2017-12-19-Joshua_on_Complete_Privacy_and_Security_Podcast_
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00:00:29.800 | Welcome to the Complete Privacy and Security Podcast.
00:00:34.840 | I'm Timothy Lovejoy.
00:00:36.440 | And I'm Mitch Martin.
00:00:37.840 | This podcast will help you become digitally invisible.
00:00:41.920 | This is the Complete Privacy and Security Podcast.
00:00:54.800 | You will eliminate current and future threats toward your privacy and security and take
00:00:58.840 | yourself out of the system.
00:01:01.440 | When taken to the extreme, you will be impossible to compromise.
00:01:10.960 | Jesse what's going on man?
00:01:12.960 | Are you, please tell me you're recording this from your van.
00:01:15.880 | No, not yet man.
00:01:18.240 | We're working on it.
00:01:19.240 | Trust me.
00:01:20.240 | We're getting closer and closer.
00:01:22.920 | Almost 100% there.
00:01:24.880 | Was that one of your design requirements for the van?
00:01:27.600 | It had to have a podcast studio?
00:01:30.080 | Like here's what I'm looking for.
00:01:31.320 | I'm looking for like a stove, a sink, a bathroom, a bed, and a podcast studio.
00:01:36.560 | Yeah.
00:01:37.560 | One of the like soundproof walls and everything else.
00:01:40.360 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:41.360 | Yeah.
00:01:42.360 | Yeah.
00:01:43.360 | Well, cool man.
00:01:44.360 | Cool.
00:01:45.360 | I, man, I'm so excited for you guys to get that thing going and, or I mean it's, it's
00:01:48.360 | going, but for you guys to, to get into it, just looking forward to seeing how this plays
00:01:51.960 | out, man.
00:01:52.960 | It's super exciting.
00:01:55.200 | Super exciting deal.
00:01:56.840 | Anything else going on with you, man?
00:01:58.200 | Anything new?
00:01:59.200 | No, that's about it.
00:02:00.200 | Just, just me and Cameron trying to, trying to push forward and get ourselves out there.
00:02:04.120 | Start seeing this beautiful nation that we have, man.
00:02:05.840 | So anybody wants to add suggestions to our site, they're more welcome.
00:02:09.280 | That's up and running.
00:02:10.280 | So we're, we're taking suggestions and plotting them on the map for our to-do list and getting
00:02:14.200 | ready to start planning those trips.
00:02:15.920 | So yeah, I've, I've added a few and to be honest, man, I kind of had to stop myself
00:02:19.880 | cause I'm like, man, I've, I could add like probably two in every state, but I don't
00:02:24.440 | know if they're looking for that much, looking for that much stuff or not, but I might be
00:02:28.640 | back in there at some point.
00:02:30.240 | I love it.
00:02:31.240 | All right, man.
00:02:32.680 | So I don't really have too much of an intro topic this week.
00:02:38.440 | One thing I did want to maybe talk about a little bit was a pretty cool little guide
00:02:42.280 | I found for motherboard.
00:02:45.800 | And do you, do you remember that?
00:02:47.520 | I'm sorry, man.
00:02:48.520 | Do you remember the name of that right off the top of your head?
00:02:50.440 | Cause I've actually lost my link here for it.
00:02:52.920 | Yeah.
00:02:53.920 | It's a little guide.
00:02:54.920 | It's the motherboard guide to not getting hacked.
00:02:58.440 | And they basically do quick, short little guide and some pretty good beginner guide,
00:03:04.000 | if you will.
00:03:05.000 | As far as doing quick privacy and security for you.
00:03:07.920 | Yeah, honestly, man, for what it is, I thought it was, I thought it was pretty darn good.
00:03:12.160 | I ran across this on Reddit yesterday and this thing has been out for, for a couple
00:03:18.080 | of weeks now.
00:03:19.080 | It's not brand new, but man, this thing goes through a lot of stuff.
00:03:22.240 | A lot of like, it opens up a threat modeling.
00:03:24.480 | It talks about like a lot of the stuff we talk about, like using a good passwords and
00:03:29.200 | password managers and keeping your apps up to date and a two factor authentication.
00:03:35.440 | And I'm just kind of scrolling down the list here and maybe it's not quite the order that
00:03:39.920 | I would put it in, but overall, man, I felt like this was, I felt like this was a pretty
00:03:45.000 | good place to start.
00:03:46.320 | Yeah.
00:03:47.320 | I like right in the beginning, like, well, sorry, right in the meat and potatoes of it,
00:03:50.240 | they have like a quick like do's and don'ts, which is really nice.
00:03:55.280 | And then as well, I thought it was pretty interesting when it, when I got into mobile
00:03:58.240 | security, it's, they're just simple, get an iPhone.
00:04:01.920 | Yeah, yeah.
00:04:02.920 | They do a whole little excerpt and it's like, but I love Android.
00:04:08.840 | Fine.
00:04:09.840 | Here you go.
00:04:10.840 | Yeah, yeah.
00:04:12.080 | So, um, they, they, they are very, uh, uh, very dedicated to signal on this for some
00:04:20.080 | reason, which, which, which is fine, which is fine.
00:04:22.240 | I would like to see, um, you know, wires and option there because they do like very clearly
00:04:27.360 | acknowledge the like difficulty of setting up signal, uh, with either your real phone
00:04:33.160 | number and having to give your real phone number out or a fake phone number.
00:04:36.480 | And then having to like, you know, all your contacts don't know that's you.
00:04:40.160 | So having to get with them individually offline and give them your signal number and, and
00:04:44.680 | all that stuff.
00:04:45.680 | So, um, they, they do acknowledge that.
00:04:48.120 | And I, you know, this isn't exactly what I would write, but man, probably, probably nothing
00:04:52.840 | is probably nobody's going to agree a hundred percent with me.
00:04:55.600 | And, uh, this was, I don't know, man, this was just refreshing to see kind of an all
00:05:00.560 | in one guide.
00:05:02.360 | It even got into a few things that I thought were kind of, you know, maybe a little bit
00:05:06.520 | more tinfoil hat than you would expect on, you know, on your average, like mainstream
00:05:12.100 | privacy guide.
00:05:13.100 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:14.100 | Yeah.
00:05:15.100 | And I, they get into like tour and everything else.
00:05:17.880 | And even, you know, one of the things I liked as I talked about device cameras and microphones,
00:05:21.520 | you know, like kind of going in depth on that.
00:05:23.280 | And, you know, if you want to, you can throw them in the microwave if you're really concerned
00:05:26.740 | about what apps and things like that as far as people are recording you and things.
00:05:29.760 | So they do get a little tinfoil hat, which is kind of cool, but not like too crazy, I
00:05:33.520 | don't think.
00:05:34.520 | Yeah.
00:05:35.520 | And I kind of wish they offered some, uh, you know, maybe some middle of the road solutions.
00:05:40.240 | Like, you know, they, they have a section on credit cards that, uh, and now this is
00:05:44.320 | just turning into you and me picking apart this like totally well-intentioned, uh, overall,
00:05:50.600 | very good thing.
00:05:51.600 | But, uh, you know, they're like for credit cards, they're like, don't use your credit
00:05:54.640 | cards because credit card companies, you know, give that information over to the government
00:05:58.280 | and, and that's fine.
00:05:59.320 | I don't disagree.
00:06:00.320 | Uh, but their only alternative is Bitcoin.
00:06:03.560 | And uh, you know, I, I like, I would kind of like to see something like, you know, like
00:06:07.400 | some of the other options we use, uh, privacy or pseudo pay or, or blur or whatever in there
00:06:13.200 | for those middle of the road circumstances.
00:06:15.200 | I don't, you know, um, I don't feel like I need to use Bitcoin on every single purchase
00:06:19.960 | I make.
00:06:20.960 | I don't feel like I need every single thing I buy to be 100% anonymous, but I also don't
00:06:26.360 | want to give out my credit card number really for anything.
00:06:29.000 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:06:30.000 | It would have been nice to, especially now with all the different options, privacy and
00:06:34.600 | blur and pseudo, like you said.
00:06:36.520 | But I will say above all, man, they did talk about encryption, full disencrypting your
00:06:41.040 | hard drive.
00:06:42.040 | Yeah, they definitely did.
00:06:43.200 | They definitely did.
00:06:44.200 | So, uh, I'll make sure that we have a link for that in the show notes.
00:06:49.000 | And uh, if, if maybe there's someone in your life that's looking for like a really easy
00:06:53.320 | beginner guide, uh, maybe that's a good place to send them.
00:06:56.240 | I, you know, I know I, uh, well actually Jesse's probably my biggest champion as far as the
00:07:01.640 | 30 day security challenge.
00:07:03.360 | I know I send a lot of people to that man, but, uh, maybe not everyone responds to, to
00:07:09.440 | like that 30 day style and they want to read a full article like this, or maybe not everyone
00:07:14.460 | likes my writing style or whatever.
00:07:15.960 | So, um, there, there's a bunch of alternatives out there and overall I think this is a really
00:07:20.520 | good one.
00:07:21.520 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:07:22.520 | I don't think they went too deep in the weeds on the technical side and kept it pretty,
00:07:25.560 | you know, um, I don't want to say lame and make people sound like they're dumb, but it
00:07:29.800 | does keep it very simple, um, and kind of straight to the point, which is kind of nice.
00:07:34.000 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:07:35.000 | So, uh, do you want to talk a little bit about what we're going to do in the main topic today?
00:07:39.800 | Um, yeah, man, you know, actually you're, you're just talking about them and the, uh,
00:07:44.800 | the credit cards and anonymous payments and stuff.
00:07:47.040 | We're actually gonna do a show on personal finance.
00:07:49.160 | Um, and you know, this week's guest is Joshua Sheets from the Radical Personal Finance
00:07:54.240 | Podcast.
00:07:56.240 | We're going to bring him on and get some questions and kind of do some interviewing with him.
00:08:00.440 | Yeah.
00:08:01.440 | And, uh, you know, like it's, it's not a joke.
00:08:04.640 | Uh, it's, it's not just slick marketing.
00:08:06.600 | The Radical Personal Finance Podcast, uh, really is radical.
00:08:10.640 | He has, uh, he's had me on to, uh, and, and basically let me go as far as I want on the
00:08:15.720 | privacy stuff.
00:08:17.080 | He, he has, uh, just a lot of interesting guests on and kind of some radical lifestyle
00:08:23.560 | suggestions.
00:08:24.560 | Actually, Jesse, he just did an episode a few weeks ago about, uh, living in your vehicle
00:08:30.120 | and he, you know, he doesn't recommend that for everybody, but he's like, man, if you're,
00:08:34.080 | if you're in a situation where you could, uh, you know, you could buy a vehicle with
00:08:38.200 | a camper or, uh, you know, buy a van or whatever, you could save a ton of money.
00:08:43.400 | Um, he, he's not your traditional financial advisor and I, I absolutely love his show.
00:08:49.560 | And if you're kind of new to the world of financial advice, um, he has a very approachable,
00:08:54.320 | uh, manner to him and a very, just a very entertaining show if nothing else.
00:08:59.480 | So, uh, I'll quit rambling on about him.
00:09:02.120 | We'll go ahead and get him on here.
00:09:04.240 | Joshua, welcome to the Complete Privacy and Security Podcast.
00:09:08.400 | Thank you for having me.
00:09:09.400 | Hey Josh, uh, welcome to the show.
00:09:11.800 | Um, would you mind starting out by telling our audiences a little bit about yourself
00:09:15.960 | and your experiences in the, uh, financial planning?
00:09:19.120 | Sure.
00:09:20.120 | You know, I was always, uh, interested from an early age in the world of money.
00:09:23.600 | I was the nerd who in high school when most people were probably out playing football,
00:09:27.360 | I'd be sitting around reading books on money.
00:09:29.520 | And so I was a personal finance aficionado from an early age.
00:09:33.560 | Uh, in 2008 that led to my deciding after I got laid off from a job, I decided to go
00:09:39.600 | into the actual financial planning business.
00:09:42.320 | And so I began my career in the actual world of professional financial planning in about
00:09:47.240 | 2008.
00:09:48.240 | And I worked as a financial advisor for a total of just under six years.
00:09:52.600 | And during that time, I worked really hard to learn the world of professional finance.
00:09:57.400 | I became a pretty highly credentialed advisor.
00:09:59.920 | I have a master's degree in financial planning, uh, was a certified financial planner and
00:10:04.120 | a chartered life underwriter, a chartered financial consultant, and a half other, maybe
00:10:07.680 | a handful of other industry designations.
00:10:10.560 | So I worked really hard on the academic side of professional financial planning.
00:10:13.900 | And then in about 2013, I looked around and I became frustrated with the world of, uh,
00:10:20.200 | what I saw as consumer level, uh, personal finance advice.
00:10:23.560 | It seemed like there was a really great wealth of information related to somebody at the
00:10:28.000 | basic level of personal finance advice.
00:10:31.160 | Here's how you can get out of debt or here's how you can get a better deal on your cell
00:10:33.840 | phone, et cetera.
00:10:35.440 | But I was exposed to the world of professional financial planning.
00:10:38.760 | Here's how you put together a guaranteed, uh, you know, a grant for your estate planning
00:10:43.100 | in order to help this or, or a charitable remainder trust and all this kind of hardcore
00:10:47.920 | financial planning stuff.
00:10:49.320 | Uh, but that, and that was well represented in the world of professional financial advice,
00:10:52.880 | but I didn't see anything that kind of crossed that gap that brought the world of professional
00:10:57.000 | financial planning techniques to the world of personal finance.
00:11:00.920 | And a lot of the debates and, uh, arguments that occurred in the personal finance online
00:11:05.540 | blogosphere podcast world, I just felt they missed the mark.
00:11:09.560 | So looking at the beautiful new world of niche internet content, I decided to throw my hat
00:11:15.760 | in the ring and see if I can do something better.
00:11:17.800 | So about three and a half years ago, I shuttered my financial planning business, surrendered
00:11:22.040 | all my licenses and designations and launched a show called radical personal finance.
00:11:27.080 | And it's a 100% a podcast focused on audio, uh, information.
00:11:32.140 | And what I've sought to do is a tagline of the show is to help people to live a rich
00:11:36.300 | life now while also building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:11:40.160 | And I've tried to bring together the inspirational and philosophical ideas that make a difference,
00:11:47.160 | mix them with the practical tactics that are accessible to everyone, and then sprinkle
00:11:51.880 | that all over with a framework of hardcore financial planning so that we can do things
00:11:56.280 | in a very efficient way.
00:11:57.480 | Uh, so now it's been about three and a half to four years building radical personal finance,
00:12:01.720 | just published the 500th episode and going strong and have no plans to stop.
00:12:05.680 | Now, Joshua, Jesse and I were talking about this a little bit before the show, and I was
00:12:10.160 | attempting to explain to him why your show is truly radical and why that isn't just some
00:12:16.960 | slick marketing.
00:12:18.580 | Can you talk about that just a little bit?
00:12:20.360 | Well, I try to not have any fear about tackling subjects that are abnormal.
00:12:25.640 | Now, I still have the fear because it's amazing how strong the cultural influences are when
00:12:30.800 | you have a certain position to kind of say, you shouldn't do this.
00:12:33.800 | But I try to, if I feel uncomfortable about a subject or I feel like, oh, I wonder how
00:12:38.000 | I'm going to be perceived about this, I try to suppress that and press on.
00:12:41.360 | So those are a few examples.
00:12:43.740 | Number one, I try to talk about things that are accessible to many people.
00:12:47.040 | So I've done shows on dumpster diving and I've done shows on how to live in your car
00:12:52.320 | and just kind of weird off topic things like that that are not normal for somebody who's
00:12:56.920 | a credentialed financial advisor.
00:12:59.040 | I also try to tackle the hardcore philosophical ideas and I try to treat them radically.
00:13:04.280 | So I've interviewed people who are tax protesters who refuse to pay income taxes because of
00:13:09.040 | their disagreement with how the US government uses that money.
00:13:13.760 | I've spoken with and interviewed people who are expatriates who teach people how to spread
00:13:18.160 | their assets all around the world in order to provide for themselves.
00:13:21.800 | I also try to talk about some of the more aggressive approaches to financial independence.
00:13:26.760 | I keep my foot planted firmly in the world of what's called the financial independence
00:13:32.520 | early retirement movement, which is all about groups of people who are seeking to retire
00:13:39.480 | not at the age of 65, but in five years or 10 years or 15 years of active working.
00:13:45.320 | And it's a very doable process and so I try to teach those techniques.
00:13:49.440 | And then I also cover topics that I think are really interesting.
00:13:53.560 | So here's how you can set up your house with a half acre urban lot or a quarter acre urban
00:13:59.960 | lot.
00:14:00.960 | Here's how you can turn it into a productive micro farm and set up a sideline business
00:14:05.720 | selling micro greens to local restaurants and make yourself a very handsome five figure
00:14:10.040 | annual profit from that little business that turns your home into a productive source of
00:14:14.280 | capital.
00:14:15.280 | Or let's talk about how maybe instead of putting more money in your 401k, you should put more
00:14:21.160 | money into insulating your old house.
00:14:23.260 | So it's a little bit more energy efficient and that may have a better payoff.
00:14:27.160 | So I try to approach these things with the academic rigor of financial planning, but
00:14:32.040 | also to focus on strategies that are really applicable to many people.
00:14:36.520 | And I've also observed, I'm probably a bit of a maverick in the world of professional
00:14:39.840 | financial advice because I've observed that a lot of what we as financial advisors commonly
00:14:45.040 | discuss can work technically, but it often doesn't work because people don't do it.
00:14:53.120 | And I noticed that as a financial advisor, we in the professional financial advice industry
00:14:58.620 | were, and to be clear, I'm no longer a financial advisor.
00:15:01.820 | So when I was one, I noticed that we in the financial advice industry were very good at
00:15:06.080 | helping people who are already rich to care for their money, but we weren't very good
00:15:10.160 | at helping people become rich.
00:15:11.800 | And so I've tried to tackle these subjects without fear of ideology or dogma, but rather
00:15:20.800 | in discuss them in a straightforward way that in my mind, the common person could really
00:15:25.720 | understand and find some ideas that they could implement.
00:15:28.080 | Yeah, that's one thing I really appreciate about your show.
00:15:31.120 | And I could probably spend the next allotment of our time for this interview talking about
00:15:36.880 | favorite episodes of yours.
00:15:38.400 | But one thing that you do that I feel like basically people who are super focused in
00:15:45.520 | one field or another in all fields do, and we're certainly guilty of this in privacy,
00:15:50.120 | is to kind of miss the forest for the trees.
00:15:52.360 | You recently had a listener call in and say, "Hey, here's my income.
00:15:56.400 | Here's my assets.
00:15:58.160 | And you know, my girlfriend, I want to propose to my girlfriend.
00:16:01.960 | So what should I invest in first?"
00:16:03.920 | And you're like, "Whoa, whoa, you just skipped over the biggest part of that."
00:16:07.200 | If the time is right in your life to get married and to take the step that's going to make
00:16:12.760 | you happy, that should be your priority.
00:16:15.880 | And I think it's easy for people that are focused on one particular aspect, like finance
00:16:21.680 | or whatever it may be, to focus on that and to the exclusion of everything else.
00:16:28.760 | That's one thing I really enjoy about your show.
00:16:31.400 | And I just wanted to point that out because the way you answered that question was particularly
00:16:36.800 | meaningful to me.
00:16:38.440 | But anyway, moving on to this, let's tie this into privacy and talk about why you're on
00:16:44.520 | a privacy and security show.
00:16:47.640 | Can you tell us why being financially stable or financially secure, I'm not sure what your
00:16:53.760 | taxonomy is with that, but why is that important to maintaining personal privacy?
00:16:59.840 | I think a number of different areas.
00:17:01.640 | There are a lot of ways that we could talk about that.
00:17:04.800 | First and foremost, if you don't have some degree of financial stability, I think, frankly,
00:17:10.560 | any of the, let's just call them intermediate actions that can help to maintain financial
00:17:15.960 | privacy are going to be out of your reach.
00:17:19.560 | But also, they're going to be probably just not even worth pursuing.
00:17:23.920 | For example, if you want to use a post office box as your way of receiving physical mail,
00:17:30.120 | that's going to cost extra.
00:17:31.120 | You have a perfectly good mailbox out in front of your house or down in the lobby of your
00:17:35.400 | apartment building.
00:17:36.640 | If you want to build a, but if you want to use a payo box, that's going to cost you extra
00:17:41.800 | per year.
00:17:42.800 | So you need to have that set up and be in a situation where you're able to do it.
00:17:48.200 | When you start to get to more advanced financial privacy techniques, you're going to wind up
00:17:53.320 | spending more money for many of the things that you do.
00:17:57.320 | For example, let's say that you want to shelter and to title some of your assets outside of
00:18:03.080 | your personal name, which is more easily searchable by somebody who's trying to find out information
00:18:08.120 | about your personal finances.
00:18:09.960 | And you want to title them within the context of an entity of some kind.
00:18:13.520 | Well, that entity is going to cost money.
00:18:15.640 | It's going to cost money for the formation of the entity.
00:18:19.000 | It's going to cost money for the maintenance of the entity, for all of the appropriate
00:18:22.600 | agents that service that entity.
00:18:24.780 | So if you don't have some basic level of financial stability in your life, that's going to be
00:18:32.640 | really hard for you to pursue long term.
00:18:35.800 | That said, I think it's not as-- there is, as with most things, some really low-hanging
00:18:40.480 | fruit.
00:18:41.480 | And I, as you say about missing the forest for the trees with the example that you gave,
00:18:46.460 | in many ways, we do that with a lot of subjects.
00:18:49.960 | And that particular approach to financial planning is especially important to me, to
00:18:54.320 | always focus on what's the most important at this phase of time.
00:18:57.840 | Let me give one more example and then swing back to privacy.
00:19:01.640 | I learned when I was a financial advisor, when I was selling financial products, that
00:19:06.520 | it was in my own financial interest to focus my conversation on specific areas of discussion
00:19:14.120 | that would result in my ability to potentially sell a product.
00:19:17.600 | And this is the great downfall and the great challenge of the world of financial advice.
00:19:23.060 | It may be all well and good for me to encourage somebody to pay off their debt.
00:19:26.840 | And I spent many hours talking to prospective clients about paying off their debt.
00:19:30.320 | But it's hard for me to figure out how to get those clients to pay me any money to give
00:19:32.880 | them that advice.
00:19:34.280 | And so if you think, however, about what's going to make a bigger difference, somebody
00:19:37.680 | putting an extra $1,000 in their 401(k) or paying off their debt, probably, lifestyle-wise,
00:19:42.600 | paying off their debt is going to be a big thing.
00:19:44.720 | Or another example would be where they live and what they do for work.
00:19:49.160 | If you were to look at the amount of satisfaction and health and stability and well-being, the
00:19:56.080 | actual structure of your life that you get from being in a situation where you have extra
00:20:01.920 | savings, and you were to compare that to just simply living in a place that you chose because
00:20:06.720 | you want to live there, working with people that you like, and having personal people
00:20:11.440 | in your life that you like and that you enjoy being around, it's going to be a far bigger
00:20:16.200 | benefit for you, lifestyle-wise, to live and work where you want to, rather than to have
00:20:20.520 | an extra $10,000 in your 401(k).
00:20:22.800 | So I've given the advice to lots of people.
00:20:24.560 | Why don't you stop putting money in your 401(k) and save up $10,000 so you can afford
00:20:30.280 | to move across the country?
00:20:31.760 | And instead of living in some big, giant city, why don't you move to a ski town in the Rocky
00:20:36.340 | Mountains or move to the beach?
00:20:37.560 | They've got jobs everywhere.
00:20:39.000 | You don't have to be rich to make this lifestyle change.
00:20:41.280 | You just need to actually intentionally focus it.
00:20:44.100 | So in the same way, I think that applies in the world of professional financial advice.
00:20:48.200 | People miss the fact that you want to focus on those things that are going to give you
00:20:53.640 | the most return first, which is something like having a job that's well-suited for you.
00:20:58.560 | In the world of privacy, I think the same thing applies, however, because in the same
00:21:04.720 | way that switching to a different job will buy you much more life happiness, something
00:21:10.680 | like minimizing the amount of information that you publish about yourself is going to
00:21:14.880 | be a big impact on your personal privacy.
00:21:18.520 | So it doesn't cost a lot of money to start pulling back the constant leakage of personal
00:21:24.400 | information that we all put out into the world of social media.
00:21:28.500 | That doesn't cost anything.
00:21:29.840 | You don't cost much to be a little bit more circumspect with all the details and the data
00:21:34.760 | of your life that you share with others.
00:21:36.800 | So it's a real balance.
00:21:38.360 | And I think that it's important to recognize that you don't have to be rich.
00:21:41.280 | You don't have to even be financially stable to start being more careful with the leakage
00:21:46.280 | from your life of all of your personal information.
00:21:49.080 | But if you want to start to pursue some of the more aggressive medium stage and, as you
00:21:54.080 | put it in your book, expert stage strategies, you better be prepared to pay because they
00:21:58.240 | are certainly going to cost you more.
00:22:00.360 | That's an interesting, I love your perspective on that.
00:22:04.240 | A lot of your financial advisors, they will tell you 401(k), Roth IRAs, everything's for
00:22:10.640 | the future.
00:22:11.640 | And that whole plan of retirement at that 60-65 age range, you bring up an interesting
00:22:19.600 | perspective of, hey, instead of putting that $10,000 in a 401(k), use it to move somewhere
00:22:24.240 | else that you enjoy and stuff like that.
00:22:25.720 | So I guess that being said, can you describe what you would consider "to be financially
00:22:30.880 | stable or financially secure"?
00:22:32.560 | I think it's really a continuum.
00:22:34.880 | And we really do need to understand where somebody is starting from.
00:22:38.520 | And I'll give you the stages that I look at and that I have mapped out that I teach.
00:22:44.000 | They're on my website at RadicalPersonalFinance.com, and I've covered them in the show.
00:22:47.860 | But the basic stages that I see to go from zero to what I call financial abundance work
00:22:53.820 | like this.
00:22:55.200 | Stage zero is a place of financial dependence.
00:22:58.280 | And that's where we all start.
00:23:00.160 | We all begin from a place of being dependent on others for our livelihood.
00:23:05.160 | I have young children.
00:23:06.800 | They're fully dependent on me.
00:23:08.620 | And so every one of us began in that place.
00:23:11.000 | And that may be a place of a young person, a young adult who is currently dependent on
00:23:15.360 | the financial support of their parents.
00:23:17.300 | Or it may be an adult who has hit a rough patch in life, and they've needed the help
00:23:22.680 | and care of other people in order to continue forward.
00:23:26.760 | They needed to depend on personal charity.
00:23:29.820 | They needed to depend on some form of governmental program.
00:23:35.020 | That's a stage of financial dependence.
00:23:37.500 | So the first goal is to move from financial dependence to stage one of financial independence
00:23:43.080 | called financial solvency.
00:23:44.920 | And I define solvency as being able to support yourself on your own income without the aid
00:23:51.280 | of others and being current on all of your bills.
00:23:53.880 | So being able to support yourself on your own income without financial support from
00:23:57.520 | others and being current on all of your bills.
00:24:00.660 | If you can't be financially solvent or if you're not financially solvent, it's very
00:24:03.900 | hard to do anything in life.
00:24:06.040 | It's really tough.
00:24:07.040 | I've worked with a lot of people who are insolvent, and it's the lion at the door.
00:24:14.380 | You can't do much until you're in that place.
00:24:16.240 | But once you can get financially solvent, then we can move on and start to build layers
00:24:21.760 | of independence and stability.
00:24:23.760 | So stage one, financial solvency.
00:24:25.240 | Stage two, financial stability is what I've called it.
00:24:28.120 | That means that once you're current on your bills, you need to build some sort of buffer
00:24:32.340 | account and call it an emergency fund, a rainy day fund, cash reserves, just some kind of
00:24:37.900 | money that will start to protect you from the unexpected.
00:24:42.660 | Because no matter what, unexpected problems are already always going to happen.
00:24:47.100 | Something will break, something will come up.
00:24:49.280 | Or on the flip side, unexpected opportunities will come up, and you need to have money available
00:24:54.140 | to you.
00:24:55.140 | I don't have any hard and fast numbers on this, but I've actually learned over the years,
00:24:59.800 | the hard way, not to encourage people to focus first and foremost on the big picture financial
00:25:05.840 | tools that many people focus on.
00:25:08.420 | For example, putting money in an IRA.
00:25:10.380 | That's fine, but that's not the first step.
00:25:12.520 | And so in this stage of financial stability, building up an emergency fund, I think it's
00:25:16.900 | good to go based upon either a few months of expenses, three to six months is ideal.
00:25:21.740 | I encourage young people that their first major financial goal should be to build up
00:25:25.820 | a reserve account of about 10,000 bucks that's available to them.
00:25:28.980 | Whether that's in a savings account, physical currency that's available to them, about 10,000
00:25:33.220 | bucks.
00:25:34.220 | Because if you think about the life change of the average young man or woman, and how
00:25:39.460 | impactful $10,000 is, it opens up the world of options.
00:25:44.860 | There's almost nothing you can't do if you have $10,000.
00:25:47.100 | In the United States, about half the population can't lay their hands on, I forget, is it
00:25:52.020 | 500 or $1,000 cash if they needed to without borrowing it.
00:25:55.540 | So the majority of families, if they just put themselves in a situation where they had
00:26:01.020 | about $10,000 saved up, would move themselves from the bottom 50% of society to the top
00:26:06.540 | 50% of society.
00:26:08.100 | And they would be well cushioned against the vast majority of life problems that come at
00:26:14.700 | them.
00:26:15.700 | So that's stage two, financial stability.
00:26:16.860 | Stage three that I teach is debt freedom.
00:26:19.220 | This one is hard to know where to put, but generally if you have debt, for most people,
00:26:23.860 | you're going to want to get rid of it.
00:26:25.380 | Now obviously not all debt is created equal, so you need to sit down and look carefully
00:26:29.140 | at the debt.
00:26:30.280 | But definitely you want to be rid of any high interest rate debt.
00:26:33.620 | Definitely you need to have any old unpaid debts cleared off.
00:26:37.280 | Definitely you probably want to clear any consumer debt, especially consumer debt that's
00:26:40.600 | tied to depreciating assets.
00:26:42.900 | And if you do have any debts on investment assets, like investment real estate or productive
00:26:48.080 | business assets, generally you want to make a plan to clear that debt as well.
00:26:53.520 | Because no matter who you are and what stage you are, if you are fully debt free, you will
00:26:58.900 | simply enjoy greater freedom and independence in your life.
00:27:01.860 | And that's one of the things that most of us are looking for with regard to money.
00:27:06.740 | And then quickly stage four is financial security.
00:27:10.260 | What I teach is that from now on, you're trying to build up streams of income from investment
00:27:15.500 | portfolios, from independent businesses, from savings that will provide for an increasing
00:27:21.640 | percentage of your lifestyle.
00:27:25.320 | So I have stage four, financial security, which is a first stage to have your basic
00:27:29.300 | living expenses covered by your investment income.
00:27:32.020 | I define that as housing expenses, utilities, food, transportation, insurance, just those
00:27:36.060 | basic things.
00:27:37.460 | Stage five I call financial independence, which means that your current lifestyle expenses,
00:27:43.220 | both needs and wants, but your current lifestyle expenses can be reached and covered by your
00:27:48.260 | independent investment income.
00:27:50.220 | Stage six I call financial freedom, which is where you've attained any kind of additional
00:27:54.940 | lifestyle goals that you would like to have.
00:27:58.720 | More toys you'd like to have, things you want to buy or experiences that cost more money.
00:28:02.900 | You want to clarify those and then plan to cover those with investment income.
00:28:07.540 | And I consider that to be a place of true financial freedom.
00:28:11.620 | And then move on to stage seven, which I call financial abundance, which means that you've
00:28:15.460 | accumulated wealth that's beyond the amount that you need to fund your own lifestyle expenses.
00:28:20.200 | Then you have a comfortable margin of safety.
00:28:22.420 | And so this is the stage that most wealthy people get to.
00:28:25.140 | And this is the stage where I think you can consider somebody wealthy in the fullest sense
00:28:29.300 | of the word.
00:28:30.300 | And you have to decide, how do I responsibly manage this surplus?
00:28:33.220 | Who's it going to go to when I'm done with it?
00:28:35.900 | And how do I control it?
00:28:37.820 | And this is where you start to face the really hard problems, which is, what do I want my
00:28:41.420 | money to mean?
00:28:42.420 | I've got way more money than I need for myself.
00:28:44.420 | So now what change in the world am I going to accomplish with the money?
00:28:48.660 | So I look at it as a phased approach.
00:28:50.960 | But I think if you're looking for metrics-- and I have no way to define those exactly.
00:28:56.160 | But in metrics, I'm convinced of two things.
00:28:58.560 | Number one, $10,000 in the bank moves almost anybody from the bottom of society to the
00:29:04.480 | very top.
00:29:05.480 | I'm going to guess top 20%, although I haven't verified those numbers.
00:29:08.320 | I would guess that having $10,000 of liquid cash available to you moves you to the top
00:29:14.120 | 20%.
00:29:15.120 | And it opens up almost any life decision that you want.
00:29:17.360 | And the second one that I encourage people to shoot for, $100,000-- $100,000 available
00:29:22.760 | to you, not locked away in an account you can't touch, not locked up in an investment
00:29:26.680 | asset.
00:29:27.680 | But $100,000 that's liquid and available to you really puts you in a position where there's
00:29:33.120 | no business you can't start.
00:29:34.880 | There's no interest that you can't pursue.
00:29:37.820 | There's no place you can't move.
00:29:39.160 | There's no life decision that you can't make.
00:29:41.420 | You have a huge amount of financial independence.
00:29:44.160 | You're not yet independent from your need to work for a living.
00:29:49.200 | But all of your decisions are open to you.
00:29:52.320 | And when you reckon with the reality that most people will never want to not work in
00:29:56.540 | some form or fashion, we start to see that this financial independence can be achieved
00:30:02.240 | much more quickly than most people have thought possible.
00:30:05.040 | No, you don't need to have $4 million in your 401(k) to feel like you're doing OK with money.
00:30:09.640 | You probably need $10,000 to $100,000 available to you so that you can make those life decisions.
00:30:14.120 | That will put you in the place to enjoy the next 30 years while you're building and saving
00:30:19.440 | the money in your 401(k) to get to your $4 million number.
00:30:23.640 | I really like that context of this giving you options and this giving you the ability
00:30:28.340 | to pursue whatever it is you want to pursue.
00:30:30.300 | We always get to this point when we start talking about certain privacy things, especially
00:30:35.360 | at that expert level where it's like this option is not going to be available to every
00:30:39.840 | person.
00:30:40.840 | This option is not something that we recommend that everyone pursue.
00:30:45.600 | And only now do I realize that when I came on your show, I didn't quite have this context
00:30:53.480 | and didn't quite have my head around this, but if you have $100,000 in the bank, pretty
00:30:57.420 | much anything we talk about is available to you if you want to pursue it and pretty much
00:31:02.320 | anything else that you want to pursue.
00:31:04.760 | I really appreciate you putting in that context.
00:31:10.640 | So when building wealth, when accumulating money, or just doing your taxes, this is a
00:31:17.000 | thing that I'm actually up against right now because my accountant retired earlier this
00:31:21.520 | year and you've done an episode called "Don't Trust Your Financial Planner" or "Don't Trust
00:31:29.160 | Your Accountant" that aired shortly before the time I came on your show.
00:31:36.600 | And it was about how insecure those services are even though they're managing our money.
00:31:41.560 | What recommendations do you have on finding an accountant, a financial planner, a tax
00:31:46.800 | preparer, anyone who deals with your finances that respects your privacy and uses some security
00:31:52.780 | best practices?
00:31:54.960 | That is a hard one.
00:31:56.640 | That is a real hard one.
00:31:58.200 | So to answer the question directly, I only have essentially one or two suggestions on
00:32:03.600 | how to find one, but I have a bunch of suggestions on how to create one out of the one you currently
00:32:08.960 | have.
00:32:09.960 | So first and foremost, the biggest thing that I think many people have a misconception over
00:32:14.120 | is that they can maintain their financial privacy while also disclosing their ideas
00:32:19.480 | and their information to a financial professional.
00:32:23.260 | Many people have the idea that, "Well, I can go ahead and tell my financial advisor, tell
00:32:27.000 | my accountant about all my money.
00:32:28.960 | I can tell my accountant," as an example, let's talk about somebody who's committing
00:32:32.120 | tax fraud.
00:32:33.120 | "I can tell my accountant that, well, I had an extra $50,000 on the side that I earned
00:32:37.880 | that I'm not reporting to you, but here, just let me report this $50,000 that I do want
00:32:42.960 | to report."
00:32:43.960 | Well, the accountant may or may not move forward with you depending on that information, but
00:32:49.720 | the accountant can, when they're interviewed by the IRS agent, it brings them into court
00:32:55.880 | and subpoenas them, the accountant is going to be required to report on the record what
00:33:00.360 | you said to them about the fact that you made an extra $50,000 on the side that you're not
00:33:04.800 | reporting to the accountant.
00:33:06.440 | Number two, the accountant's files can all be requested and submitted to the court.
00:33:12.040 | And this is the same with any kind of financial professional that you work with as a financial
00:33:15.160 | advisor.
00:33:16.720 | When I did work as a financial advisor, I had lots of people told me all the intimate
00:33:19.600 | details of their financial life.
00:33:22.040 | I had lots of people who would share with me, as they probably needed to, all of their
00:33:26.520 | account statements.
00:33:27.520 | They had detailed records on everything that they had.
00:33:30.360 | Now, pretend for a moment that I had a client that sat down with me, gave me all of the
00:33:34.800 | information about their whole financial picture.
00:33:37.520 | And then two years later, this client starts to go through a divorce.
00:33:41.600 | And in those divorce proceedings, they don't fully disclose all of their assets and all
00:33:46.320 | of the financial information to their spouse's attorney.
00:33:50.080 | Well, that spouse's attorney can subpoena me and can subpoena my files.
00:33:54.760 | And if those files are demonstrating a different story than that person is telling their divorce
00:34:00.760 | attorney or is telling the other divorce attorney, they're going to have a problem.
00:34:04.120 | So it's important to always recognize that, first and foremost, your financial relationships
00:34:10.640 | with people who are your financial service people are not fully private or secure.
00:34:17.040 | And I think that it's important for people to recognize that.
00:34:19.960 | Now, so specific suggestion, about the only specific suggestion that I could give would
00:34:25.640 | be if you have the opportunity to work with somebody in an attorney relationship, that
00:34:32.240 | may possibly provide you with a little bit of protection for something like I've described
00:34:36.720 | because attorneys do indeed enjoy attorney-client privilege.
00:34:41.120 | There are not many attorneys, and especially the practicing attorneys, practicing in the
00:34:44.680 | world of financial advice.
00:34:46.240 | So that one's harder.
00:34:47.360 | But in the world of tax preparation, there is a small organization of accountants who
00:34:55.240 | are licensed both as CPAs and as attorneys.
00:34:59.140 | And so you might consider, if privacy is important to you, you might consider pursuing somebody
00:35:03.300 | who has that dual structure.
00:35:05.500 | And you might consider working with somebody who can work with you in an attorney-client
00:35:09.560 | relationship, especially if you have a troublesome financial problem, so that you can enjoy that
00:35:15.420 | attorney-client privilege.
00:35:17.160 | Beyond that, the only way that you can really approach it is to be careful about the person
00:35:22.080 | that you work with.
00:35:23.600 | Try to find somebody who will honor your privacy.
00:35:28.320 | And I don't know how to do this, other than to say you've got to watch your gut.
00:35:32.320 | To toot my own horn, I always tried really, really hard to protect fully my client's privacy
00:35:38.400 | when I was an advisor.
00:35:39.400 | I tried very hard to never talk about anybody.
00:35:42.400 | I would never say even if someone was a client or not, because I think that's really important.
00:35:48.920 | But my observation has been that there's a wide range of people's commitment to privacy.
00:35:54.640 | And at every company, at every firm, there is a proverbial water cooler.
00:36:00.500 | And especially if you are somebody with a high profile, there's a good chance that your
00:36:04.960 | information may be discussed, which is why I think it's very important to shop and to
00:36:11.000 | consider somebody who's going to be circumspect.
00:36:13.200 | If you're a celebrity, if you're somebody who has a high profile and you're sharing
00:36:17.040 | all of your information with somebody, that person may respect it to a degree, but they
00:36:20.760 | can also open their mouth and start to share some things.
00:36:23.720 | So you have to judge the character of the person.
00:36:26.280 | And then the only way I know to really handle it is to compartmentalize, to compartmentalize
00:36:30.640 | the information that you share with somebody.
00:36:32.480 | And this is hard, because the best advisors are going to want and to frankly need the
00:36:39.160 | most complete information.
00:36:41.360 | But you have to decide, am I ready to turn over this information?
00:36:46.000 | And so sometimes you can generalize.
00:36:48.360 | For example, if you are purchasing an insurance policy and you are soliciting advice on how
00:36:53.320 | much life insurance to buy, then you can generalize the amount of assets that you have for the
00:37:00.080 | life insurance advisor.
00:37:01.120 | You don't need to share with them where everything is.
00:37:03.920 | But at the end of the day, sometimes you're probably going to want to keep your mouth
00:37:06.120 | shut and not talk about the bucket of gold that you keep in Uncle Joe's basement or the
00:37:10.840 | valuable collection of personal artifacts.
00:37:13.240 | You're just going to need to mentally tag those things yourself and compartmentalize.
00:37:17.840 | Now that's the big picture in terms of the actual professional.
00:37:20.440 | I do think that you can do a better job of working with your actual service providers
00:37:25.640 | as they are now, just simply by asking and by trying.
00:37:30.320 | One of the things that amazed me, and I think it's probably improved in the last few years,
00:37:34.440 | I've not been active in the business, nor have I been licensed for about four years
00:37:38.160 | now, but I think it's probably been improved in the wake of the Snowden revelations, in
00:37:43.040 | the wake of many recent high profile data breaches, such as the Equifax breach.
00:37:47.520 | I think there's probably more of an attention being paid to the security of communications.
00:37:53.040 | But when I was actively working with clients in this space, I had many clients who would
00:37:57.400 | push back against the most basic step of using encrypted email.
00:38:01.940 | We had a very simple encryption program set up where when I sent an email that had personal
00:38:07.040 | financial information, I would always encrypt the email.
00:38:09.520 | It was very simple.
00:38:10.520 | And yet, many clients did not want to use it and did not want to learn how to use it.
00:38:14.760 | And if you are interested in that, just work with your provider and say, "Hey, I'd like
00:38:19.280 | to use a secure form of communication."
00:38:21.600 | Make sure that you're using an encrypted email program.
00:38:24.120 | And many of the big firms have that established already.
00:38:27.580 | If you're working with a small independent practitioner, just move over to one of the
00:38:31.000 | more accessible ones that are simply available.
00:38:33.320 | You guys are big proponents of proton mail.
00:38:35.000 | I think it's fantastic that anybody can use a proton mail setup and especially get them
00:38:39.120 | to move their business to that and try to get their clients to use that so that you're
00:38:42.480 | using an encrypted email program.
00:38:44.720 | In the world of encrypted communication apps for voice and text communications, there's
00:38:49.760 | no reason not to be using a more secure communication solution.
00:38:54.280 | The next thing you can do is just ask.
00:38:56.520 | For example, very few people ever ask anything about how their data is being stored.
00:39:01.040 | And so, many times, your financial professionals will think that people don't care about the
00:39:05.200 | fact that we all have file cabinets with all of your information right there, copies of
00:39:10.380 | your statements, copies of your mortgage, copies of your home address.
00:39:14.160 | Well, nobody ever asks about that.
00:39:16.080 | So ask.
00:39:17.080 | Ask what are the locks like?
00:39:19.320 | Do you encrypt information?
00:39:20.540 | How do you store information?
00:39:22.080 | Make sure that your advisors are storing things digitally.
00:39:24.320 | It's far easier to protect information digitally with a good, high-quality encryption system
00:39:30.920 | that's mandated by the larger firm than it is to protect file cabinets, frankly.
00:39:36.680 | You can get into most file cabinets with a bobby pin.
00:39:39.040 | So just by asking, that will start to raise it to the awareness of your providers.
00:39:45.480 | Also, try to opt out of sharing information.
00:39:49.180 | In all the years that I worked with people, I only had one person who, when filling out
00:39:52.720 | a life insurance application, asked me, "Do I have to give my Social Security number?"
00:39:57.200 | I had never known if you had to give your Social Security number or not.
00:39:59.800 | I assumed you did because it was there on the form, but I didn't know.
00:40:03.200 | So I went and I asked, and I found out that, no, this particular client didn't need to
00:40:07.000 | give me their Social Security number.
00:40:08.520 | Now, certainly, it's convenient for the insurance agent and it's convenient for the insurance
00:40:14.000 | company to have your Social Security number.
00:40:16.540 | But the problem is, number one, now that Social Security number is sitting on your advisor's
00:40:20.320 | desk on a piece of paper, that's probably going to stay in the file right on top of
00:40:23.640 | the desk overnight while the cleaning crew comes in and cleans up the office and empties
00:40:27.360 | the trash.
00:40:28.560 | But also, that Social Security number is now going to be used and it's going to be tied
00:40:32.120 | to your account.
00:40:33.120 | So you're giving out information that's going to make it much easier for your information
00:40:37.360 | to go into the centralized medical information bureau database.
00:40:40.120 | There's a special database that, as an example from the world of insurance, all of your medical
00:40:44.320 | information is stored in this medical bureau of information database.
00:40:47.920 | It stores all of your applications for insurance.
00:40:50.740 | It stores your physician's reports.
00:40:52.000 | It stores all of the medical information so that it's more convenient for the life insurance
00:40:56.120 | companies to do medical underwriting on you.
00:40:59.240 | And that's going to be tied to your Social Security number.
00:41:02.440 | And so if you can just pull back and you can get a policy without that, then do so.
00:41:08.120 | Now, not all companies will have that same policy, but at least try.
00:41:11.360 | I think my observation has been we get what we deserve.
00:41:16.020 | We give up all the information because we can and we don't think about it.
00:41:19.360 | And it's only going to be in the day when people start saying, "You know what?
00:41:22.160 | This is abuse of me for you to get all this information.
00:41:25.080 | Facebook, you're abusing me by taking this, my original content, and monetizing it.
00:41:30.520 | Physician, you are abusing me by asking for all this information."
00:41:34.860 | For example, when I fill out forms, and I encourage other people, when I fill out forms
00:41:37.760 | at the doctor's office, these forms are usually made up just simply to cover every base all
00:41:43.560 | at once, and you don't have to sign everything.
00:41:46.080 | So when you're filling out forms, read every line and cross every line out that you don't
00:41:49.400 | agree to.
00:41:50.400 | Or another example would be something like HIPAA notices.
00:41:53.280 | HIPAA notices, everybody goes around and automatically signs the HIPAA disclosure forms thinking
00:41:59.680 | that what they're signing is actually something that says that they're protecting my personal
00:42:04.560 | health information by my signing this HIPAA form.
00:42:08.040 | It's the exact opposite.
00:42:09.800 | There's nothing that you're signing that says that by signing the HIPAA form, you are not
00:42:14.640 | saying that your information is going to be protected.
00:42:17.760 | You have no way to protect your personal health information by signing or by not signing the
00:42:23.600 | HIPAA form.
00:42:24.600 | What the HIPAA form says, it's a disclosure that tells you that we're sharing your information
00:42:30.120 | with all of these different companies and all of these different people who have the
00:42:34.080 | opportunity to participate in it.
00:42:37.180 | You're not legally required, neither by the letter of the law, you're not legally required
00:42:41.820 | to sign the HIPAA release.
00:42:43.060 | And if you do sign the HIPAA release, and if you ever need to sue your medical provider
00:42:47.860 | for sharing your information, then you've lost it by signing the HIPAA form.
00:42:52.860 | So simple example, like don't sign the HIPAA forms.
00:42:55.700 | And when the person at the front desk that doesn't have any clue how to do it or what
00:43:01.580 | it says, says, "Yes, you have to."
00:43:03.580 | "No, I don't.
00:43:04.580 | It is not the law."
00:43:05.580 | And I think that the majority of this information, it goes out because people don't know.
00:43:12.020 | Nobody knows.
00:43:13.020 | When I used to open investment accounts, the average investment account paperwork system
00:43:16.620 | is about 200 to 300 pages.
00:43:19.020 | Do you think anybody in their right mind is going to sit there and read 200 to 300 pages?
00:43:22.660 | Of course not.
00:43:23.660 | It's just all by the big lawyers who write every single thing in there.
00:43:27.260 | And you have to go at a certain point with good faith and say, "Well, my advisor is going
00:43:31.000 | to tell me if there's anything bad in here."
00:43:32.540 | I always tried to point out, for example, the arbitration clauses and the important
00:43:36.180 | points in the paperwork.
00:43:37.660 | But nobody reads it.
00:43:38.840 | Nobody does it.
00:43:39.840 | And until we start paying attention and sitting there and saying, "If I'm going to sign this,
00:43:43.820 | I'm going to sit here in your office and I'm going to read it."
00:43:46.100 | I've done that when I signed a mortgage one time.
00:43:48.620 | I told the mortgage provider, I said, "You better send the paperwork over in advance
00:43:52.180 | because I'm not just going to sign, sign, sign, sign, sign until I've read it.
00:43:55.980 | And if you don't and they didn't, well, we're going to sit here in your office and you can
00:43:59.300 | sit here right with us and watch me read every single line until we start cleaning this mess
00:44:03.880 | up and actually having legal documents that make sense and actually protect the information
00:44:08.820 | of the people involved."
00:44:10.940 | But until then, just say no and stop participating.
00:44:15.460 | And what I find, I cross out all the lines on the doctor forms and whatnot.
00:44:19.100 | They look at it and they say, "But you have to."
00:44:20.740 | I say, "No, I don't agree to that."
00:44:22.500 | That doesn't mean just because I don't agree to these egregious overbearing legalese doesn't
00:44:28.700 | mean you can't treat me today.
00:44:29.940 | You can treat me and I'm not going to agree to this form.
00:44:32.220 | That's some interesting information, man.
00:44:34.380 | I didn't know that about the HIPAA.
00:44:35.380 | Definitely going to have to question that more so going forward.
00:44:39.660 | And I agree with you.
00:44:40.660 | Everything's written nowadays.
00:44:41.660 | I mean, it's kind of like the terms of service anytime you want to open a new account or
00:44:46.980 | anything else nowadays, the new millennium.
00:44:50.540 | Everybody just agrees, "Yes, I have read and understand the terms of service," and just
00:44:53.340 | kind of move on.
00:44:54.340 | And if there's a blank for it, we fill it in and we just say, "Okay."
00:44:59.620 | So I like that fact that start questioning and give pushback and compartmentalize out
00:45:04.860 | of all that.
00:45:05.860 | Just kind of continue with the privacy aspect of things.
00:45:11.060 | One of the things that we talk about as far as the financial side of the side of privacy
00:45:15.740 | is telling people to utilize trusts, LLCs, and other legal vehicles for privacy.
00:45:22.980 | As a financial advisor, in your opinion, which is better for privacy and which is better
00:45:28.500 | financially for the person itself?
00:45:30.900 | And are the two at odds or can they actually work together?
00:45:34.500 | Probably if I were going to identify one area where there's more mystique around it, I would
00:45:38.900 | have to identify this area of entities, the idea of a trust or an entity, an LLC or a
00:45:46.180 | corporation, et cetera.
00:45:47.260 | There's a lot of, I would call it mystique around it where people think that, the phrase
00:45:53.860 | often, "Well, I'm using an LLC for the tax benefits," or "You need to use an LLC for
00:45:58.220 | the tax benefits," et cetera.
00:46:00.020 | And I try to push back really hard about this.
00:46:01.620 | I've done a bunch of shows on the taxation of business entities, et cetera, to try to
00:46:05.140 | help people understand you don't need to be intimidated by these terms.
00:46:09.380 | There are no fundamental tax benefits for an LLC because, as an example, an LLC can
00:46:14.900 | choose to be taxed as a personal entity, as an S corporation or as a C corporation, and
00:46:19.700 | you just file your election with the IRS.
00:46:22.180 | There's nothing magical about an LLC versus another type of corporate entity.
00:46:28.340 | It's a big question.
00:46:29.340 | And so, my answer to it would be more in terms of structure rather than specifically.
00:46:37.620 | When you get into the world of entities, and let's just call it an entity because an entity
00:46:42.180 | includes any kind of trust or corporation or other business structure, they all have
00:46:48.460 | certain features.
00:46:50.120 | And an entity will be written to take advantage of certain features based upon the way that
00:46:56.500 | it's structured, based upon the way that it works.
00:46:59.240 | There are certain things that you can do using an LLC to hold a business, business shares,
00:47:05.620 | for example, that you can't do with an S corporation or with a C corporation.
00:47:10.980 | There are certain things, however, that you can't do vice versa.
00:47:14.300 | And so, the most important thing to all of these is to look and say, "What am I actually
00:47:18.260 | trying to do?
00:47:20.040 | What am I actually trying to accomplish?"
00:47:22.340 | And then, there's no way around it.
00:47:24.440 | You either have to do a huge amount of research or you need to speak with a knowledgeable
00:47:27.180 | expert in this particular area to figure out what's the appropriate way for me to set it
00:47:31.540 | up.
00:47:32.540 | With taxes, there are a lot of misunderstandings with regard to taxes because you can have
00:47:38.280 | a trust or a corporation and that can either affect the taxation or it can not affect the
00:47:46.300 | taxation.
00:47:47.300 | And in certain circumstances, you may want to affect the taxation or you may want to
00:47:51.620 | not affect the taxation.
00:47:53.340 | The big principle with regard to business entities is you'll either have what's called
00:47:57.360 | flow-through taxation.
00:47:58.360 | This can be the same for a business or for a trust.
00:48:02.120 | You'll either have a flow-through taxation where the income shows up on your personal
00:48:06.240 | tax return or you can have taxation that occurs at the entity level where the income doesn't
00:48:11.780 | show up on your personal tax return but it shows up on the individual entity's return.
00:48:17.840 | That doesn't have anything to do with privacy.
00:48:21.320 | It doesn't affect it one way or the other.
00:48:23.020 | It has more to do with the particular tax strategy that you're trying to pursue.
00:48:26.960 | Sometimes you really don't want to have taxation at the entity level.
00:48:29.700 | For example, trust tax rates are very, very high.
00:48:32.880 | They automatically go – if you're being taxed on assets that are held in the trust
00:48:37.760 | and the trust itself is being taxed, you basically automatically go with very low amounts of
00:48:42.040 | income to the highest marginal tax bracket in the personal tax code.
00:48:46.380 | So sometimes that's a very bad thing and it would be much cheaper for you to pay those
00:48:49.840 | assets personally, to pay those taxes personally.
00:48:53.240 | But there are times where you gain other benefits from that.
00:48:55.920 | For example, maybe by moving the asset into a trust, you've removed it from the personal
00:49:01.280 | ownership of the individual and that's helpful for estate tax planning or it's helpful from
00:49:06.280 | asset protection planning or it's helpful for some other reason and you want to go ahead
00:49:10.920 | and pay that higher rate.
00:49:12.720 | So it's not either/or.
00:49:14.040 | The key is to look and understand that there's going to be a tradeoff and a balance between
00:49:17.800 | taxation, privacy, control over the assets or control over the business and even the
00:49:25.320 | distribution of the assets.
00:49:27.600 | And once you get clear on what you want to do, then you can decide on the appropriate
00:49:33.720 | structure.
00:49:34.720 | I would here emphasize however that for most people, it's fine to keep it simple.
00:49:40.600 | As an example, the best, simplest form of asset protection planning for most people
00:49:48.840 | is to use what are called qualified accounts such as your 401(k) or 403(b) or IRA to use
00:49:55.000 | a qualified account to hold significant assets and then to use the homestead laws in your
00:50:03.560 | state for your real estate.
00:50:06.560 | So two examples for me being in Florida.
00:50:08.360 | If I have a million dollars in an IRA and I own a million dollar home, free and clear
00:50:13.920 | of any mortgage, then I now have essentially ironclad asset protection for my IRA and for
00:50:21.960 | my home.
00:50:22.960 | So you can sue me, I can lose the lawsuit, but money that's in an IRA or a 401(k) is
00:50:27.480 | not available to the claims of creditors.
00:50:29.560 | And it's basically ironclad.
00:50:30.760 | It's as close to ironclad as you can get.
00:50:33.000 | And that's cheap.
00:50:34.360 | And also my home, if I own the home, then that's also ironclad.
00:50:37.960 | In the state of Florida, we have an unlimited homestead exemption.
00:50:41.020 | So you could have a $20 million personal residence that you're homesteading and you can be sued
00:50:46.320 | and nobody can take that $20 million residence away from you.
00:50:49.080 | Now, the problem is that both of those things are very un-private.
00:50:55.280 | The qualified account is very un-private, specifically to the government authorities.
00:51:01.120 | And the house is very un-private because it's going to be listed in my name in the local
00:51:07.760 | tax database.
00:51:09.880 | And so every stage that I move to get to privacy, if I take money out of the IRA and I put it
00:51:16.400 | into a safe at home, now I've got more privacy, but I'm giving up that guaranteed asset protection.
00:51:26.240 | Or if I move my house into a trust, depending on how I structure that, I may or may not
00:51:31.680 | give up that homestead protection.
00:51:33.900 | So it's important to look at each one and recognize there's probably going to be a trade-off
00:51:38.560 | between these taxes, privacy, control, distribution.
00:51:42.320 | And let me look at my specific situation and be practical about it while also getting good
00:51:49.840 | advice on how to actually structure it.
00:51:52.120 | That's my general answer.
00:51:53.120 | If you want to ask any specific questions, I can try to do better and home in on a specific
00:51:55.960 | asset or asset type, but that's a general answer to the question.
00:51:59.480 | No, I think we could—I think we can probably work with that.
00:52:04.160 | Thank you for such a detailed answer on that.
00:52:07.520 | So one thing I'm personally very interested in is actually building wealth and actually
00:52:17.200 | moving up your various stages there.
00:52:20.000 | So how do you prioritize where to put money?
00:52:23.800 | And with the understanding that this is balanced with actually living life, but that $100,000
00:52:30.720 | you talk about, obviously a savings account maybe wouldn't be the best place to have
00:52:36.160 | $100,000 parked.
00:52:39.400 | What's your recommendation as far as cash on hand, money in a savings account, certificates
00:52:44.960 | of deposits or a CD ladder or stock market real estate, gold and silver?
00:52:50.800 | What say you?
00:52:51.800 | So I have a—shockingly enough, I have an episode of Radical Personal Finance, number
00:52:58.160 | 481, called Where Should I Keep My Emergency Fund, where I walk through that in a detailed
00:53:02.960 | format over the course of about an hour.
00:53:04.480 | So you'll want to link to that in the show notes, episode 481, Where Should I Keep My
00:53:07.480 | Emergency Fund?
00:53:08.840 | But the short answer to it is going to be it's always a matter of tradeoffs.
00:53:13.520 | And those tradeoffs are fine, but it's important to recognize that you have to look at this
00:53:18.760 | individually.
00:53:19.760 | So let's walk through this with an extra focus on privacy, but recognize that privacy
00:53:24.440 | is not the only thing.
00:53:25.920 | Now, with regard to saving—having $100,000 in a savings account in your bank, that is
00:53:30.920 | actually a fine plan because, assuming that's an FDIC-insured account, it doesn't get much
00:53:36.680 | safer than that.
00:53:38.440 | About the only risk that you would be exposed to from the perspective of safety of your
00:53:43.440 | money with having $100,000 in your savings account is inflation.
00:53:49.400 | And generally, we're not going to worry about that on a short-term basis.
00:53:53.600 | So it's really secure.
00:53:55.280 | The FDIC insurance is really important and really valuable.
00:53:58.200 | The bank is going to protect that money.
00:53:59.880 | That's not so much money where you're likely to be targeted.
00:54:02.040 | So that is going to be very secure.
00:54:03.880 | But you're not going to have a lot of accessibility to it.
00:54:06.880 | If you need to go and get money out, it's going to start to be recorded transactions.
00:54:10.160 | You start taking out $20,000 of cash.
00:54:12.080 | Now we're going to have currency transaction reports, et cetera.
00:54:14.820 | So it's not going to be very private, and it's not very accessible.
00:54:21.080 | So let's just walk through each of them.
00:54:22.280 | And I'll encourage you that every one of these actually has ways that you can use it.
00:54:29.520 | And I think they all have their place.
00:54:31.480 | So with regard to cash, I think most people should keep-- and by cash here, I mean physical
00:54:35.160 | currency-- I think many people should keep physical currency available to them much more
00:54:39.640 | than they do.
00:54:40.640 | We've got a disease, the disease of the plastic, where most of us are accustomed to just swiping
00:54:45.880 | for everything.
00:54:47.200 | And I'd like to see that reversed, because if we don't use cash, we may lose the ability
00:54:51.580 | to lose cash.
00:54:53.400 | The so-called war on cash, I think, is often overblown, but it is real.
00:54:58.600 | And I don't want to lose the ability to use cash.
00:55:00.440 | And so I encourage people, whenever possible, just spend with currency.
00:55:03.880 | I want to encourage the cash economy so that we can always maintain the anonymity and the
00:55:08.720 | privacy of cash transactions.
00:55:11.120 | You can store a huge amount of cash very privately.
00:55:13.960 | $100,000 in $100 bills, I mean, you vacuum wrap it.
00:55:17.920 | I think that'd take, what, probably four inches.
00:55:20.280 | A four-inch stack of $100 bills would be $100,000.
00:55:23.680 | So that would be very easy to conceal.
00:55:26.000 | That would be very easy to store safely.
00:55:29.560 | And that could be very doable for many people who want to keep cash.
00:55:33.600 | And I encourage people, especially when I've done consultations with people who are in
00:55:38.080 | extreme adverse negotiations with creditors, people who are very behind on their bills
00:55:45.440 | and they're working to catch up.
00:55:46.940 | When you're in that situation, you basically have to take extreme measures.
00:55:50.040 | And one of those extreme measures is you lose your ability to really participate in the
00:55:56.080 | bank account world because your creditors, if they are able to gain a judgment against
00:56:00.840 | you, put themselves in a situation where they may be able to clear out your account.
00:56:05.240 | And so I've often encouraged people who are in contentious, antagonistic relationships
00:56:09.640 | to say, "You've got to protect yourself because you want to talk about heartbreaking.
00:56:13.040 | It's really heartbreaking to be working with a young family who has $5,000 to their name
00:56:18.120 | and they keep it all in their bank account.
00:56:20.040 | And then the credit card company goes in and wipes out the $5,000 to settle an old balance.
00:56:24.640 | And now they start balancing their mortgage.
00:56:26.400 | They're pushed out on the street because they don't have the money, et cetera.
00:56:29.080 | So you've got to be strong about it.
00:56:30.560 | So cash is very, very helpful and very, very valuable.
00:56:33.800 | You do face problems with cash.
00:56:35.240 | How do you keep it secure?
00:56:36.380 | And how do you keep it secure in a way that it's not going to be stolen, that someone's
00:56:40.200 | not going to know about it, et cetera?
00:56:41.680 | But it has a really good possibility for you.
00:56:45.360 | When you get to the world of bank accounts, savings accounts, et cetera, you get a huge
00:56:49.400 | amount of security and you can get some privacy depending on how you do it.
00:56:52.680 | So number one, most of the time with a bank, you're going to be protected by the privacy
00:56:57.400 | laws of that bank or the state that's governing that, but that bank.
00:57:04.160 | And for most things, that's pretty private.
00:57:06.480 | In general, in the United States, if you know I have a bank account at, make it up, Bank
00:57:11.760 | of America, you can't really call Bank of America, especially you can't like you used
00:57:17.340 | to be able to, to call Bank of America and social engineer your way in to finding out
00:57:22.640 | the information on my account.
00:57:24.080 | It used to be easier to do that.
00:57:25.920 | It seems to be a little bit harder now, I think, in my opinion.
00:57:29.000 | But there are risks to this, and these risks are more widely known around the world versus
00:57:33.360 | just in the United States.
00:57:34.640 | I recently, a few months ago, had somebody in my life who traveled to Mexico and heard
00:57:40.480 | firsthand from some people who were living in one of the very difficult areas of Mexico.
00:57:46.000 | And one of the tools that the local drug cartel used is they had people on the inside of the
00:57:51.440 | local Mexican bank, and they would use this inside information for somebody who worked
00:57:55.360 | for the bank, who would then of course have access to the bank's computer systems, to
00:57:58.880 | find out how much some of the wealthy people in the town had in their bank accounts.
00:58:03.160 | And if they knew that somebody had $50,000 in their bank accounts, then the cartel would
00:58:06.840 | take that information, they would go and kidnap the person's child, and the ransom demand,
00:58:11.200 | they would line it up with how much money was in the bank account.
00:58:14.120 | So they would require a $50,000 ransom, knowing that there was a much stronger chance that
00:58:19.040 | person was just going to go ahead and pay the ransom, because they could, without involving
00:58:22.840 | the police, without involving other people, and they would pay it quickly to get their
00:58:27.240 | child back.
00:58:28.760 | That's a really rough situation.
00:58:29.920 | And if I lived in Mexico, there's not a chance in the world I would be keeping money in a
00:58:33.640 | savings account like that.
00:58:35.040 | Now I think there are strategies for privacy that you can use with savings accounts.
00:58:38.720 | Number one would be diversification and compartmentalization.
00:58:41.320 | There's no reason not to have four accounts at four different banks.
00:58:43.960 | I think it would be valuable to have accounts at banks that are slightly less prominent.
00:58:48.440 | If you have, for example, a company like Bank of America, there are going to be thousands
00:58:52.560 | of people who may have access to your, to be able to look up the customer account records
00:58:56.840 | and find out who has such an account here.
00:59:00.200 | I don't know what their internal controls are on that, but most big companies will have
00:59:03.640 | thousands of people who would have access to that information.
00:59:06.320 | If you banked with a local credit union, on the other hand, there may only be a handful
00:59:09.160 | of people who would have access to that information.
00:59:11.960 | Now your profile is going to be bigger at your local credit union than it would be with
00:59:15.560 | Bank of America.
00:59:16.560 | And this is where we get into the world of trade-offs.
00:59:18.320 | If I'm at the local credit union, everyone knows I have a million dollars in my account.
00:59:21.520 | Well, I'm the local millionaire.
00:59:23.120 | Whereas a Bank of America, I may just still be a number on a screen.
00:59:26.540 | So I think that it's valuable to consider diversifying your bank holdings using some
00:59:31.640 | larger national banks, but also there's benefit to local, regional banks and credit unions
00:59:37.200 | that are more likely to be a little bit more private.
00:59:40.080 | And then I think international banking comes into play here as well.
00:59:43.360 | That it's relatively easy, although it's harder for US citizens than it once was, it's relatively
00:59:48.240 | easy to establish internationally held bank accounts.
00:59:51.680 | For US Americans, the simplest and easiest access to the banking system that would be
00:59:57.040 | abroad would be Canada.
00:59:58.680 | Very easy to establish Canadian bank accounts, and I've encouraged lots of consulting clients
01:00:02.240 | to do that.
01:00:03.440 | I wouldn't be very confident about banking in Mexico, but there are other low-hanging
01:00:07.560 | fruit that you can start to establish banking relationships abroad.
01:00:12.440 | When it comes to something like precious metals, again, you get into a world of trade-offs.
01:00:16.080 | The great benefit of precious metals is you can store a huge amount of value in a very
01:00:22.120 | small space.
01:00:23.680 | And that huge amount of value can be stored in a very small space that is completely private.
01:00:29.200 | Nobody knows how much money you have in your private secure storage when it's held there
01:00:34.960 | in the form of physical currency.
01:00:36.280 | It can't be hacked.
01:00:37.480 | It can't be opened up.
01:00:39.500 | It's going to be very, very private.
01:00:41.120 | Now, of course, there are disadvantages with the value of the metal.
01:00:44.780 | May go up, may go down.
01:00:45.780 | You may be dealing with a volatile market, but it's very, very helpful and you can store
01:00:49.480 | that for a long period of time.
01:00:51.680 | The trick when it comes to buying and selling precious metals privately is to approach it
01:00:55.400 | in the right way.
01:00:56.400 | And there are two different phases.
01:00:58.400 | You have to think about the buy and you have to think about the sell.
01:01:01.480 | So and we have to think about the amount of money.
01:01:03.880 | It's one thing if you want to buy $1,000 worth of silver bullion.
01:01:07.920 | It's another thing if you want to buy a million dollars worth of-- there would be no way to
01:01:12.040 | store a million of silver bullion-- a million dollars worth of gold bullion.
01:01:15.320 | So the first thing is you can still-- if you want to get very private, there is almost
01:01:19.160 | nothing that is as good as precious metals.
01:01:21.520 | You can buy with cash.
01:01:23.400 | And you can buy precious metals with cash.
01:01:25.220 | You can walk into a coin store or a coin dealer and you can plop down $100 bills and you can
01:01:30.360 | buy with cash.
01:01:31.360 | Now, the first thing you want to be careful of is the-- it's about a $10,000 reporting
01:01:36.160 | rule that the coin dealer will be subject to.
01:01:40.120 | That if you do a transaction that is higher-- any kind of cash transaction that's higher
01:01:43.880 | than $10,000, in general, the person that you're going to be working with is going to
01:01:47.840 | be required to file a form with the US federal government indicating that you have engaged
01:01:54.280 | in a large cash transaction report.
01:01:57.720 | And that's the same at your bank.
01:01:58.860 | If you go and deposit large amounts of cash, that's the same at a coin dealer as well.
01:02:04.040 | So if you could go in and buy $100,000 worth of, let's say, gold American eagles from your
01:02:08.520 | local coin dealer, and you could pay cash, but they would be required to report that
01:02:13.760 | transaction if you did it with over $10,000.
01:02:17.520 | So your two solutions to this of buying things privately so that there's not a reported transaction
01:02:21.600 | is number one, keep your amounts significantly lower than that $10,000 number and make sure
01:02:28.000 | that you're careful of structuring.
01:02:30.080 | You don't want to go in and in the morning make an $8,000 transaction and in the afternoon
01:02:34.120 | an $8,000 transaction.
01:02:35.800 | The coin dealer would be required to report that as a structured cash transaction exceeding
01:02:40.920 | $10,000.
01:02:42.200 | So either do it small, once a week, go and make a $5,000 transaction, and pretty quickly
01:02:47.100 | you can set some serious money aside, or use a bank wire or a bank check.
01:02:52.160 | And if you use a bank wire or a bank check, now you have the ability to make a transaction,
01:02:57.720 | a private transaction, to purchase precious metals in a way that is not reported to the
01:03:03.880 | tax authorities.
01:03:05.280 | However, of course, now that you've involved a bank wire or a bank check, there will, of
01:03:09.840 | course, be a record in your bank account.
01:03:12.520 | So that's when you are buying.
01:03:14.800 | Skipping to the sell, when you get into the world of selling gold and silver, then you've
01:03:22.240 | got to be clear on what you're selling and understand what the rules are, whether it's
01:03:27.360 | able to be private or non-private.
01:03:29.400 | So let's say that you have $100,000 of precious metals and you go into your local coin dealer
01:03:33.420 | and you want to be able to sell that to them privately.
01:03:38.160 | Well, you've got to read the rules about which types of assets are going to be your best
01:03:46.800 | to go with.
01:03:48.140 | Your American Eagle coins are exempted.
01:03:51.400 | They're totally private.
01:03:52.400 | You can sell any quantity of American Eagle coins without that being a reported transaction.
01:03:57.200 | No matter what amount, as long as you're dealing with a one ounce, half ounce, quarter ounce,
01:04:00.760 | or 10th ounce American Eagle, those are not reportable to the IRS when you sell them.
01:04:05.520 | That's really, really helpful to know.
01:04:08.120 | Also, you can do that with American Gold Buffalos and Gold Austrian Philharmonics are very valuable
01:04:14.320 | coins that you can sell any amount of without there being a transaction.
01:04:19.400 | So those are your most private ones.
01:04:21.120 | With American Silver Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, and Austrian Philharmonics are your
01:04:25.280 | private silver coins.
01:04:27.360 | Now on the flip side, some of your other forms of gold coins have to be reported depending
01:04:31.880 | on the certain amounts.
01:04:33.560 | So Canadian Maple Leafs, South African Krugerrands, Mexican Onzas, those are gold bullion coins
01:04:40.160 | that if you sell more than 25 of them, that will be a reportable event which will be reported
01:04:45.020 | to the IRS on a 1099.
01:04:47.240 | And then when you move into the world of bullion bars, if you're selling bullion bars that
01:04:51.440 | are greater than a kilo, you're going to have a reportable transaction.
01:04:56.800 | Same thing with silver rounds, et cetera.
01:04:59.440 | So that was probably way too detailed.
01:05:02.700 | But every single aspect of precious metals has certain benefits and certain disadvantages.
01:05:08.840 | And you want to look at that and understand how does this help.
01:05:11.840 | And especially you have to be careful with the volatility of precious metals.
01:05:14.720 | To wrap up, a couple other categories, stocks and things like that, your ability to hold
01:05:21.720 | them and own them will depend on the ownership.
01:05:23.520 | And most of the time, you're going to have a relationship with a broker who's going to
01:05:27.720 | help you with the ownership of that.
01:05:29.620 | And that may or may not be private.
01:05:31.760 | Real estate can be purchased privately, depending on how you're approaching it.
01:05:36.800 | There are other assets as well, though.
01:05:38.480 | For example, insurance policies, cash value life insurance policies have the benefit of
01:05:44.200 | being outside of the banking system.
01:05:47.840 | And so in that way, they're a little bit more private.
01:05:49.560 | And generally, most of the transactions, as long as the policy stays in force, most of
01:05:53.480 | the transactions with a life insurance policy are not generally reported to the IRS.
01:05:58.060 | So the key is to lay out what am I concerned about?
01:06:00.920 | Am I concerned about the IRS?
01:06:02.600 | Am I concerned about a creditor?
01:06:04.840 | Am I concerned about an ex-wife?
01:06:06.600 | Am I concerned about a political enemy?
01:06:10.080 | And then to develop a strategy that's appropriate.
01:06:12.720 | I think it's important to emphasize that there are different scales to these things.
01:06:17.240 | If somebody has $10,000 of value, there's no reason to do anything other than to keep
01:06:21.600 | money in a local bank account and to keep some amount of currency on hand.
01:06:25.720 | That would be crazy to get into the world of saying, I'm going to go and buy Gold Eagles
01:06:28.920 | because I can buy them and hold them privately.
01:06:32.240 | Somebody has a few million dollars, and you're trying to shelter and set aside a couple million
01:06:37.040 | bucks privately, you're not going to go down to your local coin dealer and deal in the
01:06:40.680 | world of millions of dollars.
01:06:41.880 | You're going to go and open up a bullion storage account with an international bullion storage
01:06:45.960 | company.
01:06:46.960 | And so you've got to be clear on where am I, and then get the advice that's appropriate
01:06:51.160 | to your specific financial life stage.
01:06:54.720 | I think Jesse and I had the exact same thought at the exact same moment when you were talking
01:06:58.880 | about looking at who you're trying to hide this from.
01:07:02.520 | And this is basically threat modeling for your finances, deciding if you want to be
01:07:07.000 | private from the IRS or the bank or whom.
01:07:10.440 | I appreciate the depth you went into on precious metal, because that's something I've not actually
01:07:17.200 | dipped my toe into yet, but that's probably the next thing that I'm considering investing
01:07:23.480 | in completely off the privacy stuff.
01:07:26.200 | How wise an investment is that?
01:07:28.160 | I think it depends on the approach.
01:07:30.720 | There are a couple of major problems with the world of precious metals.
01:07:33.640 | Number one, you're dealing with a very volatile market, especially the silver market.
01:07:38.080 | The silver market is extremely volatile, and the gold market as well.
01:07:43.000 | Number two, you're dealing with basically a pure commodity whose value is measured only
01:07:47.420 | by supply and demand, and that's really hard.
01:07:50.280 | In many ways, if you said, Joshua, would you rather have a $100,000 house or $100,000 of
01:07:56.200 | gold, I'd rather have the house, because the house has the ability to earn income.
01:08:00.840 | Gold, silver don't have the ability to earn income, and so they have a real disadvantage
01:08:06.560 | when it comes to that.
01:08:07.900 | If you were to total the whole amount of gold that's available in the world and put it into
01:08:12.800 | a small geographic area, it would be a very, very small amount.
01:08:18.640 | So in terms of true wealth, it's hard to use as true wealth.
01:08:23.880 | That said, gold and silver have a bunch of major advantages.
01:08:29.000 | It's possible, especially in times of financial insecurity, it's possible that their values
01:08:35.260 | may increase, and it's possible that their values could increase substantially.
01:08:40.920 | Depending on who you're talking to, you'll find all kinds of gold bugs and silver bulls
01:08:46.480 | who will talk about the fact that all the silver is being used up in electronics, and
01:08:50.800 | so therefore silver is going to massively adjust, or the value of silver is at an all-time
01:08:56.120 | low in terms of the gold-silver ratio, and that has to adjust.
01:08:58.800 | And so many people believe there's a big upside in silver.
01:09:01.760 | Personally, I'm not convinced, but many people believe that, and they make good arguments
01:09:05.520 | for that.
01:09:06.520 | With regard to gold, similarly, gold has certain benefits that could work out in terms of growth
01:09:13.360 | in the investment market.
01:09:15.000 | The things that concern me about gold is that it's not an asset.
01:09:18.360 | It has a huge value because gold is what central banks own.
01:09:21.800 | Central banks own and stockpile gold, as well as Chinese and Indian people who have a culture
01:09:27.400 | that's devoted to gold.
01:09:29.000 | In the U.S. American market, I find it hard to see the value of gold.
01:09:32.380 | Very few people have ever held a gold coin.
01:09:34.820 | Very few people know the value of it.
01:09:36.920 | So what I look at gold and silver is it should probably be a relatively small percentage
01:09:41.280 | of your net worth.
01:09:42.280 | It's very reasonable to say, "I'm going to keep five or, I don't know, five to 10% of
01:09:47.040 | my assets in," I would generally encourage the majority gold, in gold and silver.
01:09:54.720 | And it is a useful insurance policy.
01:09:57.080 | Many technically created investment accounts will allocate a small percentage, usually
01:10:03.440 | about 5%, to commodities, especially precious metals.
01:10:07.880 | And I think the other benefits of gold are for the worst case scenario, the disaster
01:10:12.240 | scenario.
01:10:13.240 | I think a lot about the portability of money because I have both seen historically and
01:10:18.600 | also in current day how bad it is if all of your money is locked up in one place and you
01:10:24.440 | can't get it out when you need it.
01:10:26.720 | So if you go back and you think about what was it like if you were a Jew in 1930 in Germany,
01:10:31.960 | there was plenty of time to get out.
01:10:34.080 | But there was only time to get out if you could get out quickly.
01:10:36.820 | And so the people who had gold and silver and jewels to get out, that was really, really
01:10:41.360 | valuable.
01:10:42.360 | In the modern world, it's a whole lot harder to see how – it's a whole lot harder to
01:10:46.640 | walk down to your local airport and plunk down a one-ounce gold eagle and pay for your
01:10:55.320 | airplane ticket out.
01:10:56.800 | But I tell you what, still to this day, if any country in the world, if I needed to get
01:11:00.240 | out, I would always want to make sure that I had some gold coins handy to get me out.
01:11:04.520 | I'd always want to make sure that I had some that were in another place.
01:11:07.920 | I think the big reasons to pursue gold is the portability.
01:11:11.440 | The fact that it is the most universal – well, other than the US dollar, it's one of the
01:11:16.040 | most universal assets.
01:11:17.320 | You can walk into any coin shop, any pawn shop, any jewelry shop, anywhere in the world,
01:11:22.800 | no matter what the official sanctions are and the buying and selling of gold and silver,
01:11:27.260 | you can plunk down a gold coin and you can get a good quantity of the local currency.
01:11:30.800 | I think that's a real value.
01:11:32.600 | And you can do it in a very compact form of wealth.
01:11:35.920 | And it allows you to have money that should maintain its purchasing power over time that's
01:11:40.840 | held privately.
01:11:42.160 | So you think about what it would be like to hold certain assets like gold coins or silver
01:11:46.640 | coins that are securely vaulted, securely stored and privately owned.
01:11:52.160 | You can own those for decades and nobody would have any idea.
01:11:55.760 | That's a real value that you don't get with other assets.
01:11:58.480 | So I hope that that lays out the positive case.
01:12:00.600 | I think there are a lot of reasons for it.
01:12:02.400 | But I think it's best to look at gold as insurance and as kind of worst case scenario stuff and
01:12:07.800 | to focus on cash and other investment activities for real growth.
01:12:14.280 | Because at the end of the day, the value of gold and silver is only determined by what
01:12:18.360 | someone's willing to pay for you.
01:12:19.680 | It's an unproductive asset.
01:12:21.160 | Well, Josh, when you were talking earlier and you keep talking about cash and I love
01:12:26.200 | it, I agree with you in the fact that we have a plastic-- I forget what you call it-- but
01:12:32.120 | an issue with people utilizing plastic too much.
01:12:33.960 | And we need to go back on the cash.
01:12:35.480 | I tell you when you fill out a home loan mortgage and you got to give them the last two, three
01:12:39.040 | months of your bank statements, it's definitely a huge pattern of life that banks are holding
01:12:44.040 | on to about us, not just our money, but also a pattern of life where you spend your money.
01:12:49.280 | All this talk about coins kind of puts you on the spot, kind of a different question
01:12:52.480 | that probably a lot of financial advisors don't get.
01:12:55.400 | But what are your thoughts on the current talk around the fireplaces and stuff like
01:13:00.400 | that about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies?
01:13:02.400 | Wow, is there a more contentious topic as we record this?
01:13:08.000 | Bitcoin made the news for making $10,000.
01:13:12.520 | I am very optimistic with the future of cryptocurrencies.
01:13:19.180 | If you think about the best case scenario, the way that some people describe cryptocurrencies
01:13:25.040 | as cash for the internet, that is really exciting to me because I am very concerned about the
01:13:31.640 | loss of privacy of everything being digital transactions.
01:13:35.840 | And it would be wonderful to have increasing amounts of privacy available for digital exchanges.
01:13:44.440 | So I am very optimistic about that.
01:13:48.240 | I am concerned about Bitcoin, although I am hoping that it continues to work out.
01:13:55.560 | The founders of Bitcoin, or like the original people, and they talked about the way that
01:14:00.200 | the inflation would go and then the steadying out.
01:14:02.440 | We will see if that happens.
01:14:03.840 | But the problem is that as long as any of these currencies are being hoarded for their
01:14:10.600 | future increase in value, it diminishes their ability to be used as a stable source of exchange.
01:14:17.400 | And that is a real problem with Bitcoin as I see it right now.
01:14:21.560 | There are a lot of people who are buying Bitcoin, but there are not a lot of people who are
01:14:24.960 | doing a lot of transactions on Bitcoin.
01:14:26.680 | Now, I also see the marketplace developing.
01:14:28.480 | There have been a whole bunch of changes specifically to Bitcoin where there are more people accepting
01:14:33.480 | Bitcoin locally.
01:14:34.480 | There are more people doing things on a local basis so you can actually spend it.
01:14:38.960 | But it is kind of like the same problem of buying and selling gold and silver coins.
01:14:44.320 | You can do some really cool stuff with gold and silver coins.
01:14:47.760 | For example, you want to have a private financial transaction with somebody with a significant
01:14:52.320 | amount of money exchanging hands.
01:14:55.360 | In some ways, it is hard to get better than using a gold or silver coin or a variety of
01:15:01.560 | them as appropriate to the monetary unit.
01:15:04.160 | The problem is what do you do with it then?
01:15:06.520 | Somebody pays you in silver bullion coins, silver rounds for your services that you have
01:15:11.840 | provided.
01:15:12.840 | What do you actually physically do with it?
01:15:13.920 | Where do you go and spend it?
01:15:14.960 | It is harder to do that.
01:15:16.720 | And you are dealing with a very small subset of the population that would even know the
01:15:21.440 | value of a silver round or even know the value of an American Eagle and be willing to incorporate
01:15:26.640 | that in their transaction.
01:15:29.120 | I think the same problem applies to Bitcoin as things stand right now.
01:15:33.000 | So I do not know which currencies will turn out to be the currencies of the future.
01:15:37.680 | I do think we have a huge opportunity going forward.
01:15:41.200 | And then finally, I guess from a privacy perspective, the other concern is that with the exception
01:15:48.820 | of some that are focused on privacy, you actually have in some ways, you have the opposite of
01:15:54.200 | privacy where every transaction is recorded in the blockchain.
01:15:57.040 | And so it is all a matter of can I get in privately and out privately?
01:16:01.480 | Because anytime that money transfers out of the crypto world into your bank account or
01:16:05.940 | into some other scenario, you lose the same privacy that you had internally.
01:16:11.160 | So all that say, I am very optimistic.
01:16:13.360 | I am excited about the future and I want to do everything I can to encourage the proliferation
01:16:19.080 | of currencies.
01:16:22.400 | From a practical perspective, this would be a political philosophy and an economic philosophy.
01:16:26.960 | I would like to see every single state government out of the money business.
01:16:31.520 | And I would like to see money be a competitive environment where individuals choose what
01:16:36.260 | to accept for themselves.
01:16:38.880 | And so that is what I see as ultimate economic freedom.
01:16:42.200 | I am hopeful that we can continue to move towards that because today that system where
01:16:46.960 | somebody would say, well, how would I, if it is not a US dollar, then how should I know
01:16:50.800 | its value?
01:16:52.520 | Most people find a lot of confidence and trust in the fact that the US dollar is printed
01:16:57.420 | on a Federal Reserve note and they think it is an output of the US Federal Government.
01:17:01.240 | They think it is a product of the US Federal Government because of the power of the state,
01:17:04.700 | they feel confident in it.
01:17:05.960 | I would love to move to a world where people had more responsibility and they bought and
01:17:10.060 | sold using all kinds of currencies and let the market sort out which currency is the
01:17:15.720 | best.
01:17:16.720 | That has been a total failure for the last 50 years in the world of state run and state
01:17:20.840 | authorized currencies.
01:17:21.840 | But I am hoping that in the future with the cryptocurrencies that there would be an opportunity
01:17:26.440 | to move to that competitive environment for currencies where currencies are competing
01:17:30.400 | against each other.
01:17:31.400 | Time will tell.
01:17:32.400 | Sorry to put you on the spot there with the cryptocurrencies and stuff.
01:17:36.160 | I know it is not normally financial advisors going down that road with us, but it is an
01:17:41.000 | interesting topic right now.
01:17:42.720 | I guess another thing we like to do on the CPS Podcast is kind of the elevator pitch.
01:17:47.440 | I guess what is one thing that you could tell our guests or listeners right now that they
01:17:53.120 | can do to start down the road to financial freedom, just get them started?
01:17:58.860 | Probably the biggest thing for anybody who is interested in financial freedom will be
01:18:03.120 | to become and remain debt free.
01:18:06.720 | I can give all kinds of arguments about the value of debt and those arguments are to a
01:18:11.340 | point valid, especially financially.
01:18:14.240 | They can be very valid.
01:18:16.280 | When you get down to it, if you do not owe anybody any money for any reason and if you
01:18:22.520 | have no payments, no guaranteed payments that you have to make on every single month that
01:18:29.480 | you have to make, that gives you a level of freedom that is truly powerful.
01:18:35.520 | It gives you a level of choice that there is almost nothing you can do in your life,
01:18:40.960 | that nothing you cannot do in your life.
01:18:42.720 | I worked with a guy one time who was a very wealthy bond trader, made almost half a million
01:18:48.120 | dollars a year trading bonds.
01:18:50.600 | This person said to me, "I owe nobody any money and the benefit is if my whole business
01:18:57.120 | collapsed, I could work at the local grocery store as a bagger and I could earn enough
01:19:03.280 | money to support my lifestyle."
01:19:05.400 | If you get down to what the ultimate purpose of money is, it's supposed to be useful to
01:19:10.080 | us in our life.
01:19:11.640 | One of the major things that money is supposed to be used for is to provide for our needs
01:19:15.520 | and the needs of others and also to buy a certain level of freedom and independence.
01:19:21.500 | If you start with that freedom or make that a high priority and you become fully debt-free
01:19:27.540 | and you stay debt-free, your life is open to you in terms of any option you want to
01:19:32.140 | make.
01:19:33.140 | If you look back on somebody who is 70, 80, 90 years old and you were to compare somebody
01:19:38.340 | who got into debt and stayed out of debt and the choices, the interesting life choices
01:19:43.280 | they could make versus somebody who was deeply in debt and the constraint on them, I think
01:19:49.420 | you'd find someone who's much more satisfied who was out of debt.
01:19:53.180 | I'll share this one story to prove my point.
01:19:56.020 | When I was a young financial advisor, I didn't know what was going on and I would go out
01:20:00.380 | and meet with people.
01:20:01.380 | I met this one person who really deeply impressed me.
01:20:04.060 | It was a local business owner here in South Florida.
01:20:06.100 | I started in the business in 2008, which was, of course, a very difficult time to be in
01:20:12.140 | the construction business.
01:20:13.140 | I probably met this guy 2009, 2010.
01:20:15.180 | I don't know.
01:20:16.300 | I sat down and we were talking money and he was sharing with me basically a little bit
01:20:20.460 | of his story.
01:20:21.460 | He said, "This isn't the first recession I've been to.
01:20:23.340 | It's the third or fourth."
01:20:25.020 | He said, "So here's what I do.
01:20:26.820 | Number one, I don't owe anybody any money and I never borrow money.
01:20:30.460 | Number two, I keep my business lean and mean.
01:20:33.460 | As many of my employees as possible are contractors instead of employees.
01:20:38.300 | That minimizes my long-term obligation to try to pay the guys on the job, et cetera.
01:20:42.380 | We keep our fixed expenses really low."
01:20:44.740 | This guy was working in his office, was in the back of a run-down gas station, just a
01:20:49.100 | little corner hole in the wall that he ran his business out of.
01:20:51.820 | It was a big business.
01:20:52.820 | He said, "I always keep cash on hand so I can take advantage of the opportunities."
01:20:57.020 | He had just recently bought a deep-sea boat, a nice big boat, from another contractor who
01:21:03.060 | had leveraged up his lifestyle during the boom time and things were falling apart.
01:21:07.420 | He bought this $85,000 boat for about 50 grand.
01:21:11.620 | He said, "So what I do during recessions is I go and fish every day.
01:21:15.660 | I turn my recession into my mini vacation.
01:21:18.940 | I just go and fish.
01:21:19.940 | I'm enjoying this new boat.
01:21:21.100 | I take my family out on it.
01:21:22.900 | This is the time when I'm really pulling back.
01:21:24.840 | When the construction market turns around, then I'll go ahead and get busy again.
01:21:28.660 | I'll go ahead and build the business up again."
01:21:31.180 | It really impressed me because I had never thought of it that way.
01:21:34.020 | I had always been of the idea that you got to have more, you got to do better, you got
01:21:37.780 | to have more, you got to do better, you got to fight, fight, fight for as much business
01:21:40.300 | as possible.
01:21:41.460 | I had forgotten about the fact that you could just sit back and roll with the market to
01:21:45.460 | an extent.
01:21:47.180 | This guy basically had for himself a sabbatical or a mini retirement when the market was down.
01:21:52.460 | Instead of spending all of his time stressed out selling stuff because he borrowed a bunch
01:21:56.060 | of money and trying to figure out how to keep my business going, he was out fishing every
01:21:59.640 | day and just had his business on the barest of minimal input.
01:22:04.460 | It really affected me and I realized that if we all ran our lives like that, we'd be
01:22:10.260 | a lot closer to freedom and independence than the way that most of us run our financial
01:22:16.020 | lives.
01:22:17.020 | That's fantastic.
01:22:18.020 | Joshua, thank you so much for being here.
01:22:20.620 | This whole thing has been absolutely fantastic and I've enjoyed every second of this.
01:22:25.860 | This has been full of information.
01:22:27.460 | Before we close, can you tell people where they can find out more about you?
01:22:31.500 | RadicalPersonalFinance.com, which is a website that serves a podcast.
01:22:35.660 | Since you're listening to me on a podcast, if you're interested in hearing more, there
01:22:38.540 | are about 600 hours of free audio available.
01:22:41.460 | Just search the podcast directory on your phone for Radical Personal Finance and you'll
01:22:44.260 | find me.
01:22:45.380 | And I will second that.
01:22:46.820 | Radical Personal Finance is one of the first podcasts in my feed that I go to.
01:22:53.220 | If you're not a subscriber, head on over there.
01:22:55.700 | Thank you so much for being so generous with your time.
01:22:57.860 | Josh, it's been a pleasure.
01:22:59.220 | I've enjoyed it.
01:23:00.220 | Keep up the great work, guys.
01:23:01.220 | Thank you for having me on.
01:23:02.220 | Wow, man.
01:23:03.220 | That was an absolutely fantastic interview and he's answered actually quite a few questions
01:23:07.980 | that I've had, including some of the more tinfoil hat things like why I should own a
01:23:13.620 | few gold rounds here and there.
01:23:15.260 | I agree, man.
01:23:16.260 | What's great about it is us sitting here taking notes.
01:23:19.220 | I got a couple of pages of notes just from sitting back and listening to him.
01:23:22.540 | I know we ran a little bit long.
01:23:24.100 | This is going to be a huge episode for you guys, but I didn't want to cut him off if
01:23:28.100 | you didn't.
01:23:29.100 | Yeah, man.
01:23:30.100 | I feel like I could have asked him a few more, but I wanted to be respectful of his time
01:23:34.660 | there.
01:23:35.660 | So should we go ahead and jump into listener questions?
01:23:36.660 | Absolutely, man.
01:23:37.660 | I'll throw you on the hook for this one real quick.
01:23:41.900 | The one I got is, "Justin, how secure is PayPal?
01:23:47.180 | Is there anything else I should be concerned about with PayPal?"
01:23:50.260 | Okay, cool.
01:23:51.260 | Since this is a financial episode, PayPal is very secure, I believe.
01:23:56.820 | I say that based on the fact that I don't even have a PayPal account anymore because
01:24:01.740 | I kept getting locked out of it so frequently.
01:24:07.380 | That's a big problem if you want to take your privacy to an extreme, is you will have problems
01:24:13.820 | with PayPal.
01:24:14.820 | If you want to access PayPal from a VPN, you're frequently going to have issues logging into
01:24:19.140 | PayPal.
01:24:21.420 | Very secure, I believe, but it's not very private.
01:24:25.220 | PayPal shares your information with a bunch of different parties, and that's kind of a
01:24:29.540 | problem when we get into these online payment systems.
01:24:34.740 | Just like privacy.com, PayPal and these online payment services have to verify your identity
01:24:43.580 | because of banking regulations.
01:24:45.500 | So it's kind of a drag, man.
01:24:47.140 | There's not a lot you can do.
01:24:48.140 | I've looked at some off-the-wall ones, the privacy policies of ones like Dwala and Skrill.
01:24:55.180 | I think if I had to go with one of these, probably Skrill looks the best because you
01:25:00.780 | can opt out of a lot of their data sharing.
01:25:03.820 | It's not ideal, but they seem to have good security.
01:25:06.060 | They seem to have put security and privacy kind of at the forefront of what they're doing
01:25:13.820 | there.
01:25:14.820 | But man, all of these are really going to be a devil's bargain.
01:25:17.860 | The problem with going with those off-the-wall ones like Dwala and Skrill is that not a lot
01:25:23.480 | of places accept those.
01:25:24.740 | So this is kind of tough, man.
01:25:27.180 | I really don't recommend PayPal at all if there's any way around it.
01:25:30.740 | Yeah, I'd say it's kind of tough, man.
01:25:32.540 | When you're dealing with your own money, you obviously want there to be some of that know
01:25:35.860 | your customer and least shady kind of stuff, but you also want to protect your privacy
01:25:39.660 | in the same aspect.
01:25:40.660 | It's kind of tough.
01:25:42.380 | Yeah, it really is, man.
01:25:45.220 | I understand why most of these services, if you get locked out, want a selfie with your
01:25:50.340 | ID.
01:25:51.340 | They don't want just anyone to be able to take my ID and get into my stuff.
01:25:54.940 | But at the same time, I don't want to send them my ID and a selfie.
01:25:58.180 | So tough decision, man.
01:26:02.260 | I guess I would say the best case would be don't use PayPal.
01:26:05.620 | So anyway, moving on to the next question.
01:26:07.780 | My bank does not offer two-factor authentication.
01:26:10.620 | What best practices do you recommend for securing my account?
01:26:13.620 | Man, that's tough because aside from switching to another bank, there's not a whole lot of
01:26:19.620 | financial institutions that actually do have two-factor authentication going on twofactorauth.org.
01:26:27.500 | My big things that I do to focus on mine is, one, utilizing points of contact information
01:26:32.860 | with my bank, whether it be my email address and a pseudo number or something like that,
01:26:37.340 | that I don't give out or give to anybody else.
01:26:40.420 | It's solely for my banking institution and has never seen anything else.
01:26:46.060 | The other aspect is if they allow you to use a random generated username, definitely start
01:26:52.260 | there.
01:26:53.260 | Making your password as tough and complicated, or your passphrase, excuse me, as tough and
01:26:58.700 | complicated as possible.
01:27:00.500 | And then I think another overlooked aspect of security is the security questions.
01:27:05.500 | I think every bank or every kind of account tries to have that, and they're not checking
01:27:10.660 | up to make sure that, "Oh, you entered your mother's maiden name correctly."
01:27:13.380 | So to me, also randomizing that information so it can't be socially engineered or found
01:27:18.300 | anywhere else as well.
01:27:19.300 | I think all those kind of combined give you a little bit warm and fuzzy, not as great
01:27:24.460 | as twofactor, but definitely add some heightened security and should actually be your normal
01:27:28.060 | practices with everything else.
01:27:30.060 | Absolutely.
01:27:31.060 | Agree.
01:27:32.060 | So unless you have anything else, I'll go ahead and close it out, man.
01:27:35.100 | This has been a long one.
01:27:36.100 | Yeah, that's it, man.
01:27:37.340 | All right.
01:27:38.340 | If you have not read the Complete Privacy and Security Desk Reference, check that out
01:27:41.620 | on Amazon.com.
01:27:44.180 | You can check out Jesse at HopalongRVing.com.
01:27:47.740 | You can follow me at operational-security.com, or you can follow me on Twitter @OpSecGuide.
01:27:55.100 | And of course, you can follow Michael at privacy-training.com.
01:27:58.620 | [music]
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