026-cmi-joshua-sheats
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00:00:30.400 | Create My Independence Podcast, episode number 26.
00:00:34.800 | ♪
00:00:38.000 | Welcome to the Create My Independence Podcast.
00:00:41.600 | My name is Craig Mathias, and this is the podcast devoted to creating more independence in your life
00:00:47.200 | through good financial habits and strategic entrepreneurship.
00:00:52.800 | That's right. I believe that living below our means and building a business of our own is the best way
00:00:58.000 | to create freedom, options, and independence in our lives so that we can do what matters to us.
00:01:04.800 | ♪
00:01:08.000 | Today we're doing an interview with Joshua Sheets of the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:01:14.400 | Now, he's a podcast that I've listened to several times. He's got some really good stuff.
00:01:18.800 | He's got a real neat background in the personal finance industry and super interesting guy to talk with.
00:01:25.600 | I met him down in Dallas last month at the podcast movement, and we just had a great conversation.
00:01:31.800 | So I wanted to have him on the show. The interview is about 43 minutes long, so hopefully, you know,
00:01:37.600 | you've got time to listen to it. I think there's some really great stuff in here and some great conversations.
00:01:42.200 | So I'm going to get right into it, and then I'll be back at the end of the interview to kind of wrap things up.
00:01:46.800 | Here it is.
00:01:48.000 | Joshua, thanks for coming on.
00:01:50.000 | Craig, I'm excited to be here. I'll be glad to let you know that you are the first.
00:01:54.000 | You are the first of any interviews that I've ever given.
00:01:56.600 | Really? Wow, that's awesome. Okay, well, you've got an interesting story.
00:02:00.400 | We met just a couple of weeks ago at the podcast movement in Dallas,
00:02:06.000 | and I'd heard of you because I'd heard of your show. You've got some great pilot episodes that I really liked.
00:02:13.200 | Why don't you just get started and tell us a little bit about yourself and where you come from?
00:02:19.000 | Right, so I was always interested, especially as it relates to finance,
00:02:23.000 | I've always been somewhat semi-obsessed with finance, with personal finance.
00:02:27.200 | I don't know why, but I do know why. I always wanted to be rich.
00:02:31.000 | So I, from a very early age, I was that weird oddball kid that was just constantly reading, you know, finance books.
00:02:38.400 | I was the nerd at 13 years old. I'm reading every personal finance book that I can.
00:02:43.200 | And I went on and over the years continued to work hard and read, read, read, read, read,
00:02:48.000 | especially in the personal finance world.
00:02:50.000 | And I remember distinctly, vividly sitting at my kitchen table at the age of 18,
00:02:54.200 | happily opening my first Roth IRA and happily applying for my first two credit cards to build my credit score.
00:03:03.000 | And I was very proud of myself because I figured, wow, I know what I'm doing with this personal finance stuff.
00:03:08.000 | And one of those things that I did was a good decision. The other one wasn't.
00:03:12.000 | I'll let you figure out which one was which.
00:03:14.000 | And I continued on through the years and always was interested in personal finance.
00:03:19.000 | And I had a lot of ups and downs in my personal experience.
00:03:23.000 | I made a lot of mistakes financially and did a lot of things really well.
00:03:26.000 | But then after a period of time, I went through college, got out of college.
00:03:30.000 | I worked for a while in the corporate world.
00:03:32.000 | And then I wound up getting laid off from the corporate world.
00:03:36.000 | And I had always been interested in money.
00:03:38.000 | And I knew when I got laid off, I had actually been planning to leave.
00:03:42.000 | This was, let's see, June of 2008.
00:03:45.000 | I had been planning to leave my job in January of 2009.
00:03:49.000 | But in June, I got unexpectedly laid off.
00:03:52.000 | And it worked out well because I was a Dave Ramsey acolyte.
00:03:56.000 | So I had been working my way down the baby steps.
00:03:58.000 | And I had finished, what is it?
00:04:00.000 | I guess it's baby step three, I think, if anyone is familiar with his stuff.
00:04:04.000 | And I had a six-month emergency fund.
00:04:06.000 | I was out of debt.
00:04:07.000 | I was saving a good amount of money.
00:04:09.000 | And so I actually laughed.
00:04:11.000 | I had watched his, what's it called, Financial Peace University that he did.
00:04:14.000 | And he always joked about when you get laid off, you laugh in your boss's office and say, "How big is the severance?"
00:04:23.000 | And so I actually did that when I got laid off.
00:04:27.000 | And I had this snarky laugh.
00:04:29.000 | And I said, "How big is the severance?"
00:04:31.000 | And I felt like an idiot for doing that.
00:04:33.000 | And the two bosses that were having the layoff meeting with me looked at me and said, "That was strange."
00:04:38.000 | And they said, "Two months."
00:04:40.000 | So I took the two-month severance.
00:04:42.000 | And I went to -- I think I went to Columbia.
00:04:45.000 | I went on a trip somewhere and came back and was trying to figure out what to do.
00:04:49.000 | And I had a list.
00:04:51.000 | I had accumulated over the years a list of about 100 or 150 business ideas and job ideas,
00:04:55.000 | just things I thought I would be interested in because I did not like what I was doing.
00:04:59.000 | And I was having lunch with my boss, my former boss, and I was laying out for him the five things that I wanted in a business or in a job.
00:05:09.000 | And after going through those five things, he said, "You know what?
00:05:12.000 | It sounds a lot like financial services.
00:05:14.000 | You ought to consider going into the world of financial services."
00:05:16.000 | So I said, "No, I am absolutely not.
00:05:18.000 | After all, brokers are out to make you broker.
00:05:21.000 | Insurance is a scam and a waste of money and a waste of time.
00:05:24.000 | I can do better on my own.
00:05:26.000 | I know what I'm doing.
00:05:27.000 | I've written a lot of personal finance books."
00:05:29.000 | And he said, "No, listen.
00:05:30.000 | Go for an interview."
00:05:32.000 | So I went for an interview.
00:05:33.000 | And my big thing at that time was -- well, he sent me for an interview with a company called Northwestern Mutual,
00:05:39.000 | which was a large insurance company based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a very old life insurance company.
00:05:46.000 | And I went for an interview.
00:05:47.000 | His son had interned there.
00:05:48.000 | And at that time, my big issue was whole life insurance.
00:05:52.000 | And I had probably the worst first interview ever.
00:05:55.000 | And I told the interviewer, I said, "I don't think I can do this because I can't sell whole life insurance."
00:05:59.000 | But what I found was I found the person that I interviewed with was just an amazing man.
00:06:04.000 | And he was extremely knowledgeable, extremely competent.
00:06:07.000 | He was well credentialed.
00:06:08.000 | And he did a good job of talking with me and just explaining some things that I had never known.
00:06:15.000 | So to make this medium-length story shorter, I wound up interviewing all around the business.
00:06:21.000 | I interviewed with a bunch of companies.
00:06:22.000 | I interviewed with -- let's just leave it at that, a bunch of companies.
00:06:25.000 | And I interviewed with Northwestern Mutual four times.
00:06:28.000 | And I wound up back at Northwestern Mutual and then started as a financial planning career.
00:06:33.000 | I started with insurance sales and then moved on from there, built my knowledge enough to become a comprehensive financial planner,
00:06:41.000 | changed the nature of my practice over time, and did that for six years.
00:06:45.000 | And I had an awesome experience.
00:06:47.000 | And I later learned that not all offices are the same and not all financial people are the same as my office,
00:06:52.000 | but I had an amazing experience and an awesome client base.
00:06:55.000 | And then that's what ultimately led, though, to some frustrations with the business
00:07:00.000 | and nothing specifically with my company but more with the industry, which was what led me into the podcast.
00:07:06.000 | Okay, so you just wanted to kind of share your thoughts online and you figured that a podcast would be a great way to do it.
00:07:13.000 | Or what got you to think about starting a podcast?
00:07:17.000 | Well, I had always loved personal finance radio.
00:07:21.000 | I mean, when I was in college, I worked my tail off to get out of debt because of Dave Ramsey and Dave Ramsey's program.
00:07:28.000 | I used to listen to three hours of his show every single day.
00:07:30.000 | Me too.
00:07:31.000 | You do? Okay.
00:07:32.000 | So yeah, I used to listen to three hours of his show every day.
00:07:34.000 | And at that time, I was working full time.
00:07:36.000 | I was in school full time.
00:07:37.000 | And that was what kept me motivated.
00:07:39.000 | And I had very much kind of drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak.
00:07:43.000 | But what happened is after I started working as a financial planner, I tried to apply the Dave Ramsey plan in my financial planning world.
00:07:54.000 | Now, Dave Ramsey would have fired me if I had said I was in the financial planning.
00:07:57.000 | A, I was working in the insurance business, and I sold the evil dreaded whole life insurance policies, which are the bane of his show.
00:08:05.000 | But what I learned is that my ideas, the things that had worked for me didn't work for clients.
00:08:10.000 | And I wasn't getting the kind of results with clients that I thought I should get.
00:08:15.000 | And I learned over the first few years of my career, I had to learn to kind of shut up and start listening to my clients more instead of being Mr. Know-It-All and telling them, "Here's what you should do."
00:08:25.000 | And the whole time I've always enjoyed, ever since the existence of podcasts, I mean, probably Zig Ziglar and Dave Ramsey were the first podcasts I listened to back in the mid-2000s.
00:08:36.000 | And then I started finding all these other things, but I never could find a financial podcast that I liked listening to.
00:08:42.000 | Because in general, I found that people had a specific opinion and a very dogmatic opinion.
00:08:50.000 | And the more I studied financial planning and the more people I worked with, the more I realized that I had to adjust my opinions based upon what my clients' goals were.
00:09:02.000 | And I recognized that there's this huge gap between what I think is right for me and what I think is right for another person.
00:09:10.000 | And I think I became better at it. I mean, I think I became pretty good at listening then to clients and not trying to insert what I thought they should do.
00:09:20.000 | And then the more I learned about technical financial planning, I learned how essentially every financial product, every approach has its place and has its time where it makes sense.
00:09:30.000 | Now, this is the problem. There are a lot of financial products that are inappropriately used.
00:09:34.000 | And so there's this constant dichotomy of these two things going together. But just because a product is inappropriately used doesn't mean that it can't be appropriately used in another context.
00:09:46.000 | And so over the course of five years working with families and working with individuals, I had just about every one of my preconceived ideas blown.
00:09:53.000 | I had times where I thought it was smart to lease a car instead of buy a car. I found times where it was better to buy a new car instead of a used car.
00:10:01.000 | I found times where it was better to get an adjustable rate mortgage instead of a fixed rate mortgage.
00:10:05.000 | And all these things that I thought were the absolute truth from on high, I learned were not.
00:10:12.000 | So when I started the show, I said, "I wonder if I can do something where I can teach people.
00:10:17.000 | Instead of saying, 'You should do what Joshua thinks you should do,' rather, I can teach people how things work and then give them the opportunity to apply it to their situation."
00:10:27.000 | And that's what my show is about.
00:10:29.000 | Yeah, that's great. And we talked about that same thing down in Dallas.
00:10:33.000 | We talked about how you told me you felt really strongly that there's no one way to do things, right?
00:10:40.000 | That's the way a lot of people teach is that this is the way to do it.
00:10:45.000 | And I agree with you on that, that there's no one way to do it.
00:10:49.000 | And when we talked on your show a couple of days ago, we talked about how there are situations where it might not make the most sense to put money into retirement accounts.
00:11:00.000 | So that's one example of when it just depends.
00:11:04.000 | You can't just say one size fits all on this stuff.
00:11:07.000 | And that's why I had such a good conversation with you because I think we are on the same playing field as far as, "Hey, it just depends.
00:11:16.000 | What are your goals in life?
00:11:17.000 | What is it that is really important to you?
00:11:19.000 | What do you want to accomplish?"
00:11:21.000 | And there are multiple ways to go about things.
00:11:24.000 | It's not just one size fits all.
00:11:26.000 | Absolutely.
00:11:28.000 | And I loved the conversation that we had about just freedom and how things can tie you down, how things like debt can be such a terrible thing for you.
00:11:38.000 | How sometimes people get stuck.
00:11:43.000 | People tend to get stuck in situations because of maybe their purchase habits or their lifestyle is too inflated.
00:11:50.000 | And they get stuck and they end up unhappy.
00:11:52.000 | So really what all this is about to me, and I think it's about for you as well, is aligning our personal finances with our values.
00:12:01.000 | And if freedom and travel and things are – if there are certain things that are important to us, to align our personal finances with that.
00:12:11.000 | Right.
00:12:12.000 | So I don't know.
00:12:14.000 | I'd love to hear a little bit about all the cool people that you've interviewed and what you've learned through the process.
00:12:20.000 | Well, I'm just getting started.
00:12:22.000 | I'm on episode – what is it now?
00:12:25.000 | I think today is 53.
00:12:27.000 | That's pretty far along.
00:12:28.000 | Right.
00:12:29.000 | And my show is a daily show.
00:12:30.000 | So it's pretty easy to get pretty far along.
00:12:33.000 | So it's not for the faint of heart.
00:12:35.000 | I put out a lot of content very frequently.
00:12:37.000 | So I'm just going to start on interviewing people.
00:12:40.000 | And I'll tell you, I have learned a lot from the people I've interviewed, but I have learned far more from the clients that I worked with over the years.
00:12:48.000 | And I think that's one of the things that may be a unique advantage that I have is that when you work as a financial planner and you work closely with people,
00:12:57.000 | you start to listen to people a little bit more and you start to hear what's actually going on in their lives.
00:13:07.000 | And when I was a personal finance junkie, I never had that opportunity to hear what was actually going on in people's lives.
00:13:13.000 | But when you work as a financial planner, the strange thing is that I would know certain things about my clients that their own spouse might not know.
00:13:21.000 | And when you're working with people with their money, you're very closely connected to what their goals and their dreams are and their values are.
00:13:29.000 | If you want to know where your values are, pull out your calendar and pull out your checkbook or whatever the virtual equivalent of those two things is.
00:13:35.000 | And if you see where your time and where your money is going, you can find what your values are.
00:13:39.000 | But what I learned, what frustrated me as a financial planner is I learned that many people didn't recognize all the choices that were available to them.
00:13:49.000 | And the example that's the clearest example that I've ever come across is one of the essays that has most convicted me and most given me a thought
00:13:58.000 | was an essay that I read, it must have been five or six years ago, by Chris Guillebeau, who is a blogger.
00:14:04.000 | He writes a blog called The Art of Nonconformity.
00:14:07.000 | And he wrote an essay on his blog when he was just getting started and it was called "A Hundred Countries or an SUV" or something along those lines.
00:14:14.000 | And what he talked about was he said he was riding in a train across Russia and he wanted to travel more.
00:14:25.000 | He had done a bit of traveling and he sat down and he said, "How much would it cost me to go to a hundred countries?"
00:14:29.000 | And his story was he figured out for whatever reason it would cost him about $30,000 to visit a hundred countries.
00:14:35.000 | And he said, "Well, where can I get $30,000?"
00:14:39.000 | And he said, "That's about the cost of an SUV."
00:14:42.000 | Most of my friends are going to buy an SUV and he said no one is particularly impressed when they pull up in a brand new SUV.
00:14:49.000 | "Oh, it's a nice car," but they quickly get over.
00:14:51.000 | But if you say, "I've been to a hundred countries," then wow, what an amazing difference.
00:14:55.000 | And I'm obsessed with the concept of opportunity cost.
00:15:00.000 | For every choice that we make, there's a cost to it and the cost is the choices that we give up.
00:15:04.000 | And so whether it's the choice of buying an SUV, most people don't recognize that when they're going to buy a new SUV,
00:15:11.000 | they're actually being presented with the choice of, "Would you rather own this SUV or would you rather visit a hundred countries over the next two years?"
00:15:18.000 | Me, I would pick the hundred countries.
00:15:20.000 | But if no one ever told me that I could do that, then I wouldn't do that.
00:15:24.000 | And so that's why I love this financial world.
00:15:26.000 | Same thing. I saved 15% of my income diligently because that was what the financial books,
00:15:30.000 | that was what Dave Ramsey and Larry Burkett, to their credit, told me to do.
00:15:35.000 | But nobody ever told me to save 75% of my income and I would be financially independent in seven years.
00:15:40.000 | And once I learned that formula from Jacob Lund Fisker, I said, "I've missed the boat.
00:15:46.000 | I screwed everything up. Look at what I could have done if someone had laid that path out for me as an option,
00:15:51.000 | not to force me to do it but give it to me as an option."
00:15:54.000 | But no one ever did. And so then I felt like, "I could have done that."
00:15:57.000 | And here I am running behind because I'm running on the same cycle that all the rest of the country is running on.
00:16:02.000 | Isn't that weird that we need to be told what our options are?
00:16:06.000 | It is. And the thing is, I think it's conditioned out of us.
00:16:10.000 | Is that intentionally or not, and I don't know the answer to that.
00:16:14.000 | I struggle with that answer. But intentionally or not, we're basically taught that there's a certain path to life.
00:16:20.000 | There's a certain way that things need to be gone about.
00:16:24.000 | Whether that's just simply the conditioning that we have in schooling where we're trained to be good, diligent little employees
00:16:30.000 | and sit in rows and move when the bell sings like the factory system of 1888.
00:16:36.000 | Or whether it's, "We need to go to high school, we need to go to college, we need to get a certain job, we need to buy a house,
00:16:40.000 | we need to do this, we need to do that, we need to do the other thing."
00:16:43.000 | And you look back and you say, "There were a few people who escaped.
00:16:47.000 | There were a few people who see through it and escape, and I wasn't one of those people."
00:16:51.000 | Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that there was anything wrong with that path that I followed.
00:16:57.000 | I am so thankful for the experiences that I've had. I've had a blessed and privileged life, and I'm so thankful.
00:17:05.000 | Because the experiences through which I've come have formed me into the person I am.
00:17:10.000 | And yet, looking back now, I can see that if I had recognized the impact of some of my decisions,
00:17:17.000 | I think I would have made them differently. I can't change it in the past, but I can change it going forward.
00:17:22.000 | I think that's a great way to bring it up.
00:17:26.000 | When we make a decision to go buy a car, we just think, "Oh, it's just $100 a month."
00:17:31.000 | But you're really buying, you're giving up an opportunity.
00:17:35.000 | You're giving up the opportunity to do something else with that future money, or the money you already have.
00:17:41.000 | Just like you said. And I think your answer to how crazy it is that we need to be told our options is,
00:17:49.000 | "Yeah, because we're conditioned." I really believe that, too, that we're conditioned to take this path.
00:17:54.000 | Here's how I'm thinking about it in my head. I'm out in the middle of a grass field, and there's a fork.
00:18:02.000 | I can either go left or I can go right. And what's weird is that we all just go left by default.
00:18:07.000 | We don't even know that we can go right. And that's because when we're brought up, they say, "Go left."
00:18:14.000 | That's the way life goes. You go left.
00:18:17.000 | And so, yeah, it's such a crazy concept. And I think that's one of the reasons that I put on this podcast and this blog
00:18:23.000 | is because I want to show people that you can go right.
00:18:26.000 | First of all, I want to prove that you can go right.
00:18:29.000 | And once I prove that, I want to show people how to go right.
00:18:33.000 | I want to give you an example on what you were saying about the cost of the car.
00:18:37.000 | So here's where personal finance goes.
00:18:39.000 | Personal finance goes to -- and I don't wish to be pejorative of the entire industry.
00:18:46.000 | The personal finance industry has done a world of good for me and for you both.
00:18:51.000 | But here's where personal finance goes.
00:18:53.000 | Personal finance says, "You should buy a car, but you should buy a car that's not too expensive, and you should pay cash."
00:19:01.000 | Or, "You should get a good deal, and you should get it at a fixed interest rate," or something like that.
00:19:08.000 | What about what you're giving up by buying the car in the first place?
00:19:11.000 | And I'll give you an example.
00:19:12.000 | I interviewed a guy on my show who writes a blog that I've read for a long time.
00:19:16.000 | His name is Pat Schulte, and he writes a blog called Bumfuzzle.com.
00:19:22.000 | Pat, when he got out of college, he went and he took an $8 -- he knew he wanted to be a trader.
00:19:28.000 | He wanted to trade stocks. He wanted to trade in the financial world.
00:19:31.000 | He lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and he wanted to be a trader.
00:19:37.000 | So he went and he took an $8 an hour job after college.
00:19:40.000 | He had two college degrees as a clerk on the commodities exchange in Minnesota.
00:19:45.000 | And when he was there, after he was there a little bit, he took the job so that he could meet some people
00:19:52.000 | and get a little bit more connected with some people that were there on the exchange and learn.
00:19:56.000 | He made the connections he needed. He expressed his interest in learning how to trade.
00:20:00.000 | Then he went and sold his pickup truck. He got $5,000 for it.
00:20:03.000 | I didn't know this until I interviewed him on my show.
00:20:05.000 | But he sold his pickup truck for $5,000, and he took that $5,000 and he started trading it.
00:20:11.000 | And he traded on the commodities exchange.
00:20:13.000 | He traded it in Minnesota. A few years later, he and his wife, Allie, moved to Chicago,
00:20:17.000 | and he continued trading. He bought a seat or rented a seat, however that works,
00:20:20.000 | on the commodities exchange in Chicago and traded futures.
00:20:25.000 | He had built his account up. I don't know what he had built it up to,
00:20:28.000 | but he built it up to enough of a situation that about at the age of either 30 or 31,
00:20:33.000 | I don't remember, but let's call it 30, and if it's 31, it was an intentional lie.
00:20:38.000 | At the age of 30, he and his wife decided they wanted to go sail around the world.
00:20:43.000 | So he, little by little, quietly liquidated his entire business.
00:20:48.000 | He closed out all of his trades. He walked in on a Friday morning and told them today was his last day.
00:20:53.000 | They flew down to Florida. They bought a sailboat in a weekend, a $180,000 sailboat,
00:20:58.000 | spent the next three or four years sailing the world, came back to the U.S.,
00:21:03.000 | and proceeded through another series of adventures, bought a Volkswagen,
00:21:07.000 | traveled throughout South America. For the last 11 years, they've traveled the world full-time.
00:21:12.000 | He does some trading online still, but for the last 11 years, they've traveled the world.
00:21:19.000 | They're raising their two kids, and they're traveling the world.
00:21:22.000 | No one told me that I could trade in my car and take the $5,000 and trade that into a fortune
00:21:30.000 | that would be substantial enough for me to go travel the world from the age of 30 to 41.
00:21:34.000 | I just thought I was doing a good--I thought I was doing the smart thing
00:21:37.000 | because I didn't have a car payment, and I was feeling so superior to all of my friends.
00:21:41.000 | "Look, I don't have a car payment, so therefore I know what I'm doing with money."
00:21:45.000 | Wow. Now, is this the guy that you introduced me to in Dallas, or is that someone else?
00:21:49.000 | That's a different guy. I'm talking to him on Friday, so he'll be on the show soon.
00:21:52.000 | His name is Eric Hemingway.
00:21:54.000 | He did a similar thing, right?
00:21:55.000 | Right. That's Eric Hemingway, and I'll be interviewing him soon.
00:21:58.000 | He hosts the Family Adventure podcast, which is a great podcast.
00:22:02.000 | I recommend that you listen to it. My wife and I really enjoy listening to it.
00:22:05.000 | But he and his wife--I don't know all the financial details. He shared some with me,
00:22:09.000 | but I've got to talk to him on the podcast and see what he talks about publicly.
00:22:13.000 | But yeah, he and his wife and their five kids went and sailed the world for, I think it was,
00:22:18.000 | two years together, and he wound up having a sixth kid on the trip. Maybe it was three years.
00:22:22.000 | We're going to go through that on the interview. I haven't interviewed him yet,
00:22:25.000 | but he's got an awesome story.
00:22:27.000 | Wow.
00:22:28.000 | No one told me that was possible.
00:22:30.000 | No.
00:22:31.000 | Here's the next thing, and cut me off if I'm going too long.
00:22:35.000 | I have a tendency to do that, as you know from my show being an hour long,
00:22:38.000 | or two hours long sometimes.
00:22:40.000 | No problem.
00:22:41.000 | But here was the next thing.
00:22:43.000 | As a financial planner, what's the thing that I would talk to everybody about? Retirement.
00:22:48.000 | I would ask constantly to my clients, "Is there a time at which you'd like to be in a position
00:22:53.000 | not to have to work if you didn't want to?" That was always my plan.
00:22:56.000 | And then probably what was your lifestyle going to be like at that point?
00:22:59.000 | How much did you need to live?
00:23:01.000 | 80% of people say it's at 65.
00:23:04.000 | 10% of people would say, "I want to retire early at 55."
00:23:08.000 | And 10% of people would say, "I don't ever want to retire."
00:23:11.000 | Now here's the thing. Have you ever read an article, Craig, that talks about the retirement crisis facing our country?
00:23:16.000 | Yeah, you see them every single day.
00:23:19.000 | Every single day.
00:23:20.000 | So I would sit there and I would say, "Why on earth is it that nobody has the money to retire?"
00:23:25.000 | And I would look at it and say, "Very few of my clients had the money to retire,
00:23:29.000 | and those who did have the money didn't retire."
00:23:32.000 | And so I started looking at it and saying, "Wait a second.
00:23:35.000 | The people who have the money to retire don't."
00:23:38.000 | And I'll cherry pick my example from the top.
00:23:41.000 | Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and what's his name? Carlos Slim.
00:23:45.000 | None of those three guys, the richest guys in the world, are retired.
00:23:47.000 | Donald Trump.
00:23:49.000 | All of these guys could quit today, but they don't retire.
00:23:52.000 | And yet you have millions of people that are desperate to retire, who hate their jobs, hate their lives.
00:23:59.000 | I'm exaggerating a little bit, but there are plenty of people in that situation,
00:24:02.000 | and they'll never accumulate the money to retire.
00:24:04.000 | And I said, "What's going on here?"
00:24:06.000 | And so one of the things that I've learned, and I have some theories that I'm developing,
00:24:10.000 | but I just got frustrated, and I said, "Why is it that everybody feels guilty about,
00:24:18.000 | 'I'm not saving enough for retirement. Joshua, I know I should be saving for retirement.'"
00:24:21.000 | I have clients that feel guilty when they see their financial planner.
00:24:25.000 | And so what I want to say is take back control of your life.
00:24:28.000 | Decide what you want. If you want to retire, I'll tell you how to get there.
00:24:31.000 | Now, do you want to retire at 65, or do you want to retire in six years?
00:24:34.000 | Because both of them are doable.
00:24:36.000 | Or do you want to retire once a year or for every five years?
00:24:39.000 | Or do you want to take the next ten years off and then work till you die?
00:24:43.000 | I don't know, but I can design a plan.
00:24:45.000 | But think for yourself and figure out what you want to do.
00:24:49.000 | I like that. Yeah.
00:24:52.000 | There's so many things just in our society that don't make sense to me.
00:24:56.000 | No, you're exactly right. It's very interesting to think about that.
00:24:59.000 | Why is it that the people that can retire don't?
00:25:02.000 | Why is it that the people that so desperately want to retire never will be able to?
00:25:06.000 | That's crazy.
00:25:09.000 | And here's the anecdote that can help people, I guess, consider if it's true.
00:25:13.000 | Have you ever known somebody who has eagerly hit retirement age?
00:25:18.000 | And they've eagerly hit whatever their retirement age was.
00:25:21.000 | They retired. And then a year or two later, they were either dead or back at work?
00:25:27.000 | Yep.
00:25:28.000 | I think we all know somebody.
00:25:30.000 | I can't make a case off the anecdotes.
00:25:32.000 | But I think that people don't actually want to be retired.
00:25:35.000 | What people want is a sense of freedom and a sense of autonomy and a sense of purpose and control and meaning.
00:25:41.000 | Nobody wants to sit around and play golf seven days a week or watch TV 24 hours a day.
00:25:46.000 | But it would be nice on a beautiful day at 11 a.m. when the sun is shining
00:25:51.000 | to be able to go and play golf and not have to sit in a gray cubicle
00:25:55.000 | or not have to deal with a client that you don't particularly like.
00:25:58.000 | And so what happens is you have to develop that sense of freedom to be able to live your life like you want.
00:26:04.000 | Yeah. I think you're exactly right that people want a sense of purpose
00:26:09.000 | and they want something to work towards.
00:26:14.000 | But they want freedom at the same time.
00:26:16.000 | So the work part of it, people want to work.
00:26:19.000 | They want to contribute. They want to have purpose.
00:26:23.000 | I really do believe that.
00:26:25.000 | I don't believe people just want to sit around.
00:26:28.000 | So I believe that, but they don't want to be stuck, like you said, on a nice afternoon
00:26:32.000 | if they want to go play a round of golf.
00:26:35.000 | They don't want to get fired.
00:26:37.000 | They just want to be able to go play a round of golf instead of looking busy in the cubicle.
00:26:41.000 | So I think it's about freedom, you know, and that's exactly why I think we're both on the same page there.
00:26:47.000 | We want to build that into our lives and we want to help other people build that into their lives.
00:26:52.000 | It's a big part of what I'm doing here and why I do this.
00:26:55.000 | And there are as many ways to achieve it as there are people in the world.
00:27:00.000 | Yeah.
00:27:02.000 | I read your post that you had talked about where you said there once was this guy who read all these books on passive income.
00:27:08.000 | That post, I don't remember what it was called.
00:27:10.000 | And I really – that connects with me because I was that way too.
00:27:15.000 | And I – there's got to be some scheme.
00:27:18.000 | There's got to be some scheme.
00:27:20.000 | The reality is there is no scheme.
00:27:23.000 | But you've just got to create a plan and follow it through and be okay with the adventure.
00:27:27.000 | Even you asked me – I think it was on the call or right before the call started, you asked me about kind of my business transitions.
00:27:35.000 | Yeah.
00:27:37.000 | And I'll share that with you because it's something many people don't know.
00:27:40.000 | And I've shared some of it on the blog.
00:27:43.000 | But I screwed up my own finance just by thinking that I was doing the right thing.
00:27:50.000 | So when I was working at the firm that I was working with, I had a wonderful practice.
00:27:54.000 | I loved my clients.
00:27:55.000 | I had a great office to work with.
00:27:57.000 | And when you're in the financial business, in the financial services business, the office dynamic that you have heavily influences your life.
00:28:05.000 | Yeah.
00:28:06.000 | And the managing director or the managing partner, whatever it's called, it changes from every firm.
00:28:11.000 | The director basically of the office has a major impact on your life and on what the culture of the office is.
00:28:19.000 | So you may have a large company A that has two offices and those two offices can have a very different culture.
00:28:27.000 | My office had an amazing culture.
00:28:30.000 | It was filled with caring, competent, trustworthy, honest, hardworking financial advisors.
00:28:36.000 | And we had just a community. I mean, I would take the shirt off my back for any of those guys.
00:28:43.000 | And I would trust any of them with my clients.
00:28:45.000 | I had a client base of clients that I really liked.
00:28:47.000 | The nice thing is when you're a financial advisor, you don't have to work with people you don't like.
00:28:50.000 | And so I was very, very stable.
00:28:52.000 | Now, my wife and I were young.
00:28:54.000 | We have a kid and we wanted to buy a house.
00:28:56.000 | And so we shopped very carefully for a house and we decided to go ahead and buy it.
00:29:02.000 | And we wanted to buy an inexpensive house, but in our market, I live in basically West Palm Beach, Florida, just north of there.
00:29:08.000 | Houses are not inexpensive.
00:29:11.000 | So we wanted to buy a house for about $100,000, something like that.
00:29:14.000 | And I just couldn't find anything in that price range.
00:29:16.000 | So we wound up changing our price range and I very much wanted to be close to my office.
00:29:21.000 | So when we were shopping, we drew a three-mile ring around my office.
00:29:24.000 | I said, "I want to be in this three-mile ring so I can walk or bike to work whenever possible so I can minimize my transportation costs."
00:29:31.000 | And when we went on to do that, we found a house that was near my office.
00:29:38.000 | It's actually a quarter mile from my office.
00:29:40.000 | My office, we had a 10-year lease on our office space.
00:29:45.000 | And so I'm thinking, "Okay, this is good."
00:29:47.000 | But I had to increase my price range.
00:29:49.000 | I wanted to put a $20,000 -- I wanted to put a 20% down payment on the house to avoid private mortgage insurance.
00:29:55.000 | And so we wound up and we scrounged around and we put a $50,000 down payment on the house.
00:30:01.000 | And we had been saving towards it so we had cash.
00:30:04.000 | We didn't have any other debts.
00:30:06.000 | We had the $50,000 down payment ready to go.
00:30:08.000 | And we did it.
00:30:09.000 | We bought the house.
00:30:10.000 | And it was great.
00:30:12.000 | It was great.
00:30:13.000 | And I had made some other decisions.
00:30:14.000 | We'd spent some other money on some other stuff that doesn't matter.
00:30:17.000 | And then all of a sudden -- what was it, six months later?
00:30:21.000 | Yeah, six months later after buying the house,
00:30:24.000 | all of a sudden I find myself starting the podcast and wanted to do the podcast.
00:30:27.000 | And then I can't do it.
00:30:29.000 | So all of a sudden I'm in a situation now where my whole world changed.
00:30:34.000 | And I didn't have enough cash flow to be able to leave my firm and start a new business that I was excited about.
00:30:46.000 | And so for me, podcasting, this is what I love to do.
00:30:48.000 | I would do this if I had $10 million in the bank for fun.
00:30:51.000 | So I had to figure out a new plan.
00:30:54.000 | But I wasn't even -- A, I could have sold my house, but I didn't want to.
00:30:59.000 | I bought it at a good time.
00:31:00.000 | It's appropriate for us.
00:31:01.000 | But I didn't have the money to walk away from my lucrative financial planning firm.
00:31:06.000 | And so to cut to the chase, I figured out -- we sat down and we ran our budget.
00:31:12.000 | And we figured out, look, we don't need that much money to live on.
00:31:15.000 | And thanks to good principles of personal finance, I figured out we probably need about -- if we live the lifestyle we're usually living, we live on about $3,000 a month.
00:31:25.000 | If we really tighten our belt, we could live on $2,500.
00:31:28.000 | And I said, you know what?
00:31:29.000 | The fact that I could live on $2,500 a month, I can do that doing just about anything.
00:31:34.000 | So I don't care what it is.
00:31:36.000 | I've got to get out of the financial business so that I can talk to the public without it being marketing.
00:31:41.000 | So I looked all over the place as far as figuring things out.
00:31:44.000 | I said, I need some job that's a dead-end job where I'm not expected to have a career position with the company.
00:31:50.000 | And I don't mind working 16 hours a day.
00:31:52.000 | I'll work 8 hours a day at one job as long as it's near my house.
00:31:55.000 | I don't have a long commute.
00:31:56.000 | And as long as it's something where they're not expecting a long-term commitment from me, I'll spend the other 8 hours a day building my new business.
00:32:02.000 | So I built a plan that allowed me to keep the funds that I had saved in the bank to allow me to build my new businesses without needing it.
00:32:11.000 | So there is a plan for every situation.
00:32:14.000 | You just have to find it.
00:32:15.000 | That's awesome, Joshua.
00:32:16.000 | Can you tell us about what -- you mentioned a couple of businesses.
00:32:19.000 | Can you tell us about what they are and what your goals are for them?
00:32:23.000 | Right.
00:32:24.000 | So the number one business that I would love to do is the podcast.
00:32:31.000 | And it's free.
00:32:33.000 | It will always be free.
00:32:34.000 | And I don't have any business structure whatsoever.
00:32:37.000 | My thought is that if I can do an awesome job just delivering amazing in-depth content, then like Zig Ziglar said, you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.
00:32:52.000 | And the thing I love about the Internet is the Internet seems to be one of the most just places on earth.
00:32:57.000 | If you deliver value on an ongoing basis consistently to enough people, something will work out and people will return some of that value to you in the form of a monetary system or monetary compensation.
00:33:09.000 | So at the moment, I don't have any business model behind the podcast.
00:33:13.000 | I'm just trying to create awesome content.
00:33:15.000 | I'm trying to create the kind of show that I would like to listen to every day.
00:33:17.000 | And then over time, I'll figure some way out to -- hopefully, I hope to figure some way out to make some money off of it.
00:33:26.000 | I told the audience, I said, "I'm doing a thousand shows.
00:33:29.000 | If I do a thousand shows and I can't figure out a way to support it, if you don't value it enough to support me in my efforts, that's fine.
00:33:37.000 | But I'm doing a thousand shows and I'm not quitting until then."
00:33:40.000 | So that's the primary business.
00:33:42.000 | I'm in the process of filing the paperwork, working through to start a new financial advisory firm.
00:33:49.000 | And I've got some ideas which I would like to wait to not go into right now.
00:33:54.000 | I'd be happy to talk about it in the future.
00:33:56.000 | But I've got some ideas of ways to improve the financial -- the way that people pay for and receive financial advice.
00:34:06.000 | Because the system that we have now works very well for many people.
00:34:11.000 | There are also many people for whom all of the compensation models are flawed.
00:34:16.000 | And it results in a very -- in less than perfect situation.
00:34:22.000 | So I'm starting a new financial planning firm and just working through the paperwork process with the state.
00:34:26.000 | And that will allow me to pay my bills.
00:34:27.000 | And in the meantime, I have a consulting contract that is something that allows me to pay my bills in the present while I start the new firm.
00:34:35.000 | That's awesome.
00:34:36.000 | So in kind of wrapping this up -- it's been great, by the way, great stuff here.
00:34:41.000 | I always love talking to you.
00:34:43.000 | In wrapping this up, I want to ask you this one question, which is why start a business?
00:34:49.000 | Are you interested in entrepreneurship being a business owner as opposed to just being an employee?
00:34:57.000 | I don't believe that everybody needs to have a business.
00:35:01.000 | Many people are content and thrilled to work for somebody else.
00:35:07.000 | And in many ways, that is easier.
00:35:11.000 | But as a financial planner, I constantly get asked the difficult questions.
00:35:16.000 | And the theme that I have noticed is I can answer just about any financial question with start a business.
00:35:23.000 | So whether that's as simple as, "Joshua, I'm just not making enough money," start a business.
00:35:28.000 | Start a little small side business, whether that's baking cookies in your kitchen and selling them to your friends.
00:35:34.000 | That's how all the great cookie companies got started.
00:35:38.000 | Or whether that's doing a little work on the web or going on Fiverr and figuring out something that you can do there.
00:35:44.000 | So I need to earn extra money because I start a business.
00:35:48.000 | If it's something like, "Joshua, I hate my job and I want to retire, but I don't have any money and I haven't saved anything,"
00:35:55.000 | like we just talked about, the answer to that, I believe, entrepreneurship.
00:35:59.000 | Start something and you can attain most of the feeling of freedom and the sense of autonomy and self-control,
00:36:09.000 | like control of circumstances that you can achieve with being "retired," being financially independent.
00:36:15.000 | You can achieve much of that with a business. You don't have to wait five years or 50 years to save the money.
00:36:20.000 | You can get that now.
00:36:23.000 | Whether it's something like, "Joshua, I'm trying to figure out whether I should – Joshua, Mr. Financial Planner, should I invest money in my IRA, my Roth IRA, my 401k?"
00:36:32.000 | Guess what's better than all of those? Business.
00:36:34.000 | There are two tax codes in this country. There's a tax code for employees and there's a tax code for business owners.
00:36:39.000 | All the good stuff is in the one for the business owners.
00:36:42.000 | Or whether it's things like people are concerned about, "Joshua, if I buy these stocks, maybe my stocks are going to go down in value."
00:36:49.000 | If you can't handle that, go start a business because at least then you know what your value is.
00:36:53.000 | Or, "Joshua, the currency is going to implode. What do I do with it? The government is printing money.
00:36:58.000 | What about China is going to dump our currency and the entire dollar is going to implode when we go off the global dollar standard?"
00:37:06.000 | Guess what the answer is? Start a business.
00:37:09.000 | Whatever it is you're going to be trading, whether it's seashells or whether it's 22 bullets, and that's what counts as currency or gold coins or whatever it happens to be or bitcoin,
00:37:19.000 | the business, the value that you provide for someone else is key.
00:37:24.000 | Once you get your mind wrapped around all business is, is the concept of saying, "What can I do and bring to the market that is valuable?
00:37:32.000 | And then how can I help people meet that?"
00:37:35.000 | It radically transforms everything about your life and even to the point where if you go and take a job again working for someone else,
00:37:43.000 | you will quickly be at the top of any company that you work for because in learning to think like a business owner,
00:37:51.000 | even if you work as an employee, you'll be the employee that is given all of the gain. I'm convinced of it.
00:37:59.000 | Yeah, I'm convinced of that too.
00:38:01.000 | I mean just in asking you, "Well, what have you done?"
00:38:04.000 | "Well, let's see. I've built a business. I've done this. I've done sales. I've developed my product. I've executed."
00:38:11.000 | I mean think of all those skills versus some employee that's coming in.
00:38:15.000 | Well, I followed the training manual on the last job I had for 20 years.
00:38:21.000 | 100%.
00:38:22.000 | Like, "Oh, great. Well, who do you think is going to be the – who's more valuable in the marketplace?"
00:38:28.000 | I mean it's crazy. Yeah, the skills you build when you start a business, unbelievable.
00:38:34.000 | Yeah, just loved everything you said there. Brought me back to – I did an episode on the 12th episode of this show,
00:38:42.000 | createmyindependence.com/12. I gave a lot of information out of the book, 4-Hour Workweek,
00:38:50.000 | and one of them was that basically instead of giving up your 20 years to save up for retirement
00:38:57.000 | and then be able to live the life you want, why not just live it now?
00:39:01.000 | Build yourself a business and you can create most of that enjoyment, most of that freedom,
00:39:07.000 | most of that independence now. I mean it might take you a couple of years,
00:39:10.000 | but I'd rather build it within two years than build it within 20, 25, 30. You know what I mean?
00:39:16.000 | Right. I just had one last comment on what you were saying.
00:39:19.000 | Entrepreneurship, I think in general, will often – not always – will often require more work and more time
00:39:27.000 | and more effort than being an employee.
00:39:30.000 | Yep.
00:39:31.000 | And it may not always come with short-term reward, but here's the difference.
00:39:35.000 | We have this very distorted view of work in our society. Work is viewed as something that is negative.
00:39:43.000 | Work is a good thing. Work is redemptive. Work is something that transforms us.
00:39:48.000 | But the problem is that we don't want to have work that is meaningless and that doesn't challenge us.
00:39:53.000 | I remember one job I had right when I graduated from high school.
00:39:56.000 | I had a job where I was teaching wakeboarding and water skiing to kids during a summer camp.
00:40:01.000 | And this would be what many people would call an ideal job, a perfect job.
00:40:08.000 | I'd go to work every day in a pair of board shorts and flip-flops and spend my day driving around a ski lake,
00:40:14.000 | driving a ski boat. That's what many people want to do on vacation.
00:40:17.000 | Yeah.
00:40:18.000 | And at the end of the summer, I despised that boat.
00:40:21.000 | Wow.
00:40:22.000 | The work was easy. It was "fun," and I was so tired of it because it didn't challenge me. It didn't stretch me.
00:40:29.000 | I'm working harder now than I've worked in a while, and I am enjoying the process of the work,
00:40:38.000 | the learning new skills, the art of my craft, all of these things. I'm enjoying the process of it.
00:40:45.000 | And why do people run marathons? Why do people climb mountains?
00:40:48.000 | Why do people visit every country in the world? Why do people build multi-billion dollar businesses?
00:40:54.000 | It's to gain a sense of achievement.
00:40:56.000 | And so we have this weird, twisted idea that somehow work is bad, that we should run from work and run to leisure.
00:41:03.000 | Leisure is not a worthy goal. We need to rest, but there is far more satisfaction found in doing something great than there is in leisure.
00:41:15.000 | But the cool thing about entrepreneurship and work is that when you decide what that something great is you want to do,
00:41:21.000 | my vision, and this would be what I would want to wrap up with, my vision with my show, here's what I'm doing every day.
00:41:28.000 | I am trying to create a repository of knowledge that I wish I had at 10 or 12 years old when I first started paying attention to this stuff.
00:41:39.000 | And my hope is that someday, my show may only be a thousand episodes, and I'm going to do a thousand episodes and leave it there.
00:41:46.000 | But my hope is that someday, some broke, disadvantaged, oppressed child from the ghetto of the southern United States or the northern United States
00:42:00.000 | or inner city Mongolia or somewhere, you've got to speak English so Mongolia is probably not going to work.
00:42:09.000 | But some child is going to one day take his little Android phone that everyone is going to have and he's going to say,
00:42:17.000 | "You know what, I wonder if there's anything I can learn about some skills," and they're going to find my show.
00:42:22.000 | And I'm going to take them from zero knowledge all the way through advanced knowledge in all of the things that matter.
00:42:31.000 | I'm going to deliver a master's degree in financial planning and in wealth building to this child and someday that person is going to write me a letter.
00:42:45.000 | And they're going to call me, they're going to come see me, they're going to say, "My life changed because of the input that you gave into my life."
00:42:51.000 | That excites me. That gets me up in the morning and gets me thrilled to say, "Let me go and figure out how can I learn to teach something better?
00:43:00.000 | How can I become more concise? How can I tighten up my language?" That excites me.
00:43:05.000 | And that's far and away more important to me than some stupid amount of pleasure of going fishing or whatever it is that the latest thing I want to play at.
00:43:19.000 | The play is important, but when you feel like you're achieving something that's important to you, it transforms everything.
00:43:25.000 | And that's it. That's what I got.
00:43:26.000 | Well, that's awesome. Great stuff and always a pleasure to talk to you.
00:43:30.000 | Thank you for having me on, Craig. I really appreciate it. I loved our interview. I love what you're doing. Keep going.
00:43:35.000 | Keep going because I've listened to a couple of your shows and you can be a real voice of encouragement for many people. So keep going.
00:43:44.000 | I think I love that so many people are doing financial blogging, doing financial podcasting.
00:43:49.000 | We need more and more people doing it and sharing where they're at in the journey because different people are going to click with different people.
00:43:56.000 | And you'll be able to encourage the people that click with you and I'll be able to encourage the people that click with me and together we'll raise the financial IQ of this country.
00:44:03.000 | Definitely. All right. Well, thanks again. And where should people go to check you out?
00:44:07.000 | RadicalPersonalFinance.com. That's it. Everything's there. Subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever it is that you do.
00:44:12.000 | And I would love to have people check it out. There's a ton of stuff there already and new episodes coming every day.
00:44:18.000 | All right. Thanks again, Joshua.
00:44:20.000 | Thanks, Craig.
00:44:21.000 | All right. So that was the interview. I hope you guys enjoyed it.
00:44:25.000 | Just one more thing that I wanted to mention. Next Tuesday, September 9th, 2014, I'm going to be starting my first workshop.
00:44:38.000 | We're going to be doing a WordPress development workshop. It's a live workshop. It's going to be for four weeks and two hours per night.
00:44:46.000 | So we start next Tuesday, September 9th at 8 p.m. Central Time. And it's going to be a small group of five people and we are going to learn how to build custom WordPress sites.
00:44:58.000 | So if you're interested in building that skill set, I've still got room for you. So please send me an email, Craig@CreateMyIndependence.com and send it soon because this starts in five days.
00:45:09.000 | All right. And that's really it. Other than that, have a great week, guys, and I'll talk to you soon.
00:45:14.000 | [Music]
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