Why Millions are Leaving This State for That State

Surprising statistics might lead you to relocate too

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, April 21st. A new survey by Lending Club found that half of the people who are earning $100,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck. How can that be? Well, one New York financial technology firm has looked at the 76 largest cities in the US to see what a $100,000 salary is actually worth after taxes based on the cost of living.

The worst city in the country? New York City. If you earn $100,000 in New York City, that's like earning only $35,000 a year. The other most expensive cities in the country: Honolulu, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Where does a $100,000 go the furthest? Memphis, Tennessee. Earning $100,000 there actually feels like earning $86,000. That's two and a half times more than somebody earning $100,000 in New York City. And what about the other cities of the top 10? Seven of them are in Texas: El Paso, Corpus Christi, Lubbock, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Arlington, near Dallas. The other two cities in the top 10 are Oklahoma City and St. Louis.

This is a career planning conversation and a college planning conversation. Key questions: What career are you in? What career are you going to suggest for your kids and grandkids? What college degrees are you going to let them pursue and where are you going to live? What quality of life are you going to have based on how much you spend in the city you're living in? And if you're a financial advisor, are you talking about all of this with your clients for themselves as well as for their children and their grandchildren? If you're a financial advisor, this is how you demonstrate value to your clients. 

If you're going to spend $150,000 in six years to get a degree in a field that pays only $50,000 a year, living in a city where it feels like earning only $25,000 that's just plain dumb. The financial stress will ruin your life, destroy your marriage. Let's remember, money or the lack of it is the number two cause of divorce in the US. Infidelity is number one. Don't tell me you want to follow your passion. Fine. Follow your passion. But that's a hobby, not a career.

And don't tell me you'll scrimp. Being the poorest person in a rich neighborhood - that's no way to live. Far better to be the richest person in a poor neighborhood. Big fish, small pond, right? And don't tell me you'll adjust like buying a house in the boonies, 40 miles from work where housing is cheaper. You can get some nice land with a nice picket fence, back yard for the kids to play in. That's a terrible move all around. You'll have a two-hour commute to work every day. You'll be out of the house by 6 a.m. You won't get home until 8 p.m. You'll never see your spouse and kids. The stress on the family will be huge, and you'll spend a ton of money on the car, gas maintenance, repairs, and that car will fall in value. 

And that cheaper house you're buying in the boonies, that's not going to rise in value over time as much as the more expensive house that you can't afford because it's closer to the city suburbs. Pay attention to the cost of living and the compensation you can earn from your career. The ideal is to have comp that is high and costs that are low - high, low. You can manage high, high and low, low. Just make sure you don't put yourself in a position of low, high or your life will be awful.

Advisors, you need to have a candid conversation with your clients and their college bound children. And you also need to think about your own situation and that of your family. Your advisor can talk with you about ways you can improve your situation, even if that means moving to Texas or changing careers or frankly, doing both. I'm not kidding.

New tech is forcing us to ask all of ourselves whether our careers are going to exist in 10 years. And Texas is an option you really ought to consider. Just look at Dallas and Fort Worth, for example. That area is now a metroplex. There are 8 million people who live there. Since 2010, the population in this metroplex of Dallas-Fort Worth, has grown 22% - three times the national rate. It's the fastest growth rate of every big US city. And the economy in Dallas-Fort Worth has grown 46%. Pretty soon, Dallas-Fort Worth will be the country's third largest city, beating out Chicago.

Texas as a whole has been growing like that. There are now 30 million people living in Texas, an 18% increase since 2010. And the state's economy is up 39%. Of all the jobs created in the United States since 2020, a third of them, 35%, are in Texas. The GDP of Texas is now $2 trillion. That's bigger than Canada. If Texas was a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world. It exports $500 billion of goods every year. That's 25% of America's total. Only half of that is from fossil fuels and chemicals. So don't just think Texas is an oil country. The rest of what Texas exports is computers, airplanes and a lot more.

Oh, and speaking of fossil fuels, guess who's a leader in green energy? Texas. It produces more wind power than any other state. Texas has installed more solar panels in the past year than any other state and 85% more than California. Yeah, we always look at California as the big deal state. California has the most people. It's got the biggest share of our economy. But people are moving out of California and into Texas. And at the rate they're doing that, by 2040, Texas will have more people and a bigger economy than California.

In the last year alone, a quarter of a million people moved to Texas from other states. Why are so many people doing this? Well, for one thing, it's cheap to live there. The cost of living is 7.5% below the national average. Housing is 15% cheaper. There's no state income tax either. The result? The typical home in Texas compared to California, Texas houses are 56% cheaper than similar houses in California. And let's face it, Texas has a lot of wide-open spaces. It's the second biggest state after Alaska. Fort Worth alone is bigger than all five boroughs of New York City, but it only has one tenth the population.

Of the Fortune 500, 54 of them are headquartered in Texas - more than any other state. And it's not just because it's easy to recruit workers who want an affordable place to live. Texas also has the benefit of being in the middle of the country. Everywhere is within an easy flight. And political power and the Texas political power is rising. Texas has 38 members of Congress, 15% of the Electoral College votes.

And in case you're wondering, whites are a minority in Texas. 60% of the population is nonwhite. If you're wondering where you should live and what career you ought to pursue or where your kids ought to live and work, if you're struggling to save, if money is always on your mind, you can fix it so that your future is the future you aspire to. Now's the time to start working on it.

If you're a financial advisor, you've got to realize that these core fundamental issues cannot be ignored for your clients. And if you're not an advisor, you need to be talking about these topics with your children and your grandchildren. And everybody ought to be asking about Texas.

Hey, today I'm appearing on downtown Josh Brown's podcast, The Compound and Friends, hosted by Josh Brown of Ritholtz Wealth. It's a 90-minute conversation with my friend Josh. We're going to be talking about all the current events in the finance world.. And already today, yeah, it's been busy, I've already done a two-hour private breakfast with a couple of dozen financial advisors hosted by Bitwise. They're going to be more of these events. So if you are a financial advisor and you'd like to attend one of them, click the link in the show notes.

And coming up on Tuesday, April 25th at 2 PM Eastern, I'm hosting a one-hour webinar: How Crypto is Really Going to Change the World. I'm going to be sharing with you 12 real world use cases. Joining me is Matt Hougan, the CIO of Bitwise Asset Management. It's a free online virtual event for financial advisors. You can join in, too. If you're an advisor, you get one CE credit. Register at DACFP.com.

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Exclusive Interview: Crypto taxes and regulation with Professor Del Wright Jr.

Insights from the author of A Short and Happy Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Crypto.

Ric Edelman: You're listening to The Truth About Your Future. I want to introduce you to Del Wright Jr. He is professor at UMKC Law School. That's the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Del, great to have you on the program. 

Del Wright Jr.: My pleasure being here. 

Ric Edelman: Del teaches tax finance, business securities and blockchain and crypto. He's the author of A Short and Happy Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Crypto. And we've got a link in the show notes, so you can order a copy of that book. And he's writing a new book, Crypto and Blockchain Law. In a nutshell, it's going to be published this year. I'm certainly awaiting that. Del has a master's in public policy from Harvard, a law degree from the University of Chicago, and he's a former federal prosecutor, former reservist with the Marine Corps as well. Thank you for that service, Del. He's also a member of our faculty at DACFP, the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, where Del teaches one of the modules in our course for financial advisors learning about blockchain and digital assets, focusing on crypto and the law. And that's where Del I want to focus here. There aren't terribly many lawyers paying a lot of attention to crypto. What got you to pay attention as an attorney, to focus on bitcoin and blockchain?  

Del Wright Jr.: Well, interestingly enough, it was one of my students and what happened was I was teaching securities law and one of my students in the middle of class said, All right, what do you know about bitcoin? And I said, I don't know anything about it because at the time, and this is back in 2017, I didn't. You know, I had heard about it but never really looked into it. But I did understand that there were some securities law issues there, and I felt like I was doing a disservice to my students by not figuring out what this thing was so I could have an answer. And, you know, like a lot of people in this space, I fell down the rabbit hole. And, you know, it's become the thing that I am most interested in. And I certainly have enjoyed the time I've spent those last, you know, I guess six years now, almost six years of working in this space. And it's been great. 

Ric Edelman: So what made you find this subject so intriguing? 

Del Wright Jr.: Well, my master's was in finance, but it was more in finance policy. And a lot of digital assets because of this new asset class, there's a lot of financial policy that hasn't been written yet. And there are lots of things that are, well, how do we deal with this? What about the risk? And, you know, what about all these financial policy issues? And it was right up my alley. It's something that if there was crypto when I was in grad school, that's what I probably would have focused on. 

Ric Edelman: So, you know, it's interesting, whenever I talk to people about crypto, they tend to regard it as a US thing, but crypto is really a global thing and governments around the world are beginning to pay a lot of attention to this, aren't they? 

Del Wright Jr.: Oh, absolutely. And it's interesting that people would even think that crypto is a US thing because a lot more of crypto happens in other places, mostly because those other places have at least a much clearer set of rules for how to operate crypto type businesses. And you know, for example, even in places like Hong Kong, which, you know, you're talking about a government there that is less receptive generally, but many crypto businesses have been formed in Hong Kong. And, you know, there are a lot of jurisdictions around the world that are taking a much more active role in this new asset class because it brings in jobs. Unfortunately, the US is kind of lagging because that lack of regulatory clarity has hindered a lot of US businesses from being competitive with their global counterparts. 

Ric Edelman: So where do you see the trend going for the US? If we're lagging, are we going to see clarity from a legislative or regulatory perspective any time soon? 

Del Wright Jr.: You know, absent the FTX debacle, I probably would have said yes. But now the public perception is crypto. And a lot of people who really don't understand the space say crypto fraud and therefore legislators are less likely to kind of believe in it. And therefore they say, ‘Oh, crypto is bad, we have to stop it’ and you have to overcome that before you can have effective crypto policy. You can't just think, ‘Oh, crypto bad, we have to stop people from doing it’. And so I think we're going to lag for a while until it becomes a situation where it's so clear that we are hurting US interests by not coming up with a comprehensive set of rules. 

Ric Edelman: Isn't that a little ironic that they're saying that because of the FTX fraud, we don't want to create rules around crypto, but that only perpetuates the ability for fraud to occur. 

Del Wright Jr.: Are you looking for rationality in Congress? 

Ric Edelman: So sorry. Excuse me. I don't know what I was thinking. 

Del Wright Jr.: Right. But you're absolutely right. It's, you know, a lot of the things that happen in many of the recent debacles wouldn't have happened if there was a comprehensive set of regulations to say, okay, you can do this this way, that weren't draconian. And you know, what US regulation is right now is kind of and if you've ever been to a fair, you're going to be familiar with this - it's whack-a-mole. It's like, Oh, we don't like this. Why don't we like it? Because we just heard about it and it doesn't seem, we don't know, so let's whack it. And what that has evolved into is something called regulation by enforcement. Yeah. And what you have is a number of different players say, well, we will do this and we think it's fair. And the government says, Nope, don't like that one. And so it's hard for those players to really understand what they can and can't do. 

Ric Edelman: It's really important that people understand what you mean by the phrase regulation by enforcement. It's something that I've dealt with for decades as an investment advisor, heavily regulated by the SEC, FINRA and others. But a lot of consumers don't fully comprehend what it really means. Imagine it this way. You're driving on a highway. You don't know what the speed limit is because there are no speed limit signs. So you're driving along and then you get pulled over and the cop says you were driving too fast. They're governing the speeds by writing tickets instead of posting the speed limits. That's regulation by enforcement. 

Del Wright Jr.: Absolutely. 

Ric Edelman: It's very frustrating because we don't know what the rules are. We don't know if we're breaking the rules or not until after the fact. And it's a very expensive and difficult way to run a business. And it causes a lot of companies to not engage in business at all. I think this explains why so many Wall Street firms and banks and brokerage firms and insurance companies are not fully engaging in crypto because they simply don't know what the rules are and they don't want to get pulled over. 

Del Wright Jr.: Right. In crypto, it's actually a little bit worse because there are two general types of entities with respect to financial transactions and those are decentralized exchanges or DeFi transactions and centralized exchanges or CeFi. And for the most part the regulation has been applied to CeFi, which those institutions could be the on ramp for a lot of good regulation. For example, if a bank says, ‘Oh, we can do crypto this way because the banking regulators have said this is okay’, it's a lot easier to onboard. But now those banks are more or less afraid to engage in crypto because they don't know where they're going to violate the speed limit, like you said. And what's happened is for the people who really know what they're doing, they can do everything they want using DeFi, but you have to be very sophisticated because again, you're basically saying I'm on a private road and I can drive as fast as I want, but if I lose control because I don't know, there's a curve coming up. Oh well, I guess I lost. And that's kind of the state we're in. 

Ric Edelman: How long do you think the current situation will exist before we finally get to where we think it ought to be? 

Del Wright Jr.: Honestly, that's a hard thing to say. But I think when there's some technological things with respect to some crypto and particularly I'm talking about Ethereum and how fast Ethereum is and whether or not you can really start to put consumer applications on Ethereum. And right now you can't because Ethereum is quite frankly just too slow. But once Ethereum gets to the point where it can compete with things like Visa for transaction speed, a lot of these crypto companies are going to become a lot more viable and I think the government's going to have to catch up to make some of this stuff work because there are going to be so many economic reasons why people want to use it and everybody's going to say, Wait, get out of the way, government. We are losing to the rest of the world. And I think it's not really going to happen until that point because for the most part, it's a fairly narrow group of people who are being hurt by government policy. 

Ric Edelman: Define who those are. 

Del Wright Jr.: Those are the first movers into the crypto space in the financial sector. And those first movers are like, we can't do X, we can't do Y, we can't do Z because there's regulatory uncertainty about doing X, Y and Z. And so they aren't doing it, but the rest of the world is like, Well, we'll do it. And they are offering that to their citizens. But again, it's not a mainstream application yet. Once it becomes a mainstream application, then you're going to see something change. 

Ric Edelman: So given all of that from your perspective, does that reach a conclusion that crypto is a temporary fad, it's going to stay a small niche, or is it a powerhouse innovation that's going to change global commerce? 

Del Wright Jr.: I am very much of the opinion that it's the latter because there are a couple of crypto-based applications that I think have absolutely phenomenal real-world impact, and one of those is something called supply chain, i.e. the ability to know the provenance of something you've purchased. And you know, a good example, and I use this example a lot, but in China, if you go into supermarket and you want beef, you don't know where that beef came from. And in the Chinese consumer market, there is a great demand for Australian beef. Because the Chinese, as consumers, believe Australian beef is better than Chinese beef. But when you go in the supermarket, you don't know where that beef came from. You're just saying, “Oh, it might be packaged as Australian beef.” But you as a consumer have no way to know whether that's true. There are blockchain based solutions to say you can scan a QR code and know that that beef came from Australia, it came from this farm, on this date, it was slaughtered on this date. It was shipped on this date. You can get all those details and those types of products also are very hard to fake. 

Del Wright Jr.: You can't just slap a QR code on it and get that result because, you know, explaining why that is would require another show. But that is a real-world application to blockchain and those types of applications are going to be extremely valuable. And I kind of view blockchain at this point as like the Internet in the 90s. Oh, this is an interesting thing - you can get on AOL and you can go and you can talk to your friends and find out these few things - versus the Internet today, which allows us to have this conversation on Zoom. People didn't really think Zoom was all that important until Covid. And we're in that same space where it's not yet the super asset class it will be. But by the same token, Bitcoin has the market cap of something about the same as Walmart. So I'm like, yeah. And bitcoin has no advertising. Like there's never been a bitcoin ad like, hey, buy bitcoin. None. Nothing. 

Ric Edelman: That's really true because of course Bitcoin is not a company. It's not a product. There are no employees. So yeah, it's just something that somebody invented and we don't even know who that person or group of people were. You know, it's interesting that you mention the notion of Australian beef in the Chinese market. This kind of development is happening slowly under the radar without really people paying a lot of attention. But it's being used elsewhere, not just with Australian beef in China. Norwegian salmon fishermen are using the technology for that reason. Breitling watches are doing it as well and so is Parmigiano Reggiano, one of the biggest cheese makers in Italy. They're all using blockchain technology to prove the product is theirs and not a knockoff or counterfeit. So I think you're exactly right that it's going to be a big deal and we just have to wait and watch for that to occur. And that raises the question of when should you invest or engage in this? Do you do it now before any of that happens so that you're in very early and theoretically at lower prices? Or do you wait for it to be more proven out and legitimate to reduce investment risk at the risk of reducing investment profits? And along those lines, as I want you to tackle that question, well, there have been surveys done lately that show us two things. One is that about half of the nation's financial advisors say that they personally own bitcoin, but only 12% of them are recommending bitcoin to their clients. So talk about this as an investment thesis. Should people buy now or should they wait? And what are your thoughts about advisors personally buying it but not talking to their clients about it? 

The Investment Thesis of Bitcoin

Del Wright Jr.: This is my personal belief. In general, I separate crypto into two categories bitcoin and not bitcoin. And the reason is bitcoin, quite frankly, is the only mature crypto in the sense that it's never going to do anything it doesn't do now. Bitcoin basically wants to be digital gold and the world's reserve digital currency and that's its mission. It's pretty much satisfied the mission. The only issue is adoption, right? And if you think about it, there are only ever going to be 21 million bitcoin. 19 million have already been produced, which means there are only 2 million left and 20% of them have been lost. And so if you think about it, just from a purely economic standpoint, if they do what they are supposed to do, i.e. they are the world's reserve digital currency and there are only 21 million of them and there are 6 billion people walking around on the planet - should you own one? And the answer is, well, if you believe in this market, then yes, you should own one. Get in now. And if you think about kind of the history of the price of bitcoin, granted there's been a lot of volatility, but that volatility has been significantly reduced in the last two years. 

Bitcoin used to be the ultimate uncorrelated asset up until 2020. Now bitcoin is fairly strongly correlated with the S&P 500 for, you know, I don't know why, but it is and there are macro factors there. It's also very highly correlated with the Fed's actions. So for me, I think getting into bitcoin, generally speaking, is a good idea because if your time horizon is 5 to 10 years, my personal belief is absolutely. I think bitcoin could 5X to 10X in 5 to 10 years. For everything else, you have to somewhat look at it like a business, right? Ethereum has a case. We want to be effectively the operating system for blockchain assets. That's their market case. And there are some other infrastructure plays with respect to that. For example, Ethereum needs outside data for some of the smart contracts to work well. Who provides that outside data? Well, there are a few companies out there that do it. Those are infrastructure plays. But the one thing that I hesitate whenever we're talking to someone on the investment thesis, is remember the profits from a company go to the shareholders. The profits from a coin don't necessarily go to the coin holders. 

That means just because something is adopted and used doesn't necessarily mean it's going to realize a higher price in that asset and use that to say you need to understand the economics, particularly the token economics of every coin before you make an investment. And so personally, I'm like, half the money goes into bitcoin, half into the more speculative plays. Understanding that this is basically Venture Capital. And that's one of the other things I like about it. For most investors, they can't get access to VC because they're not accredited. This is the only space where you can really get access to VC in the crypto space. And so that would be my investment thesis. But you know, again, I don't like giving advice because, you've got to think of time horizons. I tell people if you're in for just one year, don't invest in crypto. It could go anywhere in one year. If you're investing, if you're talking about a five-year horizon and you have a target of, say, annualized returns of 20%, I think you're probably okay. But it depends. If it was guaranteed, I'd be doing this from my boat. 

Ric Edelman: And you're not, at least not yet. So this podcast is listened to not only by a lot of financial advisors, but also a lot of investors. So spend a moment. Let's talk to each one. What is your key message to financial advisors? 

Del Wright Jr.: My key message to the financial advisors is understand how to give advice about crypto to your clients because you're doing them a disservice by not talking about it at all and saying, Oh, it's too risky. I don't want to go into this whole thing with this investor and saying, Look, look at it as an asset class. Do enough research to say, here are the positives, here are the negatives. You make your choice. This past Wednesday I presented to a group of financial professionals about crypto as an asset class and told them, I'm not trying to sell you. I'm not trying to tell you to buy anything. I'm trying to give you information so you can make an informed decision. And I think financial advisors should do the same thing, help their clients make an informed decision about crypto. And, you know, that would be the biggest thing that I would say and also understand the rules, right? Because there are lots of rules in this space. But it doesn't take a long time to understand how to properly own crypto and also safely own crypto because you know, it can be as simple as going to Coinbase and opening an account. But often it requires something else. And if so, there's a lot more potential risk of doing it wrong and losing your crypto. It's not that hard. It's a lot easier than it was when I got started. When I started, it was very easy to screw something up and lose access to your crypto. Now there's lots of ways to make sure that doesn't happen. But again, it's a different way of doing it and it's a lot harder than simply going to Schwab and saying, I want to open an account. 

Ric Edelman: And what would you say to individual investors? 

Del Wright Jr.: Think about your investment thesis. Why are you investing? Are you investing because you need this for retirement and I’m now only 30 years old?  Or are you investing in it at age 55 and want to make sure you don't lose any money. Once you set your risk parameters and you think about it, crypto can fit in to that. For example, if you're in your 20s or 30s, you might want to take a longer-term view because you want this wonderful asset that's going to be there for retirement. If you're in your 50s or 60s and you're like, I want to make sure I'm not losing. There are also some liquidity plays with respect to crypto where there are lots of ways to make passive income in crypto. But it takes a little bit more understanding of what you're doing. There are platforms out there that will say if you hold crypto, you can borrow against your own crypto at, let's say 7%. And then the question is, well, especially if it's stablecoins and you're not really taking price risk on that. Can I earn more than 7% somewhere else? And if so, this is a pretty good deal to borrow against my own asset and not have to go to a bank or someone else to get funds to do this. So if you know, if you're going to buy a house or a rental property, you're like, oh, the rental property is going to yield 20%, I can borrow 7% from myself. No brainer, right? I mean, so there are lots of different ways to do it, but really just have a plan because one of the quotes I like to give my students is "a failure to plan is a plan to fail". 

Ric Edelman: And this is why it all begins with education, why you're a professor on this subject at a leading university and why we're so thrilled that you're a member of the faculty at the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. If you are an advisor, I encourage you to get your certificate in blockchain and digital assets. You'll be able to spend a lot of time with Del in that course where he'll share with you his knowledge. And it's been really, really helpful, Del, to have you as part of this. I invite you to get a copy of Del's book, A Short and Happy Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Crypto, and his new book, Crypto and Blockchain Law. Del Wright Jr., professor at UMKC Law School, thanks so much for joining us on the show today. 

Del Wright Jr.: It was absolutely my pleasure. 

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Self-Care with Jean Edelman The Power of Small Moments

Jean Edelman: Great to be with you this week. This week, let's go back and talk a little bit more about self-care. Why is it that maybe we don't put enough of it into our day? I was thinking if we broke it down into micro moments in our day, maybe we could find a little bit more time for self-care. So the micro moments are the moments in between, the moments in between a meeting or maybe a meal, or maybe you're driving somewhere. It's just micro moments. And if we put them into our awareness, maybe we can fit some more moments into our day. And they all count as self-care. It’s about taking a breath, maybe a little stretch, observing how we feel just to bring us back into some balance. It's being aware.

Are we out of balance? Are we stressed out a little bit? Are we doing a little bit too much? The micro moment can just be that moment that just brings us back into our body and into our awareness. It can start when we wake in the morning, maybe before we jump out of bed. Take a couple of full, deep breaths. When we get out of bed, maybe do a couple of stretches, maybe some little light yoga poses as we prepare for the day. There's lots of little opportunities to stretch and breathe and plant our feet on the floor.

Eating breakfast, that's a nice time to take some micro moments to just have some self-care. Just tune in and be in tune with ourselves. The other great opportunity is the weather's getting better. Maybe we can plan a walk after lunch or plan a walk after dinner.

The biggest key to self-care is just tuning into ourselves. And so step one, how are we feeling? Are we eating? How often? How much are we eating regularly throughout the day? Are we sleeping? Are we sleeping too little? Are we sleeping too much? Are we connected with others? Are we talking with others? If we've got an issue, are we using our journal as an outlet? Are we creating some movement in our day or a week with some yoga, tai chi? Getting our walks in?

The beauty of each day is that we get to create it. We get to make it what we need and we can flow into our day. Those little micro moments where we can have some self-care. The biggest thing is to remember to just have awareness. So the other thing that I think for self-care is to schedule fun. The weather's getting better. Go find a new hobby. I started watercolors. I have a friend coming over once a week and we just sit and we play with our watercolors. There's no right or wrong. It's just totally fun. But it's a new hobby. It's something for self-care for me. Find some art. Find some music. Get out in the garden. Have a movie night and game nights.

Maybe for self-care, we get out of our routine and go have a meal in a different room or maybe go have a picnic somewhere. It's just a wonderful time of year to embrace ourselves and get those micro moments of self-care. Embrace it, enjoy it.

And so my word of the week is going to be real simple. It's going to be SELF. 

This S is to Save, to conserve. Why do we want to work ourselves to exhaustion every moment of the day? There's no fun in that. Find those micro moments, those little breaks during the day to reset, restore and replenish, and then we can go about our activities and engage with people and we'll be happier and we'll feel better. 

The E is to Enjoy, to savor and appreciate just ourselves. You know what? If nobody told you today, we're all good enough. We have what we need. Just enjoy the moment. 

The L is for Light, weightless and free. This is what we want in our micro moments. And you know what? We will want more of them once we start experiencing that. 

And you know what the F is for: Fantabulous. Stupendous. And amazing. That's what we are. I love fantabulous. 

So have a great week, everybody. Take care of you. Enjoy the weather and find those micro moments and have a fantabulous week. 

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