2021-12-09_Why_A_Vacation_Home_Might_Very_Well_Be_Your_Best_Investment

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00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:34.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:37.760 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua, I'm your

00:00:42.040 | host and today I am going to share with you yet another of the many things that over time

00:00:48.620 | I have realized I was wrong about previously. And today's topic is specifically the topic

00:00:55.100 | of having and maintaining a vacation home. Now, thankfully this one is more of one of

00:01:01.680 | those intellectual "I was wrong, I didn't understand previously" rather than having

00:01:06.420 | had a big impact on me. But it has affected my own personal goals. And let me tell you

00:01:12.900 | very quickly what I mean. When I was younger, I observed that many people had vacation homes.

00:01:19.860 | From time to time, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the vacation homes of some

00:01:26.180 | of my friends. My family, personally, we never had a vacation home. We were not at that level

00:01:32.460 | of economic existence. But I was fortunate to be invited from time to time to a few of

00:01:38.980 | my friends' vacation homes. And in that process, I thought about vacation homes. I

00:01:44.300 | thought about money and my own goals and things like that. And I asked myself, "Would I

00:01:48.260 | want to have a vacation home?" And I came to the very clear opinion that I would not

00:01:56.340 | want to have a vacation home. I still remember an anecdote that I read in some random book

00:02:02.100 | talking about money and stuff, etc. And who knows, perhaps it was an apocryphal story

00:02:07.940 | or if it was exactly cited. I simply don't know. But the guy was a wealthy guy. It was

00:02:16.900 | a Friday afternoon. He was a wealthy guy. He was getting ready to board an airplane,

00:02:21.980 | maybe his private jet, to rush down to Florida where he was having a home built in Florida.

00:02:28.740 | And he was really stressed out. He's on the phone with his architect. And somebody

00:02:33.020 | asked him, "Why are you doing it? Why do you need this home in Florida?" And he was

00:02:36.540 | about to lose his whole weekend running down to take care of this home in Florida, this

00:02:42.100 | great nice home, but he's about to lose his whole weekend doing that. And that story

00:02:46.940 | resonated with me even from a young age. It resonated still more deeply with me when I

00:02:53.540 | add two additional facts. Fact number one is I have a tendency to appreciate the simplicity

00:03:00.500 | of minimalism. I've over the years found that the less stuff that I have, the less

00:03:07.180 | cluttered my life feels, and the more I appreciate minimalism. I've purchased various knick-knacks

00:03:14.620 | over the years. At this point, I've gotten rid of virtually all the knick-knacks, even

00:03:18.380 | the nice ones that I bought on my travels, and I haven't missed most of those things.

00:03:22.900 | I don't have a lot of fancy stuff. And I think always about the costs of money and

00:03:29.220 | time that are embedded in stuff. Usually it comes down to the time. For example, there

00:03:33.140 | was a time a few years ago I had something like five cars or five vehicles with engines

00:03:38.380 | in them, and I was just annoyed at how much time I was needing to go and take those vehicles

00:03:43.420 | to a mechanic. And I thought, "Man, I don't want to have these cars anymore," not because

00:03:48.820 | I can't afford them, not because they're too expensive, but I don't like dealing with

00:03:52.420 | the time of taking them to the mechanic and getting them fixed and waiting and working

00:03:56.980 | out all the stuff. It just really is annoying to me. And then a number of years later, I

00:04:00.980 | was down to one car, and I thought, "This is great. I just have one car to take care

00:04:04.860 | of. This is wonderful." Big fan of this because of the time that it freed up.

00:04:09.020 | So I've appreciated minimalism, and when you apply that concept of minimalism to even your

00:04:12.780 | own housing, you think, "Do I really want to deal with another house?" And that leads

00:04:18.140 | me to the second fact, that I don't personally enjoy dealing with most of the things that

00:04:22.020 | are required to keep up real estate. I find it annoying and frustrating, and I would prefer

00:04:27.660 | not to have much to do with it. I like to rent so that I can outsource some of the hassle

00:04:34.580 | of that. If I can find a reasonable rental cost and if I can find a suitable property,

00:04:38.660 | I would just assume rent most of that stuff rather than actually own the real estate.

00:04:43.580 | So when you put these things together, you can see why I was pretty well persuaded that

00:04:47.220 | I would not want to have a vacation home because of the hassle of simply having it. In addition,

00:04:55.980 | I am one who enjoys new things. I have a strong desire for novelty, new things, experiencing

00:05:03.440 | new things, seeing new things. I often feel quite alive when I'm in the middle of experiencing

00:05:09.300 | new things. And so it's this continual experience of new things that for me is very motivating.

00:05:14.860 | And I thought, why would I ever want to go to the same place twice? I'm not one who

00:05:20.660 | looks forward to going to the same place. If I've been to a city pretty much, well,

00:05:25.740 | that's nice, right? At least a few years can pass and then I'll go back. But most

00:05:30.580 | of the time, especially within a US-American context where it doesn't have that same

00:05:34.540 | flair of the exotic that I often enjoy the most myself, I think, why would I want to

00:05:40.220 | go back? I've been to St. Louis, Missouri. Why would I want to go back? I've been to

00:05:46.060 | insert any city. I just make it up a random middle of the country city. I don't need

00:05:50.940 | to go back. I don't want to go back. It doesn't thrill me with any particular joy

00:05:55.460 | at the thought of going back. And so I imposed that same thinking onto a vacation property.

00:06:01.580 | I thought, why would I want to have a vacation property that I'd have to go back to every

00:06:06.740 | single year? It's the same property in the same town and everything's always the same,

00:06:12.860 | the same, the same, the same, the same. Now, when you combine the financial analysis, the

00:06:18.940 | time analysis, and the sameness analysis, I think you come up with a pretty good argument,

00:06:26.020 | which is, again, what I previously believed. I previously thought to myself, well, listen,

00:06:30.700 | let's calculate how much the pure costs are of keeping a home. Ignore any kind of

00:06:34.820 | investment value. Let's say you buy a beach house for X number of dollars, and then you

00:06:40.780 | take a percentage of that for pure maintenance costs, double it if it's a beach house,

00:06:44.540 | to deal with salt corrosion, all of that. That's what your carrying costs are going

00:06:48.980 | to be, insurance, additional liability, etc. Do I really want that? And I compare that

00:06:55.580 | against, hey, let's go on vacation. Let's go to a new hotel, and a new town, a new resort.

00:07:02.620 | You don't have to maintain anything. The whole hotel has a staff full of people that

00:07:07.420 | maintain everything, and you just show up, and you get your room, and you do your thing,

00:07:11.460 | and you go. And next year, you can try a different place. And so then, in addition to the fun

00:07:16.700 | of whatever the activity it is, be it hanging out on the beach, or be it playing around

00:07:21.660 | on the golf course, or whatever the actual activity is, you get to enjoy the fun of the

00:07:27.780 | activity, plus the fun and the novelty of exploring new places, trying new restaurants,

00:07:32.660 | trying new things, etc. And so I was pretty well convinced that for me, a vacation home

00:07:39.100 | is not something that I have ever aspired to have. I would just as soon have a home,

00:07:46.020 | and I would just as soon go to a nice hotel, nice resort, nice rental house, etc. So what's

00:07:53.860 | changed? What's changed has been watching the world through the eyes of children, and

00:08:00.860 | thinking more about legacy, and thinking more about relationships. And there are two things

00:08:10.700 | that I want to share with you about, because these are the two things that I previously

00:08:16.900 | didn't have the maturity or the experience to actually appreciate. And these are the

00:08:23.660 | big benefits of vacation homes, as far as I'm concerned, and they are the things that

00:08:29.540 | have convinced me that in the future, I do desire to have a specific vacation home, even

00:08:36.540 | with all of the disadvantages that I've just outlined. Here they are.

00:08:43.380 | Number one, let's talk about children. I'm unconvinced that children "need" a stable

00:08:50.380 | environment. Many people look at the way that my family has lived our lives, and they think,

00:08:58.580 | "Man, your children must be totally unstable. After all, especially over the last few years,

00:09:05.020 | you've basically been traveling constantly, and that must be so disorienting, and it must

00:09:11.540 | be so destabilizing to your children." I've thought a lot about that. I've studied carefully

00:09:16.300 | to ask myself, "Is that happening? Is that true?" because certainly it can be.

00:09:21.180 | The conclusion that I have drawn, at least thus far, is that even though our outward

00:09:28.180 | circumstances have changed, where we live, where we sleep, etc., has changed, I think

00:09:34.180 | that my children are not experiencing a sense of instability. And that's because our family

00:09:41.580 | schedule really doesn't change. When we were living in an RV, this was most pronounced,

00:09:47.820 | where we never knew where we would be parked on any particular night. I didn't plan very

00:09:54.480 | far ahead. We might wake up in a beautiful park in the middle of the Rocky Mountains,

00:09:59.300 | and we might wake up in a Walmart parking lot. And yet, we pretty much had the same routine

00:10:04.800 | every day. My children had breakfast with their parents at the same table every single

00:10:10.700 | day, with a very small number of prospective dishes that they were going to be enjoying.

00:10:16.620 | We have meals together three times a day as a family. We have our routines. They're sleeping

00:10:23.520 | in the same bed, the same place, every single day. And so I concluded that things were pretty

00:10:30.520 | stable, even though what was outside of the windows was changing, and the particular people

00:10:34.860 | may have been changing. Even when we moved to full-time travel, living in hotels and

00:10:40.260 | Airbnbs, I became convinced that they're not experiencing any kind of major instability

00:10:46.620 | because our lives are so stable in terms of the relationships, the routines, etc. We do

00:10:51.860 | the same thing. And just because we happen to be in a different hotel room or a different

00:10:55.620 | house, that doesn't – I haven't observed any negative damaging effects to my children.

00:11:03.740 | If I observed any kind of deleterious effects, I would immediately change. But I haven't

00:11:08.780 | observed that. But what I have come to appreciate is that children gain a deeper sense of meaning

00:11:15.780 | when there is a consistency to a place. And of course, I would have acknowledged that

00:11:22.240 | intellectually before, but I guess I didn't see it as being the most important thing until

00:11:27.060 | I started to observe some changes that happened in my own family's life, meaning that of

00:11:33.740 | my parents and my siblings. When I was younger, my parents had built a large house to be able

00:11:38.580 | to house together their large family, and that was a stable point of connection in our

00:11:45.580 | family for a significant amount of time. Then as my parents grew older and their children

00:11:54.700 | moved out, my parents' parents died, and once my parents' parents died, my parents

00:12:00.620 | didn't have the need for that same large house that they had built, and the house itself

00:12:05.340 | was quite a burden to clean, to care for, etc. And so they sold it and they downsized

00:12:10.420 | into a small condo. And that was a great blessing in the lives of my parents that I observed.

00:12:15.500 | It freed them up from the hassle of maintaining the house, and I thought it would be totally

00:12:21.620 | fine because after all, in my family, we have good relationships, stable relationships.

00:12:27.060 | I thought no problem at all. But then over the coming years, I watched how it was more

00:12:31.940 | and more difficult for us to get all of my siblings together, all of my nieces and nephews

00:12:38.580 | together, and we had to work extra hard to make it happen. And because we lost that natural

00:12:46.020 | anchoring point in our family, we started to suffer some missed opportunities to be

00:12:53.020 | together, because it was no longer assumed where we would be for a holiday. It was no

00:12:58.020 | longer assumed where we would get together. Rather, we had to figure it out. And it's

00:13:03.540 | not been all bad. We've worked at it from time to time. We've rented large houses where

00:13:07.580 | we could stay together. We've rented multiple houses in the same place. And so we've made

00:13:12.820 | it work. But I underestimated, when my parents sold the property, I underestimated the long-term

00:13:19.660 | effects. And that really made me think about my own children and my own family. And I thought,

00:13:26.540 | you know what? I don't want that to happen. I want to make sure that we are investing

00:13:33.540 | our money into the kind of family culture that will endure the test of time.

00:13:41.220 | Now, for me, this comes out of one of those key cornerstone Christian beliefs with regard

00:13:48.220 | to money upon which I build my life. And it comes from where Jesus says, "Do not lay

00:13:52.940 | up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break

00:13:57.220 | in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy

00:14:02.700 | and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart

00:14:05.420 | will be also." And over the years, as I've pondered and pondered and pondered that within

00:14:10.220 | our context, I became convinced that the way that you lay up treasures in heaven is by

00:14:16.260 | investing your money into the beings that are in heaven, which is people. And so anytime

00:14:23.260 | you can spend money on people, that's the way that you lay up treasures in heaven rather

00:14:31.060 | than laying up treasures in earth where you're investing not into people. And that's brought

00:14:35.660 | me a place of peace and a place of clarity to say, "Can I invest money into people?"

00:14:41.300 | And of course, who are the people where I begin? People that I begin are those with

00:14:45.220 | whom I have the most contact, those of my immediate family. A man does not care for

00:14:51.380 | his own family and especially those of his own household. He is worse than an unbeliever.

00:14:55.180 | There's another Bible verse. And so you begin with investing into your own children, your

00:15:00.820 | own siblings, your own parents, and then it extends out from that. Now there are many

00:15:05.420 | different ways that you can do that, but as you think about the context of a family and

00:15:10.360 | building a family culture that will endure the test of time, I thought, "How can you

00:15:14.760 | invest money into people?" And I become convinced one of the ways that you can do it is investing

00:15:20.060 | it into a family culture. And if you're going to build an enduring family culture, you need

00:15:25.340 | to have routines, you need to have customs, you need to have memories. And as I've grown

00:15:32.620 | older and observed more, I realized how important this sense of familiarity is. And I thought

00:15:37.860 | back to other people who had vacation houses and I saw how it affected them. For example,

00:15:47.340 | many years ago I was very fortunate to be invited to a friend's vacation home for a

00:15:53.060 | Fourth of July weekend. And this particular home was a beautiful lake home on just a phenomenal

00:15:59.620 | lake in Alabama. And I went there and we had a wonderful weekend together. Spent the entire

00:16:05.820 | weekend hanging out. The entire family was together. We spent all day on the boats. There

00:16:11.340 | were boats, there were jet skis, there were toys, there was swimming, there was eating,

00:16:14.900 | there was drinking, there was making merry. It was a wonderful weekend enjoying all of

00:16:19.140 | the Fourth of July festivities. It was so fun. I only went one year, but my friends,

00:16:24.980 | they used that vacation home and every single year that was where you were. And it gave

00:16:30.020 | an anchoring point that from time to time the children were able to invite their friends

00:16:34.800 | and there would be a big party and it was just a wonderful event. And that home, the

00:16:42.140 | patriarch of that family, he had designated, he died quite young, he had designated that

00:16:48.180 | this home was going to be a part of the family's inheritance. And he had designated the home

00:16:54.300 | to be held in a trust. There was money to take care of the home, etc. Well, the heirs

00:16:57.940 | had the right to sell it and they went on to sell it. But then I observed from, not

00:17:03.500 | from close, but I observed that they're facing the same problems now that my family

00:17:07.900 | has faced of not being able to get everyone together as consistently. And now they've

00:17:12.300 | lost that corner point. They've lost that, "Oh, this is the rock that so-and-so jumped

00:17:17.100 | off of and broke his ankle." Or, "Oh, look, do you remember that one time that so-and-so

00:17:20.940 | got drunk and fell off the end of the dock and we had to go pull him out of the water?"

00:17:24.300 | And all those stories that every single year you tell the same story again and again and

00:17:28.640 | again and again and again and it becomes part of the family culture. And I thought about

00:17:33.460 | that, I thought, "That's what's needed. That's what's needed is to have that consistency."

00:17:39.060 | And that consistency of place and family tradition and culture makes it easier to keep a family

00:17:46.780 | together especially as you are going through those times of transition, especially as you're

00:17:53.460 | going through that period where your 22-year-old says, "Well, maybe this year I don't really

00:17:58.180 | want to go home for Fourth of July. Maybe I want to go to Europe for Fourth of July."

00:18:03.960 | But if they know, "You know what? No, we always do Fourth of July and it's always a great

00:18:08.100 | time and my parents expect me to do Fourth of July and we've got the house for it," then

00:18:12.580 | it creates a stronger pool and more of a desire to do that.

00:18:16.900 | And so in terms of building a culture and then having that culture extend through time,

00:18:20.740 | right? So if you imagine a wonderful lake house with all of the toys that make a lake

00:18:25.500 | house great and then you think about the generations growing and even if it's somewhat difficult

00:18:33.540 | as grandchildren come along and the family expands out, you still by having that anchoring

00:18:38.860 | place you have a commitment to a place. And I think this also facilitates closer relationships.

00:18:45.660 | For example, let's say that you bought a rather modest home and then your family grew and

00:18:52.620 | you might figure out, "Well, how could we add more space to the home?" But if everyone's

00:18:56.700 | accustomed to the fact that we stay in this home on the lake for Fourth of July weekend

00:19:02.740 | or we stay at this home in this ski town and that's where we do Christmas, then what happens

00:19:09.780 | is when families as families age, then it's expected that you're going to be in the home.

00:19:14.500 | And even if the home is too small, you're still forced into closer contact which makes

00:19:19.520 | for richer family relationships. As we grow, we like to appreciate our privacy more and

00:19:25.860 | more. We don't want to necessarily be on top of each other.

00:19:30.420 | And so if you think about doing the resort thing, what happens? Well, you get together

00:19:33.740 | in a resort and then you get together for a nice dinner. But of course, dinner has to

00:19:39.340 | be this planned affair to get 30 people together for dinner because we have to make a reservation

00:19:44.620 | at the restaurant. It's also intense because of the expense of it. We might have a great

00:19:49.580 | long dinner, but then everyone retires to their individual rooms where you don't have

00:19:54.780 | that same feel that you have in a home. Whereas if you have your own property, then yes, there's

00:19:59.460 | preparing dinner, being together, then there's dinner, and then there's some people retire

00:20:03.660 | to the rooms, but there's still the opportunities for those serendipitous encounters in the

00:20:07.540 | center of the home. And so having the house actually facilitates a sense of closeness

00:20:12.960 | even as your family grows and even as people get to that point where they'd like to have

00:20:16.180 | more privacy. But hey, you know what? Cousin John is sleeping on the couch in the living

00:20:20.700 | room because we're just out of beds and the little kids are in a tent in the backyard

00:20:24.420 | because we're out of beds and we parked an RV in the driveway to have a few more beds

00:20:30.220 | for such and such a family, but it's still more fun because it's a little bit of camp

00:20:36.100 | and it leads to those relationships. And those difficulties, even when there are difficulties,

00:20:42.780 | those difficulties are things that forge friendships at a deeper level, that forge relationships

00:20:47.100 | at a deeper level. If you think about the friends that you are the closest to emotionally,

00:20:52.380 | very frequently they will be friends with whom you have passed through trial or difficulty

00:20:59.260 | or discomfort. And so avoiding discomfort or trial or difficulty is not always the optimal

00:21:07.100 | experience. You often don't actually get close to somebody until you have passed through

00:21:14.860 | difficulty. So whether that difficulty is pledging in your local sorority or an absolutely

00:21:21.580 | catastrophic backpacking trip or going to war together and fighting in the trenches

00:21:26.420 | beside each other or starting a business together and failing constantly, those are the things

00:21:32.140 | that forge the relationships that endure the test of time. And they're not, meaning those

00:21:37.500 | are the relationships which when they have that emotional weight, they forge the test

00:21:41.060 | of time. And then so stories of difficulty that actually lend a little bit of zest to

00:21:45.900 | life. When we think about, oh, you remember that one time where we just had that awful

00:21:50.420 | experience and we showed up at the hostel at 2 a.m. and they didn't have a single bed

00:21:53.780 | and we had to hike an hour and sleep at the train station or we went camping and we were

00:21:58.380 | stuck in the rain for, I woke up and there was two inches of water in the tent. It was

00:22:02.540 | the most miserable night of my life and you were there with me with that wasn't that great.

00:22:07.180 | That builds those deeper relationships. And so even a simple vacation home where there's

00:22:12.300 | a consistency to it can be really, really helpful in terms of perpetuating a family

00:22:17.060 | culture. And I see this very clearly as children reach teenage years, young adults, they start

00:22:24.180 | to have boyfriends, girlfriends, marry off, have children, etc. Having the consistency

00:22:30.100 | of a specific place that we go, I now see as something very valuable that I personally

00:22:36.700 | wish to facilitate. And I think it's quite doable. Consider that with regard to your

00:22:43.880 | own children. Consider how can I build a family culture. I would note having a vacation home

00:22:50.820 | is not the only way to do it. It's just, I think, a good way for those who decide to

00:22:58.460 | do it. And I think that this is accessible to most people if you plan a little bit. You

00:23:05.940 | don't have to be crazy rich, just plan a little bit. Put very simply, imagine that you buy

00:23:12.300 | a home as a young married couple and you pay that home on a 15-year payment schedule. You

00:23:20.740 | have a child after being in that home three years. And then when your oldest child is

00:23:25.820 | the age of 12, your mortgage is paid off. Well, go ahead and buy the vacation home in

00:23:31.980 | the place that your 12-year-old is going to really enjoy. Make sure you have the money

00:23:35.500 | for the toys. Make sure you have the money for the jet skis or the boats or the fishing

00:23:41.360 | gear or the things that are going to make a home actually worthwhile and stock the home

00:23:45.540 | with that stuff. So don't spend it all on a house and then sit there wondering, "Oh,

00:23:49.020 | what are we going to do? Let's play video games." Stock the home with the stuff of adventure.

00:23:53.460 | Make sure it's got all the toys that will lead to people having things to do, lots of

00:23:58.660 | things to do so they'll even look forward more and more to going there. But go ahead

00:24:02.700 | and buy the home. Take out another mortgage, pay that one, and just imagine, pay that one

00:24:07.780 | on a 20-year schedule, and by the time the grandchildren are coming along, that house

00:24:13.080 | itself will be totally paid for. So it's doable even on a modest budget. You don't need to

00:24:18.940 | be very, very wealthy to do it, but I think that this is a very valuable touchpoint in

00:24:24.060 | a family culture.

00:24:25.560 | And I think that one of the things that inspired me on this was some months ago, or gave me

00:24:31.820 | a new thought, a listener gave me a new thought. Some months ago, there was a listener who

00:24:35.400 | called into a Friday Q&A show, and the listener made the comment, he said, "We've decided

00:24:41.080 | to buy the vacation home first." I had never thought of that. And the basic idea was, we're

00:24:47.860 | buying a home, we've got young children, we're buying a home that we think will be our long-term

00:24:52.120 | vacation home that we'll be in, but it's not the kind of home that we'll necessarily want

00:24:56.720 | to raise a 10-year-old in. It's too remote, it's too resort-towny, it doesn't have the

00:25:01.480 | things that you might be looking for for a 10-year-old or 12-year-old, so we're buying

00:25:04.580 | the vacation home, and then in a few years, we're going to go ahead and buy the in-town

00:25:07.820 | home that's closer to the amenities. And what do you think about that? I had never thought

00:25:12.320 | of it before that caller said it, but as I thought about it, I thought, "That's actually

00:25:16.340 | a cool idea. Very, very true, very cool idea." And what I would point out is that you might

00:25:22.580 | consider making the vacation home the permanent home, the thing that you own, and then you

00:25:28.860 | just simply adjust your other home, your primary home, so to speak, in the way that is appropriate

00:25:34.200 | to you at that time. If my parents had had and maintained a vacation home, and that was

00:25:41.320 | where we as a family celebrated the holidays, they could have simply maintained that vacation

00:25:47.620 | home even if they sold their big daily home and moved into a smaller condo, and that would

00:25:52.680 | have helped the family to facilitate this sense of togetherness. And remember that,

00:25:58.220 | especially if you are the parent, especially if you have the money, this is one of those

00:26:02.360 | ways in which you can invest your money into helping your family stay together at that

00:26:07.300 | time where it's difficult. Your children don't need your money when you're dead and

00:26:13.100 | gone. They don't need it then. If you have children when you're 25 and then you die

00:26:18.780 | at the age of 90, well, if you die at the age of 90, your child that you had at 25,

00:26:26.140 | as I stalled to do the mental math, will be 65. That's not the time when your child needs

00:26:30.540 | the money. So the time that your child needs the money is, of course, in the teenage years

00:26:35.940 | when you can give your child a richness of experience in order to enjoy and have those

00:26:48.400 | memories of a teenage year that help them as that child is going through the process

00:26:53.480 | of establishing his own identity. The time when your 25-year-old child needs your money

00:26:59.820 | is when he can just show up with his children to your vacation home and you cover everything.

00:27:06.700 | You cover the house, you don't charge him rent, you cover the food, you cover the gas

00:27:11.600 | for the boat, you cover the boat, etc. That child may not be in the position at the moment,

00:27:16.380 | nor would it be wise for him to go and spend all the money on the resort fees, but if you

00:27:20.900 | can cover that, that's a really nice time to have it. And so don't hoard your money

00:27:25.820 | with the goal of setting it aside and leaving it to your children when you're dead. Spend

00:27:30.560 | your money on your children and invest it into them at a time when you can enjoy it

00:27:34.500 | with them rather than setting the goal of simply dying with the most money.

00:27:40.980 | The next thing I want to point out is related to children, but it will lead me to my other

00:27:44.460 | point with regard to people. One of the things that I have become convinced of, also different

00:27:52.300 | from when I was younger, is I've become convinced in the idea that I want to spend

00:27:57.220 | my money to have the go-to home for my children. Of course, all of us who are parents, we care

00:28:04.940 | about our children and we want the best for our children. We want to be in a warm, safe,

00:28:10.500 | happy, loving environment and we want them to have rich relationships with other children.

00:28:15.320 | But we want those relationships and activities to happen in an environment where we can do

00:28:20.420 | our very best to make sure that there are age-appropriate activities happening and do

00:28:24.820 | our very best in an environment where we can make sure that they are safe and that others

00:28:30.280 | are safe. And while all of us as parents who are listening to this show have that as a

00:28:36.500 | goal, we all know that not all parents have the same dedication. And so we're always

00:28:40.980 | careful with how do we arrange things and how do we set things properly.

00:28:46.740 | Well, one of the things I've become convinced of is I want my home to be the center, to

00:28:54.500 | be very attractive so that it will be a great place for my children to have social enjoyment

00:29:03.260 | and social engagements with their peers. And so in order to do that, I'm going to spend

00:29:07.740 | my money to have a home that is attractive to children. And it means that I might do

00:29:13.000 | things that I might otherwise – I'll spend money on things that I might not otherwise

00:29:16.740 | value. I don't want my home to be a sterile environment. Obviously, I'm not this. But

00:29:22.700 | I don't want my house just to have a library. And look, we have thousands of books. And

00:29:27.300 | young children, would you not like to come over to our home and read our thousands of

00:29:32.820 | books? That's not particularly attractive when your 14-year-old wants to hang out with

00:29:38.820 | his 14-year-old buddies. And so I'm happy to say, "Let's have whatever the gaming

00:29:44.280 | thing is at that time. Let's make sure we have the environment. Let's make sure we

00:29:47.880 | have the toys." Well, an extension of that is often – or an extension of that idea,

00:29:54.340 | that idea of having your home be an attractive place for children and young adults so that

00:30:00.180 | those – so you can support your children and your young adults' social lives and

00:30:05.640 | also help to make sure that there is a warm, safe environment for your children and for

00:30:10.720 | others where there are good standards, good protection for the children in an age-appropriate

00:30:14.720 | way, and that rules are properly enforced so that everybody can have a great time, but

00:30:18.440 | everybody can be safe. And I see this as an extension of investing into people as well.

00:30:24.720 | The vacation home can also facilitate this. The vacation home can facilitate this to a

00:30:29.480 | higher degree. As you reach those times in which – especially with young adults, where

00:30:35.840 | it may be more appropriate for your young adult children to invite some of their young

00:30:40.960 | adult friends for a weekend, a special event at your home – you can help to facilitate

00:30:47.400 | that and also help to make sure that you protect them during what are often vulnerable times.

00:30:53.760 | Vulnerable times when young adults do foolish things that alter the courses of their lives.

00:30:58.540 | You can help to make sure that you facilitate their social lives, them being able to have

00:31:04.880 | friends and have time with their friends, and then you can help to make sure that it's

00:31:09.000 | genuinely productive. Back to kind of toys and whatnot. If you invest in, say, a great

00:31:15.820 | set of stand-up paddle boards that are hanging in your garage at your lake house, you're

00:31:20.800 | going to be able to facilitate a far more meaningful sense of personal interaction for

00:31:27.200 | your children by simply investing in that equipment. With their friends, I mean. It's

00:31:33.160 | one thing for your friends to go to somebody's house who has a TV and we can sit and watch

00:31:36.960 | a movie together. That's fine. I think we've all done that and enjoyed sitting and watching

00:31:40.840 | a movie together. But if you want to facilitate conversation and connection and meaningful

00:31:46.120 | interaction for your children so that they can have those deeper relationships with their

00:31:51.800 | friends, you're going to need to spend some money on some stuff, and that stuff will have

00:31:55.260 | to be strategically chosen stuff that enhances conversation. So it might be a really nice

00:32:01.780 | fire pit out on the lake shore. It might be a nice set of kayaks to go and kayak the mangroves.

00:32:08.840 | It might be a great set of extra skis and snowboards so that there's always plenty of

00:32:14.960 | equipment to lend to all the friends. What I'm telling you is these are good ways of

00:32:19.360 | spending money on people and on your children and their friends, and it will give you opportunities

00:32:25.700 | to potentially mentor their friends in a better way. And so that's also a useful thing. There

00:32:32.560 | will be people in your children's social spheres that don't have a loving father figure, a

00:32:39.000 | loving mother figure, who can arrange an environment where they're safe and where they might be

00:32:44.900 | able to be spoken into and encouraged and built up, etc. But you can do that. You can

00:32:50.060 | serve as that loving mentor, that encouraging wise elder that will be so helpful to some

00:32:56.740 | of your children's friends, and you can facilitate that by investing into something like a vacation

00:33:02.220 | home.

00:33:03.220 | I now want to pivot to your social life. This is the other thing that convinced me. I underestimated

00:33:10.320 | how hard it is for adults, most importantly adults with children, to have meaningful time

00:33:21.780 | with other adults with children. You go through this phase where of course you're young, you're

00:33:28.180 | single, or you're married, and it's like, "Ah, it's no big deal. Let's go hang out.

00:33:32.060 | Let's do all the stuff." And then you start having children and you find yourself incredibly

00:33:35.900 | isolated because your single friends don't really know what to do. They don't really

00:33:39.500 | know. They're kind of awkward. They don't feel quite so great. The children are loud

00:33:43.580 | or they annoy them or something like that. And then your other friends who have children,

00:33:46.980 | all of a sudden now everything changes across the board and getting together becomes really,

00:33:50.580 | really difficult.

00:33:51.740 | The single thing that I most enjoyed about being in an RV and living in an RV and traveling

00:33:56.600 | across the country with my family was that we were able to get so much time with all

00:34:03.300 | of our college friends who also had children because we could take our RV and we could

00:34:06.820 | park it in their driveway of our friends' homes. Then we could put all our little children

00:34:11.700 | to bed in the RV, pop on a baby monitor so we could still hear them and watch them, make

00:34:16.260 | sure everything was okay. Our friends would put their children down and we'd go inside

00:34:20.520 | for a three or four hour night of fun together like we were back in college. It was wonderful.

00:34:25.540 | And that experience made me realize how I want more and more and more of that in my

00:34:29.500 | life. I don't want to give that up. I loved those late night chats when I was in college

00:34:34.100 | and I'm not willing to give those up just because I got a bunch of little children.

00:34:37.580 | So I need to plan and develop a lifestyle that continues to include that. And as I see

00:34:43.220 | how lonely we all get as we continue on, I need more of that in my life.

00:34:48.700 | And so I have become convinced that a vacation home can be one of the best ways that you

00:34:53.820 | can facilitate that because it's very easy to drop an invitation to a friend of yours

00:34:58.540 | and say, "Hey, listen, we're going to be down in the Keys this weekend at our home there.

00:35:02.700 | We got an extra bedroom. Would you guys like to come and join us?" And that's a very wonderful

00:35:07.580 | invitation that's easy for people to accept. Now, I used to think, "Well, Joshua, listen,

00:35:12.140 | right? You got all this money. You're this rich guy. Why don't you just go ahead and

00:35:14.940 | just pay for them?" And I have done that. But what I have found is that that often can

00:35:19.740 | insert kind of a weird dynamic into the relationship because the person knows you're making extra

00:35:25.420 | payments for them. And if that person is gracious and there's a good relationship and you can

00:35:29.740 | do it without the person becoming – what would be the term? My wife and I use the term

00:35:35.220 | "whale," meaning somebody just depends on you. And "whale" is, of course, not

00:35:38.460 | the right word. That's just what we call them, is a whale is someone who's always

00:35:42.460 | just kind of mooching off of you and asking for stuff. So if you can help keep the person

00:35:47.500 | from being dependent, I guess a leech would be one word, but also keep them – make sure

00:35:53.220 | that there's a person who's self-confident enough to receive a gift graciously without

00:35:59.460 | it harming their own self-confidence, their own self-image, their own personal pride,

00:36:04.900 | etc., then that can work. But it's still – it's not as easy of an invitation to

00:36:10.260 | make. And people know that. So although we've done it successfully, meaning invited a friend

00:36:19.180 | of ours, said, "Listen, come with us. We'll go to a resort. I'll cover all the bills."

00:36:23.620 | Usually even what I found there is like I had to couch it. I got a great deal. Would

00:36:26.140 | you like to come with us, which makes things simpler. Whereas if you have your own home

00:36:31.740 | that's a stable point of contact, then that can be an easier invitation for your friends

00:36:37.860 | to accept. It can be much easier because they know they're not adding to your costs. And

00:36:42.780 | then they'll often make an appropriate gesture such as, "Hey, well, I'll pay for the

00:36:46.500 | gas for the boat," or, "We'll bring the wine," right? Those kinds of things

00:36:50.100 | that are good social customs and graces. And you can have more time with your friends.

00:36:57.060 | And it's also by having the gear and the equipment, it means that people want to do

00:37:02.740 | it. They're more likely to want to come with you. And so I now see what I didn't

00:37:07.820 | see before. I now see that having the vacation home is an investment into my own social life.

00:37:14.820 | And once again, it's a really great way to do it. I would much rather share...assuming

00:37:20.460 | we're talking about somebody that you like. I would always much rather share a house with

00:37:24.460 | somebody rather than us be locked away in our hotel rooms because the serendipitous

00:37:29.500 | encounters...of course, anybody who needs or wants privacy can just retreat to their

00:37:35.140 | own room. But it's easier in a house to make yourself available for socializing by

00:37:42.460 | simply going out to the living room. We all do this. You give the signals and the signs

00:37:48.660 | that I'm available and we go out to the living room and, "Oh, look, here you are,"

00:37:51.460 | and we'll sit down and we'll talk or let's cook together, let's do something together,

00:37:54.980 | let's play a game. And it just creates those rich, rewarding experiences. And by having

00:38:00.240 | a vacation home, it can be more of a neutral scenario. Even if it's not that far away,

00:38:06.960 | it would be unusual, since most people aren't adept at talking openly about their desire

00:38:12.820 | for socialization, it would be unusual for an average family who has an average home

00:38:19.740 | and has a friend who lives 30 minutes away to say, "Listen, we'd really like to see

00:38:23.180 | you this weekend. Could you come over and spend two nights with us?" Because the reason

00:38:28.180 | we're extending this invitation is because we want to spend...have eight hours of conversation.

00:38:33.980 | That's unusual. It's not impossible, but that's unusual. Whereas if you have a vacation home,

00:38:39.780 | even if it's something that's an hour away, a little home on the lake, a little home on

00:38:42.340 | the beach, whatever's appropriate in your area, I don't know, a desert cabin. But even

00:38:46.660 | if it's just an hour away, you could say, "Listen, we're going to be out at the cabin

00:38:50.020 | this weekend. Would you like to come out and spend a weekend out at the cabin with us?"

00:38:55.100 | And though it's only an hour away, there's something about the fact that this is the

00:39:00.380 | cabin, this is the lake house, this is the beach house, this is the apartment in the

00:39:06.900 | city. We're going to go in and see some shows that facilitate it and makes it easier for

00:39:11.020 | them to say yes. And you may be able to add 10 or 15 hours of quality socialization to

00:39:18.020 | your schedule by simply having that. And man, if you could do that once a month, that makes

00:39:24.060 | a radically more rich and fulfilling life. And you may be able to be a much closer friend

00:39:31.100 | to your friends in time, right, in normal relationships. You spend a few hours with

00:39:36.340 | someone, you start to get past the social niceties and get deeper. You find out what

00:39:40.300 | your friend's hurts are, your friend's ambitions are, and you can support one another and encourage

00:39:44.020 | one another and love on one another in just such a much more powerful way in that kind

00:39:47.640 | of context. So I at this point now see what I didn't see before, that something like

00:39:54.260 | a vacation home, while it still has those difficulties that I previously identified,

00:40:04.680 | it can be a tool that is a very attractive and very powerful tool. It can just make a

00:40:11.860 | big, big difference in the lives of others. And you can use it, you can leverage it in

00:40:17.900 | many, many ways. A couple more examples. You can leverage this even with your friends from

00:40:25.380 | other states, your friends from other countries, etc. Many people, quite rightly, will be very

00:40:34.340 | slow to want to come to your home where you are for an extended period of time. It's

00:40:46.500 | not that it can't be done, but we all know that house guests of more than a few days

00:40:51.640 | add extra pressures that can make things more difficult. But when you have a cabin or a

00:40:58.560 | vacation home, and you can extend an invitation to somebody and just say, "Hey, would you

00:41:05.420 | like to use our home?" That could be an incredible blessing. A friend of ours blessed us with

00:41:09.380 | this the other day at a cabin in Idaho. We were out in Idaho in the RV and we were just

00:41:14.620 | traveling a lot. He's like, "Listen, go and stay at our cabin." What a blessing it was

00:41:18.420 | to have a whole mountain cabin with a beautiful view and a wonderful deck, etc., where we

00:41:23.620 | could park our RV and just enjoy being in a home for a while. It's something that made

00:41:27.900 | all the difference in the world. And then we were able to see it and use it and see

00:41:32.020 | our friends. When our friends were able to come to the cabin for the weekend, we went

00:41:35.220 | back into our RV and sleeping in the driveway, and then we were able to see our friends.

00:41:39.660 | And so it really just inspired me and I realized, you know what? This is a good use of money.

00:41:45.500 | This is a useful tool in someone's hands.

00:41:48.940 | So now, if you buy that, I want to give you a few suggestions, some things that I have

00:41:54.420 | thought about that I think will be helpful. Number one, I think it's useful to clarify

00:42:02.940 | some kind of destination for the home. It shouldn't be too far away. There's always

00:42:09.620 | this challenge, right? If you buy a vacation home that's a 10-hour airplane flight away,

00:42:13.860 | you're not going to use it for a spontaneous weekend. Ideally, probably one to three hours

00:42:21.540 | away. Now, that might be a quick and cheap and convenient plane trip. Sometimes it could

00:42:26.620 | be a drive. Ideally, of course, in most places it would be a drive, but one to three hours

00:42:33.060 | away. You get more than three hours and you're going to have some more significant resistance

00:42:38.120 | and it's going to be harder for people to take you up on invitations.

00:42:42.860 | If you imagine what for many people is a typical schedule, you're working on Friday and on

00:42:48.500 | Monday and you're going to invite somebody for the weekend. Somebody gets off work a

00:42:52.100 | little bit early, 4.30 on Friday afternoon. If you get packed up and get out and you're

00:42:59.220 | four hours away, you leave at 4.30, you get there at 8.30, you're not going to have much

00:43:05.540 | energy left for much socializing on Friday night. So then you're just going to have one

00:43:11.220 | day Saturday and then on Sunday you may get together on Sunday morning and hang out on

00:43:16.380 | Sunday morning, but you don't have a lot of time for a lot of activities because you know,

00:43:21.460 | you know what, it's four hours away, probably got to hit the road by say one o'clock to

00:43:26.260 | be home by dark and have a chance to unpack from the weekend, unwind to get ready for

00:43:30.340 | the work week ahead. And so something that's four hours or more is just not going to be

00:43:36.420 | able to be used as regularly. It may still be able to be used on a special extended weekend

00:43:42.020 | or a special kind of weekly vacations, but the number of people that you can invite is

00:43:46.860 | going to be much more limited. Thinking about children, you know, it's one thing to say,

00:43:51.420 | "Hey, we're going to be an hour away. Could you drop someone off or can we take them with

00:43:54.580 | us?" Another thing to say, "Can I take your 17-year-old four hours away?" That's more

00:44:00.780 | of a difficult thing for parents to say yes to if it's at all even advisable. So closer

00:44:07.260 | is better. If it's an hour away or an hour and a half, somebody finishes up work, 4.30,

00:44:12.780 | by 6 o'clock they're sitting out on your back deck with a cold drink in their hand, nothing

00:44:17.340 | better, right? Making dinner, have a great time, get together on Saturday, Sunday, you

00:44:21.940 | got all day. Around 3 o'clock or so, 2.30, 3 o'clock, they wrap up, they're back home

00:44:26.660 | and they're home at 5 o'clock. That is perfect. And so with an hour and a half, if you drew

00:44:31.780 | a one to three hour radius around your home or your primary area, in most cases you could

00:44:39.060 | really find something in that area. I do think you want to look for some kind of feature

00:44:47.620 | that gives you something to want to do, but it also gives you something that other people

00:44:53.980 | will want to do. What I mean here is your own personal desires might be simple. For

00:44:59.660 | example, your desires might be as simple as having a sunny patio where you can sit out

00:45:05.580 | in the sunshine with a good book and read all weekend long. That doesn't cost much,

00:45:10.420 | and yet for somebody who's an introvert and a reader, that's a perfect thing to do. But

00:45:15.860 | you will have a harder time inviting people to that and it being appealing to other people

00:45:29.100 | than if there was say something as simple as a lake out back. And so even if it was

00:45:34.340 | a lake and you had a couple of kayaks and some fishing poles, you'll get more people

00:45:39.500 | and have more things to do. And so you want to think about what's the story of this house.

00:45:44.940 | The story can be any number of things. The story can be there's a lake, water is always

00:45:50.740 | attractive, a lake, a beach, etc. The story can be there's snow, snow season. The story

00:45:57.760 | can be there's a beach, something to do, but there's got to be some kind of story associated

00:46:02.360 | with it in order for people to say, "Okay, yes, I can do that." And the story should

00:46:07.740 | have obviously be something that you like. But I've known lots of people who will have

00:46:11.660 | a house and they don't like the beach, but they have a beach house even though they never

00:46:15.500 | go on the beach themselves, but there are people that they invite who like the beach,

00:46:19.140 | similar things with skiing, etc. And so just kind of come up with some kind of story for

00:46:25.340 | the house and then figure out how to improve that story with the equipment. Once you decide

00:46:32.880 | what the story of the house is, what's the activity of this house? Maybe there's a beautiful

00:46:38.360 | national park next door to it. So we're going to outfit this house with picnic baskets and

00:46:43.260 | we can hike into the national park and we're going to have binoculars or stargazing or

00:46:47.800 | whatever. Find something and then make sure the house has the gear for it and it has the

00:46:53.240 | extra gear. So that way you have it stocked for what you need. If it's a lake house, make

00:47:00.400 | sure that you have things that are appealing at different areas. Anybody can have paddleboards,

00:47:04.800 | anybody can have kayaks. They don't have to match. They can be old, they can be beat up,

00:47:08.520 | they can be canoes, etc. But having something to go out and do is going to be much more

00:47:13.400 | valuable. A number of years ago, I had stayed with a friend at his lake house in Michigan

00:47:19.840 | and it was wonderful. He had kayaks, they had a Hobie cat, they had a power boat so

00:47:26.560 | we could ski, we could wakeboard, we could do tubes and all that, which is wonderful.

00:47:31.760 | And then also they had all of the house related stuff. Now, in my opinion, the gear is often

00:47:37.240 | just an excuse for being together. So yeah, you got some kayaks, that gives you something

00:47:44.740 | to do when you need a little break. We always need a little break from one another. Being

00:47:47.960 | together for 10 hours a day straight doesn't work for most relationships. But you can have

00:47:53.600 | a great breakfast, then let's go out on the kayaks. Why don't you guys take the kayaks

00:47:57.760 | out? Boom, perfect separation. They're gone for an hour or two, they come back, have a

00:48:01.960 | nice lunch. What do you want to do? We're going to go out and lie in the sunshine for

00:48:06.240 | a while. Great. We all have our quiet time, come back together at dinner time, and then

00:48:10.840 | we go to the fire pit. So the other thing is invest into something that's going to bring

00:48:16.560 | lots of camaraderie in the actual house and make sure that it's appealing in different

00:48:21.920 | ways. So the heart of that should hopefully be the kitchen. One of the great things about

00:48:27.640 | having people together, physically together, staying in the same place, is the chance to

00:48:32.880 | turn meal times from a sometimes 30 minute event into a three hour event of enjoying

00:48:40.600 | being together. If you just focus on eating as is common, especially in the US American

00:48:46.080 | culture, we're going to go out to eat and we go for a restaurant and we eat, you're

00:48:49.560 | done in 30 minutes. And you barely even got past the niceties and got into really sharing

00:48:55.400 | heart to heart. Whereas if you start by cooking together and we have a glass of wine, okay,

00:49:01.960 | let's start cooking, you start cooking together, then dinner's ready, you sit down, you eat

00:49:05.880 | together, you have dessert, oh, we've got to clean up. And there's two people, we'll

00:49:11.440 | send the moms to the living room, they can sit and visit, dads will clean up the kitchen

00:49:15.080 | or vice versa, right? We're going to send the dads out back to smoke cigars and moms

00:49:18.640 | are going to clean up the kitchen or whatever it is. You can now stretch that simple event

00:49:24.160 | into a three or four hour dinner party. And again, all of us really want that camaraderie,

00:49:29.800 | that connection, that being together, and you can facilitate that with a really great

00:49:34.360 | kitchen. So think about having a great kitchen that's open, that gives space for people,

00:49:39.360 | that gives you the space to cook for people, and then of course learn how to use it so

00:49:43.760 | that it's not intimidating for you to have 10 extra people over, et cetera. It makes

00:49:48.160 | a big, big difference.

00:49:49.920 | Think a lot about having a great place to gather after dinner. And so this might be

00:49:56.320 | a wonderful living room with a crackling fireplace, this might be a sitting room with a great

00:50:01.520 | view, it might be a back deck, go ahead and put in a fire pit, it's always a winner.

00:50:08.080 | Human beings, there's nothing more universal than our enjoyment of sitting around together

00:50:13.280 | and staring at a fire. And so put in a nice fire pit and make it easy to use so you'll

00:50:19.000 | use it a lot. You might put in a hot tub, you might put in a pool, put in something,

00:50:25.160 | and again a fire pit is ideal. A nice deck and a fire pit will give you hours and hours

00:50:30.080 | and hours of conversation with your friends. And it gives it in a way that is appropriate.

00:50:37.080 | I say, stock your house with a really great coffee setup, a nice selection of wines and/or

00:50:44.920 | other alcohol, and tobacco. Joshua's theory on coffee, wine, or other alcohol, and tobacco

00:50:53.480 | is that these are excuses that adults use to say, "Hey, can we sit and talk?" In

00:51:00.080 | our modern era, especially men, most men have a very hard time saying to one another, "Hey,

00:51:06.720 | can we just sit down and talk for an hour?" That's kind of a weird and awkward thing

00:51:10.640 | to say. But if you say, "Hey, you want to grab a beer?" All of a sudden, you're

00:51:15.800 | pretty much guaranteed for 20 to 30 minutes of conversation. Two beers and you got an

00:51:20.080 | hour. Add a cigar to the mix and you got two hours right there. And so these excuses of,

00:51:27.200 | "Hey, let's have a cup of coffee," these excuses of, "Hey, let's have a glass

00:51:30.200 | of wine, let's have a cigar," these are excuses that we use with one another in order

00:51:35.660 | to say, "Hey, can we talk?" We just don't say, "Hey, can we talk?" because it

00:51:40.660 | sounds weak. So make sure your house is stocked for that with opportunities just for that

00:51:47.360 | direct conversation. You'd be amazed at how much more interaction you can have with

00:51:52.040 | a great fire pit and a well-stocked wine cabinet, or a great fire pit and a cool espresso machine.

00:52:00.460 | Things like that make a big, big difference. What else? I think have a diversity of things

00:52:06.760 | that will also engage other people. So it's unusual that you can get a 16-year-old to

00:52:13.640 | sit down and talk to you for hours and hours at a time as well, unless there's something

00:52:18.020 | to do. And so make sure you've got a number of games. Sit down and play Risk with a 16-year-old

00:52:23.680 | who understands how to play Risk. Probably you can have some great laughs, right? Ticket

00:52:27.840 | to Ride, Risk, Phase 10, some kind of random card game will make a big difference. And

00:52:37.140 | if you'll use these tools, you'll be able to get people to sit down who wouldn't ordinarily

00:52:42.980 | be able to sit down. My wife and I were recently guests in somebody's home with our children

00:52:47.480 | for the weekend. And there was, I think, an 11-year-old in this particular family's

00:52:56.200 | home. And the 11-year-old couldn't stop staring at his phone screen. And we tried,

00:53:01.900 | and we tried, and we tried, and we tried. We asked lots of questions and tried to engage.

00:53:06.620 | But the 11-year-old didn't have the social skills to stop staring at his phone screen

00:53:12.060 | and spend time talking with us until finally we started playing Exploding Kittens. And

00:53:19.420 | he liked playing Exploding Kittens. The phone disappeared. And once we got him into the

00:53:23.700 | game, two hours later, we were able to build a relationship. And while the phone came back

00:53:30.820 | later, it was a totally different relationship. And without Exploding Kittens, it would not

00:53:36.240 | have been possible. The previous night, we had tried, and it was just a movie. Well,

00:53:41.300 | we all sit and stare at the screen. And of course, with friends that you know well, you

00:53:45.220 | can put a movie on in the background and then you ignore the movie. But in this case, because

00:53:49.700 | there was still not that close connection, Exploding Kittens was the ticket.

00:53:56.460 | That said, I think it's a really good idea to have things that are going to be familiar

00:54:01.580 | to people. So video games, wonderful solution. Have a great video game console and some games

00:54:08.200 | that are going to be really fun. But you might choose games that lead to greater sense of

00:54:12.420 | togetherness. This was what was so great when the Wii, the original Wii, first came out.

00:54:16.940 | It was revolutionary and people bought it because the games that were appropriate for

00:54:22.260 | it were more kind of interactive games and they didn't require much skill. Wii Bowling

00:54:27.500 | got you all looking like goofballs in the living room together and it facilitated it.

00:54:30.940 | And I knew lots of people who bought that console when it first came out because of

00:54:35.980 | that. And so think about it and choose some games for the console and choose some things

00:54:40.140 | that are going to be useful. Same thing with movies. Don't just go to Netflix, although

00:54:45.740 | obviously that can be a great thing, but go ahead and stock some really good movies. Some

00:54:49.580 | movies that will be fun, they'll be widely appealing, and they'll be appropriate for

00:54:55.820 | varied mixed audiences. So that way you can have many different things. And so if you'll

00:55:00.500 | have different things in different parts of your home, now you can really encourage that

00:55:04.940 | sense of togetherness. You might have another family out, you've got wine and cigars on

00:55:09.820 | the back porch around the fire pit, and you've got the pool table inside with a movie going

00:55:14.940 | for the children. And they're getting the same benefit, but you're kind of breaking

00:55:18.540 | down those things that people are not yet mature enough to articulate. It would be an

00:55:23.660 | unusual 16-year-old who's able to analyze the social dynamics and recognize, "My heart

00:55:28.940 | is really, really desperate for some personal contact, for someone to talk about things

00:55:35.660 | and seek me out as a person. And so therefore what I really need is to talk with my fellow

00:55:40.340 | friends heart to heart around something." A 16-year-old can't articulate that. They

00:55:47.220 | can't do that. A mature adult can of course recognize, "I'm feeling lonely right now.

00:55:50.500 | I need to call somebody." But you can facilitate that same thing happening for the 16-year-old

00:55:56.500 | by investing in the appropriate equipment. So just think carefully about how you equip

00:56:00.820 | the house.

00:56:01.820 | A couple more comments. Think about how you can sleep more people in an appropriate way.

00:56:09.380 | Best thing I have ever seen a number of years ago, I was in the Keys at a friend's house

00:56:15.420 | in the Keys. And I went over to the neighbor's house. And the house was a fairly ordinary

00:56:19.660 | house, but they had installed a couple of bunk rooms. And these bunk rooms were not

00:56:26.740 | big rooms, but what they had is they had quadruple queen bunks in them. And a quadruple queen,

00:56:34.620 | two sets of those bunk rooms just with quadruple queens automatically means that you can host

00:56:41.380 | about 16 people without it being that big of a deal. And they were just bunk rooms.

00:56:49.680 | But it was awesome. It was so cool. I remember for me, at first I used to read Coastal Living

00:56:56.340 | Magazine. And when I was younger, I'd keep a look book of all the things that I wanted.

00:57:00.580 | And I had multiple of these bunk rooms that you would find. You'd find this amazing

00:57:03.620 | beach house and they'd have a bunk room with 12 bunks in it or 14 bunks in it, et cetera.

00:57:09.340 | And I think that we as people, we love that. Children especially love that. They love the

00:57:15.740 | chance to go to camp and to be in a bunk room with a bunch of other people. I think as adults,

00:57:20.860 | a lot of times we still appreciate certain things about that. And so if you've got a

00:57:26.060 | great house, make sure that you're not too limited by sleeping space. So make a plan

00:57:31.580 | for it. Install a bunk room and then have overflow. Put a couple of air mattresses.

00:57:37.500 | Maybe get some nice ones for the adults. Figure out where you could pull a room divider across

00:57:41.920 | to give a little privacy. Have a couple of sofa beds, et cetera. Maybe have a tent that

00:57:46.820 | you could set up. Get yourself a canvas wall tent. And that way, if you wanted to invite,

00:57:52.020 | let's say you had a great lake house, but the lake house only has two or three bedrooms

00:57:58.100 | in it because that's what's appropriate. Well, don't limit yourself to just only ever being

00:58:02.340 | able to invite one family or two families. Grab a couple of nice canvas wall tents and

00:58:07.540 | then invite a few more families and say, "Listen, it's not awesome. I got a canvas wall tent.

00:58:11.460 | I got some cots here that we can set up, but you'll be fine. We'll put a little propane

00:58:15.540 | heater in there and you're going to be great." And set those up on the lawn and make it an

00:58:18.980 | event out of people because the only thing that's more fun than two families being together

00:58:22.860 | is four families being together because now you're not just forced into too close of a

00:58:26.900 | contact with one other couple or one other set of adults. You have more and then you

00:58:31.540 | can involve more and more people and it adds to more fun. And now people can swap out.

00:58:36.260 | "Okay, I'm going to go kayaking with these guys and now we're going to go out on the

00:58:40.780 | boat," et cetera. And so your limitation is often sleeping space. You can make a kitchen

00:58:47.060 | expand. You can get a great table to eat at and not everybody has to sit at a table to

00:58:52.780 | eat, but you usually want to have sleeping space. So think in advance, "How can I facilitate

00:58:58.660 | sleeping space?" Grab a bedroom and just stuff it full of bunks. Figure out how you can provide

00:59:03.300 | appropriate levels of privacy for people, but actually just some sort of mattress for

00:59:07.940 | them and you can have more people and use it more. And especially if you buy the concept

00:59:13.300 | that I started with of simply the benefit of having this for your children, it's going

00:59:18.420 | to be nicer. You can invite more children. You can invite the whole youth group or you

00:59:24.340 | can invite the whole scout troop or the whole basketball team, et cetera. And you just bring

00:59:29.700 | along a couple extra chaperones, a couple extra parents, et cetera. And if you have

00:59:33.660 | appropriate sleeping space, then that can be a great way for you to host a whole basketball

00:59:39.260 | team, et cetera. And that can be just such a wonderful blessing for your children in

00:59:43.220 | their social lives and an opportunity for you to encourage and mentor the lives of other

00:59:48.700 | people. And again, I repeat, what else are you going to do with your money? Spend it

00:59:54.780 | on people. Spend your money on people. And these are some cool ways that you can do it.

01:00:01.800 | The final point is make this easy on yourself. Make this easy on yourself by figuring out

01:00:08.860 | what you need to do to make it simple. So if it were me, right, when I buy a vacation

01:00:15.940 | home and I choose this is going to be the vacation home, then I will stock it. I do

01:00:21.460 | this in my own home, but like I'm not going to stock it with my finest china. I'm going

01:00:25.860 | to go to the restaurant supply store and I'm going to buy 50 matching plates so that we

01:00:30.480 | never run out of plates and they're always there. I'm going to buy multiple sets of linens,

01:00:36.860 | right? Just go ahead and get all the stuff. Treat your home like a hotel and so that you

01:00:43.020 | have it. Find somebody who can clean the house for you. It is way, way better when you're

01:00:48.220 | hosting if you can figure out how to invest your money into a way of making sure that

01:00:53.380 | you don't have to do all the cleanup every single time. My least favorite thing about

01:00:58.580 | borrowing people's houses, my least favorite thing about Airbnb right now is the need to

01:01:03.900 | clean the houses. It really bugs me because it's difficult. Because at the age of our

01:01:07.660 | children we desire, right, we want very much to have a place that's clean, but because

01:01:13.580 | the children aren't great at cleaning yet and they require so much supervision, my wife

01:01:17.420 | and I often cannot leave a place the way that we would like. Otherwise, I'd have to sit

01:01:21.140 | in the car with the children while she cleans or she's got to take them on a walk while

01:01:23.940 | I clean, etc. And so as a host, I think there's just a real hassle if you've got to say, "Well,

01:01:29.300 | every Sunday night I've got to stay and clean my house after my guests." That's not going

01:01:34.340 | to be great. But if you've got a great housekeeper where you just know that every Monday morning

01:01:39.860 | my housekeeper comes and I pay my housekeeper a flat rate and every Monday morning that

01:01:44.980 | house gets cleaned, then you'll feel a lot better about using your home and hosting other

01:01:50.780 | people. If you know that, even if you're doing it yourself, if you know when you're getting

01:01:55.780 | ready to leave the house on Sunday afternoon, we just toss all of the sheets right in the

01:02:00.460 | washing machine, toss them in the dryer. We don't even have to take them out of the dryer.

01:02:04.420 | We just hit start in the dryer when we leave. We've got a whole fresh set. And so open up

01:02:12.300 | your closet, grab a fresh set of sheets, change all the sheets, put those in the washing machine,

01:02:16.500 | wash, done, boom, we leave. Tell the robot to go vacuum the floors when you're going

01:02:22.340 | out, then it can be a lot, lot better. Stock your home as well. Stock it with all the stuff

01:02:27.980 | so that when you're together you don't need to go out. Make sure that you have an extra

01:02:32.460 | fridge that's stocked with all the cold drinks. Put a freezer and make sure you've got all

01:02:36.980 | the foods in the freezer that you're going to want. And maybe if it's at the beginning

01:02:40.380 | of the season you go out and you spend a couple thousand dollars and you stock up all the

01:02:43.700 | stuff so that you don't have to shop all season, that also can be a great thing. And it'll

01:02:48.580 | make your life easier to know you've always got food. There's never a reason for you to

01:02:53.780 | not have plenty of food in your house to host a spontaneous 20 person dinner party. It's

01:03:00.180 | relatively simple. You keep, even a nice one, you keep frozen vegetables in the freezer,

01:03:05.340 | you keep frozen steaks packed up ready to go. This is one of the things that I do when

01:03:09.720 | hosting people is you keep frozen steaks cut up, a little bit of seasoning, vacuum packed

01:03:16.300 | in vacuum sealed bags. And so then you just have the sous vide ready to go. So you figure

01:03:23.500 | out how many people are going, you drop the steaks in the sous vide machine, go ahead

01:03:27.080 | and grab out your frozen green beans, go ahead and grab out your mashed potatoes that are

01:03:32.180 | just dehydrated mashed potatoes from a box or from a bag, those last for a long time,

01:03:38.060 | and add some seasonings and away you go. And even if you have no fresh food in the house,

01:03:42.780 | all of that's there, add a bottle of wine to that, no one will ever wish for anything

01:03:48.420 | else.

01:03:49.420 | And so think about that and then develop some simple menus, some ways of cooking for people

01:03:53.540 | that you know are reliable. Again, for years I use this with regard to inviting people

01:04:01.040 | to our house after church meetings. When we have a house and we go to different church

01:04:06.540 | meetings, we've traveled so much as guests and showed up at places. And one of the things

01:04:11.500 | that really shocked and hurt me, especially when traveling across the United States, was

01:04:15.740 | how many church meetings we would go to and how few invitations we would get for lunch

01:04:21.860 | afterward. And we would show up when we were traveling in an RV, if we were visiting friends,

01:04:27.220 | we would go to, we'd visit our friend's church of course, or if we had some particular reason

01:04:32.820 | to be in a place, we would go to a church meeting. But a lot of times we were just traveling

01:04:36.740 | and it's the weekend and I want to go to a church meeting and meet with some fellow Christians

01:04:41.340 | on Sunday morning. And so we would go to a local church and my family is not inconspicuous

01:04:50.420 | and people would say, "Hi, welcome," et cetera. And I would, "What are you doing?" "We're

01:04:56.540 | traveling," et cetera. And I would tell them. But week after week after we're on the road,

01:05:00.900 | we got so lonely, just incredibly lonely and really, really wanted for just to have some

01:05:07.980 | fellowship, to meet some friends, to talk to some people. And got to the point, I was

01:05:11.900 | like, "I don't care if I ever go to another church meeting in my life. I don't need more

01:05:15.980 | sermons. I don't need more singing. Fine, I appreciate that. But what I need is some

01:05:21.140 | fellowship." And we would go week after week and it felt like, it's like, "Is anybody going

01:05:25.780 | to engage with us? Is anybody going to do anything other than say, 'Hey, welcome, glad

01:05:29.660 | to see you again?'" And it really shocked and it hurt me at the state of American Christianity.

01:05:34.140 | And I resolved, I said, "I will never," it's hard when you actually make a resolve, but

01:05:38.500 | my intention, right? My intention is that I will never allow somebody to come to a church

01:05:43.660 | meeting where I am and find out that they're visiting and not invite them for lunch. Because

01:05:48.420 | it was so hurtful to me and so painful not to have that. And of course, why don't we

01:05:52.820 | do it, right? Well, we always either, "Oh, my house is a mess," or, "I don't have any

01:05:56.420 | food in the house." But when you're a traveler and you're really lonely and you just want

01:06:00.820 | to have some fellowship with somebody, you start to realize that, "I don't care if your

01:06:04.780 | house is a mess. I'm not judging if your house is a mess. My house is a mess. Houses are

01:06:08.380 | a mess. That's what happens. It happens to all of us." Or, "I don't care if you have

01:06:11.740 | any food. If somebody had just said, 'Listen, our house is a mess and we don't have any

01:06:16.580 | food, but I'll tell you what, we'd love to just visit with you. There's a park down the

01:06:20.740 | road. If you guys want to go to the park where there's a swing set so your kids can get their

01:06:25.100 | wiggles out, we'll swing by Publix or we'll swing by the grocery store and we'll grab

01:06:29.040 | some peanut butter and jelly and a bag of chips and we'll meet you down there in a little

01:06:32.500 | bit.'" I would have said, "Yes," every time. But people didn't do that.

01:06:37.900 | Anyway, after that experience, I promised myself, "I'm not going to be in a church meeting

01:06:42.100 | where there are visitors and not invite somebody for lunch, even if it's as simple as, "Our

01:06:47.660 | house is a mess and we have no food," because I know what it's like to be that way. It really

01:06:52.060 | opened my eyes in a way that I didn't previously understand. So far, I've pretty much done

01:06:58.500 | that. In so doing, what I have learned is I just want to always have my house stocked

01:07:05.460 | with some stuff that is nice. So again, I'll tell you, I already did it, but sous vide

01:07:12.500 | steaks in the freezer, buy a big hunk of ribeye, chop it up into nice thick steaks and vacuum

01:07:19.660 | seal and pack them in the freezer. They'll sit there for six months and be perfectly

01:07:22.660 | good. You find a family of two or a family of 15, all that matters is you can get your

01:07:29.260 | sous vide pot up to temperature pretty quickly. You need 45 minutes in the sous vide, which

01:07:33.020 | is just enough time to get everything else ready and have time to sit and have a glass

01:07:37.380 | of wine and visit in the living room for a little bit before dinner's on. You can go

01:07:41.600 | from nothing to a nice Sunday dinner at your home in 45 minutes with some sous vide steaks,

01:07:49.380 | some frozen vegetables. I try to make sure I keep something pickled, some kind of little

01:07:53.340 | hors d'oeuvres, little onions or little olives or something like that, some nice stuff. And

01:07:57.140 | then whatever else you happen to have, again, some dehydrated mashed potatoes or whip up

01:08:03.100 | some bread or something real quick. And you can serve a meal in 45 minutes that's really

01:08:07.220 | nice even if you have company and you need it really quickly. So just think about how

01:08:13.400 | you can institute things that make your life easy. And it does take a little bit of skills,

01:08:21.100 | takes a little bit of practice, but once you do it, then you can turn your home, you can

01:08:26.700 | turn your vacation home into something that's just a blessing for others. And in the modern

01:08:31.300 | world we are living through an epidemic of loneliness. We are living through an epidemic

01:08:37.720 | of loneliness and we have more ways to contact each other instantaneously and yet we spend

01:08:44.540 | more time alone than ever before. And so host that, encourage that. Final thing, this one

01:08:53.500 | is dangerous. Think about some ways to encourage that physical, not physical contact, that's

01:09:03.740 | a deluded term, think about some ways to encourage that face to face interaction. And so it might

01:09:09.780 | be as simple as it might be something where you just facilitate it by having the appropriate

01:09:17.180 | games and things. You might put a basket, put a Faraday cage, a basket, a little box

01:09:24.460 | at the front of your property, put your cell phones here. You might not have internet at

01:09:29.140 | the property unless you specifically turn it on and plug into an ethernet cable. But

01:09:33.540 | help people to arrange in an appropriate way, arrange just a break to be together. I think

01:09:39.860 | here's where being in a remote cabin is really wonderful because they expect it. The Faraday

01:09:47.420 | box at the front door is a little intense but it can be something where people really

01:09:52.820 | look forward to it. If you have the personality to pull it off and just to say, "Hey, here's

01:09:57.900 | the cell phone room. Here's a charger right here. This is where your cell phone is. If

01:10:01.940 | you need to talk on it, this is where you do it. But cell phones don't come into the

01:10:05.180 | rest of the house," something like that. And help your guests have a break from it.

01:10:10.100 | It's just a wonderful way to do it. I'm not so hardcore just simply because I use my phone

01:10:18.140 | as a camera and I like to take pictures, etc. But I understand and I appreciate it when

01:10:23.240 | people are intentional about it because it makes a better environment for everyone around.

01:10:28.580 | So these are some ideas that I've had over the years. I wasn't wrong, as I see it now,

01:10:34.460 | I wasn't wrong about the downsides of a vacation home but I hadn't yet arrived at a point in

01:10:39.420 | my life where I could appreciate those upsides. And so at this point in time, I now appreciate

01:10:45.140 | those upsides in the ways that I have just described to you and I encourage you to consider

01:10:50.500 | them and if they are applicable, go for it. There are so many of my listeners in this

01:10:57.880 | audience who are continually fighting the urge to spend money. "I want to be frugal.

01:11:06.780 | Should I really go and spend the money? Should I really go and buy a vacation home?" etc.

01:11:11.500 | Because after all, I could be richer. I just say, "Friend, I'm all for you getting richer

01:11:17.380 | but I want you to live a rich life now." Being the richest guy in the graveyard doesn't really

01:11:23.500 | matter. It's kind of a waste. And so to the extent that you want to build more wealth

01:11:31.300 | and to the extent that you see that minimizing your expenditures will help you, great. Obviously,

01:11:43.820 | that's a proper form of analysis that you should do. But what's the point of money except

01:11:55.900 | to use it to buy the kind of life that you want to live? And if you reflect back, the

01:12:00.940 | thing that you're going to remember and look back on is not what the particular balance

01:12:05.340 | of your bank account was at any point in time. You're going to reflect back on the experiences

01:12:09.760 | that you had. And you can spend money in order to facilitate those experiences. And I don't

01:12:20.660 | see that there's really any better use of money than that. It's funny, there's another

01:12:28.580 | weird parable that Jesus taught. I've puzzled about it for years and I still don't understand

01:12:34.260 | it, but it's the parable of the lazy servant. And it's got this funny verse in the Bible

01:12:40.540 | about it where basically, paraphrasing it, Jesus tells this parable about there's this

01:12:45.460 | king and he has a wicked servant and the wicked servant just doesn't do much good. And the

01:12:50.300 | king's really angry with the servant because the servant was a bad servant. And so the

01:12:54.380 | servant's like, "What am I going to do?" So he's still a servant of the king. So he calls

01:12:58.980 | all of the king's debtors and he says, "Listen, you owe the king $10,000, right?" And the

01:13:04.740 | debtor says, "Yeah, I owe the king $10,000." And he says, "Quick, mark this down here.

01:13:07.980 | I'm going to change your balance from $10,000 to $2,000. And then the next one, I'm going

01:13:12.660 | to cut your balance from $100,000 to $50,000." So the king calls the servant for him and

01:13:17.220 | finds out what the servant has done. The servant's given away all the king's money and the king

01:13:20.380 | says, "This is a shrewd, shrewd servant." And then there's this weird statement. I should

01:13:25.580 | have looked it up, but I didn't. But this weird statement where it says, "Use your unrighteous

01:13:30.380 | mammon to make friends for yourself on earth." And while I have a hard time quoting that

01:13:35.900 | as gospel truth, it's something that I often say. The whole point of money, you should

01:13:42.280 | spend money to buy friends for yourself on earth. Not in a weird way, not in the prodigal

01:13:48.660 | son just spending all his money not to buy real friends, but if you can use money to

01:13:53.820 | facilitate friendship, if you can use money to invest into people, what more valuable

01:13:58.500 | thing is there? And so often people just think, "Well, the only way I can do that is to go

01:14:02.600 | and give my money to buy a cow for somebody in poverty-stricken Africa." Well, that's

01:14:08.700 | fine. And I think that's wonderful. But there's a lot of lonely people around you right now

01:14:14.820 | who if you invited them over for dinner and you put out a really nice dinner for them,

01:14:19.940 | you could really encourage them. And there's a lot of lonely people around your 16-year-old.

01:14:25.860 | Your 16-year-old has some friends that right now are scheming and researching ways to end

01:14:34.300 | their life. Your 16-year-old have some friends that right now are trying to figure out what

01:14:42.460 | to do in the future. And so if you can use your money and among other things can put

01:14:50.940 | in place some infrastructure that's going to allow you to spend more time with people,

01:14:58.660 | I think that is a very, very good use of money. I forgot this earlier, so I'll just add this

01:15:04.340 | as an addendum. One final thing. I think having a vacation home can be a wonderful sense of

01:15:11.740 | security for your children even as they go through periods of their life. Having a second

01:15:17.080 | home that if your son or your daughter gets fired from a job, you can say, "Listen, son,

01:15:23.700 | why don't you move into the lake house for a little bit?" Or your daughter wants to write

01:15:28.860 | the world's best great novel, but she has no way to make any money on it. "Listen, why

01:15:32.900 | don't you move into the lake house?" Obviously, your own home might be available, but having

01:15:37.140 | a kind of that stability for a family member, for your children of knowing they've always

01:15:43.020 | got a home, there's always an extra house available, can be a really nice thing. And

01:15:48.460 | I think sometimes those of us who care a lot about responsibility, we spend so much time

01:15:52.860 | thinking about trying to create responsibility in our children that we don't think enough

01:15:58.620 | about supporting our children. And if you study the children of the wealthy, one of

01:16:03.900 | the things you find is that the children of the wealthy have a very different psyche than

01:16:08.980 | do children who grow up in poverty, because they understand that it's almost impossible

01:16:15.540 | for them to fail. They understand that if I fail, it's okay, because I've still got

01:16:23.740 | a nice trampoline to fall back on, mom and dad. And I think that's a very valuable thing,

01:16:29.580 | because knowing that you have a support system, a trampoline, means that you can take bigger

01:16:35.260 | risks. You can try more interesting flips on a trampoline than you do on a hard concrete

01:16:40.020 | basketball court. And so you have more opportunity and you can take bigger risks, etc. So I think

01:16:44.820 | that's a really powerful thing for your children, and it can also be a wonderful thing for your

01:16:49.060 | ability to help your friends as well, friends who are in need. "Listen, I've got a vacation

01:16:53.580 | home. You can't stay there forever, but I'd be happy for you to stay there for a month

01:16:58.180 | and give them some kind of interim housing which can really take the bear off of someone's

01:17:03.540 | back." So I hope these ideas are helpful to you. If you've got additional ideas, I'd

01:17:06.660 | love to hear them from you. But those are the best that I've heard. Remember that if

01:17:10.260 | you would like to speak to me personally, I'm available for consulting at the moment.

01:17:13.380 | Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult and you can book a consulting call. We can talk

01:17:17.300 | about whether you can afford a vacation home or not. What's funny is that in a lot of consulting

01:17:23.020 | calls, I actually do wind up giving an abbreviated version of this speech that I've just given

01:17:27.620 | you, basically saying, "Listen, why do you have so much money? I'm glad that you're rich,

01:17:33.260 | but you've got way too much money. How can you invest your money into your children?

01:17:38.740 | How can you invest your money into your friends?" And I frequently find myself telling the stories

01:17:45.220 | that I've just told you and saying, "Go and buy a vacation home. Go and buy a lake home.

01:17:50.480 | Invest into your grandchildren's life in this way by providing that." And this is something

01:17:54.700 | that grandparents especially can do. Your children aren't going to ask you to do it,

01:17:58.780 | but if you've got the money and you can set up a really great place that your children

01:18:02.460 | are going to want to be at and your grandchildren are going to be at, you can invest into some

01:18:05.940 | wonderful time with your grandchildren. Which, by the time you reach grandparent's age, you

01:18:10.780 | generally recognize that what I want is time with people. I'm telling you. You can spend

01:18:15.780 | your money and you can buy that time back. Not by paying someone to spend time with you,

01:18:22.980 | but by paying for things that make it easier and more attractive for someone to spend time

01:18:27.580 | with you. And if that happens and that also results in a deepening of the relationship,

01:18:33.260 | I consider that a pretty good thing. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult.

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