now I have a bit of funny news to share with you guys.

It's not that funny actually,

my wife left me.

Now, I know that some of you guys may be surprised

that I have a wife,

or had, and

I have a kid as well, a three year old child, he's great.

I love that guy,

But one day she just

took all of her stuff,

packed all of her bags,

took my kid and just left,

went back to Japan.

Now, I don't want to get too much into the details

because I think that this would be

disrespectful for her

and it's just way too much information, right, like

it's just random personal, small detailed information that

doesn't really help anybody,

but, first of all I do want to say that

the biggest victim in all of this is my son, and,

you know, I strongly believe that children should be growing

up with two parents,

so it is just an absolute shame that this had to happen

and you know we did have some issues,

I did not expect it would get this bad,

to this point.

I had always envisioned that I would be living

many, many years, to the end of my life with this person

and my son and that it would just be a great family,

but there were differences in culture,

in value, in where people wanted to be.

Her family was mostly over in Japan.

I tried my absolute hardest to get this to work

and I loved both of those people to the very end,

until they just decided to leave,

without really talking about it anymore

and broke off communications.

So,

(sharp exhale)

and the whole story is super complex and I might get into it

over time, but in this episode I specifically wanted to

focus on the money portion of this,

since sometimes I talk about personal finance,

but yeah, you can see that this whole apartment is empty.

It has been empty for a while now.

Let's talk about how money affects a relationship,

because I feel that success played a big role

in the destruction of our relationship

and it did this in ways that I did not expect.

Okay, so, firstly money acts as an escape hatch,

anytime you have the smallest little disagreement

or argument you can just press this button

and you'll be given boatloads of money

and you'll be on your way, you can get out,

and you can go travel or do whatever you want,

you can decide to become a single parent,

which is normally very difficult but,

it's actually quite easy if you have sufficient funds,

such that you don't even need to work,

you can just stay home and watch the kid and you know,

like for example, my parents, they came into the U.S.,

they were broke and that struggle became a bomb for them,

and there was no quick, easy escape hatch for either of them

they just had to learn to cooperate and work together

and that strengthened their relationship.

But, not so much, if you have some level of success,

and I feel like I have been climbing Mt. Everest

and halfway up

with my partner,

she decides to bail on me, and,

normally there's no way to bail on a mountain like that

you have to get to the top or keep struggling to go up.

But, when you have funds, you can just call in a helicopter

and say you want out,

and the helicopter would just take you out

and you don't have to do that struggle,

you don't have to mess around there

and then that leaves me stranded there,

like I don't know if I'll be able to get to the top anymore.

Now the second point here is that money makes

small acts of kindness,

trivial,

garbage,

like when I know I've messed up I will try

to apologize by taking my wife to seafood restaurants,

getting her to her favorite bakery,

getting her some chocolates,

buying her a diamond Tiffany necklace,

but she did not appreciate any of this stuff

because when you have, like, tons of money,

all of that just pales in comparison.

It just doesn't really matter anymore.

On her birthdays I would get her, like, a $30 item,

or something and then she would say that I did not

get her anything for her birthday.

Like, I just forgot it,

it's like,

well no,

I spent very hard coming up with this item,

but essentially what happens is that,

when I mess up,

It's just very difficult for me to apologize,

right?

Through small acts of kindness.

It needs to be to the level

on the scale of success

that I've reached,

like if Bill Gates were to buy you

a $20 dinner

you would think he doesn't mean it,

does that mean anything to him?

Well, it depends, right?

Like for me, my personal value of money has

not grown in proportion to the success

that I may have reached, such that,

you know,

$30 still feels like a lot to me, but,

for other people who maybe come in and

they just take a look at the wider picture

they think, that's nothing, that's nothing to this guy,

he doesn't, he doesn't care about that,

he doesn't care about me.

It essentially makes apologies extremely difficult

if not impossible to do, because,

small acts of kindness,

words, just carry no weight

at that point.

You know, the other thing is that

it made the best thing about me,

the defining factor about me,

my financial success, right?

It's very difficult to ignore,

it's the biggest elephant in the room

and I don't consider my wife to be a gold digger

by any means, I wouldn't have married her otherwise,

but there would just be moments where it would seem like

well, my funny personality,

my charm, it just carries no weight,

next to the biggest,

the best thing about me, which is that I'm successful

and I'm sure many other couples will experience this,

especially after an argument,

they may say

Well, why are they together? And then they may think back

to the good times, good old memories

and then they'll remember, yeah,

that's why they love this person, but,

when there's something so big, like a elephant in the room

which is the financial success of this person,

then you just immediately think to that.

It's like, oh yeah, right, this person is successful,

they're providing my livelihood

when,

it's better if you didn't have that

and then you force people to think a little bit more

and think about why the relationship may be valuable.

Now, the third point I have for you here is that

money just makes it extremely easy to solve problems,

it becomes the way that people start solving problems.

Right? Like,

it's just so easy to say,

hey, we're gonna give this another chance,

but you gotta buy me a new car,

or like, hey, you've gotta take me to a fancy restaurant

and it just became a way to solve problems

and then people start comparing themselves

and getting frustrated when they see, well,

how come everybody else is going to this $100 restaurant

and then we're not going there,

are we valuing each other?

Do we still love each other,

if we're not taking each other

out to the biggest, best experiences

that people at our level of success are attaining?

And then people just start feeling like,

maybe they're not being loved

because there's just so much more that we can afford

and yet we're not spending that to the maximum amount.

Whereas in reality, in my mind

there's just,

I mean, I think there's so many things

that may prevent people from spending, right?

It could simply be that a product is just not that good,

sometimes money is not the solution to your problems,

right?

Sometimes, there's just other things that you cannot buy

and that's why you can't go to a

nice restaurant, right?

Maybe you're just limited on time,

maybe the kids can't go.

Now, my fourth tip here is that success

generally goes hand in hand with

good intergenerational relationships.

So, this is a kind of tricky one but,

so let's put it this way, my wife

and my parents did not have the best relationships.

But, I knew that any wealth from my parents

would flow to me and then it would flow into my wife

and my kid,

I may die earlier, right?

So, it became kind of a concern,

if my wife and my parents

did not get along, then it would not

sound fair if the money would somehow flow into her

at the end, right?

If they're treating each other poorly.

So, I would always say, like,

we've got to at least

treat each other well and

it kind of became a requirement for me

and I started thinking, well, how can I set up

a proper financial instrument?

Like, some sort of living trust

in which I can ensure

that my parents could pass down their wealth to me

and yet it would not flow to my wife

because they did not have a great relationship.

So, it's funny, right? Like, I think that

when you get to a level of success and you really want

the money to flow to the right people,

such that, all of the hard work that you've earned

over the years of your life, goes to people that you love

and who love you back.

That level of wealth requires good relationships

among family

and if you just decide,

you know what, you don't like certain family members,

you're going to cut certain people off of your family,

you know, you're just not really interested in

developing good connections with people,

then that presents actually a barrier, to,

the flow of money across generations as people

build up wealth,

and, so, if you have no wealth,

you have no money, then you know, you could just

cut your parents off and it's okay.

Go off and be your own person and that works out okay.

But, it just doesn't quite work, if there's actually

some sort of money that ends up flowing,

from your parents to you

and then you're going to feel,

kind of bad actually,

probably guilty if you're getting money from people

that you have been mistreating the whole time

and maybe, you know, they probably wouldn't have

wanted you to have that.

And then the fifth and final point here

is that, to understand that money,

financial success does not bring you happiness.

If you take a look at us,