2022-06-09_Friday

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00:00:30.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, it's live Q&A.

00:00:33.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:35.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

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

00:00:52.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:54.000 | to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:00:56.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:57.000 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:59.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets, I am your host,

00:01:00.000 | and today is Friday.

00:01:02.000 | And today, as we do any Friday,

00:01:05.000 | in which I can arrange the technology,

00:01:06.000 | we have a live Q&A show.

00:01:09.000 | Open line Friday, call in, talk about anything you want.

00:01:13.000 | (upbeat music)

00:01:15.000 | For the uninitiated, this works just like

00:01:23.000 | a call-in show on talk radio.

00:01:26.000 | You can call in, talk about anything you want,

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00:01:30.000 | to cover any show feedback that you have.

00:01:32.000 | Basically, any comments, the floor is yours

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00:01:53.000 | of talking to me.

00:01:54.000 | Again, we don't do it every single week,

00:01:55.000 | but I try to do it every week,

00:01:56.000 | and I love to have you on board.

00:01:58.000 | So if you are interested in joining me

00:02:00.000 | on next week's Friday Q&A show,

00:02:02.000 | please go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance,

00:02:06.000 | you'll find all the information there,

00:02:07.000 | and I would love to have you on next week's Q&A show.

00:02:10.000 | We begin with John of Pennsylvania.

00:02:12.000 | John, welcome to the show.

00:02:13.000 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:02:15.000 | - Hi, Joshua, thanks for taking the call.

00:02:18.000 | I have two questions today, if you have time.

00:02:21.000 | I have one that's kind of boring

00:02:22.000 | about disability insurance,

00:02:24.000 | and one that's about Mexican residency.

00:02:28.000 | - Okay, let's do the boring one first.

00:02:30.000 | - Okay, so I had a period last year

00:02:34.000 | where I was off work,

00:02:36.000 | and I've since become employed again,

00:02:40.000 | and I got a letter from my disability insurance provider,

00:02:44.000 | Northwest Mutual.

00:02:46.000 | Apparently I had, or not apparently,

00:02:47.000 | I did have a rider that gave me a benefit

00:02:50.000 | of increasing my benefit over time,

00:02:54.000 | and I guess just like a yearly increase.

00:02:57.000 | And every six years or so, they kind of do an audit,

00:03:00.000 | and they come back and say, you know,

00:03:02.000 | have you, they sent me a letter basically saying,

00:03:04.000 | have I gained substantially more disability insurance elsewhere,

00:03:10.000 | just kind of a normal questionnaire thing.

00:03:12.000 | And I was able to answer that okay,

00:03:14.000 | because I was back into being employed again.

00:03:17.000 | But it occurred to me that I don't know

00:03:19.000 | what my responsibilities are with them

00:03:21.000 | to let them know if I become unemployed again in the future.

00:03:25.000 | And also, I don't know if I should have been paying

00:03:29.000 | that premium the year that I was off,

00:03:31.000 | since perhaps if I'd gotten disabled,

00:03:34.000 | I wouldn't have, you know,

00:03:38.000 | gotten a benefit since I wasn't working.

00:03:39.000 | But I think I did ask about that before,

00:03:42.000 | and maybe you told me they would reasonably assume

00:03:44.000 | that I could get another job of the same type.

00:03:48.000 | But I don't know how far that extends

00:03:50.000 | or what my responsibilities are to let them know

00:03:53.000 | if I become unemployed again, if at all.

00:03:55.000 | - Right. Good questions.

00:03:57.000 | So let's deal with the contract language,

00:03:59.000 | because this is the same with all companies.

00:04:01.000 | First of all, when you buy a disability income insurance contract,

00:04:06.000 | unless otherwise stated,

00:04:08.000 | that policy is always going to be what is called guaranteed renewable.

00:04:13.000 | That's the legal language that means that

00:04:15.000 | as long as you pay the premiums,

00:04:17.000 | the insurance company can't take the contract away.

00:04:19.000 | Now, there can be specialty contracts

00:04:22.000 | that are not guaranteed renewable,

00:04:23.000 | but what you're talking about is a fairly standard form

00:04:26.000 | of disability insurance contract.

00:04:28.000 | The other term that is out there is called non-cancelable.

00:04:32.000 | And these are confusing legalese,

00:04:34.000 | because non-cancelable means what you think

00:04:35.000 | guaranteed renewable means,

00:04:36.000 | and guaranteed renewable thinks what you think non-cancelable means.

00:04:39.000 | So non-cancelable, if you buy a non-cancelable contract,

00:04:43.000 | and by the way, that is an option.

00:04:44.000 | You can always choose to pay a little bit more

00:04:47.000 | and get a non-cancelable contract.

00:04:48.000 | That means that the insurance company cannot change the terms of your contract.

00:04:53.000 | So that means they can't change the price, most importantly.

00:04:56.000 | When they issue the contract and they say,

00:04:58.000 | "You owe us $2,000 a year for this contract,"

00:05:00.000 | if it's a non-cancelable contract,

00:05:02.000 | that means they can't increase the premiums from $2,000 to $2,500 per year.

00:05:06.000 | However, guaranteed renewable means as long as you pay the premiums,

00:05:11.000 | they have to renew the contract for you on an ongoing basis.

00:05:14.000 | So your contract is a guaranteed renewable contract.

00:05:18.000 | As long as you pay the premiums,

00:05:20.000 | you can renew the contract every single year.

00:05:23.000 | It doesn't matter what's happening with your job.

00:05:25.000 | It doesn't matter if you're unemployed.

00:05:27.000 | It doesn't matter if you've taken a completely different job.

00:05:29.000 | You can continue the contract.

00:05:32.000 | That's the first thing to know.

00:05:33.000 | So the next step is, well, do I owe them any duty of knowledge

00:05:38.000 | if I'm unemployed?

00:05:41.000 | The answer is no.

00:05:42.000 | It's none of their business.

00:05:43.000 | The contract is guaranteed renewable.

00:05:45.000 | You don't need to even tell them anything.

00:05:47.000 | That's why you don't even need to tell them if you change jobs.

00:05:49.000 | What happens is if you come to file a claim,

00:05:53.000 | that claim is adjudicated based upon the terms of the contract.

00:05:57.000 | And so if you go to your contract definitions,

00:06:00.000 | the contract definitions will be hard to meet

00:06:04.000 | if you are unemployed at the time of filing a claim.

00:06:07.000 | So in your contract,

00:06:09.000 | you will have definitions of partial disability and total disability.

00:06:14.000 | And then there's usually a clause for presumptive total disability.

00:06:18.000 | Presumptive total disability is that most contracts will say something like,

00:06:22.000 | "If you lose your sight or your speech or your hearing

00:06:25.000 | or you lose two legs or two arms or an arm and a leg,

00:06:28.000 | then we're going to just assume that you're disabled

00:06:30.000 | if one of those things happens."

00:06:32.000 | So that's nice because it doesn't matter whether--

00:06:34.000 | if you are presumptively disabled

00:06:37.000 | because one of those horrific, catastrophic events happens,

00:06:40.000 | then none of the rest of the stuff matters.

00:06:42.000 | But what happens if you're unemployed?

00:06:46.000 | Well, then you go to the terms of your partial disability

00:06:49.000 | and your total disability definition.

00:06:52.000 | Most disabilities are not total disabilities.

00:06:55.000 | Most disabilities are partial disabilities.

00:06:57.000 | And the way that most contracts are structured

00:07:00.000 | is that when you go to prove that you're disabled,

00:07:03.000 | you have to suffer a loss of time or duties or income.

00:07:08.000 | So if you're unemployed,

00:07:11.000 | how do you demonstrate to the insurance company

00:07:14.000 | as part of filing your claim that you've suffered a loss of time

00:07:17.000 | or a loss of duties or even a loss of income?

00:07:21.000 | That's hard to demonstrate.

00:07:23.000 | It's not necessarily impossible to demonstrate.

00:07:25.000 | It's just hard to demonstrate because you can't say,

00:07:27.000 | "Look, I was working 40 hours a week.

00:07:29.000 | Now I'm working 20 hours a week.

00:07:31.000 | I'm 50% disabled."

00:07:33.000 | And so it's kind of like the same thing

00:07:35.000 | that I've explained several times of what happens

00:07:37.000 | if you stay-at-home moms, right?

00:07:40.000 | If a stay-at-home mom has a disability contract

00:07:43.000 | from when she had a job outside the home,

00:07:45.000 | now she has a job inside the home,

00:07:47.000 | but it's just hard to prove partial disability.

00:07:49.000 | So what the insurance company will often do in that basis

00:07:52.000 | is they'll put in place a provisional--

00:07:56.000 | and it says this in the contract. You can read it.

00:07:58.000 | They'll put in place some kind of, like, provisional disability

00:08:00.000 | for perhaps up to six months.

00:08:01.000 | They'll say, "Okay, well, we think that you're partially disabled.

00:08:05.000 | We'll give you six months of partial disability benefit.

00:08:07.000 | After that, either it's going to be nothing

00:08:09.000 | or you've got to demonstrate to us

00:08:11.000 | that you're totally disabled."

00:08:13.000 | So the wrinkles do not come down to any duties on your end.

00:08:18.000 | It just comes down to the fact that if you are disabled

00:08:21.000 | while unemployed, it can be more difficult to prove

00:08:26.000 | that you are partially disabled.

00:08:28.000 | So a minor thing that, you know, you broke your leg skiing,

00:08:32.000 | and that doesn't really work,

00:08:34.000 | because we're talking about long-term disability.

00:08:36.000 | Some kind of minor sickness that resulted in a 25% decrease

00:08:39.000 | in earnings because you had 25% fewer hours at your work,

00:08:44.000 | that would be enough to qualify for partial disability benefit

00:08:47.000 | if you were working.

00:08:48.000 | It's just hard to prove that if you're unemployed.

00:08:50.000 | So nothing--you have no duties of reporting.

00:08:53.000 | You don't even have to answer their questionnaire.

00:08:55.000 | That is most likely simply a sales device,

00:08:58.000 | basically of them saying, "Hey, has your income doubled?

00:09:00.000 | If your income has doubled, we'll sell you more insurance."

00:09:03.000 | You don't even have to send that back.

00:09:05.000 | It's fine if you want to, but it's a sales device

00:09:07.000 | to find out if you can buy more insurance.

00:09:10.000 | And then in your actual riders of your contract--

00:09:13.000 | that was the other thing you mentioned--

00:09:15.000 | depending on what riders of the contract you chose,

00:09:18.000 | those riders will either be income-based

00:09:21.000 | as far as you have to verify income or not.

00:09:24.000 | So usually there's often some kind of future increase benefit

00:09:28.000 | on a contract like that where they just say,

00:09:30.000 | "Automatically we're going to increase your benefit

00:09:32.000 | at some modest rate, maybe 2% per year."

00:09:35.000 | That's a guaranteed thing based upon just a generic inflation rate.

00:09:39.000 | They're going to assume that you're a working professional.

00:09:41.000 | Your income, in theory, is going to be going up

00:09:43.000 | to keep pace with inflation, so we'll just increase

00:09:45.000 | your benefit automatically 2% per year.

00:09:47.000 | And there's no requirement that you demonstrate

00:09:49.000 | that your income has indeed increased.

00:09:52.000 | The other kind of rider that sometimes people will put

00:09:55.000 | on these contracts is what's called

00:09:56.000 | an additional purchase benefit rider.

00:09:58.000 | An additional purchase benefit is an option

00:10:01.000 | that allows you to buy more insurance in the future

00:10:04.000 | without health underwriting and usually without

00:10:07.000 | hobby or avocation underwriting.

00:10:09.000 | But you have to demonstrate that you do indeed

00:10:12.000 | have a higher income.

00:10:13.000 | And so it is possible that you have

00:10:15.000 | an additional purchase benefit and that perhaps

00:10:17.000 | they were sending you a letter that's letting you know,

00:10:20.000 | "Hey, you're in a window.

00:10:21.000 | There's a window for exercising an additional

00:10:23.000 | purchase benefit."

00:10:24.000 | It may have been a window saying,

00:10:25.000 | excuse me, a letter indicating you're in your window

00:10:29.000 | during the time at which you can increase

00:10:31.000 | the policy benefit amount.

00:10:32.000 | But in order to do that, all you need to do

00:10:34.000 | is send us proof of your higher income

00:10:37.000 | and then we'll allow you to buy more insurance.

00:10:40.000 | So it's a very simplified underwriting process.

00:10:42.000 | There's no health underwriting, no hobby underwriting.

00:10:44.000 | It's just demonstrate that you're making more income

00:10:47.000 | and we'll give you more insurance.

00:10:48.000 | So it could have been that as well.

00:10:49.000 | And I think that's actually probably what it was.

00:10:52.000 | - Okay, that's great.

00:10:53.000 | Yeah, it does sound like a mixture of both

00:10:55.000 | the reach out for an advertising to reach out

00:10:58.000 | and also I can't remember if I had that second

00:11:00.000 | type of writer.

00:11:01.000 | I remember I bought it based on a lot of your advice

00:11:04.000 | a number of years ago.

00:11:05.000 | So I'll go back and read my contract

00:11:07.000 | and reach out to the guy again.

00:11:09.000 | - I'm not aware of it.

00:11:10.000 | - That's very helpful.

00:11:11.000 | - I'm not aware of a big insurance company like that

00:11:12.000 | having kind of an underhanded way

00:11:15.000 | of trying to collect your income.

00:11:17.000 | So I think it is actually that letter is notifying you

00:11:22.000 | that you're within a window in which you can have,

00:11:24.000 | you can purchase an additional purchase benefit.

00:11:26.000 | But if you don't ever, contractually,

00:11:29.000 | there's no requirement that you ever respond

00:11:31.000 | to anything from an insurance company

00:11:33.000 | once the contract is in force

00:11:35.000 | as long as you pay the premiums.

00:11:37.000 | So all that matters is that you pay the premiums.

00:11:40.000 | - That's great to know.

00:11:41.000 | And that was really what I was mostly concerned about.

00:11:44.000 | Did I violate something unknowingly?

00:11:46.000 | So that's really comforting to hear.

00:11:48.000 | Thank you.

00:11:49.000 | I appreciate it.

00:11:50.000 | - All right, next one.

00:11:51.000 | - Yeah, the other question I had was I was re-listening to,

00:11:54.000 | I've listened to it probably four or five times

00:11:56.000 | while trying to spur myself to action.

00:11:58.000 | But your interview with Enrique Ramirez-Corona

00:12:03.000 | down in San Miguel, he outlined very nicely,

00:12:08.000 | or you outlined very nicely with him

00:12:10.000 | how to get permanent residency in Mexico.

00:12:12.000 | And I'm getting closer to wanting to execute on that.

00:12:15.000 | And I, on my third or fourth listen,

00:12:17.000 | I was starting to write down all the steps that I needed to do.

00:12:20.000 | And one thing wasn't quite clear.

00:12:21.000 | He kind of outlined, I'm sure the prices have gone up.

00:12:23.000 | It's been a year or two, but he outlined it was like $500 to $700,

00:12:27.000 | maybe up to $1,000 or so per person

00:12:30.000 | to kind of get this all handled legally

00:12:32.000 | and have them sort of hold your hand

00:12:35.000 | through the residency process.

00:12:40.000 | The only thing I wasn't clear on after listening to that was,

00:12:44.000 | do you think it is that amount of money was for

00:12:47.000 | just getting the first temporary residency permit,

00:12:51.000 | or does that kind of amount allow him to help walk us

00:12:55.000 | through the second, third, and then the fourth,

00:12:58.000 | which would be the permanent residency?

00:13:00.000 | Or is it like $1,000 for every renewal?

00:13:04.000 | I was just curious if for a family of four,

00:13:06.000 | it's going to be like $4,000 versus $16,000

00:13:09.000 | to get all the way to permanent residency

00:13:11.000 | over the next four years or so.

00:13:14.000 | - The numbers that he said were almost certainly

00:13:17.000 | for the first time around.

00:13:19.000 | So the way it works is you--

00:13:24.000 | Let me lay out the process just for other listeners

00:13:27.000 | who may not have listened to that recently.

00:13:30.000 | I recommend that all people everywhere

00:13:34.000 | who want to have a second residency in another country,

00:13:41.000 | especially North Americans,

00:13:43.000 | such as Americans, US Americans, and Canadians,

00:13:48.000 | I recommend that all people everywhere start with Mexico.

00:13:51.000 | Mexico has the best residency program in the world

00:13:54.000 | for this purpose right now as simply a backup residency.

00:13:58.000 | The reason it's the best is because

00:14:01.000 | it's relatively easy to get.

00:14:03.000 | In order to get it, all you need to demonstrate

00:14:05.000 | is that you have money in an investment account.

00:14:07.000 | They have what's basically called in English

00:14:09.000 | a person of means visa.

00:14:11.000 | All you do is go to the Mexican government and say,

00:14:13.000 | "Look, I got a bunch of money in a bank account."

00:14:15.000 | A bunch of money, I can't remember what it is right now.

00:14:17.000 | It's a multiple of the Mexican minimum wage,

00:14:19.000 | but if you've got $50,000 to $100,000

00:14:21.000 | in an investment account or a bank account,

00:14:23.000 | that should be good.

00:14:25.000 | What you do is you go to a Mexican embassy

00:14:28.000 | or consulate near where you live, ideally,

00:14:32.000 | and you ask for information from them

00:14:34.000 | on how to apply for the Mexican person of means visa

00:14:36.000 | because you want to move to Mexico.

00:14:39.000 | Then they will give you the information

00:14:41.000 | at your local Mexican consulate.

00:14:43.000 | You don't need an attorney for this step.

00:14:45.000 | This is something you do outside of Mexico.

00:14:48.000 | You go to the consulate.

00:14:50.000 | They will ask you for a series of documents

00:14:53.000 | to prove your identity.

00:14:55.000 | It will be a birth certificate.

00:14:57.000 | Most of the time, you'll need an original

00:14:59.000 | apostilled birth certificate.

00:15:01.000 | You'll take a birth certificate.

00:15:03.000 | If you're married, you'll often take a marriage certificate.

00:15:05.000 | For children, you'll need a few extra requirements.

00:15:07.000 | Then you'll need to take them a notarized

00:15:09.000 | apostilled copy of your investment account

00:15:13.000 | or bank account demonstrating a balance

00:15:15.000 | of the sufficient amount of money.

00:15:17.000 | I can't remember if they ask for a criminal background check.

00:15:21.000 | They probably do, so you'll probably need

00:15:23.000 | a criminal background check, and that will also

00:15:25.000 | probably need to be apostilled.

00:15:27.000 | The specific requirements are different by each embassy

00:15:30.000 | depending on which country you're applying in.

00:15:32.000 | You have to do this outside of Mexico.

00:15:34.000 | Once you go through that process,

00:15:36.000 | they will put a sticker in your passport.

00:15:38.000 | That sticker will allow you to go to Mexico

00:15:40.000 | and get your temporary residency card.

00:15:43.000 | From the time they give you the sticker,

00:15:45.000 | you have six months to go to Mexico.

00:15:47.000 | You need to go physically to Mexico

00:15:50.000 | to an immigration office in Mexico,

00:15:52.000 | and you need to do what's called a "canje,"

00:15:54.000 | which means you transfer or convert

00:15:58.000 | that sticker in your passport into a physical

00:16:01.000 | temporary residence card.

00:16:03.000 | Your first time around, that will be applicable

00:16:06.000 | or enforced for vigente.

00:16:09.000 | It'll be enforced for one year.

00:16:11.000 | So that's the point in time at which you contact.

00:16:15.000 | You can do it yourself.

00:16:17.000 | If you're comfortable with immigration processes

00:16:20.000 | and speaking Spanish and whatnot, you can do it yourself.

00:16:23.000 | I would strongly urge you to use an attorney

00:16:25.000 | to smooth everything out and make your job easy.

00:16:28.000 | That's the point in time at which you'll contact an attorney.

00:16:31.000 | The attorney that I interviewed on the show is Enrique.

00:16:35.000 | EnriqueRamirezCorona@SanMiguel-Legal.com

00:16:41.000 | There's the interview with him from a year or so ago,

00:16:45.000 | something like that.

00:16:47.000 | He and his staff, they will do it all for you.

00:16:50.000 | They will charge you fees that include

00:16:53.000 | fees for their legal services

00:16:55.000 | and also the fees for the Mexican government.

00:16:57.000 | So there are additional fees with the Mexican government.

00:17:00.000 | It's not much.

00:17:02.000 | It's a couple or a few thousand dollars.

00:17:04.000 | It's not much.

00:17:05.000 | After one year, then once you have your residency card,

00:17:08.000 | you can leave Mexico.

00:17:10.000 | At any point in time over the next year,

00:17:12.000 | you can spend as much time in Mexico as you want

00:17:14.000 | or as little time in Mexico as you want.

00:17:16.000 | After one year, you come back and you have a choice

00:17:18.000 | when you come back of having a one-year residency,

00:17:20.000 | a two-year residency, or a three-year residency.

00:17:23.000 | The fees to the Mexican government are higher

00:17:27.000 | for a longer one.

00:17:29.000 | Again, it's a few thousand dollars.

00:17:33.000 | Here's the problem.

00:17:35.000 | I have so many family members in my family

00:17:37.000 | that I don't remember the numbers because when I do this stuff,

00:17:39.000 | I got to do it six times over.

00:17:41.000 | I don't know what they are for you and your family

00:17:43.000 | of three or four.

00:17:44.000 | I don't know what they are for a single person.

00:17:46.000 | I do it six people at a time.

00:17:48.000 | It's not a ton of money.

00:17:51.000 | If it sounds like I'm being flippant,

00:17:53.000 | I mean very seriously in the world of international

00:17:55.000 | immigration policies, it's virtually nothing.

00:17:58.000 | A few thousand dollars to do a process for a family

00:18:02.000 | with legal fees and whatnot is virtually nothing.

00:18:06.000 | It's kind of laughable in the scheme of what people pay.

00:18:10.000 | I have friends of mine who are immigrating

00:18:13.000 | to the United States.

00:18:15.000 | The legal fees they face are tens of thousands of dollars.

00:18:18.000 | It's years and years and years of working

00:18:21.000 | through the process.

00:18:22.000 | The U.S. has the worst immigration policies

00:18:24.000 | in the world.

00:18:27.000 | That's why I sound flippant about the numbers,

00:18:30.000 | is that Mexico, it's fast, it's easy, and it's cheap.

00:18:33.000 | Then after three years, if you get the three-year visa,

00:18:37.000 | you can come back after three years,

00:18:40.000 | and you can convert at that point in time

00:18:42.000 | into permanent residency.

00:18:44.000 | Again, there's another set of fees.

00:18:46.000 | Once you have permanent residency, though,

00:18:48.000 | under current law, that permanent residency

00:18:50.000 | doesn't have to be renewed.

00:18:52.000 | Depending on what state you do, some of the states

00:18:54.000 | will require you to update the picture on your card,

00:18:56.000 | on your residency card, every 10 years or so.

00:18:58.000 | It doesn't have to be renewed.

00:19:00.000 | You don't have to spend a ton of time in Mexico.

00:19:02.000 | For that reason, it's world-class.

00:19:05.000 | To answer your question, that was the long one

00:19:07.000 | to bring everyone along with us.

00:19:10.000 | The fees that he mentioned will be fees

00:19:12.000 | that are for the law firm, for their legal services,

00:19:15.000 | and also for the immigration fees,

00:19:18.000 | because there are immigration fees.

00:19:21.000 | You should not be scared of the fees.

00:19:23.000 | I don't know of a program in the world.

00:19:26.000 | Again, remember, you can do it yourself,

00:19:28.000 | and you can look up all the fees

00:19:29.000 | for the Mexican government online.

00:19:31.000 | I have done immigration processes myself

00:19:33.000 | in other places, and I have learned not to do it.

00:19:36.000 | Just hire a lawyer. Have the lawyer do it for you.

00:19:39.000 | It makes everything so easy and so fast.

00:19:41.000 | You go to Mexico for a couple days, in and out,

00:19:43.000 | boom, you're done. It's the way to go.

00:19:46.000 | Don't worry about it at your level of wealth.

00:19:48.000 | Don't even think twice about it.

00:19:50.000 | Either decide that I'm going to do something,

00:19:52.000 | in which case, just do it, or decide,

00:19:54.000 | "Oh, I have no interest in offshore

00:19:56.000 | internationalization stuff," and then skip it.

00:19:58.000 | But don't let the money cause you

00:20:01.000 | any stumbling blocks at this point.

00:20:04.000 | - Okay. I appreciate it, because I remember you saying

00:20:08.000 | you would only do it with a lawyer going forward,

00:20:10.000 | and you speak Spanish, and I don't,

00:20:12.000 | and you're a world traveler, and I am not.

00:20:14.000 | So for that reason alone, I was going with Enrique

00:20:18.000 | or some sort of lawyer to help.

00:20:20.000 | You did say something there that's a little bit different

00:20:23.000 | than what you guys said in the interview, though.

00:20:25.000 | It sounded like you said you can get a one,

00:20:27.000 | and you might just be maybe getting confused

00:20:29.000 | because you have multiple countries you're dealing with.

00:20:32.000 | But I'm not sure if the first time you can get

00:20:35.000 | a three-year temporary residency, or--

00:20:39.000 | - You cannot.

00:20:41.000 | - You cannot. Okay. So you have to kind of do it every year.

00:20:43.000 | - First time, it's one year.

00:20:45.000 | Second time, it's maximum of three years.

00:20:48.000 | - Ah, I see. I see. Okay.

00:20:51.000 | - So it's one year, then three years, then permanent.

00:20:55.000 | - And then permanent. Okay. That clarifies.

00:20:57.000 | That jives with the interview, too.

00:20:59.000 | - And then if you want to apply for citizenship in Mexico,

00:21:03.000 | you need to be a permanent resident for at least two years,

00:21:07.000 | and then you can make an application for citizenship.

00:21:10.000 | And then you must have been physically present inside Mexico

00:21:14.000 | for 18 out of 24 months prior to your citizenship application.

00:21:20.000 | - That's correct, yeah.

00:21:21.000 | And that interview does describe that exactly, yeah.

00:21:24.000 | - So for this reason, Mexico is actually one of the fastest pathways

00:21:28.000 | to a second citizenship in the world

00:21:30.000 | if we measure fast by days on the ground.

00:21:35.000 | It's not fast under this process of one year, three years,

00:21:40.000 | because you have to wait four years, and then two more years.

00:21:42.000 | But if you want to spend a modest amount of time in another country,

00:21:46.000 | and you want a country that will actually naturalize you,

00:21:49.000 | unlike some of the places that are talked about

00:21:51.000 | in the international world, then it is possible to you.

00:21:57.000 | The only way to speed it up is have a baby in Mexico,

00:21:59.000 | or of course have another relative.

00:22:01.000 | Then you can get permanent residency immediately,

00:22:03.000 | and then you can apply for citizenship in as little as, again, two years.

00:22:07.000 | - Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

00:22:10.000 | - Yeah. Let me make one more comment on Mexico,

00:22:12.000 | because I don't talk as much as I should about it.

00:22:15.000 | But I am convinced myself that the next couple of decades

00:22:19.000 | are going to be the decades of Mexican success.

00:22:23.000 | When you look on a global basis at various countries in the world

00:22:27.000 | and which countries are poised for growth and for success,

00:22:31.000 | I am convinced that when we're looking back,

00:22:33.000 | and I'm putting this on the record, when we're looking back in 2042,

00:22:37.000 | these are going to be just massive decades of growth for Mexico.

00:22:43.000 | I mean that economically, just across the board.

00:22:46.000 | Every single metric that I can think of that would drive growth in an economy,

00:22:53.000 | for Mexico, it's very, very high and very, very powerful.

00:22:56.000 | Their demographics are world-class,

00:22:59.000 | meaning that you have one of the few young, vibrant population groups in the world

00:23:06.000 | that is actually still growing.

00:23:08.000 | Most of the big countries of the world are in such dramatic population decline

00:23:13.000 | that it's horrific if we look forward over the next couple of decades.

00:23:16.000 | A few countries are making it based upon immigration.

00:23:20.000 | The United States is barely making it based upon immigration.

00:23:23.000 | Countries like Canada, Canada is importing every year as many immigrants

00:23:28.000 | as they can possibly bring in to make up for the collapsing population.

00:23:33.000 | They're desperately trying to bring in immigrants.

00:23:36.000 | Europe, desperate.

00:23:38.000 | European demographics are absolutely collapsing,

00:23:41.000 | and the only thing that is making it up is immigration.

00:23:44.000 | So the problem in those countries is that--

00:23:47.000 | I mean think about immigration problems in the United States.

00:23:50.000 | I would say immigration problems in the United States are pretty slight

00:23:53.000 | because the United States is very, very good at bringing in immigrants

00:23:56.000 | and very, very good at accepting those immigrants, culturally speaking.

00:24:01.000 | The U.S. is world-class at assimilating immigrants from all around the world,

00:24:06.000 | but that's not the same in other places.

00:24:08.000 | And so many cultures are--many of these countries that are dying demographically

00:24:12.000 | because they're not having any children,

00:24:15.000 | they're struggling with how do we assimilate immigrants.

00:24:19.000 | They don't know how to do it.

00:24:21.000 | So the U.S. I think is--the U.S. is doing poorly,

00:24:24.000 | but it's doing less poorly than most of the competitors.

00:24:27.000 | Mexican demographics are fantastic.

00:24:30.000 | They have a growing population, a young, very well-educated population.

00:24:34.000 | They've got tremendous--like industrialization, right?

00:24:39.000 | They've got tremendous levels of industrialization, great levels of experience.

00:24:43.000 | And the story of the last couple of decades was going to be,

00:24:46.000 | "Oh, China, China, China."

00:24:48.000 | China has imploded right now.

00:24:50.000 | China is imploding.

00:24:51.000 | When you look at what they have done with the coronavirus pandemic,

00:24:54.000 | the global shipping fiascos,

00:24:56.000 | then you look at what they've done with their zero-COVID policy.

00:24:59.000 | When you look at some of the internal weaknesses in China,

00:25:03.000 | most--I can't imagine any company anywhere that manufactures things in China

00:25:09.000 | that is honestly saying, "Yeah, let's go ahead and continue to pin all of our hopes

00:25:13.000 | and all of our manufacturing capacity on China going forward,"

00:25:16.000 | because you see the vulnerability.

00:25:19.000 | And then the costs in China are increasing so dramatically

00:25:22.000 | that it's cheaper for so many companies to move their manufacturing to Mexico.

00:25:26.000 | And Mexico is not just a manufacturing country.

00:25:30.000 | They're not just making it into some kind of maquila that's just there to produce.

00:25:38.000 | It's a legit, diverse economy.

00:25:42.000 | So I think looking forward over the next 20 years,

00:25:45.000 | my prediction is that economically Mexico is going to be a powerhouse.

00:25:49.000 | And so, yes, residency and citizenship and all that in Mexico,

00:25:54.000 | yeah, that can be nice for a backup plan.

00:25:57.000 | But I think just in terms of genuinely wanting to have access to a place

00:26:01.000 | with huge opportunity, I think Mexico should be on the short list of places

00:26:06.000 | that have a tremendously bright future.

00:26:10.000 | So time will tell if I'm right or not, but that's my personal bet.

00:26:14.000 | Yeah, the story sounds like it makes sense to me as far as just demographics alone

00:26:21.000 | seem to support that story for sure.

00:26:25.000 | Thank you so much.

00:26:27.000 | Absolutely.

00:26:28.000 | Then we look forward to George Friedman's predicted war between the United States

00:26:31.000 | and Mexico at the end of the 21st century.

00:26:33.000 | But that's a conversation for another day.

00:26:36.000 | All right, we go to the great state of Utah.

00:26:38.000 | Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

00:26:42.000 | Hi, Jeffrey here.

00:26:43.000 | Jeffrey, welcome.

00:26:45.000 | Thank you, Joshua. Thanks for your time today.

00:26:47.000 | Just real quick, I need to just acknowledge you for opening the door to me

00:26:53.000 | to a world that I never imagined that I could step into.

00:26:59.000 | Over the last several years, you've given me a lot of inspiration

00:27:04.000 | and a lot of encouragement.

00:27:06.000 | You've helped me gain a lot of knowledge, and I really appreciate you for that.

00:27:09.000 | Thank you for that.

00:27:10.000 | My pleasure. It's my pleasure to do so.

00:27:13.000 | My question is regarding homeschooling.

00:27:18.000 | I've intently listened to all of your words on that.

00:27:24.000 | I'm interested in doing that for my children.

00:27:29.000 | I've got a unique set of circumstances.

00:27:32.000 | I've got a 5-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 13-year-old.

00:27:35.000 | I share my 13-year-old with his mom, and that's a whole different conversation.

00:27:42.000 | I might have to pull out the therapy couch and that one.

00:27:46.000 | But he's struggling in school.

00:27:51.000 | Hold on a second. I'm losing your audio.

00:27:56.000 | You were saying he's struggling in school.

00:27:58.000 | Let's see if you can get a better signal. Go ahead.

00:28:00.000 | You were saying he's struggling in school, and then you dropped out on me.

00:28:03.000 | Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

00:28:05.000 | My 13-year-old is struggling in school.

00:28:07.000 | I think he would benefit from some one-on-one training.

00:28:11.000 | I share him with his mom.

00:28:15.000 | Anyway, my 8-year-old is doing really well in school.

00:28:20.000 | He's in second grade, and they want to put him in fourth grade next year.

00:28:24.000 | I don't want to do that because he's also very interested in sports.

00:28:28.000 | I don't know.

00:28:29.000 | There's all sorts of implications for skipping a grade that I don't think I'm interested in.

00:28:35.000 | And then my 5-year-old, she could, I think, benefit from homeschooling just for all the reasons that you've mentioned in the past.

00:28:43.000 | In order to get my 13-year-old to homeschool with me, because, again, I share him with his mom,

00:28:51.000 | I think that's really exciting, and I have to do some traveling, and that's something I have to do anyway.

00:28:56.000 | I'm afraid I might not be financially ready.

00:28:59.000 | A couple of different points that you've made.

00:29:01.000 | You've told me that I'm one of the 1% of the richest people in the world in the past, based on other people's calls.

00:29:09.000 | And you've also told me to keep working because of inflation.

00:29:13.000 | So I want to chat about that with you for a minute, if you wouldn't mind.

00:29:21.000 | So my question is around, should I homeschool?

00:29:25.000 | And I think that's a really good question, because I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:31.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:33.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:35.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:37.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:39.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:41.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:43.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:45.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:47.000 | I think that's a really good question for me.

00:29:49.000 | We remember that you can and you should homeschool, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should withdraw your child from the school that he is in.

00:29:59.000 | So you may choose, and I think many cases you should choose, to support a child who is not doing well, if you can do that without pulling your child out.

00:30:12.000 | Now, I'm a big fan of pulling your child out.

00:30:15.000 | I'll give you the strong case for that in a moment.

00:30:17.000 | But I do believe that it's important to always acknowledge that it's not necessary in all cases to do one or the other.

00:30:25.000 | One story from my life.

00:30:28.000 | When I was a—I was homeschooled through seventh grade, and because I cheated a lot, I wasn't very good at math when I went into school.

00:30:35.000 | So they put me a little bit ahead, but I was falling behind.

00:30:37.000 | I got a D in math in my first semester in eighth grade.

00:30:41.000 | And I brought my report card home.

00:30:43.000 | My dad looked at it, and he said, "Joshua, this is unacceptable.

00:30:46.000 | This is going to change."

00:30:47.000 | So what he did was he homeschooled me to supplement the math school.

00:30:51.000 | And so every single day I had to bring him my homework.

00:30:53.000 | I brought him every single test.

00:30:54.000 | He went over every single problem with me.

00:30:56.000 | I got a D the first quarter.

00:30:58.000 | I got a C the second quarter.

00:30:59.000 | I got a B the third quarter.

00:31:00.000 | And then from then on, I got As.

00:31:02.000 | So he homeschooled me, but it was supplemental.

00:31:04.000 | So that's just a silly story from my life.

00:31:06.000 | But it is important to recognize that you need to clarify, like, why is my son struggling, and then identify, is there something that I can do to support his struggles?

00:31:17.000 | So let me give some general examples of this.

00:31:20.000 | If your son is struggling in math, you can support that.

00:31:23.000 | In my experience as a student, one of the reasons people struggle in math is they have no time to actually do math.

00:31:30.000 | They just sit in class and hear lectures.

00:31:32.000 | They don't have enough time to do problems.

00:31:34.000 | And the teacher is constantly under a pressure to assign less homework because they don't wind up doing enough math to actually get good at math.

00:31:40.000 | So you might start -- this is, you know, our school, our math school.

00:31:44.000 | If a child is not doing well in science or something like that, you can look to say, is it a problem of interest?

00:31:51.000 | How can I make it more interesting?

00:31:53.000 | Is it a problem of materials?

00:31:54.000 | How can I supplement this?

00:31:56.000 | And if it's a specific subject that's not doing well, then you can possibly reinforce that.

00:32:04.000 | If your child is not doing well socially, then you may be able to reinforce and help your child to change his perception so that he can improve socially.

00:32:14.000 | You know, put a 13-year-old in the weight room.

00:32:17.000 | I think that can do untold good.

00:32:20.000 | Take him and teach him to fight.

00:32:22.000 | Teach him to dance.

00:32:23.000 | You know, help him lose weight.

00:32:25.000 | Help him build some competence in an area where he shines out or something like that.

00:32:30.000 | And you can possibly support his social life or just teach him about how to interact with other people in a socially confident way.

00:32:37.000 | So I'm big in favor of pull your child out.

00:32:41.000 | But before you do that, ask yourself very clearly, have I done what I need to do to support this particular child in his school?

00:32:50.000 | Because especially given the joint custody issues, especially given that, that may be as close as you can get.

00:32:57.000 | There are a lot of fathers who don't even share joint custody, and they have very minimal parental rights who are desperately trying to support their children.

00:33:05.000 | But they have no ability, even legally, given their lack of custody power, they have no ability to make these decisions for their child.

00:33:14.000 | The reason I'm pointing out some of these options is to hopefully support those men, those women, so that they can recognize it's not always all or nothing.

00:33:23.000 | You know, there have been teachers all throughout the years who have found a student who's doing poorly, but have taken an interest in that student and have supported the student, have encouraged the student, have motivated the student, have given the student extra work, extra tutoring, extra inspiration.

00:33:37.000 | And that student has been able to blossom and flourish without being pulled out.

00:33:42.000 | So, consider that.

00:33:45.000 | Now, moving on.

00:33:48.000 | I believe that as a father, if you love your children, as undoubtedly you do, one of the guiding goals in life is going to be for you to see to their well-being.

00:34:04.000 | You want to see your children succeed, and you want to see your children flourish.

00:34:08.000 | If you do not do everything that you're capable of doing and everything that you know to do towards that end, you may come to regret it.

00:34:18.000 | Some of the greatest joy and some of the bitterest pain that old people experience comes from their children.

00:34:27.000 | From their children's success in life, from their children's failures in life, from their children's smart decisions, from their poor decisions.

00:34:35.000 | So, talk to old people, and you see that their greatest joys and their bitterest pain comes from their children.

00:34:43.000 | So, if we know that that's going to be a major factor down the road, then it behooves us to take every action possible at any age possible to improve the situation.

00:34:56.000 | And so, if at 13 years old, and again, I'm not doing this specific to your child, but if at 13 years old, your child needs a radical intervention, then you must intervene.

00:35:09.000 | Because at 13 years old, you will have a much higher possibility of being able to salvage him, salvage your relationship, salvage something, than you will at 23 years old or at 18 years old.

00:35:25.000 | And so, if money is the thing that is holding you back, if you have money, I believe that's one of the best investments you will make.

00:35:34.000 | And so, the reason I'm emphasizing this so strongly is we have to get our psychology right.

00:35:40.000 | We're preached to day after day after day by the financial industry, by personal finance books, etc., to get rich, get rich, get rich, get rich, which is great.

00:35:51.000 | But what for? Why?

00:35:53.000 | What's the point of getting rich? Why are we doing it all?

00:35:56.000 | We're not doing it all so that we can watch our children turn into bullies, right?

00:36:01.000 | We're not doing it all that we can watch our children turn into bullied people.

00:36:05.000 | We're not doing it so that we can watch our children start cutting themselves and start drinking too much and start doing drugs and take a gun to school and shoot up a classroom.

00:36:14.000 | So, these are the scenarios that so many of us parents face.

00:36:19.000 | So, it behooves us to get our priorities right and recognize that my primary job and my primary responsibility as a member of society is to raise my children so that they are a blessing to society.

00:36:32.000 | And although we cannot control the eventual outcome, there are many good parents who wind up facing the pain of knowing they have done everything possible, everything they need to do.

00:36:43.000 | And due to their children's own individual decisions, their children have gone to hell.

00:36:50.000 | We still don't want to leave anything back.

00:36:55.000 | Now, you don't sound like you're in an extreme situation, but I believe that it's good to start from that perspective and say,

00:37:01.000 | "If my son is cutting himself every day and he's depressed and suicidal, what would I do? Would I intervene?"

00:37:12.000 | Yeah, I would intervene.

00:37:14.000 | And if you were in a severe situation like that, then I would say intervene drastically.

00:37:19.000 | I recommend one of my top parenting books is the book Hold On to Your Children.

00:37:25.000 | And it's such a good book.

00:37:27.000 | And the author, I think it's Neufeld, something like that, Gordon someone or other, and Gabor Matei, hard names to pronounce.

00:37:35.000 | The authors, they go through that and they explain kind of how, as a parent, the basic concept of the book is that we're living in the modern age in something fundamentally new when it comes to parent-child relationships.

00:37:48.000 | And that is that we have built a culture where our young people are becoming peer-focused rather than peer-oriented, rather than parent-oriented or adult-oriented.

00:38:04.000 | For virtually all of human history, in virtually all historic cultures that we can study, we have always seen that young people have taken their cues and their input from adults rather than peers of their own age.

00:38:19.000 | So these cues and inputs vary.

00:38:22.000 | Sometimes you have kind of very family-oriented cultures where it's mom and dad who are central.

00:38:28.000 | Sometimes it's the village elders.

00:38:30.000 | Sometimes it's just simply adult leaders in the community.

00:38:34.000 | But since World War II, we've created this thing called youth culture.

00:38:39.000 | And so what's happening is that children are taking their cues and their input about how they should live and what they should do from their peers much more than their parents.

00:38:52.000 | And as parents, we're often reinforcing this.

00:38:55.000 | We're encouraging our children to go and to be connected or to use the words, the language that those therapists use in the book.

00:39:03.000 | We're encouraging children to be attached to their peers primarily.

00:39:08.000 | But this is really deadly and destructive because parents have unconditional love for children.

00:39:14.000 | Peers, on the other hand, have very conditional, any kind of, it's all conditional.

00:39:21.000 | And parents know how to overlook small things.

00:39:25.000 | Peers take offense.

00:39:26.000 | Parents have wisdom that comes with age that they can -- or adults.

00:39:30.000 | It doesn't have to just be parents.

00:39:31.000 | Parents and adults have the wisdom that comes with age that we understand that this too shall pass or we understand that this small thing.

00:39:38.000 | But peers don't.

00:39:39.000 | And you see this.

00:39:40.000 | You see this across the culture as children are becoming increasingly peer-oriented, and they're taking their cues from their peers.

00:39:48.000 | If you look at various -- you look at various trends and manias that happen.

00:39:53.000 | You know, for a time, last decade, there was a big focus on food disorders, right?

00:39:59.000 | And you have these pandemics of everyone in my class is bulimic.

00:40:03.000 | Today it's transgenderism, right?

00:40:04.000 | You have this like -- this constant peer pressure to say like, oh, well, am I a boy?

00:40:10.000 | Am I a girl?

00:40:11.000 | Or maybe I'm gay.

00:40:12.000 | Maybe I'm not.

00:40:13.000 | And youths are wrestling with these things when they don't have any of the equipment to wrestle with it, and they're seeking out their peers for influence and advice rather than older people for influence and advice.

00:40:25.000 | So I guess my -- I got a little carried away.

00:40:28.000 | The comment is that if your child were facing something severe, then you would absolutely intervene.

00:40:37.000 | If your child -- and you should, right?

00:40:40.000 | If your child is getting mixed up with the wrong crowd and he's, you know, shooting up drugs and joining a gang and committing violence and questioning everything, you would pull him out of school and you'd go to a rural ranch in the middle of Wyoming and you would spend time living on the ranch working cows.

00:40:59.000 | Or you'd go hike the Appalachian Trail.

00:41:01.000 | You'd do something like that.

00:41:02.000 | So the point is, bracket up to the situation that sounds like you're probably facing.

00:41:08.000 | Know that that's where it could go.

00:41:10.000 | So if you intervene early when it's relatively easy, when your son is 13 and it's much easier to reattach to you, and when his struggles are perhaps more modest, then it's just easier and cheaper to go ahead and do the things.

00:41:24.000 | So I went into that monologue because we spend so much time looking at the money and talking about the money that it becomes this overpowering force to us and we don't recognize that if you had the choice to save your child's life, you would spend every dollar you had instantly.

00:41:39.000 | If your son were facing a medical issue, you wouldn't even think twice about the money.

00:41:44.000 | You would spend every dollar you had with the hope of saving your son's life.

00:41:48.000 | So when you identify that something needs to change, then give it the same weight and power and recognize that I can probably just take a little bit of money.

00:41:59.000 | Maybe take a year off from work or whatever it is that you're considering and recognize that that may turn out to be one of the best, most rewarding investments that I could possibly make.

00:42:09.000 | So there's my introduction to kind of set the stage.

00:42:12.000 | Now let's talk about some specifics.

00:42:14.000 | Go ahead, Jeffrey.

00:42:17.000 | Yeah.

00:42:19.000 | That's, as always, really great insight and encouragement and inspiration.

00:42:27.000 | I guess what can you guide me on what specifics to give you?

00:42:34.000 | Yeah. So what are you thinking about doing?

00:42:36.000 | First, what do you think you can do?

00:42:38.000 | Well, let me change that.

00:42:41.000 | You want to reengage your son and you want to obviously engage him in a relationship with you.

00:42:46.000 | You want to support him and you want to see him go from struggling in school to flourishing.

00:42:51.000 | What are some of the ideas that you have that you think may help him on that journey?

00:42:56.000 | Yeah.

00:42:57.000 | And by the way, in your monologue, you uncovered a lot of other stuff that was unsaid.

00:43:05.000 | So I was very, very insightful of you to kind of pull out some of that other stuff, including the connection between me and my 13-year-old.

00:43:17.000 | I think some, I guess, an idea that I have is frankly to move to another country.

00:43:25.000 | And, you know, for me, it's almost kind of a selfish thing because that's something I'm interested in doing.

00:43:30.000 | I'm very interested in Spanish learning and immersing myself in the culture, a Spanish-speaking culture.

00:43:39.000 | So that's something I'm interested in.

00:43:41.000 | I think that that would be, you know, at this point, now that he's 13, it's less about what his mom wants and it's less about what his dad wants.

00:43:47.000 | And it's more about what he wants.

00:43:49.000 | So I feel like if I was going to compel him or inspire him to do homeschooling with me, it would have to be in some exotic place that would excite him.

00:44:00.000 | So that's kind of my thought there.

00:44:04.000 | I did just change my career a year ago and I'm a school teacher now.

00:44:08.000 | So in spending the last year in the school system directly, I've seen a lot of what you've said happens.

00:44:17.000 | It's that teachers have their hands tied in a lot of ways.

00:44:21.000 | And they're often teaching to the students that, you know, that frankly that need it most.

00:44:30.000 | And you're missing out on a lot of opportunities to teach other students and to go beyond the curriculum and something I see for him.

00:44:40.000 | And really just, like you said, condensing our school days into a few hours and then spending a lot of time engaging and exploring.

00:44:50.000 | Do you think that given the custody arrangement that you have with his mother, do you think that you would be able to find a solution that involves extensive time abroad that she would be okay with and that you would be able to handle given the legal agreement between you?

00:45:06.000 | I wouldn't probably want to take it to court to change the paperwork.

00:45:14.000 | We do have joint legal and physical custody, so I don't know that I would push that.

00:45:20.000 | I would probably be able to, you know, with his help, right, I would probably be able to convince her to let us go for a long period.

00:45:31.000 | Maybe not a school year entirely, but I think six months abroad or three months here and then come back for a few weeks and then go again for three months.

00:45:42.000 | Do you have a guess of a country that would be attractive to you or a specific kind of lifestyle that would be attractive to you?

00:45:52.000 | I find myself drawn, for whatever reason, to Colombia, other than just some anecdotal evidence of the nature of Medellin and the fact that, you know, from what I've heard, it's kind of along the same lines as what you were saying earlier about Mexico.

00:46:14.000 | And the next few decades, I think, are going to be a very fruitful time for that area.

00:46:19.000 | I agree. Where in the United States are you located now?

00:46:23.000 | Northern Utah.

00:46:25.000 | Okay. So, and then in terms of lifestyle or kind of what you think your son would, what would help him, what are some things that, setting aside academics, what are some lifestyle things that you think he might really benefit from in terms of how you would live if you were to relocate to Colombia for a time?

00:46:46.000 | You know, I think just going back to increasing the connection between us is always very important to me.

00:47:01.000 | But as far as extracurricular stuff, you know, I haven't, honestly, I don't, that's one thing I'd like to kind of draw out of him is what he's interested in. I'm constantly trying to get him to join a chess club or some other kind of, you know, or basketball or a lot of, you know, I'm trying to get him involved in stuff.

00:47:24.000 | But he really does, he enjoys, he enjoys hanging out with his family and I think his mom has lots of video games. So he's really interested in video games at his mom's house. And we've got a few at our house that we play, but nothing quite, you know, we just have like really antiquated kind of video games.

00:47:44.000 | And so, but he's really interested in that. And I'd really, I'd really like to draw out some of the, some interests that are, that might be hidden.

00:47:55.000 | Do you think he, of his own accord, has ever thought about traveling the world or ever kind of imagined what that would be like?

00:48:04.000 | Maybe, we've talked about it. We've definitely had conversations about it. And we actually are planning a trip to Columbia in just a few weeks. We're going to go for four weeks.

00:48:17.000 | Perfect.

00:48:18.000 | Yeah, we're going to go for four weeks and try it out, you know, for the summer. And we're going to do some homeschooling while we're there.

00:48:25.000 | Right.

00:48:26.000 | So we are going to go explore it and see, and see how it, you know, an experiment. I think, I think you would, I think you would have.

00:48:33.000 | Absolutely.

00:48:34.000 | The onboard.

00:48:35.000 | Absolutely. Yeah. So I guess in general, Columbia, so Columbia is a huge country. It has so many different things to offer that you'll find just by going and doing different things.

00:48:49.000 | I think the key is just to try to help in some way draw out of him the kinds of things that he's interested in.

00:48:58.000 | Obviously, that's a starting point because you want to get buy-in. You know, at 13, of course, you can push him around and make him go somewhere.

00:49:04.000 | But certainly, he's at the age in which you want there to be buy-in from him. And so then what's the problem?

00:49:12.000 | The problem is 13-year-olds have no idea of the options that are available to them in life.

00:49:15.000 | So you're kind of balancing this, this, this tightrope of I want to draw out from you what you would be interested in, but I also want to show you that there are lots of things that you don't know and introduce you to things that you might be interested in, in the future.

00:49:30.000 | And so I think that the fact that you have a four-week trip planned there is perfect.

00:49:35.000 | And then what I would encourage you to do is certainly spend some time in the guidebooks going through, you know, have him go through in preparation for the trip, have him read through The Lonely Planet Columbia or other guidebooks that you might find.

00:49:50.000 | Have him think about some of the things that are available and then try while you're there to have a time of diverse experiences doing different things that will engage him.

00:50:01.000 | And if you'll do that and really listen to him and have him have a hand in planning it, you'll get a sense of the things that he's into and you may be able to really just have it be an awesome time.

00:50:12.000 | And then imagine, okay, what would we do if we were going to come here for six months at a time?

00:50:17.000 | What are some of the things that we would do?

00:50:19.000 | What are some of the classes we would take?

00:50:20.000 | What are some of the activities we would do?

00:50:22.000 | Look around and see if you can see some social circle for him.

00:50:26.000 | That might be an expatriate group, an expat group of some kind.

00:50:30.000 | It might be a homeschooling group.

00:50:32.000 | It might be a local club, right?

00:50:34.000 | It could be a local chess club or a local dance club or a local teenage kind of youth camp or something like that.

00:50:42.000 | And just look for opportunities and then see what he reacts to.

00:50:46.000 | I think as I see it, it's important to try to help find some anchoring lifestyle ideas, right?

00:50:54.000 | Maybe he creates an interest in surfing or in horseback riding or in capoeira or something that he winds up being interested in.

00:51:04.000 | Then that gives you kind of an anchoring point to say, "Hey, this will be part of our life.

00:51:08.000 | Let's build a lifestyle where we can have more of this in our life."

00:51:11.000 | Maybe it's hiking.

00:51:12.000 | Maybe it's camping.

00:51:13.000 | Maybe it's sitting on the beach and I don't know.

00:51:15.000 | And then you can start thinking.

00:51:19.000 | Then you would have kind of an anchoring thing that he'd be excited about.

00:51:22.000 | And then you can start to add in and adjust the schooling in a way that would be helpful and appropriate for him.

00:51:29.000 | Yes, very good.

00:51:33.000 | Yeah, that's great.

00:51:36.000 | And I really appreciate your ideas about just kind of adjusting what's going on here in Utah and maybe not just quitting my job,

00:51:50.000 | but really taking this seriously, this opportunity, having a 13-year-old, and maybe reevaluate my schedule at work such that we're having a conversation.

00:52:04.000 | And maybe that's a great path to go down.

00:52:09.000 | Right.

00:52:10.000 | I would say that if you can swing it with the appropriate care and whatnot for your other children,

00:52:16.000 | I think especially at 13 years old, having in your schedule a good amount of father and son alone time on some kind of epic, cool thing.

00:52:27.000 | Maybe it's mountain biking and Moab together or hiking together or doing some activity, just any activity, but really engaging in that relationship.

00:52:38.000 | Regardless of what international travel looks like for you, this is that phase at which you've got to be so close to him.

00:52:46.000 | Because the only way that he's going to survive the coming years and the onslaught of decisions, the onslaught of successes and setbacks,

00:52:54.000 | the onslaught of hormonal changes, the onslaught of big life decisions,

00:52:58.000 | the only way that he's going to survive this is if you and he are trusted confidants and that you have a close relationship and he's looking to you for guidance.

00:53:07.000 | And so pick up that book.

00:53:09.000 | I mean, I love that book that I mentioned, Hold On To Your Kids.

00:53:11.000 | Pick it up if you haven't read it and think about it and then be really intentional with your son.

00:53:17.000 | Be really intentional about consistently attaching him to you in very, very consistent ways so that he can experience what you can give him as a father that his peers can't.

00:53:29.000 | And there's no disagreement between that and him having great friendships, having great peer-to-peer friendships.

00:53:40.000 | But peer-to-peer friendships can't be the primary source of orientation for a young person.

00:53:46.000 | Otherwise, that young person gets bad advice.

00:53:49.000 | They don't get the emotional needs met that they need.

00:53:52.000 | It's really destructive.

00:53:54.000 | So hear me clearly.

00:53:57.000 | I love traveling.

00:53:59.000 | I love traveling.

00:54:00.000 | And if someone had offered me at 13 years old the chance to go to another country for six months or to go on the road for a year, I would have jumped at it.

00:54:09.000 | Not all people are like me.

00:54:10.000 | I think a lot of them just need a little exposure.

00:54:13.000 | There are a lot of young people who just aren't very adventurous.

00:54:16.000 | But I think a few nudges in another direction, they start to realize, you know what, this is actually really fun to be in new situations and see new things.

00:54:25.000 | So I love the idea.

00:54:27.000 | And the thing about traveling that's also really great is it does give you lots more time together than many other approaches.

00:54:36.000 | Time on airplanes, time in airports, time on buses, time in unique places where you can go and explore the town together.

00:54:44.000 | And teenagehood in the United States for many people has become this very scattered lifestyle.

00:54:53.000 | It's really hard to keep a family together.

00:54:56.000 | If your children have their school schedule, you have your work schedule.

00:55:01.000 | We've got soccer on Saturday.

00:55:03.000 | We've got Joey's house on Tuesday night.

00:55:05.000 | We've got dance club on Thursday.

00:55:07.000 | And if you actually count the amount of time that you spend with your children, sometimes it's a shockingly low amount of -- shockingly low number of minutes where you're awake together, where there are no interruptions, et cetera.

00:55:22.000 | So I don't think you need to travel the world to create that.

00:55:25.000 | But I do believe that traveling the world or inserting some other thing that's out of the norm is often one of the best ways to interrupt the pattern.

00:55:34.000 | Because it can just be a natural way of interrupting all of normal life.

00:55:40.000 | You might secretly scheme in your head that, hey, all you're doing is spending nonstop time chatting with your friends.

00:55:48.000 | I'm going to take you away from a cell phone signal.

00:55:51.000 | And, yeah, you'll have Wi-Fi here and there, but I'm going to take you away for a time.

00:55:55.000 | But traveling makes it easier to do that than as a father you say, I'm cutting you off.

00:56:01.000 | So sometimes you can just use circumstances to interrupt the patterns, create new and healthy patterns, and then even if you go back to relatively normal life, you can go back rebeginning at a different place.

00:56:13.000 | Very good.

00:56:15.000 | All right.

00:56:16.000 | This is great stuff.

00:56:18.000 | One quick, real quick follow-up.

00:56:20.000 | And it's interesting.

00:56:22.000 | I'm tempted to ask all these questions about money, but it's like just kind of shows my brainwash.

00:56:28.000 | And it's like what's the most important thing?

00:56:30.000 | And you've elucidated that for me, so thank you.

00:56:33.000 | But real quick, as far as have you been to Medellín?

00:56:37.000 | I have not been to Medellín.

00:56:39.000 | I have been to other places in Colombia, but not to Medellín.

00:56:42.000 | Okay, very good.

00:56:44.000 | I'm going to have a five-year-old, little blonde five-year-old in tow with me, little girl, and an eight-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy.

00:56:50.000 | Just regarding safety, I mean, you've talked a lot about that in the past.

00:56:55.000 | I wonder, would you be willing to just say a couple words about safety?

00:57:00.000 | Yes.

00:57:02.000 | The world loves children.

00:57:04.000 | Traveling with children is one of the best ways to break down cultural barriers.

00:57:08.000 | It's wonderful.

00:57:10.000 | And if you have little toe-headed children and you're in a dark-haired culture, you are an exotic kind of special.

00:57:18.000 | You're a special and exotic person.

00:57:20.000 | And all around the world, the world is full of kind-hearted adults and parents who carefully want to look out for children and protect them.

00:57:30.000 | Traveling with children is one of the best experiences in the world because they break down the barriers among cultures.

00:57:37.000 | Your children, you can go to a park.

00:57:39.000 | Your children find playmates.

00:57:40.000 | All of a sudden, you wind up chatting with parents, etc.

00:57:43.000 | It's absolutely wonderful.

00:57:45.000 | You're going to have a great time.

00:57:47.000 | In terms of safety considerations, are there things that you should be careful of?

00:57:53.000 | Yeah, of course.

00:57:54.000 | Don't get involved in drugs.

00:57:56.000 | Don't go to nightclubs.

00:57:57.000 | Don't get involved in gangs.

00:57:59.000 | Don't solicit prostitutes.

00:58:00.000 | Don't get involved in the underworld of any city in the world because that's where most of the danger comes from.

00:58:06.000 | If you look at people who are murdered and you look at people who are kidnapped and you look at people who are robbed,

00:58:11.000 | much of the time it's because they're doing stupid stuff with stupid people in stupid places at stupid times of the day.

00:58:17.000 | With children, generally, you have a built-in reason to avoid most of that.

00:58:22.000 | But if you just avoid doing drugs, buying drugs, selling drugs, soliciting prostitutes, looking at women who don't belong to you, getting involved in back alleys and stupid stuff,

00:58:34.000 | you can avoid the vast majority of danger zones.

00:58:38.000 | Could you do something in addition to that?

00:58:40.000 | I would say, number one, don't flaunt your wealth.

00:58:43.000 | That's always an important thing.

00:58:45.000 | A city like Medellin is very much like a city like New York.

00:58:48.000 | It's a big, bustling city, modern city.

00:58:51.000 | If you went to New York, you would take certain precautions because cities attract certain elements of crime and they make it easy for criminals to get…

00:59:01.000 | The anonymity of a large city makes it easy for criminals to target people.

00:59:10.000 | So what you want to avoid is you want to avoid being targeted.

00:59:13.000 | When people are kidnapped in a culture, for example, or someone's children are kidnapped, they're usually a high-profile person, a celebrity, a well-known businessman, somebody who's known to be wealthy.

00:59:23.000 | So if you minimize your outward expressions of wealth, then that's a significant improvement in your safety.

00:59:32.000 | From a practical perspective, you need to teach your children that you do need to stay close and stay together.

00:59:38.000 | Stay together and stay close.

00:59:40.000 | If you're looking for one more useful thing, one of the best useful things that you can do is attach to your children an Apple AirTag.

00:59:50.000 | AirTags are the coolest invention in the modern world that give you the ability to geolocate anything or anybody.

00:59:57.000 | And so while you're traveling, attach an Apple AirTag to your children.

01:00:02.000 | Put it in their belt.

01:00:04.000 | Duct tape it to their back if you're particularly worried.

01:00:07.000 | Make sure it's just concealed somewhere on their person.

01:00:09.000 | Take their shoe and stick it in their shoe or something like that.

01:00:12.000 | And then you'll have a locator device on your children whenever they're wearing that garment, and that will help to alleviate your mind as well.

01:00:21.000 | But focus on the first thing that I said, that in my experience, traveling the world with children is wonderful.

01:00:28.000 | And while it is true that there are dangers in the world and we want to be prudent, I have never experienced a situation anywhere in the world where I've actually genuinely been concerned.

01:00:39.000 | And if I were, of course, leave. Pay attention to the hackles on the back of your neck.

01:00:42.000 | But you're going to have a great time.

01:00:45.000 | Very good. Thanks so much for your time, Joshua. Thanks for everything.

01:00:49.000 | My pleasure. All right. We go to the great state of Kansas. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

01:00:53.000 | Kansas 620. Yep, that's you. Go ahead.

01:01:00.000 | Okay. Hey, Joshua. My name is Eric. Longtime listener, first time caller. Thanks for taking me.

01:01:06.000 | I've got a quick question. You have mentioned before if you were doing our fee and you probably would do a business online without your personal name because of some privacy concerns and things like that.

01:01:19.000 | And so I'm wondering if you could speak on maybe how you would if you were doing this over again, maybe do business online without using your personal name.

01:01:30.000 | I, too, share some of your same sentiments about privacy and I've listened to some of your episodes even with Gabriel Consodiate.

01:01:37.000 | I just wondered if you could talk through maybe some ways that you thought about if I were doing this all over again, wanting to build an income in the business, especially online.

01:01:47.000 | How could I do that with privacy in mind?

01:01:49.000 | Yeah. If I were starting over again, I would focus exclusively on being a world-class marketer and selling other people's stuff to new markets.

01:02:00.000 | What has completely transformed the world of the Internet and the ability to target people with unique offers that are perfectly tailored to them has completely transformed the world of marketing.

01:02:13.000 | It was always available but there used to be you needed a certain size of a company, you needed a fairly large, you could be a copywriter for a company or something, but you always needed a certain scale in the past.

01:02:26.000 | Today, it is that those walls have been broken down.

01:02:30.000 | So I would become a really good affiliate marketer.

01:02:33.000 | I would potentially create products but I wouldn't do it necessarily in the public-facing way that I have done it.

01:02:39.000 | I would create products that are a little bit more niche.

01:02:43.000 | So I would get involved at ClickFunnels, is the world's leader in this right now.

01:02:48.000 | Some of the best marketing software, some of the best marketing courses.

01:02:52.000 | There are many, many people doing stuff with ClickFunnels and you can do stuff, you can still do it with physical products.

01:02:59.000 | So many people would choose information products.

01:03:01.000 | Many people will still brand their products themselves, of course, because it's powerful.

01:03:05.000 | But you can target people with offers and sell stuff that has no connection to you.

01:03:10.000 | You can do affiliate marketing and kind of bringing these online marketing skills together is really powerful.

01:03:18.000 | So you don't need your own products, you don't need your own face on anything, you don't need anything.

01:03:23.000 | All you need is the ability to find an offer, create compelling marketing for that offer and then target it effectively to the group of people who are interested in that offer.

01:03:34.000 | And that can all be done without any kind of public facing perspective.

01:03:40.000 | Great, thank you. That's really insightful.

01:03:46.000 | I was just wondering about that because it seems like especially when you're first starting off and trying to build an audience,

01:03:51.000 | most of the advice I've seen at least is always about putting yourself out there.

01:03:55.000 | But for those of us who don't necessarily want ourselves out there, I was just kind of curious as to how one would go about doing that.

01:04:03.000 | So thank you, I appreciate it.

01:04:04.000 | I would say also, even if you put yourself out there, remember, there's no reason why you have to put all of yourself out there.

01:04:11.000 | You can protect whatever it is that you personally care about protecting.

01:04:15.000 | There's no reason not to do business under a pen name or a professional name of some kind.

01:04:22.000 | That's not in any way a problem.

01:04:25.000 | So if you think about what you care about, I'm not particularly private when it comes to sharing about my life, my opinions, my perspectives, etc.

01:04:35.000 | I care about just a couple of things in terms of my privacy.

01:04:39.000 | I care about protecting the location of where my family sleeps at night.

01:04:44.000 | And I care about making sure that if and when I'm doxxed by an angry mob online, that I don't have to worry too much about what that means in terms of wackos showing up at my front door.

01:04:55.000 | That's about it.

01:04:56.000 | And even that is a pretty low risk.

01:04:58.000 | It's not that big of a risk.

01:04:59.000 | So beyond that, I'm pretty much an open book.

01:05:02.000 | But it is – well, I guess the other thing is that it's a little annoying sometimes if I show up to a border just to know about all the stuff that can be Googled about me.

01:05:12.000 | And my parents don't enjoy – sometimes they see things that people write about me and that just makes it hard on them.

01:05:18.000 | They don't like to see – and hear me clearly.

01:05:21.000 | So many people say very nice things and you and listeners and so many people give very complimentary things.

01:05:27.000 | So I'm not complaining at all.

01:05:31.000 | No complaints here.

01:05:33.000 | I have been extraordinarily blessed and I'm proud of the work that I've done.

01:05:37.000 | I'm happy to stand behind it and I have – so no complaints.

01:05:43.000 | But there are those times in which people say nasty things about you where your mom sees it and she's like, "Well, Joshua, why did they say this about you?"

01:05:51.000 | And I say, "Mom, don't even read it.

01:05:53.000 | Don't take your time."

01:05:54.000 | And so you can avoid that by just doing business under another name or something like – or a legal entity, et cetera.

01:05:59.000 | So there are many levels to privacy that you can scope out.

01:06:03.000 | The point is that if you are – you can do everything that you want to do completely anonymous, sometimes completely anonymously, and you can even have personality behind it.

01:06:14.000 | Gabriel, right?

01:06:16.000 | I have no idea what Gabriel's "real" name is.

01:06:19.000 | It doesn't matter to me a bit.

01:06:20.000 | His name is Gabriel.

01:06:21.000 | In the privacy space, I don't know what any of these guys' names are.

01:06:24.000 | Their names are what they say their names are.

01:06:26.000 | I don't care.

01:06:27.000 | I don't care a bit about their so "legal" information.

01:06:30.000 | I remember years ago when Mr. Money Mustache first started talking about his legal name.

01:06:36.000 | And I thought, "Why are you doing this?"

01:06:38.000 | Like, I don't care.

01:06:39.000 | I still call you Mr. Money Mustache.

01:06:40.000 | I'll call you that to your face.

01:06:42.000 | I don't care about what your "legal" name is.

01:06:44.000 | So what's funny is that a lot of people think that they feel weird if they just do business under an assumed name or a professional name.

01:06:53.000 | But it's always been this way.

01:06:55.000 | Whether you were a writer and you wrote under different names to have different personalities.

01:07:00.000 | Ben Franklin used to write under various pen names so he could publish all kinds of stuff when he was a kid.

01:07:06.000 | Over the years, there have been many women writers who wanted to write and not be perceived as a woman.

01:07:11.000 | Or men who wanted to be perceived as a woman, and so they write under a pen name.

01:07:14.000 | Nobody really cares, right?

01:07:16.000 | Mark Twain.

01:07:17.000 | We call Mark Twain Mark Twain, even though his legal name was something totally different.

01:07:22.000 | So I would say that you can still create a personality and you can do it in many ways.

01:07:29.000 | And today, it's easier than it's ever been to do that.

01:07:32.000 | So it is easier to create a following in certain cases if you will share more.

01:07:41.000 | If you'll be more transparent, share more of who you are.

01:07:45.000 | That's why the advice is there.

01:07:47.000 | But it's not impossible to do it the other way around.

01:07:50.000 | So if privacy is important to you, then just begin and be willing to do something.

01:07:55.000 | Either find a path that doesn't revolve around your being at the center of it,

01:08:00.000 | or be willing for it to take a longer time.

01:08:04.000 | One more comment.

01:08:06.000 | It's actually more powerful, I think, if you don't build a brand around your identity.

01:08:11.000 | So I don't think that radical personal finance is actually a great business in a sense because it's based around my personality.

01:08:19.000 | And so if I disappear, then a significant portion of what radical personal finance is disappears.

01:08:27.000 | So this makes it hard.

01:08:30.000 | Now you can possibly take a personality-based business and adjust it over time.

01:08:35.000 | But when Rush Limbaugh died, the EIB network was pretty much dead.

01:08:41.000 | I look at a guy like Dave Ramsey.

01:08:43.000 | Dave Ramsey has been working very diligently over the last 10 years to build his legacy,

01:08:49.000 | to have his name not be front and center all the time.

01:08:53.000 | He's promoted his daughter.

01:08:55.000 | He's promoted all of the people that work with him.

01:08:57.000 | He's trying to provide more products, etc.

01:08:59.000 | But he's still stuck.

01:09:00.000 | He's had great success in doing that, but he's still stuck with his name.

01:09:04.000 | If you are a behind-the-scenes marketer or you're a behind-the-scenes businessman,

01:09:08.000 | where it's not your name out on the front,

01:09:10.000 | then you wind up being able to actually take something and grow it much bigger.

01:09:14.000 | The classic example here, we could look at McDonald's.

01:09:16.000 | There were the McDonald's brothers who started the business.

01:09:19.000 | But then Ray Kroc came along, and he took McDonald's,

01:09:22.000 | and he disattached it from any people, and he made it an entity,

01:09:26.000 | and he was the guy behind the scenes.

01:09:28.000 | And so privacy is one compelling reason to pursue a model that doesn't have you front and center.

01:09:35.000 | But I think even a better model or a better reason is simply that your business can grow and scale beyond you.

01:09:41.000 | Because if you are at the front of it, it's always going to be constrained in some way.

01:09:45.000 | That's the other thing that annoys me about radical personal finance as a business.

01:09:50.000 | It seemed right at the time, and I'm glad that I did it.

01:09:52.000 | But other things that I work on in my own business life and other things that I'll do in the future,

01:09:57.000 | they won't have this constraint because I don't like--

01:10:00.000 | even though I love talking to the microphone, I love talking to people,

01:10:02.000 | I really enjoy what I do, I don't want to feel like I have to keep doing it in order for the business to go.

01:10:08.000 | But if I stop showing up, I stop putting out content, I stop doing stuff,

01:10:13.000 | then the whole brand declines dramatically.

01:10:17.000 | And in a perfect world, that's not what I would call a perfect business.

01:10:21.000 | I think that's an inferior business, and it's just a result of poor planning on this regard.

01:10:31.000 | OK, thank you. Thank you for that.

01:10:33.000 | And I mean, one more kind of side comment to that, because what you talked about in terms of what's important to you

01:10:39.000 | and what you want to protect, those are some of the things that I'm concerned about.

01:10:43.000 | And I mean, having worked in business for a while, it's pretty easy to find out who people are.

01:10:50.000 | A lot of Google-able information is out there.

01:10:54.000 | So do you have any resources or books or anything, episodes maybe, even in your archives,

01:10:59.000 | that would point to how we might go about setting up a new entity and doing this stuff more anonymously?

01:11:07.000 | An entity is sometimes a major privacy breach.

01:11:12.000 | So don't automatically assume that an entity improves your privacy.

01:11:17.000 | If you are concerned about privacy of your business, one of the most private ways that you can run a business

01:11:24.000 | is simply in your own name, but you just don't ever put your name on it.

01:11:29.000 | Because when you establish an entity, you now create a record of ownership,

01:11:33.000 | a record of information that is connected specifically to you, and there are legal requirements for that.

01:11:41.000 | There are states that will allow you to shield some of that information.

01:11:45.000 | These states are well known for not having the director of a company be public information.

01:11:51.000 | So you can use those states, you can use an attorney to facilitate the process,

01:11:55.000 | you can conceal to some degree the person who is behind an entity.

01:12:00.000 | But one of the most private forms of business is actually to simply operate your business

01:12:06.000 | and file your tax return information on your Schedule C.

01:12:11.000 | There are challenges depending on the business structure of how you're going to do that

01:12:14.000 | with merchant processes and bank accounts, etc.

01:12:16.000 | It's not perfect, but I'm just warning you that creating an entity often results in leakages of information

01:12:22.000 | that you might otherwise be able to protect.

01:12:26.000 | So in privacy planning, just like in other areas of planning, you have to create your threat model.

01:12:33.000 | What are you specifically concerned about?

01:12:35.000 | And you have to identify the pieces of information that are most important to you to protect.

01:12:41.000 | As far as, I don't have any podcasts on it, I have no interest in being a privacy consultant.

01:12:44.000 | I talk about it on occasion because it comes up, but I'm not into it.

01:12:49.000 | So start with Gabriel's book.

01:12:51.000 | His book is the best entry-level book.

01:12:54.000 | It's really, really good.

01:12:56.000 | Watchman Privacy.

01:12:58.000 | And then also, then from there, go on to Michael Bizzell's newest book called Extreme Privacy,

01:13:05.000 | What It Takes to Disappear.

01:13:07.000 | That book is a desk reference.

01:13:09.000 | It's a giant tome on every aspect of privacy.

01:13:13.000 | And then just decide, what am I concerned about?

01:13:16.000 | So I'm not concerned for me.

01:13:18.000 | I'm not concerned about what's on the Internet.

01:13:19.000 | It doesn't bother me a bit.

01:13:21.000 | There are only a few pieces of data that I try to keep to myself, and I'm good.

01:13:27.000 | But you might be concerned about what's on the Internet, right?

01:13:30.000 | If there's some scandal in your past or some area that's affected your career,

01:13:35.000 | then you might want to figure out how to get that or get rid of that.

01:13:38.000 | So you have to create your threat model and then go from there.

01:13:41.000 | So those resources, Watchman Privacy, I think is much more accessible than what Bizzell does.

01:13:48.000 | And it's still really good, really good.

01:13:51.000 | And then Michael Bizzell's, he has a podcast.

01:13:54.000 | So Watchman Privacy has a podcast, the Watchman Privacy podcast.

01:13:57.000 | He's got a book.

01:13:58.000 | He does consulting.

01:14:00.000 | We do a course together, which you should buy at bitcoinprivacyguide.com.

01:14:04.000 | And then Bizzell has a podcast, has a blog at inteltechniques.com.

01:14:09.000 | And his podcast is called Privacy, Security, and OSINT, which stands for Open Source Intelligence.

01:14:14.000 | And he has several books, his most recent of which is called Extreme Privacy, What It Takes to Disappear.

01:14:22.000 | >> Okay. Thank you, Joshua.

01:14:23.000 | I appreciate your time today.

01:14:25.000 | >> My pleasure.

01:14:26.000 | And with that, we wrap up our callers on today's show.

01:14:30.000 | Let me think if I have any closing announcements.

01:14:34.000 | I hope that these are useful for you.

01:14:36.000 | I don't have any big closing announcements.

01:14:38.000 | Join me on next week's Q&A show.

01:14:39.000 | I'd love to have you next week.

01:14:41.000 | Go ahead and go to Patreon.

01:14:43.000 | Find Radical Personal Finance there on Patreon.

01:14:46.000 | And you'll be able to gain access to next week's Q&A show.

01:14:49.000 | Thank you to those of you who have signed up for my summer sale for consulting.

01:14:54.000 | I've had a bunch of great calls.

01:14:56.000 | Man, you guys are just awesome.

01:14:59.000 | One of the reasons why I do consulting is to keep touch with my audience, right, because I enjoy, of course, these Friday Q&A shows.

01:15:06.000 | And I get great emails from you guys.

01:15:08.000 | I just get overwhelmed.

01:15:09.000 | But one of the things I love about doing consulting is I get to keep staying in contact with you.

01:15:14.000 | And you guys are way cooler than I am.

01:15:16.000 | I've got so many cool listeners who do all these interesting things, have these fascinating, just amazing success stories.

01:15:23.000 | And I am just overwhelmed at the quality of listener that listens to this show.

01:15:27.000 | It's an honor in every sense of the word.

01:15:30.000 | And so I have been working hard on that.

01:15:32.000 | That wraps up today.

01:15:34.000 | By the time you hear this, there won't be any more slots.

01:15:36.000 | There was one slot left this morning, but there won't be any more slots available.

01:15:40.000 | But we have some neat plans for the summer, but I'll continue to be releasing podcasts for you as well.

01:15:47.000 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:15:49.000 | Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll be back with you soon.

01:15:51.000 | [Music]

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2022-06-09_Friday_QA