Life Update (I haven't been honest with you)

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Hi. All right, it's time. We're back for another life update. And I'm doing it in my van because I feel like when I'm here, I can really just connect with you person to person cuz I step out of that Rose Han money expert, bestselling author, blah blah blah like persona, and we can just be more real and connect.

[00:00:19]So, here I am looking at the ocean. Let me show you actually. Yep, this is my setup in case you were ever wondering what it looks like behind the scenes. I wanted to update you on some big realizations that I've had because girl, a lot of gone down. I realized there's areas of my life where I haven't been completely honest with you or myself, least of all myself. And I wanted to share with you some of the decisions and changes that I'm making as a result of these realizations. Here's Jupiter. He's hanging out with me. You can expect a somewhat rambly, casual video. I would suggest grabbing something to drink, a matcha, a tea, whatever you like to drink, and let's do some catching up.

[00:00:59]Okay, so first of all, if you're new here, I'm Rose. I'm 37. And all throughout my 30s, you could say I have been searching for my personal definition of home and of freedom. And that journey has taken me all the way from New York City to Colorado to then moving into a camper van and doing that full-time, then Mexico City, trying to buy a condo there. and then most recently moving to LA. And this month actually marks 2 years since I moved to LA. And even though I have moved around all over the place, the common thread throughout it all has been always searching for that sweet spot, that perfect intersection between finding purpose, feeling fulfilled, being financially free, being free in all the ways, um feeling connected, love, happiness, all the good stuff. So that's the backstory, but let's get into it.

[00:01:47]Life is always full of wakeup calls.

[00:01:49]Last year in the last life update video, I was talking about the LA wildfires and how that was a wakeup call. Most recently, the wakeup call for me was a big relationship blowup. So, without going into too much detail, earlier this year, everything just hit a breaking point. My relationship almost fell apart. And don't worry, we're okay now.

[00:02:09]We're actually better than ever. We actually just celebrated 4 years together yesterday. So, all is well that ends well. But it was it really was a blessing in disguise, a much needed wakeup call that helped me realize that my way just wasn't working. Something had to change. So, if you've been following me last year, you probably know that last year I was working really hard to publish and launch my very first book. And I'm really, really proud of it. It's doing really well. It's helping so many people. And it wasn't until that wakeup call that I really realized what a toll it had taken on me. Like not only did my health suffer because I was working a lot, neglecting my health, I was stressed. So mentally, I was really just anxious and on edge and just my nervous system was fried. I didn't have a lot of time or bandwidth to pay attention to my partner or to a lot of my friends. It was just a lot to balance at once cuz I just moved to LA. I was trying to write a book. I was also trying to make some friends, so go out and build friendship, also have a partner, also have a team and a business to run and like payroll to worry about.

[00:03:11]and then these book deadlines and a book that I really wanted to get out into the world in a big way. So all of these things like I was trying to do it all at once. So after the book launch, you would think that I would have given myself a break. But the crazy thing is I jumped right into the next project, right into the next business goal, the next everything. And I really didn't take a moment to just rest to give myself a break and really assess what I wanted next for myself. I just went into achiever autopilot mode. So on the outside, what you may see is Rohan, bestselling author, killing it, hit a million subscribers, and I went on podcasts talking about my journey going from six-figure debt to financial freedom. Really, on the outside, it looks like I'm killing it. And you know what? In a lot of ways, I am externally, but what I realized is that external markers of success, like that does not equate to real wealth. That is the big realization. Because when I almost lost my relationship, that's when I came face to face with, wow, what have I really been placing importance on? What really matters to me? Because if I lose my health, my friendships, my relationships. So in fact, despite seven figure net worth, all the money I have in my bank account, in my investments, all of the accolades that society gives you all these social brownie points for, in fact, in reality, I actually was not wealthy. You know, you can have a lot of money in your bank account and still be poor because if you are living in scarcity, acting out of scarcity, then it doesn't matter how much money you have. I really feel like I was living in scarcity because scarcity has a muscle memory. Like even after I became financially successful, the old me that still hadn't really left my nervous system, if you kind of know what I mean.

[00:04:54]Like if you grew up in scarcity without a lot of money, maybe your parents were working all the time, just too busy to really, you know, take care of you emotionally, whatever it may have been.

[00:05:05]Like when you hit a certain number in your bank account, that doesn't automatically change the way you experience and live life. And that's exactly what was happening to me is I was very used to driving for big markers of success, going on to the next goal, the next, and the next, and the next.

[00:05:21]And financially it showed I was killing it. I had money. I had financial freedom. But if you have all that money and you lose your health, you lose the people that you love and you still are living in fear, always seeking for the next thing and the next and the next to just fill that. Oh my god, Jupiter started snoring. He's being really loud.

[00:05:41]You okay?

[00:05:44]Okay, we're going to keep going even with him snoring. Where was I? So, basically, that was all a huge wakeup call and I listened. I canled all of my big upcoming projects. I stopped posting videos on YouTube for a solid month. I even stopped reaching out to friends and just kind of gave up on being responsive on my text messages cuz I was like, I need to go inwards. I need to pour some energy into myself, like reassess, not get outside input, really tune into myself to understand what's going on here. Not to mention, I downsized my team. I had to actually let some people go, which was a really hard conversation to have, but it's like all this peopleleasing and trying to carry everything and do everything for everyone and be like a successful entrepreneur and a really good friend and girlfriend and daughter and like I was trying to do all the things and achieve. That was me and my autopilot, you know, high performer, eldest daughter, like do everything for everyone mode. And that really was the wakeup call for me to just [ __ ] stop and reassess. So, I took about a good month to just heal from burnout, to go look at the ocean, to camp by the sea, to wake up and do nothing, which is something I had hadn't allowed myself to do for a really long time since I signed that book deal. And I am so grateful for that time that I carved out for myself because it helped me not only heal from burnout, but to really heal my relationship with myself, to pour that into my relationship, also to make up for the neglect that had piled up over the course of the book launch and me like pushing and pushing for all these big goals. And it made me so so clear in my decision, in my certainty that whatever I do next in this next season of life is going to be a lot more intentional. It's going to come from a place of I'm already okay. I'm already enough and I don't need any more external markers of success to make me feel like I'm doing something right.

[00:07:38]Because look, you might see a lot of people on social media flexing, posting about all of their financial success, business success, how they have this, you know, hot body or whatever, like drive a nice car, live in this nice home, go on all these amazing trips. And this is especially true with like entrepreneurs. They, you know, showcase the lifestyle a lot. But a lot of them are hustling. Like that was the case with me. A lot of them are like look at Elon Musk for example. He's one of the richest guys in the world, but he has burned through so many marriages. Like you that there's some level of unhealthiness that that lies behind that amount of drive. And I know because I've lived it. So I don't give a [ __ ] how much money you have. If you don't have someone who you can call at 2:00 in the morning to pick you up from the airport or help you out, someone that you are so comfortable being yourself with that you can just like fart in front of them as much as you want and you can totally be yourself. And I do view being able to fart in front of someone as like the ultimate marker of how comfortable you're with someone. By the way, Jupiter farts in front of me all the time and I fart in front of him, too.

[00:08:43]Yeah. If you don't have that, then you're not wealthy. It doesn't matter how much money you're not successful. On the flip side, if you are someone who pours a lot into your relationships, you are healthy, you have a lot of joy in your life, you make time for things that you enjoy like your hobbies, people with time with your loved ones, and you have enough to pay your bills. You're not a millionaire, but you you're not struggling on food stamps. Then how about the thought that you are actually very wealthy and that in fact you are enjoying the real the truest definition of wealth. I do think society like capitalism, hustle culture, all of that is puts a lot of emphasis on these external markers of success and that can really mess with your head. So that brings me to my next point which is the idea of your enough number. So after that whole relationship crisis and the month that I took off to try and heal and fix my life, I was taking a lot of walks and like all these ideas and realizations were coming to me. And I realized the importance of knowing your enough number and and what do I mean by enough number? It is the number that you need every single month in order to live a truly intentional fulfilled life. Not necessarily private jets, the highest the highest luxury, just what you need to feel like you are enjoying life. Not not in excess, not living in scarcity, just that sweet spot in the middle. And I feel so empowered because I had sort of lost track of my enough number after moving to LA. Expenses here are way higher than in Mexico City. I was like busy with the hustle and bustle of launching my book. I didn't really have time to perfectly optimize my budget down to the tea. So, I admit lifestyle creep kind of got the better of me.

[00:10:24]That's what tends to happen when you're stressed and living in survival mode.

[00:10:27]But in recent times, I had the opportunity to really fine-tune what my enough number is. And that means going through your expenses, seeing what the average of each line item is, what you tend to spend in each category, then cutting any excess spending, like trimming the fat, and seeing how much do I really need, the minimum that I really need to live well. And if currently you are making a lot more than your enough number, awesome. That means you have extra leeway to go on spontaneous trips and sort of be a little looser with your finances or to invest and save for the future. But really, you're just your enough number. I actually would love to share with you my sort of calculator, my spreadsheet for how I came to my enough number. I'm going to record a little Loom video tutorial that you can watch, but I'm going to share it with you really, really soon in my email newsletter, Call to Freedom. So sign up there so you can stay in touch with all of my life happenings in real time because it takes me a lot less time to write an email versus making making a video. So go to rosehan.com/calltofreedom so we can stay in touch there. There's also another piece to the enough number which is the amount of money that you need invested in order to generate in passive investment income your monthly enough number. So, I like to call this your freedom number. And you can basically take your monthly enough number, divide that by 4% according to the 4% rule, and that is how much you need in investment to generate enough passive investment income to never have to work another day in your life. So, knowing these two numbers is incredibly useful because number one, if you know your enough number, like what you actually need every month to survive and to live a fulfilled life, you don't need to go for a bigger and bigger job to make even more than that. If you're in a season of just wanting to enjoy life more right now, or spend more time with your kids, or take a sbatical for a 3-month yoga teacher training in Thailand, or maybe you want to take some time off to start your dream business, whatever big life decisions you are wanting to make, knowing your monthly enough number is going to be really empowering because at least you'll know how much you need to have in savings to tide you through that time that you're unemployed or you know exactly what salary of a job you can downgrade to if you're trying to like take an easier job to let yourself take a break. Whatever it is, what I don't want you to do is to just keep going for more, more, more because that's what you're supposed to do. That's what everyone tells you you're supposed to do. That's just what you're supposed to do. I'm a little embarrassed to share that on my vision board, I used to have a section on there that said 100K months. Like that was the business goal that I was going for. And I ended up taking that down because when I calculated my enough number, I realized that I don't need $100,000 a month. Not anywhere close. But I put that on there because that's just what you're supposed to do, right? When you're a successful entrepreneur, like you go for 10k months and then 50k months and then 100k months and then a million dollar months and then $10 million months. It just never ends. But when I realized what my enough number is, which is more closer to like the $10,000 a month mark, I couldn't help but think like how stupid. Why are you going for these bigger numbers? What is that going to change in your life?

[00:13:25]There's actually a really famous study done that showed that after your basic needs are fulfilled, any amount of money over $75,000, and most recently they updated that because of inflation and cost of living. So, anything more than like $120,000 or so, there are diminishing returns on happiness, which really means we don't need to keep going for more more. At least not more more money. If you have your enough number, at some point, if you reach enough money invested in your retirement portfolios, your brokerage accounts to generate enough investment income off of those investments to cover your enough number, you could technically be work optional and be completely financially free. So assuming your enough number is $10,000 a month, that's $120,000 a year divided by 4%. So with around $3 million invested, you would be completely financially free. And this is incredibly liberating because I don't have to feel guilty about not trying to go for 10 million and taking a step back to slow down in my career and focus on some other areas of my life that are important to me right now. It's been incredibly liberating. For example, I'm right about that age where it's kind of now or never when it comes to having babies and now I have this number. So, I know that it's okay to slow down to try and realize this dream of motherhood that I have and slow down on my business. Like, that's important to me. And that's not something that can wait cuz you know when the biological clock passes it's done. Whereas my business career I can come back to that. I can go for the 100k months later. Another reason why it's so empowering to know your enough number is so you can really keep lifestyle creep in check especially in LA where a lot of people here are so affluent and you see a lot of sort of markers of outward success and it does subtly even if you're not materialistic. I am not materialistic at all. I don't care about status symbols and whatever, but it still subtly creates a little bit of pressure for you to sort of keep up with the Joneses. I think as a human being, we're just wired like this. So, if you're around it, it sort of subtly makes you want to have a nicer car, also be in a nicer home, nicer neighborhood, dress as good as your friends, and that costs money and money and money. And so, if you're not careful, you could be spending way past your actual true enough number. This is lifestyle creep.

[00:15:32]Lifestyle crate causes your freedom number to keep getting bigger and bigger because your lifestyle expenses keep going up and up. The goalpost keeps moving. So, you never reach that crossover point where your investment income is enough to actually cover your expenses. It's always just going up and up and up and up. That's how people stay on the hamster wheel their entire lives.

[00:15:50]And this is exactly why even high earners, people earning multiple six figures a year, still feel broke. So, the concept of your enough number, your freedom number. This is something I'm going to start talking about a lot more in my videos because it's that important. But now I want to hear from you really quick. Do you know your enough number? Is that ever a thought experiment that you've ever gone through? Like are you curious to know it? And once you knew your enough number, what would it change for you?

[00:16:13]Because also a lot of people who know their enough number, they still never feel secure. Like I've heard of people who like they finally hit the net worth that they needed and they still didn't feel secure enough to retire. That is a whole another story. That's basically that's the scarcity mindset that we talked about. Doesn't matter how much money you have. If you still are always living in fear, no amount of money is ever going to fix that. Come here, Jupiter. I need some cuddles.

[00:16:38]This doggy has been with me for so long for all those changes. All right.

[00:16:44]Anyway, okay. So, what else is there? I told you this would be a rambly life update. I got to say, I've been really enjoying life in this season where I'm not just blindly chasing bigger and bigger markers of success. Like, I finally feel like I've reached a point where I know that I'm enough. I don't have to earn a single dollar more. I don't have to achieve anything. I could even do less. I could even go backwards in terms of, you know, money or career milestones. And I'm still enough. You know, I've got a dog that loves me. I've got my friends. I've got my family. And so, from this place of enough, like, who is Rose? And that's really what I've been discovering and exploring. And it's been awesome. I have really been diving into some of the hobbies and passions that I neglected. Like it was almost like I was being mean to myself. There would be times when I would just sit at my laptop cranking out work. I wouldn't even get up to drink some water. I wouldn't even let myself go pee. I would like hold it in and I would just force myself to stay up late. I would turn down invitations from friends to go do fun things in order to just work, work, work. And my partner would come home and I would like not eat dinner with him. I would get into bed after he's fallen asleep. It kind of makes me emotional thinking about that version of me, like how mean I was to myself. And it that just goes to show like how far I guess society has come like to to pressure us into thinking that there's so many things that are more important than just loving yourself.

[00:18:05]I I feel like there's sort of this collective feeling of kind of anxiety and unrest and like feeling behind because of social media. that you see everyone succeeding and crushing it and then you just don't feel like enough.

[00:18:18]You like treat yourself more meanly.

[00:18:20]Like you say, "Well, you got to push harder. Just toughen up." And and that really causes like disconnection from ourselves, from what makes life really worth living.

[00:18:33]I wonder why this is getting me so emotional. I think it's because I'm just getting really present to how unkind that I've been to myself. And and then when you're unkind to yourself, you can't be as kind to others. So, and imagine like an entire planet full of people who are being unkind to themselves. And that's why that's really the source of why we have so many issues, right? Conflict. I don't want to say wars are because of that, but as within without, right? Like we are how we treat ourselves is a microcosm of how we treat each other and how life treats us and how you experience life as a whole. obviously did not mean to cry.

[00:19:16]And we're going to use this as a thumbnail. Okay, I know it makes a great thumbnail. I didn't do it on purpose, but it made you click, right? It made you click. So, in this season of rediscovering what it means to be really kind to myself, to to to put myself first above all else. What have I been doing with my time? Well, I still love making videos. Like, this gets me going.

[00:19:37]This is what I I live for this. And I'm going to live to read the comments and all the things that you have to say on this video that I will be doing for the rest of my life. I mean, I hope. But some of the things that I've been doing with my time, I have been rediscovering my passion for movement. Like movement and dance. It's always that's been it for me. So these days I'm exploring my inner pyro. And I got really into fire dancing. It makes you feel so alive to hold a flame that could burn you. But when you're really present with it and just moving with it, there's something so like primal and beautiful about it.

[00:20:09]And I've been building all these great friendships as a result of like the fun that we have playing with fire. That's been giving me a lot of joy. I also got really into baking sourdough bread. They say that once you get a taste of the sourdough lifestyle, there's no going back. Next, you're going to want to have chickens in your backyard. Then you're going to want to get a homestead and create and build a farm. Like, I get that because that's like the path that I'm headed. I love being able to just make my own food and then eat it and like give that to my friends. It's so healthy. It's nourishing. It's been a great excuse to like go visit friends cuz I'm like, "Hey, I have a bread to give you." It just feels empowering to kind of like unplug to kind of like separate myself from like the capitalist machine. I don't need to spend $12 on fancy artisal sourdough bread. I can make my own. Thank you very much. Like that's really empowering. Another huge life update overhaul is I am really in the season of routines, habits, systems, healthy healthy habits because I'm going to be almost 40 in 3 years. Like there is no doovers at this age. How we treat our bodies now really sets the tone for health like when you're 70 and 80. Like some of the things that some of the habits like won't be re reversible to a large extent. And I don't want to be immobile and not enjoying life in my 80s. I want to have like a great healthy body. So, lifting weights, going to bed early, not [ __ ] working late for no reason, waking up early, getting sunlight, eating three meals a day, not skipping meals because I'm again working. Like, really letting my day be run by my energy levels, like checking in with my body. What do you need, Rose?

[00:21:42]Do you need some water? Do you need a walk by the beach to sort of decompress?

[00:21:47]Great. Close the laptop. We're going to go do that now. It's like practicing self- loveve little by little. And you know what? It's actually made a huge difference. I do a really comprehensive sort of health lab panel every year and already my biological age apparently has reversed. I'm literally 16 years younger than my my actual age. So you guys, this stuff really works. It doesn't take much to turn your life and your health around. Something else that I'm really excited about is I didn't plan to travel much this year, but I'm going to go to France this summer for to see um my boyfriend's family and I'm traveling a bunch for like friends life milestones.

[00:22:22]Like a really good friend of mine is celebrating her 50th in Mexico. Another really dear friend of mine is getting married and we're also going to do her bachelorette in Aspen. And another really good friend of mine is getting married in October in Malibu. And I am just soaking this in like these life milestones. Like this is what life is made of. Like when you're on your deathbed and you look back like you will remember.

[00:22:46]You are such a sap. Oh my god. I like tear up for everything. Everything tears me out. I'm one of those people like watch a movie and it's not even that sad. It's like happy and I'm still tearing up. Yeah. You look back on your life and the milestones like celebrating your best friend's wedding, your own wedding or your your 50th birthday. Like these are the milestones that you're going to remember. Nobody's going to go give a [ __ ] and nobody on their deathbed is saying like they wish they had worked more, you know, or earned more money. So yeah, I'm just soaking it all in.

[00:23:16]Another thing that I'm really present to right now is sometimes you can't have total total freedom and a little too much freedom actually creates instability and therefore it becomes not freedom. So last year I was talking about how after the wildfires I didn't want to buy a house in LA. I wanted to like get on a sailboat and sail the world and I still want to do that.

[00:23:34]Recently I realized that my mom, she's getting older. She lives all alone on the east coast very far from me and she's her, you know, her health is starting to not be as good as it used to be. and I worry about her. And the other night she texted me and she was asking me like, "What's your Netflix password?

[00:23:50]How do I watch movies?" And it was late at night. And I just got this intuition that she's lonely, like she really needs someone around her. And I also really tapped into just how nice it would be to have my mom around. Granted, she like nags me and talks to me like I'm still seven, even though I'm the one like handling all my [ __ ] Like, that's never going to change. But I love her and I want her to be around. Like, why? We're family. Why is she all the way across the country and I only get to see her once or twice a year? And it would literally extend her lifespan to be around family more. And and so I realized if I really want to move her to LA, like make that happen, what's it going to take? Well, she's not going to move here to live in a rented place.

[00:24:31]Like she's older. She's very traditional. Like you know, when you're older, you want stability and you want to feel like you own the roof over your head. And like the only way that's going to happen is for me to buy a house that she can live in with me. I mean, hopefully it has a detached unit so we don't live together. So we don't live in the same house and like want to kill each other. That's something I'm really like organizing my finances around right now is how do I get ready to buy a house in LA? Because as much as I would love to not have the responsibility and just rent forever and just be a free spirit like that and have a camper van and get on a sailboat and like not have a house to take care of and a mortgage to pay. I also have a deep desire for family, for connection, to be close to my mom, to to take care of her cuz she's not going to be around forever. Not only that, but this month marks two years since moving to LA. I am loving LA and I have decided to really root down. Like, you got to at some point pick a place. Like, you can't always have your eye on other cities, one foot out the door, like, oh, well, maybe it's cheaper there. Well, maybe the weather's better over there. At some point, you just pick a place. And LA has its problems. taxes, traffic, wildfires.

[00:25:39]It sucks. A lot of things suck, but also a lot of things are amazing about it.

[00:25:42]And I'm really finding my community here. And that's like everything right in this season of my life where belonging, connection, like real wealth matters more than like living in a low tax state or in a cheap city like Mexico City. Other updates. I still have this dream of sailing around the world, whether it's for 6 months or a year or maybe even a couple of years. I don't know when that's going to happen because I also want to have babies and I can't wait forever because you know biological clock and also my mom is getting older and I need to buy a house. Like there's all these things that I need and want to do. So I don't know how I'm going to make all the happen but stay tuned, right? Like we're going to figure it out. But sailing around the world is a dream that I have and like you only get one life. If you have something on your bucket list, you got to find a way to make it happen, right? Every other weekend or so we've been going out sailing to practice and I am getting better. I do get a little bit seasick, which is kind of worrying, but I think I just need to get my sea legs. And this little guy, I think he likes it. So, that's good. I was worried about how he would take to to the sea, but hey, dogs can be sailor, too. He was my co-pilot during van life, so maybe he can be a co- captain during boat life if and when that happens. Not if, when that happens.

[00:26:47]Been a pretty long life update. I feel like I've covered everything by now. As for what's coming ahead, really the best way to stay in touch with me, so I can give you my real time musings and life updates is my email newsletter, Call to Freedom. This is where I can really share things more freshly in real time because it takes a lot less time to write an email than make a whole YouTube video. I share like a lot of what it really looks like to create and pursue financial freedom behind the scenes. So definitely sign up for that if you're not already on that list. I just want to say thank you. Thank you if you've watched this far. I love running into you guys in LA, apparently a lot of you live here. So, so I tend to run into people like once a week who recognize me and I just love it. I love it because I know that even though I shared a lot of random things and it feels very raw and vulnerable, I just know that like like the human experience is so universal. So there's So I hope that there were some nuggets in there that made you feel less alone that that prompted some light bulb moments that gave you courage in maybe some big life decision that you're sitting on. I guess that's all I wanted to say. Thank you for being here. Thank you for following my journey. You know, we're doing good. We are doing great. We need to hear that more often. I need to tell myself that more often. You are doing amazing. You don't need to chase anything. You don't need to fix anything right now as you are.

[00:28:09]You're enough. I'm enough.

[00:28:18]I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

[00:28:24]All right. I'll see you in the next video. Thanks for watching. Bye.