Welcome to Vested with Jared Bowers

Episode 001: Introduction – Vested with Jared Bowers

Synopsis

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Vested with Jared Bowers. This episode introduces the foundational philosophy of Everything is Investing (EII)—the idea that every choice we make is an allocation of our limited resources (time, energy, and money) toward a future return. Jared Bowers, a professional portfolio manager and educator, explains why he is moving beyond the world of high-finance to help listeners manage their "Life Portfolios." By applying the rigorous tools of professional investing to health, relationships, and personal growth, we can stop accidentally wasting our lives and start intentionally building them. This episode sets the stage for a journey into wealthy mindsets, portfolio management tools, and the discipline of "putting in the reps."

Timestamped Outline

I. The Foundation: Everything is Investing (EII)

• (0:34) Defining the Philosophy: EII is not just about money; it is a way of life. The core premise is that we are all portfolio managers, whether we realize it or not.
• (1:16) The Resource Triple-Threat: Every action is an investment of Time, Energy, and Money. These are our "macronutrients" of investing. How we spend them determines the "returns" we see in every area of our lives.

II. The Professional & The Teacher: Who is Jared Bowers?

• (1:46) The Day Job: Jared is a professional portfolio manager for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families. His expertise is in "taking mommy dollars and daddy dollars and making baby dollars"—buying, selling, and researching the public markets (stocks and bonds).
• (2:42) The Pro Bono Mission: Because his firm only works with the very wealthy, Jared spends significant time providing free financial advice to those who "aren't rich yet," helping them set plans and invest well.
• (3:32) The High School Classroom: For over a decade, Jared has volunteered to teach seniors in high school about investing.
  • The Challenge: High schoolers are skeptical and smart. Teaching them requires a level of mastery that client meetings don't.
  • The Goal: To instill an investor’s lens early—teaching "almost adults" to think like business owners.
• (5:08) Personal Application: Success in Jared's life—fitness, parenting, leadership—is the direct result of applying portfolio management principles to areas more important than money.

III. The Data: The High Cost of Poor Investing

• (7:15) Misaligned Investing: Society is largely investing in the wrong direction. Jared cites stark statistics as evidence of a "poor mindset" in action:
  • Financial (7:42): 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (including 50% of those making $100k+). 60% cannot cover a $1,000 emergency. The average 60-year-old has less than $100k saved.
  • Education & Time (8:28): The median number of books read per year is zero. Only 5% of adults engage in structured learning. Meanwhile, the average person "invests" 5+ hours a day in screen entertainment for a very poor return.
  • Relationships (9:01): Less than 17% of people are "very happy" in their relationships. The average American has fewer than three close friends to rely on in an emergency.
  • Health (9:14): 70% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. 60% have at least one chronic health condition.
• (9:56) The Individual Turnaround: These aren't just "sad stats"—they are indicators of poor portfolio management. Applying intentionality can result in an immediate individual turnaround.

IV. The Strategy: Managing the Life Portfolio

• (10:40) Two Categories of Listeners: 1. Those struggling and looking to stop the "bleeding."2. Those already on a positive trajectory looking to "level up." Jared’s primary focus is the second category, where "hope and optimism" drive accelerated returns.
• (12:52) Trajectory Over Position: Where you are now matters less than where you are pointed. Trajectory is adjustable if you treat life as a manageable portfolio.
• (14:37) The Ledger System: View every area of life (Faith, Health, Work, Money) as an Account.
  • Deposits vs. Withdrawals: Every choice either adds to or subtracts from an account balance.
  • Accountability: Your current balances reflect the investments you have—or haven’t—made up to this point.

V. The Triple Meaning of "Vested"

• (16:02) Why "Vested"? It bridges the gap between the professional and the human:
  • Financial: Ownership, long-term commitment, and earned rewards.
  • Philosophical: Caring deeply and having "skin in the game."
  • Behavioral: We protect and grow what we care about. Investing in something makes us value it more.

VI. Roadmap: What to Expect from the Podcast

• (17:03) Solo Teaching & Simple Concepts: The show will focus on making the complex simple. It won't be an interview show initially; it will be a classroom for the EII philosophy.
• (17:46) Core Mindsets: Future episodes will contrast Wealthy vs. Poor mindsets, Abundance vs. Scarcity, and Investing vs. Gambling.
• (18:16) Professional Tools for Life: We will apply terms like Allocation, Diversification, Compounding, Rebalancing, and Risk to both money and life.
• (18:58) Real-World Stories: Using anonymized examples from wealthy clients, high school students, and Jared's own life to illustrate progress and failure.

VII. Setting Expectations: Progress, Not Perfection

• (21:21) Progress is Motivating: The goal is walking alongside the listener, not "talking down from a mountain."
• (22:00) The "Reps": Investing is hard and takes patience. Like fitness, the "weight" of the work doesn't get lighter, but you get stronger and more capable of handling it without fatigue.
• (23:10) The Success Formula: Discipline + Patience + Effective Effort = Success. This combination is rarely defeated over time.
• (25:13) What This Is NOT: Jared will not give specific stock recommendations or "what-to-buy" lists. This is about "how-to" invest so you can decide the "what" for yourself.

VIII. Closing: Your First Investment

• (27:59) The Call to Action: Jared asks for an investment of Time and Attention.
• (28:40) The Compounding Effect: When we invest better in ourselves, the world around us gets better. Investing has a spillover effect that benefits our families, our communities, and the world.
• (29:24) Sign-off: "Thank you for investing in yourself and in those around you."

Quotes to Remember

"Everything that we do—how we spend our time, our energy, and our money—is an investment."

"Discipline, patience, and effective effort, when done together, are rarely defeated over time."

"You may not be a financial investor yet, but you are the portfolio manager of your life."

"If you say you care about it, it deserves investment. And it deserves to be invested in well."

"Poor or misaligned investing results in poor and misaligned returns, not just with money."

Next Episode: A deeper dive into the philosophy of Everything Is Investing.

001 Vested Introduction Full Transcript

(0:17) Good day, investors. Welcome to the first episode of Vested with Jared Bowers. I am your host, and this has been a little while in the making. If you've heard me talk before, read my writing, been in one of my classes, or I've helped you with your finances, you probably know that I've been developing and living by a philosophy that I call "Everything is Investing." This podcast is my attempt to take that philosophy wider, to teach it, refine it, and continue learning it myself. This is not just going to be a show about money, but about investing as a way of life, and investing applied to every part of life. Because everything that we do—how we spend our time, our energy, and our money—is an investment. That is the core, the through line that will run through every episode.

(1:00) But first, before we get deeper into that, I want to answer a question: Who am I? Well, I'm a professional portfolio manager by trade, but my investing-related threads run deeper and wider than that. Let me explain. No, there's too much. Let me sum up. I manage money for rich people. That is my role as portfolio manager for high net worth and ultra high net worth families across the country. We work with a small number of families, and by we, I mean my company, myself, and those that I work with. You'll likely meet some of those people along the way in the future. And my role is to be the one with the hands on the money—stock market things, investing in the public markets, stocks, bonds, research, analysis, buying, selling.

(1:46) I'll talk plenty about that in the future, in future episodes. But essentially what I do is I take "mommy dollars" and "daddy dollars" and make "baby dollars." It's as simple as that. Actually, that's not far off, but we'll save that for a deeper discussion later. But I also work with a lot of families—a lot of people who will likely never be my clients—and I work with them on a pro bono basis. That means for free, helping them with their finances, giving them advice, helping them set and follow a plan, getting their money invested and invested well. Because you see, the only people who can hire me and my company are very wealthy people. Most people happen to not be very rich yet.

(2:36) And over the years, especially over the last decade that I've been a portfolio manager, many of my friends, my family members, members of the organizations that I'm involved with have asked me to help them with their finances. Word got out that I do this. And so I work with and help for free as many people as I can. But I'm becoming more limited from a time standpoint in being able to work with those people one-on-one. Also on the investment-related front, I teach investing to high schoolers. For about the past decade, I have had the opportunity to volunteer to teach—in the past juniors and seniors, but recently as our class sizes have gotten larger, seniors in high school—about investing, managing personal finances, how to evaluate companies, how to think like a business owner, how to look at the world through an investor lens.

(3:32) And the reason that I do this—well, there are a number of reasons that I do this—but a big one is because I am passionate about financial education. It is one of my favorite things to do. And I believe that teaching people these principles and practices early will have better results than what most people experience when it comes to their finances. And it is also a really pretty great experience to teach a bunch of 12th graders about something that applies to every part of life, as directly as investing does. And I think that every professional should have that experience—teaching your profession to high schoolers. You better know your stuff. More accurately, I better know my stuff.

(4:41) Rich people have nothing on a group of "almost adults" who are way too smart and way too skeptical of everything that I say, at least to start. Client meetings are easy by comparison. So yes, there's my professional investing work with my wealthy clients, my charitable investing work with families that I help and the students that I teach. And then there's my personal investing work, because I've found that applying my skills and approach as a portfolio manager has resulted in most of the success that I've had in my own life, not just with money, but also to the areas of life that I care about that are more important to me than money.

(5:52) My relationships, my parenting, my health and my fitness, my leadership, my involvement with the organizations that I work with and help lead, because I care deeply about their mission. And I have been fortunate enough to realize incredible progress and returns in those areas. And this experience altogether, I've found has put me at multiple intersections of money and life. And I believe that this has allowed me to connect a number of dots—connections that I believe can and will help others invest better, not just with money. And when I look at the success others are and are not having, I can see the results of the ways that they are applying or not applying the tools and practices of portfolio management themselves.

(7:00) I love the craft of investing and portfolio management because it provides tools for understanding and improving all areas of life. So that brings us back around to "Why am I doing this?" To make money, of course. Kidding. I'm pretty sure that podcasts are worse than sports and music when it comes to making a living on them. Thankfully, my living is well spoken for. But I already mentioned that I love teaching people about investing. My goal is—my mission is—to help people invest better in every area of life that they say that they care about. Money, relationships, health, work, faith, purpose. Because if you say you care about it, it deserves investment. And it deserves to be invested in well.

(8:18) And investing is a set of tools and practices that can be learned and applied to great effect. I've been doing it on an individual basis and on a classroom basis for many years. And when I look around and when I talk to people, I see a lot of people who are struggling with investing well. Yes, with money. That's a common one. We'll talk plenty about that. And to touch on a few of those examples, where overall, as a society and as individuals, we are investing poorly with our money, here's some quick examples: Over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Even half of the people who earn more than $100,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck. Nearly 60% of Americans could not cover a $1,000 emergency without using credit cards or other forms of borrowing.

(9:43) The average 60-year-old has less than $100,000 of retirement savings, far short of what would be needed for a secure retirement. And that's just on the money side of things. But investing is challenged in many other areas of life as well. Poor or misaligned investing results in poor and misaligned returns, not just with money. When you look at education, the average person reads one book per year. Actually, the median number of books read per year is zero. The vast majority of adults stop formal learning after college. The average person spends more than five hours per day on screen entertainment. And that is a huge investment of time, with a very poor return.

(11:08) From a relationship standpoint, I see disappointing and sad results. Fewer than 17% of people say that they are very happy in their relationships. From a physical health standpoint, this may be as stark as it is from a money standpoint. Over 70% of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese. 6 in 10 have at least one chronic health condition. And 4 in 10 have two or more chronic health conditions. Less than a quarter of Americans meet the minimum physical activity guidelines. Again, those are just a handful of examples. And those are all examples of investing, but investing in the wrong direction. Or not making an important investment that should be being made.

(12:20) I strongly believe that looking at all those areas as investments, as portfolios to manage, and then applying sound principles of portfolio management consistently, with purpose, can result in—will result in—a substantial turnaround. At least on an individual basis. But it's not just on the "investing poorly" side. I also see plenty of people who are investing really well, but they want to know how to take that next step. How to level up. How to invest better, more effectively. I see people who have a portfolio of resources that they care deeply about, and that they are working hard to grow. People who are investing in themselves, and in the people around them, to realize excellent returns.

(13:44) That is where I'm at right now. And what is incredibly exciting and motivating to me is the chance to help people like this learn to invest better, grow their skills, apply their resources with useful tools and strategies. What you'll find through listening to this is that the group of people that we are going to primarily focus on is that second category. Those who are really wanting to invest well, and looking for ways to do it better. I have a lot of hope, and much more optimism, for those who are on a positive trajectory that, with some guidance, and more purposeful allocation of resources, and building know-how and confidence, are going to accelerate already positive returns. Because our trajectory matters.

(15:05) Especially if you treat and manage your life as what it is: a portfolio that can be managed. And should be managed. So, I am both a teacher and a student myself. I've been intentionally investing for the past couple decades, and I've learned a number of things along the way. I am pretty darn good at some parts. I'm great at a few, but I'm still learning. And I know that I have a long way to go. But in other areas, I am still struggling. I still run into questions about where and how to allocate my own resources—my time, my energy, and my money—nearly every single day. I'm starting this because I am still on the journey of learning it and figuring it out myself.

(16:03) I want this to be a place where I can keep figuring it out along the way, with other like-minded investors who I can help along the way. Now, let's at least talk briefly about the philosophy. Everything is investing. What is it? The core premise is that every choice we make is an investment. You are always allocating your limited resources—your time, energy, and money—toward something. You may not be a financial investor yet, but you are a portfolio manager of your life. Every area of life—relationships, health, work, money—is an account. An account that you make deposits into or withdrawals from. And the balances of those accounts reflect the investments that you have or have not made.

(17:03) The philosophy of everything is investing is about intentionality. Investing with purpose and understanding. Managing tradeoffs and opportunity costs. Essentially, you get what you pay for. You grow what you invest in. And this ties into the name of the podcast, Vested with Jared Bowers. Vested is a very "investee" word, isn't it? But it's also a deeply human word. Financial meaning: achieved ownership, long-term commitment. Philosophical meaning: caring deeply, having skin in the game. Behavioral meaning: you want to allocate your resources to it and protect it because we care more about what we invest in. So much more to dig into on that.

(18:04) Most episodes will just be me teaching, exploring, trying to make the complex, simple, providing tools, giving examples, talking through stories. Early on, we are going to focus a number of our episodes on what separates those with a wealthy approach to life from those with a poor approach to life. This ties into the mindsets that are crucial to investing well: abundance versus scarcity, a poor mindset versus a wealthy mindset, investing versus gambling. Then the concepts: allocation, diversification, compounding, deposits and withdrawals. We'll talk about the tools of portfolio management: tracking, benchmarking, budgeting, rebalancing. We'll talk about risk, time horizon, volatility, and apply them all to both money and to life.

(19:21) Also, we'll talk about stories—examples from my clients, my students, and my own life. And I promise, with privacy intact. No names, anonymized as best as I possibly can. Throughout, we will talk about the practice of it. How to actually apply these concepts in life. How to put in the reps, make the deposits, grow the accounts that we want to grow. And we are going to bring it together as the portfolio: building and managing the accounts of your life. I'll connect all of this to real-world investing, but also to relationships, parenting, leadership, health, purpose, fulfillment. And my teaching experience has taught me something: the best way to learn something is to teach it.

(20:30) That is what I intend to do here. I actually had the opportunity last year to teach a segment of a course on leadership at the school I'm involved in. I volunteered because if I really want to get better at something, I need to combine practice and learning from others with teaching it. If I can help you learn to invest better by teaching it, I know that it is also going to help me learn it better myself. And I should say, be warned, that I may or may not analogize nearly everything to fitness and to money. You'll see how that goes. This is not about me talking down from a mountain. It is about walking alongside you as we figure out how to invest better together.

(21:52) I think that learning and improving at something that is useful and that we care about is inherently fun. And progress itself is motivating, almost regardless of what it is. That is a core idea and a core truth within "Everything is Investing." I also want to acknowledge that investing, whether on the money side or in other important areas of life, is hard. It's challenging. It takes reps. It takes patience to make progress over time. But it is about progress over perfection. Those reps that we put in don't get lighter, but we are able to do them and do more of them without feeling fatigued and without feeling crushed. There you go, analogizing investing to fitness already.

(23:10) Importantly, I want to reinforce the long-term mindset. In the short term, things look chaotic. They feel messy. But progress compounds quietly and over a long period of time. Usually the longer, the better. The outcomes show up later, much later often, than the investments that caused them. Something that I like to remind people is this: Discipline, patience, and effective effort, which are bedrocks of investing, when done together are rarely defeated over time. So, if you're listening to this and you're in your 20s or 30s, think of me as a big brother who wants to see you invest well and succeed at life. I love rooting for people. I love seeing people succeed.

(24:12) If you are in your teens, you can think of me as your eccentric uncle who says what your dad might say about life and money, but in a much cooler and much more relatable way. If you're in your 50s or 60s or beyond, you might think that I am a young buck who still has a lot to learn about life. And you are exactly right. I do. But I think that you'll enjoy hearing what I've learned from the wealthy, the successes and struggles, and learning from the poor and the rich alike. If you're in your 40s, all this still applies, and I think that you'll really enjoy listening to the upcoming episodes about midlife crises—one of my many fascinations.

(25:13) I am a firm believer in setting appropriate expectations up front. You may think that I'm going to tell you what you should invest in—"Buy this specific thing to get great results." Kinda, not really. Yes, in the sense that you should invest and invest heavily in some key areas of life that are enhancers across the board—relationships, health, money. I'm going to talk a lot about those because of how they can and will enhance your life if invested in well. But mostly, I want to help us invest better in the areas of life that we care about and that align with our purpose, and mostly let you decide what you invest in.

(26:35) This is much less about me telling you what to invest in and more about learning to invest well, and then applying that to great effect. I hope that's not disappointing to hear that I'm not going to be talking about what companies you should buy or what industries I think will do well. I don't think that that's the important part. This also has the benefit of cutting down on the number of disclosures that I have to give. The following is not investment advice, nor is it a recommendation to buy or sell a specific security. The following absolutely is investment advice, and I hope that you apply it as such—it's just not a recommendation in the way that investment advice is typically applied.

(27:54) I will talk about specific examples sometimes, but I'm more likely to talk about specifics when it comes to nutrition and workouts, or leadership and business strategy, than I am to talk specifics about stocks. Approach this more from the standpoint of investing how-to, inspiration, and confidence. But don't worry, as this is investing, there will be plenty to apply to our financial investing as we go. Here is your first investment opportunity: I am asking that you invest your time and attention. The cost is your time. The potential return is a more intentional life of investing better. The upside of which is almost limitless. That sounds like a good deal to me.

(29:24) I am fired up to do this. Because if the people around us learn to invest better in their health, their relationships, and their finances—with purpose, on purpose—the world gets better. Not just for the investor, but also for those around them. Because investing and investing well has compounding effects that go beyond us. In our next episode, we're going to start with understanding how we are already investing our resources all the time, every single day, and what that means for us as portfolio managers.

Thank you for investing in yourself and in those around you.

I will talk to you next time. Bye.

(29:46) Oh, and please do follow the podcast. That'll make sure that you get new episodes when they come out each week.