2022-02-18_Friday_QA-Remote_Work_Giving_Ad_Hoc_vs_Systematically_Investing_Virtuously_Off-Shore_Bank

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00:00:30.000 | It's Friday and today, live Q&A.

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00:00:48.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:50.000 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills,

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00:00:54.000 | and meaningful life now while building a plan

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00:00:58.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets.

00:00:59.000 | Today is Friday, February 18, 2022.

00:01:04.000 | And today, we get back to live Friday Q&A.

00:01:07.000 | Open lines, you can call in, talk with me about anything

00:01:11.000 | that you want.

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00:01:22.000 | What that means is it works just like Talk Radio.

00:01:24.000 | You can call in, you can talk about anything that you want,

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00:01:29.000 | discuss anything, make any comments of your own.

00:01:32.000 | That's what we do here on Friday,

00:01:33.000 | any time when I can arrange the appropriate technology

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00:01:56.000 | We begin with John in Pennsylvania.

00:01:58.000 | John, welcome to the show.

00:01:59.000 | How can I serve you today?

00:02:01.000 | Hey, Josh.

00:02:02.000 | Well, thanks for taking my call.

00:02:04.000 | I have been out of work for about a year,

00:02:08.000 | a little bit more, actually.

00:02:10.000 | And I recently got a job, a new position I'm going to be starting soon.

00:02:14.000 | And I have a bit of concerns.

00:02:17.000 | One is I have to brush up on a new domain in my field quite a bit

00:02:22.000 | that I don't have experience with.

00:02:23.000 | But the other bigger one that I was hoping you could help with was,

00:02:26.000 | even though I had worked from home prior to being laid off for about nine

00:02:32.000 | months, I never really kind of got into a full groove.

00:02:35.000 | I did good things like getting dressed every day and having a dedicated

00:02:38.000 | space, but I never felt as effective working from home as I did in the office.

00:02:45.000 | Also, I kind of always felt bad for people who started work from home

00:02:50.000 | and never got the in-person experience with the coworkers like I had.

00:02:54.000 | So this job is fully remote.

00:02:57.000 | And I just wonder if you have any advice or opinions on both working

00:03:01.000 | effectively as a remote worker from home, which I assume you do,

00:03:06.000 | and also with connecting with colleagues in a meaningful way.

00:03:10.000 | It's fully remote and it's expected to be fully remote into the future?

00:03:16.000 | That's correct.

00:03:18.000 | I will have the opportunity to travel.

00:03:20.000 | I'm sure right now it's as needed only,

00:03:22.000 | but hopefully I'll be able to connect directly with the people in the

00:03:26.000 | offices eventually.

00:03:27.000 | But my role is fully remote, yeah.

00:03:29.000 | Are you aware of whether or not the company has things like quarterly

00:03:32.000 | in-person meetings or an annual retreat or something that facilitates

00:03:36.000 | in-person connection?

00:03:38.000 | I'm not yet, but I assume when things get back to whatever they call normal,

00:03:43.000 | they will probably institute some form of that.

00:03:45.000 | And they may do some virtually as well.

00:03:47.000 | It seems like it's kind of a company that would foster that sort of thing.

00:03:50.000 | Yeah.

00:03:51.000 | Well, I think that the future, in my opinion,

00:03:53.000 | I think the future is that most of our work is done at a distance,

00:03:58.000 | but that we facilitate opportunities for in-person connection.

00:04:03.000 | I think that there's no question that there are many benefits to the

00:04:07.000 | fully in-person environment, but in today's world,

00:04:11.000 | it seems like there are the countervailing benefits for a remote work

00:04:16.000 | environment are also quite significant.

00:04:18.000 | So I think many companies are going to find themselves in a place where

00:04:24.000 | most of the work that is done is done remotely.

00:04:27.000 | And then that they solve some of the needs for human connection,

00:04:32.000 | for relationships, et cetera, with being together in person,

00:04:36.000 | quarterly meetings, an annual retreat, team building exercises,

00:04:41.000 | things like that.

00:04:42.000 | That's my guess as far as what I think is going to happen going forward.

00:04:46.000 | And my reasons, the reasons that I think that is true,

00:04:50.000 | if you look at the advantages for both the employer and the employee of having

00:04:57.000 | remote work, they are very, very high.

00:05:01.000 | The advantages for the employer involve vastly lower costs,

00:05:06.000 | meaning significantly cheaper, no need for big, giant office buildings,

00:05:11.000 | no need to maintain a bunch of real estate,

00:05:13.000 | just simply send the employee a computer and give them a stipend for their

00:05:16.000 | internet connection.

00:05:18.000 | And so I think that there are a lot of lower costs.

00:05:22.000 | We're getting better at being able to count, figure out productivity.

00:05:29.000 | Basically companies now are accustomed to the fact that they have to have new

00:05:34.000 | metrics that don't just involve seeing someone's face in the office to know

00:05:38.000 | whether they're working or not.

00:05:40.000 | And so I think they're getting better.

00:05:41.000 | Now there's no question I think that there are some companies that have said,

00:05:43.000 | "No, it doesn't work for us.

00:05:44.000 | It doesn't work for our culture.

00:05:46.000 | We want to have an environment where people are physically together."

00:05:50.000 | And so there's going to be competition,

00:05:52.000 | but I think a lot of workers also so much appreciate the ability to be remote

00:05:56.000 | and to work remotely and all of the lifestyle benefits that opens up,

00:06:00.000 | that they're making sure that they take those remote jobs.

00:06:05.000 | So I expect the future to be kind of a mixture of them.

00:06:08.000 | So what do you do?

00:06:09.000 | It is a real problem for you in terms of how do you make a good impression,

00:06:17.000 | how do you build those kinds of relationships.

00:06:19.000 | So to begin with, for you,

00:06:21.000 | I think the most important thing is to know what you're actually being hired to

00:06:26.000 | do.

00:06:27.000 | You have to be very, very clear on what the metrics are.

00:06:29.000 | What am I going to be judged based upon what criteria am I going to be judged?

00:06:34.000 | So you need to know what is expected of you.

00:06:37.000 | What are your performance metrics?

00:06:39.000 | And then you need to make sure that you're hitting your performance metrics.

00:06:42.000 | There are little things that you could do,

00:06:44.000 | but at the end of the day, it's all about performance.

00:06:47.000 | And so if you know what you're going to be judged on and you can hit those

00:06:50.000 | performance metrics, then that will be excellent for you.

00:06:54.000 | I think one of the things that is extraordinarily important is to have a

00:06:59.000 | really good workspace.

00:07:01.000 | And this here, you have to just look at your house,

00:07:03.000 | look at your work environment,

00:07:05.000 | consider your children and ask yourself if you have an appropriate workspace.

00:07:10.000 | Having children, I think, is a major challenge to being at home.

00:07:14.000 | The noise, the interruptions,

00:07:17.000 | the kind of connectedness with the household,

00:07:20.000 | all of that can be a major impediment to your getting work done.

00:07:23.000 | And so you have to find a solution that allows you to work effectively.

00:07:26.000 | I think some of the best solutions,

00:07:28.000 | certainly if you have a great basement office where it's separate from the

00:07:31.000 | house, if you've got,

00:07:33.000 | if you can convert a part of your garage to make it separate and sound

00:07:37.000 | isolated by putting some sort of office in your garage, that's good.

00:07:41.000 | A backyard shed if you're in kind of a suburban neighborhood,

00:07:44.000 | but if you put in a really great backyard shed and that becomes your office,

00:07:47.000 | these are all good options that I think are worth investing into because you

00:07:51.000 | want to know, you want to have the confidence of knowing I can go to work and I

00:07:55.000 | can get work done so that you have a reliable, consistent work environment.

00:08:00.000 | I think what you definitely want to do is you want to invest into proper

00:08:04.000 | working infrastructure, whatever that is for you.

00:08:06.000 | So if that means a standup desk or, you know,

00:08:10.000 | a walking desk, if it means a really great office chair,

00:08:14.000 | if it means the right internet connections,

00:08:17.000 | if it means a great camera setup, if you're going to be on zoom all the time,

00:08:21.000 | make sure that you've got a great camera setup to make everything simple and

00:08:24.000 | easy. And so, so you can perform your job effectively,

00:08:28.000 | so you can hear everyone well, et cetera,

00:08:31.000 | and just deliver on your performance metrics. Now, in terms of actually,

00:08:36.000 | in terms of actually connecting with coworkers,

00:08:39.000 | I would prioritize any kind of in-person opportunity.

00:08:43.000 | I don't know, meaning what I mean is maybe there's some techniques,

00:08:47.000 | maybe sending good email emails and being showing up in the Slack channel in

00:08:52.000 | an appropriate way.

00:08:53.000 | Maybe those are good ways of establishing great interpersonal connections.

00:08:58.000 | But I think the most important thing is when possible,

00:09:00.000 | make friends with your coworkers so that you can,

00:09:04.000 | so that when there are questions in online communication,

00:09:08.000 | those questions are weighed in the context of a relationship with a real

00:09:11.000 | person. I think what's very difficult about online communication is,

00:09:16.000 | especially with so much written communication, so much, you know,

00:09:20.000 | so many Slack channels and et cetera,

00:09:22.000 | being the primary way of communicating is it's hard to convey those

00:09:27.000 | interpersonal things that tell whether you're serious or whether you're

00:09:32.000 | joking about something. And so I think to the, as quickly as possible,

00:09:36.000 | build the personal relationships when possible so that that facilitates

00:09:41.000 | the other more difficult communication channels.

00:09:46.000 | Beyond that, you know, as with anything, learn the company culture,

00:09:50.000 | get in there and figure out who your boss is,

00:09:52.000 | figure out how to make them happy. And if you do that, things work well.

00:09:55.000 | I don't have any special wisdom though, beyond that,

00:09:59.000 | other than to say that those who find a job that's a good fit for them,

00:10:03.000 | find out what their performance metrics are and do it effectively,

00:10:06.000 | those people will always win no matter the context.

00:10:09.000 | I appreciate it. Thank you.

00:10:13.000 | I'd already re-listened to some of your audio from the courses that I took

00:10:21.000 | from you and all that stuff was really helpful as well. So thank you.

00:10:25.000 | Good. My pleasure. All right, we go on to James. James, welcome to the show.

00:10:29.000 | How can I serve you today?

00:10:30.000 | Hey Joshua, appreciate you having me on.

00:10:33.000 | I was last on the show to ask your thoughts about how I might grow my blog,

00:10:38.000 | but since then I've not focused directly on growing the blog.

00:10:41.000 | I think the 20/80 rule you've talked about before is applicable.

00:10:45.000 | That my purpose behind the blog was really, I love teaching and coaching.

00:10:48.000 | And I found that I can get more leverage by pivoting my day job to doing that.

00:10:53.000 | Wonderful.

00:10:54.000 | And so I've recently started a new role in my organization where I do some

00:10:58.000 | corporate training and I'm working on my organization's learning and people

00:11:03.000 | development strategy, but it's only a temporary role through the end of June.

00:11:08.000 | And so that's got me thinking on what do I want to do next for my next role?

00:11:12.000 | And I've been doing your career and income course,

00:11:15.000 | and I was struck by the part where you said you've considered corporate

00:11:18.000 | training before because you love teaching.

00:11:20.000 | And so I wanted to ask you what were some of the different career paths you've

00:11:24.000 | considered to indulge your love of teaching and how did you decide which one

00:11:28.000 | was best for you?

00:11:29.000 | So I think that when you realize that you genuinely enjoy teaching,

00:11:34.000 | it opens up so many different avenues.

00:11:37.000 | I could, I believe if I were hireable,

00:11:40.000 | I could very happily be a high school teacher.

00:11:44.000 | I could teach a number of subjects.

00:11:47.000 | There's a number of things that I would thoroughly enjoy teaching on and I could

00:11:51.000 | be happy as anything just in a local high school working as a high school

00:11:55.000 | teacher. I could enjoy teaching college, being a college professor.

00:11:59.000 | A friend of mine who I was recently talking with,

00:12:01.000 | who was interviewing for a job as a college professor and I was going over

00:12:05.000 | again and I was surprised I really reviewed with him.

00:12:08.000 | I was like, here's all the reasons why I think this is such a wonderful,

00:12:11.000 | a wonderful job,

00:12:12.000 | just an amazing opportunity to be in this kind of very stimulating environment

00:12:17.000 | where,

00:12:18.000 | so I would genuinely derive a significant amount of joy from those two things.

00:12:23.000 | I say that because don't brush past them.

00:12:25.000 | Usually we brush past things like being a high school teacher because of limited

00:12:34.000 | income,

00:12:35.000 | but the income can be plenty to live a very comfortable lifestyle on.

00:12:40.000 | And so,

00:12:41.000 | and then in,

00:12:42.000 | and in addition,

00:12:43.000 | you can always do other things for income as well.

00:12:46.000 | So if you are someone who's thinking about a career change,

00:12:50.000 | you could be a very great fit for simply going and being a traditional teacher

00:12:56.000 | in a traditional classroom.

00:12:57.000 | So that would be something worth considering.

00:12:59.000 | If you go beyond that,

00:13:01.000 | then like I mentioned with being a corporate trainer,

00:13:04.000 | there is,

00:13:05.000 | there are teaching opportunities in virtually all industries,

00:13:08.000 | virtually all companies.

00:13:10.000 | And when you recognize that what you're skilled at or what you enjoy is being a

00:13:14.000 | teacher,

00:13:15.000 | then you can just simply identify one of those things,

00:13:18.000 | one of those,

00:13:19.000 | those niches that you would enjoy teaching in.

00:13:22.000 | And if you enjoy the classroom environment,

00:13:25.000 | the world's open to you.

00:13:28.000 | And I think we're also living in a really wonderful environment for independent

00:13:34.000 | teachers,

00:13:35.000 | whether that's independent teachers in a traditional format locally,

00:13:40.000 | or whether it's independent teachers teaching virtually to broader audiences.

00:13:47.000 | I can think of a number of topics that I'm interested in where there are people

00:13:53.000 | who make their living.

00:13:54.000 | They have,

00:13:55.000 | they create a small platform in their area of skill,

00:13:59.000 | area of expertise,

00:14:00.000 | and then they,

00:14:01.000 | they host regular classes and it's,

00:14:04.000 | they get people from across the country to come in,

00:14:06.000 | sit for their classes,

00:14:08.000 | and they make their living on that.

00:14:10.000 | And if you run the numbers on how profitable it can be to sell tuition to your

00:14:15.000 | courses,

00:14:16.000 | the numbers can make it very,

00:14:19.000 | very doable for an independent teacher.

00:14:22.000 | Right?

00:14:22.000 | If you can imagine that you're doing something where you're selling a weekend

00:14:25.000 | seminar and you sell the weekend seminar for say $300 and it's an area of your

00:14:30.000 | expertise,

00:14:31.000 | if you can put 30 people in a room at 300,

00:14:35.000 | $300 depending on what your level of expenses are,

00:14:39.000 | there's a $9,000 weekend.

00:14:41.000 | And there are all kinds of little niches and little interesting things where you

00:14:46.000 | can put 30 people in a room regularly

00:14:48.000 | without having the world's biggest brand.

00:14:53.000 | And then when it comes to the world of online education,

00:14:57.000 | it opens up so much and,

00:14:59.000 | and,

00:15:00.000 | and the world is hungry for people who do things well.

00:15:03.000 | So here I think online you have in many cases much higher levels of competition

00:15:08.000 | where you have to be better,

00:15:10.000 | you have to be more skilled.

00:15:11.000 | But if you're interested in teaching something and you simply teach it well,

00:15:16.000 | you can create a system that will be very powerful over time.

00:15:21.000 | Right?

00:15:22.000 | Everything about teaching online rewards high quality and,

00:15:27.000 | and,

00:15:28.000 | and over time growing monetization.

00:15:32.000 | So whether you're teaching English,

00:15:34.000 | whether you're teaching some specific skill,

00:15:39.000 | the ability to access the world's markets with a very low cost of advertising,

00:15:44.000 | focusing primarily on simply your high quality of information makes this one of

00:15:50.000 | the world's best times ever to be a teacher because it's a time in which

00:15:55.000 | ordinary people who previously wouldn't have been able to reach a global stage

00:15:59.000 | without having the right connections can now simply rely upon the strength of

00:16:03.000 | their communication skills and the quality of their teaching in order to be

00:16:08.000 | found by the marketplace.

00:16:10.000 | So that's my little speech on it,

00:16:13.000 | but those are the,

00:16:14.000 | when I look at those I see any number of ways that somebody who enjoys being a

00:16:19.000 | teacher or wants to be a teacher can analyze his life and can say,

00:16:24.000 | here's what I need now,

00:16:25.000 | here's what I need in the future and here's how I'll grow it.

00:16:30.000 | So,

00:16:31.000 | you know,

00:16:32.000 | recently I was watching some videos from a guy who teaches German online.

00:16:36.000 | He's a high school German teacher in a little town in the middle of nowhere in

00:16:39.000 | the United States.

00:16:40.000 | He has his day job,

00:16:42.000 | but he also has his online German teaching platform.

00:16:45.000 | And so that's just an example where you could take and say,

00:16:50.000 | I'm going to have a job,

00:16:51.000 | I'm going to have a job that allows me to do my basic day to day work,

00:16:55.000 | pays my bills,

00:16:56.000 | et cetera,

00:16:57.000 | keeps my finances stable,

00:16:59.000 | but I'm going to take my 15 hours on the side and I'm going to really invest it

00:17:03.000 | into something that has much more leverage than teaching in my local high

00:17:07.000 | school.

00:17:08.000 | Yeah,

00:17:13.000 | that's a good overview.

00:17:14.000 | Thank you.

00:17:15.000 | Do you have,

00:17:17.000 | or do you want to share the kinds of things that you enjoy teaching about?

00:17:20.000 | Sure.

00:17:22.000 | Yeah,

00:17:23.000 | I really enjoy teaching about leadership,

00:17:26.000 | personal growth.

00:17:27.000 | I like reading about history and figuring out what lessons on leadership and

00:17:33.000 | love and personal growth we can find from it.

00:17:35.000 | And then I also enjoy teaching technical things,

00:17:39.000 | my backgrounds in industrial engineering.

00:17:41.000 | So things like programming and Python or something like that.

00:17:45.000 | I've been getting ready to teach a course in that at my organization.

00:17:49.000 | So kind of a mix of soft skills and technical skills.

00:17:53.000 | So I think the challenge is if just simply choosing one that you think is the

00:17:58.000 | most interesting one for you to start with,

00:18:00.000 | any one of those can be turned into an independent business and independent

00:18:04.000 | career.

00:18:05.000 | I'm very,

00:18:06.000 | very powerfully,

00:18:07.000 | but the key is simply choosing one and that you think has the best appeal to

00:18:13.000 | you personally.

00:18:14.000 | And then thinking through a business model that you think could be effective

00:18:19.000 | for you.

00:18:20.000 | So,

00:18:22.000 | I mean I could take any one of them and create a model for it.

00:18:25.000 | But what I would say is take my,

00:18:27.000 | my advice would be make that list of interests and then go and find people who

00:18:32.000 | are already doing in your area of interest who are already applying those

00:18:38.000 | skills and then see who you admire,

00:18:41.000 | see who you would personally want to model in terms of your approach.

00:18:45.000 | I think that makes sense.

00:18:49.000 | Cool.

00:18:50.000 | Keep in touch.

00:18:51.000 | Let me know how things go as it unfolds.

00:18:53.000 | Frank,

00:18:54.000 | welcome to the show.

00:18:55.000 | How can I serve you today?

00:18:56.000 | Hi Joshua.

00:18:58.000 | I've got two questions today if there's time.

00:19:01.000 | First one in,

00:19:03.000 | in tithing or giving,

00:19:05.000 | how should,

00:19:07.000 | how should I balance saving up a giving balance for some future giving

00:19:10.000 | opportunity versus supporting currently known charitable organizations that I

00:19:15.000 | want to support regularly?

00:19:16.000 | So I think you did a podcast about tithing in the past and you kind of,

00:19:22.000 | the words you use were like systematic contributions of support versus like

00:19:28.000 | ad hoc financial contributions for others.

00:19:31.000 | Right,

00:19:32.000 | right.

00:19:33.000 | Well,

00:19:35.000 | I think you begin with saying who do you want to support?

00:19:38.000 | Because if you start by identifying the specific organization or person or

00:19:43.000 | people or thing that you're wishing to invest your money into,

00:19:48.000 | that's going to give you the idea of what's the best way to invest into them.

00:19:53.000 | When you come to,

00:19:55.000 | to supporting an organization that's very,

00:20:00.000 | or a person on an ongoing basis,

00:20:02.000 | that's very different than supporting just somebody when you see needs on

00:20:06.000 | occasion.

00:20:07.000 | And you'll probably do both.

00:20:08.000 | If you're tithing to your local church,

00:20:11.000 | then you're going to want to make sure that you're providing those tithes

00:20:16.000 | regularly on an ongoing basis so that the treasurers can make more reliable

00:20:21.000 | forecasts as to their cashflow and then manage the money more effectively.

00:20:28.000 | If you're using some of your funds to support someone like a missionary,

00:20:32.000 | that missionary will greatly appreciate having a sense of stability in his

00:20:37.000 | finances, knowing that,

00:20:39.000 | "Hey,

00:20:39.000 | I'm receiving $300 a month from this particular donor.

00:20:42.000 | That way I can go forward and I can make various investments and financial

00:20:47.000 | decisions based upon having that consistent level of money."

00:20:52.000 | So I think that those are very valuable.

00:20:55.000 | And if you are,

00:20:56.000 | certainly you're going to be giving to an organization that you believe in.

00:21:00.000 | So in that case,

00:21:01.000 | you want the organization to succeed.

00:21:03.000 | And so if you observe the fact that you want that the organization will,

00:21:07.000 | will thrive from ongoing contributions,

00:21:10.000 | then try to set it up so that you can make ongoing contributions.

00:21:14.000 | The ad hoc giving,

00:21:16.000 | I think can be very powerful because there are many needs that are genuine,

00:21:24.000 | true needs that are well-served with an ad hoc gift rather than ongoing

00:21:29.000 | support.

00:21:30.000 | So when it comes to charitable needs for somebody,

00:21:33.000 | I'm much more,

00:21:35.000 | let's say that I'm,

00:21:36.000 | there's somebody that I'm trying to support.

00:21:38.000 | I see a person who's in need.

00:21:39.000 | I would,

00:21:40.000 | I'm much more excited,

00:21:42.000 | generally speaking,

00:21:43.000 | about making an ad hoc gift or a few non-scheduled gifts in order to eliminate

00:21:53.000 | a sense of dependency by that person.

00:21:56.000 | If you're not,

00:21:58.000 | if let's say you're just simply helping somebody who lost their job and they

00:22:02.000 | need some financial support and you're making a mortgage payment or you're

00:22:05.000 | buying some food or you're making just a one-time cash gift,

00:22:09.000 | I think that's more powerful because it helps to solve the specific need the

00:22:14.000 | person has without the deleterious effects of ongoing support,

00:22:19.000 | which can lead to a person becoming complacent,

00:22:22.000 | lazy,

00:22:23.000 | et cetera.

00:22:24.000 | The kind of the classic example is just look at unemployment.

00:22:26.000 | When people get unemployment,

00:22:27.000 | when they get laid off from a job,

00:22:28.000 | they don't start looking for a job seriously until their unemployment starts

00:22:33.000 | to run out.

00:22:34.000 | Then they start looking for a job.

00:22:36.000 | And so you can take the same benefit of supporting an organization or a

00:22:40.000 | missionary or something like that,

00:22:42.000 | and it becomes a downside in other giving situations.

00:22:46.000 | So I would just say,

00:22:48.000 | look at what you're trying to accomplish and recognize that in general,

00:22:53.000 | if you're trying to make a big change,

00:22:55.000 | you're probably going to want to prioritize systematic giving and systematic

00:23:00.000 | contributions.

00:23:02.000 | But that's not to say that you shouldn't also make space for those ad hoc

00:23:07.000 | gifts because having the funds available when they're needed can be really,

00:23:13.000 | really helpful.

00:23:14.000 | And I think that also the other comment I would make is that sometimes I'm

00:23:19.000 | more comfortable giving larger amounts of money when they're not on an ongoing

00:23:24.000 | basis.

00:23:25.000 | So I might be uncomfortable signing up for a pledge of a certain amount of

00:23:30.000 | giving on an ongoing basis.

00:23:33.000 | But if I know that I'm just going to give on a one-time basis or on a

00:23:37.000 | couple-time basis,

00:23:39.000 | I can be more generous because I know that I haven't made a commitment to a

00:23:43.000 | person or an organization over time.

00:23:45.000 | Dr. Yeah, that all makes sense.

00:23:51.000 | And those are good points.

00:23:53.000 | Thank you.

00:23:54.000 | Is there time for a second question?

00:23:58.000 | Yes, go ahead.

00:23:59.000 | Okay.

00:24:01.000 | So how can I invest virtuously,

00:24:06.000 | especially within like a Roth IRA or 401k?

00:24:10.000 | And is blindly investing and index funds,

00:24:15.000 | like does that hold some sort of negative moral weight given, you know,

00:24:20.000 | the big giant corporations that the monies are invested in?

00:24:24.000 | I mean,

00:24:26.000 | from my own kind of understanding of how the stock market works,

00:24:29.000 | when you buy a stock,

00:24:31.000 | you're buying a share of ownership in the company at a given price in hopes

00:24:35.000 | that the value will go up to sell it later.

00:24:37.000 | Like at a later date or to receive a dividend,

00:24:40.000 | but you're not actually contributing money to the company itself.

00:24:43.000 | Right.

00:24:44.000 | So any thoughts on that?

00:24:46.000 | Yeah.

00:24:47.000 | Well, this is not an easy or a simple topic,

00:24:50.000 | but I'll give you a few thoughts that I think are useful when considering it

00:24:55.000 | to begin with,

00:24:56.000 | what would it mean to invest in a virtuous way?

00:25:01.000 | Or I prefer the word righteous to invest in a righteous way.

00:25:05.000 | You would have to have some kind of standard to know if I'm investing my money

00:25:10.000 | and it's getting this outcome,

00:25:12.000 | then it's I'm investing in a righteous way.

00:25:15.000 | My answer as to kind of what it would mean to invest in a righteous way means

00:25:22.000 | that people,

00:25:23.000 | human beings are being bettered by the activity.

00:25:29.000 | They're the,

00:25:30.000 | the,

00:25:31.000 | the opportunities,

00:25:32.000 | the human beings are improving.

00:25:35.000 | The lives of the human beings are improving.

00:25:38.000 | The,

00:25:39.000 | my basic background for that of course comes from Christian doctrine.

00:25:44.000 | And if I reflect and I try to boil down to its most basic form,

00:25:50.000 | the,

00:25:51.000 | the distinctives of Christian religious teaching,

00:25:55.000 | I think that at its core,

00:25:58.000 | there needs to be a prioritization of the well-being of people.

00:26:04.000 | So I always go back to the teaching of Jesus.

00:26:08.000 | Jesus said,

00:26:09.000 | "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy

00:26:13.000 | and where thieves break in and steal.

00:26:15.000 | But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not

00:26:18.000 | destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.

00:26:21.000 | For where your treasure is there your heart will be also."

00:26:24.000 | So when I have thought about that over the years,

00:26:28.000 | what eventually brought me a place of peace and clarity was when I asked

00:26:33.000 | myself,

00:26:34.000 | how,

00:26:35.000 | how would it be possible to lay up treasures in heaven?

00:26:39.000 | How would you actually do that?

00:26:41.000 | And I think that there are a number of answers to it,

00:26:44.000 | but my answer comes down to what is in heaven.

00:26:48.000 | And if you think about what is in heaven,

00:26:50.000 | what is in heaven is of course the person of God, the angels,

00:26:54.000 | but most importantly,

00:26:56.000 | the souls of men.

00:26:57.000 | That is what is in heaven.

00:26:59.000 | And so if I say,

00:27:01.000 | how do I lay up treasures in heaven?

00:27:03.000 | Then it's going to have something to do with the souls of men.

00:27:07.000 | Now frequently,

00:27:08.000 | Christians think about that in a very pious,

00:27:11.000 | direct religious context,

00:27:14.000 | meaning that the goal is to get more souls into heaven.

00:27:18.000 | And I believe that's true and accurate.

00:27:20.000 | That's something that we should consider.

00:27:22.000 | But I think it makes sense to me to expand it more broadly and to say that I

00:27:26.000 | lay up treasures in heaven when I invest into the soul of a man.

00:27:31.000 | So let's go and think about Jesus with the teaching of the Good Samaritan.

00:27:36.000 | Here's this guy who is beaten and robbed,

00:27:40.000 | left to die on the side of the road.

00:27:42.000 | All these people come by,

00:27:44.000 | religious leaders go by,

00:27:45.000 | they ignore him.

00:27:46.000 | But then here comes the Samaritan.

00:27:48.000 | And remember,

00:27:49.000 | this was a very shocking sermon that Jesus was teaching because the Jews hated

00:27:53.000 | Samaritans.

00:27:54.000 | And so here comes the Samaritan.

00:27:56.000 | The Samaritan sees a man who is in need and the Samaritan goes over and he

00:28:01.000 | loads the man onto his donkey,

00:28:03.000 | takes him to an inn and tells the innkeeper,

00:28:06.000 | I have to continue my journey,

00:28:07.000 | but I will pay for whatever the needs are for you to care for this man.

00:28:11.000 | So did the Samaritan invest and lay up treasures in heaven in that example?

00:28:18.000 | Clearly yes.

00:28:19.000 | That's why Jesus told the parable.

00:28:22.000 | So we could see that something like helping a man who's bleeding and bruised

00:28:26.000 | on the side of the road would be a decent way to lay up a treasure in heaven by

00:28:31.000 | investing into the well-being,

00:28:33.000 | the betterment of this particular human soul.

00:28:36.000 | I think you could expand it out beyond that though.

00:28:39.000 | And so anything that winds up improving the lot of people is something that I

00:28:46.000 | want to consider investing into.

00:28:48.000 | That will in and of itself bring a dividing line.

00:28:53.000 | Now I haven't gone yet to the question of profit because some people would say,

00:28:58.000 | well, profit is not, you know,

00:29:00.000 | we shouldn't do that.

00:29:02.000 | That means that charity is the way that you fulfill what Jesus said to lay up

00:29:06.000 | treasures in heaven.

00:29:07.000 | You do it with giving money away,

00:29:09.000 | but you don't do it with investing by a profit.

00:29:12.000 | When I look at the world,

00:29:14.000 | I don't see that to be the case.

00:29:16.000 | I think that the profit-seeking,

00:29:20.000 | a profit-seeking enterprise in many ways is a superior,

00:29:25.000 | a morally superior creature,

00:29:29.000 | a morally superior system than a not-for-profit enterprise is.

00:29:36.000 | That's not to say that all things should be for profit.

00:29:40.000 | I think there clearly are some things that are not for profit.

00:29:43.000 | And profit is not per se good.

00:29:46.000 | It's not by definition always good.

00:29:49.000 | There are many things that we don't do for profit.

00:29:53.000 | There are so many things that we don't put out for a bid.

00:29:56.000 | But if you look at the world,

00:29:58.000 | many of the problems that we face in the world are solved much more effectively

00:30:02.000 | with a profit-seeking institution than they are with a charitable institution.

00:30:09.000 | And in fact, the charitable institutions are obvious,

00:30:11.000 | are often harmful.

00:30:13.000 | For a number of years,

00:30:15.000 | I've had planned to do this show,

00:30:16.000 | which I haven't gotten around to,

00:30:18.000 | basically saying like,

00:30:20.000 | don't feel good about yourself by giving to a non-profit or creating a non-for-profit,

00:30:24.000 | not-for-profit entity.

00:30:26.000 | Not-for-profit entities are often leeches on society.

00:30:31.000 | They are not productive, useful enterprises.

00:30:34.000 | They don't have any ability to sustain themselves,

00:30:38.000 | and thus they can't grow.

00:30:39.000 | And they have to just have this constant flow of funds and donations in order to function.

00:30:44.000 | Whereas many times a for-profit company can solve the same problem

00:30:48.000 | that a not-for-profit company could.

00:30:50.000 | And instead of it being a leech on society,

00:30:52.000 | something that has to be funded on an ongoing basis,

00:30:55.000 | it can fund itself.

00:30:57.000 | And so you want to see productivity.

00:30:59.000 | And in the kingdom of God, productivity is a fundamentally important part.

00:31:02.000 | Think of the parable of the steward,

00:31:04.000 | meaning the parable of the talents.

00:31:08.000 | You want to see a system produce.

00:31:10.000 | If you look at nature itself,

00:31:13.000 | nature is wildly productive.

00:31:15.000 | And lack of productivity is something not to be appreciated,

00:31:20.000 | it's something to be cared for.

00:31:23.000 | Jesus cursed the fig tree when it wouldn't produce fruit.

00:31:26.000 | So if you look at a problem,

00:31:29.000 | let's say you see that there are a lot of people who are being beaten on this certain road,

00:31:34.000 | and you see an opportunity to say,

00:31:36.000 | "What if I come in here and I start a security company,

00:31:38.000 | and let's secure this road and have people pay to protect us?"

00:31:44.000 | I would see that as a basic extension of the principle of care for neighbor,

00:31:50.000 | of love for neighbor,

00:31:51.000 | and of investing into souls.

00:31:54.000 | So I look at the business world,

00:31:56.000 | and I see how systematically so many of the basic needs of mankind

00:32:03.000 | have been met in the very best ways by investing into them.

00:32:08.000 | And so I believe that you can invest into a for-profit company

00:32:12.000 | and feel very good about that

00:32:14.000 | as long as the products or the services that that company is providing

00:32:19.000 | are not harming people.

00:32:21.000 | So now you get into a classic question.

00:32:23.000 | Well, how would you know if a product or a service is harming people?

00:32:28.000 | There's often been the classic question about companies that create drugs

00:32:33.000 | or companies that create alcohol.

00:32:35.000 | Is alcohol harming people?

00:32:37.000 | Many people don't want to invest into a company that's harming people.

00:32:40.000 | I have a major issue with investing into companies that make their profits off of war.

00:32:46.000 | There's a fundamentally evil system of incentives for me to go

00:32:52.000 | and for me to invest into Northrop Grumman or Raytheon

00:32:56.000 | or one of these companies that makes its profit

00:32:59.000 | based upon this giant war machine on a global basis

00:33:03.000 | that kills millions and millions and millions of people.

00:33:06.000 | So I have a great deal of difficulty with that.

00:33:08.000 | On the other hand, somebody might look at it and see it from the other perspective

00:33:11.000 | and say, "Well, these are the machines of war that are in the hands of the good people,

00:33:16.000 | and they're the things that are holding things back."

00:33:18.000 | So some might be more obvious, some might be less obvious,

00:33:22.000 | but then you go into a world and you say, "Well, what about something like, say, Facebook?"

00:33:28.000 | Is Facebook a net good on society or is Facebook a net harm on society?

00:33:34.000 | And it becomes much more difficult for you to say as an investor, "For sure."

00:33:38.000 | I could argue either side.

00:33:40.000 | I could argue that Facebook has been one of the greatest positive influences in society

00:33:46.000 | and in the world.

00:33:48.000 | On the other hand, I could argue that it's been one of the greatest negative influences

00:33:51.000 | on society and on the world.

00:33:53.000 | And the truth is we're usually not competent to judge in the here and now

00:33:58.000 | what the actual impact of these companies is going to be.

00:34:02.000 | So now back to your question, right?

00:34:04.000 | How would you invest the money in your 401(k) in a way that gives you a sense of certainty

00:34:12.000 | about that you're investing it righteously?

00:34:15.000 | Well, it's hard.

00:34:17.000 | It's almost impossible to do because generally speaking, you're not going to actually know

00:34:21.000 | the companies that are being invested into.

00:34:24.000 | And in the modern world, unless you are choosing individual companies

00:34:29.000 | and you're choosing companies that you believe are a net good on society,

00:34:34.000 | in the modern world, you're going to be stuck to a system of mutual funds.

00:34:38.000 | And those mutual funds are either going to be selected by an active manager

00:34:42.000 | or they're simply going to reflect what is done in the marketplace,

00:34:48.000 | meaning that they're the companies that are listed in the S&P 500

00:34:51.000 | or listed on the stock market.

00:34:52.000 | So thus, they're in a total stock market fund.

00:34:54.000 | And that can be difficult.

00:34:57.000 | And I don't say that any man is wrong for doing it, but a number of years ago,

00:35:02.000 | I looked at it and I just thought like there's just too much here

00:35:05.000 | that I'm uncomfortable with.

00:35:06.000 | I don't want to invest in this kind of broad scale way.

00:35:10.000 | It doesn't make me feel good to do that.

00:35:13.000 | So you would have to judge your own conscience, let your own conscience be your guide

00:35:17.000 | and make your choices systematically.

00:35:21.000 | What I would say is in general, you're going to wind up in a few different situations

00:35:28.000 | if this is a big deal to you.

00:35:30.000 | Number one, you will either have to say, "I'm just going to not worry about it with this money."

00:35:36.000 | That's what many people do.

00:35:37.000 | "I have my retirement money and I'm not going to worry about it with my retirement money."

00:35:41.000 | And many people just invest broadly because their conscience doesn't hurt them.

00:35:45.000 | Or you're going to have to say, "I'm going to choose some individual companies."

00:35:49.000 | Because it's not possible for you to stay researched and in tune on thousands of companies.

00:35:59.000 | But you could stay tuned in on a handful of companies,

00:36:02.000 | companies that you believe are doing good in the world,

00:36:05.000 | that are solving problems in the world, etc.

00:36:07.000 | I would submit to you that a company like Walmart is a wonderful company

00:36:12.000 | that has systematically solved so many problems on a global basis

00:36:16.000 | and helps people to live better because it exists.

00:36:19.000 | So I would have no problem owning Walmart stock.

00:36:22.000 | You can go through and you can say the other companies that you think are a good example.

00:36:29.000 | But at the end of the day, I always find it interesting that I think more people boycott

00:36:34.000 | their purchase decisions way more companies than they boycott with their investment decisions.

00:36:38.000 | And I don't understand why they don't take that thinking

00:36:42.000 | and just simply choose carefully the companies that they invest in.

00:36:46.000 | I think at the end of the day you'll find it very hard to invest in publicly traded companies

00:36:50.000 | that are large and not have some kind of moral component to them.

00:36:55.000 | We live in a world where the lines are not clear.

00:36:58.000 | The good actors and the bad actors are not clear.

00:37:01.000 | I can look at Walmart and I can say, "Oh, I appreciate all the things that Walmart has done

00:37:05.000 | for the good of the world." And another person will come along and say,

00:37:08.000 | "Walmart is the biggest worst blight on mankind ever."

00:37:11.000 | That's a good argument to make, but people will look at it from different perspectives.

00:37:15.000 | And if you look at many of the largest companies,

00:37:19.000 | my biggest issue with a lot of the largest companies is that they use government power

00:37:24.000 | and crony capitalism to further their ends.

00:37:26.000 | And I consider crony capitalism to be one of the greatest evils of our day.

00:37:30.000 | And at its core, something that is damaging to public trust

00:37:35.000 | and to upright and righteous living.

00:37:38.000 | They're all involved in that, though, so what do you do?

00:37:42.000 | I think that the other answer is you don't have to invest in publicly traded companies.

00:37:47.000 | You kind of do if you're going to deal with your Roth IRA,

00:37:50.000 | unless you're going to go ahead and do a self-directed Roth IRA.

00:37:54.000 | And of course many people do that.

00:37:56.000 | But if you really want to invest for good, you might look at another scale,

00:38:00.000 | at a more human scale.

00:38:02.000 | So you can look in your local community and say,

00:38:04.000 | "Here's a business that would really help my local community.

00:38:07.000 | My local community lacks such and such a business.

00:38:10.000 | A gathering place for people or an after-school tutoring program, etc."

00:38:14.000 | And just invest your money there.

00:38:16.000 | Because then the ethical concerns are closer at hand

00:38:22.000 | and you can have a better confidence in what's actually happening

00:38:26.000 | or what's not happening.

00:38:28.000 | But it's a very difficult set of things to argue through and to think through.

00:38:33.000 | And at the end of the day, I think you're probably going to wind up

00:38:36.000 | where most of us wind up, which is a muddy mixture.

00:38:39.000 | We would love to be pure.

00:38:42.000 | We would love to be ideologically pure.

00:38:44.000 | But I don't think that that is really possible in this current environment.

00:38:51.000 | - Right. Yeah, I agree.

00:38:53.000 | And again, great points.

00:38:55.000 | Lots to think about.

00:38:58.000 | Yeah, I guess that's kind of like why I mentioned,

00:39:01.000 | as far as my understanding of how the stock market works,

00:39:04.000 | even though you might be investing your money with a company,

00:39:11.000 | again, from my understanding,

00:39:13.000 | it's not like the company is directly profiting from that investment.

00:39:18.000 | It's just you deciding to buy a share of the company,

00:39:22.000 | again, in hopes that the value will go up

00:39:25.000 | or you receive a dividend from them.

00:39:28.000 | - Yeah, I didn't address that directly.

00:39:30.000 | Let me address it quickly.

00:39:32.000 | You are technically correct that when there is a company

00:39:37.000 | whose stock is being traded on a public exchange,

00:39:41.000 | when you invest into that company,

00:39:43.000 | the company is not directly receiving your money.

00:39:48.000 | Rather, the seller of the stock is receiving your money.

00:39:52.000 | You go and you purchase $20 worth of shares.

00:39:56.000 | It's the seller of the stock, another individual owner,

00:40:00.000 | who is receiving the money, not the company directly.

00:40:03.000 | But I don't think that that solves your moral problem

00:40:06.000 | because at its core,

00:40:08.000 | the market for the stock is being made up

00:40:11.000 | of the people buying that company's stock.

00:40:14.000 | And the company that has a strong stock price,

00:40:18.000 | that's a major component of the success of the company.

00:40:22.000 | The chairman, the board of directors,

00:40:26.000 | all of the key executives,

00:40:28.000 | they all want and need the company to have a strong stock price

00:40:32.000 | in order for their personal compensation to flourish

00:40:35.000 | and in order for the company to flourish.

00:40:37.000 | And so the fact that you went out on the independent market

00:40:40.000 | and you paid what was asked in order to settle a stock trade

00:40:44.000 | is a vote of confidence in that company.

00:40:47.000 | And if the demand for a company's share prices went down,

00:40:52.000 | that company would undergo significant changes

00:40:56.000 | in its plans, in its approach, in its system, etc.,

00:41:00.000 | until its share price were to recover.

00:41:03.000 | So it is still, even though the money is not directly there,

00:41:06.000 | as I see it, it is still a vote for that company

00:41:09.000 | when you purchase that company's stock.

00:41:11.000 | This is what's so interesting about the modern world, though,

00:41:14.000 | is that very few people ever go out

00:41:16.000 | and make a direct investment into a company.

00:41:19.000 | We're living in a world where it's not you and me as individuals

00:41:23.000 | who are going to make the difference.

00:41:25.000 | It's much more a world where it's a small number of investors,

00:41:32.000 | they might be activist investors, institutional investors,

00:41:34.000 | they can put pressure on a company,

00:41:36.000 | and the company is much more focused on not making--

00:41:40.000 | with the general public, they're more focused on

00:41:42.000 | not having a bad reputation develop

00:41:44.000 | versus being focused on making a splash

00:41:48.000 | and attracting individual investors.

00:41:50.000 | The only comment I would close with is simply this.

00:41:54.000 | It's very difficult to be ideologically pure,

00:41:57.000 | and I think that it's probably something that's best avoided.

00:42:02.000 | You don't want to hurt your conscience

00:42:05.000 | by being involved in things that you think are wrong,

00:42:08.000 | and so that's something that's best avoided.

00:42:10.000 | But we're living in a world that is so complex

00:42:13.000 | with so many points of compromise

00:42:18.000 | that it's very, very difficult, and I would say

00:42:21.000 | almost impossible to be ideologically pure.

00:42:24.000 | So I would say at its core,

00:42:27.000 | I don't want to be a weasel and back out

00:42:29.000 | of personal responsibility with your money.

00:42:31.000 | That's not my goal.

00:42:33.000 | But at its core, I think you're better put

00:42:36.000 | in a situation where you say,

00:42:38.000 | "Where can I actually make a difference?"

00:42:41.000 | And I don't think that your Roth IRA with $15,000 in it

00:42:46.000 | is going to make a big difference

00:42:48.000 | with regard to what you choose to invest it into

00:42:51.000 | or choose not to invest it into.

00:42:53.000 | Now, if you've got a portfolio of $30 million

00:42:56.000 | that you're managing, and you're going to go out

00:42:58.000 | and purchase individual companies,

00:43:00.000 | now I think you need to be more careful of that.

00:43:02.000 | But there are a lot of people who can--

00:43:05.000 | I'm sitting here, we're doing this call over an iPhone.

00:43:08.000 | An iPhone is made with slave labor in China.

00:43:11.000 | So how am I best served?

00:43:14.000 | Am I best served by saying that I'm going to avoid

00:43:18.000 | buying this iPhone, which is made with slave labor in China

00:43:21.000 | and manufactured there,

00:43:24.000 | and not only is the company run by a bunch of people

00:43:28.000 | that do things that I don't agree with,

00:43:30.000 | but the actual products themselves are from a country

00:43:34.000 | that is committing genocide against religious minorities?

00:43:39.000 | All that is absolutely true.

00:43:41.000 | But what's going to best serve me?

00:43:44.000 | I don't want to weasel out and not confront the reality

00:43:48.000 | of this device sitting here in my hand.

00:43:51.000 | I want to be very clear about it,

00:43:53.000 | and I want to be effective.

00:43:55.000 | And so we're all going to make compromises.

00:43:58.000 | I choose to make a compromise and say that I'm going to use this device,

00:44:02.000 | and I'm going to try to be effective

00:44:05.000 | and encourage people to think about righteousness in their living

00:44:08.000 | and righteousness in their investing,

00:44:10.000 | but I'm aware of the fact that it is a compromise.

00:44:13.000 | So you're going to have to let your conscience guide you.

00:44:15.000 | I've just seen people on either extreme,

00:44:19.000 | some people who just never pay attention to it,

00:44:21.000 | and say, "I'm going to go and make as much money as I can

00:44:23.000 | from things that are harming people,"

00:44:25.000 | which I think is wrong, absolutely wrong.

00:44:28.000 | But on the other hand, being a purist,

00:44:31.000 | I think can dramatically limit your effectiveness.

00:44:34.000 | So you'll have to find where that line,

00:44:36.000 | the appropriate line is for you.

00:44:38.000 | We go to 217 Aerial Code.

00:44:40.000 | Welcome to the show.

00:44:41.000 | How can I serve you today?

00:44:44.000 | Hi Joshua, excited to be speaking with you today.

00:44:48.000 | I had listened to your show recently.

00:44:50.000 | It was back in December,

00:44:51.000 | and it really just resonated with me where you had talked about,

00:44:55.000 | you know, just creating memories with your children

00:44:58.000 | and that they won't need your money when you're 90

00:45:02.000 | and just really being conscious of spending your money

00:45:05.000 | when it most counts for your children,

00:45:08.000 | and I really appreciated that show.

00:45:10.000 | But I also wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit,

00:45:13.000 | given our current situation,

00:45:15.000 | which is we have a little one that may need that money

00:45:19.000 | when we're older,

00:45:20.000 | and we need some additional support as an adult.

00:45:24.000 | So do you think that you would be doing things differently

00:45:27.000 | if you were in that situation,

00:45:29.000 | and if so, what do you think you would be doing differently?

00:45:33.000 | Absolutely.

00:45:34.000 | I think that if you are--

00:45:38.000 | so whenever someone like me is talking about a subject,

00:45:43.000 | you need to always try to understand the perspective

00:45:48.000 | that I'm talking from,

00:45:50.000 | and then ask yourself,

00:45:51.000 | "Does this apply to my situation or not?"

00:45:54.000 | So with my comments, for example,

00:45:56.000 | about don't wait until you're old to give your children money

00:46:00.000 | because they're probably old too,

00:46:01.000 | I'm talking about a stereotyped situation

00:46:06.000 | in which mom and dad pile up all this money,

00:46:08.000 | all this money, all this money.

00:46:10.000 | They don't give it to their children.

00:46:12.000 | They don't do anything with it,

00:46:14.000 | and then they die with millions of dollars in the bank,

00:46:17.000 | and the children get it,

00:46:18.000 | and great, mom and dad gave us this money, big deal.

00:46:21.000 | And my comments are based upon saying,

00:46:23.000 | "Hey, this is more effective if you invest it in a different way."

00:46:28.000 | You can invest it into your children, in their education.

00:46:31.000 | You invest it into memories.

00:46:33.000 | You give it to them at a young age

00:46:35.000 | and give them a house when they're 30

00:46:36.000 | rather than when they're 70 and they don't need it.

00:46:38.000 | But that doesn't apply to someone like you

00:46:44.000 | if you have a child who has special needs.

00:46:46.000 | If you have a child who is going to be limited

00:46:48.000 | in his or her capacity,

00:46:50.000 | then that changes things very, very dramatically.

00:46:53.000 | And now you're in a situation

00:46:55.000 | where you're looking at a child and saying,

00:46:58.000 | "This child is going to need more substantial help,

00:47:01.000 | and so how do I make sure that that help is there?"

00:47:04.000 | Now, some things are certainly true,

00:47:06.000 | meaning that I sometimes wonder.

00:47:10.000 | I would not want to judge somebody.

00:47:12.000 | I would just simply wonder.

00:47:14.000 | I sometimes wonder if in our hyper-financialized world

00:47:18.000 | we make the same mistake with people who have special needs

00:47:22.000 | as we do with people who don't have special needs,

00:47:24.000 | meaning that we try to solve certain things with money

00:47:27.000 | that are better served in other ways.

00:47:30.000 | And so we try to say,

00:47:32.000 | "I'm going to--we first think about setting up a special needs trust

00:47:36.000 | before we think about spending all the money now

00:47:39.000 | in hopes of finding a solution to the specific problem."

00:47:43.000 | I wonder about that,

00:47:44.000 | but I think that that's probably not my place to say.

00:47:48.000 | But I would always ask,

00:47:49.000 | "Is there a way that you could spend the money?"

00:47:51.000 | because a special needs trust is a not very good solution

00:47:54.000 | if that same thing--if that same money could be invested

00:47:57.000 | in a way that would minimize the particular impact of the need.

00:48:01.000 | I also think that sometimes money and financial--

00:48:06.000 | that things are financialized when they shouldn't be.

00:48:09.000 | And so you might say, "Hey, instead of going through

00:48:13.000 | a long, complicated legal planning and financial instruments

00:48:19.000 | in a special needs trust,

00:48:20.000 | let's see if we can build a family culture

00:48:23.000 | where we can look out for this particular family member

00:48:26.000 | who's going to need extra help, extra needs, etc."

00:48:29.000 | And so the human element is, I think,

00:48:31.000 | an element that is often under-discussed in financial circles

00:48:35.000 | because we are very accustomed to professionalizing everything.

00:48:39.000 | However, that said, I think you still have a duty

00:48:43.000 | and an obligation to do the very best that you can

00:48:46.000 | towards your child.

00:48:47.000 | And if your child needs help, that means

00:48:49.000 | I need to support my child now when my child is young,

00:48:53.000 | and I need to make the appropriate financial planning moves

00:48:56.000 | so that there is support there even into perpetuity,

00:48:59.000 | even to make sure that after I'm dead and gone,

00:49:01.000 | my child is still taken care of.

00:49:03.000 | So it absolutely does not apply with those caveats.

00:49:07.000 | I'm not talking to someone in your situation,

00:49:09.000 | and I think that if you have a child who seems like

00:49:12.000 | that child is going to need extra support, extra care,

00:49:15.000 | extra financial support because of limited capacity in some way,

00:49:19.000 | then yes, you owe it to your children to make sure

00:49:23.000 | that you engage in that long-term planning.

00:49:30.000 | Great. Thank you.

00:49:31.000 | I don't know if that didn't sound offensive in any way.

00:49:34.000 | I just really appreciate your outlook on things,

00:49:37.000 | and it helps me just kind of see that it is okay

00:49:40.000 | to spend some of that money now.

00:49:42.000 | It's okay to create those memories now,

00:49:44.000 | but I just always have that thought in the back of my head

00:49:47.000 | that I just need to continue saving and continue saving.

00:49:50.000 | So it's good to know that you can do both.

00:49:53.000 | Right. Yeah, and finding that line,

00:49:56.000 | kind of like the previous call,

00:49:58.000 | finding the line where you can sleep well at night

00:50:00.000 | is probably a very individualized thing.

00:50:03.000 | You don't want to--as a parent, right,

00:50:07.000 | you're always balancing competing ideas.

00:50:10.000 | If you have more than one child,

00:50:13.000 | any moment spent with one child is a moment not spent

00:50:15.000 | with the other child.

00:50:17.000 | And so trying to find that balance is difficult.

00:50:20.000 | I'm really conscious of the fact that it's much easier for us

00:50:24.000 | to spend all of our time and attention on our children

00:50:29.000 | who misbehave as compared to spending our time

00:50:32.000 | and attention on our children who are better behaved.

00:50:38.000 | It's so easy to ignore the child who is polite and kind

00:50:42.000 | and obedient and spend more time with your problem child

00:50:46.000 | instead of rewarding the good behavior in some way.

00:50:49.000 | And so kind of the same challenge comes to money.

00:50:52.000 | How much should go into a long-term investment account

00:50:56.000 | versus how much should go into creating family memories now?

00:51:00.000 | And I don't have the answer to those things

00:51:02.000 | other than to say that you will--

00:51:06.000 | just the fact that you are consciously asking the question,

00:51:10.000 | thinking about the challenge, et cetera,

00:51:12.000 | means that you'll find the appropriate way through it

00:51:15.000 | for your family.

00:51:18.000 | - All right, thank you so much. - My pleasure.

00:51:20.000 | We go on to Catherine.

00:51:22.000 | Catherine, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

00:51:24.000 | [silence]

00:51:28.000 | Catherine, you're up.

00:51:30.000 | [silence]

00:51:33.000 | All right, we'll come back to you, Catherine,

00:51:35.000 | - and we'll go on to Joseph. - Hello.

00:51:37.000 | Joseph, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

00:51:40.000 | Hey, this is Joseph. Can you hear me?

00:51:42.000 | Sounds good. Go ahead, sir.

00:51:44.000 | [silence]

00:51:46.000 | Yeah, so my wife, Catherine,

00:51:50.000 | spoke with you a couple weeks ago

00:51:52.000 | about our family dynamics

00:51:55.000 | with e-readers and language,

00:51:58.000 | and then you did the--

00:52:00.000 | you followed up this week, I guess,

00:52:03.000 | on the whole language acquisition topic.

00:52:08.000 | And so my question is--

00:52:10.000 | I'm kind of the tech in the house,

00:52:12.000 | and I wanted to better understand

00:52:16.000 | your workflow from a digital perspective.

00:52:21.000 | You know, downloading this, downloading that,

00:52:24.000 | ripping it here, bringing it into there,

00:52:28.000 | you know, just kind of the nuts and bolts of that

00:52:31.000 | so that I can start a year kind of challenge

00:52:35.000 | with our kids and e-reader and input methods.

00:52:40.000 | Okay. Well, I guess we will get a little bit technical here,

00:52:45.000 | - but to begin with-- - Yeah, that's the problem.

00:52:48.000 | I was like, "Is there any way I can email you

00:52:50.000 | - and we can-- - It's okay. It's okay.

00:52:52.000 | We'll talk it through.

00:52:55.000 | So to begin with,

00:52:58.000 | you're a homeschooling family,

00:53:01.000 | you're a literature-based family,

00:53:03.000 | and I would assume-- and I understand and remember

00:53:05.000 | from the previous call that at the moment,

00:53:07.000 | most of your children's reading is done on the page,

00:53:10.000 | on the written page. Is that right?

00:53:13.000 | - Yes, all of it. - Okay.

00:53:15.000 | So I don't think that there's any downside to that,

00:53:18.000 | and I don't think that it's technically necessary

00:53:20.000 | for you to use an e-reader of some kind

00:53:23.000 | in order to have good results.

00:53:25.000 | We were pretty hardcore about no devices,

00:53:31.000 | and again, I'm not saying that's the best thing.

00:53:33.000 | We just had chosen to be hardcore for a variety of reasons.

00:53:37.000 | But when we were going to travel full-time,

00:53:39.000 | obviously the challenge of traveling full-time

00:53:41.000 | is how many suitcases are you going to dedicate to books?

00:53:44.000 | We wound up dedicating a suitcase to books,

00:53:46.000 | but we weren't willing to do more than that,

00:53:48.000 | and so we decided that it was time to go ahead

00:53:51.000 | and start to use a digital reader.

00:53:54.000 | And I think that when we look at modern reading technology

00:53:59.000 | straightforwardly, there are actually many benefits

00:54:03.000 | to a high-quality e-reader,

00:54:06.000 | things that it provides that the written traditional page

00:54:10.000 | does not.

00:54:12.000 | So what we chose, first of all, is that we didn't want to have--

00:54:15.000 | we wanted a reading device, not a tablet.

00:54:18.000 | We didn't want games.

00:54:20.000 | We didn't want colors.

00:54:21.000 | We didn't want anything.

00:54:22.000 | We didn't want web browsing.

00:54:24.000 | We just wanted a reading device.

00:54:26.000 | And so thankfully, there's a really wonderful reading device

00:54:28.000 | called the Amazon Kindle, the original Kindle,

00:54:30.000 | Kindle Paperwhite, et cetera.

00:54:31.000 | And these things are awesome.

00:54:33.000 | They're fantastic in terms of how effective they are.

00:54:36.000 | I think that that's the natural obvious choice

00:54:39.000 | is simply to use an Amazon Kindle.

00:54:42.000 | And if you use an Amazon Kindle,

00:54:45.000 | you will stay in the Amazon ecosphere.

00:54:49.000 | The benefit of that is you have the best selection

00:54:54.000 | of any ecosphere out there of books.

00:54:58.000 | And so all of the books are available to you.

00:55:02.000 | And that's really, really powerful

00:55:04.000 | because depending on what you're trying to get to,

00:55:08.000 | the books that you'll put on there will vary.

00:55:11.000 | So what we have used it for is at this point in time,

00:55:15.000 | virtually all public domain books are available

00:55:19.000 | as a Kindle e-book.

00:55:21.000 | So you can use public domain books

00:55:23.000 | in a really wonderful way.

00:55:25.000 | I also really love that there's tons and tons of bundles

00:55:29.000 | and collections that are available on Amazon ready to go.

00:55:33.000 | So for example, I mentioned in the conversation

00:55:36.000 | with your wife, I mentioned that I've got

00:55:39.000 | the original Tom Swift series, right?

00:55:41.000 | The classic books written in the early 1900s.

00:55:43.000 | And I paid 99 cents and somebody gave the whole collection.

00:55:48.000 | And it's awesome because you can pay 99 cents,

00:55:50.000 | you get the whole collection,

00:55:51.000 | and it's right there on the book.

00:55:53.000 | And all of the old public domain books

00:55:55.000 | have been basically put into collections

00:55:57.000 | and you can find them and put them on your device.

00:56:00.000 | And that's really, really powerful.

00:56:02.000 | But-- - Can I--

00:56:03.000 | - Go ahead.

00:56:05.000 | - You mind if I jump in and take it kind of back

00:56:08.000 | to the technical piece of it?

00:56:10.000 | So I love the idea of having access to the dictionary,

00:56:17.000 | you know, or to define the words for vocabulary purposes.

00:56:23.000 | Now, what--so I like that about the Kindle.

00:56:28.000 | What I'm hoping to be able to do is find a solution

00:56:31.000 | that I can still have that type of screen

00:56:34.000 | without all the mess, you know,

00:56:36.000 | so I don't have to buy an iPad for this purpose,

00:56:39.000 | but be able to use some of the platforms like Hoopla,

00:56:43.000 | for instance, is one of the free provided pieces of software

00:56:51.000 | that the library has access to.

00:56:54.000 | And we have, you know, tons of titles there.

00:56:58.000 | And I was--I'm hoping to find a way

00:57:01.000 | to take these different formats

00:57:05.000 | that are formatted for specific places

00:57:09.000 | and either convert those or break them down

00:57:14.000 | into a way that I can bring them into another e-reader

00:57:19.000 | if that's possible, you know, like--

00:57:22.000 | so this app, Hoopla, if I was to grab that book

00:57:26.000 | and then export it into a form

00:57:29.000 | that I could bring it into a Kindle,

00:57:32.000 | that would be cool, but I don't know

00:57:34.000 | if that's open source enough to do something like that.

00:57:36.000 | - It's not. It won't.

00:57:38.000 | So if that's important to you,

00:57:40.000 | then the Amazon ecosystem is not gonna be your best bet.

00:57:42.000 | Amazon formerly was a little bit more friendly.

00:57:46.000 | I have for years purchased Amazon books, Kindle books.

00:57:50.000 | I for years was able to get

00:57:52.000 | all the digital rights management software stripped off,

00:57:55.000 | and I--all the books that I bought,

00:57:57.000 | I emptied my entire Amazon Kindle account out,

00:58:00.000 | and I keep them all on my computer

00:58:02.000 | as independent files outside of the Amazon ecosystem.

00:58:06.000 | You can use a Kindle device to put books onto if you own them,

00:58:10.000 | but what you can't do at this point in time

00:58:12.000 | is you cannot get the--

00:58:15.000 | at least any way that I have found

00:58:17.000 | when I've researched it in the past year,

00:58:19.000 | starting about a year ago,

00:58:21.000 | I could not get Amazon books and get the DRM off

00:58:25.000 | so that I could store them on my actual device.

00:58:27.000 | So if that's important to you,

00:58:29.000 | I would encourage you to go away from Amazon Kindle.

00:58:32.000 | What you-- - So is there an option?

00:58:34.000 | - Yeah. So if that's important to you,

00:58:36.000 | I would say that you should look at one of the other devices.

00:58:40.000 | So all of the e-readers, most--

00:58:42.000 | at least--I don't know about all of them,

00:58:44.000 | but most of them will probably work similarly to the Amazon Kindle,

00:58:47.000 | and they'll all work with Hoopla,

00:58:49.000 | but you won't have--

00:58:51.000 | I don't think you'll have an easy time

00:58:53.000 | getting your Hoopla books out into your personal collection.

00:58:57.000 | That's going to be difficult,

00:58:59.000 | and Hoopla works very hard to keep that from happening.

00:59:02.000 | I-- - But you're saying I would be able to access them

00:59:06.000 | from, like, the Kobo, for instance?

00:59:08.000 | - You can access them from any e-reader, yes.

00:59:10.000 | So all the e-readers are going to have a plug-in

00:59:13.000 | to either OverDrive or Hoopla

00:59:15.000 | where you put in your account,

00:59:17.000 | and you can borrow them directly from those platforms.

00:59:19.000 | It's just simply if you're trying to get them off of the device

00:59:22.000 | and onto your own computer,

00:59:24.000 | you're not going to be able to do that from Hoopla very easily.

00:59:27.000 | So-- - Okay.

00:59:29.000 | So you're saying even the Kindle can access Hoopla?

00:59:32.000 | - Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:59:34.000 | And what I'd say is that your Kindle--

00:59:36.000 | if you're just going to be reading them from the library,

00:59:39.000 | Kindle's going to be your best option

00:59:41.000 | because every library platform--

00:59:43.000 | Hoopla, OverDrive, whatever the next one is--

00:59:46.000 | they're going to be fully integrated with the Amazon Kindle,

00:59:49.000 | and they have a seamless borrowing system.

00:59:51.000 | So I think that the Kindle is--

00:59:53.000 | the Kindle is the standard,

00:59:55.000 | and so it's a really great option for you.

00:59:58.000 | - Okay, so then the other piece is the audiobooks--

01:00:03.000 | I mean, yeah, the audiobooks itself

01:00:05.000 | that you research and you add to the mix

01:00:09.000 | to narrate while you read.

01:00:12.000 | - So once again here, I think the winner is Kindle

01:00:17.000 | because Kindle has the WhisperSync integration.

01:00:21.000 | So if you own the Audible audiobook from audible.com

01:00:25.000 | and you own the Kindle book,

01:00:27.000 | then the integration--

01:00:28.000 | you can make the integration of those two things seamless.

01:00:31.000 | And the Kindle device, the e-reader device,

01:00:35.000 | will read to you from the specific text

01:00:40.000 | with a good narrator, et cetera.

01:00:44.000 | And so the strength is on the actual Kindle brand again.

01:00:49.000 | So we can get more complicated.

01:00:53.000 | Like what I do is I do all of my reading

01:00:56.000 | in a totally different system called LingQ, L-I-N-G-Q.

01:01:01.000 | That is not something that works on the actual Kindle e-reader.

01:01:05.000 | That's an iPad application, iPhone,

01:01:08.000 | or computer-based application.

01:01:10.000 | I don't think it's necessary for children,

01:01:11.000 | and that's why I didn't recommend it.

01:01:13.000 | So I use some different systems.

01:01:14.000 | But if you're talking about for children,

01:01:16.000 | I think the best thing is either have two devices,

01:01:19.000 | have one device that you're going to read the book on

01:01:21.000 | and the other device that you're going to use

01:01:23.000 | for playing the audiobook,

01:01:25.000 | or go ahead and just stick with Amazon Kindle.

01:01:29.000 | I think the strength is really just on sticking

01:01:32.000 | with Amazon Kindle as your platform

01:01:34.000 | because then you can buy the books that are available.

01:01:38.000 | They're not going to--

01:01:39.000 | you can get the version that you want.

01:01:42.000 | You can get them synced up with Audible,

01:01:44.000 | and you can get the same book on Audible.

01:01:46.000 | It's really probably the best solution to go with.

01:01:49.000 | It's annoying because you never own it, right?

01:01:51.000 | You're forever renting it.

01:01:52.000 | You're paying these fees to--

01:01:54.000 | you pay these fees to Amazon and to Audible,

01:01:57.000 | and you have a rental payment for--

01:01:59.000 | a one-time rental payment for something

01:02:01.000 | that you can never actually own.

01:02:03.000 | So that's really, really annoying,

01:02:05.000 | but it's cheaper than--

01:02:07.000 | it's cheaper than a full-time language tutor.

01:02:09.000 | You got to just invest into the actual end result.

01:02:12.000 | - Mm-hmm.

01:02:15.000 | And then how do you manage them from your--

01:02:19.000 | let's take the children aside

01:02:21.000 | because my wife and I,

01:02:22.000 | we need to acquire some better language skills

01:02:25.000 | before we get to--

01:02:27.000 | I mean, before--

01:02:29.000 | in the process, we need to do that.

01:02:31.000 | So looking at LingQ or something along those lines,

01:02:37.000 | do you then just manage all the content

01:02:40.000 | from your home server, or what do you--

01:02:43.000 | how do you--

01:02:45.000 | I guess it would be great to see, like,

01:02:47.000 | a digital workflow, like, a mind map of your--

01:02:51.000 | - Right.

01:02:52.000 | - --of your tech setup--

01:02:54.000 | - It's pretty simple.

01:02:55.000 | - --in a way that--

01:02:56.000 | - Yeah, it's pretty simple.

01:02:57.000 | So I keep them separate, totally separate.

01:03:00.000 | My children's stuff is not integrated

01:03:01.000 | with my stuff in any way.

01:03:03.000 | So I have a device,

01:03:04.000 | and you may have to have a device

01:03:06.000 | that you're going to use,

01:03:07.000 | and this is going to be the children's e-reader

01:03:10.000 | or this child's e-reader.

01:03:13.000 | The Amazon system has a really good system

01:03:15.000 | of parental controls,

01:03:16.000 | and with a Kindle device,

01:03:18.000 | you're just dealing with reading books.

01:03:20.000 | And so they have parents.amazon.com.

01:03:23.000 | You go on there.

01:03:24.000 | You authorize--you set up an account,

01:03:27.000 | a profile for the individual child,

01:03:29.000 | and then you just have a system of toggle switches

01:03:31.000 | that you can add or add content

01:03:34.000 | or take content off of the device very easily

01:03:36.000 | based upon what has been purchased

01:03:38.000 | in the Amazon account.

01:03:40.000 | So you can just add whatever content you want

01:03:42.000 | onto the device very simply.

01:03:44.000 | And then similarly with a separate Audible profile

01:03:49.000 | if you're using audio books there.

01:03:50.000 | And audio books, by the way, same thing.

01:03:52.000 | You can get a lot of those from Hoopla.

01:03:54.000 | Some of those from Hoopla or Overdrive

01:03:55.000 | or your local library system as well.

01:03:59.000 | I think that Link is more than what's necessary

01:04:02.000 | for most children.

01:04:04.000 | I really love the power of Link.

01:04:07.000 | If I were coaching a high school-age student,

01:04:10.000 | I would encourage the use of Link.

01:04:13.000 | But I think that for young children,

01:04:15.000 | it's unnecessarily complicated,

01:04:17.000 | and I haven't seen any benefit of trying to use it.

01:04:20.000 | So for me, then what I do is I use Link.

01:04:24.000 | Now Link has lots of content,

01:04:25.000 | and the whole system of the Link app

01:04:28.000 | is something that you can use any digital content

01:04:31.000 | that you own, you can upload into it.

01:04:34.000 | So you can bring stuff in from webpages,

01:04:36.000 | you can bring stuff in from any file

01:04:38.000 | that you have on your computer,

01:04:39.000 | any book that you have, you can bring it into it.

01:04:42.000 | So what I do is I purchase my e-books

01:04:44.000 | from a site that I can eventually strip the DRM off

01:04:50.000 | and get either an EPUB file or a text file

01:04:52.000 | or whatever it is that I have,

01:04:53.000 | and then I just upload my books into Link

01:04:56.000 | as standalone books.

01:04:57.000 | And depending on what language you're looking for,

01:04:59.000 | you can find lots and lots of books

01:05:01.000 | that are in the public domain,

01:05:03.000 | or you can find lots of books

01:05:04.000 | where you can get the full file

01:05:06.000 | and you can just load those on as well.

01:05:09.000 | So that's a separate system.

01:05:10.000 | Link works really beautifully on an iPad.

01:05:13.000 | That's where I usually use it,

01:05:14.000 | but I wouldn't go and buy an iPad just for it.

01:05:17.000 | They also have a really great web browser system as well,

01:05:19.000 | so you can use that for your own reading.

01:05:22.000 | Okay, and that was,

01:05:24.000 | so where do you find that content from

01:05:28.000 | that you're able to--

01:05:30.000 | I'm not willing to--

01:05:31.000 | What language are you going to be studying?

01:05:34.000 | We're starting with Spanish.

01:05:36.000 | All right.

01:05:37.000 | So with Spanish, I would say

01:05:39.000 | one of your best websites would be

01:05:41.000 | lelibros.online,

01:05:44.000 | L-E-L-I-B-R-O-S dot online.

01:05:48.000 | That's a website I always point Spanish speakers to.

01:05:51.000 | I don't understand how they have their rights,

01:05:53.000 | but they have hundreds of books

01:05:55.000 | that are available totally for free.

01:05:57.000 | With no DRM in Spanish,

01:05:59.000 | available on that website.

01:06:01.000 | And you can find something there

01:06:03.000 | that will interest you.

01:06:04.000 | For you personally as an adult,

01:06:06.000 | they have lots of novels.

01:06:07.000 | They have lots of stuff there.

01:06:09.000 | And then beyond that,

01:06:12.000 | it's kind of a constant hobby

01:06:14.000 | is that as a language learner,

01:06:16.000 | your number one problem

01:06:18.000 | is finding content that is accessible to you

01:06:22.000 | and that you're interested in.

01:06:23.000 | That's your number one thing.

01:06:25.000 | If you could find the content,

01:06:26.000 | everything works,

01:06:27.000 | but that's part of the hunt.

01:06:28.000 | And so your content is going to be different

01:06:31.000 | from your children's content.

01:06:32.000 | You just got to go out and find something

01:06:33.000 | that you're interested in and get it.

01:06:35.000 | So there's lots of stuff available for free online.

01:06:38.000 | If you're the tech guy in the household,

01:06:40.000 | you should be good enough

01:06:41.000 | at finding the files that you want

01:06:43.000 | or you can use one of the solutions

01:06:45.000 | and purchase your stuff on a platform

01:06:48.000 | that you can hack in some way,

01:06:50.000 | apply a software program, etc.

01:06:53.000 | to be able to get the DRM stripped off

01:06:55.000 | so you can have a DRM-free file

01:06:56.000 | that you can upload into LingQ.

01:06:58.000 | But that's the classic challenge that we all face

01:07:01.000 | is finding our content that we want.

01:07:03.000 | Sure, sure.

01:07:04.000 | Okay, so last thing is,

01:07:06.000 | let's just say I download some content

01:07:09.000 | from Lead Libros

01:07:11.000 | and then am I able to

01:07:16.000 | bring that straight into a Kobo

01:07:19.000 | or which e-reader is the one

01:07:21.000 | which I can use to import in that stuff that I pull?

01:07:26.000 | So with that,

01:07:27.000 | man, we are getting really technical in the weeds.

01:07:29.000 | You weren't lying about we're going to get into it.

01:07:31.000 | I'm sorry, man.

01:07:32.000 | So I think what you want to use for that

01:07:34.000 | is you want to use,

01:07:35.000 | the king of the hill here

01:07:37.000 | is the software application called Calibre.

01:07:39.000 | C-A-L-I-B-R-E, Calibre.

01:07:43.000 | Calibre is a technical,

01:07:46.000 | is an open source program

01:07:50.000 | that is meant for managing an e-book library.

01:07:54.000 | So what you can do is,

01:07:56.000 | if you use Calibre,

01:07:58.000 | you can have your device

01:08:00.000 | and then what Calibre will allow you to do

01:08:02.000 | is you can plug your,

01:08:04.000 | it'll allow you to organize all of your files

01:08:06.000 | in the Calibre software

01:08:08.000 | and then you can plug in your device

01:08:09.000 | and you can just send files to your e-reader.

01:08:12.000 | And so that'll work with just about any device

01:08:15.000 | that you actually want.

01:08:17.000 | So that's also a good solution.

01:08:20.000 | - Okay.

01:08:21.000 | That's super helpful, man.

01:08:22.000 | I appreciate it.

01:08:23.000 | - Yeah, my pleasure.

01:08:24.000 | It's, there's all,

01:08:27.000 | the reason I haven't just said,

01:08:30.000 | here, do all my things

01:08:31.000 | is that I think that you want a straightforward system.

01:08:34.000 | A straightforward system that works

01:08:35.000 | is better than kind of a wacky,

01:08:38.000 | put together, cobbled together system.

01:08:40.000 | I really think the best solution

01:08:42.000 | is just an Amazon Kindle and an Audible account.

01:08:45.000 | I really think that's your best solution.

01:08:47.000 | - Yeah, I hear you,

01:08:50.000 | especially for the kids.

01:08:52.000 | I'm kind of wacky

01:08:53.000 | and I've got a pretty extensive IT,

01:08:57.000 | wacky mind.

01:09:00.000 | So I need to piece together things.

01:09:05.000 | And yeah, so that was super helpful.

01:09:11.000 | I'll figure it out

01:09:12.000 | and we'll keep you up to date

01:09:14.000 | on this journey. - My pleasure.

01:09:16.000 | My pleasure.

01:09:17.000 | And in closing, I would say that,

01:09:18.000 | like I mentioned to Catherine,

01:09:20.000 | I haven't observed any downsides

01:09:22.000 | to this particular system

01:09:24.000 | and I think that there are upsides to it.

01:09:26.000 | I think that as a bone,

01:09:28.000 | for your homeschooling,

01:09:29.000 | I think that using the,

01:09:33.000 | using a good E-device,

01:09:36.000 | an E-reader in your homeschool

01:09:39.000 | is I think a powerful, powerful solution.

01:09:42.000 | And here are a couple of advantages of it.

01:09:44.000 | Number one, if you go through

01:09:47.000 | and you look at what's available

01:09:49.000 | in the public domain marketplace,

01:09:52.000 | there are so many books available

01:09:54.000 | that you just cannot get the reprints for.

01:09:57.000 | And every year, more of them come on.

01:10:00.000 | For example, like the classic,

01:10:02.000 | I'll just use the example I already gave you,

01:10:04.000 | Tom Swift.

01:10:05.000 | Tom Swift is such a powerful set of books

01:10:09.000 | for a child to read.

01:10:11.000 | And the original ones written in the early 1900s

01:10:15.000 | are fantastic.

01:10:16.000 | They have rich language.

01:10:18.000 | They're very well written.

01:10:19.000 | The ideas are big.

01:10:20.000 | In fact, you can trace all kinds of modern inventions

01:10:23.000 | back to the original Tom Swift books.

01:10:28.000 | But they are not easy to find.

01:10:31.000 | You can't find them.

01:10:32.000 | I've bought a lot of old, used books in series,

01:10:35.000 | but I can't find them.

01:10:37.000 | And a lot of times when you go

01:10:39.000 | and you're trying to search for Tom Swift,

01:10:41.000 | you're getting more of the modern reprints,

01:10:42.000 | which may not be exactly what you're looking for.

01:10:45.000 | And so if you want the originals,

01:10:47.000 | the best thing to do is just simply

01:10:49.000 | to get them with a classic file.

01:10:50.000 | So for 99 cents that you pay to the guy

01:10:53.000 | who put together the collection on Amazon,

01:10:56.000 | you have the whole library right there.

01:10:59.000 | And it's fantastic to have it.

01:11:01.000 | In addition, I think that the e-reader system,

01:11:05.000 | Amazon has their, I think they call it WordlyWise.

01:11:08.000 | They have a system where many books,

01:11:09.000 | they will put in synonyms and dictionary definitions

01:11:13.000 | for various words while you're actually reading.

01:11:15.000 | And then you also have the system

01:11:17.000 | where you can tap the word, add it to your,

01:11:19.000 | look it up in the dictionary.

01:11:21.000 | That's powerful.

01:11:22.000 | When I was a kid,

01:11:23.000 | I hated looking up words in the dictionary,

01:11:25.000 | so I never did it.

01:11:26.000 | But to the ability to tap the screen

01:11:28.000 | when there's a word you don't understand,

01:11:30.000 | have a dictionary built in,

01:11:31.000 | tells you what that word means,

01:11:32.000 | even just in your native language reading,

01:11:35.000 | is really, really good.

01:11:36.000 | Really awesome scenario.

01:11:38.000 | And then you can have access

01:11:40.000 | to a much more interesting set of books

01:11:42.000 | that allows your reader sometimes

01:11:45.000 | to read based upon interest.

01:11:46.000 | For example, I was watching my son,

01:11:50.000 | and yesterday he was reading on his Kindle,

01:11:53.000 | and I asked him, I was like, "What are you reading?"

01:11:54.000 | And he was reading a biography

01:11:56.000 | that I have on there of General Grant,

01:11:58.000 | Ulysses S. Grant.

01:11:59.000 | And it was one of the books that I had put on him,

01:12:01.000 | but I hadn't assigned it to him.

01:12:02.000 | But he just got interested in the biography,

01:12:04.000 | and I went and checked his reading history,

01:12:06.000 | and sure enough, he'd read 90 minutes

01:12:08.000 | of this biography of General Grant.

01:12:11.000 | And what I have observed,

01:12:12.000 | one of the things that I learned from watching it,

01:12:15.000 | is that by having a more diverse set of books

01:12:20.000 | on there available,

01:12:22.000 | that his reading wound up being more diverse.

01:12:25.000 | So instead of just reading the two or three books

01:12:27.000 | that he would carry around with him

01:12:28.000 | when it was physical books,

01:12:29.000 | now he would go more among different genres,

01:12:32.000 | change different things,

01:12:33.000 | read things that I didn't think

01:12:34.000 | he would actually be interested in,

01:12:36.000 | but yet he wound up still being interested in them.

01:12:39.000 | So I think it's a benefit and something worth having,

01:12:42.000 | rather than a negative thing in any way.

01:12:46.000 | - I appreciate that.

01:12:47.000 | - Yep, my pleasure.

01:12:48.000 | All right, we go on to,

01:12:51.000 | well, Catherine was on there,

01:12:52.000 | but I think she's, we don't need to talk to her,

01:12:54.000 | we talk to Joseph,

01:12:55.000 | and we go to 813.

01:12:57.000 | Welcome to the show, how can I serve you today?

01:13:01.000 | - Hey Joshua, how are you?

01:13:02.000 | - I am well, how are you, sir?

01:13:05.000 | - I'm doing well.

01:13:07.000 | I had called back, I guess a couple of weeks back,

01:13:11.000 | and I'm talking about my daughter,

01:13:13.000 | who was two years old,

01:13:14.000 | and having problems with the speech.

01:13:18.000 | And I just saw today

01:13:21.000 | that the CDC has changed the age limit of 50 words.

01:13:29.000 | - I saw that as well.

01:13:30.000 | - To 50 by, was it 30 months?

01:13:35.000 | And that never really made the news.

01:13:39.000 | But I thought that was very, very strange.

01:13:41.000 | - I did, and what was interesting is I--

01:13:43.000 | - I wanted to know your opinion on that.

01:13:44.000 | - I heard from a couple of listeners on Twitter

01:13:48.000 | after you called into the Friday show

01:13:50.000 | saying that they had had a similar experience

01:13:53.000 | with their children.

01:13:55.000 | - Really?

01:13:56.000 | - Yeah, I started to look into it,

01:13:57.000 | 'cause as I mentioned to you on that live show,

01:14:00.000 | I had kind of, I didn't, I wasn't that skeptical.

01:14:05.000 | I just never really got into the mask debates.

01:14:07.000 | I never bothered, I just kind of,

01:14:09.000 | I figured, eh, not that big of a deal, et cetera.

01:14:12.000 | I didn't get into the mask debates all that much.

01:14:14.000 | And so when you were calling in

01:14:15.000 | and talking about the impact that it had

01:14:17.000 | on your daughter's development,

01:14:19.000 | I started reading about it a little bit more.

01:14:21.000 | And especially for young children,

01:14:22.000 | I think that absolutely it's harmful to young children.

01:14:26.000 | I had never, I just hadn't thought about it previously.

01:14:29.000 | And so the idea that children who gain all of their cues

01:14:33.000 | from someone's face and they're attracted

01:14:36.000 | from a very young age from babies

01:14:38.000 | of being attracted to somebody's face,

01:14:42.000 | absolutely it makes all the sense in the world

01:14:44.000 | that that would be more damaging to children.

01:14:46.000 | And so I was wrong.

01:14:47.000 | I just hadn't bothered to dig into it much,

01:14:50.000 | 'cause I didn't have any reason to.

01:14:53.000 | But now I definitely see that, yes, it is an impact.

01:14:56.000 | And so I saw that story this morning of the CDC changing.

01:14:59.000 | And so for context, previously the CDC had said

01:15:03.000 | as a normal benchmark, your child by the age of 24 months

01:15:07.000 | should be able to produce about 50 words

01:15:09.000 | by the age of 24 months.

01:15:11.000 | But the argument is that they've now changed it

01:15:14.000 | and instead of it being 24 months,

01:15:16.000 | they've said by 30 months,

01:15:17.000 | your child should be able to produce about 50 words.

01:15:19.000 | And so the argument is this is something

01:15:22.000 | that they're just changing the rules.

01:15:24.000 | Now, I'm still, I'm personally a little skeptical

01:15:27.000 | that that's all there is, right?

01:15:29.000 | I don't know without actually going back

01:15:31.000 | and doing some deep investigation

01:15:32.000 | into the CDC's recommendations

01:15:35.000 | and where did this chart come from, et cetera.

01:15:37.000 | But I definitely know that masks for children

01:15:39.000 | are a bad deal or a bad idea in every way.

01:15:41.000 | So I'm sold on that.

01:15:43.000 | I don't need to know any more than that.

01:15:45.000 | (laughing)

01:15:46.000 | - The reason for my call today was,

01:15:49.000 | I had listened to your show yesterday

01:15:51.000 | about, was it yesterday or the day before,

01:15:54.000 | about the Canadian--

01:15:56.000 | - Finance system.

01:15:58.000 | - Limit on banks.

01:16:00.000 | And what's the easiest solution you found

01:16:05.000 | to do an offshore account?

01:16:08.000 | - Are you, where do you live?

01:16:10.000 | Are you American?

01:16:11.000 | - Yes.

01:16:13.000 | - Okay, so the easiest solution for Americans is Canada.

01:16:16.000 | And obviously I'm fully aware of how ironic that is.

01:16:20.000 | To recommend a Canadian bank account

01:16:24.000 | in light of what I said.

01:16:25.000 | But the answer for Canadians,

01:16:28.000 | the easiest solution is the United States.

01:16:30.000 | And for Americans, the answer is Canada.

01:16:32.000 | I don't expect, I think that the Canadian debacle

01:16:38.000 | is a very good example of how they will change the rules.

01:16:43.000 | And everything that I said.

01:16:45.000 | But I don't think that that is in and of itself

01:16:49.000 | says that why on a widespread basis,

01:16:52.000 | Canada is not a reasonable solution

01:16:55.000 | for people who want to open an offshore bank account.

01:16:58.000 | And for Americans, definitely Canada is the simplest

01:17:03.000 | and most accessible option.

01:17:05.000 | Which gives me kind of a layup to address something

01:17:07.000 | that a listener mentioned earlier today,

01:17:12.000 | also in response to that show.

01:17:13.000 | When you look at an offshore bank account,

01:17:16.000 | you have to ask yourself the question,

01:17:19.000 | why am I actually opening this account?

01:17:21.000 | What am I trying to get out of it?

01:17:22.000 | And there are some things that are just off the table.

01:17:27.000 | For example, I don't try to talk to people

01:17:29.000 | about opening a bank account for privacy reasons.

01:17:32.000 | Or at least privacy from government actors.

01:17:35.000 | The US government knows about all of my offshore bank accounts

01:17:39.000 | because every single year I file a form

01:17:41.000 | and I tell them exactly where all of my bank accounts are.

01:17:44.000 | So there's no privacy from the government.

01:17:47.000 | There's no tax savings.

01:17:49.000 | We're not engaging in tax fraud or tax evasion.

01:17:51.000 | That world is dead and gone.

01:17:53.000 | There was a time 30 years ago

01:17:55.000 | where you could probably get away with it.

01:17:57.000 | You could go and you could open an offshore account.

01:17:59.000 | You could have gains in that account.

01:18:01.000 | You could not report those gains

01:18:02.000 | and you could get away with it.

01:18:03.000 | But those days I think are dead and gone.

01:18:07.000 | So that's not the reason.

01:18:10.000 | My answer as to why should someone have an offshore bank account

01:18:14.000 | is a few things.

01:18:15.000 | Number one, I think the most sensible thing

01:18:18.000 | is to recognize that there are certain threats that you face

01:18:22.000 | that are national in scope.

01:18:24.000 | So a threat like, hey, the government is saying

01:18:27.000 | that if I have a GoFundMe or a GiveSendGo contribution

01:18:31.000 | in my bank account to the trucker convoy,

01:18:33.000 | they're going to shut me down.

01:18:35.000 | What is happening in Canada is that bad.

01:18:38.000 | It is just that bad that if you made a contribution

01:18:42.000 | via GoFundMe or GiveSendGo to the trucker convoy,

01:18:46.000 | then they can come in and they can say,

01:18:48.000 | oh, we're going to freeze your account.

01:18:50.000 | I don't think that they will do that

01:18:52.000 | because although I don't think that the people who are involved

01:18:56.000 | actually have any moral qualms about being tyrants,

01:19:00.000 | they love it.

01:19:02.000 | They love controlling people's lives.

01:19:03.000 | They don't have any moral qualms about being tyrants.

01:19:06.000 | But there is still a culture that would push back more

01:19:10.000 | if they affect too many people.

01:19:12.000 | So the way that what they do is they pick on a few people.

01:19:15.000 | And as long as you can get just a few people,

01:19:17.000 | most people will never lift their hands

01:19:21.000 | to defend a small minority of people.

01:19:24.000 | It's just not worth their time.

01:19:26.000 | They're not going to get into it.

01:19:27.000 | So I don't think that they're going to shut down everyone

01:19:29.000 | who made a GiveSendGo contribution, but they could.

01:19:32.000 | I don't think that banks are going to go

01:19:34.000 | and try to shut down all those accounts, but they could.

01:19:38.000 | And so my point was they could, they can,

01:19:40.000 | and they do it really, really fast.

01:19:43.000 | So if you have an account that's outside of the jurisdiction

01:19:48.000 | that you're living in every day,

01:19:50.000 | that account is harder to regulate

01:19:53.000 | than an account that's inside the jurisdiction.

01:19:56.000 | Canadian banks are very, very heavily regulated

01:19:59.000 | by the Canadian government.

01:20:00.000 | And so they will not do anything

01:20:05.000 | that could interrupt their profit flow.

01:20:07.000 | They're not going to stand up

01:20:08.000 | and try to defy the government in any way.

01:20:10.000 | They're going to do whatever the government says.

01:20:12.000 | Now, if your money as a Canadian

01:20:14.000 | is just simply in Bank of America,

01:20:16.000 | if you're a big enough target,

01:20:18.000 | then the Canadian government can get to you, right?

01:20:21.000 | They can go to the US government.

01:20:22.000 | They can open up a line

01:20:23.000 | of international diplomatic communication.

01:20:25.000 | They can make an argument as to why your funds

01:20:27.000 | in the United States should be frozen.

01:20:29.000 | And if you're a big target, then they can win.

01:20:32.000 | They will win that particular opportunity.

01:20:36.000 | But what they won't be able to do

01:20:38.000 | is just do a widespread sweeping command

01:20:41.000 | like they can do in Canada.

01:20:43.000 | And so the same thing for the United States, right?

01:20:46.000 | The United States is vastly bigger than Canada,

01:20:49.000 | a country of 10 times as many people,

01:20:51.000 | and although not geographically bigger,

01:20:53.000 | 10 times as many people, so much more complex society.

01:20:57.000 | But the same thing has for the United States,

01:21:00.000 | that if you have $5,000 in a Canadian bank account,

01:21:03.000 | then you can know that,

01:21:05.000 | "Hey, at least I've got a little bit of money

01:21:07.000 | that's not subject to the same scrutiny

01:21:10.000 | or the same easy access

01:21:12.000 | as if it is all in the United States."

01:21:14.000 | Usually, this is not a problem, right?

01:21:16.000 | Because usually there's a system of court checks and balances.

01:21:19.000 | In the United States, you have much more,

01:21:22.000 | evidently, much more rigorous protection of your money

01:21:24.000 | than in Canada,

01:21:25.000 | because you have to get an actual court order,

01:21:27.000 | you have to go through the process with judicial oversight.

01:21:30.000 | That's what was so awful about what the Canadian government did

01:21:33.000 | is that for bouncy councils and trucks in the street,

01:21:36.000 | they swept their hands and they waived all of that.

01:21:39.000 | They used what was formerly the War Measures Act

01:21:42.000 | over this minor domestic disturbance.

01:21:47.000 | So to my point is,

01:21:49.000 | I see an account like that as primarily functioning.

01:21:52.000 | Yes, maybe it's your $5,000 of money

01:21:54.000 | that's in another place,

01:21:57.000 | but primarily it's a safety valve.

01:22:00.000 | And the way I've talked about it is that,

01:22:02.000 | let's say that something happens

01:22:03.000 | and you decide, "I want to get my money out of U.S. dollars."

01:22:06.000 | Well, the fact that you already have the Canadian account established

01:22:10.000 | allows you to make a transfer of your real assets

01:22:14.000 | later down the road.

01:22:15.000 | And you can move your $100,000 savings account into Canada,

01:22:19.000 | get into Canadian dollars, etc.

01:22:21.000 | My big fear is not a political protest.

01:22:24.000 | My fear is currency controls.

01:22:26.000 | Because what happens is they always implement currency controls

01:22:30.000 | when they run into a crisis of some kind.

01:22:35.000 | And so I don't want my money stuck behind a system of currency controls

01:22:39.000 | where they can just destroy the value of the money.

01:22:46.000 | But now that's different

01:22:48.000 | than if you really have more significant assets

01:22:51.000 | that you want to move offshore.

01:22:53.000 | And so I think that there are very good reasons

01:22:56.000 | for you to move significant assets offshore.

01:22:59.000 | But then I wouldn't recommend Canada as a first step.

01:23:01.000 | If you've got a million dollars, you don't go to Canada.

01:23:03.000 | You go to Switzerland or you go to Singapore.

01:23:05.000 | You don't go to Canada.

01:23:07.000 | And I do think that, obviously,

01:23:10.000 | the benefit of Canada for Americans, in conclusion,

01:23:14.000 | is simply it works just like what you're accustomed to.

01:23:18.000 | And so you drive to Canada.

01:23:20.000 | That's a big hurdle for many people,

01:23:23.000 | is to go somewhere they can drive.

01:23:25.000 | They speak the language that you speak every day.

01:23:27.000 | Everything looks and works and functions just like you're used to.

01:23:31.000 | It's a little different in Mexico.

01:23:32.000 | I don't like Mexico at all as a banking destination.

01:23:36.000 | So my answer is Canada.

01:23:38.000 | That's why.

01:23:39.000 | Even with all of these issues.

01:23:42.000 | Now, it shouldn't stop in Canada.

01:23:44.000 | And I wouldn't put major money in Canada, although you could.

01:23:47.000 | But I think that if you're dealing with major money,

01:23:49.000 | with an actual sizable account,

01:23:51.000 | then it's much more in your best interest

01:23:53.000 | to go to a more robust banking jurisdiction than Canada.

01:23:58.000 | Okay.

01:23:59.000 | I appreciate that.

01:24:01.000 | And if you've got time for one more, that'd be awesome.

01:24:03.000 | Sure, go ahead.

01:24:06.000 | And moving some cash into commodities.

01:24:14.000 | Gold, silver.

01:24:16.000 | Right now.

01:24:18.000 | What would you say a percentage wise of, of, of cash.

01:24:25.000 | Should be put into.

01:24:27.000 | Into some alternative other than cash.

01:24:30.000 | Out of inflationary concerns.

01:24:32.000 | Yeah.

01:24:37.000 | That's hard.

01:24:38.000 | Because I think that.

01:24:42.000 | So.

01:24:45.000 | That's a hard, hard question to answer.

01:24:47.000 | Because the answer is going to commit you to a prediction of what you think is actually going to happen.

01:24:54.000 | So if you thought, if you were sure that there was going to be 1000% inflation of your currency,

01:25:02.000 | and your currency is the US dollar, then you would, of course, the answer would be,

01:25:07.000 | I would like to move as close to 100% out of cash as possible.

01:25:10.000 | Right.

01:25:13.000 | That would be, that would be sensible.

01:25:15.000 | But you're not sure that there's going to be 1000% inflation.

01:25:20.000 | And I would say it's exceedingly unlikely that there would be any, you know, 1000% inflation.

01:25:27.000 | Notwithstanding the last month's figures of 7.5% inflation.

01:25:32.000 | Inflation is significant right now.

01:25:34.000 | But I don't, I don't, I don't believe that the US dollar, I don't believe that the US dollar is going to turn into a hyperinflation currency.

01:25:47.000 | I could be wrong.

01:25:48.000 | I hope I'm not wrong.

01:25:50.000 | But I could be wrong.

01:25:51.000 | And I have a plan for it.

01:25:52.000 | But what I would say is your first solution would not be to say what percentage of my cash would go from cash to commodities.

01:26:00.000 | But rather to say what percentage of my cash should go from cash to a better run currency.

01:26:06.000 | And so I think that if you're genuinely concerned about inflation,

01:26:09.000 | that you're probably better off to think about what percentage of your cash reserves you want held in a competing currency.

01:26:17.000 | And so you can hold Canadian dollars, you can hold Swiss francs, you could hold Singapore dollars, you could hold pounds, you could hold euros.

01:26:25.000 | Any of those are good solutions.

01:26:27.000 | You're exposed to some risk of international currency fluctuation risks.

01:26:35.000 | But I think that's a more sensible way for you to protect against inflation than just buying commodities.

01:26:41.000 | My answer on the commodities question is more a matter of net worth rather than percentage of cash.

01:26:48.000 | And so I think that if you have somewhere 5% of your net worth in commodities, I think that that's probably a pretty good number.

01:26:54.000 | Maybe as high as 10%.

01:26:56.000 | Somewhere in that 5% to 10% range seems pretty good.

01:27:00.000 | And so I would look at it in terms of net worth.

01:27:03.000 | And then I would also say, is this going to be the best, most productive commodity for me to purchase?

01:27:09.000 | So if you're trying to say a percentage of cash, I think your first answer is let's put some into a competing currency.

01:27:16.000 | Swiss francs, wonderful, right?

01:27:19.000 | Again, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, New Zealand dollars, Singapore dollars, any of those are fine.

01:27:25.000 | And then answer the commodities question based upon a net worth question, not a percentage of cash.

01:27:31.000 | Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

01:27:35.000 | And I don't like to be – sometimes I wonder if I've gotten too wait and see.

01:27:41.000 | I just –

01:27:43.000 | No, not at all.

01:27:45.000 | I don't – when I was younger, I was prone towards kind of catastrophism, thinking, oh, it's all going to happen so fast.

01:27:53.000 | But I don't think that's the case.

01:27:55.000 | And so – and then I guess the other thing that has really affected me is having watched and studied carefully.

01:28:04.000 | I've studied several, like, serious hyperinflations and watched very carefully over the last few years with what's happened in Venezuela.

01:28:13.000 | That I think that the answers are usually not gold coins.

01:28:18.000 | I think that the answer is a competing currency.

01:28:21.000 | And a competing currency – and the best thing is simply a currency that you can get into if you decide that that's right for the bulk of your assets.

01:28:33.000 | So I think the first thing is have an offshore bank account that will allow you to hold foreign currency and U.S. dollars.

01:28:39.000 | Then you can move your U.S. dollars out of the United States into a U.S. dollar account abroad.

01:28:44.000 | That should help you to bypass currency controls if or when they were actually imposed.

01:28:50.000 | And then the ability to take that money and go quickly into another foreign currency I think is sufficient.

01:28:56.000 | Because hyperinflation – inflation itself and hyperinflation is not necessarily contagious.

01:29:03.000 | You had high inflation rates in Canada recently reported and the United States.

01:29:07.000 | But I think that's due to the same underlying causes.

01:29:10.000 | And for my cash I'd rather own Swiss francs than a bunch of gold.

01:29:15.000 | Yes. Okay. Awesome.

01:29:20.000 | That's it. Anything else?

01:29:22.000 | That's it.

01:29:23.000 | Good. Good stuff.

01:29:25.000 | My pleasure.

01:29:26.000 | And Catherine, are you there?

01:29:29.000 | I didn't want to cut you short if you had your own question earlier.

01:29:32.000 | I tried to go to you and then evidently I think I spoke to your husband.

01:29:34.000 | Are you there, Catherine?

01:29:35.000 | Does that happen to be me?

01:29:37.000 | I guess it is because you don't sound like a Catherine.

01:29:40.000 | No. Okay.

01:29:41.000 | That's all good. I just wanted to make sure.

01:29:43.000 | So that concludes – I finished all of the phone lines.

01:29:46.000 | That is it for today's Q&A call.

01:29:49.000 | Thank you all for the great questions.

01:29:51.000 | I've enjoyed them.

01:29:52.000 | As you can see, I'll take it even if we get into the technical question of what e-reader platform

01:29:57.000 | and the details of international currency transfers, et cetera.

01:30:04.000 | Thank you all so much for listening.

01:30:06.000 | I really appreciate it.

01:30:07.000 | Remember that if you would like to join me on next week's Friday Q&A show,

01:30:10.000 | you can do that by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

01:30:13.000 | In addition, if you'd like to book a private personal consultation with me,

01:30:16.000 | I'd be happy to provide that service.

01:30:18.000 | You can do that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult.

01:30:21.000 | I'll be back with you very soon.

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2022-02-18_Friday_QA-Remote_Work_Giving_Ad_Hoc_vs_Systematically_Investing_Virtuously_Off-Shore_Bank_Accounts