#254 – Getting Rich, Designing Your Life Afterwards, and Risk Management with Arvid Kahl and Daniel Vassallo

**Courtland Allen** (0:06)
What's up everybody, this is Courtland from indiehackers.com, and you're listening to the Indie Hackers Podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these Indie Hackers to discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of, so the rest of us can do the same.
Okay, we're here with Arvid Kahl and Daniel Vassallo, two Indie Hackers who've been on the show before. They're both very successful. They've both made a lot of money doing, I guess following two very different paths. And I would say they're both great audience builders and teachers who have big followings on Twitter.
And right now we're in the middle of talking about inflation, which I know literally nothing about. But Daniel, you had a really funny tweet about inflation recently, where you talked about how inflation can't hurt you if you just avoid the red things on this graph and you shared kind of that classic graph of how prices have changed over time and the red things have gotten more expensive over the last 20 years, like textbooks, college, tuition, health care, housing and food. And the blue things have gotten cheaper over the last 20 years, like electronics, TVs, cell phone service, cars, et cetera. So is this what you're doing, Daniel? You're just avoiding inflation by avoiding the red things?

**Daniel Vassallo** (1:22)
Oh, I mean, it was mostly a joke, obviously. Like you, I know almost nothing about inflation, but like many people I worry about because I have some savings and I don't want it to disappear. But I think it was 90% joke, but there's some truth to it because I think when we see these inflation numbers, 8% inflation year on year, I mean, that's an average of lots of things and it doesn't apply to everyone the same, right? Depending on what you're spending money on, depending on what stage in your life you're in, depending on what you do, what you can avoid.
For example, you know, housing, you could, if you manage to secure a house, buy a house, you have a mortgage, you're pretty much insulated from rising housing costs. So, and that's usually a big expense, right? So I think it was something, at least some food for thought, but it was mostly a joke as well, because some things you can't really avoid, of course, you know, food.

**Courtland Allen** (2:12)
Yeah, so food is one of the red things. Like, how do I avoid food?

**Channing Allen** (2:15)
Well, I read that and I was like, so in other words, don't go to college, don't go to school, don't live in a house, just buy a computer and go live in a library.

**Courtland Allen** (2:26)
Yeah, don't get sick. Don't go to the hospital.

**Channing Allen** (2:29)
Well, but I mean, on that topic, who here has, Daniel, I think I saw on Twitter that you do have kids.

**Daniel Vassallo** (2:35)
I do, yes, two kids.

**Channing Allen** (2:36)
I mean, so what is your thought for them in school? I mean, they're gonna be-

**Courtland Allen** (2:40)
You think they're going to go to college?

**Daniel Vassallo** (2:42)
Yeah, they were born in 2014 and 2017, but they're sort of seven and five.
To be honest, I'm playing it by ear. Like Arvid, I also come from Europe. I come from a smaller country, Malta, which sort of has a different approach to education than the United States. And I'm learning as I go. I think what I'm trying to be careful with is to not set the expectation on my kids that they have to go to college or they have to do this or that. Otherwise, it's going to dent their opportunities or their self-worth or whatever. But I do see it a lot in the United States. Many of my friends here seem to put that expectation on themselves and on their kids.
To be honest, even with the choice of private schools and public schools, my kids are for now going to a public school. And I'll admit, private schools look better, look nicer. There's probably better education or whatever.
I think some of my friends spend tens of thousands, $50,000 a year, and they're just first grade, second grade. Is it worth it? I think I'd rather leave my kids maybe $100,000 or the equivalent with inflation for when they're 18 or 20

**Courtland Allen** (3:51)
$10 million, 10 years from now.

**Daniel Vassallo** (3:53)
Probably.
I'm not an educational maximalist. I know it sounds almost bad to say it, but I'm not saying to maximize my kids' education at all costs because like everything in life, if you maximize something, you're paying the cost somewhere else, either financially or some other sort of more subtle way, which is sometimes even more insidious.