2021-06-04_Friday

00:00:00.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance is live Q&A.

00:00:19.600 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:22.400 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while

00:00:26.640 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:29.920 | My name is Joshua Sheets, I am your host.

00:00:31.800 | Today is Friday, and every Friday that I can possibly arrange an internet connection and

00:00:36.480 | the appropriate technology, I record a live Q&A call.

00:00:39.120 | It works just like call-in talk radio.

00:00:41.400 | You call in, ask your questions, and I do my best to give you a useful answer.

00:00:51.600 | I don't screen these calls for content.

00:00:53.440 | I don't screen them for questions.

00:00:54.840 | You can call, make any comments, have any questions that you want, and I love doing

00:00:58.040 | them.

00:00:59.040 | The more I enjoy doing them, the more I enjoy answering the questions.

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00:01:15.120 | live Friday Q&A calls.

00:01:17.360 | We begin with, let's see, oops, hold on just a moment.

00:01:23.680 | There we go.

00:01:24.680 | All right, we begin with John in Pennsylvania.

00:01:26.320 | John, welcome to the show.

00:01:27.320 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:01:29.320 | Hey Joshua, thanks for taking my call.

00:01:32.320 | I have a question, just curious about your thoughts on having money to remove pain points

00:01:42.080 | versus being frugal and having a lot of time for DIY projects.

00:01:47.320 | I have more time than ever now, but I find myself, I have more time to work on my own

00:01:55.400 | things, but I'm finding it more and more difficult, even with more time, to justify

00:02:01.480 | doing some of these things, replacement of a door when I can have someone install it

00:02:07.840 | for a few hundred bucks, or even have a big project, paint the house coming up, and I'm

00:02:12.600 | even considering outsourcing that a little bit.

00:02:16.600 | Even though some of these things, they give me enjoyment to do them and satisfaction to

00:02:22.560 | get them done, but I feel like I'm even more guarded about my time now since a lot of it

00:02:26.880 | can be dedicated to spending with my kids.

00:02:28.880 | I'm just kind of struggling with that.

00:02:30.680 | On top of that, just being pretty frugal normally and not wanting to necessarily pay for these

00:02:37.400 | services.

00:02:38.400 | I'm curious about your thoughts on that and how you've kind of balanced that out.

00:02:41.880 | I've thought a lot about this.

00:02:43.320 | I was raised by a relatively frugal father who engaged with his children in a lot of

00:02:50.720 | around the house projects, and I noticed what a big difference that made in my life to have

00:02:57.360 | that experience.

00:02:58.800 | I've done lots of construction work.

00:03:00.560 | I've been skilled in a lot of those areas more than the majority of my peers.

00:03:05.800 | I've been involved in house projects from foundation to roofing, and that's given me

00:03:11.880 | a tremendous amount of personal confidence to have those experiences and to have those

00:03:17.120 | skills.

00:03:18.240 | By no means am I a skilled craftsman, but I saw it express itself.

00:03:24.240 | For example, when I was in high school and we were building our senior class float, I

00:03:28.400 | would be there and my fellow classmates were just kind of staring dumbfoundedly at a pile

00:03:34.960 | of boards.

00:03:35.960 | And kind of the basics of building things, the basics of construction seemed to be beyond

00:03:40.560 | their realm of experience, whereas for me it was not that way.

00:03:44.400 | I could do it.

00:03:45.720 | And a lot of that was gained as just childhood projects.

00:03:48.200 | We built a three-story tree fort and the woods next to our house when I was a kid.

00:03:52.800 | But a lot of it came from being involved with projects around the house with my father.

00:03:59.520 | Now simultaneously, I have never in my life enjoyed doing a lot of those things.

00:04:05.680 | It's never been something that brought me joy.

00:04:08.160 | I find it deeply frustrating to deal with the inevitable problems and difficulties that

00:04:15.080 | come with DIY projects.

00:04:17.500 | When I work with my hands, much of the time I feel largely inept.

00:04:21.720 | I have a friend of mine, a close friend of mine growing up.

00:04:24.920 | He is amazing just with working with his hands.

00:04:28.240 | He has almost a sixth sense of how things are created, how to do things, and he has

00:04:33.260 | so much experience.

00:04:35.060 | Watching him work is like magic.

00:04:37.020 | And over the years I've discovered that I get exactly that same feeling when I engage

00:04:42.480 | in mental work, when I work with my brain.

00:04:44.960 | My brain is flexible and for me, concepts that are difficult for other people come through

00:04:50.760 | very easily for me, whereas other people can't roll ideas around in their head in the way

00:04:56.140 | that I can.

00:04:57.220 | But I can't roll tools around in my hand the way that other people can.

00:05:01.660 | And so I've learned over the years that projects, DIY projects and construction projects, are

00:05:08.260 | a source of significant frustration for me personally.

00:05:13.040 | And I would much rather simply earn the money and pay someone else to do them so that they're

00:05:19.160 | done and I can do the things that I enjoy, the things that make me money, the things

00:05:24.460 | that I just literally enjoy, that I physically enjoy doing.

00:05:28.260 | And as long as I have enough money, it seems like a fairly wise way to approach it if I

00:05:33.940 | enjoy it.

00:05:34.940 | Now, when you look at frugality and you look at people who have gone ahead of us and shared

00:05:40.660 | their wisdom with us, you often see the value of DIY projects.

00:05:46.900 | Whether it's from someone living a conserver lifestyle, someone like one of my favorites,

00:05:51.660 | Charles Long, where he wrote the book How to Live Without a Salary.

00:05:55.980 | One of the modern people like Mr. Money Mustache, who's inspired many people to build their

00:06:00.720 | own things, do their own things.

00:06:02.180 | He spends half his time building stuff.

00:06:05.020 | It seems that there's a very good parallel between building things yourself, doing things

00:06:12.060 | yourself and economic freedom.

00:06:14.060 | I have in my library lots of books of people who move out to the country and build a homestead

00:06:21.180 | from scratch, very, very inexpensively, doing the work themselves.

00:06:25.820 | I've read accounts of people who've built houses at astonishingly low prices because

00:06:30.860 | they built them using materials that they picked up for free and things that they got

00:06:35.860 | from the Habitat Restore, etc.

00:06:39.420 | I believe that DIY and doing things yourself is a powerful tool, a powerful method that

00:06:47.740 | many people can use to enjoy personal freedom, to enjoy a sense of lifestyle freedom.

00:06:54.660 | For me personally, I find them to be more constraining than freedom-giving.

00:07:01.180 | If you tell me, "Joshua, listen, you don't have to have a job, but what you need to do

00:07:05.860 | instead is spend, say, five or six hours a day working on your own projects, building

00:07:11.240 | your own homestead," since it's generally such a source of frustration and annoyance

00:07:16.100 | for me personally, I would rather have the job.

00:07:19.420 | I would – now, you'd question which job.

00:07:23.700 | I may not want to have a job filled with drudgery.

00:07:27.180 | I may not want to be the proverbial cubicle slave.

00:07:30.780 | I may not want to have a job that is boring for me and something to which I'm not well-suited,

00:07:37.140 | but I can come up with long lists of jobs that I would rather have working for other

00:07:42.020 | people versus having personal time freedom and sitting around and doing my own projects.

00:07:47.900 | So as I see it, there are a few ways to think through this.

00:07:50.860 | The first thing you can do is recognize, "I'm the kind of person who enjoys doing these

00:07:56.360 | kinds of projects.

00:07:57.860 | They bring me a sense of personal satisfaction and joy.

00:08:01.740 | And so because of that, I'm going to do them, and I'm going to save the money.

00:08:06.260 | I'm going to be the tinkerer.

00:08:07.260 | I'm going to get the materials on sale.

00:08:10.740 | I'm just the kind of person that's good at this, that enjoys that.

00:08:13.500 | I have people in my own family who are that way, and I respect it.

00:08:16.060 | I think it's a very powerful strategy."

00:08:19.140 | On the other hand, you can say, "I'm not that kind of person."

00:08:21.660 | And that's what I'm trying to make clear.

00:08:23.540 | Like I have learned about myself.

00:08:25.020 | I'm not that kind of person."

00:08:27.020 | So what do you do if you're not that kind of person?

00:08:28.700 | Well, one, you can just simply be financially productive enough to be able to pay for the

00:08:35.340 | work to be done for you and recognize that that's just part of the transfer.

00:08:39.300 | I feel really good about that.

00:08:40.860 | I'm good at making money.

00:08:42.300 | I'm very skilled at it.

00:08:43.700 | And I feel really good at being able to employ and support other people and have that money

00:08:48.180 | flow quickly out into the local economy.

00:08:51.340 | And that helps other people to do their work and helps me to do more of what I enjoy doing.

00:08:56.460 | And so I've known many wealthy people over the years who simply pay other people to do

00:09:00.380 | things for themselves, but they're financially productive enough to where it's not a problem.

00:09:05.660 | The ratios are in line.

00:09:08.200 | You might not be super financially productive.

00:09:11.460 | In that scenario then, I think that you can think carefully about the kind of living setup

00:09:17.940 | that you engage in.

00:09:18.940 | You know, right now I'm living in a rented house.

00:09:22.620 | I don't need to do any of that stuff.

00:09:25.300 | You can live in Airbnbs, traveling around the world.

00:09:27.680 | You can choose to do something where you don't have a house.

00:09:31.420 | Maybe you don't mind boat maintenance projects and so you live on a boat or an RV or in a

00:09:35.580 | tent or in a yurt, who knows.

00:09:37.860 | And so you can always adjust things on the outside and choose an unusual lifestyle where

00:09:42.220 | you don't have to do a lot of those things.

00:09:45.060 | And so you can adjust it either way and you should judge yourself and say, "Am I the kind

00:09:50.500 | of person that takes satisfaction in these things or am I the kind of person who doesn't

00:09:53.500 | take satisfaction in them?"

00:09:55.740 | And I think that either one is fine.

00:09:58.540 | Now one caveat I personally have.

00:10:01.700 | I value so much what I described in the beginning, the experience that I had as a child learning

00:10:08.100 | how to do some things.

00:10:09.900 | And I observed how my own father used chores, manual labor, as training tools for his children.

00:10:18.900 | Tools to teach discipline, tools to teach work ethic, and tools to teach a very diverse

00:10:24.300 | skill set.

00:10:25.300 | And again, I value that from the sense of personal resilience.

00:10:29.660 | The fact that I have a diverse skill set fills me with a sense of personal confidence that

00:10:34.540 | I'll never be out of work long term.

00:10:37.700 | I'll never not be able to support myself and my family.

00:10:41.380 | Even if I'm making a basic living, because of the diverse skill set and the diverse jobs

00:10:45.940 | that I've done and the many different opportunities that even my parents exposed me to, then that's

00:10:52.540 | built my personal confidence.

00:10:54.780 | So as a father of young children, one of the things that I am trying to observe is how

00:11:00.240 | can I impart similar skills to my own children?

00:11:04.100 | I don't believe it has to be the fact that I do it all with them, but I am willing and

00:11:09.740 | desirous of doing things with them simply for the acquisition of personal skills.

00:11:16.180 | They may not be the kinds of things that I personally would do for fun, but I'm willing

00:11:21.080 | to do that because it will give me an opportunity to teach my children some skills, give them

00:11:25.140 | an opportunity to be exposed to certain things.

00:11:27.940 | That doesn't have to all be done myself in my own house.

00:11:31.940 | I can keep an eye open.

00:11:33.100 | One thing that my father did really well was he worked hard to try to find work opportunities

00:11:38.540 | for his children.

00:11:41.020 | And so my brothers and I, we did construction work, but my dad was not a carpenter, but

00:11:46.020 | he arranged for us to work at a very young age with a skilled carpenter.

00:11:50.620 | And we learned a lot of skills from that.

00:11:52.480 | And so I don't have to do all the work myself, but I'm conscious of the fact that there may

00:11:56.760 | be many times where there's something I want to do.

00:12:00.040 | I could just simply buy it done for me, but I'm not going to do that.

00:12:05.360 | I'm going to go ahead and do it myself because it'll give me a chance to work with my children

00:12:10.320 | and to expose them to some of the skills.

00:12:12.720 | So I think it's a balancing act and there's not a right or wrong answer.

00:12:18.560 | It's important to identify the fact that doing things yourself is a powerful strategy for

00:12:23.760 | saving money and building wealth and living financially independent.

00:12:30.520 | Just for me, what I've learned is that I wouldn't want to do it.

00:12:34.240 | I don't want to live that lifestyle.

00:12:35.400 | I'd rather have the job versus living that lifestyle, but that doesn't mean it's not

00:12:38.760 | appropriate for many people.

00:12:40.580 | So I say judge it yourself and balance among those factors.

00:12:44.000 | Okay.

00:12:45.000 | Yeah, I appreciate that.

00:12:47.400 | It puts in a lot of things that also come up in my mind and that's sort of the problem.

00:12:51.760 | All those things are kind of halfway between point.

00:12:54.360 | I get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing a job done, but I have no real enjoyment of

00:12:59.120 | the process generally.

00:13:00.600 | It's usually very frustrating and takes twice as long.

00:13:03.000 | And then I say, okay, well at least it's an example to my kids that we do things ourselves

00:13:08.280 | and we have the capability to do this, but they're also a little too young to participate

00:13:12.020 | without getting bored after 20 minutes.

00:13:13.640 | So do I take on a job that takes me two days or three days, whereas they're only going

00:13:18.440 | to engage with it maybe a couple of minutes here and there and is that worth it?

00:13:23.800 | And then the balance of the money thing, it's always been, well, when I had a job and I

00:13:29.520 | had an income, I could balance it real easily saying, okay, it's going to take me this long

00:13:33.480 | or I could make this much over here.

00:13:36.600 | Now that I don't have that, I thought that calculation would be a lot easier to just

00:13:40.120 | do it myself, but it turns out to me at the time is worth more than the money job was,

00:13:45.880 | so the hourly rate I was getting.

00:13:47.680 | So it almost threw it in the opposite direction that I thought it was going to.

00:13:51.360 | And I find myself wanting to outsource even more.

00:13:55.040 | But I think you touched on all the different things that I've been thinking of and I appreciate

00:13:58.760 | that.

00:13:59.760 | But I think the biggest overwhelming thing is, do I enjoy the process?

00:14:03.000 | And I think that's an overwhelming no, even though I enjoy the after effect, the satisfaction

00:14:07.880 | of having done it myself.

00:14:08.880 | But yeah, I just got to keep turning through these things.

00:14:13.000 | There's no question that the ages of your children make a big difference and you'll

00:14:17.120 | do one thing now that you won't do in five years and vice versa.

00:14:21.080 | So at the end of the day, the only formula is to calculate the opportunity cost.

00:14:26.160 | Okay, if I don't do this myself, what else will I do?

00:14:30.440 | And is it worth the money for me to do the other thing because I have more time and I'm

00:14:34.160 | doing something that I would rather do?

00:14:35.960 | Or is this a good opportunity cost?

00:14:38.640 | Sometimes maybe there's in between.

00:14:40.840 | For example, one thing that you can do when you have more time freedom is you can be more

00:14:45.560 | involved in the details of the job without actually physically doing the work.

00:14:50.080 | Back to my father.

00:14:51.880 | When we were growing up, he needed a bigger house and so he wanted to build a bigger house.

00:14:57.680 | But he didn't want to spend a lot of money, but he was also keeping, he had a job.

00:15:02.160 | Now his job provided him with some flexibility, but he had a job.

00:15:05.840 | So what he did was he kind of threaded the needle.

00:15:09.640 | In the beginning, he hired a contractor to build the shell of the house, but he worked

00:15:13.600 | with that contractor providing a lot of assistance so that the contractor's prices were lower.

00:15:19.880 | But the contractor built the shell.

00:15:21.960 | Then once the shell of the house was completed, then my dad worked as the subcontractor.

00:15:28.240 | In most cases, excuse me, he worked himself as the contractor hiring the subcontractors

00:15:34.120 | in most cases and then doing some of the work himself from time to time.

00:15:39.080 | So he saved some tens of thousands of dollars by doing that, by inserting himself into the

00:15:44.520 | actual time, but he didn't try to do everything.

00:15:46.960 | So let's go back to a house project.

00:15:48.560 | Maybe with your painting job, maybe you can use kind of an in-between option.

00:15:53.780 | You may not want to actually commit yourself to two weeks to repaint the house, but you

00:15:58.520 | might not also want to go and contact a painting contractor and pay a retail price.

00:16:04.880 | So perhaps what you do is you understand what painting work you're going to get done.

00:16:11.480 | You go and you purchase all the paint and the equipment needed to prepare the house

00:16:17.760 | for painting.

00:16:20.040 | You involve your children in that, going with you, choosing the colors, choosing the paints,

00:16:24.840 | having everything ready.

00:16:26.320 | And then you hire day laborers and you supervise their labor to make sure that the work is

00:16:31.240 | being done well.

00:16:33.080 | Maybe you help them here and there, but most of it is just supervision and you kind of

00:16:36.680 | split the difference.

00:16:37.760 | Maybe you save 30% or 40% of what the contractor would charge you by supervising, but because

00:16:44.020 | you're there and you're able to supervise without physically getting involved every

00:16:47.420 | single day, you can make sure that the job is well done.

00:16:50.020 | So that might be a way to satisfice these different options that you're considering.

00:16:56.220 | Yeah, no, that's good.

00:16:59.100 | I appreciate that.

00:17:00.100 | I just got to kind of take a step back and think of which parts I want to do and what's

00:17:03.980 | worth it and which parts I can outsource.

00:17:06.380 | Yeah.

00:17:07.380 | Exactly.

00:17:08.380 | I think I appreciate that.

00:17:09.380 | Thank you.

00:17:10.380 | My pleasure.

00:17:11.380 | Always love talking to you, John.

00:17:12.380 | Thank you for calling in today.

00:17:13.380 | We go on to, looks like Steve in Toronto.

00:17:16.140 | Steve, welcome to the show.

00:17:17.140 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:17:18.140 | Hey, good afternoon.

00:17:20.140 | Good afternoon, sir.

00:17:24.020 | I have a question.

00:17:25.020 | I don't know if you'll be able to provide a whole insight because I'm not sure if it's

00:17:27.580 | something that you've done, but I'm hoping your familiarity will be, you'll at least

00:17:30.860 | have some thoughts.

00:17:33.100 | Recently traveled to Mexico and just had a really fantastic time and kind of have some

00:17:38.860 | life changes going on and was thinking about maybe potentially kind of moving down there

00:17:42.460 | and starting a business.

00:17:43.460 | So I was curious both on the kind of legal side, like in terms of like immigrating or

00:17:50.980 | becoming a permanent resident, kind of what needs to be done there in terms of owning

00:17:55.700 | and operating a business.

00:17:57.020 | And then also like if you had any thoughts about kind of the potential barriers like

00:18:02.660 | you saw someone who's not from Mexico might encounter when trying to like own and operate

00:18:09.140 | a consumer facing business in Mexico.

00:18:12.340 | Tell me more about the kind of business that you're imagining.

00:18:16.420 | I don't have, I have a couple of different ideas.

00:18:19.900 | So one of them would be like a bar and restaurant type business.

00:18:22.260 | Another one would be something like an Airbnb or some kind of a bed and breakfast maybe

00:18:27.900 | with some kind of incorporated tours or something like that.

00:18:30.940 | That would mostly be targeting Christian and expats.

00:18:36.540 | So I can't give you specific ideas on the details of starting the business in terms

00:18:44.540 | of the necessary licenses.

00:18:45.980 | That would be an appropriate conversation to pick up the phone and talk specifically

00:18:50.060 | with a lawyer.

00:18:51.780 | Mexico is extremely open and so in general I think that you'll be able to do it.

00:18:58.180 | Virtually any country in the world loves to see businessmen come with money to invest,

00:19:03.100 | start a business and build economic activity.

00:19:08.420 | And so the basic answer is going to be I'm quite confident that you'll be able to do

00:19:13.860 | it.

00:19:16.100 | It may be a combination of approaches.

00:19:20.580 | You might go ahead and get a residency visa that doesn't allow for employment.

00:19:25.100 | Then you'll change that to some kind of business visa.

00:19:27.780 | That short answer is I don't know the specific visas that you will need but I'm confident

00:19:33.540 | that you will be able to do it if you simply talk with an attorney and tell them what you're

00:19:36.820 | thinking about and bring that to them.

00:19:41.260 | That's your magic key.

00:19:42.260 | A businessman can go to virtually any country in the world and if you say I'm here to open

00:19:45.980 | a business, especially something like a physical business where they can count the number of

00:19:50.260 | employees, you can show them your roster of employees and all of the money that you're

00:19:55.820 | investing into the business, they will open their arms and welcome you in.

00:20:00.420 | Okay, that kind of jives with what I was initially thinking.

00:20:13.420 | How about in terms of tangling through local regulations and doing all that in something

00:20:19.980 | that's not your first language, do you have any thoughts or tips or tricks or anything

00:20:23.980 | you would like in terms of how you would approach that problem?

00:20:28.180 | Yeah, so the first thing is call a lawyer.

00:20:31.140 | Email the guy that I interviewed recently on the show at sanmigael-legal.com.

00:20:36.220 | His website is sanmigael-legal.com.

00:20:39.860 | That's a lawyer that I recommend you start with.

00:20:41.420 | He can help with the immigration stuff if you need that and then you'll probably work

00:20:44.860 | with somebody locally.

00:20:47.460 | If you don't speak any Spanish, you will definitely need to find somebody who can interpret for

00:20:52.540 | you, maybe hiring a professional interpreter, might be hiring, working with a local business

00:20:57.340 | partner, somebody who can interpret for you.

00:20:59.020 | There's no question that will make your life difficult not being able to speak at least

00:21:02.500 | basic Spanish.

00:21:04.260 | But there are lots of people who go to Mexico or wherever and open a business and do well.

00:21:10.180 | I think the most important thing is just studying the market and making sure that there's actually

00:21:15.020 | a demand for what you want to do.

00:21:18.340 | And then as with any business, going in with as much investment as you need in order to

00:21:23.460 | get the doors open and see what the demand is but without getting in over your head.

00:21:28.460 | That's just generalized business advice.

00:21:30.580 | But you're going to be dealing with the local markets, the local rental markets, etc.

00:21:36.940 | Now can there be surprises along the way?

00:21:39.980 | Absolutely.

00:21:40.980 | Every country has its own challenges, its own things that are just different about that

00:21:46.340 | country.

00:21:47.340 | And that will be the various forms needed when hiring somebody, subscribing them to

00:21:55.060 | the local health insurance laws, the local social employment insurance systems, etc.

00:22:01.820 | But most of that stuff is fairly standardized.

00:22:04.300 | And I think in general, as long as you're a bit wary, I think that it's just going to

00:22:10.780 | be the nature of what happens locally.

00:22:13.700 | So you'll figure out the local customs.

00:22:15.280 | Just like if I came to Canada and I came to you and said I want to open a business, you

00:22:19.620 | would say, "Well, here's the guy that talked to this accountant and that accountant will

00:22:22.820 | say here's what you need to do."

00:22:24.540 | So I would go to Mexico and I would start looking for a good local accountant and a

00:22:29.420 | good local lawyer, somebody who speaks English.

00:22:32.300 | Usually that'll be your best place to start is if you can find a local lawyer who can

00:22:34.980 | speak English, who can advise you on the local customs, etc.

00:22:39.140 | Pay them some fees just to work for you and then start the process and see what they tell

00:22:45.720 | you.

00:22:46.720 | Your local lawyer and your local accountant are usually, in my experience, probably the

00:22:49.840 | best place to start because they'll have the networks, they'll know the people in the local

00:22:54.440 | administration, they'll know the people in the local county government, they'll know

00:23:01.180 | the relevant inspectors, they'll be able to refer you a lot of times to the vendors.

00:23:06.480 | And so they're usually the local pillar of the community and that's the support that

00:23:09.360 | you'll need when you start.

00:23:10.880 | Mad Fientist Awesome, awesome, fantastic.

00:23:15.600 | I'm excited to kind of see where this takes me.

00:23:19.800 | Dave Great.

00:23:21.600 | What area of Mexico are you targeting?

00:23:23.600 | Mad Fientist So far I've been to Puerto Vallarta which

00:23:27.560 | we liked a lot but going to be going to other places.

00:23:30.600 | Guadalajara and Mexico City are kind of next in line.

00:23:33.080 | Dave Okay, awesome.

00:23:34.560 | Yeah, I think all of those you can find something that's going to work for you and when you

00:23:41.520 | find it, give it a shot.

00:23:43.080 | My only kind of closing comment, how much money would you anticipate investing into

00:23:47.840 | your business there?

00:23:49.440 | Mad Fientist Obviously that kind of depends on what we

00:23:53.800 | decide to go into but we're probably prepared to fund at a six-figure level if needed.

00:23:58.880 | Dave Okay, so just remember that all of the power

00:24:08.120 | is on your side.

00:24:09.600 | All of the demand is on your side.

00:24:14.760 | You don't go in thinking that you are a little fish, thinking that you're just the kind of

00:24:22.800 | guy that, "Ah, well who wants to hear from me?"

00:24:24.880 | You're not.

00:24:25.920 | You are exactly what every politician on a local level wants.

00:24:33.640 | They want you to come and invest in their community.

00:24:37.440 | Now you shouldn't be arrogant of course.

00:24:38.880 | You're Canadian, you're not going to be arrogant.

00:24:40.280 | You're going to be very kind but the point is that you should recognize the value that

00:24:45.520 | you bring.

00:24:46.520 | I'm not sure if it works this way in Canada but in the United States, let's say that a

00:24:51.880 | sports team is looking for a place to go or a business is looking for a place to go.

00:24:57.840 | That business will have all of the local politicians coming in and vying for that business to relocate

00:25:06.400 | to their specific area and it really is powerful.

00:25:12.800 | So you have the same power.

00:25:15.860 | You can do exactly the same thing in the same way that if I'm running, what was it, Amazon

00:25:20.160 | a couple of years ago put out bids and they had hundreds of cities saying, "Come here,

00:25:24.960 | we'll give you all kinds of tax breaks, we'll give you all kinds of assurances, etc."

00:25:29.040 | If you're going to go and open a business and potentially invest six figures into that

00:25:33.040 | business, the exact same benefits are going to be yours.

00:25:37.240 | So the first thing I would do is talk to a lawyer in a local area, find a lawyer in Puerto

00:25:43.800 | Vallarta, ask him your immigration questions, ask him about the business licenses and then

00:25:48.480 | have that lawyer arrange a meeting with you with the mayor of Puerto Vallarta or the relevant

00:25:53.480 | other politicians and start to build a relationship there with them and see what they might be

00:25:59.040 | willing to offer you because they will offer you things, you just have to make it known.

00:26:05.560 | Don't try to do it all in secret, see what they can offer you.

00:26:07.720 | They can help you to arrange a prime location, there might be tax breaks that they'll offer

00:26:12.080 | you and a lawyer can help you navigate that.

00:26:14.440 | So think of yourself not as, "Well, I'm going to go and ask for permission."

00:26:18.080 | Recognize that what you're bringing is exactly what every single politician and every local

00:26:23.760 | government wants.

00:26:25.360 | Somebody to come in, build a business, employ local people, build something that's going

00:26:30.280 | to attract tourists, that's going to attract other businesses to the area and generally

00:26:34.080 | build their town for the well-being of the local people.

00:26:36.680 | All right, and with that we move on to the state of Tennessee.

00:26:40.800 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance.

00:26:41.800 | How can I serve you today?

00:26:45.240 | Hello Joshua, can you hear me?

00:26:46.520 | I can hear you well, go ahead sir.

00:26:49.480 | Awesome.

00:26:50.840 | You have helped me on a couple of your consultation calls and I want to highly recommend that

00:26:58.480 | to some of your listeners.

00:27:00.440 | But I have a question or kind of a statement and then a question.

00:27:05.560 | My brother-in-law and I have bought rental properties, apartments, houses, etc. for years

00:27:12.380 | and we grinded out on some of these apartments, lower income and it's a lot of work and not

00:27:20.480 | a lot of appreciation.

00:27:21.480 | Well, we sold them off and we're rolling it.

00:27:26.680 | We had to do a 1031 because we've had them for close to 20 years.

00:27:31.160 | So there's really nothing to buy out there.

00:27:33.220 | So what we kind of figured out is we did probably eight or nine owner finance situations with

00:27:43.040 | Mexicans.

00:27:44.040 | They put down a pretty nice down payment and we basically put it 10%.

00:27:49.680 | They don't seem to mind paying 10% and they always pay, they're never late.

00:27:53.480 | Awesome.

00:27:54.480 | We got a pretty good reputation with them and looking back over the last 20 years, we

00:28:00.120 | figured out, man, we're making more money doing that than anything else.

00:28:04.120 | So we're rolling all this money from apartments into about 20 to 25, 120, 180 thousand dollar

00:28:12.920 | houses and we're just going to owner finance them to Mexicans.

00:28:17.080 | You see anything wrong with that?

00:28:19.120 | No.

00:28:20.120 | I think that, I mean, probably the only risk would be, so first of all, to clarify, you're

00:28:27.800 | doing this in the United States and you're renting primarily to Mexican immigrants.

00:28:32.880 | Do you know if those Mexican immigrants are in the United States with the appropriate

00:28:38.120 | documents or without the appropriate documents?

00:28:40.440 | No idea.

00:28:41.440 | No idea.

00:28:42.440 | I have no idea and really don't care.

00:28:44.720 | So I think the only risk would be if one of your tenants gets deported.

00:28:49.680 | But I think that's, first of all, if you have some collateral, I think that's probably a

00:28:54.320 | relatively minor risk.

00:28:57.680 | So in my experience with Mexican immigrants to the United States, you're dealing with

00:29:03.440 | a really wonderful culture.

00:29:06.520 | In my experience, most Mexican immigrants to the United States will tend to be fairly

00:29:10.080 | conservative in terms of their approach.

00:29:13.160 | They're very family oriented.

00:29:15.320 | They're accustomed to working for opportunity.

00:29:18.480 | They're accustomed to kind of the Mexican values of community.

00:29:23.000 | Mexico is a very community oriented society.

00:29:26.560 | And so I would be thrilled with that business model myself.

00:29:31.920 | I just think your only risk is if one of them gets deported.

00:29:34.920 | Now probably somebody else would step in and probably work to kind of keep the deal going.

00:29:40.280 | If you've got enough earnest money where it would be pretty expensive for them to be deported,

00:29:44.760 | then my guess would be that they would want to keep the contract alive even if one of

00:29:49.160 | their friends or relations or coworkers or someone else in that community came in and

00:29:54.560 | was willing to take over the contract or willing just to...

00:29:57.640 | Their name is on it, but the money keeps coming in.

00:30:00.000 | So no, I think that you can do really well serving a community like that.

00:30:04.920 | And it's one of those win-win scenarios where it can be very difficult for an immigrant

00:30:11.160 | to get a fair deal in the large commercial space.

00:30:16.040 | It's very difficult for an immigrant with a limited credit history to go and work with

00:30:23.680 | a bank.

00:30:25.120 | And especially depending on whether you're dealing with what's usually in the sociological

00:30:29.600 | analysis called an acculturated immigrant or an unacculturated immigrant.

00:30:34.600 | Oftentimes unacculturated immigrants to the United States are taken advantage of very

00:30:39.160 | heavily by the overall system.

00:30:42.120 | And so when they find that, "Hey, here's a guy who is fair to us, gives us a fair deal,

00:30:48.240 | doesn't take advantage of us.

00:30:49.800 | We pay him certainly higher rates than we would pay if we had an 800 credit score and

00:30:54.480 | a W-2 job and an H1N1 visa or a green card."

00:31:00.760 | Certainly they're paying you for the privilege, but as long as you're treating them fairly,

00:31:04.360 | that's wonderful.

00:31:05.360 | And they will help, as you've experienced, to refer you as a good service provider within

00:31:10.840 | the local community.

00:31:11.880 | So I don't see any risk in it other than the risk of deportation.

00:31:15.520 | And I think you've got enough earnest money and enough, as you said, you've got a good

00:31:18.600 | reputation.

00:31:19.600 | I think you would fill the house again and be able to sell it again if the worst came.

00:31:24.920 | Right.

00:31:25.920 | In fact, we actually had a guy probably 12, well, seven or eight years ago that had a

00:31:34.800 | house that got deported.

00:31:35.800 | And the way the contracts are written up is they're pretty one-sided towards us, that

00:31:44.080 | it's more like a rent-to-own situation, even though it's a contract for deed.

00:31:48.920 | So this guy had paid us something like 12 years and he got deported.

00:31:54.000 | And we legally, of course, we didn't even consider it.

00:31:57.640 | We could have said, "Well, we're just out."

00:32:00.400 | But we handed it off to his daughter and she actually got the house paid off last year.

00:32:08.520 | So that kind of got us some pretty good will, I think, in that community.

00:32:13.720 | Like you said, we didn't get enough down that if they walked away, we'd be fine.

00:32:22.640 | The thing we've noticed is they go in there and they take a $100,000 house and a year

00:32:28.320 | or two later, it's a $160,000 house with all the improvements.

00:32:35.400 | My experience, I've worked with a lot of immigrants just because I speak Spanish in the United

00:32:39.600 | States.

00:32:40.600 | I've worked with day laborers.

00:32:41.600 | I've worked – I spent several years working on a farm.

00:32:44.960 | And so all of my – I was the only white guy on the farm.

00:32:49.160 | And every single one of my coworkers was Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, etc.

00:32:54.640 | I worked for several years in lawn maintenance, same exact thing.

00:32:57.280 | I was the only white guy on the lawn maintenance crews.

00:32:59.720 | And so I just got a good sense, probably more than most people of the community.

00:33:05.680 | And I'm telling you, one of the things that bugs me so much – I'm trying to avoid

00:33:10.840 | the politics of this, but in my experience, the kind of people that I want for neighbors

00:33:16.280 | are usually the kind of guys and gals that immigrate from Mexico to the United States

00:33:20.960 | or from Guatemala to the United States.

00:33:23.120 | They are hardworking guys and that the amount that most guys have overcome – I mean, you

00:33:29.880 | got to speak Spanish in order to get them to trust you enough to tell you the story.

00:33:33.760 | But the amount that those guys pay to get brought in across the border and the pressure

00:33:41.120 | that puts on them, I mean, they are the hardest working guys.

00:33:45.560 | And they understand why they're doing it.

00:33:48.360 | They're the classic immigrant mentality.

00:33:50.080 | I'm going to go to the United States where I can make more money.

00:33:53.800 | I'm going to bring my family as soon as I can.

00:33:56.880 | And by the time a guy is ready to buy a house, he's going to have paid off the fees that

00:34:01.240 | he paid to get across the border.

00:34:02.680 | I mean, it's thousands of dollars.

00:34:04.880 | Even coming across illegally, it's virtually impossible for most of those guys to get into

00:34:10.480 | the United States legally.

00:34:12.080 | It's just – it's impossible.

00:34:15.200 | But even if they're coming across illegally, it's still thousands of dollars that they

00:34:18.560 | will pay to the people who facilitate that process.

00:34:22.680 | And so by the time they're coming to you and buying a house, they have paid off that

00:34:26.160 | debt.

00:34:27.160 | That's the first thing that they do.

00:34:28.480 | They will often have paid – done it again to try to get their family back together.

00:34:34.080 | And so they're going to be at a point where they're fairly stable and able to do it.

00:34:37.360 | And they're going to be – I mean, they understand the value of what they have.

00:34:40.680 | And immigrants, illegal immigrants are abused day in and day out.

00:34:46.040 | And so when a guy comes along, treats them fairly, gives them the opportunity to own

00:34:50.840 | a house, rent to own is perfect, 10% down, higher rates, you're perfectly legally and

00:34:57.800 | morally justified in my view to charge them higher rates for owner financing because of

00:35:02.200 | the additional risk.

00:35:04.080 | But when it's a lot – it's cheaper than often what they can get for financing on real

00:35:08.800 | estate in other places.

00:35:10.480 | So it's a really good deal.

00:35:13.280 | And I'm glad that it's working out well for you.

00:35:14.880 | And I love to see just people treating those guys fairly.

00:35:17.760 | They need the help.

00:35:18.760 | Well, good deal.

00:35:19.760 | I appreciate it.

00:35:20.760 | All right.

00:35:21.760 | My pleasure.

00:35:22.760 | We go on to the state of Iowa.

00:35:26.680 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance.

00:35:27.680 | How can I serve you today, please?

00:35:28.680 | Hey, Joshua.

00:35:29.680 | This is Tanner here.

00:35:30.680 | Tanner, go ahead, sir.

00:35:31.680 | I guess just a little bit of background on me.

00:35:38.800 | I am 25.

00:35:39.800 | I just got married last year.

00:35:42.800 | And I'm a CPA.

00:35:45.800 | Great.

00:35:46.800 | So yeah, I guess I'm just calling just a little bit more for general life advice here because

00:35:52.960 | I'm so young.

00:35:53.960 | I guess I think I'm struggling just a little bit with direction as far as career-wise.

00:36:02.520 | What would you tell your 25-year-old self?

00:36:05.200 | Do you like the work of a CPA?

00:36:07.220 | Do you like the business model of a CPA?

00:36:13.760 | I like the people.

00:36:16.320 | Okay.

00:36:18.200 | So as I see it, having a CPA license is an ideal foundation on which to build a career.

00:36:26.400 | But the normal career track of an everyday accountant is usually not particularly exciting,

00:36:34.800 | and it usually doesn't result in you making all that much money.

00:36:38.720 | But there are ways that you can build on that normal career track to really build some excitement.

00:36:45.000 | And so I think it's an ideal kind of foundation to have for a young guy, 25 years old, newly

00:36:50.040 | married.

00:36:51.040 | I've got a CPA license.

00:36:52.040 | Do you have your own practice or do you have a job?

00:36:55.840 | A job.

00:36:58.160 | But there's some opportunities to buy in within the next year.

00:37:03.760 | So let's talk about a couple of different career tracks that you can consider.

00:37:08.580 | Career track number one is what I'll just simply call kind of the ordinary common everyday

00:37:12.960 | career track of a CPA of self-employment.

00:37:16.000 | There is nothing wrong with this career track and it can have certain benefits.

00:37:20.400 | You can start a tax preparation business.

00:37:23.080 | You can start a bookkeeping business.

00:37:25.440 | And you can start to attract your own clients to that business.

00:37:29.960 | It's a business that takes some hustle at the beginning to get going.

00:37:32.880 | But once you've got a stable body of clients, you can build something really phenomenal.

00:37:37.960 | It's a good business.

00:37:39.860 | One benefit of the business is that it can be seasonal.

00:37:43.280 | Many CPAs obviously work all year long and they don't take much time off.

00:37:50.540 | But you can integrate the seasonality into a more interesting lifestyle.

00:37:55.520 | If you build your work time primarily around the seasons, if you have more tax preparation

00:38:00.760 | clients rather than bookkeeping clients, then you can work heavily during those seasons

00:38:05.800 | and have a lot of time freedom during other seasons.

00:38:09.240 | It's a really rewarding job because you have a good demand, but you also have a high degree

00:38:14.320 | of flexibility.

00:38:15.320 | You can digitize the business.

00:38:17.240 | You can do most of your work virtually.

00:38:19.680 | You can build a referral network in many different industries.

00:38:24.060 | You can choose to target one specific geographic area.

00:38:26.640 | You can target an industry.

00:38:28.480 | You can target a certain type of client.

00:38:30.280 | There are a lot of areas that you can specialize in and you can build a nice business.

00:38:35.360 | Let's say that that and you can do it in a couple different ways, right?

00:38:37.640 | You can build it in a solopreneur approach.

00:38:40.240 | Maybe you and one part-time bookkeeper, you and one assistant type of thing, very small,

00:38:45.120 | flexible business provides a great living, right?

00:38:47.600 | You can have a six-figure living, maybe $100,000 to $200,000 a year would be normal in terms

00:38:52.220 | of earnings, somewhere in that range, which is a healthy living and with the other benefits

00:38:56.640 | you can do that.

00:38:57.960 | Now you can take the CPA and you can use that as a foundation for other kinds of business

00:39:02.600 | approaches.

00:39:04.780 | When you are an accountant and you have passed your CPA exam, you can use that as a foundation

00:39:11.200 | to say, "I have a high degree of financial intelligence," and you can start to apply

00:39:14.600 | that to business investments.

00:39:16.640 | I have known a number of extraordinarily successful businessmen who started as accountants and

00:39:23.080 | CPAs, but you need to usually decide that you're going to do that and that you're not

00:39:29.640 | going to stay in the comfortable space of working as a CPA.

00:39:34.080 | In my experience, personality-wise, most accountants would tend to be more risk-averse.

00:39:40.040 | They would tend to be more conservative.

00:39:42.160 | They tend to be less people-oriented people, right?

00:39:46.880 | More of people who like the numbers, like the spreadsheets, etc.

00:39:50.040 | And so if you're not that, like if you really like the people, you can turn that into entrepreneurship

00:39:55.000 | and say, "Okay, I've got a foundation.

00:39:57.240 | Now how can I build a local business that is going to really open up and pave the way

00:40:06.280 | forward for me to really invest into bigger deals?"

00:40:12.800 | And so having a CPA license that hangs on the wall of your business, whether it's a

00:40:17.600 | local franchise, a local business, a factory, a school, who knows, I think it's really,

00:40:22.400 | really valuable.

00:40:24.040 | And it gives you one of the powers of a CPA is that accountants and CPAs don't have any

00:40:29.680 | of the baggage that other, they have almost none of the baggage that other financial professionals

00:40:35.520 | have, right?

00:40:36.520 | I have a certified financial planner plaque that I could put on my wall.

00:40:40.760 | And that gives pretty good professional recognition.

00:40:46.000 | But there's so many difficult relationships that people have with financial advisors that

00:40:50.960 | they're still like, "Well, I'm not so sure.

00:40:52.800 | What's Joshua going to sell me here?"

00:40:54.040 | If I just have certified public accountant on my wall, people immediately assume this

00:40:58.360 | guy is a total expert and he's not a sales guy.

00:41:01.360 | And so you can build that really powerfully and you can apply that into any other business.

00:41:06.480 | I skipped over the job, right?

00:41:08.000 | You can work and get a great job in the corporate world if you like that.

00:41:11.760 | You can get a corporate, a great job just simply working in a CPA business, becoming

00:41:15.840 | partner.

00:41:16.840 | Those paths are all sketched out for you.

00:41:18.880 | And then finally, I would just point out that as a CPA, you can also take that and leverage

00:41:25.400 | that into many different areas of other businesses, right?

00:41:29.520 | When I, a good guy here would be, look at Mark Kohler, right?

00:41:33.440 | Mark Kohler is an attorney CPA, but he's built a good business practice with people doing

00:41:40.080 | legal work, people doing legal work and doing accounting work.

00:41:46.040 | But then he's got this huge information business, selling books, selling courses, etc.

00:41:50.680 | And so if you like the business, I would recommend you do that and incorporate an information

00:41:56.260 | and consulting practice into your CPA work as well.

00:42:00.600 | So as I see it, having knowledge in accounting and having a CPA license is a phenomenal foundation

00:42:07.880 | upon which to build your career.

00:42:10.520 | And it's just up to you as far as which of those kind of paths appeals to you more.

00:42:14.860 | You don't have to stick with any one of them.

00:42:17.160 | You could stick with what you're doing now for a couple of years.

00:42:19.120 | You can go to law school, get yourself a law license, do something like Kohler has done,

00:42:25.320 | go and start buying a local franchise or buy out a local business and start using your

00:42:29.880 | business skill and building your skills as an entrepreneur.

00:42:32.380 | Any of these options are open to you.

00:42:34.080 | - Okay, wow.

00:42:35.480 | Thank you so much.

00:42:37.480 | Yeah, I'm gonna have to listen to that back.

00:42:40.320 | There's a lot in there.

00:42:41.320 | - Good, good.

00:42:42.320 | - Yeah, just recognize that your investment and the time and the knowledge is good and

00:42:47.780 | you have a good stable job.

00:42:49.240 | Perfect.

00:42:50.240 | Now, where do you wanna go from here?

00:42:51.840 | I will encourage my children to learn the skills of accounting, to consider getting

00:42:59.600 | a, this is one of the ones on my list, learn the skills of accounting and possibly get

00:43:04.760 | a CPA license.

00:43:06.480 | It's easy enough to do and it's one of those good professional licenses that really serves

00:43:10.360 | as a foundation.

00:43:11.880 | So use that foundation and then go on and see what it opens up for you.

00:43:16.840 | There are lots and lots of options available to you.

00:43:20.080 | All right, we go on to Toledo, Ohio.

00:43:23.000 | Welcome to the show.

00:43:24.000 | How can I serve you today?

00:43:25.000 | - Hi, Joshua, can you hear me?

00:43:28.520 | - Sounds good, go ahead, please.

00:43:29.520 | - Hi, this is Alex.

00:43:30.520 | My wife and I, Danielle, have consulted with you before and we've done just exactly as

00:43:41.240 | you said we would.

00:43:42.600 | We've just continued to grow wealth and with COVID and everything last year, I basically

00:43:49.040 | busted my keister and now I'm basically, my role has become remote and I'm absolutely

00:43:53.800 | loving having the littles in my life with obviously the struggles of working from home,

00:43:58.680 | learning to adapt.

00:44:00.400 | But it's been quite an experience and I just can't thank you enough for your advice in

00:44:08.080 | the past and listening to your podcast, it's been very, very, very beneficial to myself

00:44:15.640 | and my family and just wanted to, first off, thank you for that.

00:44:20.320 | My question today is rooted around basically us trying to get to that next stage of life

00:44:26.080 | and purchasing a home.

00:44:28.080 | We've been saving very diligently over the past few years now.

00:44:33.120 | We're living in a condo that we rent from a family friend at a very generous rate given

00:44:39.160 | our area.

00:44:40.160 | So we've accumulated quite a large sum of money.

00:44:45.000 | But it's just been difficult for us to pull the trigger in the market that we're in today

00:44:49.700 | with just how inflated everything is.

00:44:52.640 | We've been considered looking at land and trying to purchase land and then possibly

00:45:00.400 | build maybe live around because things just, again, seem so grossly inflated right now.

00:45:05.240 | Do you have any advice on, is it worth it for us to dump today's money at today's rates

00:45:13.480 | now or is it worth it to try to wait and see where the next couple of years may go?

00:45:18.600 | Brett, just so you have an understanding of our living arrangement, the condo we're in

00:45:22.680 | right now is technically a two bedroom, but I converted an office that was upstairs into

00:45:28.960 | a nursery.

00:45:29.960 | So we've kind of made it like a three and we have two littles, one that's just over

00:45:35.240 | one and the other that's approaching three.

00:45:37.480 | So children of that age do not require a lot of space.

00:45:40.760 | So we've been able to condense and over the past five years or so make it work.

00:45:45.240 | But we're definitely starting to get a little cramped in our shell and I'd like to move

00:45:50.080 | on to the next stage and purchase a house and take those next steps.

00:45:55.240 | Do you have money saved?

00:45:56.640 | And if so, how much?

00:45:59.920 | Probably a little over $150,000.

00:46:04.680 | And how much do you earn per year?

00:46:07.720 | Do you want myself or?

00:46:11.920 | Total family income?

00:46:14.560 | I would say probably around $180,000.

00:46:19.840 | And do you have any outstanding debts?

00:46:23.120 | No debt at all.

00:46:27.360 | So first of all, financially, it's obvious that financially, yes, you can purchase a

00:46:34.960 | house.

00:46:36.400 | So this is more not a question of whether you can afford it.

00:46:40.360 | This is more of a question, is this the best thing to do at this stage in your life?

00:46:44.800 | So tell me, how would owning a house improve your life and lifestyle?

00:46:55.640 | So I believe the first issue that we've come across is just space in general, space for

00:47:03.600 | the kids to play because basically the one main room we have on the main floor is a hybrid

00:47:10.400 | between living room, dining room, kitchen, it's kind of all in one.

00:47:16.640 | And granted, we've made it very friendly for them with all the kids stuff that comes along

00:47:23.160 | with children of this age, but it's always a constant battle between trying to keep the

00:47:28.440 | place somewhat clean and have space versus allowing them to do what children should do

00:47:32.560 | is just play and use their imagination.

00:47:35.320 | So space has been the primary issue for us.

00:47:39.080 | We've considered, okay, we could leave our current condo and maybe rent a house or something

00:47:45.120 | versus having to buy.

00:47:47.000 | But I'm just, the cost benefit analysis of going to a larger place at probably much higher

00:47:54.000 | rate than what we pay.

00:47:55.000 | I mean, we pay out the door $10,200 a year for living costs for just rent alone, rent

00:48:03.720 | and I guess basic utilities, water's included.

00:48:07.120 | So it's relatively cheap where we live and the association is fine, the little condo

00:48:12.800 | is fine, but aspiring to have something larger, a larger place for the kids to play.

00:48:20.640 | I mean, we adventure around to the local parks or whatever, but it would be nice to have

00:48:25.200 | a large fenced in backyard to allow them to play, et cetera.

00:48:32.280 | So you are now working completely remote.

00:48:35.200 | Is your wife still working in the local area?

00:48:38.440 | She is, yeah.

00:48:41.160 | She's in the local area.

00:48:42.160 | She's within healthcare.

00:48:43.160 | So she's actually dropped down after we had our second child, she was able to drop down

00:48:47.040 | to 20 hours a week.

00:48:49.480 | So I'm basically fully remote.

00:48:51.640 | Essentially, I have to go to the office maybe once or twice a month for larger meetings

00:48:57.240 | or conferences or if they need me for an engineering endeavor, I show up to the office for those.

00:49:03.640 | But otherwise, I'm basically remote.

00:49:06.720 | In your area, if you bought the kind of house that you felt would be suitable for your family,

00:49:13.240 | about how much money do you think that would cost you?

00:49:18.000 | Probably in the ballpark of 400 to 500,000.

00:49:21.960 | And what city is this?

00:49:26.720 | Roughly the city in which we're looking to build or buy.

00:49:31.400 | Yes.

00:49:32.880 | Northville, Plymouth, or Canton, primarily are the three towns or townships we've been

00:49:41.040 | looking in.

00:49:42.040 | So this is the state of Ohio.

00:49:43.040 | And in your area in Ohio, you can't find...

00:49:46.240 | Not Ohio.

00:49:47.240 | Not Ohio, it's Michigan.

00:49:48.240 | Michigan, okay.

00:49:49.240 | I actually live in Michigan.

00:49:50.240 | I just have a legacy number.

00:49:53.240 | That's fine.

00:49:54.240 | All good.

00:49:55.240 | So that's what I was trying to figure out.

00:49:56.240 | So in your area of Michigan, you couldn't find a suitable house that would be a substantial

00:50:02.360 | upgrade on your condo and provide you with more room that would be a comfortable lifestyle

00:50:08.200 | for $250,000 right now in the market?

00:50:14.280 | For 250?

00:50:19.320 | We've looked, but relative to our market, it's just...

00:50:25.840 | At that sort of price point, it's a house that's so outdated, I know how much work that

00:50:29.800 | I would have to probably put into it to get it to an optimal living standard, I guess

00:50:36.480 | I would say.

00:50:37.480 | It's just surprising to me because in Miami, Florida, I can buy a very nice house for $500,000.

00:50:46.280 | So it's surprising to me that the difference between Michigan and Florida in your area.

00:50:51.560 | Now you know the local market, I don't.

00:50:53.000 | So that's a little surprising to me.

00:50:54.800 | So let's talk through your options.

00:50:56.680 | Number one, can you buy a house?

00:50:58.640 | Obviously you can.

00:51:00.080 | You have lots of money saved, you make a high household income, you can easily and comfortably

00:51:05.120 | afford to purchase a home that is more comfortable for your family.

00:51:10.180 | Is that a good idea?

00:51:12.200 | Almost certainly yes.

00:51:14.360 | Almost certainly yes.

00:51:15.680 | Why?

00:51:16.680 | Number one, at this stage of life, you will be able to appreciate the space much more

00:51:22.440 | than previously.

00:51:24.480 | You'll be able to appreciate what you're doing, the time, the family time.

00:51:30.280 | It'll provide a good grounding for your family to say like, "This is our family home."

00:51:35.400 | You'll be able to enjoy some of the many benefits of home ownership.

00:51:39.180 | You can make the home how you like it.

00:51:41.480 | You can have the joy of building equity, of having kind of all the benefits of home ownership.

00:51:49.320 | And almost certainly 10 years from now, if you buy a good house, a wise house that really

00:51:55.600 | fits you, almost certainly this is going to be a great financial move.

00:51:58.760 | Almost certainly.

00:52:00.560 | Purchasing your own home and owning your own home is a good thing.

00:52:04.160 | And you guys are in the place where you can easily and comfortably afford it.

00:52:09.640 | So is there any hesitation whatsoever?

00:52:13.520 | I think the hesitation is just whether you are content with that normal traditional path

00:52:21.600 | of good traditional money management, or whether you want something a little bit more aggressive.

00:52:28.760 | And if that more aggressive path fits into what you're doing.

00:52:34.000 | I would guess that almost any house that you purchase, especially if you need to buy something

00:52:39.980 | in the $400,000 to $500,000 range, you're going to be paying more than $10,200 per year

00:52:46.160 | of pure expenses.

00:52:48.240 | I mean insurance, interest, tax, I would guess.

00:52:52.960 | Now I don't know that for certain.

00:52:54.600 | You should test that and find out.

00:52:57.160 | If I go and buy a $400,000 house, let's say you do an FHA loan, you put down a modest

00:53:01.400 | down payment, how much would you actually be paying in pure expenses?

00:53:06.040 | I would guess it would be much more than $10,200, something more than $10,000 a year.

00:53:10.160 | But perhaps your insurance rates are extremely low in that area.

00:53:13.920 | The interest rates would be modest and your taxes are low.

00:53:16.880 | That's possible in the Michigan area.

00:53:18.360 | I don't know your market.

00:53:20.160 | But if you had an aggressive path towards financial independence, then buying a house

00:53:26.240 | may not be the best plan.

00:53:28.380 | Maybe you said, "We're making $180,000 a year.

00:53:31.120 | We're spending $40,000 a year saving every single dime we can.

00:53:35.220 | And our dream is to move to Portugal in four years and set up kind of a remote lifestyle

00:53:40.000 | living in Portugal as semi-retired people."

00:53:42.400 | Well, in that situation, I would say, "No, don't buy a house.

00:53:45.240 | Stay with a rented apartment.

00:53:46.240 | It's inexpensive.

00:53:47.240 | You can deal with the frustration of the small space for a few years and you've got an aggressive

00:53:50.980 | financial independence goal."

00:53:52.720 | I haven't heard you say that, but if that is your goal, you should consider it.

00:53:56.200 | Now what else could you do?

00:53:57.240 | Well, you could say, "I have an aggressive career plan, a career goal.

00:54:02.320 | We're earning $180,000 between us now, but I'd like to make more money."

00:54:06.400 | In this situation, I think that often owning a house is one of your bigger impediments

00:54:11.640 | towards career flexibility.

00:54:14.440 | Many people earn far less than they're capable of because they own a house.

00:54:19.720 | And thus, they don't look for opportunities to move for a better job.

00:54:23.340 | They don't aggressively and actively grow their careers because they're tied to one

00:54:28.240 | place.

00:54:29.240 | Now, if you want to be aggressive in your career, I don't know what your share of the

00:54:32.360 | income is, but let's say you're making a hundred and – if your wife's at 20 hours a week,

00:54:36.080 | maybe you're making 120 and she's making 60 or 50 or whatever.

00:54:40.360 | Right?

00:54:41.360 | Well, if you want to go –

00:54:42.360 | That's about right.

00:54:43.360 | Good.

00:54:44.360 | So 120.

00:54:45.360 | If you want to say, "You know what?

00:54:46.360 | I've been doing well at this and I like my career.

00:54:47.480 | I'm well suited for it.

00:54:48.880 | My goal is four years from now, I want to be making 320, not 120."

00:54:54.680 | Well, in that situation, you're probably not going to do it in your local area.

00:54:59.440 | You're probably going to need to be more aggressive in your career search.

00:55:02.320 | And so in my experience, this is the most disregarded area of financial planning.

00:55:07.280 | People don't actively build their careers, but when they do start doing it, there's usually

00:55:11.080 | going to be a geographic move involved.

00:55:13.340 | So are you the kind of guy who if you could facilitate a job offer over the next three

00:55:19.200 | to five years for $320,000 a year, are you the kind of guy who would move to take that

00:55:24.480 | job offer?

00:55:25.480 | If so, you might be better off just simply renting, but renting a bigger house than buying

00:55:30.360 | something, perhaps.

00:55:32.000 | Now, what's the other side?

00:55:34.200 | You say, "No, Joshua.

00:55:35.200 | Listen, we like it here in Michigan.

00:55:36.880 | Where our family is here, our friends are here.

00:55:38.720 | I'm content with my career.

00:55:40.000 | I might take some promotions, but I'm not going to do this aggressive thing.

00:55:43.240 | I'm not going to move from here to Dallas or from here to New York City just to make

00:55:47.400 | more money.

00:55:48.400 | We like this.

00:55:49.400 | We like the Michigander lifestyle and we want to stay here."

00:55:52.360 | Totally fine.

00:55:53.360 | In that case, the weight is on your buying a house.

00:55:56.360 | The third thing that you should consider is, am I buying a house for now or am I trying

00:56:02.080 | to buy a house forever?

00:56:03.680 | Now, obviously forever is a very long time, but let me explain.

00:56:07.680 | The biggest regret that I have from my younger years is that I did not intentionally buy

00:56:14.520 | a portfolio of houses for me to live in using the Nomad real estate strategy.

00:56:20.480 | Now, there are a couple of real estate strategies that have acquired some names.

00:56:26.840 | The one here, the Nomad strategy basically goes like this.

00:56:31.040 | You buy a house and you move into it.

00:56:33.640 | You finance the house with a residential mortgage, just a standard everyday house purchase.

00:56:39.920 | You live in it for the amount of time necessary to fulfill the terms of your mortgage, usually

00:56:44.720 | about a year.

00:56:46.240 | And then after a year, you get some renters for that house and you go and buy another

00:56:51.040 | one and purchase another one.

00:56:53.320 | Your renters move into the house.

00:56:55.120 | They pay off your mortgage for you over time.

00:56:57.540 | You repeat this process the number of times that you want to until you own the number

00:57:02.740 | of houses that you want or need to to fulfill your long-term investment goals.

00:57:07.860 | And I love this strategy.

00:57:09.660 | And for a guy like you with a high six-figure, almost multi-six-figure household income,

00:57:16.680 | with stable W-2 employment, and with lots of cash and no debt, this is a perfect wealth

00:57:22.880 | building strategy for you.

00:57:24.860 | And it's a very low-risk wealth building strategy that you can implement.

00:57:29.620 | The biggest cost to you is the frustration and the hassle of moving regularly.

00:57:35.280 | Now, if you're coming from a small apartment, I would say you can certainly do this.

00:57:40.100 | If you're thoughtful, you don't acquire too many things, and you just go into it knowing

00:57:43.520 | this is the plan.

00:57:44.880 | So if you really care about big long-term wealth building, what I would encourage you

00:57:48.820 | to do is not try to say, "I'm going to buy the forever house.

00:57:52.260 | I'm going to buy the half a million dollar house with a water view and a nice little

00:57:55.860 | lake and a community with a good school system where we're going to be for the next 20 years."

00:58:00.580 | If that's what you want, you can do it.

00:58:02.060 | You can afford it.

00:58:03.060 | But what I would love to see you guys do is say, "Our goal is to accumulate five houses.

00:58:07.900 | We've got very young children, and so we're going to buy traditional three-bedroom, two-bath

00:58:13.420 | houses with a two-car garage and a backyard in a safe, traditional suburban neighborhood."

00:58:20.860 | And you go in, and you just start doing that.

00:58:23.020 | And your goal is buy the house, first house, with the minimum money down that you can get

00:58:27.620 | good terms on for your mortgage payments.

00:58:30.340 | Put down the minimum amount of money, move into it, live in it for a year, and then buy

00:58:34.300 | another one.

00:58:35.300 | Move into it, live in it for a year, buy another one.

00:58:37.500 | Rent these out.

00:58:38.500 | It's 12 o'clock.

00:58:39.500 | And then after about four years, maybe five years, you now own five houses.

00:58:47.640 | Then go ahead and move into the bigger house.

00:58:50.260 | And then over the coming 20 years, let your tenants pay off the mortgages for you.

00:58:54.260 | If you have excess cash flow, then you might pay off the mortgages one by one.

00:58:58.140 | 20 years from now, you'll be in a situation where you have, say, five rental houses all

00:59:01.700 | paid off, providing you with a good rental income, and you'll be in a really good situation.

00:59:06.300 | So I think that any of those options are available to you, and you and your wife will just want

00:59:10.820 | to think about, "Well, what fits our goals and dreams?

00:59:13.180 | Are we ready to have the nice house?"

00:59:15.180 | If so, you could probably afford it.

00:59:17.620 | Do we want to be flexible to move for a better job?

00:59:19.660 | If you're going to do that, don't buy a bunch of houses in Michigan if you think you might

00:59:22.340 | wind up in Florida.

00:59:24.260 | On the other hand, if you're willing to do that, and she'd be willing to say, "Let's

00:59:27.380 | move for a few years," then set yourself a target and say, "Let's not buy one house.

00:59:31.300 | Let's buy three houses.

00:59:32.340 | Let's buy five houses, and then go ahead and buy that nice house on the lake."

00:59:36.180 | So just consider some of these alternative views and see if any of them appeal to you

00:59:39.260 | and your wife.

00:59:40.260 | >>Joshua Foer: I greatly appreciate it, Joshua.

00:59:44.660 | That's one thing that we've been mulling over is the option of doing that.

00:59:48.180 | Last time we consulted with you, we had discussed that, and we looked into a few of the different

00:59:53.020 | areas, because as with most major cities, there's areas that are worth trying to purchase

00:59:59.060 | a house of that scale and invest in and leapfrog, and there's other areas that aren't as advantageous.

01:00:07.420 | So we've been trying to figure out which are the best areas for us to actually cherry pick

01:00:13.340 | from.

01:00:14.340 | And just with COVID and this housing explosion and just the cost of even those houses have

01:00:20.540 | risen so dramatically that it's kind of pushed us away from it a little bit.

01:00:27.300 | But we'll definitely revisit it and see if we can find something that works for the plan.

01:00:34.340 | >>Steve: My summary statement, to make it very clear, would be from my perspective,

01:00:39.100 | without question, you can afford a house, and you probably should buy a house.

01:00:46.020 | You will appreciate the space, you'll appreciate those things, and it'll make a substantial

01:00:50.980 | improvement in your lifestyle, and you can leverage it in many ways.

01:00:55.300 | So hopefully that's a clear enough place to leave it.

01:00:58.540 | Let's stay in the state of Ohio.

01:00:59.540 | Welcome to the show.

01:01:00.540 | How can I serve you today?

01:01:01.540 | 513 area code.

01:01:02.540 | Yep, that's you.

01:01:03.540 | Go ahead.

01:01:04.540 | >>Joshua: Thank you, Joshua.

01:01:08.660 | You recently mentioned you had a conversation with President Veep Jadlata of Leverland.

01:01:14.340 | I might have mispronounced the last name there.

01:01:17.700 | >>Steve: When I asked him, hold on, hold on.

01:01:20.060 | It was funny, right when we were sitting down to do the interview that you heard, I was

01:01:23.340 | sitting there, I was like, "Okay, now precisely please tell me how to say your last name."

01:01:27.660 | And he was like, "Josh, don't even just try.

01:01:29.340 | Just don't even try.

01:01:30.500 | Just call me Veep."

01:01:31.500 | That was why I had that awkward introduction.

01:01:33.100 | I'm like, "I'm here with Veep, President of Leverland, instead of a properly pronounced

01:01:37.420 | last name," because he wouldn't tell me.

01:01:39.300 | He's like, "Don't even bother."

01:01:41.540 | My check was not up to snuff.

01:01:44.940 | >>Joshua: You said that you actually had an interview.

01:01:48.820 | Did you record that and publish it?

01:01:50.140 | >>Steve: I did.

01:01:51.140 | >>Joshua: Am I missing some...

01:01:52.140 | >>Steve: That was immediately prior.

01:01:53.140 | I published it on June 3 into the podcast feed.

01:01:56.980 | So since we're recording this on June 4, you may not have seen it yet.

01:01:59.260 | But yes, it's there for you now.

01:02:00.780 | >>Joshua: Okay.

01:02:01.940 | Well, we might be recapping some stuff.

01:02:03.780 | But as far as what you understand, can you rate the project of Leverland on a scale from

01:02:13.220 | novel proof of concept to is it just actually got some potential if they get some sort of

01:02:22.340 | agency as far as being recognized by other countries?

01:02:26.660 | And where do you see that agency coming from as far as...

01:02:30.860 | I'm assuming a very small GDP, not a lot of trade, not a lot of constituents.

01:02:39.060 | Do you see this as a promising project that can be built upon and is just waiting on people

01:02:51.620 | that just take the risk, I guess, waiting for Mayflower?

01:02:56.660 | >>Steve So let's talk... yeah, I love the question.

01:03:01.100 | I'm so grateful that you called in to talk about it because it's something that is really

01:03:04.420 | fascinating to consider.

01:03:07.580 | And we simply don't know.

01:03:09.820 | When you think about what is a country, what is a nation state, which are not synonymous

01:03:17.460 | terms, these can be very interesting concepts.

01:03:22.100 | And there are a lot of so-called micro nations that have tried different things over the

01:03:28.060 | years.

01:03:29.060 | There are today micro nations.

01:03:31.300 | And so let's talk about land, right?

01:03:32.860 | Leverland, the current land is very small, the amount of land that they have.

01:03:37.380 | But that's not necessarily a problem, right?

01:03:40.420 | That's not necessarily something that makes a nation.

01:03:45.620 | There is a nation that does not have any land.

01:03:48.060 | It's called the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, something like that.

01:03:53.780 | The Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta.

01:03:56.500 | And so this nation is an official nation, it's an official country.

01:04:00.540 | It has observer status at the United Nations.

01:04:03.220 | It's recognized by over a hundred countries all around the world.

01:04:08.820 | But this country has no land.

01:04:10.500 | It has a legacy.

01:04:11.540 | It's 800 years old, something like that.

01:04:14.300 | But it currently has no land.

01:04:15.540 | It has a leased property on the island of Malta.

01:04:19.220 | It has an office, I believe, in Rome and a building somewhere else, like a third building.

01:04:24.380 | Now, is this a real nation?

01:04:26.780 | Well, yes, by many, many cases, it is a real nation.

01:04:31.260 | But is it a real nation that provides all of the services that you might have as, say,

01:04:35.340 | a US American citizen?

01:04:37.300 | Answer is no, it's certainly not.

01:04:39.160 | But there are lots of other nations that are small but do provide more of those services.

01:04:43.660 | For example, the most common one to look to is Monaco.

01:04:46.780 | Monaco is a real country.

01:04:48.620 | Monaco has thousands of inhabitants.

01:04:51.180 | Monaco has citizens that live there, that work there.

01:04:55.820 | They have a bustling economy.

01:04:58.300 | They have a prince.

01:04:59.380 | They have a government.

01:05:00.380 | They have passports.

01:05:01.380 | They have international recognition.

01:05:03.820 | But they're extraordinarily, it's a small nation.

01:05:07.020 | They have no military.

01:05:08.060 | They have, the borders are totally open, even though they technically have them.

01:05:11.920 | And so is it a nation?

01:05:13.260 | Well, yes, certainly.

01:05:14.620 | What about other small countries?

01:05:16.500 | Singapore, right?

01:05:17.620 | Very small when you compare the land mass of Russia to Singapore.

01:05:21.820 | Obviously it's night and day, but Singapore is a very real country.

01:05:25.060 | So could this little island and a little bit of land out in the middle of, on the border

01:05:29.180 | between Serbia and Croatia, could this become a nation?

01:05:32.780 | Certainly.

01:05:33.780 | Now, what I thought was interesting, I've previously laughed off the project.

01:05:36.620 | And by the way, you need to be, you should be skeptical of these projects because there

01:05:41.300 | is a long history of, what's the right word?

01:05:45.860 | There's an adjective that I'm wrestling for.

01:05:48.740 | There's a long history of unique people.

01:05:53.020 | I hate it when my language abilities fail me.

01:05:56.580 | Of just unique people that are, iconoclasts would be one word we could use.

01:06:02.740 | There's a history of iconoclasts saying, "I'm going to do this certain thing."

01:06:06.580 | Right?

01:06:07.580 | You think of the history of sea land, for example.

01:06:09.740 | The nation, the principality of sea land, where a guy goes out and he colonizes this

01:06:15.700 | offshore oil rig in the seas by, was it by England or Ireland, the Netherlands, somewhere

01:06:21.860 | in that area of the world, and creates the principality of sea land.

01:06:26.300 | Well, okay.

01:06:27.780 | He did his thing for years, sold passports for sea land, et cetera, but never went anywhere.

01:06:34.020 | So certainly there's a long history.

01:06:35.580 | And all throughout the world, there are hundreds and hundreds of small little, you know, Pogestan

01:06:42.580 | and Abkhazia and all these different little enclaves of people that started.

01:06:47.420 | But then there's even places like Taiwan, right?

01:06:49.600 | So Taiwan, is Taiwan a country?

01:06:52.060 | Well, it's a matter of tremendous international debate.

01:06:55.980 | And so people don't even believe that, many people in the world don't even believe that

01:06:58.620 | Taiwan is a country.

01:07:00.620 | Is Palestine a nation, right?

01:07:02.680 | So what is a nation is actually a very difficult question to answer.

01:07:07.720 | So could this little island and other strip of land between Serbia and Croatia, could

01:07:12.920 | it actually, you know, be a country?

01:07:16.000 | Well, Vite would say it is a country.

01:07:18.360 | He has diplomatic relations with Somaliland.

01:07:20.600 | And as we said in the interview that you haven't listened to yet, here's Somaliland, here's

01:07:24.360 | a nation of 5 million people with borders, with government, with an economy, but still

01:07:29.560 | most of the world does not recognize Somaliland as a nation.

01:07:34.280 | So is it or not?

01:07:37.640 | What I think, and then I'll go on for just a moment more, right?

01:07:41.120 | We're so tied to the land, to the concept of land.

01:07:44.360 | Well here's the reality though.

01:07:46.520 | A country like Liberland might get its start with a small island, but in reality, that

01:07:54.640 | particular country doesn't have to stay with a small island, right?

01:08:00.680 | He, Vite has organized and they have arranged the purchase or the lease, I'm not sure which,

01:08:07.200 | of a parcel of land from the nation of Serbia where they are establishing a free trade zone.

01:08:14.400 | And so in that free trade zone, they have the ability now to expand the territory and

01:08:22.000 | they can build more parts of their nation.

01:08:25.480 | And so even in terms of foreign missions, right?

01:08:28.560 | Vite has succeeded in attracting a team of diplomats for the nation of Liberland all

01:08:33.880 | around the world and they're establishing foreign missions in other countries.

01:08:37.680 | There are communities around the world of Liberland people living together and building

01:08:42.640 | communities in local areas.

01:08:44.280 | And so just because a nation starts very small doesn't mean that the nation can't grow.

01:08:49.040 | And it doesn't mean that if the nation is going to grow that all of a sudden they have

01:08:51.120 | to start fighting a bunch of wars, which of course would be completely antithetical to

01:08:54.200 | the principles and philosophy of a nation like Liberland.

01:08:58.080 | What's interesting, you start thinking about these topics all around the world, there are

01:09:02.920 | countries that are spread across the globe.

01:09:04.720 | The United States, right?

01:09:05.720 | What does the United States have?

01:09:06.920 | The United States has the continental US, but then there is an exclave of Alaska that's

01:09:12.040 | completely separate from the United States, but is considered by everyone to be part of

01:09:17.520 | the nation of the United States.

01:09:19.560 | And Alaska came via land purchase from Russia.

01:09:23.080 | You have islands like Hawaii, but then you have other parcels of the United States.

01:09:28.160 | You have the Marianas Islands or American Samoa, Puerto Rico, these different parts

01:09:32.720 | of the United States that are spread all around the world.

01:09:35.200 | And it's the same with almost any nations, right?

01:09:37.120 | You got Russia, but then Russia owns Kaliningrad in Europe, which is part of continental Europe,

01:09:46.920 | completely separated from Russia, but it is Russia.

01:09:49.640 | So a nation like Liberland, if they have people, they could buy land, they could expand.

01:09:55.500 | The nation of Liberland today might be a few square miles starting from this island, but

01:09:59.920 | then the nation of Liberland for 20 years from now could be very different.

01:10:04.360 | So the answer is it depends.

01:10:06.040 | And it depends upon what the found, as I see it, it depends upon what the founders of that

01:10:11.720 | nation are able to do.

01:10:13.260 | So what Vite needs right now is he needs people to be more involved in building the economy

01:10:18.240 | of Liberland.

01:10:19.360 | He needs people to physically locate their businesses in the free trade zone that Liberland

01:10:24.140 | has established in Serbia.

01:10:25.840 | He needs people, they've negotiated a community that they're building, and they've had an

01:10:29.620 | architect draw up plans for property.

01:10:33.260 | And so he needs people to actually commit to building houses there and living there,

01:10:37.700 | etc., to establish the nation of Liberland.

01:10:41.780 | It's great that they can have the houseboats right now and they're having parties and events,

01:10:46.180 | etc.

01:10:47.180 | And I think obviously what else could you expect at this stage, but it has to continue

01:10:50.260 | on and grow.

01:10:51.340 | And so I've thought a lot.

01:10:52.780 | Do I believe that this kind of thing could have a future?

01:10:55.300 | My answer is yeah, I do believe it.

01:10:57.180 | I'm not going to stake 100% of my future on this particular project.

01:11:01.380 | Vite, as he's traveling around the world, he's not, even though he holds a Liberland

01:11:06.580 | passport, he's not traveling around the world exclusively on his Liberland passport.

01:11:12.980 | He has his Czech passport, right?

01:11:15.540 | But he's still active and he's still building it.

01:11:18.260 | And so the answer as to whether or not it could succeed will depend, in my estimation,

01:11:24.380 | on his and other Liberlanders' ability to attract people to their personal project and

01:11:30.820 | people's willingness to commit.

01:11:33.340 | I told Vite about, I don't think he'd read it, but I shared with him a number of years

01:11:36.740 | ago I read James Wesley Rawls' novel called Land of Promise.

01:11:41.220 | And I think it was his most poorly written novel compared to his Patriot series that

01:11:46.820 | was, even with all of its idiosyncrasies, was a much more well-written series.

01:11:52.660 | But the concept of it was basically this concept.

01:11:55.460 | The concept of that novel, Land of Promise, was that people would go take a very undesirable

01:12:01.840 | piece of land – in this case it was an undesirable desert in Africa – and committed people,

01:12:07.380 | people that were committed to the cause, would establish a new nation.

01:12:10.300 | In Rawls' book Land of Promise, it was committed evangelical Christians and Jews that wanted

01:12:15.580 | to build a free state with a strong influence of Christian principles.

01:12:21.180 | And so they go to this nation in the middle of nowhere and they start building the country.

01:12:25.180 | And they have to come up with new technologies to actually physically settle people there.

01:12:29.460 | They came up with an unwanted piece of land between borders.

01:12:32.500 | That was how the novel developed.

01:12:34.020 | They sold citizenships in that passport and they came up with services that the country

01:12:37.720 | could offer.

01:12:38.980 | And of course it was a novel, but that was where I first started thinking about it a

01:12:42.180 | number of years ago.

01:12:43.180 | So I think it could work.

01:12:45.620 | Is it going to work?

01:12:47.040 | Time will tell.

01:12:48.040 | If you think about the US-American experiment, there was a time at which you would have been

01:12:52.720 | laughed at if you thought that the United States of America could succeed and flourish.

01:12:58.220 | You know, what, 50 or 100 guys are going to come together.

01:13:01.520 | They're going to agree on these principles.

01:13:03.180 | They're going to unite some delegates from all these different colonies and they're going

01:13:07.060 | to come together and they're going to face off militarily and fight off the largest army

01:13:12.340 | in the world.

01:13:13.340 | Like, that's insane.

01:13:14.340 | It's ridiculous.

01:13:15.640 | And yet that's history.

01:13:17.360 | And so I want to support it.

01:13:19.700 | You know, I'm now, I've made my application for Liberland residency, waiting to see on

01:13:26.620 | the approval and everything like that.

01:13:27.900 | I paid for it with Bitcoin, which is exciting to me.

01:13:31.580 | And if I wind up sending them a few thousand dollars and nothing comes of it 10 years from

01:13:36.340 | now, I won't regret it a bit because I want to see people experiment with these things.

01:13:41.100 | I want to see these concepts and these ideas grow because if you believe in the concept

01:13:44.660 | of freedom and right to self-governance, et cetera, then there should be an ability to

01:13:48.740 | do that.

01:13:49.740 | And in the modern world, I think that we're going to see more and more nations start to

01:13:55.380 | compete with one another and there's no fundamental reason why 50 years from now, Liberland could

01:14:02.340 | not be a well-recognized country.

01:14:05.820 | I mean, put it in conclusion, right?

01:14:08.240 | If Taiwan still fights for recognition, if you have, who was the actor that came out

01:14:16.460 | and apologized for saying that Taiwan is a country, like the ridiculous stuff this last

01:14:19.660 | year, if Taiwan, this independent powerhouse of a country, is still fighting the world

01:14:26.580 | for recognition of its status from China and every day is wondering whether China is going

01:14:30.960 | to come and occupy them again militarily, then a lot of these concepts are not as set

01:14:37.140 | in stone as you might think.

01:14:39.020 | And largely it's a matter of what will people accept.

01:14:42.340 | If somebody's going to accept that, you know, Nauru or Palau are independent nations, then

01:14:47.940 | why can't Liberland be an independent nation?

01:14:50.900 | But there's a whole lot of diplomatic work that's got to happen for that to happen and

01:14:54.900 | it'll depend on the community that's attracted to Veet's project.

01:15:00.020 | What do you think?

01:15:01.020 | >>Jay: Right on.

01:15:02.020 | I just recently been opened up to the possibility of checking it out, so I don't have a fully

01:15:10.140 | formed opinion.

01:15:11.140 | I think I'm very interested in it and I see it almost as, this is probably the wrong way

01:15:21.140 | to say it, but a charitable move as far as it just sort of gives me hope that something

01:15:30.420 | like that is out there and the only way it's going to work is if people make it happen.

01:15:35.100 | So being one of the first to make it happen in no way is a, you know, something you would

01:15:44.500 | recommend your average person, but it was someone with the capability of doing so and

01:15:52.420 | that sees a little bit of promise there or hope.

01:15:58.620 | I think it's something that I'm willing to learn more about and I'm not sure if that's

01:16:10.780 | enough to go on there, but I also have another question if you've got time.

01:16:14.300 | >>Trey: Yeah, go ahead.

01:16:15.300 | We'll do it quickly.

01:16:16.300 | Go ahead.

01:16:17.300 | >>Jay: Okay.

01:16:18.300 | As far as looking at C-State, which is like the opposite of a new country, it's more removing

01:16:24.940 | yourself from any country than going to participate in starting a country.

01:16:31.100 | And in that instance, you have, I guess, even less agency because it's you versus whoever

01:16:39.380 | would like to trespass on whatever you see your rights are.

01:16:43.680 | If you are not associated with military or rule of law, I've heard some stories of like

01:16:48.940 | contractors working down even in Antarctica, you know, where you would imagine things would

01:16:53.620 | be somewhat civil, but where workers' comp cases or disability is just, you know, completely

01:17:03.180 | ignored because there's no jurisdiction.

01:17:05.860 | So who are you going to go to?

01:17:08.540 | So what do you see as, I guess I'm trying to say stepping into both of them, C-Stating

01:17:21.820 | and stepping into if you were to actually go and try and engage in commerce in this

01:17:28.500 | free trade area, you're sort of stepping into the legal void, obviously C-Stating more so

01:17:36.380 | than actually doing trade, you know, on land with somewhat of a government.

01:17:46.140 | Do you see the risk of stepping into that extremely high, something that can be hedged

01:17:55.340 | against or more or less, you know, with proper planning, you know, you're good to go.

01:18:04.540 | If you were to get involved with C-Stating, would you try to join one of the communities

01:18:08.300 | that's already trying to build such a project?

01:18:10.660 | Would you do this independently?

01:18:11.660 | Would you just, are you talking about you living on your sailboat bouncing around the

01:18:14.660 | world?

01:18:15.660 | What would that look like for you personally?

01:18:19.660 | As far as joining, I would probably join a community because I have seen instances of

01:18:28.620 | people setting up their own little floating domicile in international waters and just

01:18:35.220 | the closest government decides to come up with reasons why that can't happen.

01:18:42.220 | So like I said, it's kind of the C-Stating alone is you versus potentially anyone.

01:18:49.900 | So I definitely would not go that route.

01:18:53.500 | I don't have much of a formed opinion.

01:18:55.460 | I think that all these ideas are interesting and I respect the iconoclasts and curmudgeons,

01:19:01.740 | that was the word I was looking for earlier.

01:19:03.500 | I respect the iconoclasts and curmudgeons who decide this is for me and I'm going to

01:19:08.220 | be, you know, the guy who does this.

01:19:11.900 | Perhaps it's my children, almost certainly it is my children, but I'm not quite that

01:19:17.500 | radical.

01:19:18.500 | I don't, and I'm pretty bored by it, right?

01:19:20.860 | For me personally, like when I think about living on a sailboat even.

01:19:24.060 | Someday I may do it, but honestly whenever I think about living on a sailboat I just

01:19:27.860 | think of total boredom and I'm like, "I want to go out and live on a sailboat and bounce

01:19:31.580 | around in some lagoon day after day after day and go from beach to beach to beach."

01:19:36.220 | Like that doesn't sound super attractive to me and appealing to me.

01:19:40.620 | Most people it does.

01:19:41.980 | And so seasteading, like there's nothing, there's no real freedom that I can't, there's

01:19:48.180 | no real freedom that I need to do that kind of approach that I can't get in a simpler

01:19:54.580 | way.

01:19:55.700 | There are a few freedoms that are important to me and they're pretty basic and pretty

01:20:01.700 | easy to accomplish and I don't have any, and I have found the most practical of these is

01:20:08.500 | just simply the concept of PT theory or flag theory.

01:20:11.860 | To me that's the most practical approach because I could live really almost anywhere in the

01:20:17.980 | world and because I'm not doing much that I require government approval for.

01:20:27.740 | And so even people who do, right?

01:20:30.180 | If you want to do drugs, right?

01:20:32.220 | Go to a place where drugs are legal.

01:20:33.580 | There's lots of places where you can do that.

01:20:34.980 | You don't have to go and do drugs on your sailboat.

01:20:36.840 | You can just go to a country where there's no problem.

01:20:40.580 | If it's any vice that you're involved in, gambling or shooting automatic, this is not

01:20:44.940 | a vice, but you want to shoot automatic weapons, go to Belarus and hang out with some guys

01:20:50.020 | and shoot some automatic weapons or go and find someone who's got the appropriate licenses

01:20:53.460 | in the United States and do it there.

01:20:55.620 | There's plenty of options available to do almost anything that you want to do without

01:21:00.060 | going to those extreme areas.

01:21:02.720 | Things that are important to me, right?

01:21:05.300 | Are pretty simple.

01:21:06.300 | I want to be free to educate my children in the way that I believe is best.

01:21:11.700 | Now I don't have to go offshore to do that.

01:21:13.900 | I might need to move from Germany to the United States or from Germany to Mexico or something

01:21:18.500 | like that, but that's pretty easily done.

01:21:21.620 | Whereas going offshore is a little bit harder.

01:21:26.200 | I want to be able to say what I think is right.

01:21:32.340 | But generally speaking, virtually all of the world has a significant level of freedom of

01:21:36.900 | speech and so I don't need to go and live offshore for that.

01:21:40.660 | I want to be able to serve God and love my neighbor, right?

01:21:43.480 | But I can do that even in the middle of a totalitarian dictatorship.

01:21:47.280 | And so for me personally, people are worried about medical freedoms, right?

01:21:51.620 | To put in your body what you want to put in your body.

01:21:54.020 | You can do that in most places in the world without having to go offshore.

01:21:57.100 | And so I'm just not going to...

01:22:01.060 | Sometimes libertarians are an odd bunch.

01:22:04.300 | And a lot of times people are so interested in the theories of libertarianism and maximum

01:22:10.020 | freedom that they get lost in philosophical analysis and they don't actually do anything.

01:22:14.740 | And so I feel like that's probably the case with things like Sealand.

01:22:19.700 | Maybe it's things like Liberland.

01:22:22.580 | And it's not strictly necessary in my opinion.

01:22:24.580 | I think that, at least for me personally, I've found that I can have pretty much all

01:22:28.220 | of what I want with multiple countries, PT theory, etc.

01:22:33.900 | And then, you know, frankly I could live pretty well in the United States too.

01:22:37.900 | I'm much more open now that I know I don't have to live in the United States.

01:22:42.500 | I'm much happier with many things in the United States now and I could live happily there

01:22:46.900 | myself.

01:22:48.340 | So I love the experiments happening.

01:22:50.660 | And if you look at the experiments, you know, a bunch of visionaries who want to do an experiment

01:22:57.980 | can wind up influencing the world.

01:23:00.860 | Whether it's the founders of the United States of America, whether it's visionaries involved

01:23:07.680 | in other areas.

01:23:08.680 | But I'd rather personally right now, for freedom, I'd rather personally be involved living in,

01:23:14.860 | you know, like I did in yesterday's show.

01:23:17.140 | I'd rather be living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working on how do I create systems of money

01:23:25.860 | and financial exchange that serve the tens of millions of inhabitants of Ethiopia in

01:23:32.380 | a way that the international banks just simply aren't doing.

01:23:35.560 | And I feel like that will do more to encourage freedom than seasteading.

01:23:40.580 | I'd rather be involved in the 3D makerspace community, teaching people how to print plastic

01:23:45.220 | guns in their basement.

01:23:46.860 | That'll do a lot more for freedom than me going and, you know, necessarily, you know,

01:23:52.780 | settling in sea land or something like that.

01:23:55.380 | So I guess I'm a little more practical than some others are at this point.

01:23:59.300 | Being extremely unproductive.

01:24:00.300 | But I love talking about it.

01:24:05.300 | Thank you so much for calling in and giving me a chance to talk about it.

01:24:07.740 | And I do hope personally to go, hopefully this summer or fall, I hope to go and visit

01:24:14.300 | Liberland.

01:24:15.300 | And I'll talk about how the borders go and how the travels open up.

01:24:18.180 | We finish out today with Stephen in Maryland.

01:24:19.940 | Stephen, welcome to the show.

01:24:20.940 | How can I serve you today, sir?

01:24:21.940 | Hey, Joshua.

01:24:22.940 | Thanks for taking my call.

01:24:23.940 | My pleasure.

01:24:24.940 | Just calling in to get a sanity check on our current family of plans, making sure that

01:24:29.300 | we're on the right path.

01:24:30.300 | You'll hear a lot of corollaries with the last caller from Michigan.

01:24:34.060 | So kind of give you a background.

01:24:35.580 | You know, I've been listening to you for a number of years now.

01:24:38.060 | I've actually taken steps to implement a lot of the concepts that you talk about on the

01:24:42.940 | show, including insurance.

01:24:45.900 | We're exploring potentially homeschooling our children, getting involved with real estate

01:24:50.900 | investing.

01:24:51.900 | And as of recently, I've been able to secure a 100% remote job situation for our family.

01:25:00.740 | And my wife is taking the steps now to step away from work and become a stay at home mom.

01:25:07.780 | We have a lot going on, a lot due to the show.

01:25:11.020 | So to kind of give you background on our plans now and where we're coming from, we have two

01:25:16.420 | children, a three-year-old and a one-year-old, both boys.

01:25:20.140 | We've been living in our townhouse since 2013.

01:25:22.420 | We're starting to feel a little bit cramped, not having a yard space that we're accustomed

01:25:27.900 | to.

01:25:28.900 | You know, my wife and I grew up with very large yards.

01:25:32.460 | And a lot of our family lives in South Carolina, and a lot of our family is moving to South

01:25:37.060 | Carolina.

01:25:38.060 | So we're very connected to our family.

01:25:39.580 | We want to stay connected.

01:25:42.700 | And currently we have about a quarter million dollars in the bank, and we're about $50,000

01:25:48.020 | away from a million dollar net worth.

01:25:51.260 | So we're considering selling the townhouse in Maryland.

01:25:54.780 | We played around with the idea of renting it, but trying to rent it from South Carolina

01:25:59.180 | doesn't seem like a great situation.

01:26:03.220 | So we're thinking about selling it and then establishing about six to eight months' worth

01:26:07.900 | of Airbnb contracts.

01:26:10.460 | And so we were thinking about living in Florida near Disney World for four months, and then

01:26:16.180 | maybe four months of Airbnbs in the state of South Carolina to get a feel for the area

01:26:20.540 | and see where we would want to settle down.

01:26:23.820 | And part of that move would include trading our very expensive Jeep that I bought pre-listening

01:26:30.140 | to your show.

01:26:31.140 | It's fully paid off.

01:26:32.580 | Trading that in for a minivan, selling the second car, putting all of our stuff in storage,

01:26:37.620 | and like a pod situation, and then executing on that plan where we stay for four months

01:26:42.260 | in Florida and then four months of Airbnbs throughout the state of South Carolina.

01:26:47.020 | Some concerns that I have with that plan that my wife also has with that plan is the Florida

01:26:52.100 | aspect of the Airbnb is going to be very expensive.

01:26:54.820 | You're talking about spending my entire paycheck, essentially, take-home pay, after fully funding

01:27:01.140 | the 401(k)s and HSAs and stuff like that.

01:27:03.740 | We would pretty much spend everything that we save.

01:27:06.300 | Not a huge deal because we have a lot of money in the bank to execute a purchase of a home

01:27:11.220 | or whatever we decide to do after this trip.

01:27:15.220 | The other concern that we have is very short-term.

01:27:17.220 | We're talking eight months of Airbnbs, and then what?

01:27:20.300 | What if we don't like South Carolina?

01:27:22.220 | What if there's some things going on right now that maybe we can't live in South Carolina

01:27:26.300 | in terms of my job?

01:27:29.100 | So there's that aspect of it as well.

01:27:30.860 | And then during this trip, there's a chance that my wife gets pregnant.

01:27:35.740 | I think you've mentioned on your shows before where it's very important that she has a very

01:27:40.300 | comfortable space where she can do doctor's appointments and she can be comfortable.

01:27:44.380 | And then, of course, when the baby comes, it's important to be in a long-term situation.

01:27:50.060 | And then the other thing that we're concerned about is losing out on the rental income.

01:27:53.740 | There's this question of do we rent?

01:27:57.140 | And what the long-term impact on our wealth and financial goals will result as this plan

01:28:04.940 | is executed.

01:28:06.820 | So that's the plan in a nutshell.

01:28:10.460 | The other aspect that we're thinking of, and maybe this is a part two question that if

01:28:14.580 | we have time we can get to it, is we're interested in settling down somewhere sooner than later,

01:28:21.100 | if not Maryland, South Carolina, because based on what we learned from your show and some

01:28:25.420 | other shows, we want to start buying that portfolio of investment real estate.

01:28:32.100 | And part of the plan there was to actually buy that dream house, that lake house or that

01:28:37.940 | beach house first as a way to...

01:28:42.300 | It's kind of like the nomad strategy, the nomad real estate investment strategy you

01:28:46.340 | just talked about.

01:28:47.340 | But rather than just traditional rentals, we thought, "Okay, if we buy that lake house

01:28:51.780 | or we buy that beach house first with good terms and conditions based on the mortgage,

01:28:57.140 | then we can potentially turn that into a portfolio that we live close to and then go settle down

01:29:01.900 | in the more traditional neighborhoods."

01:29:04.820 | So that's kind of part two of the question, but really just focused on how risky is it

01:29:11.220 | going to Florida and then South Carolina with six to eight months of Airbnb and not really

01:29:16.140 | having a long-term plan.

01:29:17.700 | I could hear the hearts of four-wheelers and overlanders all over the world sink when you

01:29:25.820 | said, "I'm selling a Jeep and buying a minivan."

01:29:31.980 | People say, "Jobstone, what's wrong with you?

01:29:34.220 | Don't do it.

01:29:35.220 | Don't do it.

01:29:36.220 | No.

01:29:37.220 | Tell Steven not to do it."

01:29:40.540 | So I do have some thoughts, and I think first of all that you should acknowledge that most

01:29:48.380 | of these, while it's important to talk them through and think them through, you have worked

01:29:53.180 | hard to put yourself in a situation where most of these things are pretty simple.

01:29:57.820 | They're pretty easy to do.

01:29:59.980 | All of these moves, you have enough money and you have income, and so you have the freedom

01:30:06.140 | to do any of these things that you want, which is awesome.

01:30:10.260 | And I want to applaud you for doing that because a lot of times people who are in this situation,

01:30:15.020 | they don't stop and think about what they want or go explore for it or go and look for

01:30:19.660 | it.

01:30:20.660 | They often just say, "Oh, I can't do it."

01:30:21.740 | But you've worked hard, you've saved money, and you've worked hard to get a remote job,

01:30:25.420 | and so now you can do that.

01:30:26.820 | I say, "Awesome.

01:30:28.540 | Well done."

01:30:29.540 | Now, when you go to Florida, you mentioned Disney.

01:30:34.600 | Is it important to you to be close to Disney the whole time, or is that just, "Oh, we'd

01:30:38.500 | like to go a few times," or do you want to be in Orlando or Kissimmee?

01:30:42.340 | Yeah, so it's funny.

01:30:45.340 | We never really thought we were Disney people until we went to Disney.

01:30:49.820 | It's one of those things we want to live in while we're there, be on a resort-style setting

01:30:54.920 | where we have the splash pad and all the amenities within the neighborhood, and then within driving

01:30:59.500 | range of the parks because during that time, there'll be Christmas, my son's birthday,

01:31:05.300 | and of course Halloween.

01:31:06.300 | We thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be cool if we could go to the parks and really give our

01:31:11.340 | children that opportunity?"

01:31:12.340 | So close, but not on the gates or on the border.

01:31:16.620 | Okay.

01:31:17.620 | Yeah, it sounds awesome.

01:31:18.620 | It sounds really cool.

01:31:19.620 | So the first thing that I think is obvious to me is, number one, you should probably

01:31:24.060 | spend some time looking into house-sitting.

01:31:26.400 | If you have two children, do you guys have any animals?

01:31:30.480 | We do.

01:31:31.480 | That's what's making this a little bit harder.

01:31:32.480 | So we have a chocolate lab, and so of course the price goes up when you look at Airbnbs

01:31:39.460 | with a pet.

01:31:43.980 | No question, it goes up substantially.

01:31:45.660 | So is there somebody who may be able to pet-sit for a few months where the pet is happy and

01:31:52.180 | they're happy, and you guys know that you're not abandoning your puppy?

01:31:56.100 | Is there a family member or somebody who could take care of the dog for a few months?

01:32:00.260 | I don't think that's going to be an option.

01:32:02.220 | Okay.

01:32:03.220 | Well, then it's going to be more complicated.

01:32:05.800 | First I would say house-sitting is not necessarily out of the range of possibility.

01:32:11.460 | You don't need to do it, but you should think about it because house-sitting or pet-sitting

01:32:15.900 | might be something that you could do that could defray some of the costs over the course

01:32:20.900 | of a month or two.

01:32:22.260 | I don't know.

01:32:23.260 | I would imagine there's quite a lot of demand in the Orlando, Kissimmee area for that kind

01:32:27.900 | of service, but you should look for it.

01:32:31.380 | Number two, I know the Orlando area extremely well.

01:32:36.260 | Depending on where you want to be, right, and what you envision.

01:32:40.060 | Now you have the money.

01:32:41.060 | If you want to stay in a resort, you can stay in a resort, and that will come with certain

01:32:45.820 | things, but the area, the range of towns and places that you can live that is within easy

01:32:55.300 | driving distance to Disney is very high.

01:33:00.140 | There are a lot of towns.

01:33:01.860 | And so you might, if you're just looking in Kissimmee and Orlando on Airbnb, that's one

01:33:05.940 | thing, but if you start bringing in Claremont and Lakeland and Winter Haven and some of

01:33:11.900 | these other towns, then all of a sudden your options will be much, much bigger.

01:33:17.040 | And so if you want to lower the cost while still being within easy driving distance of

01:33:21.340 | Disney, there are a lot of options available to you.

01:33:25.660 | They may not all be on Airbnb, but even Airbnb rentals, there will be a lot of them.

01:33:31.020 | And now, will it provide you with a resort, splash pad, et cetera, all that?

01:33:35.900 | You'll have to look at the amenities of each individual community and judge exactly what

01:33:39.340 | you need.

01:33:40.340 | But you're not restricted to what you can find on international drive, right?

01:33:46.520 | You don't only have to rent a house in, what's the name of the community?

01:33:52.740 | There's like a own developed by Disney, this awesome community that, anyway, it's like,

01:33:59.540 | it'd be cool if I could summon the name.

01:34:03.060 | Anyway, Celebration, there we go.

01:34:04.700 | I knew it had it.

01:34:05.700 | You don't only have to rent a house in Celebration.

01:34:07.500 | If you're not familiar with Celebration, it's this really phenomenal community that's very

01:34:12.140 | close to Disney.

01:34:13.980 | It's awesome.

01:34:14.980 | Really, really neat place.

01:34:16.180 | But you're not restricted to renting a house in Celebration to have easy access to Disney.

01:34:20.100 | You can be 30 minutes away in Winter Haven.

01:34:23.240 | You can go north, you can go south, you can go east, you can go west.

01:34:29.040 | And they're all within easy striking distance.

01:34:31.980 | Anywhere along the I-4 corridor is totally doable.

01:34:35.420 | So if you want to defray the cost a little bit, you should consider that strategy.

01:34:41.220 | I think the other thing that you should consider is, and again, this won't fit with your, with

01:34:46.660 | your, your resort idea, but you should consider just simply having in your back pocket a little

01:34:56.460 | bit of camping.

01:34:57.680 | If you've got a Jeep, then you're probably the kind of person who enjoys going back off

01:35:01.180 | roads.

01:35:02.180 | You know, a teardrop trailer and a ground tent for the Jeep, a pop-up camp or something

01:35:06.420 | like that.

01:35:07.420 | Florida is a wonderful place during the winter to camp and it's really beautiful.

01:35:13.760 | And so if you're the kind of people who are at all outdoorsy, which I'm projecting that

01:35:17.980 | because of the Jeep, you might be a little bit outdoorsy, then that can be really interesting

01:35:22.080 | and fun.

01:35:23.080 | Now it's hard work on your wife with children that young, but it is possible for you.

01:35:29.260 | I affirm what you're saying from a financial planning perspective.

01:35:33.220 | I'm convinced that you, you, when you come to a place in your life where you're thinking

01:35:38.340 | about making a change, you ignore the money, you ignore other investments and you focus

01:35:43.120 | on getting the people in your life right, the place right and then the work right.

01:35:47.180 | And then you go back to the traditional financial planning.

01:35:50.120 | And so the people that you mentioned are family members and I would lean on them a little

01:35:55.660 | bit in the process.

01:35:59.880 | Could you see, is the townhouse paid off?

01:36:02.540 | Do you have expenses on the townhouse?

01:36:03.540 | Yeah, so a couple of clarifying points there.

01:36:07.100 | Maybe I was a little bit unclear.

01:36:08.340 | So the townhouse still has a mortgage on it.

01:36:12.600 | It's relatively easy for us.

01:36:14.640 | So our average expenses for the month, the household, I'm sorry, housing expenses for

01:36:20.160 | like utilities, things like that, it's roughly 2,500.

01:36:23.240 | So it's really low in our budget.

01:36:26.540 | And then, you know, looking at some of these Airbnbs, the price goes up, calculated up

01:36:30.600 | to be almost $7,000 a month, which is just crazy.

01:36:34.980 | And then the $250,000 in the bank, I'm projecting based on the equity that we have in the house,

01:36:42.520 | that will be the cash that we have on hand for the purchase of a future house or multiple

01:36:47.520 | houses depending on the steps that we take.

01:36:50.160 | But currently it's $90,000 less than that.

01:36:54.140 | But using the equity from the home, that will be the cash that we have on hand.

01:36:57.440 | Right, right, right, right.

01:36:58.840 | And you mentioned this resort.

01:36:59.840 | Let me just clarify.

01:37:00.840 | When you picture resort living, tell me what you're picturing.

01:37:06.700 | So when I say resort living, it's mainly just a community that has amenities.

01:37:14.140 | The splash pad for the kids, the home itself.

01:37:17.940 | You know, I don't think we really care if it's a townhouse or a single family house

01:37:22.820 | or like an attached duplex or something as long as you're looking at the pool that comes

01:37:29.860 | with the house.

01:37:30.860 | Typically it's, you know, screened in, it's got the covering and the patio.

01:37:37.700 | Maybe we're just really interested in having the amenities.

01:37:44.340 | One of the reasons why we're so, you know, focused on getting out of our current neighborhood

01:37:49.620 | at the very least is we want to be feeling great in the house, but there's no amenities.

01:37:55.260 | There's nothing to do in the neighborhood.

01:37:56.980 | We're starting to get very bored.

01:37:58.460 | We want things to do with our children.

01:38:01.060 | And so we kind of want to see what that lifestyle was like living in a community like that,

01:38:04.940 | that provided all of those amenities.

01:38:08.220 | Right.

01:38:09.580 | Well, I would say $7,000 a month on Airbnb is a bit steep.

01:38:15.940 | And while you could do it and you could afford it, certainly I'm not sure that you would

01:38:20.940 | enjoy it as much as you might think.

01:38:24.300 | What I would encourage you to do is expand your search around Orlando a little bit.

01:38:30.420 | So the first thing I would do is I would look and say, okay, what can I, let me go a little

01:38:34.520 | bit outside of Orlando.

01:38:35.520 | Let me look a little, little bit outside of Kissimmee and let me not look just on Airbnb.

01:38:41.140 | But what does a seasonal rental look like in, you know, Winter Garden or down in Lakeland,

01:38:47.820 | Winter Haven, Auburndale, Cypress Gardens.

01:38:51.380 | These are all communities where you could come in and you could rent a beautiful, you

01:38:58.060 | know, a beautiful four bedroom house with a pool in a gated community for $2,500 a month,

01:39:04.820 | $3,000 a month with most of that stuff.

01:39:08.740 | And then expand your activities to beyond just the Orlando area as well.

01:39:14.700 | Orlando is awesome, but it's easy to drive in from any of those places.

01:39:19.340 | So anywhere along the I-4 corridor from Tampa to the East Coast is easy, is an easy place

01:39:27.420 | to be.

01:39:28.740 | Anywhere north of Orlando you can find all kinds of options.

01:39:31.940 | And so all of these within 45 minutes of the park.

01:39:34.820 | And let's say that you went from a set of $7,000 a month on Airbnb to $3,000 a month

01:39:39.500 | for a seasonal rental.

01:39:41.160 | And you can get a very nice three month rental on a nice house.

01:39:44.580 | Well that leaves up, let's say you spend another $1,000 a month on actual hotels at Disney

01:39:49.220 | when you go.

01:39:51.420 | And the cost of Disney, you're still in the whole thing with just more options available.

01:39:58.380 | So consider that and see what you find.

01:40:03.660 | I've lost any of the other questions that you had.

01:40:06.580 | Did you have a specific question that I haven't covered?

01:40:09.740 | Yeah.

01:40:10.860 | So the concept of your nomad real estate investment strategy, but sort of lake house.

01:40:20.460 | Yeah, the VRBO aspect of it.

01:40:22.820 | So buying that really nice lake house or beach condo first with the good terms and then potentially

01:40:31.420 | moving to a more normal suburban house that you would go to live in.

01:40:38.540 | Yeah.

01:40:39.540 | I love the idea, especially for someone who's going to work remote and especially with children

01:40:43.180 | the ages of your children.

01:40:45.260 | I think that could work really beautifully for you.

01:40:48.060 | The reason why most people don't do it is number one, of course, employment.

01:40:50.900 | A lot of times the most desirable places to have a lake house or a beach house don't offer

01:40:56.020 | you the kind of employment that many people need.

01:40:59.560 | Since you can work remote, then you can handle that.

01:41:03.180 | The second reason why that often doesn't work is kids schooling and or kids social networks.

01:41:09.220 | So with homeschooling, you shouldn't have too big of a problem with schooling, but even

01:41:13.720 | with regard to social networks and homeschooling co-ops and things like that, a lot of times

01:41:19.820 | those types of communities are more available to you in a bigger city.

01:41:22.760 | So I like the idea a lot and I think it could definitely work.

01:41:26.440 | You come in, you have enough money, you come in, you finance the lake house as your primary

01:41:31.380 | residence, you get good terms on that and then live in it, enjoy it for a time and then

01:41:36.340 | go ahead and put it out as a vacation rental and move to a place that might be more of

01:41:40.820 | what you're looking for.

01:41:41.820 | Would you do that in South Carolina?

01:41:43.020 | Have you looked at any of the lake communities in South Carolina?

01:41:45.340 | >>Joseph: Yeah, absolutely.

01:41:47.540 | I mean, obviously with post-COVID and certainly it feels like a bubble that we're in.

01:41:54.540 | It seems like it's just out of reach, but I'm sure things could potentially change.

01:42:02.060 | Regardless of the price, I haven't really sat down and ran the numbers.

01:42:04.780 | And so if the numbers work, even in an inflated market, based on the expected rental incomes,

01:42:10.620 | then it works.

01:42:11.620 | It's just something that we have to look into.

01:42:13.940 | But back to the South Carolina thing, the concern is we do this six to eight month Airbnb

01:42:21.860 | adventure, for lack of better terms, it's an adventure.

01:42:27.780 | But what if the concern that my wife is having around potentially getting pregnant and not

01:42:33.380 | being able to find that long-term house, potentially we hate South Carolina.

01:42:37.420 | And then we sold the house to Marilyn and me too, we're concerned.

01:42:42.980 | Okay, then what?

01:42:43.980 | Do we just keep up this Airbnb strategy or just find a long-term home and settle down

01:42:50.380 | for a year and figure it out?

01:42:52.220 | >>Dave: Yeah, you just rent a house.

01:42:53.740 | My answer is you just rent a house for a year and figure it out.

01:42:56.520 | It's not that difficult.

01:42:58.320 | Most of this stuff is just a matter of ... There is certainly a concern, right?

01:43:03.060 | You want your wife to feel settled when that time comes, but you have plenty of time.

01:43:08.220 | She's not pregnant now, let's say she becomes pregnant immediately, then you have six months,

01:43:13.460 | right?

01:43:14.460 | Easy six months before you really want to be stable so where she can have everything

01:43:19.340 | in a comfortable position for herself.

01:43:22.420 | And so if you don't find something, then you just simply rent a house.

01:43:26.660 | And you have enough money that this is not that big of a deal.

01:43:29.740 | And you're looking at areas where this is not that big of a deal.

01:43:33.380 | And because you can work remotely and because you have money, even if you ... Let's say

01:43:38.460 | your family is all in Charleston.

01:43:41.220 | Charleston is a wonderful town, right?

01:43:42.840 | You can easily find a rental that would fit your family and a very comfortable price based

01:43:47.580 | upon your budget and be close to your family members.

01:43:50.600 | But in a worst case scenario, let's say you need to be 30 minutes or 60 minutes away from

01:43:54.020 | family just because that was where you found the house that would work for you for a year.

01:43:58.820 | I think you're in great shape and that this is not difficult.

01:44:02.980 | It's not crazy.

01:44:04.580 | It's not a hassle.

01:44:07.140 | Your money and your remote income will smooth all of these things out for you.

01:44:11.380 | I'm not scared of the plan at all.

01:44:13.060 | Fantastic.

01:44:14.060 | It's good to hear.

01:44:15.420 | I appreciate it.

01:44:16.420 | Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

01:44:20.260 | I guess maybe you've heard me say recently, it's only scary the first time.

01:44:25.420 | And same thing with almost everything, buying, selling houses, renting this, renting that.

01:44:30.140 | It's really only scary the first time.

01:44:32.340 | And once you've picked up and moved and kind of bounced around a little bit, then you'll

01:44:36.620 | understand what's great about that and you'll understand what's not great about that.

01:44:40.620 | And my answer is just keep some kind of backup plan.

01:44:44.320 | My biggest fear as a father with children, caring for my wife and children, my biggest

01:44:49.540 | fear is I get stuck.

01:44:51.600 | And I get stuck in a place where I've got to rent something for $7,000 a month and all

01:44:54.660 | of a sudden I don't have the money.

01:44:56.980 | So I always look for what's a backup plan in that situation.

01:45:00.980 | What are the backup plans?

01:45:01.980 | Number one is savings, right?

01:45:03.780 | Making sure you have money.

01:45:05.440 | And then number two is flexibility.

01:45:07.460 | So if I get stuck somewhere for $7,000 a month, okay, maybe this was great for a month.

01:45:12.080 | We loved this Airbnb and the community with the fountain and all the stuff.

01:45:17.420 | But something just happened.

01:45:18.620 | All right, let's go to an hour outside of Orlando and let's go where we can get a big

01:45:24.000 | comfortable house for $2,000 a month on a three-month rental and just kind of square

01:45:28.900 | things away.

01:45:30.420 | And by the way, one of the things that I think you could definitely do is find a place on

01:45:34.820 | Airbnb and/or use Airbnb as a listing.

01:45:38.940 | And of course this violates their terms of service.

01:45:41.740 | But find a property on Airbnb that you like and then contact the owner privately off of

01:45:48.060 | the platform and see if you can negotiate a three-month rental directly.

01:45:51.780 | And there are many Airbnb tenants, sorry, Airbnb landlords that would be happy to negotiate

01:45:57.940 | a three-month rental for you of just, "Hey, the Airbnb price would be $2,500 a month.

01:46:04.520 | But if I just pay up front cash, would you take $6,000 for a three-month rental?"

01:46:10.040 | That gives you the time to stabilize your family.

01:46:12.300 | There's plenty of amenities in all of the communities around.

01:46:15.480 | There are municipal splash pads in most places.

01:46:20.080 | There are community pools.

01:46:21.800 | There's wonderful parks.

01:46:22.920 | You have day trips to Weekee Wachee Springs and all the stuff available to you.

01:46:27.880 | So I don't think it's crazy at all.

01:46:30.080 | The only thing that you want to be careful of is being stuck in $7,000 a month Airbnb

01:46:35.960 | rentals because that'll stress you out.

01:46:37.700 | So I say use them, but then recognize that you're not stuck there.

01:46:40.760 | You can go to South Carolina.

01:46:41.760 | You can go back and forth.

01:46:43.280 | The options are there.

01:46:44.920 | And so that's the other reason why I like the camper option, even if it's just a temporary

01:46:48.640 | thing.

01:46:49.640 | So let's say that maybe you go ahead and sell the Jeep, but maybe you...

01:46:53.920 | Because I think you'll have a much more comfortable trip with the luggage that you need with a

01:46:57.320 | minivan instead of the Jeep.

01:46:59.080 | But keep a tent, a nice tent.

01:47:02.960 | And Florida has some really wonderful parks.

01:47:06.080 | And as a way of temporarily lowering the cost, and you got a one-year-old and three-year-old,

01:47:10.160 | it's a little young to really enjoy that.

01:47:12.640 | But just keep something in your back pocket to where you have low expenses and more options

01:47:17.280 | available to you.

01:47:19.640 | Sounds good.

01:47:22.640 | I'll take that under advice and we'll execute and hopefully I'll see you and let you know

01:47:27.640 | how it all turned out.

01:47:29.560 | Congratulations on all your success.

01:47:30.920 | And if it doesn't turn out well for this particular one, recognize that you just simply rent another

01:47:37.520 | house or you buy another house.

01:47:39.320 | There's plenty of them available and it's not that difficult to do.

01:47:44.080 | That brings us to the end of today's Q&A show.

01:47:48.040 | I want to thank you all for calling in.

01:47:50.240 | I love doing these shows.

01:47:51.760 | And as you see, where else do we talk about seasteading?

01:47:54.480 | Seasteading.

01:47:55.480 | How's that for an out of the box conversation?

01:48:01.280 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:48:02.360 | Have a wonderful weekend and I will be back with you very soon.

01:48:05.360 | (upbeat music)

01:48:07.940 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

2021-06-04_Friday_QA