# Paul Merriman on Managing $1.6 Billion But Never His Own Money

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/sound-investing-342834/paul-merriman-on-managing-1-6-billion-but-never-his-own-money
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/sound-investing-342834/paul-merriman-on-managing-1-6-billion-but-never-his-own-money.md
Podcast: [Sound Investing](https://stenobird.com/podcast/sound-investing-342834)
Published: 2026-04-01T17:08:06+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sound-investing/episodes/Paul-Merriman-on-Managing-1-6-Billion-But-Never-His-Own-Money-e3h9q5l
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/10bb8090/podcast/play/117810805/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-3-1%2Fc7d3481a-5f5b-4477-b24a-75363b3dba0d.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/sound-investing-342834/episodes/paul-merriman-on-managing-1-6-billion-but-never-his-own-money
Duration seconds: 3209

## Resource

At 82 years old, I still work. Not because I have to, but because I want to. I joined Brian Herriot and Kirby Denison on “The Time Freedom Podcast” to talk about exactly that. But we ended up covering a lot more than I expected. Here's something that might surprise you: I managed money for thousands of people over 30 years and built a firm to $1.6 billion under management. And I have never once managed my own money. Why? Because I know myself too well. When the market drops, I would second-guess everything. I'd probably hesitate to put more money in, even though that's exactly what I teach people to do. So I let someone else handle it. I don't even check how I did last year. We also got into my disagreement with John Bogle. I had the privilege of sitting with him for about 90 minutes earlier in my career. Bogle preached Enough and it's even the title of one of his books. I respectfully disagree. I believe the goal should be more than enough. Because life gets in the way. Bad things happen. And they often happen during retirement, when you have the least ability to recover. If you stop working the moment you have just enough, you're one bad year away from trouble. 📚🎧 Brian's book Time Freedom is available for pre-order! Pre-order and get the audiobook free... instant access today, paper copy in September. Normally that takes three copies, but for my listeners, just one. timefreedombook.com | code: PAUL

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/sound-investing-342834/episodes/paul-merriman-on-managing-1-6-billion-but-never-his-own-money/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/sound-investing-342834/paul-merriman-on-managing-1-6-billion-but-never-his-own-money.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.