In this episode of AlignedLife, I sit down with Jack Raines — venture capitalist, Substack writer, and author of the new book Young Money — to talk about what money actually means once you stop treating it as a scoreboard.

Jack grew up around entrepreneurial parents and grandparents, which shaped his view of money as fungible rather than scarce. He shares the story of the trip his grandmother took him on to Tanzania at age 11, and the lesson she passed down that money is only worth what you eventually spend it on. We get into why he treated his early twenties as a season for building experience and social capital rather than chasing a paycheck — including the year he spent backpacking Europe and Latin America before business school — and why he thinks time, not money, is the one truly finite currency we have.

We also dig into the tension between planning for the future and staying present, why he pushes back on the advice to obsess over savings rate in your twenties, and how intuition — backed by a disciplined information diet — has guided his biggest decisions, from career pivots to where he lives to how he dates. Toward the end, Jack shares a rule of thumb about planning your asset location for the version of you at 40, not 65, plus a half-joking pitch for a "degenerate account" every young investor secretly needs.

If you're trying to figure out how money and time actually fit together at different stages of life, this conversation is for you.

Jack's book, Young Money, is out now, and his newsletter of the same name lives at youngmoney.co on Substack. Find him on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram — search his name and look for the cowboy hat.

🔗 Young Money (the book): www.amazon.com/Young-Money-Wealth-Purpose-Twenties/dp/B0FZS5PL15

📩 Jack's newsletter: www.youngmoney.co

Zac Owens is back on AlignedLife — and this conversation picks up right where we left off two years ago.

Since his first appearance, Zac launched For the City, a foundation that gave 120 kids a free basketball camp experience. Then, right before heading back overseas, he tore his ACL — a season-ending injury that forced him off the court and into the deepest inner work of his life.

We talk about what that year away from basketball actually looked like: the phone call to his coach and GM, the doubt, the gratitude journaling, discovering hot yoga, and the moment he sat down and asked himself who he'd be if everything — the money, the career, the game — was taken away.

We dig into non-attachment, flow state, why injuries sometimes carry a lesson we keep missing, and how detaching his identity from basketball might be exactly what lets him play his best season yet. I also turn the questions back on myself toward the end, sharing what I'm working on and what I feel I've done well.

If you've ever had to rebuild after a setback — in sports or in life — this one's for you.

What if the difference between good and great isn't talent — it's what happens in the 5 minutes before you step on the field?

In this session of Mindful Mondays, we break down meditation — not the sit-cross-legged-and-empty-your-mind myth, but the real, practical tool elite athletes use to get present, cut distractions, and perform under pressure. We recap last week's mindfulness talk (fear only lives in the past and future — not the present), then dive into what meditation actually is, the different ways to practice it, and the neuroscience behind why it works (prefrontal cortex, amygdala, default mode network — yes, we nerd out a little).

Then we go live with special guest Hakim Tafari — meditation teacher, Tai Chi instructor, model, DJ, and one of the most authentic humans on the planet — who joins us straight from Zoom to share how he uses meditation daily, why "trust the process" isn't just a saying, and closes the session with a live guided meditation and visualization exercise for the guys.

Featuring insights and references from Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Jude Bellingham, and George Mumford's The Mindful Athlete.

This is Session 3 of a 5-part series built for young athletes (ages 13-18) ready to train the mental side of the game — the side that separates good from great.