[Ep. 405] What You Can Learn About Wealth from the Stoics with Darius Foroux

Hello and welcome back to the More Money Podcast.

I am your host, Jessica Moorhouse, and for this premiere episode of season 19 of the More Money Podcast, I’m so excited to have my next guest, Darius Foroux.

He is the author of eight different books, including the new book that just came out, which we’re going to focus on in this episode, called The Stoic Path to Wealth.

He also is a big writer, hence why he has so many books, but he writes largely about productivity, stoicism, and then of course, wealth building.

I will be giving away a copy of his book.

If you want to enter to win, all you have to do is go to jessicamoorhouse.com/contest and it will be there.

I will be adding to that page as this season, it goes by with more books when new authors come on the show.

jessicamoorhouse.com/contest is where you can find out how to enter to win a copy of The Stoic Path to Wealth.

Now, the reason I really wanted Darius on the show was, I loved his book number one and binged it in just like two days.

But I think it’s a really important book for people like yourself to read and give a listen to this episode about it because it really is a great way for you to get grounded with your money and specifically your investments.

Because there is a lot of noise, there’s a lot of people with opinions out there.

It can be easy to feel lost or to feel overwhelmed and then just not do anything.

And this book really provides a great foundation on how to stay centered, how to stay on that path and not go this direction or this direction.

You really want to have a clear guide on where you’re going because that is ultimately the only way of reaching your different financial goals and building long-term wealth which is a big theme of this podcast.

So I’m so excited to have Darius on the show.

And without further ado, let’s get to that episode.

Welcome Darius to the More Money Podcast.

So excited to have you on the show and really thrilled to talk about your book, The Stoic Path to Wealth, Ancient Wisdom for Enduring Prosperity.

I think it is a book that people need to read.

Like I mentioned before we hit record, this is a book that’s a really important reminder for most people on what’s really important when it comes to your finances, investing because I feel like with all of the noise out there, a lot of us have lost the plot a little bit.

So welcome to the show.

I’m so excited to have you on here.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me.

Very excited about this.

Yeah.

So the main foundation of the book is this idea of Stoicism, which honestly was completely new to me when I brought it up to my husband.

He’s like, oh yeah, I know all about that.

I’m like, oh, well, I didn’t.

So it was very new to me.

And I thought it was a really great way just to tether all the different ideas you had in the book.

So I’m curious, what was your introduction to Stoicism?

And then how did you kind of make that connection between Stoicism and how, oh, this is, it easily connects to finance?

Yeah, so I discovered Stoicism in 2014 when I was going through a difficult time in my career, but also personally, I just lost my grandmother and I was climbing the corporate ladder in London and I wasn’t really satisfied with that career because before that, I had a business with my dad, but I always knew that I enjoyed entrepreneurship, but I didn’t really enjoy the industry that we were in.

And I thought, oh, maybe I should try climbing the corporate ladder.

That wasn’t for me either.

And just not knowing what to do, I always turn to books because I’m kind of searching.

So what’s the best place to find the answers?

And in my opinion, it’s always books.

You can find the answers to anything you want to do in life.

And because I felt like I wasn’t really focused, and I wasn’t very motivated, or at least I felt like stuck in my career in life.

So I looked at philosophy and I found Stoicism.

And that really helped me to simplify everything in life, because the philosophy is very simple to summarize, which is focus on what you can control and ignore everything else.

And it sounds so simple.

But when I read it for the first time, I thought, wow, this makes a lot of sense.

This is what I need.

So I started to read all of the classics from Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca, and Epictetus, and Masonius Rufus.

And the funny thing was that as soon as I started reading, I started applying it to every aspect of my life, not only personally, but also to my career and to my finances as well, because I’ve always wanted to be an investor.

When I was in my teens, I watched that movie Wall Street with Michael Douglas, and I thought I want to be that guy.

That didn’t play out, but yeah.

So all of these things came together after many years of struggling with finding my thing in life and in my career.

That was also the time that I really decided to pursue writing full-time.

So I wrote my first book in 2015 and have been on this path ever since.

Can you explain how you were able to integrate stoicism in your life and your finances?

How did that actually manifest?

What did that look like?

Yeah.

So the thing with investing and also with career advice is that there’s just so much advice out there and it can be very overwhelming.

So when I read the Stoics and I hear them, or at least in my mind, because when I read a book, I always have this inner dialogue with the author.

I was hearing their advice, which is just keep it simple, focus on the foundation and make sure that you always have true intentions.

And when it comes to your career, I think the true intention is, of course, everybody wants to earn a living.

But I think it’s about providing value in the economy.

The more people you can help or the more value you can offer in the economy, the more you will generally be rewarded.

Or at least you will be rewarded.

That’s the main thing.

There are also certain professions where you don’t get rewarded more, but you feel a lot of inner satisfaction and the drive is authentic.

So when I read that, I thought, or when I, I should say, when I started to apply that line of thinking to my career, I thought, what’s the one thing that I love to do?

And I feel like I can provide value in, and that’s to simplify ideas.

I’ve always been a reader.

I’ve always loved sharing the things that I’ve read.

And that’s how I came about pursuing writing full-time.

And then the other thing about investing is that, you know, I started investing in 2007.

So I was in college at the time, and I worked at a bank in the evenings.

And I thought, okay, you know, like, I’m this genius now.

I can start buying my own stocks.

And a year later, 2008 happens, you know, the great financial crash, and I was down like 60 percent.

And I thought, okay, well, this is really hard.

So I actually didn’t do anything until like 2015 or something.

Because all that time, I was just overwhelmed.

I didn’t know what to do.

And because I was overwhelmed, I didn’t do anything.

And in hindsight, that’s a mistake, because from 2009, the market started to recover.

And since then, we went on this crazy run because of the whole tech boom and all of the amazing companies that have, you know, that basically went on this exponential growth path since then.

But I always wanted to come back to the market.

I just didn’t know how, because I knew that if I look at myself, I’m not the type of person who goes out to hunt investing deals or real estate deals.

And I’m an introvert.

I prefer to just keep to myself, write, do my job, focus on the thing that I love to do and provide value and write books.

But at the same time, I also want to build wealth, because I know that in society in general, not just today, even during the time that the Stoics lived about 2000 years ago, they said that money is important.

And they said, if you can pursue money while remaining honest, by all means, do it.

So I started to put everything together.

And I said, look, I should focus on my career.

But at the same time, I need to have a vehicle to build more wealth in an honest way.

And if I just simplify everything, the most honest way of investing, in my opinion, is to invest in the companies that basically shape our lives, the Apples and the Amazons and you name it, right?

And that’s basically the S&P 500 index, the 500 largest companies in the US that are active globally.

And that we have a relationship with, whether we know it or whether we like it or not.

We all use Macs or PCs, and we shop at Amazon or we go to Starbucks or whatever.

And I thought if I just put my money there, and as long as the economy keeps growing, my wealth will keep growing, and it’s something that I can maintain.

It’s simple, it’s accessible, and it’s the strategy that Warren Buffett recommends to everybody.

So for myself, I finally figured it out, because the goal is not to find the perfect investment.

The goal is not to get rich fast.

The goal is to have a career that you love, that also pays the bills and some more, so you can take that money to invest it in the stock market and do that over years, so you have more freedom.

And the moment that I started applying that strategy from 2015, 16, 17, because all the stuff that I’m talking about might sound very simple, but it took me a few years to put together and start executing.

But once I started to execute it consistently, and I would say from 2017, I started to see everything falling in its place, and I started to slowly feel emotionally free already.

I already started to see myself financially free, before I was actually numbers-wise financially free.

And I think that’s worth more than having a lot of money, because there are a lot of folks who have a lot of money, but they always have that feeling that they need to acquire more, or that they might lose everything, or they have a lot of obligations, and they have a lot of stress, so they’re not emotionally free.

And I don’t think that’s worth it, even if you have a lot of money.

So, I think the stoic way of becoming wealthy is perfect for today’s society, because there’s so much pressure on you to succeed and to show that you are successful.

And if you apply stoicism to your life, you mitigate that.

You just really focus on the things that are truly important to you.

And yeah, you basically can have it all.

Yeah, no, I completely agree.

There are so many people who have ridiculous amounts of wealth and they are the opposite of free.

Because you think if you have that many millions or billions in the bank, you would be living your life in a different way.

But they’re all about just, I need more, more, more.

And for what purpose?

To buy a bigger yacht, to get a bigger house, to buy more stuff, I don’t know.

And you’re like, that is not what freedom, at least for me, that’s not what freedom is.

Freedom is, yeah, living authentic to you and having a purposeful life and figuring out how can I give back or make the world a better place.

That’s a great way to kind of view things.

I know in your book, you do talk about ideas like greed.

Greed comes up and the idea of enough.

And I thought those are such interesting topics, I find, because especially in this world where it’s very capitalistic, it is all about more, more, more, more is better, you want to get more, you’re not doing enough.

And there’s literally no chatter really about, well, what is enough, though?

How will you know when you’ve reached that limit?

Because the goalpost keeps on moving forward.

It’s difficult, it makes sense to apply these principles of stoicism to kind of figure out what your enough is.

It’s difficult in practice when all these external factors are saying the opposite.

How do you kind of stay true to your vision, your path so you don’t get swayed and go back to kind of old patterns, maybe?

Yeah.

Well, what you said about that this message isn’t really communicated in the media or maybe even on social media, is totally true because like with the publicity and everything, we’re talking about doing excerpts and stuff in the media, and one of the things that me and my editor was saying like, yeah, this idea of enough is great, and can we really tell people to just be content and not aspire to have more?

I was like, yeah, why not?

You’re like, but they may not buy your book.

Because they’re like, oh, I’ve got enough.

I don’t need more books.

Yeah, and I thought to myself, why not?

Because there’s a difference between having the ambition to improve yourself and your life and your career and also to earn more versus being greedy and overdoing it.

Because I think that desire to always acquire more leads to a lot of emotional turmoil within yourself.

And if you’re constantly dedicating your time and energy to thinking about buying a new house or a new bag or, you know, it’s something else every day.

You will miss out on life, I think, right?

Because you could have used that time to maybe plan a very nice camping trip with your family, something, right?

Or you could have used that time to journal and discover new things about yourself.

And I’m not even talking about everything that you could do for your career to improve yourself.

You could learn, you could read a book and improve your skills.

Now, I think that’s really what enough is about and being content.

And my biggest inspiration for aspiring to have enough and being content is John Bogle.

So he’s the founder of Vanguard that manages trillions of dollars of wealth.

And he’s one of the most impactful people in finance.

Because he essentially introduced the ETF, which is a very low cost way of investing.

Because in the 1950s, 60s, all the way up to the 90s, it was costly to trade stocks and buy stocks and mutual funds.

Came with a lot of transaction costs, especially if you compare it to today where, in many cases, there are no transaction costs and there is always a fee when you invest in a mutual fund for basically the fact that they manage your money.

And for an ETF, that fee is very low, 0.1% or something like that.

But some mutual funds would charge a few percentage points.

And if you calculate the effect on your wealth over decades, it can cost you hundreds and thousands of dollars, even if you don’t end up with 100 million.

If you end up with a million over a lifetime, you’ve missed out on maybe $300,000 if you just save like 2% or whatever a year.

Now, what Bogle did was he said, everybody in the world needs to have access to low-cost investing, and that was kind of the premise of Vanguard.

And he made such a big impact on the world and investing, but he basically died with…

He died a very wealthy man, of course.

But I think his net worth was something like 80 million, but if you compare it to the trillions that they manage, you think to yourself, you know, that’s quite low, relatively speaking, while there are hedge fund managers who are worth way more and who manage maybe a few billion.

Bogle was a very philosophical person.

He wrote a book called Enough, talking about his philosophy for life, and he just lived a very simple life.

He always talked about that the goal for the average investor is to just enjoy life and to do your work.

He always said, just invest in the S&P 500 or the total stock market.

In my opinion, the difference is not that big, whether you want to invest in the S&P 500 or the total stock market index, which covers more than 2000 stocks.

Yeah, more like the world.

I’m based out of Canada, so if you’re an index investor, you want America, Canada, international.

But yeah, just getting the whole pie.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Or a world index, stuff like that.

In my experience, it doesn’t really matter as long as you go for the top companies.

But he said, just invest and never look at it again until you retire.

Yeah.

Never look at your account.

I personally like to take a look at my account, but I love the advice, which is just invest and don’t think about it anymore, and just live your life by doing the things that you love to do.

By doing that, you really live in a way that’s more calculated, because when you invest, you need to decide how much of your income you want to invest.

So it forces you to think about that and to be more deliberate about your finances.

And I think all of those actions really make you more a complete human being.

You know, it makes you more rational and it makes you think about your future.

And at the same time, it makes you more at ease with today because a lot of folks have this financial anxiety around retirement and whether they’ll get a pension and that kind of stuff when they’re in their 20s or 30s or 40s.

And they already think about what they will do in the future.

And I get that because kind of worrying is a habit, right?

And if you worry about tomorrow, it’s very easy to extend that and worry about next year and then 10 years and whatever or your retirement.

And the benefit of investing today is that you basically take away that future worry because you can tell yourself, I am taking a piece of my income.

I’m investing in stock market or I’m investing it, period.

I’m building wealth.

I’m having healthy financial habits.

I focus on my career.

So because I do all of these things, I don’t have to worry about my financial future, right?

And it’s completely different than someone who says, well, I’ve read the secret and I’m manifesting things and everything will be all right.

Yeah.

I’m like, you’ve got to manifest and then do X, Y, Z.

You can’t just wish it in to fruition.

I mean, I think this goes into, again, what you kind of mentioned about Stoicism, which is focusing on what you can control, which those are all the things that you can control, you can do and then it can have a big impact.

And then you’re just wasting energy if you’re worrying and all the things like, what if the market goes down, what if it doesn’t recover for many years, et cetera, et cetera.

Those are external factors.

You have zero power over.

So what’s the point of worrying?

They may happen, they may not.

You just need to understand what you can do in those circumstances.

One thing that just kind of brought to mind was you do also talk about, and this is kind of an element of Stoicism, which is the idea of trusting yourself and trusting your own judgment.

I think that’s another thing that a lot of us have lost sight of.

We are often looking for someone else, some external person or team or what have you, some expert to give us what we need.

Instead of us, again, looking to ourselves, teaching ourselves, learning the stuff and trusting ourselves to make the right decisions.

Why do you think people are always looking for something outside of themselves to solve their problems, instead of being like, I wonder if there’s something I can do about this?

That’s so true, because we’re offered so many crutches and things that can really simplify our lives, and I think the mistake that we make is to go all in on those things.

I don’t think it’s a mistake to use what’s available.

A good example is AI.

If you’re a content creator or you’re a writer, or you’re just a professional who writes a lot for their work, you’re in sales, you’re in communication, you name it, you can use AI to do all of your written communication for you.

The question is, do you really want that in the long term?

Because it will take away some of your creative thinking abilities, problem-solving abilities, and your own ability to translate your thoughts into words.

Because I think that writing is an intellectual pursuit.

It’s not something that’s about the outcome.

It’s about taking your abstract thoughts and putting them into words so that another human being can understand what you are saying.

And I think that’s an inherent human thing to do.

And it’s a very important process, cognitively.

Now if we look at investing or if we look at money, we can almost say the same thing.

Investing is not only about the outcome.

The outcome is, yeah, I want to have a lot of money, but investing is a habit, like what we were talking about earlier, is something that really improves your character, yourself, your life.

And in a similar way, your just thinking process and your judgment in general for everything that you do is something that you should never outsource because you give up a human process to something that’s outside of you.

And in the case of AI, you give it up to the language models.

And in the case of your career or your relationships or whatever, you can give your judgment to a friend or a group of friends or a social media, quote unquote, influencer.

And I think it’s a very dangerous path, because if it becomes a habit, then you really risk losing your own voice.

And that’s one of the saddest things that can happen.

Yeah, it’s funny, because when you think about it, there are more tools now than ever to have your own voice and to have it heard on any platform.

But I think often, sometimes, I’m scrolling on social media, and there’s so many patterns.

I’m like, have I heard that before?

People are just mimicking each other.

There’s not as many…

There’s a lot of voices, but I’m not sure if they’re authentic voices.

They’re just people regurgitating or copying things.

And you’re like, that is kind of scary and dangerous.

You don’t want to be in a position where you lose your own sense of self and your voice, because then you’re in a really bad situation, because then you’ll end up in a situation where you’re like, I don’t actually know what I want, who I am, where to go.

You want to, again, why like the idea of Stoicism so much is, it is a really kind of solid foundation for you to always come back to when you are in a position of I don’t know where to go next.

It’s like, well, let’s go back to the basics and go through those.

And kind of along the same lines, besides trusting yourself, your gut, your own intuition, your own knowledge, I also find often, and this is very much based in behavioral economics, just the rules of Stoicism and the rules that you put in your book about investing specifically are very simple.

But we also know that doesn’t mean they’re easy to implement.

Like you said, it took you years to really kind of put them into practice and see some of the progress that you made.

But I always find people are still, even though they may know that, they’re still looking for a quick fix, a quick solution, which is kind of funny.

Like, why are we still trying to get rich quick?

Why are we trying to find that one, you know, that golden ticket that often doesn’t actually exist?

Why do you think people still have a hard time just going with the tried and true simple path instead of trying to find that shortcut?

It’s Sarah Burke here, the founder of the Women in Media Network.

We are so excited to partner with Wonderbra to celebrate their 85th anniversary.

And after 85 years, of course, they are the experts in comfort, fit and support.

Whether you’re looking for a bra with underwire or without, something that’s a little sexy, something for under your everyday t-shirt or a plus size bra, they have so many options.

I’ve become a bra snob.

I really have.

If it’s not comfy, I’m not going near it.

And it makes me laugh how many years of suffering I’ve put myself through with underwires that poke and bands that cut you in the wrong places.

The wireless bra with the wide underbust Wonderband, it literally stretches to fit your shape as you move.

It’s so comfortable.

And if you’re someone who, I don’t know, podcasts from home for a living, maybe you’re not exactly looking for an underwire.

Shop any style you like with code MoreMoney40 for 40% off your purchase at wonderbra.ca.

Yeah, I really think that’s the impatient nature of, you know, as a species.

And I can relate to that as well in my career.

I’ve always, you know, said that I’m an impatient person and I am too.

I get it.

I am too.

And I think it’s something that you really can learn, right?

Because, or I overcome, I should say, because after trying out certain investment techniques or strategies that promise fast…

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

High returns and quick wealth.

I think everyone sooner or later realizes that it’s just either too frustrating or it doesn’t work, and that they don’t want to go to bed thinking about their risky strategy.

Right?

So I think it’s just a matter of time before everyone realizes that that’s not what they want.

The problem is that if you just go through a lot of these types of experiences where you lose money or where you get scammed, which is something that I quite hear quite often these days, like readers emailing me saying that they were scammed about some kind of crypto scheme or whatever, any type of new scheme that folks come up with.

There are a lot of negative emotions involved where you say, yeah, well, maybe it’s not for me.

Maybe investing is not for me.

And then it starts with the impatience and then all of these marketers are so good at convincing you that, oh, just give us your money or try this and try Forex trading or whatever it is.

And then you give it a try and then the risk is that you stop investing.

I think that’s always the biggest problem.

And when that happens, you kind of retreat in your own shell.

Yeah, that’s why impatience is so dangerous, right?

Because we might think it’s innocent or, yeah, you know, like this is like being in traffic.

Yeah.

You know, maybe you curse a little bit, but you always arrive.

With money, it’s not the case, right?

Like several bad experiences can really destroy your financial future.

So I always say to folks, like if you notice that you’ve been impatient, it’s really something to work on, right?

Like try to meditate, try to journal, try to go within yourself, try to find out the cause of your impatience.

Why do you pursue those things?

Why are you swayed by certain marketing things or ads or whatever?

And I think the answer is often some inner issue of not feeling that you’re good enough, feeling that you, right?

Feeling that you need to compensate for something with material wealth.

You’re not keeping up with your peers and you’re like kind of the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

You’re late, you’re late.

You need to catch up.

Yeah, yeah, you need to catch up.

You’re behind.

All of these things make you really impatient, right?

And then you make the wrong decision.

Well, if you just stuck to the simple advice and stuck to the simple life, you would have been fine, but it’s OK because it’s never too late, right?

It’s never too late to make a change.

And you can always decide to give up a lot of things.

And the most important thing that you can do for yourself is to just give up the rat race, right?

Give up keeping up with the Joneses and trying to always up yourself or up other people, or trying to look cool, you know?

And everyone knows that the best things in life are free, but we always want to figure it out on our own, you know?

Like we want to make those mistakes.

But I do think there is some value in making certain mistakes.

The thing is, like, you don’t want to make the same mistake.

Twice.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it’s good to make a mistake once and learn that lesson, but you don’t want to keep on repeating.

And I think that’s often what I see, especially with new investors, young people, they are repeating, you know, you think they learn, oh, maybe cryptocurrency is for you, and then they get into NFTs, they get into something else, and you’re like, that’s really not any different.

Yeah, it’s very interesting.

I know the one thing that I really liked from your book, you know, a really great message is you need to obviously focus on your own path, which sometimes can be difficult to do, but it’s easier when you do have people to look up to you who are good influences, mentors.

And you have so many great examples of really successful people in finance in your book.

And I love, I mean, I very much read a lot of personal finance books.

I love the ones that really have great stories and you have some really great stories in there of people who, yeah, did just the simple path, the boring path, were patient because no one, none of the people in your book got rich quickly.

None of them.

It was over years or decades.

Was there any particular story that you think would resonate with people?

Just when you were talking about cryptocurrency, do you remember there was a story, I can’t remember who it was, but a really successful business person who said, he was influenced to invest in cryptocurrency.

And after a little while, he’s like, I don’t like it.

I’m getting out.

And you would think that someone that’s knowledgeable about the business.

It might be in the same dilemma.

Yeah, yeah, it might be.

And I’m like, you know what?

That’s a great story to tell because most people don’t hear those stories of successful people like, yeah, cryptocurrency is not for me.

I’m going back to what I’m used to.

I’m going back to what I’m comfortable with.

But yeah, are there any other stories that might, you think, resonate with people?

Yeah, that’s a good example here.

I think that’s the same to let the author of Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, great books for anyone who wants to be a more active investor.

I think most folks just prefer to be passive investors.

That’s my philosophy for the podcast.

I’m always talking about passive investing.

So I’m right on that.

I totally get what you’re saying.

Yeah.

The other person that comes to mind, who did not change their stance, but was always very clear about his messaging is Charlie Munger, the longtime partner of Warren Buffett, who was always more punchy in his advice and in his thoughts, where if he did not see any underlying value to real life, he would always say, yeah, it’s a scam, it’s fake, it’s nonsense, something to avoid.

I think that’s the best shortcut that you could make mentally for yourself as a passive investor, is to think about how that truly impacts not only the economy, because you could argue that cryptocurrency has impact with the economy, right?

There’s a lot of wealth created.

Now, there’s an ETF, so it does create a lot of wealth.

But what Charlie Munger always said was, how does a certain company or, in this case, a new technology or asset class really impact our day-to-day lives?

Like one of his biggest investments was Costco, and it’s a store that is convenient, they offer great prices, etc.

Now, if you use that line of thinking for any investment opportunity that comes your way, you can always think, okay, what does this really mean for day-to-day life?

Real estate is actually a good example.

It’s a great investment because you’re providing value, you’re creating housing for people who probably are not in a stage or in a place to buy something for themselves, so they can rent it from you, makes sense.

If you’re investing in companies that change the world, makes sense.

If you have the opportunity to invest in this new technology that’s not proven yet and that might change the world and maybe does something that you don’t even understand, it’s probably a sign to just ignore it because it’s not worth it.

There’s so many things in life that are not worth it.

I think if you have that ability within yourself to judge whether an investment is worth it or not, I think you’re set.

That’s the ultimate goal, I think, for the average person.

And actually, why I wrote the book, because I started writing about personal development, and I’ve always seen myself as an investor, but I didn’t necessarily think that I would write about it until when I started, put everything together and I started to see how big of an impact it had on my life.

I thought, okay, I need to write this book because I feel like if folks just have a basic understanding of finance and of how investing really works, or how solid investing works, not speculation and trading, folks will be better equipped with enough knowledge to make the right decision.

And mostly, or 99% of the time, the right decision is to just protect your money, right?

It’s not necessarily about, maybe I found this thing that can 10x my money.

You’re much better off playing defense, as a lot of investors have said.

And if you can do that while maintaining, you know, your career progression as well, you’re really in a great position to just have a good life.

Yeah.

I’m curious because you mentioned that the 2008 crash had a really big impact on you and kind of scared you off investing for a number of years.

And then you started, you know, you started taking some of this information and applying it to yourself and are in a better position for it now.

What was your reaction to, I guess, what happened during COVID?

Because that was a very intense time, especially since we were all at home, on our screens.

I never, I feel like, looked at the news, financial news, especially more often.

And, you know, part of stoicism is making sure your emotions don’t dictate your decision making.

Were you able to react in a very different way compared to when you were just starting back in 2008?

Yeah, that was really my stress test.

Yeah.

Because in 2008, of course, I was a beginner and I also didn’t have that much money on the line.

But it felt like a real gut punch, right?

Like when something like that happens and you don’t have the mental framework, you feel it physically, right?

Like you feel the pain.

And I think a lot of folks can relate to that if you, if you’re so attached to your money or your investments and something happens, like you start sweating, you get really warm and you feel it in your stomach.

Just like going back in 2017, I started to apply all of this stuff.

I didn’t write about any of this because I felt like I just need to have a test.

Of course, every year there’s always a pullback or whatever when the market goes down 5 percent or maybe 10 percent.

It’s not fun, but like you said, of course, financial media and just the news in general in 2020 was the perfect stress test for me because I knew that if I am able to really withstand this time, then my theory actually works.

Fortunately, that’s what happened.

I didn’t do anything.

I didn’t sell.

I didn’t necessarily think about adding more.

I just stayed the course, which is in my investment strategy, that is to just invest the same amount or the same percentage of the income every single month.

I just stuck to it.

In fact, like a lot of folks, I did add more a few months later during the summer.

But all the while, mentally, I was repeating to myself, it will get better, stay the course, have the long-term focus, and just stick to it.

Fortunately, everything played out.

If we look at history.

That’s what happens.

All right.

Yeah.

And yeah, it was a good moment because, well, a lot of bad things were going on in the world.

It was kind of confirmation to myself that, okay, now I finally have the mental tools to stick to my investing strategy.

And ever since, I’ve been saying that investing is really about managing your emotions.

It’s not about picking the right strategy.

So yeah, if you can do that, then you can definitely be a very consistent investor.

Yeah.

And you’ll just be stronger for it.

Like, did you feel at all swayed in 2021 when it was very much like the meme stocks, the NFTs, and people were really talking about, no, the future is different and da da da da.

Or you’re like, no, I’m good.

Another technique that I’ve kind of developed over years is what I call the 90-10 rule.

And I take 90% of the money that I dedicate to investing, and I put it in the S&P 500, and I take 10% to speculate and trade a little bit because I still have that itch.

Yeah, most people do.

I had that from when I was in my teens, and I still have it.

And I always felt like I need to find a good balance, because if I put too much money on the line, I won’t be able to sleep.

And if I just put too little money on the line, I don’t care if I invest with 10 bucks or 50 bucks.

So I came up with this 90-10 rule, and I said to myself, if I just take 10% of the money that I have and trade like one or two or maximum three stocks, and I’m very disciplined about setting a stop loss and not taking on massive losses, I can actually make this thing work.

And that’s what I did also in 21, and I still do until this day because I love the stock market.

I love tracking what it does, see how companies perform, whether, like my favorite stocks to trade are kind of comeback stories, right?

Like stocks that are punished unreasonably, in my opinion, right?

Like company comes out, they post earnings, like a small decline, and then the stock goes on a massive sell-off and it’s down 30% within a few days.

And like, what?

Yeah, still a good stock.

It doesn’t make sense.

Yeah, exactly.

It’s a great company, great earnings.

So I’d like to take a little bit of a bigger bet on that.

Like, for example, that’s what I did earlier this year with Tesla, right?

Like it was going down for two years.

I know it’s in the S&P.

I know I have exposure to it.

But I’m thinking to myself, why is this company down?

Like, I think like 40% or something over the past year or so.

And I’m seeing all positives.

And I’m thinking to myself, okay, well, let me give this a try because I feel like the investment community has punished this stock in an unreasonable way.

And I started buying earlier this year.

And since then, it’s on a kind of an upward trend.

And at the same time, I also, when I do the 90-10, I also have moments when I sell because that’s my trading thing, right?

Like my 90%, I never sell.

Right.

But when it comes to my 10%, I’m like, okay, the stock ran up too much.

Like I bought it at 160 and then it was 260.

I’m like, okay, it’s like, that’s a little bit crazy.

Let’s sell a little bit, you know?

Yeah.

So you start, that 90-10 helps you know when you’re supposed to rebalance, basically.

So you always stay within that limit.

Well, I just take profit at some point, right?

Because I know that this 10% is kind of working money.

It’s like, I use it to buy and sell.

So it doesn’t mean just buy and wait for a few years, because that’s what I’m already doing with my S&P, right?

I do this, I trade part of the 10% because I love it, and I also want to make a little bit of money.

Yeah, exactly.

Right?

So, and a part of that is also knowing when to sell.

And for me, I know when it’s time to sell, when I think that the valuation is a bit too rich, right?

So kind of the rule of thumb that I always use is, you know, I can recall exactly where I read this, but there’s this rule of thumb that says if the PE of a company or if you divide the PE of a company by two, that’s kind of the growth rate of their earnings, right?

So if a company has a 50 PE, your assumption is that the company will grow their earnings by 25% this year.

Now, if I see that, you know, in the example of Tesla, if I see their PE is running towards 70 or something or 80, I’m thinking to myself, are they going to grow by 40% this year?

No, I don’t think so, right?

So let me sell a little bit of it and take some profit.

Well, at the same time, I do still think it’s, you know, it’s still in upward motion.

The stock market still is, you know, we’re still in the bull market.

Things are going great.

I don’t want to take all my money off the table.

I just want to take some profit.

So when that’s going on, I sell a part of my position, but when I start seeing like in 2022, when I started at the beginning, right?

When I started seeing with the whole, the rate cuts and everything, I was like, yeah, I don’t want to have, I don’t want to deal with this at all.

I don’t like it.

I don’t know what’s going to happen.

I’m cool, you know, with my S&P.

I don’t need 10%.

And I don’t want to make some extra money because I don’t want to deal with this stuff.

So I just sold sold everything.

I didn’t didn’t hold any stocks part of my 10%, right?

And then by the end of that year, I started to come back in a little bit because I felt like what?

Nasdaq is down 30%.

Let me buy some Nasdaq ETF part of my 10%.

Right.

So like the 10% is very flexible.

I can use it to buy one or two individual stocks.

I can use it potentially to add more exposure to the Nasdaq.

That’s something that I only recommend to folks if they’re like obsessed with investing and with the stock market and most folks are just not.

No.

I mean, it’s like you mentioned the stress test of 2020, I think doing the core explore kind of strategy of having that core portfolio of index funds and then an explore kind of portfolio of 10% to do whatever you like.

I think it’s a good way to scratch that itch, especially for people who are like, oh, index funds sounds so boring.

You need some excitement.

It’s like, cool, fine.

Do that 10%.

See how you feel.

Because I mean, I definitely do that a little bit.

I’d say like it’s even a smaller part.

It’s probably more like 5% of my portfolio.

Yeah.

What I kind of realize is I’m like, yeah, I don’t love it.

I did scratch that itch and I definitely did, I think set that part of my portfolio up based off of emotions and just what was going on over the past couple of years.

But I’m much more happy and just feel more comfortable with just the index funds, just keep it simple.

But that’s something that I had to realize myself and I think a lot of other people need to test it out, see what works and doesn’t work.

Yeah, that’s worth more than anything, right?

It’s worth more than the extra money that you might earn with that trading.

So at least you have more peace of mind and I think, yeah, that’s what it’s about.

Yeah.

So just to kind of sum up some of the great kind of things that we touched on, the last one I feel like was really, if you are going to invest and you do want to kind of speculate a little bit, have a strategy, have that, this is where we’re going to stay within, because that will mitigate a lot of risk, but still give you that kind of freedom if you feel like you need it.

Patience, we touched on quite a bit.

I think that’s really important and hard to do, because, like you mentioned, patience doesn’t mean waiting a few hours or a week.

It’s years.

Sometimes it’ll take you years of investing to see the fruits of your labor, and you’ve got to be comfortable with that.

But then, as you’ve probably experienced as well, there’s definitely a tipping point where you’re like, oh, hello.

Now there’s some momentum going on, but you have to stay in it to really see that.

And of course, the biggest one, which is a really big theme in your book, is emotions.

We’ve all got them.

They’re not bad.

They tell us something important, but when it comes to finance, we really can’t let them make our decisions for us because they don’t know what’s going on.

They think they know better than us.

No, sometimes the simplest path is the best.

And stoicism is a really great strategy.

If you don’t know a foundation to stick with, I think stoicism is a great, not only for your finances, but for your life, it’s a really great, like, huh, okay.

Let’s always go back to that if you need that kind of anchor or that guiding light, which I think often, again, we get lost in the mix.

There’s a lot of noise out there and it’s hard to hear our own thoughts and our own voices.

So I appreciate you coming on the show, The Stoic Path to Wealth, a great read.

I want to say I read it in like two days.

It was very easy.

It was just because I really enjoyed it, but I’m like, oh, this is it.

I love this stuff.

And so it was very easy to read.

Do you want to kind of share more where people can grab a copy?

Also, let people know what are some of the other books they can explore after reading The Stoic Path to Wealth?

Yes, I have another book on Stoicism in general, and how you can apply it to personal life, which is called Focus on What Matters.

And yeah, one of my most popular books within my readers is Do It Today.

And that’s my philosophy for productivity.

And yeah, those are kind of the most popular books.

Amazing.

And where can people follow you or find your website?

Where can they find more information?

Yeah, so I’m not really active on social media.

Oh man, that’s the dream.

I wish I could be offline all the time and just do this and talk to people like you.

Yeah, exactly.

And that is my favorite thing.

Like we were talking about social media earlier, right?

Like the great thing about podcasts or blogs is that you can really, you know, when you’re listening or reading, have this dialogue with the folks that you’re listening to or reading.

And yeah, I do that personally with my blog, right?

Like I write a weekly newsletter and I always publish one article every week.

And my newsletter is called Wise and Wealthy.

And yeah, it’s available for free on my website, dariusforoux.com.

And yeah, that’s actually the only thing that I consistently do.

I also have a podcast, but it’s very occasional, like some Q&A.

But yeah, the newsletter is my main thing.

Amazing.

Great.

Well, I’m definitely going to check that out.

It’s free.

I love free.

So sign up.

Get in there.

Sign up to that.

Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show, Darius, to share your wealth of knowledge.

And I know this book is going to help a lot of people.

I really enjoyed it, so I highly recommend it.

So thanks so much for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I really appreciate it.

And that was my episode with Darius Foroux.

Make sure to check out a few important links.

First, go to the stoicpathtowealth.com for more information about his book, and then his personal website, dariusforoux.com.

That’s dariusforux.com.

I will include information about lots of things that we talked about, including the links and where you can find him.

And also, I should mention his amazing newsletter called Wise and Wealthy.

It is free, so make sure to subscribe.

It is a very popular newsletter.

But if you just go to the show notes for this episode, I will include everything there.

You can easily find it if you go to jessicamoorhouse.com/podcast and find the episode.

Or if you know the episode number of whatever episode you’re listening to, it is typically in the title for the episode or in the description.

There’s usually a link to the show notes.

Just go there and then it will direct you right to where you want to be.

And then you can check out Darius’ other amazing books.

And I’ll just give you a list of what some of those are so you can read those after reading The Stoic Path to Wealth.

So he’s got Focus on What Matters, The Road to Better Habits, Highly Productive Remote Work, What It Takes to Break Free, Do It Today, Think Straight, Win Your Inner Battles, and Procrastinate Zero.

So a lot of great books on how to just self-improve.

And aren’t we all looking for a way to improve ourselves?

I certainly am.

I certainly am.

And again, I’m giving away a copy of Darius’ book, The Stoic Path to Wealth.

If you go to jessicmoorhouse.com/contest, that is where you can find that and entered win and I will be adding more books to that page with other authors.

And there’s a lot of authors coming on this season of the show.

And some of our close friends of mine are very excited to be able to share some of those episodes with you.

So that is it for me, but not quite, actually.

This is a very exciting week because it’s the premiere week of season 19.

I actually have a special bonus episode for you, a solo episode that will air tomorrow on Thursday.

So make sure to check that out.

I am going to be sharing more details that I’m sure you’ve been waiting for about my book.

I can reveal the details, the title, the cover, everything I can reveal and just share what my journey has been like so far and what you can expect.

I’m very, very excited to be really at the kind of tail end of this book journey.

So don’t miss that episode airing tomorrow.