Money for the Rest of Us · J. David Stein

Burnout, Breaks, and the Courage to Spend with David Bach

November 19, 2025·42 min·2 clips

David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire, reveals why you shouldn't be afraid to spend money on mini-retirements or taking Social Security early.

David Bach starts early. The setup follows a childhood shaped by investing classes, municipal bonds, and the path from financial advisor to bestselling personal finance author. Then the conversation shifts. Saving still matters, but the focus moves toward burnout, rest, family, health, and the permission to use money while life is still open. Bach had the credentials. He also hit exhaustion at 46, took a mini-sabbatical, and used the break to rethink his work and his life. The practical question is blunt. If retirement planning assumes decades of healthy leisure, what happens when health changes first? Bach pushes back on waiting. He cites a health expectancy age of 63 in the United States, compares it with 67 in Europe, and argues that real clients do not always get the long, able-bodied retirement their plans seem to promise. That point carries the episode. Money matters, but health decides whether those saved options are still usable. The host ties it to a familiar idea: live like you are already retired, or at least build a life now that does not make retirement the only way out. Bach's move to Italy becomes the example. He and his family planned nine months in Florence. Six years later, they were still there. The discussion stays practical. Part-time work, family, the rhythm of daily life abroad, and the awkward truth that more money does not automatically make more time. The closing returns to education, pointing listeners toward investment principles, checklists, episodes, articles, and books, with the reminder that the material is general education rather than personal investment advice.

As heard by us

A retirement conversation that argues for spending sooner, not just saving longer.

David Stein uses David Bach's story to ask a plain but sticky question: when does saving turn into a way of putting off life? The episode moves from Bach's childhood around his father's investment classes to burnout at 46, a mini-sabbatical, and a later move to Florence.

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Why you'd press play

You want a retirement conversation that makes spending feel like a serious decision.

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