re just a speck in the universe that you’re just living in a sliver of time and that I didn’t know this in the middle of my life. It was like, no, we’re gonna change it on my watch. But humans have faced this before. The utter collapse of the systems, they presumed were eternal.

We’ve done it. We are actually with, you know, whatever it is, 20 some civilizational collapses. [00:27:00] Notice that we’re still here. So there’s a resilience in us and there’s an a capacity to adapt that comes to the fore. It’s just when different stresses on your system produce different behaviors. It’s like the slime mold.

Sometimes it’s sort of jelly creepy thing, and then sometimes it’s, you know, just a small thing. You know, it depends on the conditions. So if we’re in dire conditions. We’ll be scared and I’m scared, but there’s waves that will come up that we can ride that we can’t see in softer times.

[00:27:34] Jonathan DeYoe: In a lot of the Buddhist training I’ve had, and this is probably also psychology as well, it’s like you have to accept this is anger I.

This is sadness. It’s not all, this is joy. This is hap, you know, there’s two sides and you, you kind of have to embrace both sides and, and sort of integrate. And those people who can integrate both sides end up being stronger, more resilient, more able to adapt to whatever comes their way. And I think that that’s, uh, it’s part of the package.

I’m [00:28:00] curious, how do you think about impact? I, it sounds like you’ve, you’ve written on all these different categories and all these different areas and had all this different thinking. It sounds like you’ve released the idea of having impact. Is that true? I mean, I, I would love to say that I could do that, but I don’t believe in, I don’t think I can.

[00:28:16] Vicki Robin: I have this vestigial notion that just presses on me. There’s some way I should be having influence. I can’t sit back and let all this happen. I. And I don’t know whether it comes from my ego that I got accustomed to money your money or life years of having a lot of influence. I just, oh, just let me go on a television show and talk and it’ll change the world.

You know? I don’t know if it’s delusional or it’s just the sense that, you know, I have to keep showing up. Right now, my hobby horse is in the realm of affordable housing in my house. It was just made sense to me when I. Surprise. Surprise was able to buy a house. It like, oh man, this is huge. 1800 square feet.

But it was huge to me. So I [00:29:00] converted the family room into a little studio apartment, and so the renters there, and then I thought, that’s going so well. I converted the garage, nobody puts their cars in the garage, and I bought a shed and put it out in the side yard and put everything that I put in the garage in the shed.

And so I have two studios in the ground floor of my house, which have been, you know, I don’t know, a quarter or a third of my income, but it’s also solved housing rentals for a class of people in my community who are being, because real estate is being bought up by who knows what. We were able to stay here in the community and work, you know, during the pandemic as the housing stock got bought up more because more wealth was going to the top and people were just like, oh, let’s have a second home right here.

We’ll take that one. They used to be a rental and the Airbnb situation, which is at one point seemed brilliant, but now they’re just eating through. I mean, not little old ladies like me renting out, you know, part of their house. While we’re living [00:30:00] here, but corporations buying up our housing and making money to hotels in our neighborhoods and people, which people are trying to do development.

Number one, our planning department is dysfunctional, so no permits go through Number two. Ours too. Yeah. Yeah. How did that happen? I don’t know. And then nimby, nobody wants anything in their backyard. Number three, no, you can’t take over farmland and build cookie cutter houses. You’re just not allowed to do that.

And we’ll put our bodies on the line for that. So I thought, you know, look, the lowest hanging fruit of. Affordable rentals for everybody. I think from teachers to medical professionals to, you know, service people, to all of whom, you know, the fundamental backbone of our community. The people who make this place run us.

Retired people just, you know, bring in checks from outside and, and buy things. You know, we’re not productive, you know, now you hear me, now you hear the high horse happening. Yeah. So I thought, okay, let’s [00:31:00] change the culture. Have people think that it would be the coolest thing in the world to portion off an unused or underutilized part of their house?

Turned it into what we now call in-Home Suites. They’re not accessory dwelling units, they’re part of the house. It’s like sort of roommates on steroids. My suites have door to the outside, their own bathroom and a kitchenette, and that’s all legal. That’s just roommates, but with features. And so I don’t get two, you know, three water bills that, you know, financially it works out.

We’re sharing a house, but we’re sharing it separately. Everybody has private lives. Can go weeks or months, even from not seeing one another. You’re just like, oh, the car’s there. The car’s not there. So it’s like a little mini

[00:31:46] Jonathan DeYoe: communing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:31:48] Vicki Robin: So it’s not even a triplex because it’s just my house.

They’re all utilities. So we started promoting this idea of in-Home Suites, and it’s really counter-cultural. It’s sort of like, no, I don’t wanna go [00:32:00] back to college and sharing my house, you know? No. So we’re trying to make the point that there are those of us in our community who are resource rich, you know, housing resource rich, whose families are gone and may not need all that space.

And guess what the benefit is. You get income, you have a caretaker spot in your house should you ever need it. Mm. You have somebody to watch your pets or, and water your garden. When you go away, you get security of somebody else being in the house. You know, so there’s lights on all over the place and you get conviviality.

I mean, you don’t have to visit with your, your tenants, but you can. It’s a win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win. I have a college professor on one side now I had, she’s been here for four years and the other one cooks food at our, our children’s center. I’ve had, you know, farmers and lawyers and doctors and, I mean, I’ve had all sorts of people live in my house.

So anyway, I’m definitely, you know, on my pony and writing for this idea, but [00:33:00] I, it’s a bit of a consciousness change thing. It’s sort of figure ground from. In the box thinking is, I own a box and no, it’s my box. You know’s outta the box thinking where are buildings already built that are sitting empty?

[00:33:13] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s funny ’cause we also have, at the same time we have the loneliness epidemic, so Totally.

[00:33:17] Vicki Robin: No, no,

[00:33:17] Jonathan DeYoe: that’s it too. Why not? Why not open the house and you got these big houses? Why not have more people live those big houses? This is personal right now, so there’s a ton of noise out there. I want to ask you to simplify the coming of aging for us a little bit.

I’m 53. I might be a little bit early, but I’m still alive and sort of burning with a desire to make this impact and help people. And life is moving faster and I feel like 60 and retirement or whatever that is, is right around the corner. What do I do to make that transition smoother? Or is there no transition?

[00:33:48] Vicki Robin: That’s an interesting question. Number one, you know, despite the fact that I’m co-author of a book about. Retire early. I think retiring early is way overrated because [00:34:00] people often retire early and they don’t know what to do with their time. So I think Exactly.

[00:34:05] Jonathan DeYoe: Thank you. Yeah. Working. I keep telling people this and they’re like, whatcha worried about

[00:34:09] Vicki Robin: Yeah.

The Buddhist idea, uh, I mean we said this in your money or life, you know, little factoids that we pick up here and there, you know, that the idea of work is, you know, self-development, it’s contribution to the community and it’s getting enough to live. But work is not only for money. That’s like a very recent capitalist idea.

Yep. Work is a form of belonging. Work is a form of putting your shoulder to the wheel of your generation. The capitalist system gives us incredibly deadly roles, but we wanna work. So I think the preparation is really, I mean, number one, realize you’re mortal. Realize, you know, I mean, it’s a little bit your money or life ish, you know, it’s like step one is.

Making peace of the past. Well, that’s what I’m talking about, making peace. You know, this is my life. I didn’t have a different life. I did what I did. I didn’t do what I didn’t [00:35:00] do. That’s it, you know, there’s no way to change what’s in the rear view mirror. All I can do is reconcile with it and make amends and you know, reconnect with the people from my past who I may have harmed on the way.

And then. Make sure I make friends for the journey forward. And then the money is life energy. Well, life energy is life energy, you know, realize, I mean the whole thing about step two is mortality. Your mortal. You have limited amount of time in your life. How do you wanna spend the money that, that you use the time to get?

So that’s another piece of it is, and it’s hard to realize you’re mortal because there’s nothing in our, our egos or personalities or anything. And we hide death from, you know, I mean, we don’t have to go off on that one, but so realize your mortal. And then three is like tracking your time. Not in an anal time management thing, but just really, so what do I wanna do with my one wild and precious life?

You [00:36:00] know, really? Mary Oliver? Yeah, Mary Oliver, you know, but it’s like she’s the sort of saint of the whole issue, but. It, it really is true. I mean, yeah, there’s bucket lists, things you wanna do, you know, there’s fun things you wanna do before, you know, you can’t, your knees won’t go up a mountain. But there’s also, you know, what do I wanna give it back?

You know, what do I want? My little dent on eternity. My scratch on eternity to be, I. That’s the time to take a look at that.

[00:36:28] Jonathan DeYoe: I struggle so much with that dent on eternity or that scratch on eternity. Like I, I keep, it’s, it is such a huge ego thing for me. I wanna leave a mark. I wanna leave a mark, and then I go, no one’s gonna remember me three generations later ever.

Like,

[00:36:40] Vicki Robin: but that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. You know, go for unwinnable game, but don’t expect to win it.

[00:36:47] Jonathan DeYoe: Right?

[00:36:48] Vicki Robin: That’s the fun thing.

[00:36:51] Jonathan DeYoe: Let go of the outcome.

[00:36:52] Vicki Robin: Make a mark. Along with your Buddhist training is a great motivator. Everybody should have that [00:37:00] motivation

[00:37:00] Jonathan DeYoe: and then be okay not to be okay. To not have the mark.

[00:37:03] Vicki Robin: That’s, that’s the wisdom,

[00:37:06] Jonathan DeYoe: that’s the difficulties. Right. We’re still still working on that part. Still working on it.

[00:37:10] Vicki Robin: Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, so and then I’m just gonna like continue this little thing. Step four, in your money, your life is looking at how you spend your life energy and you’re asking.

The questions, does it bring me pleasure commensurate amount with the proportion of my short life that I have left? Is that like really something I wanted to invest? Time is becoming more precious. Every minute becomes more precious and not to be like freaked out about it, but you know, and then also I.

Is it in alignment with my values? You know? Mm-Hmm. This is really the time, the legacy time is like saying, okay, what little scratch or just pinhole or whatever, you know? Or just like one little person, you know, your people or families believe that their families are their scratch and eternity. Yeah. So it’s like there’s a way to use that.

’cause your [00:38:00] money or life is not about, not about money per se, it’s about self-awareness. It’s about quality of life. As defined internally by you? Yeah. I just recently realized that those same tools can be used for coming of aging.

[00:38:15] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah,

[00:38:16] Vicki Robin: do what you love and love what you do. You know, whatever you want.

That’s a little homily that I must, somebody else must’ve said, but I just picked it out of the ether.

[00:38:24] Jonathan DeYoe: I mean, this is, this is, we don’t have to go through all nine steps, obviously, but, uh, I, I love the application to come of aging. That’s where I am. So I appreciate the, the insight. I appreciate the way you’ve, uh, the way you just sit and say what you say.

I, I think it’s just. You own it and it’s beautiful. Could you just come around to the personal one more time? Can you name a place you visited that had a real big impact on who you are today? Yeah, Brazil. What’s the impact?

[00:38:49] Vicki Robin: As soon as I stepped on on the soil of Brazil, I felt like vibrationally I’d come home.

Huh? I feel like an oddball in this sort [00:39:00] of stuffy America. That, you know, in Brazil, I just, people started hugging, you know, like not everybody, it’s not like an idealized place, but so many hugs, so much fun even. And not necessarily when I lived in Spain, I lived in Mexico also, and I speak Spanish. And when I speak Spanish, I am more myself when I, than when I speak English.

’cause it has passion in it. And Portuguese is just, there’s a phrase in, in Brazil, at least what I, what I learned, which is it’s sort of samba, you know? Well, you can get into a conflict. You know, you call Brazilians conflict of averse, but it’s just they don’t wanna break the social bonds in service to the mental constructs.

So then you get a certain point in an argument and then you just, like, it’s not samba. You don’t necessarily do samba, but you dance, you go to the beach. Then natural beauty there, it’s like when I, I have friends who live pretty much sort of between Flo Anolis and, and Rio and you know, [00:40:00] sort of like. Up there in the Atlantic rainforest.

This like, like the vitality of the rainforest. I could, I felt like that was part of what Brazil is. It’s like, oh, I’m living someplace where we haven’t. Unraveled. I mean, the last decade has done a good job of doing more damage, but anyway, so it just gave me sort of an outrigger support for my wildness.

Yeah, I’ve gone to a lot of different places in the world, but that’s probably Latin countries in general. You know, Latin countries in general. Mexico, you know, Spain. I lived in Spain for nine months. It’s just different.

[00:40:41] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of different energy for sure. Tell people how they can connect with you.

What do they find coming of aging?

[00:40:46] Vicki Robin: It’s a blog that’s hosted on Substack, so all you have to do is just. Quote unquote, coming of aging, or go onto this platform called Substack. Look for my name. It’s right there. I do have a legacy website, vicky robin.com. That [00:41:00] has a lot on it. So a lot from all my other, you know, activities.

But mostly I’m blogging over there. There’s a video that’s just gorgeous that a filmmaker who has a series called Reflections on Life. Stumbled on me, came to my house, recorded for a day, and it’s called Coming of Aging, and you can find it on YouTube.

[00:41:22] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s really short. It’s, it’s a nice, it’s a nice watch for sure.

[00:41:25] Vicki Robin: Right. Okay, so that’s, that’s about it.

[00:41:29] Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, Vicki, thanks so much. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I, I feel like I’ve known some of your stuff for a long time. We’ve first time we’ve met, but I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much.

[00:41:37] Vicki Robin: Thank you so much. Really, this has been a pleasure. You know, it’s like a, I’m a Nickelodeon.

I have no idea what record you wanna play, but you, you asked so

[00:41:45] Jonathan DeYoe: many, so many options.

[00:41:47] Vicki Robin: Yeah, so many options. Okay. Thank you so much. So thank you so very much.

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