I Moved to Arizona for the Winter: The 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Snowbirding

Tyler Gardner (0:00)

Pull back into yourself, stop running, because wherever you go, you take yourself with you. There's a version of retirement planning, and I hear it constantly. If I could just get to the place, if I could just reach the number, then I will be the version of myself I'm trying to get to. And I'm here to tell you, that is not how it works.

Hello friends, this is Tyler Gardner welcoming you to another episode of Your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance and investing. So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be.

Before we get into today's episode, I am genuinely thrilled to share this with you. After three years of listening to your questions and locking myself in a room to answer as many of them as I can, I decided it would be slightly more efficient to write a book. So I did. It's called Real Wealth, published by Norton out December 6th of this year. Yeah, the kid whose parents thought he might be illiterate till he was 21 and whose high school English teachers passed him on the condition he never took another English class. And I'm dang proud of how it turned out and what I believe it can and will do for all of you. Here are three quick reasons to pre-order right now. And I'll tell you exactly how at the end. One, you'll actually finish this book. I know, low bar, except it really isn't. I've spent two decades watching people's eyes go blank the moment I said asset allocation. I took that personally. This is my response. You know the look, and I refuse to be the cause of it. Number two, the number one comment I get thousands of times is, you left something out. You're right. I'm making 60 second videos about topics that deserve 60 minutes. This is my answer. Everything in one place. No countdown clock, no algorithm cutting me off. And number three, what I'm most excited about, every month through December, I'll be releasing an exclusive pre-order incentive, and April's might already be my favorite. Pre-order this month and you're automatically in for a free two hour live event on Wednesday, May 6th, where I'll be expanding on some of the ideas present in the book and answering some of your most commonly asked practical and theoretical investing questions. This will be exclusively for people who pre-order. Here's all you need to do. Go to tylergardner.com, pre-order the book, then click the button on the page that says you've pre-ordered. Two minutes, you're in, and I genuinely cannot wait to do this with all of you. Real Wealth, December 6th. Your future self will appreciate having it all in one place. And now on with the show.

This week, I'm going to do things a little differently, and it's a bit of an experiment. I want to share some more personal money, finance and life lessons this week, instead of the usual textbook lessons. So, I'm 43 years old, I have a financial podcast, I have a book coming out in December that I'll share more about later, a wife who is extraordinarily patient and amazing, with my posting daily cringey videos of myself walking through the woods talking about investing, and a bloodhound who has made our lives better than anything money could ever buy. And this past winter, for the first time in my life, I became a snowbird, as some of you know based on the change in background from the forests of Vermont to the desert trails in Sedona, Arizona. For those unfamiliar with the term, a snowbird is someone who leaves the cold weather of their home state to spend some part of the winter somewhere a little bit warmer. It's a lifestyle associated primarily with retirees, people who own linen pants, and individuals who have discovered that their joints now have opinions about the weather. I am none of these things, well, maybe the joints part, but we did it anyway. We packed up the car, loaded the hound in the back seat, where she immediately arranged herself in a way that suggested the entire vehicle was hers and we were merely permitted to operate it. We drove from Vermont to Sedona, Arizona. We would be there for two months, new landscape, new life, or so we thought. I want to tell you about five things that two months of snowboarding taught me, and I want to tie every single one of them back to money, because this is a financial podcast and I have a reputation to protect. But I also want to get to something at the end of this episode that I think is the most important lesson of all. Something a very smart Roman said about 2,000 years ago that turns out to be just as applicable to your retirement relocation fantasy as it was to ancient philosophy.