2022_0404_0534
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:03.880 | skills, insights, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:08.040 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:10.760 | My name is Josh Reichits and today we wrap up our three-part series on financial lessons
00:00:15.020 | from recent crises.
00:00:16.700 | Part one was financial lessons from Ukraine.
00:00:19.520 | Part two was financial lessons from Russia.
00:00:22.480 | Today part three, financial lessons from the current crisis in the United States.
00:00:28.020 | That word crisis is a bit too strong for me.
00:00:30.520 | I wouldn't generally use it because I don't think we're living in a crisis, but there
00:00:35.000 | are certainly many yellow and red warning lights on all sides.
00:00:41.280 | You have a few examples here for you to consider.
00:00:44.360 | Number one, of course, you have significantly elevated levels of inflation based upon what
00:00:49.680 | we've been accustomed to over previous years.
00:00:52.520 | Right now the most recent median CPI figures that are available show that the median inflation
00:01:01.220 | rate is approaching 5%.
00:01:04.100 | That's a significantly higher inflation rate than we are accustomed to dealing with in
00:01:10.140 | the United States.
00:01:11.880 | You see the practical effect of that on all sides and you see concerns about the future,
00:01:17.940 | of where that could go in the future.
00:01:21.360 | In addition, related to the inflation, you see very practical impact in people's pocketbooks
00:01:26.800 | with very high fuel prices, which are causing a restructuring of people's budgets.
00:01:32.200 | Even areas that are traditionally associated with prosperity, such as high housing prices,
00:01:38.020 | I don't get the sense that most people feel all that great about the high housing prices.
00:01:43.620 | Oftentimes when there's a run up in housing prices, it leads to people feeling good because
00:01:47.400 | their wealth has increased.
00:01:49.160 | Just like when they have fat 401k accounts and fat housing prices, they feel wealthy
00:01:52.920 | and they can borrow money out and spend it, etc.
00:01:56.200 | But I get the impression that many Americans rather feel the pinch of high housing prices.
00:02:02.420 | They feel the pinch that if I sell my house, I have to buy another one and I'm going to
00:02:05.760 | get priced out of the market.
00:02:06.940 | How am I going to get an affordable house?
00:02:08.240 | There are a lot of people who would like to get into real estate who find it very difficult
00:02:13.200 | to summon the necessary funds to get into real estate.
00:02:16.640 | This traditional measure of prosperity feels different when it's put together with all
00:02:24.160 | of the other areas of high prices that people are experiencing right now.
00:02:30.040 | I think there are many other things that people are concerned about.
00:02:34.200 | There's concerns about security.
00:02:36.440 | Even though the United States is not involved directly, kinetically, in the war with Russia
00:02:41.240 | and Ukraine, the United States of course has been involved for many years in the war with
00:02:45.700 | Ukraine and Russia.
00:02:47.560 | People are concerned about escalation.
00:02:49.980 | People are concerned about getting involved with that.
00:02:53.140 | People are concerned about the impact of financial sanctions.
00:02:57.640 | There are significant concerns about even the basics of life such as food supply.
00:03:01.840 | I myself am very concerned about the possibility of widespread food shortages and even famine
00:03:07.960 | over the coming year or two because every single agricultural input, the price is very,
00:03:15.440 | very high right now.
00:03:16.840 | It seems difficult to see how given the disruptions in certain agricultural centers such as Russia
00:03:23.480 | and Ukraine, given the disruptions in the supply chain, the ability to redistribute
00:03:29.600 | food supplies around the globe, and given the massive high cost of agricultural inputs
00:03:35.920 | right now, everything from the basics of fertilizer to diesel fuel, etc., it seems difficult to
00:03:43.080 | see how the global food production is going to be high enough in the next couple of years
00:03:48.880 | to meet the world demand.
00:03:51.240 | When you think about the hundreds of millions of people who live on the edge, very well
00:03:55.740 | could lead to widespread famine in the next year or two, which is a very, very concerning
00:04:01.040 | trend.
00:04:02.040 | This is all on top of the widespread disruption, societal disruption that we've experienced
00:04:08.920 | in the United States and around the world.
00:04:11.680 | The arguments around the global pandemic, which has cost the lives of millions of people
00:04:17.560 | around the world, the massive disruption from that in terms of lifestyle, the arguments
00:04:24.240 | among neighbors as to how that should be managed and should have been managed, the destruction
00:04:31.480 | to many businesses, many jobs because of the economic fallout from responses to the pandemic,
00:04:37.560 | changes in supply and demand, you have this exacerbated by other hardcore conflicts.
00:04:46.000 | This is not just limited to the United States, which is a very argumentative and violent
00:04:53.240 | culture, a culture prone to loud and public argumentation.
00:04:56.880 | This is happening in cultures that we traditionally understand to be more unified.
00:05:01.600 | You look at the disruption in the Canadian culture and the government response to the
00:05:06.120 | protests and the protesters and the counter protesters, and you see a traditionally unified
00:05:12.240 | culture such as the Canadian culture significantly disrupted compared to what we normally consider
00:05:19.160 | it to be.
00:05:20.160 | Even in authoritarian culture right now, there are widespread protests across China, people
00:05:25.520 | protesting the Chinese zero COVID policy, which has led to very widespread draconian
00:05:32.840 | lockdowns to limit the spread of coronavirus.
00:05:36.400 | And the people there are protesting, which is quite unusual for the authoritarian experience
00:05:43.560 | in China.
00:05:45.340 | And so when you look at these, the question is, well, what are the lessons that I can
00:05:48.400 | be learning from this stock market down this past quarter, worst quarter performance in
00:05:53.400 | the last few years?
00:05:54.860 | What are the lessons that I need to be learning from this experience?
00:05:59.600 | The first lesson I would like to draw your attention to is the experience, the situation
00:06:05.080 | in the United States is fundamentally different than the situation in Ukraine or in Russia.
00:06:14.080 | It's so fundamentally different that I feel a twinge of remorse and guilt even drawing
00:06:20.560 | a comparison, even pulling the three together in a series like this.
00:06:26.520 | And I'm doing so because my point is they're very different, but they're so different that
00:06:32.480 | you feel bad even looking at any problems.
00:06:35.160 | Because if you compare the problems being faced by Ukrainians defending their homeland
00:06:40.760 | or the problems being faced by Russians having their country isolated from the rest of the
00:06:47.240 | world, the problems in the United States seem like light and ordinary experiences, not even
00:06:53.760 | worthy of being talked about.
00:06:56.920 | But yet this is what I would say, this is the point.
00:07:00.080 | One of the things that I wrote in my notes in preparing for this is that it's good to
00:07:04.640 | be the king.
00:07:05.640 | And I think here in this situation, you see how it's good to be the king of the world.
00:07:10.280 | It's good to be in the United States right now, because for all the problems that the
00:07:14.000 | United States has, which are significant and worth paying attention to, worth discussing,
00:07:18.720 | worth planning for, those problems pale in severity as compared to many places in the
00:07:23.680 | world.
00:07:24.800 | It's good to be the king.
00:07:26.640 | And this is a point that I've made for a long time, that one of the best ways to improve
00:07:31.800 | your situation in life is to be where the problems are not.
00:07:36.680 | When I talked about Ukraine, I drew the point, I said the best way to survive an actual war
00:07:44.000 | with bombs and guns, etc., is not being in the war, not being there.
00:07:49.360 | And while that's really hard to say, because I think we all look at, understand, and applaud
00:07:56.360 | those who take up arms to defend their homeland from a foreign invader, the most justified
00:08:05.160 | form of violence that exists, the impact of that violence, even in its most justified
00:08:12.120 | form, will change a generation.
00:08:14.440 | I made the point that it's very difficult to survive in a war zone, physically, with
00:08:20.560 | your life.
00:08:21.560 | But even if you do survive, it's very difficult, because you lose your life.
00:08:26.620 | You lose everything that is normal to you.
00:08:28.980 | You lose everything that is dear to you.
00:08:32.280 | You lose your family, if you send your family away to safety.
00:08:35.260 | You lose your family if your family stays, because you're isolated from them.
00:08:38.560 | You're trying to keep them in a safe little country town somewhere while you go and fight
00:08:42.840 | the invaders.
00:08:44.320 | You lose your business, not necessarily because your business is bombed, although that can
00:08:48.360 | happen, not necessarily because the demand disappears, although that does happen, not
00:08:53.640 | just because the market is completely disrupted, although of course that is true.
00:08:57.680 | You lose your business because you have no higher priority than saving your life and
00:09:04.440 | your homeland from the foreign invaders.
00:09:08.680 | It's like stress.
00:09:09.680 | If you're drowning in a swimming pool, you're not thinking about the stress of the stock
00:09:13.760 | market decline.
00:09:14.760 | You're thinking about, "How do I get air?"
00:09:16.880 | That's what happens in war, because the stress and the threat is so acute, you can't think
00:09:22.100 | about anything else.
00:09:24.360 | Even if the war ended today, there was an immediate ceasefire, the Russian troops withdrew,
00:09:28.580 | the Ukrainian troops withdrew, you lose years and years of your life.
00:09:34.160 | Because you have to rebuild, you have to clean up the rubble in the streets, you have to
00:09:38.200 | rebuild infrastructure, you lose years to the nightmares, the broken society, the lack
00:09:47.040 | of trust, the broken markets.
00:09:49.680 | So I made the point that if you can get out, the best thing to do is to get out.
00:09:54.520 | If you have to stay, at least try to feel like you need to stay and that's the right
00:09:59.000 | thing for you to do, to stay and be together with your neighbors and defend your homeland,
00:10:04.000 | then getting your family out is your highest priority so that you can spare them to the
00:10:08.520 | greatest degree possible the trauma of war.
00:10:12.340 | Then in Russia, I made the point that in Russia, you lose your life and your lifestyle.
00:10:17.720 | No, you're not worried about the same level of physical danger of death, but you lose
00:10:23.740 | the ability to build your business, you lose the ability to improve your job and career,
00:10:28.320 | you lose the ability to think long term, which means that when you're living in a place where
00:10:33.320 | you're facing sanctions and the severe opprobrium and sanctions that the Russian people are
00:10:41.040 | facing, you're going to lose years and years and years of your life being there.
00:10:45.640 | And if possible, the best way to get those years back is to go someplace where you don't
00:10:49.920 | face those same levels of sanctions and build something where you can get back on a track
00:10:55.860 | of stability to build.
00:10:57.940 | When you compare the United States to that, what you see is the United States has none
00:11:01.520 | of those features.
00:11:03.100 | You don't have to be worried about the loss of your life on a daily basis from a bomb
00:11:07.240 | falling on you.
00:11:08.540 | You can build.
00:11:10.440 | Things are stable.
00:11:11.440 | You can start something new.
00:11:12.440 | You can build something new.
00:11:13.520 | You're not worried about that.
00:11:15.240 | And so when you look at that and you look at even the potential threats to the United
00:11:19.600 | States of things that could make things worse, one of the best places to be right now in
00:11:24.040 | the world is the United States.
00:11:26.320 | In fact, my travels of the world over the last years have raised my opinion of life
00:11:31.760 | in the United States quite substantially.
00:11:34.520 | When I first left the United States about three years or over three years ago now, I
00:11:40.120 | was pretty dark and negative in my outlook for the country.
00:11:45.920 | I was watching things internally that made me say, you know what?
00:11:50.080 | I don't know if life is the best here.
00:11:52.560 | But after three years of being abroad, living abroad, traveling back and forth the United
00:11:56.920 | States, traveling the world in over a dozen countries, I've come to the perspective of
00:12:01.360 | no, actually, in many cases, it's hard for me to say that there's a better place for
00:12:07.820 | most people than the United States.
00:12:10.840 | And in terms of practical evidence of that, what is the practical evidence of it?
00:12:15.240 | Well, number one, things are much more stable in the United States.
00:12:18.920 | It seems from an outside, especially when you look at the cultural strife and the arguments
00:12:23.240 | and whatnot, it seems from the outside that things are difficult.
00:12:28.080 | It often feels like, well, the culture is splitting apart, the country is splitting
00:12:31.600 | apart.
00:12:32.600 | I think that's true to a significant degree.
00:12:34.480 | But yet at its core, there's a giant bureaucracy, there's a giant system that just kind of trundles
00:12:40.620 | forward the way the things, the way that more or less the way things always have been, doesn't
00:12:44.920 | change much.
00:12:45.920 | And so that leads to a sense of stability.
00:12:48.380 | From a financial perspective, you have the US dollar, which for all of its lacks, for
00:12:53.180 | all of its difficulties, for all of its injustices, is the world reserve currency and is the world's
00:13:00.000 | most stable in-demand currency.
00:13:01.980 | It is, it's inconceivable that the US dollar, for all the problems that it will face, will
00:13:06.860 | face the same problems as so many other currencies around the world.
00:13:10.920 | And so your money is safer.
00:13:13.260 | You look at the American stock market, you try to draw a comparison between the collapse
00:13:17.180 | of the Russian stock market and the declines in the American stock market recently.
00:13:23.120 | And it's just not even a valid point of comparison.
00:13:27.300 | The US stock market cannot collapse the way that the Russian stock market collapsed.
00:13:34.140 | Because if the US stock market did collapse that way, it would not signal, it's not the
00:13:39.300 | signal of a temporary thing, it's a signal of a complete implosion of the world, literally,
00:13:44.780 | because of the companies that are listed there, because of the centrality in the global market
00:13:50.140 | space.
00:13:51.140 | And so while it's certainly theoretically possible that you could have that kind of
00:13:55.180 | widespread collapse, it's just not practically conceivable in any reasonable, practical sense
00:14:03.200 | of analysis.
00:14:05.240 | When you look at the situation that the Russians and the Ukrainians face, the Russians being
00:14:11.140 | concerned about invasion, so then invading Ukraine, the Ukraines being concerned about
00:14:15.000 | invasion and getting invaded, you look at the European context, you realize how low
00:14:19.920 | the threat of war is for Americans.
00:14:23.420 | The US is so geographically insulated from virtually all violence from its neighbors,
00:14:28.420 | friendly neighbors to the north and to the south, two large, stable countries that don't
00:14:36.020 | have any meaningful military power compared to the United States.
00:14:39.900 | The United States is the king of the seas on a global basis, isolated and insulated
00:14:44.660 | on all sides.
00:14:46.300 | The idea of somebody invading the United States with a land invasion is laughable.
00:14:53.160 | It's utterly risible that somebody would think of invading the United States.
00:14:58.460 | The most hardcore of a scenario you could come up with would be somebody simply launching
00:15:02.840 | missiles at the United States.
00:15:06.060 | And even that is very hard to believe that would actually happen, although not outside
00:15:12.220 | of the realm of possibility.
00:15:13.220 | But the idea of somebody invading is utterly risible.
00:15:18.180 | The US is financially insulated from virtually all outside forces.
00:15:21.220 | You look at how deeply impacted Russia is and is going to be by the global sanctions,
00:15:29.700 | then you go back and you look at the United States.
00:15:31.180 | Here's a country that produces massive amounts of food, that manufactures massive amounts
00:15:35.860 | of stuff.
00:15:36.860 | Here's a country that has the world's dominant currency, the world that controls political
00:15:44.020 | maneuverings in virtually the entire world.
00:15:47.580 | The scale of power, economic power, financial power, military power, is so lopsided in favor
00:15:56.780 | of the United States that it's just impossible to believe that at this stage in world history,
00:16:05.580 | the United States would face any of the same kind of trials that other very powerful countries
00:16:10.420 | face.
00:16:12.540 | And the USA simply has the clout and the authority and the bullying power to get almost everything
00:16:18.860 | it needs.
00:16:19.860 | It has the clout to get what it needs.
00:16:20.860 | It has the internal resources to get what it needs in terms of very tremendous reservoirs
00:16:29.940 | of intelligence, hard work, companies, skills, etc.
00:16:34.020 | All united around a basic core identity, an identity of being an American people who is
00:16:40.340 | resilient, who is able to change.
00:16:43.860 | I think you saw this in the early stage of the pandemic when all of a sudden all across
00:16:49.900 | the country, all of these companies immediately turned themselves to producing face masks
00:16:54.660 | and to printing things for respirators and little valves and whatnot.
00:16:59.860 | But the level of creativity and the level of resources in the United States is so deep
00:17:04.820 | that the culture, when united around a central purpose, can respond very, very quickly and
00:17:11.420 | change things very, very quickly.
00:17:14.580 | And then the United States is vastly underpopulated.
00:17:18.060 | And so because it is so vastly underpopulated, it has room to maneuver.
00:17:23.340 | It has room for the population to adjust, change, to go and relocate within the country
00:17:30.260 | and follow the available trends.
00:17:33.660 | And so for all of the downsides of the United States, I look at the country after being
00:17:40.700 | gone for three years and a good sober analysis and I say it's very hard to believe that there's
00:17:46.180 | a better place to be on a broad scale for most people.
00:17:50.620 | It's very hard to think that there's some place better.
00:17:54.660 | And so the risk level being in the United States is much, much lower than it is in many
00:18:00.140 | other places.
00:18:01.140 | And I think that you see this with regard to even how the pandemic has played out.
00:18:08.620 | Now here you have to look a little bit at the...
00:18:12.020 | It's important you look at the death rate.
00:18:13.780 | Death rates in the United States high, much higher than many other nations of its peers.
00:18:19.060 | And you say, "Why is that?"
00:18:21.140 | And I think there are good reasons to that.
00:18:22.500 | But one of the things that I thought was so obvious is where did the, for example, vaccines,
00:18:27.620 | where did the vaccines get developed the most quickly?
00:18:31.060 | Well, the ones that worked got developed in the United States.
00:18:33.900 | You had vaccines developed quickly in Russia.
00:18:36.180 | You had vaccines developed quickly in China.
00:18:39.420 | You had various approaches throughout the Americas of different companies researching
00:18:44.780 | them.
00:18:45.780 | And in many of those, the efficacy proved to simply not be sufficient.
00:18:50.020 | The high-risk performing vaccines were developed by American companies, and then they were
00:18:55.420 | available very quickly in the United States.
00:18:57.860 | So back to the clout of the United States, both in terms of internal ability to develop
00:19:02.780 | things and also the financial power to go and buy vaccines from international manufacturers
00:19:08.300 | and get them brought into the United States quickly.
00:19:11.140 | The widest availability of vaccines, the quickest, was in the United States as compared to many
00:19:15.720 | other places.
00:19:16.940 | And it was so widespread that basically at that time, any tourist could fly to the United
00:19:20.260 | States, get vaccinated, and go.
00:19:21.500 | They were begging people to get vaccinated all across the country, giving out prizes
00:19:25.140 | and whatnot in the United States.
00:19:27.700 | And so it shows as just kind of a microcosm.
00:19:30.540 | I looked at that and studied it all the way through, and I thought, "This is a good example
00:19:34.300 | of the power of these United States."
00:19:39.420 | And so when you look at that, and to be clear, that's not an all-consuming thing.
00:19:44.980 | I don't live in the U.S.
00:19:45.980 | I'm not going back to the United States to live.
00:19:49.460 | But when you study it, honestly, if you're in the United States, as most of my audience
00:19:53.740 | is, don't think that it's just magically better somewhere else.
00:19:58.300 | It's not.
00:19:59.580 | I have come from the last few years of travel, I have come to the conviction that most people
00:20:05.660 | should stay where they're from, and that includes Americans, and that there are very good reasons
00:20:12.660 | as to why you'll probably have the best long-term possibility of success in the United States
00:20:17.860 | as compared to other places.
00:20:20.340 | But when you look at these yellow warning signs that are around, it does give you reason
00:20:25.860 | to pay attention.
00:20:27.580 | So what do you need to pay attention to?
00:20:29.940 | What are the financial lessons?
00:20:31.420 | Well, I think the financial lessons are really the same ordinary run-of-the-mill lessons
00:20:38.180 | that I have been talking about for many years.
00:20:41.460 | And it's not to pat myself on the back, it's to say that I don't see anything new at the
00:20:46.100 | moment.
00:20:49.020 | Number one, you must protect your income.
00:20:52.540 | That is the number one goal that you have.
00:20:54.740 | Right now, in any place in the world, if you have an income, you're okay.
00:20:58.660 | And in the United States, if you have an income, you're okay.
00:21:01.660 | Why are the Russian sanctions so devastating?
00:21:04.460 | Well, for many reasons.
00:21:06.300 | One of the reasons they're devastating is it's destroying the incomes of many people.
00:21:10.700 | It's destroying the incomes of people living in Russia who work outside of Russia, meaning
00:21:15.100 | work online, publish things online.
00:21:17.500 | Their isolation in the banking system has made it impossible for many of them to get
00:21:21.380 | hold of the money that's owed to them for their work abroad.
00:21:24.620 | Because of the social probrium that the world is leveraging against Russia, then many people
00:21:31.180 | are simply dropping all of their Russian clients, even though those ordinary...
00:21:34.540 | Sorry, dropping Russian clients, yes, but dropping Russian workers, even though those
00:21:38.260 | Russian workers themselves have not done anything wrong.
00:21:41.940 | And then inside Russia, you have a massive economic crisis because the people are facing
00:21:47.800 | loss of work.
00:21:48.800 | You have companies, international companies, shuttering their shops, laying off their workforce.
00:21:54.420 | And that ripple effect spreads throughout the economy.
00:21:57.580 | If you have thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people without work, then
00:22:02.140 | those people don't have the income now to go and buy, and that puts more thousands and
00:22:06.620 | thousands of people out of work.
00:22:08.500 | And so it's loss of income that's the primary problem.
00:22:11.980 | It's not the loss of power of the ruble, which has declined in value and then come back.
00:22:17.140 | If you're living in Russia, the ruble is still working fine.
00:22:19.340 | There's been no widespread inflation.
00:22:21.540 | The prices haven't shot off.
00:22:23.500 | There's no widespread shortages right now.
00:22:25.340 | But if you've lost your income, you've lost your ability to buy.
00:22:28.380 | You've lost your ability to live.
00:22:30.940 | But that's just because you lost your income.
00:22:33.180 | And so again, if you could protect your income in a crisis, you can get through that crisis
00:22:38.980 | very well.
00:22:40.840 | So looking at the United States, if you can keep your income, you can absorb the increases
00:22:44.640 | in the cost of your food.
00:22:45.840 | You can absorb the increases in the cost of your fuel.
00:22:49.300 | You can absorb it if you can keep your income.
00:22:52.000 | So your goal is to keep your income, just to maintain it, if that's all you can do.
00:22:58.500 | If you can grow it, of course.
00:23:00.020 | But if all you can do is maintain it, you maintain it.
00:23:03.140 | Because the maintenance of that income will allow you to weather the economic crisis extremely
00:23:08.780 | well no matter how bad it gets.
00:23:12.300 | That's the core lesson.
00:23:13.920 | So focus on keeping your income.
00:23:16.060 | Make a plan of, if I lost my income, how would I get more income quickly?
00:23:20.640 | Make a plan to make sure that you're not in the first round of layoffs if your company
00:23:24.300 | lays off.
00:23:26.420 | That's lesson number one.
00:23:27.420 | And there's no change from that today versus 10 years ago.
00:23:30.260 | The principle still remains true.
00:23:32.500 | Those who can keep their income through a crisis are generally going to be fine.
00:23:40.740 | Next, you cannot be living near the edge with your finances.
00:23:46.020 | That's the lesson that we see right now.
00:23:47.980 | You cannot have everything built so you're right on the edge.
00:23:53.740 | A guy who's got a good, healthy six-figure income, who's fixed an ordinary expenses or
00:23:58.820 | say 50% of his income, that guy doesn't care about increased cost of food, increased cost
00:24:06.100 | of fuel because you've got an ability to expand and to adjust.
00:24:10.060 | Okay, maybe you have to save less money.
00:24:12.540 | Maybe you have to work a little bit of overtime or something, but you can adjust your budget
00:24:16.220 | to match changing prices.
00:24:19.260 | But the guy who's got a low income or the guy who's got his fixed expenses as a very
00:24:23.840 | high percentage of his income, that guy's got major problems.
00:24:29.020 | There's a statement that is a really tone-deaf thing to say, but I think it's really true.
00:24:37.220 | And so even at the risk of it being offensive, I think it's worth saying.
00:24:41.260 | I've thought of it several times in watching the situation.
00:24:44.460 | The statement is this.
00:24:46.120 | "If the price of gas makes a major difference to your daily life, you're doing it wrong."
00:24:53.880 | "If the price of gas makes a major difference to your daily life, you're doing it wrong."
00:25:00.480 | Let me expand that statement because it's a provocative and inflammatory statement,
00:25:05.600 | but it holds a lesson that I think is the right lesson to hold.
00:25:12.120 | There's a small subset of businesses that are high consumers of fuel whose business
00:25:18.600 | will be majorly disrupted by the price of gas.
00:25:25.120 | I'm not arguing that those people are doing it wrong because they can simply adjust their
00:25:29.840 | business.
00:25:30.880 | If you run a trucking company and you're consuming thousands and thousands of gallons of fuel,
00:25:38.120 | then you will simply adjust your prices.
00:25:40.480 | You'll adjust your freight charges.
00:25:41.880 | You'll adjust your end product prices, whatever, very quickly to adapt to the increased cost
00:25:47.120 | of inputs.
00:25:48.120 | And that's as you should.
00:25:49.640 | That's what you should do.
00:25:51.800 | But for an individual, an ordinary consumer, the price of gas should be a very, very small
00:25:56.960 | component of your situation.
00:26:01.440 | And because if you have a high amount of income and a low amount of other expenses, you can
00:26:08.320 | easily adjust your spending on fuel.
00:26:11.640 | You can easily absorb the increased costs.
00:26:14.280 | If you have a low income, then your number one focus should be to figure out how can
00:26:19.860 | I find an alternative that doesn't expose me to the high price of fuel.
00:26:25.600 | And so the way to get ahead financially is to do your very best to keep your expenses
00:26:30.880 | low as compared to the amount of your income.
00:26:34.960 | Where I think you see the people who are hurting the most right now with fuel prices is those
00:26:39.080 | who have not structured their finances in a way that thinks about frugality and spending
00:26:45.920 | rates.
00:26:47.080 | I think here of a guy that I-- this is who I would have been when I was younger.
00:26:52.880 | But I had a family member who has a young boyfriend.
00:26:56.320 | And this guy, young guy, 18 years old.
00:26:59.800 | And he was from kind of the rural redneck culture in the United States.
00:27:06.960 | And so his daily driver vehicle was a big Dodge pickup truck with a 5.7 liter Hemi,
00:27:16.280 | which is a fuel sucking vehicle that he was using exclusively to transport himself around.
00:27:22.400 | And that's what I would have wanted, except I didn't want a Hemi.
00:27:25.560 | I wanted a big old diesel.
00:27:26.800 | That's what I wanted in high school.
00:27:27.960 | I never got enough money together to get it.
00:27:30.320 | But he was able to do it.
00:27:31.960 | The problem is he's rolling around getting 10 miles per gallon.
00:27:35.320 | And so I think of him.
00:27:37.640 | Find out.
00:27:38.640 | I'm sure by this time he's sold his pickup.
00:27:40.520 | Because when fuel prices go up, it just becomes crazy for an 18-year-old to be trundling around
00:27:45.560 | doing tons of miles in a fuel sucking pickup truck that he has no useful need for.
00:27:51.320 | And so that same 18-year-old can intelligently turn into a small economic car, can go to
00:27:57.000 | a motorcycle, a moped, something that gets 50, 80, 100 miles per gallon, and get the
00:28:01.800 | same basic functionality.
00:28:04.160 | That's what you need to do.
00:28:05.440 | If you have enough money that you want to drive a fuel sucking car, go for it.
00:28:10.440 | But if you're still trying to get money together, you can't indulge your whims of having a beautiful
00:28:15.640 | cool pickup truck that sucks fuel down.
00:28:18.080 | You got to get a moped, something that's going to get you around and solve your transportation
00:28:21.480 | needs until you get your income coming in.
00:28:24.360 | So when you look at people who complain the most about gas and you look at the structure
00:28:27.960 | of their life, their lives are not ordinarily structured towards wealth.
00:28:32.000 | They're not making decisions to keep their expenses low as compared to their income so
00:28:35.800 | that they can invest money.
00:28:37.720 | What's happening is they're often living high consumption lifestyles as compared to their
00:28:43.000 | income.
00:28:44.000 | I don't want to drive a moped on a daily basis, but I have to find a solution to my transportation
00:28:50.520 | needs that still allows me to save money and absorb changes.
00:28:54.560 | I think in the current fuel price increase, you see the importance of that.
00:29:01.360 | If the price of gas makes a big difference in your daily life, you're doing it wrong.
00:29:05.040 | It's a sign that your ratio of expenses to your income is out of whack and you need to
00:29:11.520 | change.
00:29:13.560 | That's the same in 2022 as it was in 2012.
00:29:17.800 | If you want to build wealth, you have to have your expenses much, much lower than your income.
00:29:24.320 | Then when there are changes in the prices of things, you can absorb those changes.
00:29:29.000 | Let me add one bit of mathematical analysis to why I say this at the risk of it being
00:29:33.800 | so...
00:29:34.800 | I'm trying to say it clearly, but at the risk of it being quite offensive.
00:29:40.520 | Let's say that your expenses are 50% of your income and there's a 10% change in your expenses.
00:29:50.840 | You suffer a 10% inflation of expenses.
00:29:56.120 | Now your expenses are 55% of your income rather than 50%.
00:30:03.840 | You can still save money.
00:30:05.520 | You're still okay.
00:30:06.520 | You can absorb a 10% inflation rate even if your income doesn't change to keep up with
00:30:10.200 | it.
00:30:11.200 | What if there's a 20% increase in your expenses, but you started with a structure of 50% expenses
00:30:18.960 | to income ratio?
00:30:21.440 | If your expenses increase by 20%, then they would go from 50% of your income to 60% of
00:30:30.000 | your income.
00:30:31.200 | That's a massive change, 20% increase.
00:30:35.080 | In your life, you can absorb that increase.
00:30:37.800 | You can absorb that uncertainty.
00:30:40.160 | Now let's say that you're living right at the edge.
00:30:42.880 | Ordinarily, you have 90% of your income devoted to expenses.
00:30:49.200 | You're saving 10%.
00:30:51.520 | And then there's a 10% change in your expenses.
00:30:55.320 | Well, a 10% change in your expenses would take your expense level from 90% to 99% of
00:31:02.080 | your income.
00:31:03.080 | What about a 20% change?
00:31:06.120 | Well now it's going to take you over 100% of your income and you're going to immediately
00:31:09.000 | be in the red.
00:31:10.200 | So the key is to make sure that your expenses are modest as compared to your income.
00:31:18.400 | That is what makes the difference in your ability to weather difficult circumstances
00:31:23.280 | and hard times.
00:31:25.960 | Brings us to the next point.
00:31:27.640 | All the basics still apply in that you must have savings.
00:31:31.780 | If you have savings, liquid money, emergency fund, buffer funds, savings, money that you
00:31:38.040 | haven't consumed, then you can absorb the temporary increases in price while you restructure
00:31:44.200 | your life.
00:31:46.060 | You can absorb several months of being in the red.
00:31:48.780 | Even the guy who's got expenses at 90% and now due to over 10% inflation, he's over 100%
00:31:54.320 | of his expenses, he can absorb with savings.
00:31:58.460 | He can take up the slack.
00:31:59.760 | He can handle his expenses for a few months until he can restructure his life.
00:32:05.760 | He can go and buy a moped or figure out some solution to deal with the price of gas.
00:32:12.280 | He has time to figure out how to get his garden in and get it productive to get food so he
00:32:17.640 | can lower his food budget.
00:32:20.080 | Now those are silly but practical examples that if it's at that point, that's what you
00:32:26.640 | need.
00:32:27.640 | You need the savings in order to absorb it.
00:32:29.640 | And that's what savings do.
00:32:30.840 | They give you a buffer zone against unanticipated expenses.
00:32:34.300 | Why do we have emergency funds?
00:32:36.340 | Why do we have savings funds?
00:32:38.080 | Well, they give us a buffer against disruptions that we can't anticipate perfectly.
00:32:44.040 | They allow us to be calm and relaxed while we figure out how to solve problems.
00:32:49.680 | That's why when you have a buffer on a production line, you have a buffer of materials, if there's
00:32:53.880 | a disruption of materials, you can keep your supply line, you can keep your production
00:32:57.680 | line going.
00:32:58.680 | In every business, having a buffer allows you to say, "All right, how do I make new,
00:33:02.960 | fresh, good decisions in this situation?"
00:33:05.520 | That hasn't changed because of high inflation rates.
00:33:08.360 | What's happened is it's become more important in high inflation rates.
00:33:12.360 | Your savings haven't just lost their value because there's a 5% inflation rate.
00:33:15.800 | It's the exact opposite.
00:33:17.300 | Your savings have become more valuable because there's a 5% inflation rate.
00:33:21.660 | They're much more valuable to you as you figure out what to do.
00:33:26.520 | By the way, I just hear so many of the audience saying, "5%, Joshua, 5%!
00:33:30.000 | It's much more than that."
00:33:31.000 | It may be.
00:33:32.240 | In some cases, it is.
00:33:33.880 | But it doesn't change the fundamental point.
00:33:35.280 | If you're facing a 15% inflation rate in your personal level of expenses, your savings are
00:33:41.440 | now much more valuable to you as you figure out, "What should I do?
00:33:47.000 | Should I take this and go and buy a bunch of food?
00:33:49.160 | Should I go and buy a bunch of fuel?
00:33:51.240 | Should I go and buy a bunch of hard assets?
00:33:55.600 | Should I go and keep the money in case of future disruptions?"
00:34:00.400 | The savings become more valuable in times of inflation than they do in other scenarios.
00:34:09.920 | Next lesson.
00:34:11.480 | I still continue to believe that most "normal" financial planning moves will work out.
00:34:18.640 | Meaning that if you look at the situation in the United States, there's no reason to
00:34:23.560 | panic and sell stocks.
00:34:25.840 | There's no reason to panic and say, "This is forever."
00:34:28.880 | There's no reason to panic at all.
00:34:33.920 | I still continue to believe that ordinary day-to-day financial advice is still sound.
00:34:39.960 | There's no big structural problem that needs to be changed immediately.
00:34:48.240 | And if you look at the availability of things, being in the United States is one of the best
00:34:51.720 | places to be in the world.
00:34:53.040 | Now, I don't think that all countries are going to weather the current difficulties
00:34:59.240 | as well as the United States will.
00:35:02.560 | And going forward, how could things get worse?
00:35:07.880 | And will other countries weather?
00:35:10.160 | So let's talk about how things get worse.
00:35:11.720 | My biggest concern right now is not nuclear war, although that is a concern.
00:35:16.560 | My biggest concern right now is food supplies.
00:35:19.880 | And I think it should be a concern for you.
00:35:22.000 | You need to watch this very, very carefully.
00:35:23.920 | But if you don't have any food, if you don't have any kind of stockpiles of food, I beg
00:35:28.120 | you, go this weekend and turn some of your US coins, your token fiat money, into food.
00:35:37.600 | Food that your family will eat eventually, whether it's available or not.
00:35:42.320 | Whether it's widespread availability or not.
00:35:43.920 | Go and buy food.
00:35:45.760 | Because right now, there are red flashing warning lights all over the global food system.
00:35:51.800 | I'm hoping that things can change.
00:35:55.880 | I'm hoping that by changing the price of food, it becoming much more expensive, we can keep
00:36:00.360 | it available.
00:36:02.120 | That's going to have a big impact because you'd be spending a lot more money, but at
00:36:05.480 | least it would be available and there wouldn't be widespread famine.
00:36:08.400 | I'm hoping that there can be a quick response to the high prices and there can be more food
00:36:13.280 | planted.
00:36:14.280 | But right now, there are big, big problems on the horizon for that.
00:36:22.200 | In that situation though, what works?
00:36:25.240 | Ordinary preparedness works.
00:36:27.320 | Ordinary prepping.
00:36:28.320 | I have for years made these statements.
00:36:31.880 | Number one, ordinary financial planning works until it doesn't.
00:36:36.400 | Everything I've said works, has been ordinary financial planning.
00:36:41.280 | What could happen that would make ordinary financial planning not work?
00:36:44.320 | Well, it would be if there was literally not enough supplies of food.
00:36:49.840 | That could lead to, would lead to widespread social disruption.
00:36:54.720 | If you thought social disruption was bad during COVID, you ain't seen nothing yet.
00:36:58.280 | Wait till there's famine in the land and all of a sudden now, everything falls apart.
00:37:04.200 | But you can avoid that for you and your family by having food.
00:37:08.320 | So I've been stockpiling significantly over the last couple of weeks, trying to make sure
00:37:12.640 | that our larders are full.
00:37:18.400 | That could be a big thing.
00:37:19.400 | That could be a big, big trend over the next year or two that could be seriously disruptive.
00:37:25.280 | I'm hoping that we can avoid it.
00:37:29.440 | I'm planning for the fact that we can't.
00:37:31.760 | That wouldn't make financial planning fall apart.
00:37:34.280 | It would just mean that you need to have money to buy the food and the cheapest time to do
00:37:38.880 | it is now.
00:37:39.880 | And then later, you need to have the money to buy the food then, assuming that it is
00:37:43.400 | available.
00:37:45.920 | That's not a remaking and that's not a reason to leave the United States.
00:37:50.280 | In fact, I think that the United States will have the least impact of any country from,
00:37:58.080 | if it happens, of disruptions in the global food supplies.
00:38:02.680 | What I really worry about is so many other nations around the world that have far higher
00:38:07.160 | levels of poverty and that are far more dependent on exports.
00:38:10.600 | The United States is very highly food independent.
00:38:15.680 | And if food became short, the United States makes plenty of food to feed itself, the basic
00:38:22.760 | staple crops, and then that can be easily supplemented, especially with modern growing
00:38:26.920 | technology of all the stuff around the edges, vegetables, etc.
00:38:30.920 | That stuff can be brought into production quickly.
00:38:32.520 | The United States is so technologically advanced, I think it could be brought into production
00:38:38.160 | very quickly.
00:38:41.360 | I'm not too worried about that in the United States.
00:38:43.360 | What I'm worried about is on a global basis, where there's far higher levels of poverty
00:38:47.640 | and far lower levels of production and lower levels of ability to respond.
00:38:55.680 | If food became scarce in the United States, people left and right, the best business to
00:39:00.960 | be in would be selling UV lights, grow lights, greenhouses, hydroponic kits for salad greens,
00:39:09.520 | things like that.
00:39:10.520 | Maybe it would be a great thing to point our culture more and more towards a localized
00:39:19.040 | production where every kitchen has one of those cool little salad walls in it, and every
00:39:24.000 | backyard has a little vegetable plot in it, and there's a little hen coop of chickens
00:39:29.800 | outside every kitchen window.
00:39:32.100 | Maybe that would be a good thing.
00:39:33.100 | I'd love to see it, but maybe it would be a good thing.
00:39:35.480 | The point is that the United States, because there's so much money, people can respond.
00:39:39.320 | They can adjust to that.
00:39:40.600 | I worry about it on a global basis more than I do about the United States.
00:39:45.400 | The other thing, of course, is the threat of war.
00:39:49.160 | A few weeks ago, I talked about my biggest concern with cyber warfare.
00:39:53.960 | At this point, none of that has emerged.
00:39:55.560 | It's been an interesting question is why has, for example, Russia, that the world believes
00:40:00.720 | and has believed has a very sophisticated ability to engage in cyber warfare, why have
00:40:05.640 | they not seemingly used those abilities?
00:40:08.200 | They haven't done much in Ukraine, and they haven't done much around the world.
00:40:12.000 | I can understand why they haven't done much around the world, but why they haven't done
00:40:16.280 | much in Ukraine is a harder question to answer.
00:40:19.560 | It seems to me that the risk level has come down.
00:40:26.320 | As long as the Russians will be able to finish their war in some way that allows them to
00:40:31.120 | save face, then I think it would lower the risk of the conflict spreading beyond the
00:40:36.240 | region.
00:40:37.920 | I think that the risk is much, much lower.
00:40:40.280 | However, it is interesting to think about what if you did get, instead of an erroneous
00:40:46.400 | alert, what if you got an actual alert that said, "Hey, there's a nuclear missile inbound
00:40:52.160 | to your city.
00:40:53.160 | Do you have a plan for that?"
00:40:54.640 | It's not something that most of us think about, but the lesson that I look at it is wouldn't
00:40:58.480 | you feel better if you had a plan for that?
00:41:00.840 | Wouldn't you feel better if you actually had a bunker, a blast room in your basement, or
00:41:06.720 | a bunker in your backyard, or a little piece of land that you could get to where you had
00:41:11.040 | a bunker and supplies, etc.?
00:41:12.480 | Wouldn't that make you feel better?
00:41:15.380 | As I've gone through it in the analysis, I think that when you look at these scenarios,
00:41:21.000 | you recognize that, "Hey, if I have the money, if I'm a millionaire, it might be worth it
00:41:26.960 | for me to go ahead and build out a bunker.
00:41:29.440 | It might be worth it for me to make sure that I was well protected from those things in
00:41:33.520 | case the financial markets collapsed and it didn't work anymore."
00:41:36.880 | You cannot pretend that the world is just going to be at peace for the rest of your
00:41:41.160 | life and so making a plan that that is the case doesn't make sense.
00:41:46.480 | You have to make a plan that works no matter what.
00:41:50.000 | Final thing I point out is I think when you look at the situation in the United States,
00:41:56.320 | you see how, or on the world, excuse me, when you look at the situation in the world, you
00:42:00.600 | see how you don't get to choose and necessarily get one disaster after another.
00:42:07.080 | And that's oftentimes what can provoke a crisis.
00:42:10.420 | The Ukrainian people have gone through a very difficult flu pandemic with widespread loss
00:42:18.240 | of life, widespread economic disruption, political unrest, et cetera.
00:42:24.400 | And then that was exacerbated by their country being invaded.
00:42:28.600 | The Russian people have gone through a very difficult flu pandemic, widespread loss of
00:42:34.000 | life, widespread restrictions, et cetera, and then they go through global sanctions
00:42:41.480 | being levied against them.
00:42:43.840 | The American people have gone through a disruptive event, a disruptive flu, widespread economic
00:42:51.960 | difficulties, widespread disruptions, and now all of a sudden got to deal with high
00:42:58.000 | gas rates, high gas prices, increasing rates of inflation, et cetera.
00:43:02.900 | So you don't get to choose one crisis at a time.
00:43:06.020 | They often come together.
00:43:07.600 | And so when you do deep level planning, it's often because you recognize that while any
00:43:12.060 | one particular threat may not be such a big deal, I don't get to choose whether one threat
00:43:18.440 | comes at a time or not.
00:43:21.420 | There have been a lot of businesses wiped out over the last couple of years completely.
00:43:26.780 | Those people are still suffering and trying to figure out how to get things forward.
00:43:30.280 | And they're really upset about high gas rates.
00:43:35.020 | Maybe they were perfectly set up to where, hey, gas prices aren't a big deal in my life
00:43:39.220 | before, but now gas prices are a big deal.
00:43:42.660 | And they used up all their savings trying to keep their business afloat.
00:43:45.880 | And now you have uncertainty, you have economic uncertainty, inflation, risks of war, et cetera.
00:43:52.440 | So the reason you do planning, even for hardcore deep level scenarios, is that you can't predict
00:43:59.780 | the scenario that you specifically will face.
00:44:02.940 | You don't know specifically when it will happen to you.
00:44:07.020 | And so because of that, you acknowledge it and you do the deep level planning.
00:44:13.020 | That's the lesson from the United States.
00:44:16.700 | I think that things in the United States are really not that bad.
00:44:21.180 | And I don't think they're really going to be that bad, especially when held on a global
00:44:25.940 | basis.
00:44:28.020 | I think that if you can get to the United States and you're not thriving where you are,
00:44:32.700 | one of the best places to be in the coming year is going to be in the United States.
00:44:38.140 | But all of the basics still apply.
00:44:42.860 | And even hardcore planning still applies.
00:44:45.420 | And by planning for disasters and disruptions, it puts a sense of stability in your life
00:44:51.900 | that allows you to keep building for what you want to actually have happen.
00:44:57.580 | I see this as the fundamental reason why do I talk so much about disaster planning.
00:45:04.180 | As I see it, it's so that you can go on and ignore the disasters without worrying about
00:45:09.660 | things so much.
00:45:10.660 | There's interesting research people do about what causes children to be economically successful.
00:45:22.300 | And there are some who argue with data to indicate good strength to their arguments
00:45:28.500 | that the children of wealthy people always do better than the children of non-wealthy
00:45:33.300 | people.
00:45:34.300 | And people try to figure out why is that.
00:45:36.060 | Is it because they went to better schools, because they were given more money, et cetera?
00:45:39.980 | But one of the arguments that I think is pretty powerful is the children of wealthy people
00:45:45.860 | don't worry about getting wiped out.
00:45:49.620 | They don't worry about having enough food to eat.
00:45:52.220 | They don't worry about going bankrupt and being homeless.
00:45:55.700 | They don't worry about those things.
00:45:58.500 | And because they don't worry about those things, they can take bigger risks.
00:46:02.900 | They can go for things that other people wouldn't do.
00:46:05.740 | In my own life, I observed this that when I was in college, I was worried about having
00:46:11.020 | enough money to pay for school.
00:46:13.000 | And because of that, I didn't go after some of the high-level internships that other people
00:46:18.780 | went after because I needed to make money today.
00:46:22.240 | Looking back, I now see that I made the wrong choice.
00:46:24.980 | I should have gone after those high-level internships instead of worrying about making
00:46:28.500 | money today because it would have been a significant advance in my life and in my career.
00:46:33.300 | I was wrong.
00:46:34.300 | I did the wrong thing.
00:46:36.020 | But I didn't know better.
00:46:37.940 | And so you see this played out, right?
00:46:39.380 | You see that the children of wealthy people will go and take the unpaid internship that
00:46:43.420 | has much better access.
00:46:45.300 | They'll go and start a business that may or may not go and that may or may not have any
00:46:49.100 | cash flow today and it still works.
00:46:51.380 | And yet the children of poor people often feel more pressure to make it today, to make
00:46:56.860 | money today, to be okay, to not get wiped out, to not be a burden on mom and dad, etc.
00:47:02.900 | I think there's really good evidence to say that that can be true.
00:47:06.500 | Now, there are countervailing arguments, right?
00:47:08.340 | You can appreciate the hunger that poor people have that rich people often don't express
00:47:12.180 | so seriously.
00:47:13.840 | But on the whole, I can't see how you're better off if you don't have a safety net psychologically.
00:47:22.140 | So that's why you build a safety net under yourself now.
00:47:24.780 | I can't go back and change what I did or didn't do at 18 years old.
00:47:29.180 | But you build a safety net under yourself now so that you can move on.
00:47:34.060 | And if you've got a year's supply of food in your pantry, you don't need to spend time
00:47:39.460 | worrying about food on a weekly basis.
00:47:41.700 | You don't spend time worrying about food and, "I gotta go to the store."
00:47:45.200 | Even just the simple convenience of, "I gotta go to the store."
00:47:49.540 | You have it covered.
00:47:50.540 | They got plenty.
00:47:51.540 | No big deal.
00:47:52.540 | We'll make a big shopping trip once a month.
00:47:54.300 | And then if prices go up, okay, we'll keep buying.
00:47:56.800 | But if we don't need to buy, it's no big deal.
00:47:59.100 | And so by being conservative in your financial planning, it allows you to be more aggressive
00:48:05.660 | in your business planning, in your career planning, in your income planning.
00:48:10.300 | That's how I see it.
00:48:11.300 | I've tried to figure out where's the right balance of conservatism and being aggressive.
00:48:16.740 | And as I see it, that's the balance.
00:48:19.100 | Be conservative in your consumption so that you can be aggressive in your income.
00:48:23.060 | And then you can go after the opportunities that you see knowing that you have a safety
00:48:26.980 | net, knowing that you're not likely to get wiped out, knowing that you can fall back
00:48:31.060 | on your reserves in the same way that the child of wealthy parents knows that, "Hey,
00:48:38.980 | I'm never gonna be homeless.
00:48:39.980 | So therefore, I can be more aggressive in the opportunities that I go after."
00:48:43.860 | Hope these lessons are useful to you.
00:48:48.540 | We're not in a period of prosperity for many people, but yet prosperity is often created
00:48:55.420 | out of times of crisis.
00:48:56.420 | And so my hope for you is that you and your family would be able to navigate whatever
00:49:01.320 | level of crisis you're facing personally, be it war, be it sanctions, or be it inflation.
00:49:11.160 | My hope is that you'd be able to navigate it.
00:49:13.000 | And my hope is that you would have great wisdom to be able to figure out, "How do I capitalize
00:49:17.440 | on this crisis?
00:49:19.720 | How do I find ways to improve?
00:49:21.240 | How do I find ways to adjust it?"
00:49:24.320 | I'm seeking to do that myself.
00:49:28.120 | And I have a brand new course called International Escape Plan.
00:49:30.760 | I haven't talked about that on this class much, but it's my way of capitalizing on a
00:49:35.440 | crisis.
00:49:36.440 | It's my way of saying, "Hey, here's things I've taught for a long time.
00:49:39.120 | Let me reteach it brand new."
00:49:40.880 | Because as part of that, it's a matter of saying that if you're prepared to leave your
00:49:45.160 | country, as I talked about and showed with Ukraine and Russia, if you're prepared to
00:49:49.040 | leave your country, you can be prepared to thrive in the middle of a crisis.
00:49:52.720 | So let me just close today's show with an ad that in addition to what I have said, if
00:49:57.760 | you do not have a plan to get out of your country, then I think that that is a real
00:50:02.880 | blind spot in your overall thinking.
00:50:05.400 | There are many things that can happen that could cause you to want to leave your country.
00:50:09.560 | Your country could be very robust in a great economic state, but they shut you in your
00:50:15.040 | apartment and don't let you leave for weeks at a time, months at a time.
00:50:18.560 | Just imagine living in China right now.
00:50:19.920 | They say you can't come out.
00:50:20.920 | They got robotic dogs trotting through the street with loudspeakers and cameras going
00:50:25.400 | to a central place, keeping you in your apartment.
00:50:27.520 | They literally bolt you into your apartment building in some buildings.
00:50:32.080 | Today they're doing that.
00:50:33.400 | I can't even imagine living in that kind of place.
00:50:36.120 | Imagine that happens in your country.
00:50:38.120 | Get out, man.
00:50:39.120 | Go somewhere free.
00:50:40.120 | Right?
00:50:41.120 | If you're living in Canada and you don't want to live in it, get out.
00:50:44.120 | Go somewhere free.
00:50:46.200 | What if they pass some medical mandate that you don't think is right?
00:50:52.140 | They say you've got to get this.
00:50:53.400 | You've got to take the jab or you've got to go and get this medical procedure done or
00:50:57.240 | you can't be here.
00:50:58.240 | You're not allowed to have rights like the rest of people.
00:51:01.080 | Get out.
00:51:02.920 | It's crazy to live under that kind of stuff.
00:51:05.160 | Get out and go somewhere else.
00:51:06.520 | Or it could be the fact that, hey, I'm living in a place and all of a sudden there's a threat
00:51:10.000 | of war from our neighbor or to the threat of economic problems due to our country going
00:51:14.280 | to war.
00:51:15.740 | Get out and go build somewhere.
00:51:17.480 | Don't lose the most precious thing that you have, which is time to these outside circumstances.
00:51:24.480 | So if you're interested in building a practical, reasonable plan for that and you're interested
00:51:29.240 | in my walking you through how to do it cheaply, quickly, and very effectively, go to internationalskateplan.com.
00:51:36.480 | Internationalskateplan.com.
00:51:37.480 | Sign up for my newest course.
00:51:39.480 | Internationalskateplan.com.
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