2021-11-04_Friday

00:00:00.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, it's live Q&A.

00:00:19.960 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:22.840 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while

00:00:26.960 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:30.160 | My name is Joshua Sheets, I am your host, and this is Radical Personal Finance.

00:00:34.200 | And on Fridays here at the show, we do live Q&A.

00:00:38.000 | Open phone lines, you call in, talk about anything that you want.

00:00:41.640 | We chat about how to live a rich life now and build freedom fast.

00:00:47.200 | Each Friday that I can arrange the appropriate recording technology and equipment to be able

00:00:56.800 | to record this podcast.

00:00:59.400 | I do a live Q&A show.

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00:01:28.720 | Friday Q&A shows.

00:01:29.720 | Looks like I got one, two, three, four, five callers on the line right now.

00:01:33.200 | We'll see who else jumps on, but we begin with James.

00:01:35.680 | James, welcome to the show.

00:01:36.680 | How can I serve you today?

00:01:37.680 | Hey, Joshua.

00:01:38.680 | Appreciate you taking my call today.

00:01:39.680 | Let me mute my background noises real quick.

00:01:40.680 | All right, there we go.

00:01:41.680 | So my question is around blogging.

00:01:42.680 | I do a weekly blog that is focused on what I read about history and what I observe from

00:01:56.000 | watching movies, taking in popular culture.

00:01:58.800 | It's all about giving lessons in leadership and personal growth.

00:02:05.360 | And I was curious for your take on how I would think about growing my blog audience.

00:02:11.120 | Right now it's mostly just close friends and a few people I work with, about 60 people

00:02:15.360 | that I send a newsletter to each week.

00:02:17.920 | And I'd like to grow the audience to several hundred people and kind of start to grow an

00:02:21.800 | online community.

00:02:23.960 | And you've got a great thriving community with Radical Personal Finance and so a lot

00:02:27.360 | of experience with that.

00:02:29.160 | And so I'd just be kind of curious with how you would approach that question.

00:02:31.960 | That's a good question.

00:02:33.800 | So first of all, let's confirm that blogging is the right medium for you to be focused

00:02:40.200 | on.

00:02:41.800 | Does writing long form content, does that fit your skills and interests?

00:02:48.960 | Yeah.

00:02:50.720 | So right now the blog is short form, about 200 to 400 words per piece.

00:02:56.080 | So I guess that would be kind of more medium form.

00:03:00.520 | So if I were writing 200 to 400 word essays, I would not write a blog, nor would I host

00:03:06.920 | that kind of writing on a blog.

00:03:08.640 | I would host that kind of writing on Twitter threads.

00:03:12.240 | That would be kind of the ideal scenario for Twitter threads.

00:03:15.160 | And there are plenty of people on Twitter who write about, give their insights on history,

00:03:20.640 | current events, et cetera, using in a relatively short format like that, 200 to 400 pages.

00:03:27.320 | Sorry, let me rephrase, 200 to 400 words.

00:03:31.400 | And I think Twitter there is your most interesting methodology.

00:03:35.480 | And this is very current.

00:03:38.120 | So I believe that blogs can be very useful.

00:03:43.000 | However, blogs are kind of a 10-year-old technology that I think still have their places, but

00:03:51.280 | are not the current and cutting edge.

00:03:52.920 | Right now Twitter is amplifying massively threads.

00:03:57.120 | People like to read Twitter threads.

00:03:59.080 | They like to observe them.

00:04:00.840 | There's a very good reading experience.

00:04:03.120 | And most of the time, people who are on Twitter really get annoyed by having to leave to go

00:04:08.040 | read some blog when they could turn it into a thread.

00:04:10.160 | And so if your writing is medium form like that, or I would say short form, 200 to 400

00:04:15.520 | words, to me that's an ideal format to just simply go with the native platform and share

00:04:21.080 | your thoughts there.

00:04:22.080 | It doesn't mean you can't also blog it.

00:04:23.600 | It just means that if I had an essay that I wrote for 200 to 400 words, I would also

00:04:28.880 | take that essay to Twitter and I would start publishing that as a Twitter thread.

00:04:33.440 | I think that if you're going to build a blog, there has to be a reason why that blog itself

00:04:38.960 | is the best kind of platform for you to engage in.

00:04:42.840 | And there needs to be some strategy as to why a blog is the best strategy.

00:04:47.680 | If you're focusing on writing, you want to start by saying, "Why am I writing?"

00:04:53.280 | So let me just ask you, why is James choosing to take his time and spend his time writing

00:04:58.680 | these essays?

00:04:59.840 | Why is James doing that?

00:05:01.600 | Right.

00:05:02.600 | My reasons are I love drawing connections between what I read from history, my own experience,

00:05:11.240 | and in dramatic movies and stuff, and then seeing how can we take those principles of

00:05:17.640 | leadership and personal growth and grow from them and become better people.

00:05:21.600 | And so what I want to do is to, what I've been using the blog for is an outlet for that

00:05:27.120 | passion and I love to reach as broad an audience with my ideas as possible.

00:05:33.000 | Okay.

00:05:34.000 | All right.

00:05:35.000 | Do you have any ambition to earn money with this in some way or to support your personal

00:05:40.120 | brand in some way?

00:05:43.160 | So I don't have any ambition to make it a living, but it would be nice to make at least

00:05:47.720 | a little bit of money to cover my costs with it.

00:05:50.560 | But your costs are nothing, right?

00:05:52.160 | $10 a month.

00:05:53.160 | I mean, there's no big cost here.

00:05:54.160 | Right.

00:05:55.160 | Right.

00:05:56.160 | Okay.

00:05:57.160 | So I just tell you that if you don't care enough, the cost thing to me seems silly.

00:06:00.360 | Like when people say, "Oh, help us cover the cost."

00:06:02.560 | If you don't care enough about what you're saying to pay for your domain name, annual

00:06:06.680 | registration at $14.99 per year and pay whatever, a few bucks a month for web hosting if you

00:06:12.000 | have it, you don't believe in your ideas enough.

00:06:15.480 | I mean, any of us should easily be able to support $50 a month of costs just for the

00:06:22.200 | value of our ideas.

00:06:23.600 | To me, that's a negligible thing.

00:06:26.360 | And I think that you can use your writing in many ways to support yourself.

00:06:34.720 | There have always been writers who have been able to make a living directly from their

00:06:39.400 | writing.

00:06:40.400 | And today, it's actually easier than it has been in the past.

00:06:44.160 | Right?

00:06:45.160 | I subscribe to a not insignificant number of writers on Substack.

00:06:50.600 | I have a number of different Substack subscriptions.

00:06:53.920 | These are people who, many of them are anonymous, and I like their writing.

00:06:59.840 | I want to pay for it and I want them to write.

00:07:02.360 | And so I subscribe to their Substack.

00:07:03.840 | So for a writer right now today, and there have been previous platforms, there are other

00:07:09.120 | platforms, but for a writer today, it's never been easier to actually monetize your writing

00:07:14.640 | directly.

00:07:15.640 | And again, the leader in this right now is Substack.

00:07:18.760 | I think that, let's talk through some of the strategic issues.

00:07:21.960 | So first of all, it's very difficult to get people to come to your corner of the universe

00:07:27.760 | unless your stuff is really, really good.

00:07:29.640 | I want you to imagine that right now, as I record this, I am in the great state of Tennessee.

00:07:36.600 | So I'm driving through the hills of Tennessee doing a couple things here.

00:07:41.480 | And I want you to imagine that you have a little farm, a little 10-acre farm out in

00:07:48.200 | the woods of Tennessee.

00:07:50.240 | You can put up, maybe you might make the very best, you might be the best storyteller in

00:07:59.920 | Tennessee.

00:08:00.920 | In fact, you might be the best storyteller in the whole world.

00:08:03.960 | But if you're going to sit on your front porch and tell stories, the number of people who

00:08:09.080 | you're going to reach with your stories is exceedingly small.

00:08:13.720 | Now you might have some neighbors around, right?

00:08:15.400 | There's a guy who lives in the next hall or over that he comes by in the evening and he'll

00:08:19.360 | sit out on your front porch and he'll listen to your stories.

00:08:22.120 | And that guy has a brother-in-law that he says, "Man, you ought to come and listen to

00:08:25.120 | James tell his stories.

00:08:26.600 | He's really got some great stuff.

00:08:27.960 | You're really going to want to hear him."

00:08:29.600 | And so you can have a few people and you might wind up with three or four people that you

00:08:33.080 | know personally or who happen to be in your part of the valley who know that you're a

00:08:38.440 | good storyteller who will come and listen to you.

00:08:40.920 | But it's very unlikely that those people are going to be able to amplify your message very

00:08:45.600 | much.

00:08:46.600 | You might be a world-class storyteller, but your neighbor is almost certainly not a writer

00:08:52.080 | for the New York Times, right?

00:08:54.120 | Your next-door neighbor is almost certainly not a guy with a million Twitter followers

00:08:57.760 | who will say, "Hey, listen, James is one of the best storytellers."

00:09:02.200 | And so you're not going to be able to attract an audience to your little farm in the middle

00:09:06.000 | of nowhere, Tennessee.

00:09:08.160 | And that's what a blog is, right?

00:09:09.600 | A blog is a little farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, and nobody's going to come to that

00:09:14.560 | blog by accident.

00:09:16.960 | Now can it be found?

00:09:18.280 | Well yeah, maybe one day there happens to be a writer for the New York Times, an editor

00:09:24.840 | for the New York Times who's on a road trip through Tennessee.

00:09:28.040 | His car breaks down and he's hiking through the woods trying to find help from a nearby

00:09:32.640 | farmhouse, and in the evening he comes up to your front porch and you're sitting out

00:09:36.480 | there with your corncob pipe telling stories to three of your neighbors, and he listens

00:09:40.880 | from the gathering dusk and he's like, "Man, this James guy is an amazing storyteller."

00:09:45.960 | And then he comes up and after you finish your story he says, "James, that was fantastic."

00:09:51.020 | And then you help him fix his car and get it back on the road, and then when he goes

00:09:54.040 | back to New York City he happens to go ahead and write an article about how there's this

00:09:57.320 | guy named James telling stories in the middle of Tennessee, and he tells you about—and

00:10:03.800 | then some people start to find you, right?

00:10:05.280 | And eventually people start to come, and then when more and more cars are parked by the

00:10:09.680 | road then it becomes a thing.

00:10:11.800 | And so this is the model that a lot of people have.

00:10:13.560 | They think if I'm just sitting out in the wilderness telling my stories people will

00:10:16.840 | come.

00:10:17.840 | If I build it and I'm good enough people will come.

00:10:19.560 | There was a day in which blogs themselves were more findable, right?

00:10:24.360 | This was the early days of web searches, and so if your content was well suited to be scraped

00:10:29.040 | by the crawlers who would find your content they would send people to your blog.

00:10:35.920 | But all of those things have changed over the past years, and because they have all

00:10:39.600 | changed you have to make a difference.

00:10:44.040 | So the first thing I would say is if you have a message that you want to get out and you

00:10:47.760 | want to tell stories it makes far more sense for you to leave the rural farm and much more

00:10:53.120 | sense for you to go where the people are.

00:10:55.280 | And so maybe you go into downtown Nashville, Tennessee and you start telling stories from

00:11:00.360 | the town square.

00:11:01.360 | Well you've just increased dramatically the opportunity that you have for people to

00:11:06.160 | actually hear you.

00:11:07.680 | And so that's what telling stories directly on social media is.

00:11:11.320 | So each of the media platforms that you have, you have Twitter, you have Facebook, you have

00:11:15.640 | LinkedIn, each of these and others as well, right?

00:11:19.240 | There are plenty of other niche sites.

00:11:23.040 | Medium would be a better example of one that could be very useful.

00:11:26.400 | But each of these places is like a big town square where there are lots of people gathered

00:11:31.200 | there.

00:11:32.200 | And so if you simply take your insights and you take your messages to those platforms

00:11:37.200 | there's a better chance that people will be able to find you because you're native on

00:11:42.760 | the platform.

00:11:44.120 | In addition though what you can do with those platforms is you can go and find the conversations

00:11:49.120 | already happening.

00:11:50.640 | If you imagine yourself as a street preacher, a street preacher would have a hard time,

00:11:55.440 | usually has a hard time attracting an audience.

00:11:58.240 | Standing on the street corner preaching about Jesus is coming soon and you need to stand

00:12:02.680 | there and you need to repent.

00:12:04.160 | A few people will stop and listen to him.

00:12:06.400 | But if a preacher will go and find where something is happening and find something relevant,

00:12:11.200 | will find a place where people are gathered together and then start preaching, then there

00:12:15.520 | would be more likely that people will listen to him because he has something to say that's

00:12:19.160 | relevant.

00:12:20.160 | So this is what social media does.

00:12:21.920 | So if you're on Twitter and you observe how, you know what, there was just this election

00:12:26.040 | happening in Virginia and we see the leadership lessons, the good things and the bad things

00:12:32.760 | from this election, and you go and you start posting about topics that are very current,

00:12:37.600 | that's what Twitter wants.

00:12:38.680 | It wants to be very current.

00:12:40.520 | And then in addition to that you can go and you can find the places where people are already

00:12:44.920 | talking about this stuff and you start talking to them about it.

00:12:47.520 | You start responding, replying, sharing, etc.

00:12:50.840 | And so you respond to a guy who makes a good point.

00:12:53.520 | You reply back with some thoughtful comment, expand the conversation.

00:12:57.300 | He clicks on your profile, starts reading your threads, and he hits subscribe.

00:13:01.000 | Now that he's hit subscribe, your subscriber base starts growing and then more and more

00:13:05.040 | people will start to see your content and Twitter starts to amplify it across the platform

00:13:08.640 | as hey, this is a guy that you might want to be seen.

00:13:11.560 | And so you comment on trending topics and you show up in people's explore tab when they're

00:13:15.120 | just aimlessly flipping through.

00:13:17.160 | And so I think that there's no way to get around that.

00:13:19.760 | That should be your first step.

00:13:22.600 | And for much of your content, even if you just hosted it natively on the platform, that's

00:13:27.000 | really the best situation.

00:13:28.760 | Don't go to LinkedIn and post a link to your blog.

00:13:33.120 | Just go and take your blog and post it into LinkedIn if it's related in some way to leadership

00:13:38.880 | and you're posting on your LinkedIn profile.

00:13:41.060 | Same thing on Facebook.

00:13:42.340 | Now text is not featured heavily right now by Facebook.

00:13:47.100 | Video is king.

00:13:48.100 | Pictures are queen and text comes in at a very distant last.

00:13:54.140 | But still, it still is more powerful for you to post an actual post, an essay natively

00:13:59.340 | into Facebook than to post a link outside of Facebook to your Facebook profile.

00:14:05.080 | So I would build that.

00:14:06.380 | And then the other thing that you can do is take some of your content and go to platforms

00:14:12.180 | that have a larger web presence.

00:14:14.980 | So let's say that you have your personal blog.

00:14:18.460 | What you should additionally do though is you should additionally be taking some articles

00:14:21.980 | that you would otherwise post on your personal blog and post them to Medium.

00:14:26.740 | Why?

00:14:27.740 | Well because Medium has a much bigger presence.

00:14:29.220 | It's much more likely to show up in the searches.

00:14:31.660 | And so if someone's searching about something that's current, then the Medium search results

00:14:38.020 | will come up higher in the list than will whatever your personal URL is.

00:14:44.300 | So these are just the tip of the iceberg.

00:14:46.360 | But I think the first thing is don't spend your time telling stories on your front porch

00:14:50.220 | in the middle of nowhere.

00:14:51.920 | First go to the places where there already are people and start telling your stories

00:14:55.700 | there, sharing your insights there.

00:14:57.540 | And then from time to time go ahead and refer them back to your front porch, your personal

00:15:04.140 | blog.

00:15:05.140 | And that should be, you know, at this, when you're beginning that should be 20% of what

00:15:08.500 | you're doing.

00:15:09.500 | In the very beginning 80% of your time and effort should be finding people out there

00:15:14.580 | and building up followings in the other space with 20% of your time spent building your

00:15:20.260 | own real estate.

00:15:21.820 | Then as you are able to send more people to your real estate, then you focus more on your

00:15:26.460 | own personal real estate and start moving people in that direction.

00:15:30.700 | So that's how I view it, James.

00:15:32.620 | Go ahead.

00:15:33.620 | Sure.

00:15:34.620 | Yeah, just like that right now I share links to the blog on like LinkedIn, but I don't

00:15:40.500 | post it directly on LinkedIn.

00:15:42.500 | So I think, and then I don't have any presence on Twitter right now.

00:15:45.840 | So those are, you know, two good action steps I could go ahead and take with it.

00:15:50.100 | Remember that you're trying to make things as seamless as possible for your readers.

00:15:54.420 | And most readers don't want to go outside of the native platform.

00:15:58.820 | When I'm on Twitter, right, and I spend a lot of time on Twitter, when I am on Twitter,

00:16:03.420 | it's very unlike, I don't want to post on an, I don't want to click on an outside link.

00:16:07.500 | Now I do it, I do it, but I often don't want to post on, click on an outside link unless

00:16:12.640 | there's some real value.

00:16:14.480 | So for a 200 word essay, there's no real value of my clicking on that.

00:16:17.620 | Just put that as a Twitter thread for me where I can just bookmark it right on Twitter.

00:16:21.460 | Now a 6,000 word essay, don't post that on Twitter.

00:16:25.260 | Post that on your blog and then create a Twitter thread telling me the basic ideas and then

00:16:31.180 | referring me to your 6,000 word essay where I can go for the long form content.

00:16:36.640 | But you'll just have, you'll have far more, find the most popular people talking about

00:16:40.620 | your subjects.

00:16:42.100 | Find the people who have the big followings, et cetera, who have the conversations and

00:16:46.780 | just start genuinely adding to those conversations.

00:16:49.540 | That's the best way for you to start building your public platform.

00:16:52.940 | Yeah, that sounds good.

00:16:56.660 | Thanks for the advice, Joshua.

00:16:57.660 | My pleasure.

00:16:58.660 | All right, we move on to Derek.

00:17:00.660 | Derek, welcome to the show.

00:17:01.660 | How can I serve you today?

00:17:02.660 | Hi, is this the right Derek?

00:17:08.620 | That's the right Derek.

00:17:09.620 | Go ahead, sir.

00:17:10.620 | Okay, sorry.

00:17:11.620 | Hey, so I had a couple of questions.

00:17:12.620 | I'll try to be quick on both.

00:17:16.100 | One is regarding the topic of, I'm sure you've been dealing with this with clients, but we

00:17:22.780 | bought a house two years ago in New Hampshire.

00:17:25.620 | And as you might imagine, it's gone up quite significantly in value.

00:17:29.860 | And I was wondering if you've come across any topics lately about people taking advantage

00:17:35.140 | of that or leaving that alone because of where that might be going or what you consider good

00:17:40.860 | opportunities.

00:17:42.780 | We bought at around 455K and it's just a Zillow score, but they're saying it's like 600K at

00:17:51.180 | this point, just after two years, which is mind-numbing and crazy to me.

00:17:55.260 | But that's what they're saying.

00:17:56.260 | And then the other topic was just about general business starting and some threads to go down

00:18:06.260 | as far as if I wanted to start a business and I have a certain amount of capital potentially

00:18:11.980 | related to the first question.

00:18:13.660 | So I guess with the first one, have you been talking to a lot of folks about their houses

00:18:18.820 | going up in price recently and taking advantage of that?

00:18:22.300 | Yeah.

00:18:23.300 | So let's talk about the first one and then call back next Friday for the second one and

00:18:26.620 | we can deal with that in more detail.

00:18:28.260 | But let me give you a couple of frameworks to consider this.

00:18:32.380 | The first thing I would say is look at your house and ask yourself, is this house an investment

00:18:38.100 | or is this house a home?

00:18:40.860 | Either is fine.

00:18:42.740 | A home can be a wonderful investment, but I think there's a different way that you look

00:18:47.340 | at it and you operate differently.

00:18:49.780 | If you buy a house as an investment, then it really doesn't have much emotional meaning

00:18:54.540 | to you.

00:18:55.540 | It's not something that figures into your long-term future.

00:18:57.820 | It's just a matter of the money.

00:18:59.780 | On the other hand, a home can mean many more things.

00:19:02.820 | And when I was younger, I discounted the value of those things more than I do now.

00:19:07.580 | I increasingly see the value of having the home place.

00:19:11.260 | I increasingly see the value of being invested into the place that you love.

00:19:15.500 | In fact, I think that investing into the place that you live and transforming it into a place

00:19:20.860 | that you love is a fundamental component of actually living rich.

00:19:26.100 | A number of years ago, I read the great book that Michael Masterson wrote on basically

00:19:30.780 | how to live rich.

00:19:31.780 | And he talked through – it's a topic that of course I love.

00:19:36.420 | My show was about how to live rich now.

00:19:38.220 | And his experience as a wealthy man, he was talking about here's how you live like a rich

00:19:43.380 | man.

00:19:44.380 | And it was a very tactical book.

00:19:45.660 | He talked through the kind of mattress that you live in, the kind of car you should drive,

00:19:49.300 | the kind of clothes that you should wear, the kind of music you should listen to, the

00:19:52.140 | kind of house that you should live in.

00:19:54.140 | And his basic argument in the house that you should live in was that if you want to live

00:19:58.580 | rich, you want to live like a rich man with regard to your house, you certainly should

00:20:03.020 | choose a house, a neighborhood, et cetera, that fits you, that likes you.

00:20:07.660 | But the reality is what makes a house the house that a rich man owns is not how ostentatious

00:20:15.580 | it is.

00:20:16.580 | You can go and you can buy a flashy ostentatious house that feels completely soulless.

00:20:21.860 | What makes a house feel rich is when that house is personalized to you.

00:20:27.660 | It reflects your life.

00:20:29.620 | And that can be your style.

00:20:31.780 | Yes, you spent $100,000 to redo the kitchen, but you redid it the way that you like a kitchen

00:20:37.360 | to be.

00:20:38.360 | It can be the art that's on the walls or the books on the bookshelves, but it should be

00:20:41.380 | your house.

00:20:42.900 | It reflects you and your personality.

00:20:45.480 | And I just appreciate that more and more and more.

00:20:48.380 | I feel like there's real value to that, and that in the US American culture where we move

00:20:53.220 | so much, we often diminish the value of having the home place, having the place that we love

00:21:00.100 | because it's ours, it reflects us.

00:21:02.960 | And so in that situation, if you're living in a home that is a good candidate, it has

00:21:08.760 | the bare bones that you want, and it's the neighborhood that you like, and it has the

00:21:14.100 | structure, then I would ignore the nominal value of the home.

00:21:17.860 | Why?

00:21:18.860 | Well, because your house is increased in value from $455,000 to $600,000, but that means

00:21:23.900 | that if you sell it, the house that was $600,000 a few years ago is now $800,000.

00:21:30.580 | And so if you just sell it and move up, you're going to wind up having the same general inflation

00:21:36.980 | that all of the home values have had.

00:21:39.380 | And so I think that if it's your home, you basically ignore the nominal value, ignore

00:21:44.860 | the nominal price, and recognize that if you're buying and selling in the same market, it's

00:21:50.540 | not a deal for you to sell.

00:21:52.660 | And in fact, you're going to incur a whole bunch of expenses, realtor expenses, financing

00:21:57.060 | costs, moving costs, the disruption in your life, the time involved packing all your stuff

00:22:02.980 | and getting the next house just right and getting the next house's furniture fit because

00:22:06.740 | your previous furniture doesn't fit the room quite so well.

00:22:09.980 | I think that if it's your home, you ignore the nominal value and just simply keep it.

00:22:15.140 | Now, if it's an investment, here are the arguments in favor of you going ahead and selling.

00:22:20.220 | To begin with, you look and say, "Is the increase in my home value due to this particular property

00:22:28.420 | or due to the general market?"

00:22:30.500 | So if you bought the house for $455,000 and you could sell it today for $600,000, but

00:22:35.000 | every other house that you're going to buy has also had the similar increase in value,

00:22:40.300 | it's not that much of a deal for you to upgrade.

00:22:42.780 | You're going to wind up with a larger mortgage.

00:22:44.340 | You're going to wind up with higher property taxes.

00:22:46.160 | You're going to wind up with your own expenses going up.

00:22:47.860 | You might as well just sit with the $455,000 house.

00:22:50.500 | On the other hand, if you bought a house strategically, maybe you forced up the value a little bit

00:22:55.380 | by fixing up something that was messed up, or you bought a house that was strategically

00:23:00.480 | growing because it was an attractive neighborhood, and if you have some arbitrage opportunity,

00:23:05.340 | then absolutely it can work well.

00:23:07.140 | So I guess the question is, do you have an arbitrage opportunity?

00:23:09.020 | Do you have an opportunity to move from a neighborhood that's increasing value to the

00:23:12.180 | neighborhood that's going to increase in value next?

00:23:14.340 | Do you have an arbitrage opportunity to move from one house to a significantly better house

00:23:18.860 | that you've got an angle on?

00:23:20.140 | Do you have an arbitrage opportunity to move from one state to another state?

00:23:23.900 | Do you have an arbitrage opportunity to sell now, take some tax-free money, and then wait

00:23:30.140 | for a downturn in your neighborhood because your market is artificially inflated in terms

00:23:35.440 | of the demand?

00:23:36.700 | These are all dangerous games, meaning they're not guaranteed.

00:23:40.660 | You can be priced out of the market fairly quickly, but if you're wrong, and I'll just

00:23:46.620 | give you an example, in 2017, I sold the house that I was living in at that time, and I sold

00:23:53.380 | it because I wanted to sell it and I didn't want to own a house, but I thought that I

00:23:57.540 | was – excuse me, I guess it was 2016.

00:24:00.420 | I sold it because I didn't want to own a house at that point in time, but I had a good

00:24:04.020 | bit of appreciation.

00:24:05.020 | I wanted to take some profits off the market, and I wanted to move and change my living

00:24:09.260 | situation.

00:24:10.300 | But I did think that there was going to be a decline in real estate prices in the next

00:24:15.460 | year or so.

00:24:16.620 | So I thought, "You know what?

00:24:17.860 | Maybe I'm selling six months early, but I'd rather be six months early than six days late,"

00:24:21.980 | because I thought prices are getting high.

00:24:23.860 | I think there's going to be a correction.

00:24:25.500 | I think there's going to be a major change.

00:24:26.980 | I thought that.

00:24:28.020 | I was wrong.

00:24:29.020 | Then I thought, "Okay, 2017, there'll probably be a recession."

00:24:32.020 | I was wrong.

00:24:33.020 | 2018, yeah, I was still wrong.

00:24:35.340 | 2019, there's got to be a recession.

00:24:37.700 | Nope, wrong.

00:24:38.700 | 2020, all right, maybe there's not going to be a recession, but it's still possible.

00:24:43.060 | But then the recession came in 2020.

00:24:46.220 | And then two weeks later, the recession was over, and housing prices in my market had

00:24:50.180 | not changed at all.

00:24:51.820 | And so now, here we are in 2021.

00:24:54.300 | I don't want to own a house, but I've been house shopping.

00:24:56.980 | And so I've looked at it, and I'm fascinated to see so many people are priced out of the

00:25:01.660 | market.

00:25:02.660 | Thankfully, I'm not personally, because I make excellent money, and I'm not broke.

00:25:08.100 | But I've watched, if I didn't make good money, if I were broke, I would be priced out of

00:25:12.860 | the market.

00:25:13.860 | I have a friend of mine that I've given advice, right?

00:25:15.540 | Had a house, sold his house, wanted to get cashed in, right?

00:25:19.660 | But now, he's trying to move back to the same place, but he spent the money, and he's priced

00:25:23.020 | out of the market.

00:25:24.020 | He's not going to be able to live there because he's priced out.

00:25:26.280 | So you got to be clear on your plan and understand, "Okay, if I'm going to play this strategically,

00:25:32.500 | how am I going to make sure that it's a win-win?"

00:25:34.340 | And I do think that selling, locking in profits, especially tax-free profits with the sale

00:25:39.780 | of a house, I think that these are all really good options, but you need to be clear that

00:25:45.780 | you're going to invest the money into something better.

00:25:48.260 | Otherwise, often, the expenses are higher than you think, the expenses of time, mental

00:25:53.420 | energy, et cetera, and often it's best just to sit tight until your plan changes.

00:25:59.380 | Sure.

00:26:00.380 | Yeah, so I was actually going, what you were saying was interesting to me, so I didn't

00:26:09.700 | stop you.

00:26:10.700 | The route that I was kind of trying to lean you towards was not keeping versus selling.

00:26:17.980 | It was more along the lines of opportunities associated with refinancing.

00:26:23.540 | But your answer to the first use case of living richly in the house and investing in it, it

00:26:32.460 | kind of affirms one of the two routes that I was taking on, taking the $150K, $120K,

00:26:40.500 | whatever, and putting it back into the house to make it more...

00:26:44.380 | Because I think that we overpaid for the house.

00:26:48.180 | It's not as updated as it probably should have been even back in 2019, but there's definitely

00:26:54.660 | a lot that I could do with $120,000 to put it back into the house.

00:27:00.740 | And this is definitely a home for us.

00:27:03.420 | Good.

00:27:04.420 | In fact, we've actually taken on...

00:27:07.180 | We've moved up my parents-in-law to live with us from Philadelphia, and that's been its

00:27:13.980 | own adventure, as you might imagine, but we're building quite a location here, I think, as

00:27:22.220 | far as inside the house.

00:27:23.660 | But you've definitely affirmed the idea of reinvesting into it with the increase in value

00:27:31.740 | for me.

00:27:32.740 | If you have the money and it's not going to cost you...

00:27:37.020 | If you have the money, then definitely you should reinvest into the home.

00:27:41.260 | Number one, this is a very good investment.

00:27:45.900 | Investing into your personal residence is a very good investment for most people, and

00:27:50.700 | it's an investment that has benefits.

00:27:54.620 | The financing costs of your own residence in the United States, very inexpensive.

00:27:58.380 | The tax benefits, massive.

00:28:00.120 | The security, the protection from difficult real estate situations are substantial, even

00:28:05.860 | including foreclosure.

00:28:08.900 | So even if you got into stress, you definitely want to be foreclosed on a house that you

00:28:12.580 | own and live in, rather than a rental house, in terms of your legal protections and the

00:28:17.220 | bank's willingness to work with you.

00:28:19.300 | And so if you can spend some money and update it, go ahead and borrow it out at low rates,

00:28:23.220 | et cetera, and update the house, then do it.

00:28:26.140 | And do it while you can enjoy it.

00:28:28.580 | One of the things that a lot of us tend to do is we wait until we're ready to list the

00:28:32.500 | house or we're going to sell the house a year from now, and then we start spending money

00:28:36.180 | left and right, fixing the house up, getting ready for the buyer.

00:28:38.660 | Well, in that case, you don't get to enjoy it because you deal with months and months

00:28:41.820 | of construction hassle, and then the house is wonderful, and then you're gone.

00:28:45.900 | Fix the house up when you move into it so that you can enjoy the updates, and you'll

00:28:50.940 | get more use of your money.

00:28:53.220 | Thank you very much.

00:28:56.180 | That was a great thinking on your part.

00:29:00.860 | Great to meet you.

00:29:01.860 | Good, my pleasure.

00:29:02.860 | Call in next week, and we will talk about your business question.

00:29:05.700 | All right, move on to John.

00:29:07.060 | John, welcome to the show.

00:29:08.060 | Thank you for joining us.

00:29:09.060 | We're delighted to serve you today.

00:29:10.060 | Hi, Joshua.

00:29:11.060 | I have a question about moving cash around physically.

00:29:17.060 | I had a friend a month or so back who had a loss of their, I think it was a grandmother.

00:29:26.740 | And the grandmother was moving across country to be with the kids.

00:29:33.180 | And she didn't know much about their finances, but the grandfather had a substantial amount

00:29:37.780 | of cash in his safe deposit box, presumably for a specific reason, which I kind of thought

00:29:45.100 | of, maybe they shouldn't put that money in the bank to transfer it.

00:29:49.060 | Maybe they should just physically move it.

00:29:51.940 | I'm not sure what they really did.

00:29:52.940 | I didn't really follow up, but it kind of brought that question to me about how would

00:29:57.940 | you, not crossing international borders, just going a far physical distance away within

00:30:04.460 | the United States, what would be the best way to move that money, if not just physically

00:30:10.300 | transporting the cash, which can be bulky, not really educated on the transition costs,

00:30:16.860 | carrying things to gold and back to make it more compact, or things like, obviously, there's

00:30:22.460 | Bitcoin, if it's a short term, maybe that's a viable way to transfer the value across

00:30:28.420 | the country.

00:30:29.420 | But what would your take on that be?

00:30:31.940 | I think the value, by the way, was somewhere, my best guess from talking to them was somewhere

00:30:35.740 | in the range of like 50,000 to, I don't know, I can't imagine it was over 250,000, but I'd

00:30:41.900 | say it's somewhere in that range.

00:30:44.660 | So 50 to $250,000 is not that big of a deal, right?

00:30:47.700 | This is money that can fit into a small, a few envelopes, more than a few envelopes.

00:30:52.220 | Right, well, a van full of cash.

00:30:54.540 | It's not that much, right?

00:30:55.740 | If we're talking millions of dollars of cash, then it gets very different.

00:30:58.780 | But 50 to $250,000 is not that big of a deal.

00:31:02.300 | So I'll give you two, the two methods that work is to take it, and you can take it, you

00:31:09.300 | can take it on an airplane, you can take it on a car.

00:31:11.940 | I'll talk to you about the advantages and disadvantages of both, and/or to mail it.

00:31:16.580 | And mailing it is a very good way of sending cash as well.

00:31:20.040 | So I'll describe both of these, both of these things, and I'll give you the rules that you

00:31:24.460 | would follow if you chose one or the other.

00:31:27.580 | To begin with, there is nothing illegal about having and moving around with significant

00:31:34.340 | amounts of cash.

00:31:35.340 | There is no law being broken.

00:31:37.500 | There's nothing illegal about it.

00:31:39.920 | The concern that there is, is one small concern, and that concern is confiscation by a police

00:31:46.980 | officer.

00:31:48.340 | That is the concern.

00:31:49.860 | Now here, it's hard because that concern can be quite overblown, right?

00:31:53.660 | I did a show, I talked about this in a podcast recently where I explained how, when a police

00:31:58.320 | officer confiscates money, I'm blanking on, what is it called, the seizure, help me out

00:32:04.780 | John, what is the term, the technical term?

00:32:07.300 | >>John: I think it's just seizure of assets.

00:32:08.300 | >>Steven: Yeah, but there's a technical, it'll come to me in a moment as I'm speaking.

00:32:11.980 | But there is a seizure process that the, this is bugging me, hold on a second.

00:32:20.220 | >>John: It's the end of the show, so you'll have to remember.

00:32:22.380 | >>Steven Yeah, okay.

00:32:23.380 | So, civil asset forfeiture, and sorry for the blip, I bumped the wrong button on my

00:32:27.660 | recorder in just 20 seconds while I was looking it up.

00:32:30.580 | Civil asset forfeiture.

00:32:31.580 | The term is civil asset forfeiture.

00:32:33.020 | So what is civil asset forfeiture?

00:32:35.380 | In the United States, in most states, there's one or two minor exceptions like the state

00:32:40.180 | of Maine, et cetera.

00:32:41.500 | But in the United States, there is a risk of what's called civil asset forfeiture.

00:32:46.020 | Basically, if a police officer comes into contact with a large amount of currency, physical

00:32:52.900 | currency, that police officer can seize the currency until or unless you can prove its

00:33:01.380 | legal provenance, right?

00:33:03.400 | You can prove how you came by it legally.

00:33:06.700 | That's the law.

00:33:07.700 | Now, this law is the worst civil asset, one of the worst civil rights abuses right now

00:33:13.140 | in the United States that happens.

00:33:15.180 | But how often does it happen?

00:33:17.740 | It's not, I don't know how to describe it, right?

00:33:19.900 | It happens frequently, but it's not like every police officer is out there searching every

00:33:24.660 | person and saying, "Oh, here, you have 20 bucks on you.

00:33:28.180 | This is gone."

00:33:29.180 | So what are the rules, right?

00:33:30.180 | Well, the first thing is generally $5,000 is considered to be the number.

00:33:33.340 | So if you're in possession of more than $5,000 of physical currency, you wind up having a

00:33:39.660 | risk to the possession of that currency, and it could be subject to civil asset forfeiture.

00:33:45.300 | But most police officers, first, they're not going to come into contact with it.

00:33:49.300 | Number two, they're not necessarily going to take it, especially if you've got a good

00:33:53.660 | explanation.

00:33:54.780 | So if you look like a drug dealer, you smell like a drug dealer, and you've got a suitcase

00:34:00.760 | full of cash like a drug dealer, yeah, they're going to take it.

00:34:04.060 | And then you're going to have to sue them to get it back.

00:34:05.980 | And the suing process is a real hassle because you have to prove it to their satisfaction

00:34:10.300 | order for them to get it right.

00:34:11.380 | You're not innocent until proven guilty.

00:34:13.260 | You're guilty until you can prove that you're innocent.

00:34:15.580 | So it is a serious risk, but we also have to put it into a framework of recognizing

00:34:19.740 | that it's not like you could just never carry $50,000 in a bag.

00:34:25.620 | You could carry $50,000 in a bag.

00:34:27.900 | But that is the risk.

00:34:29.240 | That's what you have to be concerned about is the civil asset forfeiture.

00:34:33.620 | So what would you do?

00:34:34.620 | Well, if you wanted to move $200,000 of currency from one side of the country to the other,

00:34:40.500 | you have two ways to get-- again, we're going to talk about taking it there and then mailing

00:34:43.860 | it there.

00:34:44.860 | The other way would be taking it there in a car.

00:34:46.900 | So you say, I'm going to drive from one side of the country to the other.

00:34:49.460 | Again, there's nothing wrong with this.

00:34:51.060 | There's no law being broken.

00:34:53.020 | You're not doing anything suspicious.

00:34:54.380 | It's your money.

00:34:55.380 | You can do whatever you want with it.

00:34:56.680 | So what could you do in order to improve the likelihood of your getting it to the other

00:35:03.420 | side of the country without it being seized by the police?

00:35:06.260 | The first thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that there are no indications

00:35:11.660 | on your car that would wind up having you run a risk of being pulled over.

00:35:15.860 | So the first thing that you do is you check your automobile, and you make sure that your

00:35:18.940 | automobile is a legal automobile.

00:35:22.260 | By legal, I mean it doesn't have green-colored lights on the front, which in some states

00:35:25.820 | would be illegal.

00:35:26.820 | By legal, I mean it doesn't have a radar detector sitting in the window, which in a couple of

00:35:31.340 | states is illegal, and it gives them cause for them to pull you over.

00:35:34.260 | By legal, I mean it doesn't have tinting that's too dark, which a police officer can pull

00:35:38.740 | you over because the tinting is too dark.

00:35:40.820 | By legal, I mean that the lights work.

00:35:42.780 | There's two lights on the license plate.

00:35:44.740 | The license plate is not obscured.

00:35:46.300 | It doesn't have a border around it.

00:35:48.100 | You can't have a border or a cover, even a translucent cover on a license plate in most

00:35:51.860 | states.

00:35:52.860 | By legal, I mean all the lights work.

00:35:54.180 | By legal, I mean you have tires that have the proper amount of tread that are properly

00:35:57.500 | inflated.

00:35:58.500 | By legal, I mean your car is not covered in Bondo and sagging at the back because one

00:36:03.060 | of the shocks is broken.

00:36:04.060 | It's just a normal, appropriate automobile.

00:36:06.880 | If you will drive a normal, appropriate automobile without all of these indications of your being

00:36:12.420 | either poor or a crook or having some weird thing going on, "Hey, the back of that car

00:36:18.180 | is too low," then your likelihood of being targeted by the police is extremely low.

00:36:25.580 | You definitely don't want to load up three of your buddies and drive across the country

00:36:30.700 | with four of you sitting in a car, crew cab style, when you have a bunch of cash.

00:36:35.260 | That is a major reason why a police will pull you over.

00:36:37.820 | They'll pull you over because there's four guys in a car, especially if you're young.

00:36:40.860 | If you've got four guys riding crew cab style in a car, you're going to be pulled over because

00:36:45.500 | there's a very good chance that a police officer can find a warrant on one of you.

00:36:51.060 | You go with a couple or one person or a family, not four young males in a car.

00:36:57.020 | The next thing is you just drive appropriately.

00:36:58.940 | You drive the speed limit.

00:37:01.540 | Probably best in most places, three and a half miles an hour over the speed limit.

00:37:07.220 | You drive safely.

00:37:08.220 | If you speed, you can get pulled over.

00:37:10.260 | If you go too slow, you can get pulled over.

00:37:12.620 | If you drive too carefully, if the speed limit is 60 miles an hour and you're driving 60

00:37:16.380 | miles an hour, you can get pulled over because this guy is driving too carefully.

00:37:19.940 | He's probably trying to hide something.

00:37:21.920 | If you don't run a stop sign, you just drive properly and your chances of being pulled

00:37:26.220 | over are very, very low.

00:37:28.380 | You should prepare for being pulled over.

00:37:30.240 | What do you need to do to prepare for being pulled over?

00:37:32.520 | Make sure that the car has a clean title, that it's not wanted by somebody, that it

00:37:37.740 | wasn't stolen, it doesn't have a stolen tag because then it alerts on some automatic license

00:37:42.640 | plate reader system, "Hey, there's a stolen car.

00:37:44.700 | Get pulled over."

00:37:45.700 | If there's any question about there being some kind of problem with your car, you got

00:37:50.220 | a problem.

00:37:51.220 | Make sure that you don't have any warrants.

00:37:53.040 | Check your driver's license.

00:37:54.040 | Make sure there's no warrants out for your arrest.

00:37:55.660 | Make sure there's no giant stack of unpaid parking tickets, et cetera.

00:37:58.500 | If a police officer pulls you over and runs your driver's license, that there's no problem

00:38:02.980 | there.

00:38:03.980 | Make sure that you're clean driver record and a clean car.

00:38:08.740 | Then you want to prepare your automobile defensively in case of search and/or seizure by the police.

00:38:16.020 | What do you do?

00:38:17.020 | First, you want to make sure that your automobile is clean, that there's no reason why a police

00:38:21.260 | officer would want to search your car.

00:38:23.940 | It would be a good idea not to carry around a gun visible on the back seat.

00:38:29.380 | Police officer walking up to your car, sees a gun sitting there, that's a problem.

00:38:33.100 | Or any indications of that, spent ammo or something like that.

00:38:36.420 | It'd be a good idea not to have to make sure that your car is clean of drugs so there's

00:38:40.860 | no odor of marijuana coming out of the car.

00:38:44.480 | You want to make sure that there's no reason that would create a suspicion in an officer's

00:38:50.260 | mind.

00:38:51.260 | In order for an officer to search your vehicle without permission, which we'll get to in

00:38:55.420 | a moment, the officer needs some level of reasonable articulable suspicion for some

00:39:02.620 | searches and/or some level of probable cause.

00:39:07.980 | With probable cause, the officer can search your vehicle.

00:39:10.820 | You eliminate anything that could lead to probable cause or its junior neighbor, reasonable

00:39:17.860 | articulable suspicion.

00:39:20.420 | You make sure that there's nothing there.

00:39:22.140 | I would drive with the vehicle totally empty inside.

00:39:27.660 | Or if you had something, it would be something innocuous.

00:39:29.940 | It would be a car seat strapped in the back.

00:39:33.500 | Something innocuous, not full of junk, not full of things that go, "What's that down

00:39:37.180 | there?

00:39:38.180 | Does that look like a marijuana roach down there?"

00:39:40.580 | Things like that.

00:39:41.580 | Make sure the car is clean and empty.

00:39:43.180 | Doesn't say too much of a story about you.

00:39:45.560 | You want your cash to be in a locked container in a separate locked compartment of the car.

00:39:51.560 | Now, here I'll give you a couple of the things, but some of these are harder to do.

00:39:55.960 | But there are levels of search.

00:39:58.020 | When a police officer has searchability, the levels of search are based upon the amount

00:40:04.100 | of probable cause that he has.

00:40:05.640 | For example, in any state of the United States, if you're walking down the street and a police

00:40:10.200 | officer stops you, the police officer can do what's called a Terry Frisk.

00:40:15.160 | A Terry Frisk is a very simple outside of the clothing pat down or wipe down to make

00:40:22.000 | sure that you're not carrying large obvious weapons.

00:40:26.440 | This is where if a police officer says, "John, will you please step out of the car?"

00:40:30.260 | You step out of the car.

00:40:31.260 | A police officer has the right to search the outside of your clothing.

00:40:34.380 | This is known as a Terry Frisk for officer safety.

00:40:37.400 | What the police officer cannot do is start going through all your papers.

00:40:40.760 | You can't pull out your wallet and start digging through your receipts to try to figure it

00:40:43.440 | out.

00:40:44.440 | This is a pat down for officer safety.

00:40:47.080 | Now if a police officer has additional cause, then that police officer's search—again,

00:40:51.840 | this is all without consent.

00:40:53.640 | If you give consent, it's all over.

00:40:55.720 | But without concern, the officer's search can go farther.

00:40:58.400 | So let's say that the officer is concerned about officer safety and pulls you over on

00:41:04.720 | the side of the road and says, "John, step out of the car."

00:41:07.160 | The officer can do a Terry Frisk on your purse, can move you to the back of the car, and can

00:41:10.960 | do a quick visual inspection or maybe a quick look underneath the front seat, etc.

00:41:15.720 | What the officer can't do is open up a locked trunk because the locked trunk is not a concern,

00:41:21.280 | is not a threat to officer safety.

00:41:23.360 | If the officer has probable cause that you might have some kind of illegal substance

00:41:27.720 | in your trunk, for example, if the officer has called out a canine unit and the canine—the

00:41:33.760 | dog has alerted to the presence of drugs in your trunk, now the officer has probable cause

00:41:38.960 | and can force the search of your vehicle with a warrant.

00:41:42.400 | But if there's no probable cause, then what's in your trunk is not going to cause the officer

00:41:48.520 | any safety concerns.

00:41:49.980 | So you want to create separation.

00:41:52.800 | And you want to make sure that there is a locked container.

00:41:55.400 | In addition, you want to heighten your expectation of personal privacy.

00:41:59.960 | So if I were transporting the cash, I would get some sort of locked container.

00:42:03.760 | It could be a locked briefcase.

00:42:05.400 | It could be a locked toolbox.

00:42:06.600 | It could be a locked Pelican case.

00:42:08.360 | It could be a locked—any kind of—anything that's locked because this adds weight to

00:42:12.880 | your legal argument that you have a heightened expectation of privacy.

00:42:16.720 | I would have a locked container, and then I would keep that locked container in a separate

00:42:20.960 | locked part of the vehicle.

00:42:22.640 | So if you have a car with a trunk, that's ideal because you have a separate locked trunk.

00:42:26.680 | Now if you were doing this every day, if I were transporting cash for some business or

00:42:31.260 | something like this, maybe, for example, you are running a marijuana business in a state

00:42:37.640 | where marijuana—the sale of marijuana is legal.

00:42:41.560 | Licensed marijuana dealers have a problem right now.

00:42:44.920 | Their trade has been deemed legal in certain states.

00:42:49.180 | They have a license from the state.

00:42:50.440 | They can have a marijuana dispensary, whether it be for medical marijuana or for recreational

00:42:56.440 | marijuana.

00:42:57.440 | So their business is legal in the state, but because marijuana possession is still illegal

00:43:03.000 | on a federal basis, they have a very difficult time getting bank accounts.

00:43:07.260 | So let's pretend that I were running a very successful marijuana business and I hadn't

00:43:10.880 | hired an armed guard service to move my cash, which would be the obvious solution.

00:43:15.280 | What would I do?

00:43:16.280 | I would have a vehicle that has a locked trunk, and I would make sure that the trunk of that

00:43:21.560 | vehicle is on a separate key and that the remote release of that vehicle has been disabled.

00:43:27.400 | So if you go back and you study police searches over the years, if a police officer has reason

00:43:32.420 | to search your car and there's a little trunk release there, then the officer can just pop

00:43:36.200 | the trunk release and can pop the trunk open and find whatever's in the trunk.

00:43:42.280 | But if the trunk release has been disabled and the officer doesn't have a key for the

00:43:46.680 | trunk, well now he has to have a higher level of proof to get a warrant to actually impound

00:43:51.680 | the car.

00:43:52.840 | Years ago, there was a case, and I looked for this story.

00:43:55.720 | I read the story in one of the resources that I had found, but I looked for the case and

00:44:01.880 | I couldn't find it.

00:44:02.880 | I read a story about a drug dealer, a guy, like on the street drug dealer, who carried

00:44:08.680 | cocaine in his car.

00:44:09.680 | But what he had done was he had installed a private safe in the trunk of his car, meaning

00:44:16.000 | just like a house safe.

00:44:17.400 | He had bolted it into the trunk of his car and he carried his cocaine that he was dealing

00:44:23.560 | in that safe in the trunk of his car.

00:44:26.040 | Well it so happened that the drug dealer got pulled over, got arrested, and his car was

00:44:29.960 | impounded by the police.

00:44:31.800 | But it was impounded by the police and it was in the impound yard for several days while

00:44:35.200 | the police were trying to figure out how to get into it.

00:44:37.760 | By the way, when you're arrested, then your car is searched either with a search incident

00:44:43.280 | to arrest or with an inventory search.

00:44:46.320 | When the police confiscate something, they do an inventory search of the car so they

00:44:51.080 | know what's in it.

00:44:52.080 | So this can put you in a vulnerable position.

00:44:53.560 | So police did an inventory search of his car, but they couldn't get into the safe.

00:44:56.480 | They couldn't bring in the safe cracker to actually get into the safe.

00:45:00.400 | So the guy got out of prison within a couple of days.

00:45:02.280 | He bailed out, bonded out, et cetera.

00:45:03.760 | And he went and he got his car back and the police never found the cocaine that was in

00:45:09.440 | the safe in the guy's car.

00:45:11.320 | So that's the basic concept that you're trying to follow, legally speaking, is you're establishing

00:45:16.640 | a heightened expectation of privacy and then you're putting in place these hurdles so that

00:45:22.360 | if you are subject to search non-voluntarily, that there's no reason why a police officer

00:45:29.920 | would be able to invade your privacy, which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, would

00:45:35.880 | be able to invade your privacy in order to confiscate, to find and then confiscate the

00:45:41.760 | cash.

00:45:42.900 | So the final piece of all of this is you never consent to searches.

00:45:46.960 | You do not consent to searches.

00:45:49.120 | And so if you just simply know how to not consent to searches and you don't consent

00:45:53.200 | to searches, then this practice, while civil asset forfeiture is a legitimate threat, and

00:45:59.920 | I would be concerned driving across the country with $100,000 of physical currency in my back

00:46:04.880 | pocket, if you put these things into place, then there's virtually no chance that your

00:46:12.400 | cash would be actually confiscated.

00:46:16.120 | Because in order for it to be confiscated, you would have to have come to the attention

00:46:19.980 | of a police officer, in addition to coming to the attention of the police officer, the

00:46:23.800 | police officer would have to have some sort of cause, some sort of probable cause for

00:46:30.760 | pulling you over in a traffic stop.

00:46:33.600 | That police officer would have to have some kind of cause for forcing a search.

00:46:38.320 | If you refuse a search of your vehicle, then he has to have some kind of probable cause

00:46:42.000 | to get a search.

00:46:43.320 | If he's got probable cause to search inside of your vehicle, okay, maybe, but he's got

00:46:47.460 | no probable cause without a warrant to actually invade something like a locked container held

00:46:52.760 | inside of a locked container such as your trunk in a separate compartment from the vehicle

00:46:56.960 | because he cannot argue that there's any threat to officer safety from something that's held

00:47:01.720 | in a separate compartment of the vehicle.

00:47:03.680 | So if you put that in place, that will exploit the laws that are in place for your protection

00:47:09.720 | and that will allow you to assert your constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy in your person's

00:47:16.440 | papers and effects against the police search.

00:47:20.520 | And I think in that situation it'd be very safe.

00:47:22.760 | Now you also need to think about, okay, what would happen if this cash were actually confiscated

00:47:28.060 | from me?

00:47:29.060 | Can I prove in a court of law where it came from such that I can get it back?

00:47:34.160 | Good chance that probably not.

00:47:35.700 | You can't prove it right now.

00:47:38.200 | If this was your grandfather who 30 years ago sold a house to some guy for physical

00:47:43.560 | currency and he put the money into a safe or a safety deposit box at the bank, you probably

00:47:48.320 | don't have those records.

00:47:49.880 | And so you would want to be very thoughtful about that.

00:47:52.200 | And if it's a concern, you take these more heightened steps.

00:47:56.120 | Now at the end of the day, I think it's still fairly safe.

00:47:59.180 | But if there were really a concern, then you would do multiple shipments, right?

00:48:02.640 | You would split it up.

00:48:04.080 | Maybe you'd do $100,000 one time and $100,000 a second time.

00:48:08.920 | And so that all of your currency is not exposed to one potential confiscation.

00:48:12.900 | I think the risk is very low if you do all the stuff I've described, but it does still

00:48:17.000 | exist.

00:48:18.000 | Now, can you fly with it?

00:48:20.160 | Absolutely.

00:48:21.360 | You absolutely can fly with it.

00:48:23.360 | So let me give you a couple of ways that you could do it.

00:48:26.240 | I don't think I would because when you pass through the airport system, you are giving

00:48:33.220 | up your personal rights to privacy to a degree.

00:48:37.600 | Generally this is not a problem, but you're generally giving up your personal right to

00:48:41.080 | privacy.

00:48:42.200 | So if I were doing this, I absolutely would keep it on my person.

00:48:45.960 | And I have flown with significant amounts of cash, never $100,000 or even $50,000, but

00:48:50.680 | I've flown with tens of thousands of dollars of cash.

00:48:52.720 | And it's not that big of a deal.

00:48:54.860 | You do want to make sure that you find a way to secure it in your effect so that it's safe,

00:49:00.520 | so you don't just leave it somewhere, leave your bag somewhere accidentally.

00:49:04.200 | But generally speaking, it's not that big of a deal.

00:49:06.160 | Why?

00:49:07.160 | Well, the time when you're most vulnerable is passing through a security checkpoint.

00:49:11.140 | But the TSA officers who are examining the security, who are studying the security thing,

00:49:18.800 | they're looking for bomb making, things that look like bombs, explosives, firearms, or

00:49:23.560 | edged weapons.

00:49:24.560 | They're not looking for paper.

00:49:26.320 | So you can have just a stack of paper, and a stack of paper looks like a stack of paper.

00:49:30.760 | And as long as there's no other indications, the X-ray machine is not going to have any

00:49:34.300 | problem with it.

00:49:36.680 | They say there's drug residue on basically all physical currency.

00:49:41.640 | I doubt that that's a real concern.

00:49:44.380 | And so I think that you're fine traveling with it.

00:49:46.920 | And the time at which somebody is most likely to see it, it really doesn't matter.

00:49:50.400 | In addition, TSA agents are not police.

00:49:53.340 | They're not in the business of, in the United States.

00:49:55.480 | Maybe in some other countries they're in the business of confiscating money, but in the

00:49:57.880 | United States they're not in the business of confiscating money.

00:50:00.720 | And so there's nothing illegal about having it, but you do have a greater concern because

00:50:07.080 | it does exist.

00:50:08.080 | Now, if you had some kind of history in your past, let's say that you had a warrant out

00:50:13.220 | for your arrest or something like that, then absolutely that would be completely unacceptable.

00:50:18.200 | It would be unacceptable because you have reasons to be brought to a police officer's

00:50:24.680 | attention.

00:50:25.680 | But me personally, I mean, I guess I'd be a little nervous at a hundred grand, but I

00:50:30.040 | wouldn't bother me too much to travel with 30, 40, 50 thousand dollars.

00:50:34.320 | And I would just look like the kind of person who had reason to have 30, 40, 50 thousand

00:50:37.440 | dollars.

00:50:38.440 | I would secure it in my personal papers.

00:50:39.520 | I would make sure that it is in my bag, in a bag where it doesn't have to be opened up,

00:50:44.520 | kind of with stuff dumped into the bin exterior and just can be transported.

00:50:51.080 | I wouldn't try to hide it.

00:50:52.080 | I don't try to hide it when I travel with currency.

00:50:56.480 | I want to make sure it's in a wallet, so it looks like it's a wallet.

00:50:59.760 | And so in that situation, I would have like a passport wallet with a zippered compartment

00:51:03.480 | where it's very clear that it's just sitting there.

00:51:05.560 | This is cash.

00:51:06.560 | And the TSA agents probably in many cases know what it is.

00:51:09.360 | In the past, I have flown with things like travel money wallets, money belts, et cetera.

00:51:15.240 | Everyone knows, they know it's cash, but their job is not to find people with cash.

00:51:18.700 | Their job is not to be the IRS.

00:51:19.960 | Their job is not to be the customs officials, et cetera.

00:51:22.880 | That's different at an international border.

00:51:24.240 | At an international border, when you go through a scanning device, there you have a customs

00:51:28.720 | agent and it is the customs agent's job to identify the cash.

00:51:32.800 | Now could you fly with it in checked luggage?

00:51:36.040 | Obviously this would be a kind of a foolish thing to do, but there are times, at other

00:51:39.800 | times when you may have other things that you need to, that are valuable like cash that

00:51:45.800 | you can't bring with you.

00:51:46.800 | And so what I would encourage you to do in that situation in the United States is to

00:51:51.320 | fly with a firearm.

00:51:53.760 | So there is a way in US law that if you want to fly, you can fly with a locked suitcase

00:52:00.440 | and not one of those stupid TSA locks that every single security agent has access to

00:52:07.440 | and anybody who has a 3D printer or anybody who can go online can just simply download

00:52:11.980 | the schematics and file your own little key out of a piece of aluminum foil.

00:52:17.180 | So if a suitcase has a TSA lock on it, that suitcase can be opened by practically anyone.

00:52:25.520 | It adds virtually no security whatsoever.

00:52:28.500 | You can buy all of the keys to those TSA locks easily online.

00:52:33.400 | But what you can do is you can put on a proper lock on your suitcase if you fly with a firearm.

00:52:39.360 | And so let's say that you needed to travel from Pennsylvania to Florida with the cash

00:52:44.940 | and you wanted to, or with something else, again the cash I think should be on your person,

00:52:48.720 | but you wanted to travel with a locked suitcase.

00:52:50.240 | How do you do that?

00:52:51.240 | The answer is you fly with a gun.

00:52:52.640 | Because the way that the law works on flying with a gun is you go to the airline, you need

00:52:57.520 | to have the gun unloaded, and it needs to be in a locked case.

00:53:03.680 | Now a lot of times you can see people fly with a visible gun case, but there's no clear

00:53:09.300 | requirement by the TSA on the specifics of that locked case, other than it has to be

00:53:14.920 | a locked case.

00:53:16.240 | And by law, the lock must be a lock that the security agent does not have the key to.

00:53:24.080 | That's the law.

00:53:25.080 | I'll get to the actual practice in a moment.

00:53:26.240 | But the law is that you have to travel with a locked case the security agent does not

00:53:30.620 | have the key to.

00:53:32.160 | So in this situation, the way it works is you go to the counter, you declare your gun,

00:53:36.640 | you say I'm flying from Pennsylvania to Florida, I'm flying with a gun today.

00:53:41.760 | You need to go and you need to demonstrate to the airline agent that the gun is unloaded

00:53:47.120 | and that the ammunition is held in a separate box case and the gun is unloaded.

00:53:51.300 | Then you're supposed to be conducted to a private security checking.

00:53:54.560 | So you have an agent that does a private security scan, verifies the firearm, then in the presence

00:53:59.440 | of the security officer, you close the case, you lock the case, and then the bag is sent

00:54:05.360 | through checked baggage.

00:54:07.040 | That's the law.

00:54:08.320 | And then that bag cannot be opened again by law until you're at the other end.

00:54:14.040 | Now what happens when people do this is about half the time, the security agents will want

00:54:19.200 | to open the bag again and they wind up cutting the lock off with the bolt cutters or cutting

00:54:23.600 | the case apart to get into it, etc.

00:54:26.100 | And so while that is the law, the law seems to be very poorly applied in most circumstances.

00:54:32.200 | And many times when people travel with guns, they wind up having their cases opened and

00:54:36.480 | their locks tested.

00:54:37.980 | But if you're traveling with things, right, where you have a bunch of electronics, you're

00:54:41.360 | traveling with 30 iPhones or something like that that you have to transport to an event

00:54:46.780 | or a bunch of computers or etc.

00:54:48.640 | This is your secret, is fly with a gun.

00:54:50.800 | Now here's what's interesting.

00:54:51.940 | There may be times where you may not actually want to have a gun.

00:54:55.720 | You might be flying from Florida into JFK, right, and you're going to be in downtown

00:55:00.480 | Manhattan, and your destination is in Manhattan.

00:55:03.360 | Well that would be, in Florida you might be fine with your Glock 19 that you carry all

00:55:09.440 | the time, and if you were flying from Florida to Texas, then of course you'd have your Glock

00:55:13.160 | 19 that you could carry in Texas and in Florida.

00:55:15.280 | But that's very troublesome in Manhattan.

00:55:16.840 | So how do you fly with a gun?

00:55:18.820 | If you read the TSA regulations on what is characterized as a gun, it includes a number

00:55:25.320 | of important pieces.

00:55:27.320 | So the key ones are replica pistols are often characterized as a gun.

00:55:31.920 | So if you have some kind of stage replica, not the kind of stage replica that Alec Baldwin

00:55:37.480 | might be holding and playing with and shooting people with, but rather a stage replica that

00:55:42.200 | doesn't actually accept ammunition.

00:55:44.280 | You can do a starter pistol, and a starter pistol won't accept live rounds, but some

00:55:48.160 | kind of stage replica will work, and that can often get around the rules of a very restrictive

00:55:52.880 | place like Manhattan.

00:55:54.600 | In addition, my two favorites are a flare pistol, so a flare pistol for like boating

00:56:00.640 | safety.

00:56:01.640 | A flare pistol, even an empty flare pistol with no flares with you, that is legally speaking

00:56:06.280 | a gun.

00:56:07.360 | And so if I were wanting to do that, I would have a flare pistol, bright orange safety

00:56:12.220 | flare pistol, no ammunition, so I don't have any explosives, and I would go up to the agent

00:56:16.960 | and I would say, "I'm flying with a firearm.

00:56:20.320 | Here's the firearm," and the whole legal process applies, but you don't have to necessarily

00:56:25.240 | travel with your Glock 19.

00:56:28.080 | In addition, kind of the final piece is you could take a modular firearm like an AR-15,

00:56:33.440 | and the legal firearm piece of an AR-15 is the lower, right?

00:56:38.940 | So you could just take an AR-15 lower, which is, for the uninitiated, simply a piece of

00:56:43.680 | metal that has a trigger assembly on it, but there's no barrel.

00:56:46.840 | It doesn't accept a magazine.

00:56:48.080 | There's no stock.

00:56:49.080 | It's just a hunk of metal ground out, but it has a serial number on it.

00:56:53.480 | Because that piece has the serial number on it, that is technically considered a firearm.

00:56:58.240 | And so you could grab yourself a $30 or $50 lower, and that's a gun, and now you can use

00:57:05.340 | that gun to actually secure your suitcase and actually travel through an airport with

00:57:13.400 | it.

00:57:14.400 | And so those are my tips.

00:57:16.520 | So I don't think you should do cash, but if other people have valuable items that they

00:57:20.240 | did need to actually run the risk of checking, those are some of the tips for you.

00:57:25.080 | I would encourage you, though, not to check items that are valuable if you can possibly

00:57:29.600 | avoid it, because those who have done this and are doing it, again, frequently, even

00:57:34.000 | when the person uses high-quality locks, a high-quality locked case, et cetera, they

00:57:38.640 | wind up having their items opened, their locks cut off, their cases destroyed.

00:57:44.540 | Sometimes they can't get the locks cut off, and so they just destroy the case to get it

00:57:47.480 | open.

00:57:48.480 | So you're not supposed to do that, but that's what is happening now when people are doing

00:57:52.560 | it.

00:57:53.560 | Finally, let's talk about mailing money.

00:57:55.860 | Mailing money is a really good way of moving money.

00:57:59.200 | Now in this case, I would use the US Postal Service, not FedEx or UPS, because you actually

00:58:06.260 | have more protection from the US Postal Service than you do with FedEx and UPS.

00:58:11.380 | First of all, FedEx and UPS are spies for the US government, and they are charged with

00:58:17.680 | reporting anything that is suspicious to the US government.

00:58:21.040 | They scan all documents, all packages, et cetera, and if they are aware of something,

00:58:26.480 | you grab a FedEx envelope and you put $100,000 of cash in the FedEx envelope, it's not going

00:58:31.120 | to make it to its destination.

00:58:32.420 | It will be referred to a federal agent of some kind for investigation, so you cannot

00:58:36.360 | use one of those.

00:58:38.000 | But USPS is actually good.

00:58:40.440 | First of all, there's good legal protections for the US Postal Service.

00:58:44.700 | Those legal protections are that it's only the Postmaster General and the US Postal Inspectors

00:58:52.980 | who are legally allowed to open mail.

00:58:56.080 | One technique that you can do, which is legally speaking, if you have very important documents,

00:59:02.120 | and in this case, one of the tools that you could use, if I were flying with mail, is

00:59:07.380 | if you secure those documents in an envelope that is addressed, properly addressed from

00:59:18.780 | you to a recipient, properly stamped, some people argue that that mail is protected even

00:59:26.000 | from search by law, from search by regular police officers, et cetera, because legally

00:59:32.860 | speaking it's supposed to be the Postmaster General and/or the Postal Inspectors who can

00:59:36.380 | access the contents of that mail.

00:59:38.860 | I'm not aware of ever having that having been tested.

00:59:41.820 | I don't know if that's ever actually been tested, if anyone's ever sued it.

00:59:44.660 | I just know that technically speaking, that's a little loophole that I've read about that

00:59:47.740 | is supposed to be in case, and if I were flying with $100,000 cash, I would make sure that

00:59:52.380 | that's probably one of the wrappers that I put on the cash to protect it for all the

00:59:57.860 | reasons that I've just said.

00:59:59.860 | But beyond that, the point is that mail that's in transit is secure.

01:00:05.460 | Now would I send all of it in one envelope?

01:00:07.820 | Absolutely not, but you can very easily, even just sending $100 bills, you can pretty easily

01:00:13.400 | send a couple thousand dollars in first class mail and it's really reliable.

01:00:18.060 | It's pretty good.

01:00:19.060 | So in that situation, what do you do?

01:00:20.380 | Well you make sure that you cut out, remember mail's going to be scanned and it's going

01:00:24.180 | to be scanned both by the US Postal Service machines in the United States.

01:00:27.980 | By the way, a couple of quick things on mail security.

01:00:30.020 | In the United States, all mail is scanned and those scans are saved.

01:00:34.500 | So you have the sender and the recipient of all mail is scanned and stored in a database.

01:00:39.620 | And then in addition, the actual envelopes are scanned.

01:00:42.100 | And if there's some reason why the Postal Service has a reason to open your mail, they

01:00:46.300 | can do that.

01:00:47.380 | And then of course, the mail could be scanned by somebody individually who's trying to steal

01:00:52.520 | from a mailbox.

01:00:55.780 | Your aunt receives her social security check in the mail.

01:00:59.580 | Somebody knows that the social security check arrives on the first of the month, opens it

01:01:02.740 | up.

01:01:03.740 | It's a social security check.

01:01:04.740 | People have had their mail stolen for years.

01:01:07.020 | But within those constraints, if I were wanting to send $100,000 across the country, you just

01:01:11.900 | take it out and divide it into say $3,000 or $4,000 a piece.

01:01:16.300 | That's not that big a deal with sending $100 bills.

01:01:19.060 | Wrap it up in torn out pages from a magazine, put it in a security envelope.

01:01:25.180 | Probably good to do this spread out over a period of time.

01:01:28.060 | Probably good to make sure that you're sending it to someone with a secure mailbox, not just

01:01:31.580 | sitting on the street.

01:01:33.240 | But you can easily send thousands of dollars back and forth by the mail with just bills

01:01:37.260 | in between magazine pages or whatever, and it's very safe.

01:01:40.980 | And so you might want to use a couple names, couple addresses, etc. if you have those available,

01:01:45.460 | or just do it over a period of time.

01:01:47.420 | But I think that's a very reliable way to do that.

01:01:50.460 | I learned all that from JJ Luna, who being a privacy aficionado, he believed very strongly

01:01:57.940 | that to send, he wrote a book on how to hide your money, your cash, whatnot.

01:02:04.380 | And he believed very strongly that the best way to move physical cash was just simply

01:02:08.980 | with the US mail.

01:02:09.980 | And I've tested it and it works fine.

01:02:11.740 | It works great.

01:02:12.740 | So those are probably more than you expected, John, but those are my pieces of advice on

01:02:19.080 | how to do it.

01:02:20.080 | I guess for sake of completion, I would simply add that in many cases it may be better for

01:02:26.880 | you to choose something other than physical cash.

01:02:30.020 | And so there are financial systems that some people have, I forget the specific name of

01:02:37.140 | it, but basically let's say that somebody is sending remittances.

01:02:42.760 | I've used this to get money into places for relief work that we couldn't get money in

01:02:50.160 | other ways.

01:02:51.160 | And I wish I could remember the name of it, but there's a specific name for it.

01:02:54.900 | But the idea is in many cultures, let's say that I'm trying to send money into a place

01:02:59.640 | where that money is not being accepted.

01:03:02.240 | I'm trying to do something that is morally right, but legally wrong.

01:03:06.980 | So I'm sending money and food and medical supplies to help people who are in need, but

01:03:12.080 | the government of a certain place says you can't do it.

01:03:14.080 | What do you do?

01:03:15.080 | Well, you find somebody who has a family connection or a friend connection in that local place.

01:03:21.780 | And so you go to the person, let's say that you're in the United States, you go to the

01:03:25.280 | person in the United States that has a family connection there and you say, "Here, here's

01:03:29.000 | $50,000 or $5,000."

01:03:32.240 | And that person says, "Okay, I'll take the $5,000 of cash."

01:03:36.000 | Then that person speaks to their family member who's in the restricted country or restricted

01:03:41.320 | place and says, "Okay, I've got $5,000 cash.

01:03:44.620 | Go ahead and give the intended recipient the money."

01:03:48.540 | And obviously they're going to charge money for it.

01:03:51.880 | Usually it's quite steep, 20%.

01:03:54.520 | You might pay a 20% fee for the conversion.

01:03:57.240 | But this allows you to actually transfer the money from one place into another place without

01:04:02.920 | having to physically send the money.

01:04:04.680 | There's no physical transfer of money.

01:04:07.840 | There's no even digital transfer.

01:04:09.900 | The money never changes.

01:04:11.320 | It's just held in the accounts based upon the honor and the relationship of those people

01:04:15.400 | involved.

01:04:16.400 | And so the guy in the restricted country knows that he's got a $5,000 credit with his family

01:04:21.860 | member living in the United States.

01:04:23.240 | So that's another system that can be used in situations where you have to do it.

01:04:26.440 | But I don't think that any of that is practical to your needs.

01:04:30.040 | So there you go, John.

01:04:31.040 | Hope it helps.

01:04:32.040 | John Ligato: Yeah, I appreciate it.

01:04:33.040 | Thank you very much.

01:04:34.040 | It's as thorough as I expected it to be and very, very much on brand.

01:04:39.040 | Thank you.

01:04:40.040 | Dave: We're on brand for radical personal finance.

01:04:41.840 | Exactly.

01:04:42.840 | All right.

01:04:43.840 | Two other callers.

01:04:44.840 | Two, six, seven, eight.

01:04:47.080 | Welcome to the radical personal finance.

01:04:48.080 | How can I serve you today?

01:04:49.080 | Joshua Steinberg, CFO Alphabet and Google: Hi, Joshua.

01:04:51.560 | I have questions about designing a sovereign lifestyle that really fits in well with your

01:04:56.840 | how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis course.

01:05:00.720 | Dave: Okay, great.

01:05:02.360 | Joshua Steinberg, CFO Alphabet and Google: Basically, I want guidance on inexpensively

01:05:05.640 | living in Florida and then Asia for the next few years, waiting for assets to appreciate

01:05:12.400 | with the current COVID restrictions and inflation expectations.

01:05:18.400 | And quick background is basically six months ago, I fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

01:05:24.040 | It really gave me a deep understanding of the legacy financial system in addition to

01:05:29.800 | Bitcoin.

01:05:30.800 | And I currently have 565,000 in Bitcoin.

01:05:35.120 | 300 is in a traditional self-directed IRA.

01:05:39.840 | 75,000 is in a Roth self-directed IRA, and then 190,000 in taxable accounts.

01:05:46.120 | So I am currently doing a Roth conversion on that 300,000, which will result in me owing

01:05:54.200 | an additional 105,000 this coming April 15th.

01:06:00.320 | For assets, I have a home worth 293,000 without a mortgage.

01:06:06.160 | I'm currently downsizing the personal belongings in advance of the sale.

01:06:11.000 | And then so 105,000 of that will go for the Roth conversion.

01:06:15.560 | And I'd like to use the remaining amount to live on for the next few years until the Bitcoin

01:06:20.480 | appreciates.

01:06:21.480 | And in addition, there's 115,000 in gold coins, depending on how they are graded.

01:06:31.200 | There's one very special Liberty head that could be worth $50,000, and the rest are St.

01:06:37.920 | Gaudens or modern Olympic or American Arts medals.

01:06:43.960 | And I have no 16, in addition, there's 16,500 in cash and no credit card debt.

01:06:52.320 | And are you a single man or are there other family members living with you?

01:06:58.160 | I'm 51 years old, unmarried with no children.

01:07:02.600 | The only physical limitations are a past lower back injury that prevents me from lifting

01:07:07.400 | heavy items.

01:07:08.840 | And my 81 year old father who lives with me, he's in good health and he's joined me down

01:07:16.240 | the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

01:07:17.520 | And whether I go to Florida or Asia, he wants to join me.

01:07:23.320 | It's like we're looking forward to this together.

01:07:25.720 | Awesome.

01:07:26.920 | So I think this is great.

01:07:28.040 | And so the idea is you want to live frugally for the next few years, not work, but live

01:07:36.200 | frugally while you wait for Bitcoin to appreciate.

01:07:38.880 | That's the plan, right?

01:07:40.320 | Well, I'm not opposed to working.

01:07:43.160 | I left my job in September, my job of 17 years in September.

01:07:50.600 | Basically, if we're staying somewhere that's very low, low cost, I'd like to spend the

01:07:57.040 | time studying whether it's I've been looking into Salesforce admin certification, several

01:08:06.000 | of the IT certifications.

01:08:08.200 | And just I generally like to learn more about Bitcoin and lightning and IT just to just

01:08:13.440 | to secure my own assets so they can't get taken.

01:08:17.320 | Right.

01:08:18.320 | Are you willing to live in an RV at least for a time or seasonally?

01:08:24.760 | That is not something that my father enjoys.

01:08:28.440 | No.

01:08:29.440 | And I'm a person we do enjoy Florida.

01:08:35.920 | But when I went to Asia several times, it's like that really speaks to me.

01:08:42.160 | It's the I apologize.

01:08:49.320 | It's the the interest in social cohesiveness, the politeness.

01:08:54.720 | I'm kind of a type B person, but very driven.

01:08:58.720 | And it just spoke to me well.

01:09:00.240 | So that that that is where I'd like, you know, that's where I ultimately want to live.

01:09:07.920 | And the goal is to, you know, when the Bitcoin finally appreciates it, it'll be picking up

01:09:13.720 | the residencies and citizenships.

01:09:16.280 | And ultimately, you know, I'd love to say goodbye to that U.S. citizenship.

01:09:20.480 | OK.

01:09:21.480 | When you think about going back and forth from Asia and Florida, is it important to

01:09:27.280 | you that you do it regularly, meaning you want to spend six months in Florida, six months

01:09:31.920 | in Asia?

01:09:33.000 | Or are you willing to spend longer amounts of time in one of those two places?

01:09:38.600 | Definitely not.

01:09:39.600 | It would it would it would be I would see coming back to the U.S. when maybe, oh, we've

01:09:45.040 | been out there two years, maybe three years and we just missed missed the U.S.

01:09:51.120 | I mean, the immediate thoughts were to move to Florida to establish residency there because

01:09:57.040 | current my current state has a state income tax, establish a mail forwarding service there

01:10:04.120 | and just get a small storage unit for for minimal personal belongings.

01:10:08.520 | May or may not even keep the furniture and then decide what to do about the cars.

01:10:13.680 | I mean, I would love to live kind of a permanent tourist situation for the near future just

01:10:22.920 | to see if dad's comfortable with it.

01:10:24.840 | If if he if he's not, you know, we come back to the U.S. and at least then still have possibly

01:10:32.080 | the cars and the furniture and not have to recreate that.

01:10:35.640 | But if but if abroad is is what's suiting as well, you know, next time we come back,

01:10:40.680 | it'd be just sell everything except for the essentials and have it in a very small, small

01:10:46.440 | storage unit.

01:10:47.440 | And dad has Social Security income.

01:10:50.240 | Does he also have other regular forms of income, such as other pension flows or investment

01:10:54.400 | flows?

01:10:55.400 | He does not.

01:10:56.840 | He has he has just his Social Security and a minimal amount of personal assets.

01:11:03.040 | So the goal is is just for for him not to not to have to to to pay down on any of that.

01:11:11.360 | And there were there were areas I know it's not open yet, but Dumaguete in in in the Philippines

01:11:18.360 | just seems like a nice it's a college town where food is inexpensive.

01:11:23.880 | You know, housing doesn't appear to be bad and health care is affordable.

01:11:28.440 | And it'd be a nice, nice springboard for Southeast Asia, you know, with with our eyes on, you

01:11:34.200 | know, in the long term, more of a Malaysia residency just just for the for the lifestyle

01:11:42.040 | and and and the fact that they don't don't tax your outside income.

01:11:47.040 | Right.

01:11:48.040 | Right.

01:11:49.040 | So let me walk you through this first.

01:11:51.400 | I would encourage you at this stage, based upon what you have described at this stage,

01:11:58.240 | I would encourage you to spend to not worry too much about the paperwork of, you know,

01:12:04.440 | second citizenship residency permits.

01:12:06.400 | Yes, we do need to pay attention to.

01:12:08.480 | But there would be little reason at this stage for you as a US citizen to take the very significant

01:12:15.560 | step of renouncing your citizenship.

01:12:18.480 | A few years down the road, yes.

01:12:21.480 | And the yes, maybe is the question.

01:12:25.060 | The yes, maybe is based upon why do you need to renounce citizenship?

01:12:29.720 | If the question is tax planning, the biggest thing that you need to pay careful attention

01:12:35.040 | to, contrary to what you hear on the Internet, is that you need to pay careful attention

01:12:38.880 | to the fact that significant amounts of your personal Bitcoin investments are inside of

01:12:45.280 | IRAs and Roth IRAs.

01:12:47.680 | This is not bad.

01:12:48.680 | I'm not saying it's a problem.

01:12:50.640 | What it means is that your tax planning considerations are very different than other people.

01:12:56.100 | And in fact, renunciation of citizenship for those assets when they're held in IRAs is

01:13:03.660 | not a good solution.

01:13:05.460 | And the reason is that on the day that you renounce citizenship, all of your assets are

01:13:10.400 | marked to the market and taxes are due.

01:13:14.340 | But there's a difference here between how your IRA and your Roth IRA assets are treated

01:13:18.740 | as compared to your personally owned capital gains assets.

01:13:22.780 | So let's pretend that I'll just add zeros to what you described of your asset mix just

01:13:28.460 | to make things interesting in terms of what you're hoping for and what you're anticipating

01:13:32.480 | could possibly happen with your Bitcoin holdings.

01:13:36.780 | Let's pretend that you were 55 years old and you had $3 million of Bitcoin in an IRA, $750,000

01:13:45.500 | of Bitcoin in a Roth IRA, and then $1.9 million of Bitcoin in a taxable account.

01:13:52.740 | On the day of your citizenship renunciation, you would incur $3,750,000 of ordinary income

01:14:01.380 | that is all fully taxable to you on your final tax return because the Bitcoin assets are

01:14:06.980 | held in your IRA or your Roth IRA.

01:14:10.200 | So that would obviously be the worst possible thing that you could do, meaning to generate

01:14:16.860 | a taxable income of $3.75 million immediately puts you into the top tax bracket.

01:14:22.760 | And then that's all ordinary income.

01:14:24.880 | It's not capital gains income.

01:14:28.000 | Now if you wait until you're 59 and a half and then you renounce income, that plan would

01:14:33.720 | be different.

01:14:35.080 | So for example, at that point in time, your Roth IRA assets would be received tax free.

01:14:40.500 | And then if you continue to do Roth conversions, perhaps even by then all the money is in your

01:14:44.200 | Roth IRA.

01:14:46.460 | But at the moment, definitely you would not renounce citizenship.

01:14:50.240 | And you would not renounce citizenship even if you have assets in the Roth IRA until you're

01:14:55.280 | 59 and a half.

01:14:56.500 | Because if you renounce citizenship, all of the assets in the Roth IRA get turned into

01:15:01.640 | ordinary income, which is then fully taxable because it's not a qualified distribution

01:15:06.640 | from the Roth IRA.

01:15:08.280 | And so it's a bad, bad move for you based upon what you're describing to be considering

01:15:12.760 | renouncing citizenship at this point in time.

01:15:15.940 | That may change after 59 and a half.

01:15:17.760 | If you have not seen it, go to Nomad Capitalist channel and find the video that I did on Peter

01:15:22.700 | Thiel's $5 billion Roth IRA and how Peter Thiel could renounce US citizenship at the

01:15:30.200 | age of 59 and a half, take his $5 billion that's in his Roth IRA, and potentially, according

01:15:35.640 | to my understanding of the tax law, could potentially have that money income tax free.

01:15:40.880 | Because that could in theory apply to you.

01:15:43.360 | The challenge is you're 51 years old, and I expect that law to change within the next

01:15:48.160 | eight years.

01:15:49.280 | But you should pay attention to it and see, because as you approach 59 and a half, if

01:15:54.320 | you complete these Roth conversions, such that virtually all of your Bitcoin, or at

01:15:58.800 | least all the Bitcoin that's currently in the IRA, goes into the Roth IRA, and if Bitcoin

01:16:04.920 | does do what you anticipate and does massively increase, then potentially you could follow

01:16:11.120 | the path that I described about Thiel in that video that I did for the Nomad Capitalist

01:16:15.720 | channel of the $5 billion Roth IRA.

01:16:18.480 | So it's not something that you should ignore forever, but it is something that you should

01:16:23.120 | ignore for now.

01:16:24.660 | You definitely will not want to renounce citizenship, as from my perspective, until you're 59 and

01:16:30.200 | a half.

01:16:31.200 | And as an American, in your current asset structure, there's really no reason to renounce

01:16:35.480 | citizenship at this point in time.

01:16:37.840 | There are enough other things that you can do that most likely you would be the guy who

01:16:41.880 | would be best suited for, yes, getting a residence visa for the Philippines or Malaysia or something

01:16:46.000 | else, but maintaining your American citizenship.

01:16:48.920 | If you do wind up with massive increases in Bitcoin values, then what I definitely would

01:16:55.400 | do is I definitely would go ahead and purchase a second citizenship.

01:17:01.820 | I mean, here, not today.

01:17:04.040 | Today you don't have enough assets to make it the best move.

01:17:07.560 | But if you wound up with millions of dollars, then definitely I would purchase a Caribbean

01:17:11.340 | citizenship from one of the Caribbean Citizenship by Investment programs, so that you would

01:17:15.980 | be positioned to renounce, but don't go down that path right now.

01:17:20.700 | There are some unique tax ramifications of your IRAs and your Roth IRAs that would make

01:17:26.080 | that plan a bad plan for you.

01:17:28.720 | So let's go back from that.

01:17:31.740 | Just finish it out.

01:17:32.740 | What could you get?

01:17:33.820 | What should you get?

01:17:34.820 | You probably should get a residency permit from a country in Asia that you would want

01:17:37.740 | to be in.

01:17:38.740 | I think here, definitely, the Philippines just redid the rules on the retirement visa,

01:17:43.540 | but I think the Philippines would be a wonderful place for you to start.

01:17:47.660 | I think that the Philippines, culturally speaking, is a very comfortable place for English-speaking

01:17:54.300 | Americans.

01:17:55.300 | I mean, the Filipino culture is just generally so pleasing for Americans.

01:18:00.620 | There's just a good cultural connection there, and the Filipinos are very nice.

01:18:06.520 | They like Americans.

01:18:07.520 | They're very welcoming.

01:18:08.520 | There's a good cultural fit.

01:18:10.440 | From a language perspective, the Philippines' English is so widely spoken that I think it

01:18:15.060 | would be wonderful.

01:18:16.180 | From a cost perspective, it's very doable to live very inexpensively in the Philippines.

01:18:22.540 | You've got great tax benefits of the Philippines and a pretty easy residency program using

01:18:27.660 | one of their retirement visas, which certainly your father could get and you could get.

01:18:32.500 | And so I think that's a good place to start.

01:18:34.780 | Malaysia, they've been dickering around with their My Second Home program, which was probably

01:18:40.420 | the world's best option and is now different, but they're fighting about it.

01:18:44.180 | So I think some time would wait to see, and they've been slower to reopen than the Philippines,

01:18:48.940 | so you may just need to wait on that.

01:18:50.780 | But I think that if you set up a base in the Philippines and then just traveled from there

01:18:54.020 | as a tourist, that could be a really good way for you to get to know more parts of Asia

01:18:58.060 | and see, do you enjoy more being in Dumaguete?

01:19:00.820 | Do you enjoy more being in Malaysia?

01:19:02.940 | Do you enjoy more being in Vietnam?

01:19:04.820 | I mean, it's just benefits of all of the above.

01:19:08.300 | So practically speaking, here's what I would say.

01:19:10.260 | The reason I asked about the part-time part-time is you can save a lot of money and live very

01:19:15.860 | well in Asia as long as you're not trying to come back to the United States every few

01:19:19.860 | months, because the airfares are generally pretty significant.

01:19:23.940 | I mean, you can find deals if you're willing to be, but basically it's a thousand bucks

01:19:28.700 | back and forth, and the flights are not fun.

01:19:31.580 | You know, 16 hours, 14 hours, 13 hours, it's not fun to do those flights regularly.

01:19:37.500 | And so it's music to my ears that you say, "We want to try going to Asia and spending

01:19:42.040 | time in Asia and just be there, and then, hey, in a couple of years, if we want to come

01:19:46.380 | back, we want to come back."

01:19:48.100 | So what I would encourage you to do if I were in your shoes is I would store my furniture

01:19:52.340 | and my cars on Craigslist or on Facebook.

01:19:55.580 | I would not store them in a locally rented storage unit, especially right now with the

01:20:00.980 | high values of used vehicles.

01:20:03.060 | Sell your cars.

01:20:04.120 | No question, sell your cars.

01:20:05.860 | In addition, sell your furniture.

01:20:07.540 | Unless, I mean, most people, it's just not worth it.

01:20:11.420 | Those things should be sold, and you should store your cars and furniture in the form

01:20:16.240 | of cash, and just set it aside if you need to, or in your case, you'll buy more Bitcoin,

01:20:21.500 | but just set it aside and know, "Hey, I can always buy a car."

01:20:25.000 | Cars and furniture are easy, but yet having them will be one of the biggest frustrations

01:20:30.340 | to you personally.

01:20:32.140 | So when I got ready to travel the world, I did a few things.

01:20:36.060 | First, go through your personal effects.

01:20:37.740 | I scanned my entire library.

01:20:39.260 | I scanned thousands of books.

01:20:41.300 | You may or may not need to do that.

01:20:42.620 | In fact, I recommend you probably don't.

01:20:44.260 | It's a lot of work and a real hassle, and unless you make a living like I do from the

01:20:47.940 | knowledge that's in your head and you need the ability to pull up your books because

01:20:52.180 | your brain can see the page that you need to look at from time to time to remember something,

01:20:55.860 | then you probably just get rid of all that stuff.

01:20:58.200 | Get rid of all your personal belongings, except just a few mementos, et cetera, and get whatever

01:21:04.280 | is really, truly necessary, and be as minimalistic in your approach as possible.

01:21:09.740 | If you do this, it makes traveling easy, because what you haven't yet grasped since you've

01:21:15.000 | been living conventionally is that you can live very well, especially as two single men,

01:21:21.740 | you can live very well even just on short-term arrangements, short-term accommodations.

01:21:27.760 | So when I'm traveling, even with four children, I basically plan, depending on where I'm at,

01:21:34.760 | I basically plan in my head that I'm going to spend $100 a day on accommodation.

01:21:39.060 | Now I'm traveling with four children and a wife, and we work from home, we homeschool,

01:21:42.960 | et cetera, and so I'm generally spending quite a lot more money than I used to when I was

01:21:48.000 | a backpacker.

01:21:49.000 | I'm staying in normal business class hotels.

01:21:51.400 | I'm staying in upscale Airbnb apartments.

01:21:54.840 | I'm not roughing it because of the family considerations.

01:22:00.800 | But for a lot of people, paying $3,000 a month on rent is not, I mean, that's about what

01:22:05.760 | it winds up being.

01:22:06.760 | And so I can travel with my family of four for more or less about $3,000 a month of accommodations,

01:22:15.160 | even just using short-term accommodations.

01:22:18.860 | Now you want to live frugally, and so if you're going to places that are generally less costly,

01:22:23.520 | places like the Philippines, places like Southeast Asia, you have access to a whole raft of hostels,

01:22:30.000 | guest houses, hotels, et cetera.

01:22:32.320 | The nightly cost there, you can do very well at $30 or $40 a night.

01:22:37.100 | You can find budget options at $20 a night.

01:22:40.280 | So if you traveled on a budget of $50 a day, you wouldn't be suffering as long as you guys

01:22:45.120 | are willing to embrace the adventure.

01:22:48.120 | You can do $50 a day.

01:22:49.460 | You can do $75 a day total all in with accommodations, transportation, et cetera.

01:22:55.340 | And so that's the kind of budget that you can do.

01:22:57.520 | If you give yourself $100 a day, $3,000 a month, maybe, again, depending on your personal

01:23:05.500 | constraints and how much you care about living frugally versus how much you care about living

01:23:10.800 | fancy, then you can do very well on that as long as you're not doing your plane tickets

01:23:16.200 | back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

01:23:18.720 | So I would dump the furniture in the cars, sell those things, and store them in the form

01:23:24.400 | of money so that wherever you wind up going, you can buy new furniture and buy new cars

01:23:29.400 | there.

01:23:30.400 | And especially even in the case of a move to Florida, are you going to put your stuff

01:23:34.080 | in a storage unit where home is now in whatever state it is now?

01:23:36.960 | Well, if you do that, then you're paying storage unit there.

01:23:40.880 | Are you going to drive it to Florida?

01:23:42.160 | You wind up paying truck rental expenses.

01:23:43.920 | I mean, most people, if they're doing an out-of-town move, should probably get rid of most of their

01:23:49.440 | stuff, especially most single people, most flexible people.

01:23:53.400 | The reason I'm articulating this difference is simply that it's different.

01:23:56.100 | You have different needs if you have a bunch of children.

01:23:58.620 | And so family needs are different.

01:24:00.080 | But in your situation, you and your dad should be able to live very simply and just simply

01:24:04.240 | go to Florida.

01:24:05.240 | And if you could get by with just a very small storage unit, with monthly rental of, say,

01:24:10.960 | $10 a month, a little 5x5 locker, something like that, stuff that you could fit into just

01:24:16.480 | a standard rental minivan or a standard rental car, then you're in the range at which it's

01:24:21.880 | no problem to keep that, to keep your mementos safe in a storage unit.

01:24:25.680 | And then you're totally free.

01:24:26.880 | And you can follow your interests wherever they go.

01:24:30.080 | And this could be just the greatest adventure ever imaginable with your dad.

01:24:34.560 | Because the two of you traveling together, you have camaraderie, company, et cetera.

01:24:39.240 | And this just, I can't think of a better way to spend time with my 81-year-old father than

01:24:43.200 | what you're describing.

01:24:44.580 | But you'll want to be light, as light as possible.

01:24:47.560 | And so I would get rid of that stuff so that you don't have $200 a month of storage fees

01:24:52.180 | for stuff that, I mean, just imagine, right?

01:24:54.680 | If you're paying $200 a month for a big enough storage fee to store your furniture in a car,

01:25:00.720 | maybe, there's no way to ever recoup that if you're gone for two years.

01:25:04.520 | $30 a month, absolutely.

01:25:06.500 | Do that.

01:25:07.500 | If you're going to buy a 5.5 locker and put all your stuff in there, do that.

01:25:10.560 | But don't do a storage unit for furniture and cars.

01:25:13.680 | >>Steve: Good, good.

01:25:16.380 | Do you have any advice?

01:25:17.440 | I've heard you speak about gold in the past, about how to get rid of the gold.

01:25:23.560 | We've explored PCGS, but we don't know if we should mail it into them.

01:25:29.920 | Do we bring the good ones there to two of the events that are coming up?

01:25:34.360 | What's been your experience with gold in the past?

01:25:36.200 | >>AJ: I think that the question would be, do you want to store it and keep it in the

01:25:39.860 | form of gold, or do you want to try to convert your gold to Bitcoin?

01:25:43.740 | I would rather you not be 100% all in on Bitcoin.

01:25:50.020 | I feel like that's not the right plan.

01:25:55.220 | I don't want you to be 100% on Bitcoin.

01:25:57.900 | That's just foolish.

01:25:58.940 | Even the most bullish Bitcoin maximalist, being 100% all in, especially at your age,

01:26:06.060 | your father's age, et cetera, unless you have very marketable skills, which you're talking

01:26:10.340 | about, educating yourself, I think it would be foolish to be all in.

01:26:15.220 | I would like to see you keep the money in the form of gold, and I would also like to

01:26:19.780 | see you make sure that you keep enough cash.

01:26:23.340 | I don't mean here currency.

01:26:24.820 | I mean working bank accounts, so that you could at least resettle yourself in the United

01:26:30.300 | States and get another job if you needed to.

01:26:33.080 | When you're traveling, you should have a resettlement fund.

01:26:36.600 | You should have an amount of money that you've said, "Hey, dad, if I...

01:26:40.640 | Let's say that you go to Asia, your dad dies, and you're totally broke, and Bitcoin goes

01:26:45.720 | to zero.

01:26:47.680 | You need to have a resettlement fund where you could move back to the United States."

01:26:51.680 | It's the single most important reason why you keep your US citizenship at this point,

01:26:55.760 | is because there is no better job market in the world for you than the United States.

01:27:01.120 | If you came back to the United States as a US citizen, you can get any job in the world

01:27:06.300 | that you want.

01:27:07.960 | But if you are not a US citizen, and there's a total crash of some kind and you need a

01:27:13.120 | job, you will have a very, very hard time.

01:27:15.720 | And while you might make it as a bartender at some beach bar in Dumaguete, Philippines,

01:27:19.800 | it would be a whole lot better for you to move back to where you're from, where you

01:27:22.660 | have a network, and get really any job, and kind of rebuild and get going forward again.

01:27:27.560 | So keep a resettlement fund, keep an amount of money available to you where you can buy

01:27:32.040 | yourself a plane ticket back home from anywhere in the world.

01:27:35.020 | Keep a resettlement fund enough to get your first, last insecurity on an apartment.

01:27:39.920 | Keep a resettlement fund enough for you to buy yourself a used car, to get yourself some

01:27:44.680 | furniture, etc.

01:27:46.040 | And keep a resettlement fund of an emergency fund that's big enough for you to have several

01:27:50.700 | months of living expenses so that you could find a job.

01:27:53.760 | And so if you imagine Bitcoin going to zero and everything falling apart, if you had,

01:27:58.680 | I mean, with those numbers, let's say 15,000 to 20,000 of cash set aside as like an emergency

01:28:06.300 | fund, a last-ditch emergency fund to get you home, get you employed, get a roof over your

01:28:10.520 | head, to me that would be the smart move.

01:28:13.120 | And then on top of that, of course, you'll need your petty cash for traveling.

01:28:17.540 | But I would always keep that aside.

01:28:20.360 | And then in this case, I think I would store my gold.

01:28:23.120 | I would find secure storage here, I think in your case, just a bank safety deposit box

01:28:27.840 | would work fine.

01:28:28.840 | It gives you some protection.

01:28:30.040 | As long as there's no legal risk that you have right now, then I wouldn't worry too

01:28:33.720 | much about the banking relationship.

01:28:35.360 | Otherwise, you could sign up for private storage where there's no bank involved.

01:28:39.000 | Do private storage on your gold.

01:28:40.880 | Keep it set aside as kind of your return home fund as well, and then wait and watch and

01:28:46.340 | see over the coming years.

01:28:47.560 | But I would do that before I would go and try to ship it.

01:28:53.840 | Thank you so much for your guidance.

01:28:57.200 | These are just the kind of problems that I, or questions that I see you come alive at.

01:29:02.680 | And this has been a long time coming.

01:29:06.560 | And yes, the podcast you did about Peter Thiel with Nomad Capitalist and Andrew Henderson,

01:29:16.080 | it's just keep doing what you're doing.

01:29:17.960 | It's just you are speaking to that remnant and the ones who are out here and are listening

01:29:24.760 | are gaining so much from few other people.

01:29:29.160 | I mean, I did initiate the Roth conversion actually just today after speaking with my

01:29:37.240 | tax man.

01:29:38.760 | And he's an accountant, lifelong friend of my father's, and he actually had no clients

01:29:46.720 | who have self-directed IRAs.

01:29:48.720 | So I guess the more I absorb, I think that everybody else must be getting all this that

01:29:53.760 | I am, but I'm still that outlier and that weirdo.

01:29:58.640 | Even given the changes that are harder and harder for everyone to ignore with the inflation,

01:30:05.800 | with the questions over there that quickly switch from taking the income of the rich

01:30:13.160 | to taking the wealth of the rich, and then changing the definition of what is rich.

01:30:18.120 | It's just, it's scary.

01:30:20.120 | Yeah, I don't disagree.

01:30:23.480 | It's funny because we all get into our own echo chambers and then we think like, "Well,

01:30:28.080 | we're just like all of our other people."

01:30:29.520 | But when you look at the civilization broadly, all of our neighbors, like, "No, they're

01:30:34.840 | in their own echo chambers."

01:30:36.760 | But there are very few people who actually do this stuff, which is what many of the Bitcoin

01:30:42.440 | aficionados see.

01:30:43.440 | They're like, "Well, this seems logically inevitable."

01:30:47.100 | And so it's just people are paying attention as people pay attention.

01:30:50.400 | Let me give you one last tip before I go on to my final caller.

01:30:54.520 | You mentioned moving to Florida.

01:30:56.040 | I think that that can work, but here's what I want you to know.

01:30:59.680 | First of all, you should check your state.

01:31:01.640 | And if you're not going to be physically present, then in most states there's probably no reason

01:31:05.720 | why you have to actually move your residence to Florida.

01:31:09.340 | Because if you're not going to be physically present, most states will exempt you completely

01:31:12.840 | from taxes.

01:31:14.600 | Some states do not have those rules and some states do.

01:31:18.120 | I recently was looking at California, right?

01:31:20.640 | California does not have an explicitly stated thing such as, "Hey, if you qualify for the

01:31:25.440 | foreign earned income exemption because you're out of the United States for 330 days per

01:31:28.800 | year, we'll also exempt you from state income taxes."

01:31:31.520 | They still go based upon, "Well, we're going to look at all these factors."

01:31:35.160 | And so if I were living in California and going and doing what you're describing, I

01:31:38.680 | definitely would move from California to a free state such as Florida or Texas or South

01:31:45.160 | Dakota and move my residency to one of those states before going abroad.

01:31:50.620 | But that's not necessary with every state.

01:31:52.720 | And the downside that you're going to face is that when you move your residency to Florida

01:31:58.160 | or to South Dakota or to Texas, and these are all three states that we talk about because

01:32:02.560 | they all allow nomad residents.

01:32:05.520 | They are no state income tax states and so they don't mind having people registered in

01:32:11.520 | their state as a resident who aren't paying taxes because they don't charge state income

01:32:14.520 | taxes.

01:32:15.520 | They'd rather have more residents than fewer because it enhances their personal standing,

01:32:19.600 | etc.

01:32:20.600 | And so that's why these states are used by, say, full-time RVers as a place to set up

01:32:24.860 | a home base.

01:32:26.120 | You can do it.

01:32:27.120 | But the problem is that there are some downsides that come with it.

01:32:31.380 | So things like credit card registrations.

01:32:34.240 | Your credit cards, you will have a hard time getting new credit cards if you register your

01:32:38.800 | address to a postal service in one of those states.

01:32:43.320 | You will have a very hard time getting new bank accounts if you register your address

01:32:47.400 | to a postal service in one of those banks.

01:32:50.840 | Registering your address in one of those places is completely legal.

01:32:54.240 | You can wind up with a driver's license that says your state of residence is Texas and

01:32:58.920 | everything is good.

01:33:00.340 | But the banks and the credit card companies are picky, which is one more reason why banks

01:33:04.800 | are zeros, right, to play the Bitcoin game.

01:33:07.760 | And I don't mind it.

01:33:08.760 | But what you'll find is that those banks and credit cards are quite useful to you still

01:33:13.160 | in the current world while you wait for the new world order with regard to currency to

01:33:18.760 | be created.

01:33:20.120 | And so what I would rather see you do is choose a trusted relative to simply move your affairs

01:33:27.160 | to.

01:33:28.160 | Choose a trusted relative and then you and your dad move your address to that trusted

01:33:31.640 | relative's home and register that as your address as long as you can look at the rules

01:33:37.740 | of your state and they might clearly exempt you from state income tax due to being abroad.

01:33:43.520 | The other thing that would be useful about it is that if you do that, whenever you need

01:33:50.000 | to handle administrative stuff, it'll be easier for you to handle administrative stuff, right,

01:33:54.080 | like renewing your driver's license.

01:33:55.960 | And so you should do all of that.

01:33:58.560 | You should renew all those documents as much as you can now.

01:34:03.600 | But if you need to renew your driver's license, if you don't know anybody in Florida and you're

01:34:06.760 | just going to Florida or just going to Texas to renew your driver's license, that's not

01:34:10.520 | such a fun trip back to the United States as it is going back home, wherever home was,

01:34:16.120 | staying with a friend, spending a few days, renewing your driver's license, getting new

01:34:19.880 | bank cards, et cetera, things like that.

01:34:22.480 | So just a thought for you is check the laws clearly.

01:34:27.000 | In addition, just as Josh was moving abroad thing, lesson's hard one, okay, make sure

01:34:34.200 | your banking infrastructure is all set up.

01:34:36.360 | Make sure your credit card infrastructure is all set up.

01:34:38.780 | Make sure your communications infrastructure is all set up, depending on what you're going

01:34:42.840 | to need there.

01:34:45.280 | Otherwise, in the moment, there's no truly global option from the United States.

01:34:50.720 | So the only option that I recommend is that you have redundancy.

01:34:54.720 | So you might go with a Google Fi or a T-Mobile plan, et cetera, but they will both eventually

01:34:59.860 | cut you off if you don't come back to the United States and if you're using lots of

01:35:02.640 | data.

01:35:03.640 | So they're a good option for you, but you should additional probably have a Google voice

01:35:06.740 | number and/or some other VoIP service as well, and then use your local SIM cards.

01:35:11.880 | You will want to move as many of your contacts and friends over to messaging services rather

01:35:16.160 | than phone calls, whether that's iMessaging, WhatsApp, Signal, Wire, Facebook Messenger,

01:35:22.680 | whatever email, whatever you're using, get them accustomed to speaking with you so that

01:35:26.520 | you can continue those relationships.

01:35:29.040 | Also, from a practical perspective, before you leave, what you want to do now, especially

01:35:35.120 | for residency stuff, you need to go down and for both you and your dad, get about five

01:35:41.360 | to ten original copies of your birth certificate and have them apostilled by your estate.

01:35:47.880 | So get your apostills done now and have those with you.

01:35:51.480 | Additionally, I would encourage you go to your local sheriff's office, get about five

01:35:56.280 | to ten, I would encourage ten, but ten sounds excessive, I have ten of all this stuff, go

01:36:00.920 | and get ten copies of your fingerprint cards that you can send in for your FBI background

01:36:06.720 | checks, because with every residency application, you will have to send in a current background

01:36:12.320 | check for law enforcement, and that's really inconvenient to go and get fingerprints done

01:36:18.440 | in Dumaguete, Philippines and then send those into the FBI.

01:36:21.860 | So go and get ten copies of your fingerprint cards made for you and of your dad.

01:36:26.200 | They may or may not always be accepted, depending on how your local sheriff's department dates

01:36:30.120 | those forms, but it's much better for you to have those and leave those with a trusted

01:36:34.080 | friend.

01:36:35.080 | So original apostilled birth certificates, extra copies of your FBI fingerprint cards,

01:36:43.600 | original apostilled copies of marriage certificates and/or divorce records.

01:36:50.600 | So you won't have apostilled copies of divorce records, but if either you or your father

01:36:55.080 | have been divorced, get the marriage certificate and then get the divorce records and have

01:36:58.960 | those.

01:37:01.160 | Transcripts can be useful, so call your alma mater, go ahead and order an extra sealed

01:37:06.080 | copy of your college and your high school transcripts, get those sent to and hold those

01:37:11.360 | somewhere with a trusted friend.

01:37:13.720 | And let me think, birth certificates, marriage certificates, divorce certificates, fingerprints,

01:37:18.920 | those are the main ones that you need.

01:37:22.600 | And then academic records.

01:37:25.560 | Then what you should do also is you want to work out a system with your bank for doing

01:37:30.680 | bank records.

01:37:31.680 | And this is also something you need to be careful of with so much money of your money

01:37:34.680 | in Bitcoin.

01:37:36.240 | Almost any visa program that you're going to do is going to require you to demonstrate

01:37:40.400 | a certain amount of income and/or a certain amount of assets.

01:37:43.400 | And they're not going to accept the first three passcodes for your cold wallet.

01:37:49.840 | They want to see money in a bank.

01:37:51.800 | And so especially right now when you have money in a bank, you need to be strategic

01:37:55.960 | with the sale of your house as to what you do.

01:37:59.400 | So you're going to want to see that money seasoned and in a bank.

01:38:03.200 | And that's when you're going to want to do your residency applications.

01:38:05.920 | So sell the house, put the money in the bank, let it sit.

01:38:09.680 | Defer your tax bill for the largest amount of time.

01:38:13.560 | And this is the time when you need to line up your residency applications.

01:38:16.800 | You'll get bank statements, and in some countries you'll need to get those bank statements apostilled.

01:38:22.520 | This is a process that most Americans are unfamiliar with.

01:38:25.720 | They don't know, they've never had anything apostilled.

01:38:28.740 | So check your state, but the way it works in most states is you'll need to get a notarized

01:38:33.280 | copy of a bank statement or a letter from your bank saying, "Hey, we see that so-and-so

01:38:38.800 | has this amount of money and they've had an average balance in his account of XYZ or an

01:38:42.520 | average income of his account of XYZ."

01:38:44.920 | So you'll get a notary at the bank to notarize that document.

01:38:48.800 | Then you'll take that document to your state, and the state will apostill the authenticity

01:38:57.120 | of the notary stamp, and that will be good enough for the countries that require apostilled

01:39:02.360 | bank records.

01:39:03.600 | Some other countries have an automatic process of apostilling bank records, but the United

01:39:07.880 | States does not.

01:39:09.400 | And so you'll need to understand how to get that notary signature apostilled so that they'll

01:39:16.440 | be willing to accept your documents.

01:39:18.760 | And then just be careful with that, because that's going to be the key thing.

01:39:21.680 | If you wind up with $30,000 in a bank account and all the rest of your money is in Bitcoin,

01:39:26.640 | and then you got to try to go to apply for Malaysia's My Second Home program, it ain't

01:39:30.520 | going to work.

01:39:31.800 | And so Philippines, I think you can get it done.

01:39:33.680 | I think the Philippines is the best state place for you to start.

01:39:38.880 | And then I would just tell you that you probably don't need many more residencies than that.

01:39:42.600 | If you're willing to move around, I would only worry much with a residency.

01:39:46.760 | Most of those places you can do perpetual tourism, and as long as there's not a pandemic

01:39:50.920 | on, I think you're good to go with minimal residencies.

01:39:54.080 | So those are my thoughts.

01:39:55.080 | >>TED: Thank you for answering the questions that I didn't think to ask.

01:40:00.760 | That's awesome.

01:40:01.760 | >>TED: Well, if you want to know how I learned all this stuff, it's been extremely expensive.

01:40:06.200 | [LAUGHTER]

01:40:07.200 | >>TED: Extremely expensive and hard-won advice.

01:40:12.280 | I literally have had so many bank accounts declined.

01:40:15.000 | I've had to fly.

01:40:16.000 | I've been back to the United States so many times to work out this stuff.

01:40:19.360 | And you do that enough times, you want people to have their problems solved first up.

01:40:24.560 | All right, we finish off the call in 360.

01:40:26.480 | Welcome to the show.

01:40:27.480 | How can I serve you today?

01:40:28.480 | >>ROJAS: Hi, Joshua.

01:40:29.480 | Thank you for taking my call.

01:40:30.480 | >>TED: My pleasure.

01:40:31.480 | >>ROJAS: This is Rojas.

01:40:32.480 | >>TED: Hi, Rojas.

01:40:33.480 | >>ROJAS: I have a question on when would be a good time for my wife and I to talk with

01:40:40.600 | you as far as a consulting call or take on a financial planner?

01:40:45.320 | And there's three sub-factors on that.

01:40:48.080 | I've already received so much good advice that I haven't used yet, and there's still

01:40:54.200 | so much I need to put into practice.

01:40:55.800 | So is it worth talking with someone more specifically when there's advice I haven't done?

01:41:01.520 | And also, our scale is still pretty small.

01:41:04.400 | We're earning under $70,000, $80,000 a year, and we only have under $200,000 of net assets.

01:41:13.480 | But we're not seeing the progress we'd like to see, or we're wondering, "Hey, could we

01:41:16.640 | speed things up?"

01:41:17.640 | Do you have any wisdom on how to view our scale and when to talk with an expert?

01:41:23.120 | >>TED: Yeah.

01:41:24.120 | So it's a good question, and obviously it's kind of a softball for me, but I will answer

01:41:29.440 | it with as much objectivity as I can.

01:41:34.360 | To begin with, if your $70,000 to $80,000 per year is wages, earned income from jobs,

01:41:44.840 | and if your $200,000 of assets are invested in the traditional ways, it's home equity,

01:41:51.800 | it's money in your 401(k) at work, some money in your bank account, et cetera, then there

01:41:57.040 | really isn't much that most financial advisors can offer to you that you can't do with self-education.

01:42:06.160 | How do you reduce your taxes?

01:42:07.760 | You put money in your 401(k), that's it.

01:42:09.800 | If you're an employee, all you do is put money in your 401(k), and at $70,000 to $80,000

01:42:14.320 | per year, your tax bill is not that significant.

01:42:18.160 | There's not much you can do.

01:42:19.360 | You can go and you can figure out, well, how do I enroll in the commuter credit so that

01:42:25.520 | my employer can give me the $120 a month of commuter credit, the money that's tax-free,

01:42:31.120 | but it doesn't matter.

01:42:33.280 | All that stuff really doesn't matter much.

01:42:35.240 | How do you save money on your taxes as an employee?

01:42:37.380 | You put money in your 401(k), and you focus on increasing your income.

01:42:40.560 | Now, when you can get your income up, then things change a little bit, but the average

01:42:45.240 | financial advisor can't do much for you there.

01:42:47.640 | In addition, most of your investment products at this scale are not really that impactful.

01:42:55.160 | I don't know any financial advisor who makes a business of going around and opening $5,000

01:43:02.200 | Roth IRAs for people.

01:43:04.480 | There's no reason to do it.

01:43:05.480 | They'll do it for you as a convenience, but the whole time, they're gnashing their teeth,

01:43:09.600 | right, of like, "I've got to go and do all this work and print out 87 pages just to do

01:43:13.240 | a Roth IRA."

01:43:14.240 | It's just there's not much.

01:43:16.480 | Here I think at this stage of wealth and this stage of investments in the financial planning

01:43:21.440 | world, this is your best as a DIY investor, right?

01:43:24.440 | Open an account at Fidelity.

01:43:25.580 | Open an account at Vanguard.

01:43:27.520 | Fund a Roth IRA.

01:43:28.720 | Fund your wife's Roth IRA.

01:43:33.720 | Put your money in your 401(k), et cetera.

01:43:36.040 | This is a better solution.

01:43:37.760 | What you do probably need to do is talk to an insurance agent.

01:43:42.080 | Here I think you can be helped by an insurance agent, but the insurance is going to be fairly

01:43:46.440 | straightforward.

01:43:48.000 | At this levels of wealth, et cetera, you need some term life insurance if you want it.

01:43:52.560 | You didn't mention children.

01:43:55.440 | People always say, "I don't need life insurance."

01:43:57.640 | I figure you should have some, so maybe you purchase five times your income of term life

01:44:03.640 | insurance.

01:44:04.640 | Here, I think there's no reason not to use a proper insurance agent.

01:44:08.320 | Can you go online and buy it yourself through one of the websites?

01:44:11.800 | You absolutely can.

01:44:13.040 | The problem is you're not saving any money and you're just not getting any personalized

01:44:18.200 | advice.

01:44:19.440 | I think that you should talk to an insurance agent, just buy it from an insurance agent,

01:44:25.000 | so at least you can have a little bit more time and the agent will earn his commissions

01:44:28.480 | by actually spending time explaining stuff rather than doing everything through automated

01:44:32.240 | forms.

01:44:33.240 | How old are you and how old is your wife?

01:44:35.240 | >> Steven Rubinstein 30 and 25.

01:44:38.320 | >> Tavish McGrath So at 30 and 25, the other reason to talk

01:44:41.240 | to an insurance agent if you want life insurance is that you should be purchasing annual renewable

01:44:46.080 | term insurance, not level term, annual renewable term insurance.

01:44:51.280 | That's a more specialized product that is vastly superior from a financial planner's

01:44:58.760 | perspective but it's not widely sold nor is it widely understood.

01:45:03.760 | I would call up Northwestern Mutual, a New York life agent, and I would buy annual renewable

01:45:08.880 | term from one of those companies and for there you'll actually talk to an agent because they

01:45:13.480 | don't sell that stuff on any of the websites.

01:45:16.200 | When you start to reach around 45, that's the point at which I switch to level term

01:45:19.760 | insurance for your term insurance needs.

01:45:21.880 | You'll also want to look at your disability coverages.

01:45:23.760 | If you're employers, employees, you probably have some disability insurance already in

01:45:28.440 | place with your employer and that's probably good enough or you might supplement it a little

01:45:33.480 | bit.

01:45:34.480 | So I would talk to the insurance agent about disability income insurance as well.

01:45:38.120 | But there's really not much more that a financial advisor can do for you at this scale of where

01:45:44.440 | you are, meaning that traditional, like a certified financial planner, etc.

01:45:49.760 | Now does that mean you shouldn't consult an advisor?

01:45:54.600 | My answer is no, it doesn't.

01:45:56.800 | The key is to consult the right kind of advisor.

01:46:01.300 | And so I like to believe and I have proven many times that I am worth the money even

01:46:10.180 | for somebody who is just getting started.

01:46:13.100 | And so I firmly believe that if you pay me for a consultation, you go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult,

01:46:21.380 | you put in your name, your information, and you sign up and book an hour with me, that's

01:46:27.100 | 500 bucks.

01:46:28.220 | I firmly believe that I can give you in excess of a 10x return on the 500 bucks.

01:46:34.580 | Because the key to implementing advice is not so much have I implemented all of the

01:46:40.660 | advice that I've been given.

01:46:43.660 | I have not implemented all the advice that I've been given.

01:46:46.060 | I have so many loose ends in my life, we all do.

01:46:49.020 | None of us ever do all the stuff that we'd like to do.

01:46:52.580 | The key is am I laser focused on the most impactful area of self-improvement or the

01:46:59.820 | most impactful things right now?

01:47:02.660 | And do I have I firmly looked at my opportunities and built a plan for them?

01:47:08.300 | And so if your household income right now is 70 to $80,000 and you're in your late 20s,

01:47:12.940 | early 30s, then your number one area of focus needs to be to 10x that income in the next

01:47:19.340 | decade.

01:47:20.820 | Because if you'll go from 70 to $80,000 of household income to 70 to $800,000 of household

01:47:25.620 | income in the next 10 years, then that will make more of a difference than ever.

01:47:30.940 | But how do you find the right advisor for that?

01:47:34.660 | I think that I'm pretty good at that.

01:47:36.620 | I can lay out the game plans for you, but realistically I don't know many people who

01:47:43.540 | do that.

01:47:44.900 | And so that's the kind of thing where it's harder to get an expert's consultation.

01:47:49.340 | I think your best bet at this stage of your game is to spend most of your time and most

01:47:54.900 | of your money on books and make sure that you're regularly investing in books.

01:47:59.380 | And then as you sketch out a game plan towards your goals that you then invest into public

01:48:05.020 | seminars and/or classes.

01:48:07.260 | Right now we're going through an absolute revolution in web classes, et cetera.

01:48:12.180 | I can sit down and I can invest three days of time and three days of teaching into something

01:48:17.620 | and then I can afford to sell it for 200 bucks, 400 bucks, 600 bucks.

01:48:22.780 | And that's a much better use of your money is to spend your money on educational products

01:48:28.060 | that people that you're modeling or people you admire create for you.

01:48:33.300 | Best bang for the buck is going to be books in terms of the total amount of knowledge

01:48:38.220 | and ideas that you can acquire.

01:48:40.060 | The problem is that books are super time intensive and they're usually not customized.

01:48:44.580 | And some of the most impactful stuff is simply not found in books because books are not current

01:48:50.660 | enough.

01:48:51.660 | And so right now the revolution that's happening in the educational space where world class

01:48:55.900 | experts are creating their master classes and putting together seminars and you can

01:49:00.220 | buy it for a seminar, this is where the current cutting edge stuff is.

01:49:04.620 | And so that's where probably most of your time and money should be made.

01:49:07.900 | And then what I would say is that you can coach yourself.

01:49:13.020 | You can coach yourself.

01:49:14.220 | The key is make sure that you have your priorities laid out and that you have done an analysis,

01:49:19.940 | an 80/20 analysis of those priorities and the pathway to get there to say what are the

01:49:23.900 | things that are the most impactful.

01:49:26.540 | And then look for the best teachers in that space.

01:49:31.260 | So I would be happy to do a private consultation with you.

01:49:36.460 | If you ever get to the end of a call with me and you say, "Josh, well that wasn't

01:49:39.260 | worth my money," then I'll return 100% of it.

01:49:44.140 | I 100% stand behind my work and I'm happy to return 100% of it.

01:49:48.660 | I've only ever made one partial refund to one client.

01:49:51.660 | Actually, sorry, that's not true.

01:49:52.980 | It's now two.

01:49:53.980 | I've had two partial refunds to a client out of hundreds and hundreds of clients.

01:49:59.660 | The first partial refund was from a guy who was doing some shady stuff and I spent most

01:50:05.020 | of the time yelling at him saying he shouldn't do shady stuff that I thought was morally

01:50:09.980 | wrong and he didn't appreciate my using his time and he asked for a 50% refund.

01:50:15.420 | The second was I gave some wrong advice to a guy who was doing a Roth IRA contribution

01:50:20.860 | and I missed a law.

01:50:21.940 | I missed a technical thing.

01:50:23.500 | He wound up doing what I said and I had made a mistake and he wound up having a tax bill

01:50:27.820 | that was unexpected and had to spend money to unwind it and I made a dumb mistake.

01:50:32.980 | And so I refunded.

01:50:33.980 | I can't remember if it was all or partial, but I refunded his money.

01:50:37.300 | Those are the only two.

01:50:38.300 | I've never had someone, even young getting started guys making 30 grand a year, I've

01:50:42.260 | never had someone walk away from one of my consulting calls and say that it wasn't worth

01:50:46.500 | their money.

01:50:47.500 | So I'm here to serve if that would be useful.

01:50:50.100 | If you want the cheapest thing though, just stay a patron of the show.

01:50:53.140 | Call in every Friday.

01:50:54.140 | I don't set a limit on how much you call.

01:50:56.460 | Call in every Friday and systematically week by week I'd be happy to talk you through as

01:51:00.020 | public content, coach you through all the stuff that you're doing here on these Q&A

01:51:03.620 | shows and I'd be your best bang for your buck as well.

01:51:06.540 | Very helpful answer.

01:51:07.540 | Thank you Joshua.

01:51:08.540 | Good.

01:51:09.540 | The only thing I would just say as we close is that you are doing the right thing by looking

01:51:14.540 | for the answers.

01:51:15.540 | The thing that is pretty astounding that so few people do is so few people actually spend

01:51:21.740 | time looking for the answers.

01:51:23.940 | But if you will dedicate yourself to just looking for the answers, you'll figure out

01:51:28.660 | the advice to put into place.

01:51:30.460 | And then I'll tell you that over time you can figure out the lens of scale for yourself.

01:51:35.460 | You figure out, hey, what's meaningful right now?

01:51:37.900 | What works for me right now?

01:51:40.300 | But I just would beg you that right now the goal of every – this is one of the reasons

01:51:45.820 | I left kind of the normal world of financial advice.

01:51:49.700 | The goal should be that you spend 80% of your time increasing your income and then saving

01:51:54.700 | that difference.

01:51:55.700 | That's it.

01:51:56.700 | The technical financial planning for someone in your situation is very simple and you don't

01:52:01.500 | really need an advisor.

01:52:02.500 | The do-it-yourself world is so good, right?

01:52:04.500 | We've got Vanguard.

01:52:05.500 | We've got Fidelity.

01:52:06.500 | You don't need anything else.

01:52:07.500 | You can go and open your own Bitcoin account.

01:52:09.500 | You don't need anybody else.

01:52:12.500 | Talk to an insurance agent.

01:52:13.500 | Invest a few hours of your time.

01:52:14.500 | The insurance agent won't charge any money.

01:52:16.500 | He'll just make a few hundred bucks a commission when you buy your life insurance policies

01:52:19.700 | and he's happy.

01:52:20.700 | And then you can go and do a lot of other things.

01:52:23.700 | You buy your life insurance policies and he's happy.

01:52:26.700 | And so you don't need anything else.

01:52:28.100 | What you got to do is be laser-focused on increasing your income.

01:52:31.540 | And so if I were in your shoes, I'd be spending courses related to businesses that I thought

01:52:36.200 | would be interesting.

01:52:37.200 | I'd be buying Gumroad products left and right.

01:52:39.340 | I mean you should see my Gumroad account.

01:52:40.860 | You should see my Udemy account.

01:52:42.340 | You should see my – I got folders of all of the dozens and dozens of courses that I

01:52:47.580 | buy and whatnot because it's the best form of education.

01:52:52.020 | It gives you the ideas.

01:52:54.300 | And you see a payoff in spades in your own life and you want other people to have the

01:52:58.100 | same thing.

01:52:59.100 | So that's where I would be spending my time and my energy.

01:53:04.060 | Thank you all so much for listening to today's Q&A.

01:53:06.020 | Remember that if you also would like to talk to me and if you don't want to pay me 500

01:53:09.940 | bucks for that opportunity, then you can help me create public content here with Q&A show.

01:53:16.420 | To do that, go to Patreon, find the show Radical Personal Finance, sign up there and you will

01:53:20.060 | receive the invitation next time I do a Friday Q&A show.

01:53:24.300 | If you would like to work with me personally and go over with some laser focus, do that

01:53:29.220 | at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult.

01:53:30.220 | You just heard my ad for it that my listener pitched me a softball there.

01:53:36.900 | Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult and I guarantee you – and I don't use that

01:53:41.380 | word lightly – I guarantee you I will give you your money's worth and you will be happy

01:53:46.540 | or you will have your money back.

01:53:48.820 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult.

2021-11-04_Friday_QA