Pet Perks, Vol. 3: Seven Little Things That Make Everything Better

David Gardner (0:00)

A baby smiles, you sink into a surprisingly great armchair, you discover a restaurant you'd never heard of, step outside into the first crisp morning of autumn, or say something to somebody you love, that you've thought for years and simply never said.

None of these is a big thing, and that, my fellow fools, is exactly the point. Pet perks are the little things that make everything better. Ordinary pleasures hiding in plain sight, made more valuable simply by noticing them. This week, seven of them all drawn from life. Some playful, some practical, and by the end, one, I hope, might even prompt you to pick up the phone. Pet Perks, Volume 3, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

SPEAKER_2 (0:53)

It's the Rule Breaker Investing Podcast with Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner.

David Gardner (1:02)

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing, and happy October to all. I was looking over the last few weeks of this podcast. We've been very investment-centric. Before last week's Mailbag, we did a Market Cap game show.

And before that, we did Chat GPT asking me, trying to stump me with investing questions. And before that, ten years later, five low-risk stocks for the next year. So stock, stock, stock. This time, this week, I'm gonna make it about life. This week, we returned to an episodic series that owes its existence to my friend and fellow Fool Ben Adams. Ben took one of this podcast's longest-running series, and that would be Pet Peeves, and he turned it on its head. How about Pet Perks? Ben asked the little things that make everything better. Optimism is contagious.

Yes, Pet Perks was born. In fact, Ben himself gave us a wonderful one just this past August. When I visited with him in the UK, Stratford-upon-Avon, he sent in his audio mailbag, talking about the pleasure, the Pet Perk of taking your kids to school in the morning. The scramble to get everybody dress-fed, packed up out the door, and there on time. Well, it can feel sometimes just like another logistical hassle from one day to the next, until you recognize that there will be a last one of those days, and suddenly something ordinary looks a lot more like a privilege. That to me is the spirit of this series. A pet perk doesn't need to be profound.

Noticing it is often what makes it profound. Our first two volumes wandered through investing business and life. This time, I'm going to stay entirely with life. Seven little things, some playful, some practical, a couple of perhaps more meaningful, all hiding more or less in plain sight. Before we get started, two bookkeeping items. The first is if you feel like, gee, David only speaks once a week on this podcast. I can't get enough of that. I need more. Well, I was on the Investing Unscripted podcast a couple of weeks ago with my friends, Jason and Jeff, Investing Unscripted, which is a highly capital F foolish look at the markets. And I just want to give them a plug. I want to thank Jason and Jeff for inviting me on to their podcast. In fact, it was number 222 I see it was September 9th. So several weeks ago, it was entitled David Gardner Rule Breakers AI and the Next Great Stocks. So if you haven't had a chance to listen either to that particular episode or Investing Unscripted at all, let me put in a good plug for two fellow fools and their foolish weekly podcast, Investing Unscripted. I'd also like to shout out someone else who's been on this podcast before, and that would be my friend Sam Horne, the author of Talking on Eggshells. I had Sam on as an author in August a year ago, summer 2025 Well, Sam just came out with her next book. It's called The Force for Good Project. It comes out in hardback in November, but you can actually get it now, right now on Kindle or in audiobook. And I'm really happy to say, Sam is looking for some bright lights around the country or the world, people who are forces in her terms, Forces for Good doing something positive. And I'm happy to say that this podcast and yours truly got called out in The Force for Good Project book. So I want to thank Sam because she has so many remarkable people and a fool in that book as well. The Force for Good Project, again, out in hardback in November, but out now if you're a Kindle reader like I am, or enjoy audio books. I think all of Sam's books are great. Haven't read this one yet, but I hope you'll enjoy it. All right. With all that said, it's Pet Perks time. Let's go to number one.