2021-02-12_Friday

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00:00:14.320 | - Today on Radical Personal Finance is live Q&A.

00:00:18.400 | (upbeat music)

00:00:20.980 | (upbeat music)

00:00:23.560 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:35.780 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:37.340 | skills, insight, and encouragement that you need

00:00:39.540 | to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:00:41.700 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:43.220 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:45.180 | My name is Joshua Sheets.

00:00:46.020 | Today is Friday, February 12th, 2021.

00:00:48.940 | And today we have a live Q&A show.

00:00:52.020 | A live Q&A show wherein I open up the phones,

00:00:55.780 | you call in, talk about anything that you want.

00:00:57.600 | Questions, comments, anything that you like.

00:00:59.460 | (upbeat music)

00:01:02.040 | I haven't done these show in a couple of weeks

00:01:08.140 | 'cause it's been hard to arrange the internet.

00:01:09.340 | But today I'm sitting here at my desk,

00:01:10.980 | got an internet connection, so we're able to get it going.

00:01:13.660 | These shows work just like call and talk radio.

00:01:16.340 | And if you would like to gain access to these shows,

00:01:18.320 | to call in and discuss some topic that's on your mind,

00:01:20.820 | ask a question, talk about your situation,

00:01:22.860 | it's probably one of the best ways to,

00:01:24.260 | and cheapest ways to talk to me personally.

00:01:26.180 | Just go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance,

00:01:28.460 | search on Patreon for Radical Personal Finance.

00:01:30.540 | There you'll find all of the information

00:01:32.100 | as to how you can join me on one of these shows.

00:01:35.420 | Broadcasting today from beautiful Bogota, Colombia.

00:01:38.300 | And so it's fun looking out my window at Bogota.

00:01:40.580 | I know that many of you right now

00:01:41.900 | are looking for places to go,

00:01:43.780 | and you're frustrated that you can't travel,

00:01:46.180 | especially most of the audience of the United States

00:01:48.180 | is, sorry, most of the audience

00:01:50.140 | of Radical Personal Finance is in the United States.

00:01:52.260 | So there is a little bit of a difficulty

00:01:53.900 | if you're going back to the United States

00:01:55.100 | as to now you have to have a negative PCR test for that.

00:01:57.280 | But if you're looking for a place to go,

00:01:58.500 | I strongly recommend that you consider going to Colombia.

00:02:01.620 | I've been coming to Colombia for many years,

00:02:03.380 | and I really, really like Colombia.

00:02:05.780 | Bogota is a wonderful city,

00:02:07.480 | right up high at a high elevation, lovely weather,

00:02:09.940 | really, really beautiful.

00:02:10.780 | And Colombia is one of those places

00:02:12.100 | that's had an absolute transformation over the years.

00:02:14.660 | I just picked up a new book yesterday

00:02:17.820 | called "Un Mensaje Optimista para un Mundo en Crisis,"

00:02:22.820 | a message of optimism for a world in crisis.

00:02:25.620 | And it was written by Juan Manuel Santos,

00:02:28.420 | the last, the ex-president of Colombia.

00:02:30.860 | And it's really fascinating.

00:02:31.820 | It's basically just an argument from him

00:02:34.060 | as to how things have gotten so much better

00:02:37.340 | in Colombia over the last 30 years.

00:02:39.380 | And so if your impression or your picture of Colombia

00:02:43.560 | is that it's stuck in kind of the 1980s drug wars

00:02:47.020 | and dealing with FARC and all of that,

00:02:49.420 | most of that is in the past.

00:02:51.020 | Not to say there's not still things that are different

00:02:52.900 | or things that are troubled.

00:02:54.380 | Of course there are, not everywhere we live, right?

00:02:56.740 | Every country has problems,

00:02:58.540 | but it's really a wonderful place,

00:03:00.380 | and I would encourage you to check it out if you wanted to.

00:03:02.540 | Hopefully, as we get back to,

00:03:04.420 | coronavirus starts to become more predictable

00:03:10.040 | around the world as countries open their borders,

00:03:11.720 | hopefully we'll be able to get back and do more traveling

00:03:14.180 | as we go into the next part of this year.

00:03:15.820 | We begin today with Jeff in Florida.

00:03:17.560 | Jeff, welcome to the show.

00:03:18.400 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:03:19.860 | - Thanks, Joshua.

00:03:22.780 | I am considering a new job opportunity,

00:03:26.900 | and both where I'm at and the new one

00:03:28.540 | are pretty equal in terms of intangible,

00:03:31.300 | but vastly different in compensation structure.

00:03:33.760 | I'd love to hear how you would think

00:03:35.980 | through the two different compensation models

00:03:38.700 | of private versus government.

00:03:40.620 | I could talk about all FARC numbers if you'd like,

00:03:44.260 | or we could just talk about tax advantaged accounts

00:03:46.980 | and retirement benefits.

00:03:48.740 | What would be best for you to talk it through?

00:03:53.020 | - Start with the nature of the job,

00:03:54.340 | and then give us a little bit about the numbers

00:03:56.140 | and the packages that they're offering to you.

00:03:58.700 | - Sure, so the nature of the job

00:04:00.880 | is kind of a nonprofit administration.

00:04:03.940 | The work is something I've been in for a long time,

00:04:11.080 | so I know it well and I'm comfortable in both roles.

00:04:14.300 | For perspective, my partner and I

00:04:16.540 | were both about six to seven years away from our FIRE goal.

00:04:20.180 | I know it's a big if,

00:04:21.140 | but if historical averages are present,

00:04:23.460 | and pretty decent stability in both positions.

00:04:29.420 | As far as kind of the government job

00:04:33.780 | is the one I'm in right now, a little lower stress,

00:04:37.220 | maybe a little less stable,

00:04:38.800 | but a really good team that we're taking part of.

00:04:42.600 | The private sector one is a little more stable,

00:04:45.760 | maybe slightly more stress,

00:04:46.960 | but I've been there before, so I know it well.

00:04:50.440 | And I'm uncertain of the team dynamics since I've left.

00:04:53.640 | So the offers that are out there are,

00:04:58.960 | the government job is this kind of step ladder,

00:05:02.440 | position as normal.

00:05:03.500 | It's about a hundred, I'll use round numbers,

00:05:06.800 | about a hundred K compensation

00:05:09.160 | between the 401k or 403d,

00:05:12.760 | but the 401k, the 457, the HSA,

00:05:16.360 | we're maxing them all out.

00:05:18.080 | There's 8K into kind of a 401a plan,

00:05:21.320 | but there's some strings attached

00:05:22.480 | about how that has to be invested and taken out.

00:05:25.260 | It is matched by about another 8K if I vest,

00:05:28.400 | no social security contributions.

00:05:31.840 | And so between my partner and I

00:05:33.680 | we're saving about 80K annually on about 160K of expenses,

00:05:38.200 | or salary and match.

00:05:39.520 | Benefits are really great,

00:05:41.820 | eight weeks of vacation and holidays,

00:05:44.440 | four weeks of sick leave,

00:05:45.600 | which multiple people with families

00:05:47.400 | have said they've taken them all.

00:05:49.320 | But you have a little less control over your,

00:05:51.520 | less savings, less control over your retirement funds.

00:05:54.340 | But eventually in retirement,

00:05:56.640 | you get health insurance covered

00:05:59.560 | at about 5% off per year of work.

00:06:01.640 | So after 20 years, you'd be free.

00:06:04.280 | I'd probably make it to where health insurance

00:06:06.320 | is about 65% off.

00:06:07.840 | - Okay.

00:06:08.680 | - The private sector role,

00:06:10.840 | the compensation is a little better,

00:06:12.520 | would be around 130K.

00:06:14.840 | There's a 401k with a 2% match, HSA.

00:06:17.720 | There's a pension, it's not COLA adjusted,

00:06:20.040 | but it is really well funded.

00:06:21.320 | So I'm pretty confident in their security.

00:06:23.420 | And the pension is basically 2.5% of your cumulative salary

00:06:28.920 | while you've worked there per year.

00:06:30.680 | And then, if we were maxing all of those out

00:06:35.120 | and saving the rest to taxable,

00:06:36.840 | it would mean we'd have about 40K going into taxable annually

00:06:40.120 | and about 90K saved between me and my partner

00:06:42.960 | on about 190K of salaries and matches.

00:06:46.160 | The soft benefits, five weeks vacation,

00:06:50.380 | one week of holidays, or four weeks vacation,

00:06:53.000 | one week of holidays, five weeks time off.

00:06:55.240 | About two weeks of sick leave,

00:06:57.160 | not totally sure how much people use that.

00:06:59.260 | And in that one, there's just more savings,

00:07:03.120 | more control over the savings.

00:07:04.720 | You were tax advantaged accounts to kind of play with

00:07:06.660 | and, but you do have the pension

00:07:09.080 | and would be paying into social security again.

00:07:12.080 | But I would need to obtain healthcare in retirement

00:07:14.480 | for a family, either through the marketplace

00:07:17.320 | or just paying at cost.

00:07:20.520 | And I'd probably be there for about five more years

00:07:22.440 | and then part-time for another five.

00:07:23.960 | So those are the two things.

00:07:26.360 | The commutes are about the same.

00:07:28.120 | The bosses, I have strong relationships with both.

00:07:30.760 | Work-life balance, probably a little better

00:07:32.160 | with the government job

00:07:34.120 | and the opportunity for future positions.

00:07:36.600 | Probably a little better with the private job.

00:07:39.240 | So--

00:07:40.600 | - Do you have children?

00:07:41.440 | - And just to, we do, two kids.

00:07:44.400 | - And how old?

00:07:45.240 | - One is a little over two

00:07:48.240 | and the other one is a little under one.

00:07:50.720 | - And on your current plan, if things go as you,

00:07:54.880 | as they are expected to go,

00:07:57.080 | and if you do become financially independent in 67 years,

00:08:00.240 | do you see yourself stopping employment

00:08:04.360 | at that point in time?

00:08:06.480 | - Yeah, we would, we're, our family's very interested

00:08:09.400 | in long-term travel, kind of slow travel.

00:08:11.760 | You know, Columbia sounds lovely, I hear.

00:08:14.480 | And so that'd be one option.

00:08:17.640 | Also just, we've considered the possibility

00:08:20.560 | of potentially kind of negotiating down to where,

00:08:24.840 | and it'd be very easy in the roles I'm in

00:08:26.520 | to negotiate towards only working

00:08:29.480 | while the kids are in school

00:08:30.600 | and being more present outside of that

00:08:32.600 | and kind of using the time off

00:08:33.880 | or going 50% three quarters time

00:08:36.920 | and having summers largely available.

00:08:40.320 | But the long-term travel is kind of the big one

00:08:45.120 | or downshifting into some careers

00:08:47.360 | that are maybe more combinations of life passions

00:08:50.920 | as well as some extra side income.

00:08:54.200 | - Do you see yourself as an aggressive career builder?

00:08:58.580 | Meaning if you took the private sector job,

00:09:01.920 | would you see yourself going and applying

00:09:04.280 | for another bigger private sector job

00:09:07.000 | two and a half years from now

00:09:08.460 | where you'd be making $200,000 a year or 250

00:09:11.840 | because of your excellent results

00:09:13.800 | at this current opportunity?

00:09:15.600 | - Probably not at one point in my life.

00:09:19.320 | That's definitely kind of how I got

00:09:20.960 | into the role that I'm in now.

00:09:23.320 | But with the family coming on board,

00:09:25.800 | priorities have shifted much more

00:09:27.680 | towards being present to the family.

00:09:31.440 | And also just the relationships I built,

00:09:34.680 | as I mentioned, I'd be returning to the nonprofit.

00:09:36.640 | So I have some really strong relationships

00:09:39.000 | and in many ways there's been a long-term plan

00:09:41.280 | for me to be there.

00:09:42.760 | It would be that I'd stick around for a while

00:09:45.000 | both out of gratitude and loyalty

00:09:47.760 | and also personal family circumstance.

00:09:50.600 | - Based upon what you're describing,

00:09:51.760 | I think to me the favor,

00:09:55.720 | the weight falls on the government job

00:09:58.160 | as being probably a better option for you.

00:10:01.080 | And here is what I'm thinking

00:10:03.520 | and as far as how I get there.

00:10:05.200 | First of all, it sounds like both of these jobs

00:10:07.440 | are a good fit for you.

00:10:08.560 | If one was clearly not a good fit for you,

00:10:11.160 | if you were gonna go crazy

00:10:12.600 | and just be bored out of your mind in the government job,

00:10:14.800 | but in the private sector job, you would love it.

00:10:16.960 | Well, then that would be obvious.

00:10:18.280 | But it sounds like both of these are a good fit.

00:10:19.960 | You said you have a good relationship

00:10:21.200 | with both of your potential bosses, et cetera.

00:10:24.820 | You can't, in my mind, it seems inarguable

00:10:30.440 | that government jobs are generally going

00:10:33.720 | to be far less stress and require less of you

00:10:36.840 | in terms of mental commitment and mental stress.

00:10:40.420 | When you work for the government,

00:10:41.980 | you have a certain set of expectations.

00:10:44.560 | But because of the nature of bureaucracy,

00:10:47.720 | it's very hard for you to be fired

00:10:49.840 | and it's very hard for the government

00:10:52.400 | to impose upon you lots of excessive demands.

00:10:56.160 | So you're expected to be there at nine o'clock,

00:10:58.160 | great, you're there at nine o'clock,

00:10:59.280 | but you can leave at five o'clock.

00:11:00.680 | And if the work's not done in a government position,

00:11:03.400 | you just simply say, well, we're the government, right?

00:11:05.520 | They have to accept what we say,

00:11:07.000 | the work will get done next week.

00:11:08.560 | And this leads to a very clear ability for you

00:11:13.440 | to segment your work life and your personal life.

00:11:18.440 | In the private sector, that's much less common, right?

00:11:21.200 | In the private sector, there's much more of an expectation

00:11:24.020 | that whatever it takes, we get the work done.

00:11:26.520 | And this would be why most of us

00:11:28.400 | who work in the private sector, we tend to work more.

00:11:31.800 | We tend to feel more pressure

00:11:33.600 | and there's the pressure of the free market upon us

00:11:36.720 | to cause us to perform.

00:11:38.320 | That pressure is probably a little bit,

00:11:39.960 | that pressure is less intense in the not-for-profit sector,

00:11:43.580 | but I think there's still a difference.

00:11:44.920 | And when you compare the benefits across the board,

00:11:48.440 | especially the benefits that are important to you

00:11:52.060 | as an early retiree, to me,

00:11:54.160 | the government job sounds a whole lot better.

00:11:57.600 | It's not a bad compensation rate.

00:11:59.800 | You have access to a number of different plans

00:12:03.880 | that will help you with everything.

00:12:07.280 | The eight weeks of vacation and holiday leave,

00:12:09.880 | to me, is probably a much more livable thing

00:12:12.560 | for you long-term.

00:12:13.840 | If you've got eight weeks of vacation per year,

00:12:16.220 | plus four weeks of sick leave,

00:12:18.680 | then with having young children,

00:12:20.800 | that means that you can do almost anything

00:12:23.060 | that you wanna do and still keep working.

00:12:25.480 | So to me, I think the pressure for you

00:12:27.360 | to actually quit working in six or seven years

00:12:29.920 | would be much lower in that kind of system.

00:12:32.720 | I mean, I like to travel for long-term.

00:12:34.860 | Two months of travel per year is a lot of travel.

00:12:38.920 | It's a lot of travel.

00:12:40.520 | So that kind of job is probably much more livable for you

00:12:45.080 | for an extended period of time,

00:12:46.800 | and that might mean that you might choose

00:12:48.740 | not to quit working in six years or seven years.

00:12:52.080 | Might mean that you're comfortable enough

00:12:53.520 | that you do it for 10 years or 15 years

00:12:55.200 | or something like that.

00:12:56.040 | That's gonna be a cushy, cushy job.

00:12:58.840 | And as long as the work is a decent fit for you,

00:13:01.040 | you can go to work, you can work your expected hours,

00:13:03.240 | you can deliver as your bosses expect,

00:13:05.760 | you can go home with a clear conscience

00:13:07.360 | and just not worry about it.

00:13:09.120 | And then from the perspective of early retirement,

00:13:13.360 | the discounted health insurance

00:13:14.840 | is a very, very valuable perk.

00:13:17.100 | It's one of the most difficult things to handle

00:13:19.300 | in the US-American system for early retirees.

00:13:22.000 | And so, especially given that you see yourself

00:13:24.800 | as the kind of person who would actually stop working

00:13:27.240 | in six or seven years,

00:13:28.600 | I think having some discount

00:13:30.280 | on the health insurance system would be good.

00:13:33.200 | And then finally, my final comment is this.

00:13:35.360 | Going from the government sector into the private sector

00:13:40.280 | or into the not-for-profit sector,

00:13:42.440 | I think is generally gonna be an easier transition

00:13:45.680 | than going from the private sector

00:13:47.160 | into the government sector.

00:13:48.480 | I can't prove that, it just feels that way to me.

00:13:52.760 | And especially when I think about doing things

00:13:54.280 | like part-time work,

00:13:55.520 | if you work for the government for the next six years

00:13:58.080 | and then you decide to stop working full-time,

00:14:00.400 | but you wanna pick up a part-time job,

00:14:02.760 | you'll have your contacts

00:14:04.280 | and your connections inside the government,

00:14:07.520 | and that will be very employable

00:14:09.240 | to somebody in the private market.

00:14:11.080 | You can be a lobbyist of sorts,

00:14:12.880 | or you can be a consultant.

00:14:14.480 | And so those kinds of things

00:14:15.840 | would lend themselves very well to a part-time job

00:14:18.400 | in the private sector

00:14:19.860 | because of the strength of your government resume.

00:14:21.920 | So from what you're describing,

00:14:23.360 | those are my reasons I think the weight falls

00:14:25.920 | in favor of the government job from what you're saying.

00:14:28.560 | - Great, thank you.

00:14:31.120 | Yeah, it's been helpful to think through that.

00:14:34.240 | And the big thing for me,

00:14:36.520 | I agree with your assessment,

00:14:38.800 | is kind of wondering about the benefits

00:14:40.520 | of taxable funds invested

00:14:43.000 | versus manipulating various tax-advantaged funds.

00:14:48.000 | But it feels like I have some flexibility with both.

00:14:52.480 | - Remember that your investment portfolio,

00:14:54.560 | your investment choices are not entirely tied

00:14:57.240 | to the system.

00:15:00.240 | So I don't think there's that.

00:15:02.240 | From what you described,

00:15:04.360 | there is some benefit to the pension,

00:15:06.720 | but in that kind of pension program,

00:15:09.240 | if you want to create that kind of pension program yourself,

00:15:12.480 | you can.

00:15:13.720 | That's gonna be a commercial annuity

00:15:15.240 | that's funding that particular pension program,

00:15:18.800 | and it's just gonna be an overall part of your compensation.

00:15:21.760 | When you're, the health insurance,

00:15:24.320 | that's a genuinely valuable business,

00:15:26.160 | but you can still do most of the other stuff.

00:15:28.720 | You don't have to have an HSA at work

00:15:31.040 | to be able to contribute to an HSA.

00:15:32.840 | You just need a high-deductible health plan.

00:15:35.080 | You can still do lots of other investing.

00:15:37.320 | And with having a salary,

00:15:39.040 | you could buy five rental houses in the next five years

00:15:41.160 | if you wanted to,

00:15:42.000 | just by leveraging your stable government salary

00:15:45.460 | to borrow money, buy a house, move into it,

00:15:48.680 | do the old nomad strategy for five years,

00:15:51.080 | and now you have a giant real estate portfolio.

00:15:53.320 | So I think you can handle the money in an intelligent way.

00:15:56.960 | To me, the lifestyle that you described

00:15:59.480 | of having eight weeks of paid vacation

00:16:01.240 | plus four weeks of sick leave,

00:16:03.320 | that's gonna pretty much open up to you

00:16:06.880 | the vast majority of travel

00:16:09.440 | or anything that you wanna do while you're still working.

00:16:11.560 | And when you also have that compounded with the fact

00:16:14.440 | that this is a nine-to-five job,

00:16:16.800 | or whatever the hours are that you're expected to work,

00:16:18.800 | the point is that it's constrained to those hours,

00:16:22.220 | then you won't have a significant amount of work stress

00:16:25.600 | with that kind of position.

00:16:26.600 | You go to work, you do your job when you're there,

00:16:28.760 | you leave, if the children are sick,

00:16:30.380 | you say, "The children are sick," and you stay home.

00:16:32.520 | And because of the nature of a government job,

00:16:34.720 | you can do that without it messing everything up

00:16:37.260 | and without feeling like I'm letting the whole team down

00:16:39.500 | and whatnot, which is gonna be some of the pressure

00:16:41.300 | that you'll feel in the private sector.

00:16:43.260 | - Right there.

00:16:45.120 | Thank you so much.

00:16:45.940 | I appreciate the assessment.

00:16:46.880 | - My pleasure.

00:16:47.720 | - And hopefully you'll know great wisdom

00:16:49.280 | to figure out which one is best for you.

00:16:51.640 | All right, let's go to Adam in Philadelphia.

00:16:54.560 | Adam, welcome to the show.

00:16:55.380 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:16:57.080 | - Hi, Josh.

00:16:58.240 | I hope you're doing well.

00:16:59.080 | I have two questions.

00:17:00.320 | I'll start with the first,

00:17:01.360 | and we can circle back to the second later.

00:17:03.880 | My question has to do with taxes

00:17:05.640 | for someone with multiple citizenships,

00:17:07.440 | that someone would be me.

00:17:09.480 | I'm 22 years old, single.

00:17:11.520 | I was born in the US to Hungarian parents,

00:17:14.140 | but I grew up in Canada.

00:17:15.960 | Three citizenships, American, Hungarian, Canadian.

00:17:19.560 | I went to school in Canada,

00:17:20.840 | did all my summer jobs in Canada.

00:17:22.200 | I have Canadian bank accounts,

00:17:23.360 | Canadian TFSA, RRSP, the whole nine.

00:17:25.680 | As of January of this year, I've moved to the US.

00:17:30.640 | I'm working for a big Fortune 500 company here.

00:17:33.640 | I've never paid US taxes.

00:17:35.040 | I've never even filed US taxes.

00:17:36.800 | I'm aware that this is something

00:17:38.080 | that I should have been doing since I started working,

00:17:41.560 | although I never have.

00:17:42.680 | And so I'm concerned that the IRS

00:17:45.040 | might be lurking behind the corner,

00:17:47.280 | and I was hoping for your advice on how to get compliant.

00:17:49.480 | I know this is something that you mentioned earlier.

00:17:51.720 | - You said you're 22?

00:17:53.880 | - Yes, sir.

00:17:54.720 | - Okay, so in your situation, I think it's fairly simple.

00:17:57.880 | What you need to look for is the IRS has a program.

00:18:02.880 | I cannot remember the name of it right now,

00:18:06.160 | and I can't search for it right at the second,

00:18:09.280 | but I'll tell you how to find it.

00:18:11.440 | So do a web search for US citizens tax compliance,

00:18:16.440 | and find a tax lawyer who specializes in helping US,

00:18:21.960 | here we go, I found it,

00:18:28.160 | relief procedures for certain,

00:18:31.440 | I'm looking at the IRS website,

00:18:32.880 | relief procedures for certain former citizens.

00:18:34.760 | No, that's not it.

00:18:35.720 | So browse around on the IRS website, irs.gov,

00:18:39.640 | and find the section where they talk about the programs

00:18:42.680 | that they have for people bringing themselves

00:18:44.680 | into tax compliance.

00:18:46.760 | And again, I'm sorry, I don't remember the name of it.

00:18:49.800 | But there are, I'm finding lots of resources

00:18:54.800 | for expat tax professionals, et cetera,

00:18:57.360 | and there are lawyers who specialize in this.

00:18:59.760 | And so what you will do is you will contact the IRS,

00:19:03.400 | and you will say, I'm 22 years old,

00:19:06.120 | I didn't know that I was supposed to be filing taxes,

00:19:08.600 | I have a limited work history,

00:19:10.120 | and I'd like to bring myself into compliance.

00:19:12.440 | They have a number of amnesty programs

00:19:14.520 | that you can participate in.

00:19:16.120 | And those amnesty programs will allow you

00:19:19.440 | to file tax returns for the previous years

00:19:23.320 | when you were not compliant,

00:19:25.660 | and then to be free of your legal burden

00:19:28.520 | of having been non-compliant.

00:19:30.480 | And in your situation,

00:19:31.860 | this should be a relatively easy and simple thing.

00:19:34.360 | You probably weren't making much money,

00:19:35.560 | you're 22 years old, et cetera.

00:19:37.560 | And you'll go ahead, so you'll create tax returns

00:19:40.560 | for the years in which you were liable to file them,

00:19:43.120 | for the years in which your income

00:19:44.400 | has exceeded the filing threshold

00:19:45.840 | of whatever it is, $7,000, $10,000-ish,

00:19:48.560 | which probably isn't very many years.

00:19:50.520 | You'll create those tax returns,

00:19:52.440 | but you will be eligible

00:19:55.000 | for the foreign earned income exclusion

00:19:57.520 | because you were living outside the United States,

00:19:59.760 | and thus you will owe no tax.

00:20:01.920 | So your only costs will simply be any legal fees

00:20:05.480 | that you would incur to have a lawyer and accountant

00:20:09.160 | help you with filing for that amnesty program.

00:20:12.680 | And that's what I would do.

00:20:13.600 | So if you have the money to go ahead and start paying,

00:20:17.400 | I can't imagine your situation,

00:20:19.240 | it would be more than a couple thousand dollars

00:20:20.800 | of legal fees, but I would go ahead.

00:20:23.680 | You may be able to do it yourself, I don't know.

00:20:25.560 | I wouldn't.

00:20:26.400 | I would wait until I had the money

00:20:27.680 | and go ahead and use an attorney as the go-between

00:20:29.600 | and find an attorney who has done,

00:20:31.800 | who has helped people to bring people into tax compliance.

00:20:36.800 | But that's how you do it,

00:20:40.960 | is you just simply, you'll file the returns

00:20:43.840 | for the years that you didn't file.

00:20:45.440 | So you'll grab whatever information you have

00:20:48.120 | from your previous work,

00:20:55.000 | from your Canadian tax returns,

00:20:56.840 | wherever you previously filed,

00:21:00.040 | and then you'll go ahead and file those returns.

00:21:01.920 | But because you were outside of the country

00:21:04.280 | and assuming that you weren't making

00:21:05.560 | hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,

00:21:06.640 | you won't actually owe any tax.

00:21:08.000 | You have to bring yourself into compliance that way.

00:21:10.240 | - Perfect, and then I guess the follow-up to that,

00:21:13.800 | and maybe it's better for the tax lawyers,

00:21:16.000 | but going forward, is there anything special I need to do

00:21:18.840 | to ensure that the Canadian Revenue Agency

00:21:21.400 | doesn't come after me when I'm working in the US,

00:21:23.880 | being paid in US dollars?

00:21:25.240 | - Yeah, so this is not that difficult.

00:21:29.000 | But the biggest thing you want to do

00:21:30.440 | is become Canadian non-tax resident

00:21:34.560 | in order to eliminate your filing requirements.

00:21:37.840 | So, Canada and the United States

00:21:42.080 | have an excellent tax treaty,

00:21:43.840 | and working in the United States

00:21:45.440 | and living in the United States,

00:21:46.880 | you can minimize your taxes through that tax treaty.

00:21:49.540 | However, since you're now living in the United States,

00:21:52.480 | unless you have some compelling reason

00:21:55.500 | to maintain your residential ties with Canada,

00:21:58.640 | you would just simply want

00:22:00.040 | to become Canadian non-tax resident.

00:22:03.000 | So, the non-residence comes down to the basic facts of life,

00:22:07.720 | the fact that you're living now in the United States,

00:22:10.280 | not in Canada.

00:22:11.680 | You don't have any significant residential ties.

00:22:14.060 | You're staying, most of the time, in the United States.

00:22:17.280 | What you should look at is just simply look and say,

00:22:19.800 | do I have any other significant connections to Canada?

00:22:23.140 | So, do I have my RRSP?

00:22:25.440 | What should I do with that?

00:22:28.080 | And the other things, and look at them.

00:22:32.280 | Do you think that your time in the United States

00:22:35.280 | is gonna be for a long time,

00:22:37.160 | or is it a fairly short time?

00:22:39.040 | What do you think?

00:22:39.880 | - So, the work contract I'm on now

00:22:42.360 | is gonna take me for about three and a half years.

00:22:45.160 | I'll probably bounce around a couple different states

00:22:47.680 | while I'm there, and given all three of my citizenships,

00:22:50.920 | I also might spend some time in Europe.

00:22:53.360 | I'm not sure if I'll ever come back to Canada,

00:22:55.480 | although I'm 22 years old and single,

00:22:58.360 | so everything's kind of, I'm open

00:23:00.240 | to just about anything at this point.

00:23:01.560 | - How much money do you have saved in,

00:23:03.720 | how much money do you have saved

00:23:05.020 | in your retirement plans in Canada right now?

00:23:08.120 | - Very little.

00:23:08.960 | I have a couple grand in the TFSA,

00:23:11.320 | and then I have $150 in the RRSP

00:23:15.160 | that was just put in there to open it,

00:23:16.920 | and for me to feel financially responsible at 16

00:23:19.520 | that I'm saving for retirement,

00:23:20.760 | but not much has been put in there.

00:23:23.080 | If I were in your shoes, I would go ahead

00:23:25.840 | and just simply cash those assets out

00:23:28.400 | and sever all of my financial ties with Canada.

00:23:31.700 | I don't think it's strictly necessary.

00:23:34.540 | If you had a lot of money in those accounts,

00:23:36.400 | I wouldn't say it's necessary,

00:23:38.420 | but right now, the cost for you of ending those plans

00:23:42.860 | will be next to nothing, assuming,

00:23:45.160 | I have the impression that your income

00:23:46.440 | is probably not super high, being 22 years old,

00:23:49.160 | and just kind of just starting on your work life,

00:23:52.440 | so I would just go ahead and cash those out

00:23:54.920 | and end my financial connections with Canada.

00:23:59.300 | That way, in the future, you can maintain the benefits.

00:24:02.080 | You can always move to Canada,

00:24:03.480 | but by becoming fully Canadian non-tax resident

00:24:06.640 | and having no ties to the country,

00:24:08.320 | you don't own any real estate there,

00:24:09.960 | I would just go ahead and end my retirement plans there.

00:24:14.840 | If you wanna keep one bank account, that's probably okay.

00:24:18.000 | If you were wealthy, I would say no bank accounts,

00:24:19.760 | no credit cards, but since you're just

00:24:22.200 | getting started, it's probably fine

00:24:23.520 | for you to have a bank account there.

00:24:25.600 | If it were me, I would go ahead and just fully extricate

00:24:28.800 | myself from the Canadian tax system.

00:24:31.280 | You're gonna be in the US tax system,

00:24:33.860 | but that way, you're only dealing with one system,

00:24:36.200 | and then if, in the future, you wanna go to Canada,

00:24:38.120 | you can always go to Canada,

00:24:39.260 | become resident and tax resident again,

00:24:42.520 | but this way, your tax obligations will be simple,

00:24:45.440 | and as a US citizen now, you would have

00:24:47.280 | the ability to travel, you would have the ability

00:24:49.840 | to do everything with just the US American system,

00:24:53.840 | and because of the way that the US American system works,

00:24:56.800 | you can keep your entire financial infrastructure

00:24:59.040 | in the United States, you have good banking,

00:25:01.280 | better banking, lower cost, lower cost investing

00:25:04.320 | in the United States than in Canada,

00:25:06.540 | and so you can keep your entire infrastructure

00:25:08.480 | in the United States and/or choose some other countries

00:25:10.960 | that you don't have citizenship in

00:25:12.560 | to expand your banking into, but then,

00:25:14.760 | if you're outside of the United States,

00:25:16.880 | then you could qualify for the relevant,

00:25:20.400 | you know, the foreign earned income exclusion, et cetera,

00:25:22.140 | for the United States, so if it were me,

00:25:24.720 | I would extricate myself from the CRA.

00:25:27.240 | I think the IRS is probably easier to work with

00:25:29.240 | than the CRA, and certainly, the United States

00:25:32.920 | is probably most Canadians' best tax haven.

00:25:35.580 | There's a really good book that I recommend

00:25:36.800 | by Robert Keats, which is called

00:25:39.840 | "Why the United States is," I can't remember

00:25:42.680 | the exact title of it, but it's

00:25:44.840 | "A Canadian's Best Tax Haven, the United States,"

00:25:46.960 | and he makes a strong argument that for most Canadians,

00:25:49.800 | the very best, most useful tax haven

00:25:51.600 | that they can move their life to

00:25:53.760 | in the beginning is the United States,

00:25:55.480 | so that's what I would do.

00:25:56.780 | - Perfect, that sounds great for now.

00:25:59.840 | I'll stay on the call if you have time for me at the end.

00:26:01.560 | Great, if not, then we'll talk later.

00:26:03.320 | - Okay, great. - Thank you so much.

00:26:04.660 | - All right, move on to Trey in Texas.

00:26:06.500 | Trey, welcome to the show.

00:26:07.340 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:26:09.520 | - Hi, Joshua.

00:26:11.000 | I wanted to ask you about inflation

00:26:13.640 | and how concerned I should be

00:26:15.560 | about inflation in the United States.

00:26:17.740 | Obviously, we're creating a lot of money.

00:26:22.760 | I saw a stat the other day.

00:26:24.720 | I don't know if it's true or not,

00:26:25.780 | but it was 40% of the US dollars that are in existence

00:26:30.440 | right now have been created in the last 12 months.

00:26:33.360 | I don't know if it's that extreme or not, but it's a lot.

00:26:36.040 | So I've got a couple of hundred thousand dollars in cash

00:26:40.680 | that I was saving to buy some property,

00:26:43.680 | multifamily property sometime in the next one to five years

00:26:49.160 | or just whenever the right deal presents itself.

00:26:51.960 | Do you have any suggestions on how to protect that

00:26:54.640 | in the meantime?

00:26:55.860 | - Is the cash in a bank account?

00:26:58.240 | - Yes, sir, mostly.

00:26:59.660 | - So my first suggestion, and this is across the board,

00:27:04.660 | is that everybody be prepared

00:27:07.560 | and have what I call a tunnel set up

00:27:10.820 | to be able to protect their assets.

00:27:13.500 | So the previous caller was from Canada.

00:27:16.320 | So what I routinely recommend to people

00:27:18.440 | is that I think everybody should have

00:27:21.120 | at least one offshore bank account.

00:27:23.360 | And I usually recommend to most US Americans

00:27:25.840 | who aren't accustomed and comfortable

00:27:27.840 | getting on an airplane and flying

00:27:29.000 | to the other side of the world often,

00:27:30.480 | go to Canada and open a bank account.

00:27:33.240 | It's easy to do.

00:27:34.560 | You don't need any kind of residency in Canada.

00:27:37.120 | You don't need anything except to be able

00:27:38.800 | to physically go there to open the account.

00:27:42.000 | And that's obviously a problem right now

00:27:43.920 | because the Canadian border is closed

00:27:45.600 | and they have extremely strict

00:27:48.280 | and stringent quarantine requirements now,

00:27:50.260 | even for Canadian citizens returning to Canada.

00:27:53.400 | So it is a problem right now.

00:27:55.440 | But as soon as you can, go to Canada or to some other place,

00:27:59.360 | we'll cut to that in a moment,

00:28:00.520 | and simply open a bank account.

00:28:02.480 | Now, when you do that, what do I recommend?

00:28:04.640 | Well, I tell people go and open a US dollar bank account

00:28:09.120 | and open a Canadian dollar bank account.

00:28:11.520 | Why?

00:28:12.680 | I don't think that you should,

00:28:14.400 | if you're saving money to buy assets in the United States,

00:28:19.400 | then I think you should keep your money in US dollars.

00:28:23.080 | Right now, the US dollar has weakened significantly

00:28:25.980 | over the past few months,

00:28:27.360 | and it's probably going to continue to weaken.

00:28:29.440 | Many analysts believe that it's gonna continue to weaken,

00:28:32.280 | especially with the monetary creation

00:28:34.160 | that we see right now.

00:28:35.200 | And so I expect the US dollar to continue to weaken.

00:28:38.560 | But when you are living and working

00:28:40.600 | and investing in a dollar economy,

00:28:42.840 | that's not necessarily a problem.

00:28:45.900 | And I don't think that most people

00:28:47.080 | should all of a sudden become Forex traders

00:28:49.720 | trying to predict, well, if I go ahead

00:28:52.520 | and move my US dollars into Swiss francs today,

00:28:56.040 | then I'll go ahead and convert them out of Swiss francs

00:28:58.200 | three months from now to buy my real estate.

00:28:59.920 | Maybe some people can do it.

00:29:01.280 | I think it's a little bit too complex for most people.

00:29:06.280 | But what I recommend is very simple.

00:29:10.200 | If you will open a tunnel account

00:29:12.840 | with an offshore bank account,

00:29:15.280 | and open one in US dollars,

00:29:17.080 | and open an account in Canadian dollars,

00:29:19.860 | now you have the ability to get your money out

00:29:22.320 | if you need to.

00:29:23.160 | So how does this work?

00:29:24.200 | Six months ago, when we were right

00:29:28.280 | in the midst of, I guess it was eight months ago or so,

00:29:33.280 | in about March and April of 2020,

00:29:36.880 | when everything was looking pretty black,

00:29:39.000 | stock markets were dumping off,

00:29:40.700 | we didn't know how severe the coronavirus pandemic would be,

00:29:43.480 | we didn't know what exactly the economic fallout would be,

00:29:46.480 | the US budget is cratering, et cetera,

00:29:51.480 | I got extremely nervous about banking stability.

00:29:54.560 | And I got extremely nervous about the US dollar stability.

00:29:59.560 | I don't, I believe that the US dollar is very strong

00:30:02.600 | and that it's very unlikely

00:30:05.160 | that we're going to face kind of a novel,

00:30:08.980 | the kind of thing that you would write in a novel

00:30:10.840 | about a hyperinflation environment.

00:30:12.520 | I think it's very unlikely.

00:30:14.200 | But I acknowledge that it's possible.

00:30:15.800 | And so I'm looking for ways that I can protect myself

00:30:18.060 | with minimal risk.

00:30:19.120 | And so what I advised clients to do at that time

00:30:21.540 | was move money from the United States,

00:30:25.520 | move money from your US dollar account

00:30:27.520 | to a US dollar account with an offshore bank.

00:30:29.920 | In keeping your money in US dollars,

00:30:34.000 | you're not taking any currency risk.

00:30:36.040 | You're not making a bet on currency,

00:30:37.440 | you're just keeping your money in US dollars.

00:30:38.800 | You're just moving it from a US bank into an offshore bank.

00:30:42.680 | Now, if you do start to see

00:30:45.400 | significant levels of inflation,

00:30:47.520 | your money is already outside of the country,

00:30:50.080 | which can help you to protect

00:30:51.820 | against likely capital controls.

00:30:54.720 | When governments face economic instability,

00:30:57.860 | they start to impose significant capital controls

00:31:00.260 | and currency controls.

00:31:01.300 | They make it illegal for you to change your money

00:31:03.620 | out of the failing currency into a foreign currency.

00:31:06.540 | So you're protected from that

00:31:07.700 | by moving your money into an offshore bank.

00:31:09.540 | And now the transaction can be easily accomplished.

00:31:12.100 | If you have $200,000 in US dollars at your Canadian bank,

00:31:17.180 | then you can just simply,

00:31:19.120 | with one click of a button on the website,

00:31:21.640 | move your $200,000 from your US bank,

00:31:25.120 | your US dollar account to your Canadian dollar account

00:31:27.280 | at the current exchange rate,

00:31:28.840 | thus freezing your exposure to US dollars.

00:31:32.440 | So that's the simplest, lowest risk plan

00:31:37.080 | that I've ever come up with.

00:31:38.280 | Create an account offshore,

00:31:40.600 | create a tunnel account for US dollars,

00:31:42.480 | and you have to have it set up in advance.

00:31:44.800 | You have to have it set up

00:31:45.760 | so that you can wire money back and forth.

00:31:47.920 | And you should go ahead and wire money back and forth

00:31:50.600 | so that your banks get used to the fact

00:31:52.120 | that you transfer money back and forth.

00:31:53.800 | But you don't have to take any currency risk.

00:31:55.840 | You just simply need to have the US dollar account offshore,

00:31:58.800 | and then you can go ahead

00:31:59.800 | and convert it to a foreign currency.

00:32:02.680 | For this scenario, almost any foreign currency is fine.

00:32:06.480 | It really doesn't matter significantly what currency it is.

00:32:09.480 | Obviously, there are good reasons to choose

00:32:12.020 | one of the stronger currencies,

00:32:13.820 | Euro account, Swiss franc account,

00:32:15.520 | Canadian account, et cetera.

00:32:16.920 | The point is, however,

00:32:18.100 | you wanna have your money outside of the country,

00:32:20.360 | and you wanna be able with a click of the button

00:32:22.360 | on your computer to convert it to a foreign currency

00:32:27.360 | that's not going to be experiencing as much inflation.

00:32:31.200 | And then from there, if the facts in the future warrant,

00:32:34.440 | and you recognize, all right,

00:32:35.800 | I'm moving into Canadian dollars right now

00:32:37.280 | 'cause there's massive inflation in the United States,

00:32:39.760 | but I don't wanna stay in Canadian dollars

00:32:42.000 | because there might be Canadian inflation in Canada then.

00:32:45.360 | Well, at least you're out of the country.

00:32:46.840 | You can go ahead and now move into a Euro account

00:32:49.540 | or whatever seems to be the appropriate basket of currencies

00:32:51.800 | for you to hold at the time.

00:32:53.420 | That's my best solution.

00:32:55.440 | I acknowledge the fact that that's difficult right now

00:32:58.420 | if you don't already have those offshore accounts set up.

00:33:01.220 | This is why I emphasize that the time to plan for disaster

00:33:05.260 | is long before the disaster ever happened.

00:33:07.500 | Almost two years ago now,

00:33:10.100 | I launched my "How to Survive and Thrive

00:33:11.980 | During the Coming Economic Crisis" course,

00:33:13.500 | and I emphasized this stuff is easy to do now.

00:33:16.460 | Two years ago, you could easily drive

00:33:18.460 | across the Canadian border

00:33:20.260 | and be welcomed into Canada and do that.

00:33:22.140 | Today, you cannot get in.

00:33:23.580 | So if it's not set up now,

00:33:27.420 | you need to either find a country

00:33:29.860 | that you can bank in right now and set up an account there.

00:33:34.180 | This is more difficult than you might imagine

00:33:35.780 | because many countries do not have a system

00:33:37.940 | where they simply allow tourists to come in and bank.

00:33:40.060 | Canada does.

00:33:41.060 | There are other countries that do,

00:33:42.620 | but many, many countries require you

00:33:45.540 | to have a residence permit

00:33:49.180 | or have some significant ties to the country.

00:33:52.100 | Many countries get nervous about people coming in

00:33:54.140 | and wanting to have bank accounts

00:33:55.140 | if they don't have ties to the country.

00:33:57.060 | So you can try another offshore jurisdiction,

00:34:00.220 | or what I would just say is

00:34:01.940 | I wouldn't worry too much about it.

00:34:03.700 | While I think that that kind of planning is important,

00:34:08.100 | I'm still not in the hardcore,

00:34:11.340 | I don't see significant signs of inflation.

00:34:15.740 | I do see the Federal Reserve creating money,

00:34:18.540 | but compared to where things could be,

00:34:22.020 | I don't think it's that big of a risk right now.

00:34:24.900 | So your kind of other backup plan,

00:34:28.500 | if you don't do go the offshore banking route,

00:34:30.820 | is just simply keep your eye on the markets

00:34:33.260 | and then think about what kind of commodities

00:34:35.660 | could I move into if I needed to.

00:34:38.460 | So let's say that I did start to see

00:34:40.580 | significant levels of inflation.

00:34:42.540 | What could I do with that?

00:34:44.500 | What would I buy?

00:34:45.340 | Would I buy, you would generally buy some kind of hard asset.

00:34:48.340 | A monetary asset is ideal, but would you buy Bitcoin?

00:34:51.500 | Would you buy gold?

00:34:52.460 | Would you buy tools?

00:34:54.340 | There are lots of things that you could buy

00:34:56.060 | to protect your money if you got into that system.

00:34:59.220 | I don't think the hyperinflationary scenario is likely.

00:35:05.060 | I think in the future,

00:35:06.460 | some kind of mass inflation scenario,

00:35:08.500 | like a 1970s, 8%, 10%,

00:35:11.180 | I think that kind of thing is possible.

00:35:14.500 | Probable, I don't know, right?

00:35:15.780 | Possible to probable somewhere in that range.

00:35:18.380 | But I think that in that scale,

00:35:20.060 | I don't think that that level of inflation

00:35:22.340 | is the kind of level where you would just

00:35:24.620 | all of a sudden go out and buy gold, right?

00:35:26.020 | I think that that's a doable level of inflation

00:35:29.940 | that you would press forward with your business activities,

00:35:33.580 | kind of as expected.

00:35:36.180 | So that's my answer, Trey.

00:35:37.540 | - That sounds great.

00:35:41.100 | If you don't mind, I'd also like to hang on the call,

00:35:43.500 | and if you have time to circle back,

00:35:44.620 | I'll ask another one,

00:35:45.460 | but your answer was awesome for the inflation,

00:35:48.180 | so I appreciate it.

00:35:49.020 | - Cool, I'll put you on the list,

00:35:50.260 | and let's see what we got time.

00:35:51.460 | John of Pennsylvania, welcome to the show.

00:35:52.660 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:35:54.220 | - Hey, Joshua, thanks for taking the call.

00:35:57.540 | - My pleasure.

00:35:58.380 | - I was considering taking a road trip cross-country.

00:36:03.220 | I'm in the US,

00:36:04.220 | only in the spring and summer.

00:36:07.780 | Since we've done so much road travel and camper travel,

00:36:11.460 | I was actually considering just doing this in hotels

00:36:14.740 | and whatnot, since I'm not set up with a pop-up

00:36:18.260 | or anything like that yet.

00:36:20.300 | I was just curious of your advice on kind of

00:36:22.740 | both pacing, duration, places to go that were your favorite

00:36:28.380 | in the middle of the country,

00:36:30.260 | so-called flyover states,

00:36:31.460 | you know, to kind of take our time.

00:36:33.460 | The only thing I know we're looking to not do

00:36:35.020 | is pack and unpack into a hotel every single day,

00:36:38.940 | so depending on the full duration of the trip

00:36:42.620 | and how far we want to go,

00:36:43.900 | maybe a few days at least in each hotel,

00:36:48.500 | but I'm really not sure about long-term travel trade-offs,

00:36:52.100 | and if there's any advice you have on that

00:36:54.580 | or any thoughts you have on that I could use.

00:36:57.180 | - Absolutely.

00:36:58.700 | You have, I think, two children, right?

00:37:00.300 | And how old are they?

00:37:01.340 | - Yeah, two children.

00:37:04.060 | The boys are five and seven.

00:37:06.740 | - Five and seven, okay.

00:37:08.240 | So I'll give you my thoughts on this

00:37:11.860 | from having done both of the above, all of the above.

00:37:15.180 | I generally, from a financial analysis perspective,

00:37:21.180 | I don't believe that RV camping saves most people money.

00:37:26.460 | If you're going on trips for two weeks of annual vacation,

00:37:29.980 | three weeks of annual vacation,

00:37:31.900 | many people buy a camper and they think that,

00:37:36.060 | well, if I have this camper,

00:37:37.060 | I'm gonna save lots of money

00:37:38.700 | going camping for two weeks a year.

00:37:40.380 | It doesn't happen, in my opinion,

00:37:42.500 | because campers experience such massive depreciation

00:37:47.180 | and there's so many expenses associated with camping

00:37:51.140 | of buying a vehicle that can tow a trailer,

00:37:54.060 | buying a trailer, buying all the stuff for it,

00:37:56.460 | fixing the thing when it's broken,

00:37:58.180 | paying the campground expenses, et cetera,

00:38:00.700 | that I don't argue to people

00:38:02.720 | that camping is a financially efficient thing to do

00:38:07.720 | if they're going on two or three weeks of trips a year.

00:38:10.180 | I think that if you're gonna travel for two or three weeks,

00:38:11.780 | you can go to nice resorts if you like that and do it.

00:38:14.820 | What I do argue is that camping with children

00:38:18.840 | is, in my opinion, a really, really ideal way

00:38:22.980 | for a family to travel.

00:38:25.180 | I don't like going to hotels with my children

00:38:28.380 | because there's generally nothing to do

00:38:31.420 | in the hotel room that's productive.

00:38:33.780 | And so you go to a hotel room

00:38:35.740 | with a five-year-old and a seven-year-old,

00:38:37.600 | you go, even if it's a nice hotel,

00:38:39.860 | you have the amenities of the hotel,

00:38:42.460 | hopefully they have a pool,

00:38:43.660 | maybe they have some kind of other games and things to do,

00:38:47.600 | and then you have your room.

00:38:48.440 | And what do you have to do in a room?

00:38:49.540 | Well, you have a TV,

00:38:51.900 | you have their books,

00:38:54.020 | you have their games, their digital games,

00:38:57.540 | their tablets or whatever you're doing,

00:38:59.000 | but there's not much to do.

00:39:00.300 | There's not a lot of things where children can play.

00:39:02.820 | And so you can't generally allow your children

00:39:05.180 | just to go play unsupervised in the hotel.

00:39:08.920 | And so I find traveling in hotels

00:39:10.820 | with children pretty stressful.

00:39:13.020 | It's not stressful if you go to a resort

00:39:15.940 | and you have a lot of activities there.

00:39:18.240 | But just kind of a standard hotel,

00:39:20.500 | I find it pretty stressful

00:39:21.640 | because you've got this little itty-bitty room,

00:39:23.560 | you've got one or two chairs, it's no fun.

00:39:28.300 | Now, when I compare that to camping in RV parks,

00:39:32.660 | national parks, state parks, et cetera,

00:39:35.940 | I find the situation totally different.

00:39:38.500 | Because if I take a camper into a state park

00:39:42.420 | or an RV park or something like that,

00:39:45.180 | then now I've got a big, beautiful outside

00:39:48.220 | where it's expected that my children can run around

00:39:51.380 | and generally speaking,

00:39:52.860 | with a five-year-old and a seven-year-old,

00:39:54.100 | generally speaking,

00:39:55.620 | most campgrounds are contained enough

00:39:57.700 | where you could feel confident

00:39:58.780 | about sending them to the playground.

00:40:00.460 | Or they can feel confident about having,

00:40:03.680 | riding around the camping loop.

00:40:06.220 | If you bring a couple of bikes, some scooters,

00:40:08.340 | some bicycles, you can send your children outside

00:40:11.380 | and they can play very happily and very safely outside

00:40:15.180 | for two hours straight,

00:40:16.220 | just riding their bicycles around the loop

00:40:17.860 | and poking around in the woods

00:40:19.460 | and catching spiders and whatever it is that children do.

00:40:23.940 | And there's often other children in the campground,

00:40:26.860 | which means that often they can have the chance

00:40:28.980 | to play with other children

00:40:30.140 | in a more, an easier way than hotels.

00:40:33.660 | And so I would be willing to spend more money

00:40:37.340 | going and camping

00:40:40.020 | because it makes for a better environment for me.

00:40:44.060 | You don't just have to sit down in front of the TV

00:40:45.740 | and turn on a movie to figure out what to do

00:40:47.420 | and how to keep these children

00:40:48.360 | from going crazy in the hotel room

00:40:49.860 | when they're full of boundless energy.

00:40:51.960 | You can just say, "Go outside,

00:40:53.460 | I'll call you when it's time for dinner."

00:40:54.900 | And then you look out the window,

00:40:56.300 | you poke, you peek your nose around,

00:40:57.900 | you set some boundaries

00:40:58.860 | and generally I think they have more fun.

00:41:01.980 | In addition, camping often has lots of work

00:41:05.020 | associated with it that children can help with.

00:41:08.460 | So the work of setting up a fire, right?

00:41:12.820 | It's really fun for children to have a fire.

00:41:14.740 | And so now all of a sudden,

00:41:16.020 | you have a really healthy evening's entertainment

00:41:20.460 | where you, at 5.30, you get some firewood,

00:41:25.460 | you build the fire.

00:41:26.300 | Of course, that's hard to do 'cause the wood is wet,

00:41:28.300 | so it takes you 50 minutes to get a fire going,

00:41:30.660 | but you teach your children how to build a fire,

00:41:32.460 | then they can happily sit and watch the fire

00:41:34.260 | and poke it and burn sticks in the fire.

00:41:36.140 | Then you have dinner,

00:41:37.220 | then you have marshmallows and s'mores,

00:41:39.060 | and then y'all just sit around the fire

00:41:40.540 | and stare at it and talk to each other.

00:41:42.100 | And so it creates this really healthy environment

00:41:45.020 | where you have time with your children,

00:41:46.860 | time to spend with them, time to talk to them,

00:41:48.900 | instead of sitting around a little itty-bitty table

00:41:51.580 | in a hotel room wondering what do we do now, right?

00:41:54.300 | It's just very different in that sense.

00:41:57.340 | Similarly, there's other work.

00:41:58.740 | Again, the work is you can say to the children,

00:42:00.380 | "Go into the woods there and collect dead sticks

00:42:02.380 | "on the ground so that we can burn them."

00:42:04.060 | Well, there's an hour and a half to keep them busy

00:42:06.260 | while you and your wife make dinner.

00:42:08.220 | You can say, "Let's wash dishes," right?

00:42:10.660 | "We gotta wash the dishes."

00:42:11.820 | So you can easily put the dish pans on the picnic table.

00:42:16.660 | Now all of the things that are annoying at home

00:42:18.260 | when they start having water fights

00:42:19.820 | and blowing bubbles and everything,

00:42:21.020 | well, you got time and it's not a big deal

00:42:22.540 | if the water spills on the picnic table.

00:42:24.340 | So I prefer camping because of the lifestyle.

00:42:29.340 | The other thing of the lifestyle that I really appreciate

00:42:32.500 | is the lack of stress,

00:42:33.820 | and especially the lack of financial stress.

00:42:36.180 | In the United States, hotels are generally very expensive,

00:42:40.240 | even for mediocre hotels.

00:42:42.580 | So you can drive across the country,

00:42:44.540 | and when you're driving somewhere,

00:42:46.500 | you're kind of stuck to what's available in a certain place,

00:42:50.180 | and you don't know where you're going to be.

00:42:52.420 | And so I drove across the country last year,

00:42:55.820 | and I was with a friend of mine,

00:42:58.100 | and we're driving across the country,

00:42:59.500 | and we're just two adult men driving across the country,

00:43:03.380 | and we're driving hard

00:43:04.820 | 'cause we were making progress across, we had a goal,

00:43:08.340 | but we had to pull in, and I'm finding myself stuck

00:43:11.440 | paying $100 a night for this dirty motel

00:43:15.640 | in the middle of Texas because that's what's there,

00:43:19.060 | and I don't want to drive for another two hours

00:43:20.520 | to try to find something else.

00:43:21.840 | And so you're kind of stuck with what's available,

00:43:24.180 | and it really bugs me to pay $105 a night

00:43:27.480 | for a dirty hotel in the middle of Texas.

00:43:29.480 | I don't like staying in those places,

00:43:30.960 | and I feel like I'm wasting money.

00:43:32.880 | And so now with children now, it becomes even worse

00:43:35.820 | because at least my friend and I, we're both adults,

00:43:38.040 | we can keep going, but you can't press your children

00:43:41.040 | that hard when you're road tripping.

00:43:42.840 | You get to the point where they're done,

00:43:44.880 | and you want to get out of the car and do something.

00:43:46.880 | And so you pull up to some random hotel somewhere

00:43:49.140 | that's gonna cost you 100 bucks for a junky room

00:43:52.080 | that you don't really want to touch anything in it

00:43:54.600 | because that's where you happen to be,

00:43:55.820 | and now there's nothing to do.

00:43:57.800 | There's some tiny little swimming pool out back

00:44:00.960 | that's too cold to swim in,

00:44:02.240 | or there's too many drunk people,

00:44:03.400 | really you don't want to take your children

00:44:04.920 | to that environment right now.

00:44:07.280 | And so I find that stressful.

00:44:09.320 | I find it stressful to be stuck paying

00:44:13.320 | whatever is available.

00:44:15.080 | However, when I have a camper,

00:44:17.640 | I find myself totally at peace

00:44:20.200 | 'cause if I have a camper, not a pop-up,

00:44:21.800 | but a camper where we can sleep in,

00:44:24.000 | then now I know that I can pull over anywhere,

00:44:27.320 | and I can be totally fine.

00:44:28.620 | If the children are done,

00:44:30.180 | I'll just pull over into a rest area,

00:44:32.200 | and we'll sleep in the rest area.

00:44:33.840 | Now, there may not be that great amenities,

00:44:36.960 | but there's usually some woods,

00:44:38.800 | and I can take them and find a playground,

00:44:40.120 | or we can go and throw a Frisbee in the woods

00:44:41.960 | in the grass while mom gets dinner ready

00:44:44.240 | or something like that.

00:44:46.080 | If we're in a bad part of town,

00:44:48.840 | we just drive to a Walmart,

00:44:50.000 | stay in the Walmart parking lot,

00:44:51.200 | and once they're in their beds,

00:44:53.100 | then everything is normal.

00:44:54.600 | And then because they have their stuff,

00:44:57.180 | they have their bed, they have their books,

00:44:58.960 | they have their things,

00:45:00.200 | it's actually easier to keep them contained and settled.

00:45:02.680 | We're not moving into a new hotel room

00:45:04.240 | and you just have what's in your backpack or the suitcase.

00:45:05.840 | You have your bed, go, go, go away and read a book.

00:45:10.160 | And so you can get some peace.

00:45:11.840 | So I love the lifestyle of traveling in a camper

00:45:16.040 | with children, and it makes me really enjoy traveling

00:45:19.320 | because it's just so low, I find it extremely low stress.

00:45:22.220 | I would pay more if it cost me more to have a camper

00:45:27.200 | because I find it with children

00:45:30.200 | a very low stress way to travel.

00:45:32.500 | Now, I don't think it actually has to cost more.

00:45:34.800 | And if you're traveling for an extensive period of time,

00:45:37.600 | then it does save you a lot of money.

00:45:39.920 | And so I think back to my hotel example.

00:45:42.480 | I think that although you can find a $39 red roof inn

00:45:46.740 | in the middle of Georgia, right off of I-75 or something,

00:45:49.600 | you can find those things out there.

00:45:51.960 | Most of the time, in my experience,

00:45:54.160 | I budget for something like $100 for a hotel,

00:45:57.720 | just a standard, we're sleeping here hotel,

00:45:59.680 | not a resort, in the United States, I mean.

00:46:02.160 | But I'm not gonna be surprised by $129.

00:46:05.080 | That's gonna be a standard cost.

00:46:07.320 | That goes pretty far if you're gonna be on the road

00:46:09.000 | for six weeks.

00:46:10.480 | And it goes pretty far in terms of the costs of an RV,

00:46:14.360 | a little trailer, a drivable motor home, things like that.

00:46:18.440 | So for the lifestyle reasons, I would pay more,

00:46:22.840 | but I don't think you have to pay more.

00:46:24.280 | I think that the RV is, for traveling with children,

00:46:27.520 | is a cheaper thing to do

00:46:29.240 | because you can control your expenses

00:46:31.080 | based upon where you stay.

00:46:32.760 | If you wanna go and you wanna pay $200 a night

00:46:35.560 | to camp at Disney's Fort Wilderness

00:46:37.600 | or to camp at a Jellystone RV park and pay $100 a night,

00:46:42.600 | that's available and you'll love it, right?

00:46:43.980 | You'll love the amenities of that.

00:46:45.800 | But if you don't wanna spend any money tonight

00:46:47.520 | because you're just trying to drive across a place

00:46:49.600 | where you need to drive, the ability to pull over

00:46:53.280 | and spend the night at a rest area and pay nothing for that

00:46:56.720 | and not have to go and eat, that's the other thing,

00:46:58.720 | is preparing food is also something I find

00:47:02.120 | extremely stressful traveling without amenities.

00:47:05.840 | I don't like eating at restaurants

00:47:07.320 | 'cause generally you have too much food

00:47:09.020 | and it's very hard to eat healthy food

00:47:11.720 | in many of those situations.

00:47:13.880 | And then the cost adds up.

00:47:15.080 | When you're buying four meals at a time, three meals a day.

00:47:17.700 | So you can do stuff out of a cooler and whatnot,

00:47:19.680 | but it's so much nicer to have your own fridge,

00:47:21.680 | your own things.

00:47:22.520 | So I'm trying to sell the lifestyle

00:47:24.320 | because I've experienced it.

00:47:25.680 | If I were gonna do any kind of significant trip

00:47:28.120 | more than a week or two,

00:47:30.080 | and if I'm gonna travel across the country with children,

00:47:33.720 | I'm gonna buy some kind of RV

00:47:35.860 | and use some kind of RV for that.

00:47:38.040 | The best, if you want a no-brainer solution,

00:47:42.400 | what I would tell you is if you don't have an RV,

00:47:45.120 | go to Cruise America and buy one,

00:47:49.040 | try a rent, rent it if you wanna try,

00:47:50.760 | but buy a Cruise America former rental.

00:47:53.160 | And with two children, you can easily get away

00:47:55.040 | with their 25 foot or the smaller one that they have,

00:47:58.760 | I think it's 23 foot actually.

00:48:00.320 | They have a 28 foot one that they sell

00:48:02.360 | and a 23 foot one that they sell.

00:48:04.240 | And it's gonna be something like $30,000,

00:48:06.680 | but it'll give you a good solid class C

00:48:09.440 | that allows you to drive in it,

00:48:10.860 | has all the stuff that you need.

00:48:12.460 | As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the simplest ways

00:48:16.600 | for people just to get an RV that's gonna work

00:48:18.440 | and that's gonna need what they need.

00:48:20.120 | But I would personally choose the RV

00:48:22.140 | because of the lifestyle of traveling with children

00:48:23.680 | across the United States.

00:48:24.920 | - Okay, yeah, I appreciate that.

00:48:27.440 | That's great advice.

00:48:28.820 | You wouldn't have concerns about buying a rental RV

00:48:34.000 | as far as, had a lot of drivers

00:48:37.280 | and been beat up and all that stuff.

00:48:38.760 | I mean, I guess one of the reasons

00:48:40.120 | I had concerned going hotels,

00:48:42.400 | I remember hearing your discussion about,

00:48:45.100 | RVs do cost a little bit more,

00:48:47.700 | but I understand your argument for,

00:48:51.480 | I kind of sympathize with all those arguments

00:48:54.400 | and having a slower pace and giving things to kids,

00:48:57.400 | things to do.

00:48:58.880 | One thing I had said I didn't wanna do is,

00:49:02.520 | buy a whole new car, truck to pull a pop up or a trailer.

00:49:07.020 | So, having the trailer is one cost,

00:49:09.040 | but having a whole new car that we don't need

00:49:10.640 | was another cost.

00:49:11.480 | But I guess I can think about buying smart

00:49:14.040 | and reselling it when I get back and all that stuff.

00:49:16.280 | But the cruise America thing is something

00:49:18.120 | I'll have to look into off the,

00:49:19.880 | once they're buying one of their old ones,

00:49:21.440 | if you think that's a good route.

00:49:22.560 | - Yeah, so it's an unlimited conversation.

00:49:25.200 | So I have, so I'm, to be clear,

00:49:27.960 | what I'm saying to you is regarding traveling with children.

00:49:30.920 | Now, I've given the exact opposite to couples

00:49:35.000 | who were older, who didn't have young children.

00:49:38.080 | And I would give the different advice,

00:49:40.560 | possibly to people who didn't, who had older children.

00:49:43.760 | Right, if there was somebody who had older children,

00:49:46.840 | and maybe they were gonna do a mixture, right?

00:49:48.760 | They were gonna go ahead and have a tent

00:49:51.080 | that they were gonna use, set up tents in a national park,

00:49:54.380 | and also stay in hotels,

00:49:57.160 | then I think that can work really well, right?

00:49:59.120 | I wouldn't be scared about that.

00:50:00.160 | If I got a 12 year old and a 14 year old,

00:50:02.640 | we could load up in tents and it'd be great

00:50:04.000 | because they can do the work and they're useful.

00:50:06.340 | But a five year old and a seven year old

00:50:07.640 | are very minimally useful.

00:50:09.280 | And so that kind of stuff just creates a ton of work

00:50:11.720 | for you and your wife.

00:50:14.760 | For an older couple who can go to a nice hotel room

00:50:19.000 | and enjoy just simply being in the hotel room,

00:50:21.620 | and they're not running around,

00:50:22.840 | needing to get their wiggles out.

00:50:24.200 | And the fact whether they go to the pool or not,

00:50:26.360 | like now all of a sudden,

00:50:28.280 | and then they're often comparing it to saying,

00:50:29.920 | well, either I buy a $100,000 RV,

00:50:32.460 | or we travel for six weeks a year in hotel rooms.

00:50:35.800 | I think you can make a good argument

00:50:37.040 | for the hotel rooms in that situation.

00:50:39.060 | But I don't enjoy being in hotel rooms with my children,

00:50:42.440 | unless it's a place where it has a resort

00:50:44.400 | and it has lots of activities,

00:50:45.760 | which is not kind of what you're describing

00:50:47.920 | traveling across the country.

00:50:49.560 | So on the RV setup,

00:50:52.520 | if you're willing to deal with the hassle,

00:50:54.720 | I don't think they have to cost that much.

00:50:57.040 | Your cheapest thing to do is buy a travel trailer.

00:50:59.280 | And you can go down all day long and get a travel trailer

00:51:02.000 | for a used travel trailer in good condition for 15 grand.

00:51:05.600 | Something in a 25 foot range, 20 with two children,

00:51:09.120 | you can get away with 20 footer,

00:51:10.760 | something like 20, 25 foot,

00:51:13.120 | you can get those all day long for 15 grand

00:51:15.200 | that are five to nine years old.

00:51:17.660 | Your maximum depreciation,

00:51:19.340 | if you kept it for a year or two,

00:51:20.920 | let's say you lose three grand,

00:51:22.480 | four grand, something like that.

00:51:24.280 | That's not that much.

00:51:25.880 | And I don't think you have to if you can buy smart.

00:51:29.340 | If you stick with a trailer in that size range,

00:51:33.440 | something that's a 5,000 pound trailer,

00:51:35.560 | an eight, 7,000 pound trailer,

00:51:37.940 | which there's tons of them in that range.

00:51:40.240 | Then if you need a car,

00:51:41.320 | just go get a $5,000 F-150, something like that.

00:51:46.320 | You can do an SUV with that size of trailer.

00:51:49.800 | I wouldn't do a pilot, I would do a bigger,

00:51:52.440 | but an expedition can work, something like that.

00:51:55.280 | And so I would just grab a $5,000 F-150

00:51:58.320 | and a 10 or $15,000 25 foot or 20 foot trailer,

00:52:03.080 | depending on how big you want.

00:52:05.040 | And I think you're good.

00:52:07.280 | And so let's say you use it for a year or two

00:52:09.040 | and you sell it,

00:52:10.120 | you'll sell the F-150 for,

00:52:11.920 | if you pay eight grand for it, you'll sell it for seven.

00:52:14.800 | If you buy the trailer for 12,

00:52:16.880 | you'll put $1,000, $2,000 into kipping it up

00:52:20.240 | and then you'll sell it for 10.

00:52:23.120 | So when I had my rig, I did the whole thing

00:52:27.360 | and I came out basically even.

00:52:31.580 | And so I think all the same principles apply.

00:52:34.720 | Now, if you do the Cruise America route

00:52:36.280 | where you buy one of their rental RVs,

00:52:38.160 | I'm not concerned about buying one of their rental RVs

00:52:40.960 | because while I do believe that people have used them

00:52:44.800 | and used them hard,

00:52:47.020 | vehicles are made to be used.

00:52:52.320 | So somebody drove their RV at 70 miles an hour

00:52:55.400 | or 75 miles an hour across the Arizona desert.

00:52:58.360 | I mean, they're not, no one's joyriding an RV.

00:53:01.040 | No one's spinning donuts in the parking lot.

00:53:02.920 | They're just driving fast

00:53:03.920 | and maybe pushing the gas pedal down.

00:53:06.440 | The cars are built to handle that.

00:53:08.240 | And then those rental RVs are built to be tough.

00:53:10.640 | They're custom built for Cruise America.

00:53:13.440 | They're built to be tough and they're used.

00:53:15.920 | They're well used, but they're adequate.

00:53:18.520 | And so I would look at that as,

00:53:20.800 | if you wanna get into a drivable RV

00:53:23.000 | where you're inside of it, it's your class C,

00:53:26.420 | basically it's, I can pay 30 grand for this RV

00:53:34.560 | that's a rental, it's got a hundred thousand miles on it.

00:53:36.680 | It's built tough, but it's five years old.

00:53:38.200 | It's got a good roof.

00:53:39.040 | It's got a generator, it's got all the stuff that works.

00:53:41.520 | I can probably go and sell it because it's a rental.

00:53:44.960 | It's not gonna have a strong resale.

00:53:46.320 | So maybe I can sell it for 23 or 24

00:53:48.720 | at some point in the future.

00:53:50.120 | That's different than going and paying 65

00:53:53.860 | for a five-year-old class C.

00:53:56.160 | So if you can find a good class C

00:53:58.360 | that's being sold for cheaper,

00:53:59.600 | I think you can come out better ahead

00:54:01.680 | because it doesn't have the baggage of the rental RV.

00:54:04.000 | But if you want something that's just fast,

00:54:05.560 | that's a fair deal,

00:54:06.720 | that you're gonna lose five grand in depreciation,

00:54:08.980 | I think the rental RV is something worth considering.

00:54:11.560 | - Okay, yeah, I appreciate that.

00:54:14.240 | That's great stuff.

00:54:15.320 | And I fully agree, I mean,

00:54:17.720 | especially for keeping the kids busy and all that stuff,

00:54:19.720 | we plan to do at least a little bit of car camping,

00:54:21.880 | but we may consider that, but yeah,

00:54:24.920 | just keeping them busy with the fire,

00:54:26.520 | basically what I do in the backyard anyway,

00:54:28.120 | is just want to extend that across the country.

00:54:31.320 | So I think it's a good plan.

00:54:32.760 | - If you're willing to do the tent,

00:54:35.120 | and with a five-year-old and a seven-year-old,

00:54:37.320 | it'd be fun for them.

00:54:38.240 | I think the biggest thing is

00:54:39.160 | how much work is it for your wife?

00:54:41.600 | If you're willing to do the tent,

00:54:42.960 | then I think a mixture of the two

00:54:45.060 | can also be something that you should consider.

00:54:47.480 | So when I was growing up, we did this a lot.

00:54:50.400 | We had a pop-up camper,

00:54:51.860 | but we didn't all fit in the pop-up camper,

00:54:53.240 | so we also had a tent.

00:54:54.520 | And so what my parents would do,

00:54:55.760 | we would travel across the country.

00:54:56.960 | We never traveled full-time.

00:54:58.140 | Our longest trips were three and a half weeks, right?

00:55:00.040 | We went from Florida to Maine

00:55:01.080 | or from Florida to Montana, things like that.

00:55:03.360 | But, and we did it in three and a half weeks, which is fast.

00:55:05.760 | But what we would do is we would go to a national park

00:55:10.760 | or a state park, and we would set up at that national park

00:55:14.160 | and that state park for several days.

00:55:16.120 | And when you have a tent and you're setting things up,

00:55:18.380 | that works fine.

00:55:19.400 | And then in between, if we were in a city

00:55:23.400 | or we were just traveling, then we would stay at a hotel.

00:55:26.600 | And so there were many times where we're leaving Colorado

00:55:30.020 | and we got to get to Florida in two and a half days.

00:55:32.640 | Well, we're not stopping and setting up the tent

00:55:34.760 | or trying to find a nice park.

00:55:36.240 | We're just staying at one of those hotels.

00:55:37.680 | And so if you don't want to own an RV

00:55:39.840 | or you don't want to own one yet,

00:55:41.360 | then I think you could handle that.

00:55:42.980 | It's just really hard to do that

00:55:45.420 | for weeks and weeks and weeks.

00:55:46.760 | So if you've got enough friends that you can stay with

00:55:48.680 | or family, and that could just be one thing,

00:55:51.120 | then yeah, you don't have to buy another car,

00:55:52.600 | get a nice tent, get some nice cots or whatever it is

00:55:55.400 | that makes your family comfortable.

00:55:57.200 | And then just don't go too fast.

00:55:59.320 | If you set up a tent and you stay somewhere

00:56:00.740 | for two or three nights, and then you travel from there,

00:56:03.100 | you do the hikes, et cetera,

00:56:04.260 | I think that's a good way to do it.

00:56:06.180 | And with a five-year-old and a seven-year-old,

00:56:08.580 | I think they could handle that.

00:56:10.080 | I've got babies, and so tent camping with babies

00:56:15.620 | is a much bigger hassle 'cause they're just dirty

00:56:17.700 | all the time and it's frustrating.

00:56:20.140 | But you don't have babies anymore.

00:56:21.940 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:56:24.300 | Well, thank you very much.

00:56:25.140 | That gives me so much to kind of go on and plan out

00:56:28.380 | and consider the cost of all the options.

00:56:31.160 | I got some homework now, so thank you.

00:56:32.720 | - My pleasure.

00:56:34.160 | My pleasure.

00:56:35.000 | I didn't mean to cut you off, but I did.

00:56:36.080 | All right, we go to Lucas in New Jersey.

00:56:38.360 | Lucas, welcome to the show.

00:56:39.200 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:56:41.160 | - Hey, Josh, can you hear me okay?

00:56:42.280 | - Yes, sir, sounds good.

00:56:43.980 | - Okay, great.

00:56:44.820 | Hey, so I had a question about HSAs.

00:56:47.720 | So I'm engaged to be married.

00:56:51.400 | I have two HSAs to my name from two different employers,

00:56:55.720 | and I know already that I take them with me.

00:56:58.280 | That has happened, but they're still

00:57:00.420 | with two separate accounts.

00:57:05.000 | What's the C word that you would use to describe those?

00:57:09.820 | I can't think of it.

00:57:11.720 | - Yeah, I'm not sure.

00:57:13.880 | - Anyway. - Go ahead.

00:57:14.800 | - Anyway, so two separate HSAs, and my fiance has one.

00:57:18.920 | And we were talking about it,

00:57:20.800 | and just wanted to get some guidance

00:57:22.760 | on what we should be doing with these HSAs.

00:57:27.480 | Is there any reason or ability

00:57:30.240 | that we would want to roll those into one?

00:57:33.320 | What benefits might I lose?

00:57:35.920 | And more importantly, when we do eventually get married,

00:57:39.000 | is the reimbursement length of an HSA

00:57:45.000 | only go back as far as the original account holder?

00:57:48.960 | Because obviously, well, not obviously,

00:57:51.960 | but I'm a couple years older,

00:57:53.320 | and so my HSAs tend to go back further.

00:57:56.080 | So would we want to keep those

00:57:57.640 | so that we can eventually submit reimbursements

00:57:59.720 | against for them for older receipts?

00:58:03.000 | I'm trying to piecemeal how to optimize multiple HSAs

00:58:06.920 | for different age holders.

00:58:10.480 | - Understood.

00:58:11.920 | Are you using your HSAs in a normal way,

00:58:16.760 | as in you're putting money in them,

00:58:18.440 | and you're using them for expenses?

00:58:19.880 | Or are you using them in the aggressive,

00:58:22.760 | mad scientist, using HSA to fund your early retirement way?

00:58:26.600 | - More along the mad scientist idea

00:58:30.440 | of submitting expenses 20 years from now

00:58:34.720 | once the interest has accrued.

00:58:37.040 | - Okay, got it.

00:58:38.240 | So I think that you,

00:58:41.840 | I don't think you can roll over an account

00:58:46.480 | from your HSA into your wife's HSA after you're married.

00:58:50.960 | I don't think that can work.

00:58:53.120 | - Okay.

00:58:54.040 | - If you set up a joint account,

00:58:56.480 | I'm not sure you can transfer it into that.

00:58:58.680 | I don't know the answer to that question.

00:59:00.720 | I don't know.

00:59:03.720 | That would be, I think,

00:59:04.560 | what I would do is I would call the custodian,

00:59:06.480 | I think that was the C word you were looking for.

00:59:08.200 | - That is.

00:59:09.040 | - I would call the custodian and ask them that question.

00:59:12.040 | They should know those laws enough

00:59:16.840 | to answer the question.

00:59:20.040 | I don't know the answer to it.

00:59:21.920 | What I would think I would do is if she has an HSA

00:59:26.440 | and I have an HSA,

00:59:28.160 | I don't see any real benefit to commingling them.

00:59:32.520 | So I would just probably leave those accounts there

00:59:34.920 | as long as they're not having high expenses

00:59:38.080 | associated with maintaining those accounts.

00:59:39.640 | I'd probably leave them alone

00:59:40.600 | and I would just start a new joint HSA

00:59:42.680 | because of that issue of rolling money over.

00:59:47.400 | I don't know.

00:59:48.360 | My guess would be that you can't roll it into her account,

00:59:51.280 | but you probably could roll it into a joint account

00:59:54.160 | and then and co-mingle it later,

00:59:56.040 | but you have to ask the custodian.

00:59:57.400 | I don't know the answer.

00:59:59.280 | With receipt question,

01:00:01.520 | I think this is one of those areas

01:00:03.180 | where there's the letter of the law

01:00:04.520 | and then there's what's practical.

01:00:06.320 | So on the letter of the law,

01:00:08.600 | it would go back to,

01:00:11.760 | yeah, you would have your oldest account.

01:00:13.880 | And so that would also would be a good reason

01:00:16.000 | if you're doing the hardcore, mad scientist,

01:00:19.200 | use your HSA as a retirement account plan,

01:00:21.520 | then I think keeping the original account

01:00:23.920 | with that initial inception date

01:00:25.680 | would be what you needed to do

01:00:27.840 | 'cause that would give you the maximum timeline.

01:00:30.760 | But I honestly think that a lot of that stuff

01:00:33.520 | will just come out in the wash.

01:00:34.900 | I haven't heard stories of the IRS auditing people

01:00:39.080 | because they submitted their receipts on their HSAs.

01:00:43.760 | Now, maybe if you accumulate $200,000 in your HSA

01:00:48.760 | and then you turn 55 years old,

01:00:51.120 | and then one year you submit $100,000 of receipts

01:00:54.340 | from the 1980s,

01:00:55.880 | or that was too extreme.

01:00:58.420 | You're in the year 2045

01:01:00.440 | and you submit $100,000 of receipts from the year 2012,

01:01:04.920 | maybe that would get audited.

01:01:06.140 | But I think a lot of that stuff

01:01:07.200 | would just come out in the wash.

01:01:09.480 | Here's the receipt, here's the account,

01:01:11.260 | and how are they gonna find the records on that stuff?

01:01:13.960 | So in summary, I don't know the specific answer

01:01:17.980 | of moving it to a joint account.

01:01:19.640 | My guess is yes, but ask the custodian,

01:01:22.880 | and I would probably just keep the old account

01:01:25.640 | with the initial inception date

01:01:27.080 | unless there was some compelling reason

01:01:28.980 | to move it into a joint account,

01:01:30.440 | such as lower expenses on maintaining the account,

01:01:34.920 | something like that.

01:01:35.920 | - Okay, great, thanks.

01:01:39.040 | I will talk to the custodian,

01:01:40.680 | and thank you also for the recommendation

01:01:42.720 | of The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman.

01:01:44.640 | I've gotten it started and it's going real well so far.

01:01:47.040 | - It's a great book.

01:01:47.880 | It's one of those things

01:01:48.700 | that I think every business owner

01:01:50.160 | should have on their nightstand,

01:01:52.560 | or on the corner of their desk,

01:01:54.200 | or on the little stand next to their toilet or something,

01:01:57.280 | where they could just pick it up

01:01:58.280 | and flip through a chapter

01:02:00.000 | and then think about it with regard to their business.

01:02:02.440 | I'm glad that you're finding value in it.

01:02:04.400 | - Thanks a lot.

01:02:06.240 | - All right, we move to, who was it?

01:02:08.960 | Uh-oh, our other's dropped off.

01:02:10.760 | So Luke's listening, we'll go to Trey.

01:02:13.800 | We'll go back to Trey, I think.

01:02:14.720 | Trey, you had another question, go ahead.

01:02:17.400 | - Yes, sir, it's another travel question.

01:02:19.280 | - All right.

01:02:20.120 | - It seems popular today.

01:02:21.160 | So we are expecting our first child in August,

01:02:26.160 | and I just kind of want to sanity check.

01:02:31.480 | My wife works for the VA, she's a pharmacist,

01:02:33.960 | and the federal employees have 12 weeks

01:02:38.960 | of maternity leave paid,

01:02:40.520 | and then you can use up to another four weeks of sick leave.

01:02:43.120 | So she's gonna be off for 16 weeks.

01:02:45.640 | And I've, on your recommendation, actually,

01:02:50.720 | moved into a work-from-home scenario with my employer

01:02:55.160 | that I thought would have never been attainable

01:02:57.000 | until everything that's transpired over the last 12 months.

01:02:59.920 | And so I've got that flexibility,

01:03:02.400 | and I never having a baby,

01:03:05.480 | certainly never having traveled with a baby,

01:03:07.680 | would I be crazy to pick a couple of places

01:03:12.920 | and stay for maybe a month at a time in nice Airbnbs

01:03:15.960 | and just kind of use that as an opportunity

01:03:17.640 | to explore some different areas with a newborn,

01:03:22.640 | or is that just too wild?

01:03:26.280 | - I think it's very probably too wild.

01:03:29.240 | I think that would be really hard on your wife.

01:03:32.060 | (sighs)

01:03:34.220 | The first time around for a new mother,

01:03:37.140 | it's hard to learn to be a new mother.

01:03:39.660 | It's hard.

01:03:40.500 | It's a brand new set of skills.

01:03:42.580 | One of the things that I have some standard speeches

01:03:45.460 | that I always give to any of our friends

01:03:47.540 | who are expecting their first baby,

01:03:49.540 | and one of the aspects of that is we talk about birthing.

01:03:54.540 | Here's what you should know.

01:03:56.260 | Here's our advice.

01:03:57.100 | Here's some things, the resources that we found helpful.

01:03:58.980 | Here's some ways that you can think about

01:04:00.740 | the kind of birth experience that you wanna have, et cetera,

01:04:03.820 | but one of the things that I always try to emphasize

01:04:07.300 | is that what I was underprepared for

01:04:10.300 | when I was a first-time father

01:04:13.220 | was the fact that the birth was only one thing

01:04:18.220 | that we needed to prepare for,

01:04:21.180 | but the time after birth was much more difficult

01:04:25.420 | than I expected.

01:04:27.440 | We planned a lot for the birth,

01:04:29.920 | and we were ready for what happened after the birth,

01:04:33.320 | for the new baby,

01:04:34.600 | but it was harder than I thought it would be.

01:04:36.720 | So things like breastfeeding, right?

01:04:39.200 | Assuming that your wife would intend to breastfeed her baby,

01:04:43.880 | it's hard for most new mothers

01:04:46.300 | to learn how to breastfeed a baby.

01:04:48.000 | It's a whole set of skills

01:04:49.640 | that they've never experienced previously

01:04:51.440 | and probably don't know,

01:04:52.360 | and so it's,

01:04:55.800 | even if you have the world's,

01:04:57.560 | so first of all,

01:04:58.400 | even if you have the world's greatest

01:05:00.140 | and smoothest childbirth,

01:05:01.520 | you have a natural vaginal birth,

01:05:03.600 | everything goes great,

01:05:05.020 | you have a glowing story of how smooth and easy it was,

01:05:08.840 | you still have to remember,

01:05:10.120 | and it's very important for you as a husband,

01:05:11.440 | you have to remember that childbirth

01:05:13.080 | is a traumatic medical event.

01:05:16.160 | It is a serious traumatic medical event

01:05:19.320 | when everything goes well,

01:05:21.000 | and so you need to,

01:05:22.680 | it's very important that you plan,

01:05:25.400 | in the first couple of weeks,

01:05:27.040 | to do everything for your wife

01:05:28.720 | and to make sure that she is well cared for,

01:05:31.520 | because one of the things that,

01:05:33.120 | especially, again, first time moms can happen,

01:05:35.800 | is they're like, "Well, I feel great, right?

01:05:37.120 | "We had a great experience, here's the baby,

01:05:38.720 | "I feel great,"

01:05:39.760 | and then they push it too hard.

01:05:41.200 | They do too much physical activity,

01:05:42.880 | and because the wounds of childbirth are internal,

01:05:46.600 | it's hard to see, right?

01:05:47.640 | You don't think of your wife as being sick

01:05:49.360 | because, well, she looks fine,

01:05:50.560 | she's happy, she's full of endorphins,

01:05:52.160 | like, everything's good.

01:05:53.680 | No, she still needs to be in bed,

01:05:55.400 | she still needs to rest,

01:05:56.800 | she needs time to simply rest.

01:05:58.880 | Then she needs time to get to know the baby.

01:06:00.960 | She needs time to just snuggle and enjoy the baby,

01:06:03.320 | and the baby needs that

01:06:04.600 | in order to build the proper emotional bonds,

01:06:06.960 | and so you want her to be in a very comfortable place,

01:06:10.200 | to be in a place where she has everything she needs

01:06:12.720 | around her,

01:06:13.680 | and to be able to properly bond with the baby.

01:06:16.720 | She needs to bond with the baby in the first few weeks,

01:06:19.160 | and so moving around a bunch is not a good plan.

01:06:22.760 | Now, sometimes everything does go easily,

01:06:26.240 | and I think that for, again, future babies,

01:06:29.600 | probably so, right?

01:06:30.640 | My wife, having had four babies,

01:06:34.240 | has more experience now,

01:06:35.840 | and to me it's very obvious

01:06:37.800 | that dealing with a newborn is actually pretty easy, right?

01:06:41.080 | So if we had a baby, another baby,

01:06:43.600 | and that baby was a month old,

01:06:45.200 | I mean, with our fourth baby,

01:06:46.680 | we traveled when our baby was three weeks old,

01:06:48.960 | four weeks old, something like that.

01:06:50.040 | We got on an airplane and we traveled,

01:06:53.000 | so, and it wasn't a big deal.

01:06:54.640 | You still have to protect for that first few weeks,

01:06:57.040 | but you still need to make sure

01:06:59.960 | that she has time to learn,

01:07:01.120 | and so the skills of breastfeeding,

01:07:03.440 | the skills of caring for the baby,

01:07:05.280 | all of those things take time for her to learn.

01:07:07.640 | In addition, I would just point out

01:07:09.520 | that a lot of times babies have weird little problems

01:07:12.200 | that take time to figure out.

01:07:14.220 | Our second child was extremely sick as a baby.

01:07:18.080 | She had GERD and, what's the other one?

01:07:22.720 | And colic, she had GERD and colic,

01:07:27.920 | and so she was just a miserable little baby,

01:07:30.560 | and so sometimes you have a miserable baby,

01:07:32.680 | and those first few months are brutal,

01:07:34.720 | and then the final thing I would point out

01:07:36.160 | is that your wife will not want to go and travel

01:07:40.320 | and go and see sites

01:07:41.800 | when she is taking care of a newborn,

01:07:45.060 | just simply because of the amount of round-the-clock care

01:07:48.000 | that the newborn requires.

01:07:49.800 | So babies eat every three hours, every four hours,

01:07:53.160 | 'cause they have itty-bitty tiny stomachs,

01:07:55.040 | and so they need to eat every three or four hours,

01:07:56.600 | and that's around the clock,

01:07:57.840 | and so her sleep patterns will be messed up,

01:08:00.440 | all of that stuff,

01:08:01.280 | so you want her to be in the most comfortable place possible.

01:08:04.080 | You want to make sure that the place that she gives birth

01:08:06.540 | is where she's totally relaxed, totally confident,

01:08:09.560 | and you want to make sure that she has the time

01:08:13.200 | and the space to nest with the baby,

01:08:16.600 | and that she's just totally comfortable

01:08:18.880 | so she can bond with the baby

01:08:20.440 | and learn those new skills of motherhood.

01:08:22.240 | So I would not try to go around a bunch of places.

01:08:25.680 | Now, would I go somewhere for a birth, like birth tourism?

01:08:29.040 | That's hard.

01:08:30.000 | I think it's really hard for a first-time baby,

01:08:32.200 | but I think there are people who do it,

01:08:33.780 | but even in that situation, I wouldn't go to many places.

01:08:36.280 | I would have one place.

01:08:37.280 | I would set up a really nice environment there,

01:08:39.960 | and then just plan to be in that one place

01:08:41.600 | so that she can be cared for and protected

01:08:44.260 | during those first few weeks of the baby's life.

01:08:46.900 | - Man, that's great information.

01:08:50.640 | I appreciate that.

01:08:51.480 | So probably what we're gonna do then is not plan anything,

01:08:56.160 | and since she'll be off for 16 weeks,

01:08:58.440 | we'll just see how she feels towards the end of that,

01:09:01.400 | and then maybe we could pick one place if we wanted to go,

01:09:04.480 | and maybe it's just to go visit family for a week or two.

01:09:08.200 | - Yeah.

01:09:09.040 | In the past, when we have been expecting a baby,

01:09:13.240 | I put everything on hold because you just don't know.

01:09:16.560 | You just don't know, and so you do everything you can

01:09:19.760 | to prepare for the optimal circumstances,

01:09:22.000 | but you don't know.

01:09:23.520 | You don't know if the childbirth is smooth

01:09:27.040 | or the childbirth is very difficult.

01:09:28.840 | You don't know if the baby is perfectly happy and healthy

01:09:32.680 | or if the baby is sick or handicapped in some way.

01:09:36.720 | You don't know what the baby is gonna experience

01:09:39.120 | in that first few months,

01:09:42.560 | and then again, it takes time.

01:09:44.600 | It takes time for you to learn the skills

01:09:47.000 | of caring for a new baby,

01:09:48.440 | and it takes time for her to learn the skills

01:09:50.240 | of caring for a new baby, so I would not,

01:09:52.740 | I wouldn't make any plans.

01:09:53.840 | I would keep the schedule wide open.

01:09:55.400 | I would plan that we're gonna stay at home,

01:09:57.200 | and we're gonna hang out, and we're gonna be together,

01:09:58.840 | and we're not gonna go anywhere,

01:10:01.120 | and then if at some point,

01:10:04.200 | you find that everything is going well,

01:10:06.640 | mama's healthy, baby's healthy and happy,

01:10:09.920 | and you're working things out, then yeah,

01:10:11.240 | then you can travel, and so at this point,

01:10:14.160 | I consider a newborn a relatively easy baby to travel with.

01:10:17.520 | It's easier to travel with a newborn

01:10:18.760 | than it is with a two-year-old,

01:10:19.960 | but that's after some experience of working with newborns.

01:10:23.140 | - Great, that's what we'll do then.

01:10:25.760 | Thanks so much.

01:10:26.600 | - Good deal, all right, we'll go back to Adam,

01:10:29.000 | and we'll finish up with Adam.

01:10:30.840 | You said you had another question.

01:10:31.760 | Adam, go ahead, please.

01:10:33.320 | - Yes, sir, so similar vein having to do with me

01:10:36.540 | moving from Canada to the US.

01:10:38.360 | I was hoping if you had any advice

01:10:39.760 | on how to quickly build my credit in the States.

01:10:43.360 | I've read a lot of the sort of standard advice,

01:10:45.320 | and I plan on following through with most of it.

01:10:47.120 | I think the unique situation that I'm in

01:10:49.440 | is that I do have very good credit,

01:10:51.880 | at least for a 22-year-old, good credit in Canada,

01:10:54.800 | excuse me, and I was hoping that maybe

01:10:56.800 | I could leverage that some way.

01:10:59.140 | I have an existing account with American Express,

01:11:01.400 | and so I know they have both a Canadian and a US subsidiary,

01:11:05.200 | likewise with my Canadian bank.

01:11:07.280 | Any words of wisdom in this area?

01:11:09.440 | - Those are good ideas.

01:11:11.200 | I've never done this personally,

01:11:12.820 | moved from Canada to the United States,

01:11:14.560 | and I've not worked with someone, nor have I researched it.

01:11:17.680 | So my advice is simply from a generalized knowledge,

01:11:21.560 | but I think I would start with both of those ideas.

01:11:25.360 | I would call American Express, and I would explain to them,

01:11:30.360 | I would apply for a new American Express card

01:11:35.200 | under my US Social Security number.

01:11:37.520 | I don't know the best way to do it.

01:11:39.840 | I would call them and talk to an agent,

01:11:42.600 | explain the situation to them,

01:11:43.880 | and maybe have them do it manually.

01:11:45.320 | It would be hard, I think, to fill it in on the website

01:11:48.520 | in an appropriate way, but since you already have

01:11:51.200 | an American Express card in Canada,

01:11:53.240 | I would go ahead and apply for one of the blue cash

01:11:55.900 | or something like that that's easy to get

01:11:57.200 | with American Express under your US Social Security number.

01:12:01.440 | And then the same thing, if your Canadian bank

01:12:03.360 | has an American subsidiary or partner,

01:12:07.880 | then I would talk to that, and I would explain again

01:12:13.200 | the situation, and just simply apply

01:12:15.040 | under your US Social Security number.

01:12:17.720 | Those two things, I would guess, would probably work.

01:12:20.520 | If it doesn't work, then I would say,

01:12:22.840 | just simply start the standard process

01:12:24.720 | of the standard advice.

01:12:25.720 | If necessary, start with a secured credit card,

01:12:27.880 | nothing wrong with that, and then just simply be aggressive

01:12:31.080 | about gathering new credit cards

01:12:35.000 | and applying for new credit cards in the United States.

01:12:37.720 | And you can do it very quickly.

01:12:39.920 | A few months of a secured credit card,

01:12:42.240 | I mean, starting with zero, do some research

01:12:44.600 | on some of the credit cards that are designed

01:12:46.120 | for new borrowers, some of the credit cards

01:12:51.120 | that are targeted at college students.

01:12:53.440 | Open an account with a bank, a new account

01:12:58.120 | with a US American bank, and get their credit card.

01:13:01.360 | Open an account with a credit union

01:13:02.760 | and get their credit card, and in four or six months,

01:13:06.960 | something like that, you could get any credit card

01:13:09.360 | that you want.

01:13:10.200 | And then just follow the advice that I teach

01:13:12.800 | in the credit card course about systematically

01:13:16.200 | expanding your credit lines,

01:13:17.720 | systematically building your portfolio,

01:13:19.760 | and keeping your credit score high,

01:13:21.320 | and then making sure you have the infrastructure there

01:13:23.120 | for that, and yeah, you can do it very quickly.

01:13:25.360 | In addition, you should consider for maximum credit score,

01:13:30.360 | then you might consider going ahead in the beginning,

01:13:38.260 | borrowing some money with some line of credit

01:13:40.860 | other than a credit card.

01:13:42.220 | So take out a small car loan,

01:13:44.420 | take out a small student loan, something like that,

01:13:48.160 | a couple thousand dollars is sufficient,

01:13:50.220 | that will massively increase your credit score very quickly,

01:13:53.220 | and then make getting credit cards very easy.

01:13:55.520 | - Great, that's perfect.

01:13:58.000 | I'm working through your career

01:13:59.360 | and income planning course now,

01:14:00.480 | and I think the credit card is gonna be the next one up.

01:14:03.240 | Thank you very much. - Good, awesome, my pleasure.

01:14:05.360 | All right, that rounds out our calls for today.

01:14:09.060 | Thank you all for calling in.

01:14:10.980 | A bunch of good questions, let me see

01:14:12.080 | what closing comments I have for you today.

01:14:14.480 | I think the closing comments that I would just

01:14:16.000 | simply focus on is in what I said

01:14:20.000 | with regard to how you need to plan ahead.

01:14:24.200 | I think that was probably some of the more important ones,

01:14:28.460 | but just simply planning ahead.

01:14:30.240 | Notice that the inflation concerns,

01:14:31.800 | there are inflation concerns.

01:14:33.280 | The caller is correct on what he said

01:14:36.360 | about the amount of money that is being created

01:14:38.560 | right now in the United States.

01:14:40.840 | It's bad.

01:14:42.240 | We've just reached a record where the total national debt

01:14:48.240 | equals the total annual budget in the United States.

01:14:51.760 | It's bad, and it's gonna get worse.

01:14:53.600 | So again, I'm not a catastrophist or an extremist.

01:14:58.600 | I'm not predicting impending doom.

01:15:01.560 | One of the things that I have become convinced of

01:15:04.960 | is that the Mad Max scenario,

01:15:09.480 | everything falls apart super fast, it's just not realistic.

01:15:12.440 | Last night I was watching some videos

01:15:16.040 | from a Venezuelan YouTuber,

01:15:19.400 | and I think his name is Juan Guerrero, something like that.

01:15:23.280 | And he was in Caracas in Venezuela,

01:15:27.000 | and here you are observing, it was in Spanish,

01:15:32.000 | so if you speak Spanish, go and watch it.

01:15:34.000 | But what you see in a total financial collapse

01:15:37.320 | is the fact that everything looks pretty normal.

01:15:40.800 | There's tremendous problems on all sides,

01:15:44.580 | but it doesn't look like Bosnia,

01:15:47.160 | at least not in a place like Venezuela.

01:15:49.160 | It doesn't look like Bosnia.

01:15:50.420 | There's tremendous danger, tremendous physical conflict,

01:15:53.760 | lots and lots of violence,

01:15:55.400 | but it doesn't look like Bosnia.

01:15:56.800 | It looks much more like a wacky, messed up system.

01:16:00.080 | So I have spent a lot of time over the years

01:16:03.760 | trying to caution people about how difficult things can be

01:16:07.460 | and about the fact that we all need to prepare

01:16:09.880 | for things to be difficult.

01:16:11.640 | And I believe that that is absolutely true.

01:16:13.560 | We do need to prepare for things to be difficult,

01:16:15.800 | and we need to be protected against those things happening.

01:16:19.420 | But it's not Mad Max, it's not.

01:16:24.420 | So set up your infrastructure in advance,

01:16:28.600 | and then you'll have the best,

01:16:30.840 | those are the best solutions that I have

01:16:32.880 | for those scenarios.

01:16:35.040 | Thank you all so much for listening.

01:16:36.040 | I'd love to talk to you next week.

01:16:37.200 | If you would like to join, go to Patreon,

01:16:39.120 | search for Radical Personal Finance,

01:16:40.360 | and join me on next week's Q&A show.

01:16:43.140 | (upbeat music)

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2021-02-12_Friday_QA