2023-11-17_Friday

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00:00:24.760 | Today on Radical Personal Finance is live Q&A.

00:00:43.400 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:46.200 | skills, insights, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:50.000 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:52.480 | My name is Josh Rashid.

00:00:53.480 | This is Friday, November 17, 2023.

00:00:57.560 | On this Friday, after a long hiatus, we have a live Friday Q&A show.

00:01:02.320 | Welcome.

00:01:03.320 | If you're new around here, each and every Friday in which I can arrange the appropriate

00:01:18.400 | recording technology, then I record a live Friday Q&A show.

00:01:22.560 | It works just like Call & Talk Radio.

00:01:24.160 | Call in, ask about whatever you want.

00:01:25.400 | We have a live conversation back and forth.

00:01:27.120 | It gives me a chance to connect with you on a deeper level, answer questions, comments,

00:01:30.720 | you get to bring up topics that I might not bring up, answer questions in a more interesting

00:01:34.560 | way and get a little bit of personalized insight and advice.

00:01:38.960 | And I thank you, the many of you who join me for these Friday Q&A shows.

00:01:43.360 | If you would like to join me for a Friday Q&A show, you can do that by becoming a patron

00:01:46.360 | of the show.

00:01:47.360 | Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

00:01:48.360 | Support the show on Patreon and that will give you access to one of these Friday Q&A

00:01:55.560 | shows.

00:01:56.560 | I'll notify you in advance and you can call in and talk about whatever you like.

00:01:59.960 | We begin with Andy in Indiana.

00:02:01.160 | Andy, welcome to the show.

00:02:02.160 | How can I serve you today?

00:02:03.160 | Hi, Joshua.

00:02:04.160 | Thanks for taking my call.

00:02:05.160 | I think the sort of high level picture of what I wanted to ask was what mental models

00:02:12.480 | and tools and decision making frameworks do you use for somewhat open ended, hard to define

00:02:21.080 | things like which job should I be applying for, which of these jobs that I applied for

00:02:25.440 | should I take or buying used cars, I feel like is similar.

00:02:30.480 | So the specifics of my situation, my medium term goal is to move from a onsite technician

00:02:38.760 | role company I'm with to a completely remote non technician role going from hourly to salary.

00:02:46.920 | I was I started working down that path a few months ago and then they completely closed

00:02:51.640 | down a lot of salaried hiring.

00:02:54.100 | So that's not available at the moment to me.

00:02:57.560 | However, there is there still doing internal hiring for other hourly roles.

00:03:03.760 | And so I do have the option to take or to apply for and or take some slightly higher

00:03:10.160 | level hourly roles doing different work.

00:03:14.720 | My intermediate term goal is I'd really like to get away from like I'd like to do something

00:03:21.480 | different than what I'm doing.

00:03:22.480 | I've been in the same role for several years.

00:03:24.640 | I'm not finding it challenging or stimulating the schedules got less appealing, etc, etc.

00:03:29.920 | So I'd like to get out from that.

00:03:31.280 | I also think I'm not like I'm not going to get any more qualified to move up doing the

00:03:37.000 | work I'm doing.

00:03:38.240 | And I could go do six months or a year, whatever of some other role and be more qualified for

00:03:46.640 | the eventual job that I would like to get.

00:03:49.560 | So then I find that I spend a lot of time and mental energy saying, well, you know,

00:03:55.520 | I don't see any perfect jobs.

00:03:57.000 | Do I like a better than B is, you know, schedule freedom more important to me or is challenge

00:04:03.280 | more important to me?

00:04:04.520 | And I don't think there's necessarily a right answer there.

00:04:08.120 | But how would you think through when I'm like, I would be happy to take a high schedule freedom

00:04:13.760 | job with lower responsibility and do something else different.

00:04:18.080 | But I'd also be happy to take a more challenging, less schedule freedom job.

00:04:22.280 | And I don't know what my I just find I get sort of bogged down trying to decide which

00:04:29.640 | ones should I pursue.

00:04:30.640 | Should I cast the net really wide?

00:04:32.240 | Should I have a really narrow focus?

00:04:34.000 | That sort of thing.

00:04:35.000 | Yeah.

00:04:36.000 | In some ways, it would be nice if there were just a narrow focus.

00:04:38.960 | I've always admired people who always knew exactly what they wanted.

00:04:43.000 | They're sure that they they're sure they want to do this thing.

00:04:45.960 | It's very clear to them and they're on track and and and, you know, we're going to go and

00:04:51.600 | get this done.

00:04:52.600 | No problem.

00:04:53.600 | Unfortunately, that's not generally been my experience.

00:04:56.560 | And I think that's not an experience for many of us.

00:04:59.600 | We have to go and search a little bit.

00:05:02.560 | Excuse me, I had to cough.

00:05:07.760 | Here are the models that I find to be most useful.

00:05:13.760 | The first one, I think just comes down to vision is I have discovered this to be the

00:05:19.840 | most powerful is simply that if your vision is clear, if your goals are clear, that makes

00:05:25.680 | decision making relatively simple and straightforward.

00:05:30.040 | That doesn't mean it's easy.

00:05:31.960 | But the first question I ask myself is, am I having trouble deciding because I'm genuinely

00:05:37.960 | having trouble deciding or am I having trouble deciding because I don't know what I want?

00:05:43.980 | It's probably just as frustrating for me to say, well, get clear on what you want as it

00:05:48.120 | is to say, you know, what job do you want?

00:05:50.280 | But the point is simply that a job or any decision in life is going to, you know, what

00:05:56.520 | car you buy, etc. is going to be driven by your vision.

00:06:00.440 | And let me give a couple of examples from people that I have known.

00:06:04.760 | There have been people that I have known whose primary goal, their primary vision was to

00:06:10.080 | make a large amount of money.

00:06:13.300 | And in order to do that, they set themselves off on the career path that was most likely

00:06:17.840 | to make them a large amount of money.

00:06:20.920 | Sometimes that came with very heavy consequences to their social life.

00:06:26.240 | Sometimes that came with very heavy consequences to their family life.

00:06:30.020 | Sometimes that came with very heavy consequences to their health, etc.

00:06:32.940 | But eventually they wind up succeeding and making a lot of money.

00:06:36.720 | In my circles, I've known a lot of people who have prioritized other things.

00:06:40.200 | I've known men who prioritized their family.

00:06:43.840 | And so, you know, I knew one man who he, for a decade of his life, he worked, he was a

00:06:49.400 | highly qualified engineer, had no problem there, but he worked, actually for more than

00:06:53.600 | a decade, he worked a half-time job so that he could homeschool his children.

00:06:58.760 | His wife was there, but he wanted to do the homeschooling of the higher level subjects,

00:07:02.320 | etc.

00:07:03.320 | So he worked a half-time job.

00:07:04.600 | That undoubtedly cost him hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, both in current wages

00:07:09.640 | and in opportunity cost of investment growth, etc.

00:07:13.200 | But he had a vision of what he was trying to build that caused him to go in that direction.

00:07:18.240 | I've known men who had a vision of wanting to be able to work with their children.

00:07:22.720 | And so, instead of taking a corporate job where they wouldn't be allowed to see their

00:07:26.680 | family, they chose a pathway that allowed them to work with their family.

00:07:32.320 | I've known people who just loved adventure.

00:07:34.760 | And so they would go off and chase adventure, etc.

00:07:38.000 | And so it seems to me pretty obvious that your vision will drive your job choices in

00:07:44.720 | some way.

00:07:45.920 | I, myself, my vision of freedom and control over my time, control over what I want to

00:07:54.120 | say, control over what I want to do, etc., has driven each and every one of my decisions.

00:07:59.100 | And there's been many times when faced with a decision that I've said, "Well, am I going

00:08:03.960 | to do this certain pathway?

00:08:05.160 | Am I going to go down this path?"

00:08:07.160 | And I realized, "Well, Joshua, is your vision still that you want freedom or honesty or

00:08:11.800 | liberty, etc.?

00:08:13.300 | Or is your freedom that you want to make more money?

00:08:14.800 | You'd probably make more money if you took this path."

00:08:16.760 | And generally, I find that if I'm clear on my vision, then things fill in.

00:08:21.560 | Let's use a vehicle analogy to make it clearer, right?

00:08:24.800 | Your vision of what you want to do with the vehicle drives your choice.

00:08:30.520 | The choice of whether you buy a pickup truck or whether you buy a sports car is driven

00:08:35.240 | by your vision of how you imagine yourself driving it.

00:08:38.400 | The vision of whether you buy a nice big Jeep that you're going to take off-roading every

00:08:43.280 | weekend or overlanding every weekend up in the mountains is different than your vision

00:08:47.360 | of buying a little two-seater to get you around in the city.

00:08:50.080 | Your vision of a new car versus an old car is driven by – or sorry, your decision of

00:08:54.120 | a new car versus an old car is driven by your vision.

00:08:57.640 | And so, one of the things I've noticed in financial counseling over many years now is

00:09:01.440 | that when somebody doesn't know what to do, my best work is not generally going to be

00:09:08.800 | to tell them what to do but rather to try to help them get clear on what they want by

00:09:14.360 | sometimes laying out alternatives, suggesting courses of action.

00:09:18.100 | Sometimes I'll suggest a course of action and just see how they respond or react to

00:09:21.480 | it.

00:09:22.480 | Sometimes you want them to kind of glom onto an idea and say, "Yes, I really want this.

00:09:26.720 | I really want that."

00:09:28.240 | Sometimes you want them to just recoil from an idea and that recoiling from a certain

00:09:33.040 | thing helps a lot.

00:09:35.340 | And so, I believe that if you're having trouble knowing what to do, then generally speaking

00:09:41.440 | the most fruitful area of focus is to say, "What kind of vision do I have?"

00:09:47.240 | Now I can anticipate the next thing.

00:09:49.280 | "Well, I have multiple visions."

00:09:50.840 | Okay.

00:09:51.840 | Or, "There's multiple things I could be happy with or I could be contented with multiple

00:09:55.280 | pathways."

00:09:56.640 | So there I think that one of the things that we want to play with is the vividness of a

00:10:03.280 | description.

00:10:04.600 | And so, I have found for me one thing that's been helpful is to just take an idea, and

00:10:11.120 | this works well for me.

00:10:12.120 | I'm not a very mechanical guy.

00:10:13.120 | I'm an idea guy so I can manipulate images and ideas in my head very easily.

00:10:17.280 | But I'll take an image and I'll just blow it up and I'll say, "What if I were hyper

00:10:20.640 | successful at this job?"

00:10:21.760 | I've shared publicly.

00:10:22.760 | This is one of the things that caused me to leave financial planning in the formal sense

00:10:32.000 | to go after radical personal finance.

00:10:36.200 | I took my current more standard job and I said, "What if I'm hyper successful at this?"

00:10:43.680 | And I imagined myself as a managing partner of a big firm with the money and the schedule

00:10:48.880 | and everything like that.

00:10:50.880 | And I said, "Okay, now I know what that looks like."

00:10:53.280 | Then I took my – I checked out what does failure at that mean, but I wasn't worried

00:10:58.080 | about failure then.

00:10:59.120 | Then I took my alternative path and I said, "What if I'm hyper successful at the alternative

00:11:03.720 | path?"

00:11:04.720 | And I sketched out what that would mean and then I said, "What if I'm a complete failure

00:11:09.100 | at the alternative path?"

00:11:10.740 | And what I found is that I was more excited about even being a failure at the alternative

00:11:16.400 | path than I was about being hyper successful at the known path.

00:11:21.320 | It just wasn't very exciting to me.

00:11:23.580 | So amplifying and differentiating them is, I think, sometimes useful.

00:11:30.380 | And this leads me to the next one, which is regret.

00:11:35.320 | Is that I think a lot of times you should ask yourself, "Which choice am I going to

00:11:39.520 | regret more?

00:11:41.720 | And which regret am I more likely to have?"

00:11:44.920 | So that word regret, I think, touches at a core emotion that for many of us is a very

00:11:52.200 | off-putting emotion that we don't want to experience.

00:11:55.540 | But we can understand it a little bit if we engage with it.

00:11:59.640 | So here I think of – let's say you're in college and you say, "Well, I could stay

00:12:03.980 | up late and I could study for this exam and get an A or a B, or I could go to this concert

00:12:11.000 | with my friends.

00:12:12.000 | Well, what am I more likely to regret in the future?"

00:12:15.360 | Well, it depends on what happens with it.

00:12:18.340 | If this A or the B on this exam is the thing that's going to mean you either flunk out

00:12:23.660 | of college or suffer some massive problem versus being very successful in college, then

00:12:29.440 | certainly you would want to study.

00:12:31.400 | But generally speaking, you probably have things mostly in hand and the fear of regret

00:12:36.440 | is just something to illustrate to you that I should go with my friends.

00:12:39.560 | This is a component of what I'm doing.

00:12:42.760 | Or not pursuing things that are interesting.

00:12:45.160 | I find, at least for me, the fear of regret is – and actually the emotion of regret.

00:12:50.920 | I try to discipline the emotion of regret because it's kind of a worthless emotion

00:12:54.160 | when it actually happens.

00:12:55.680 | We all make the best choices at the time with the information that we have.

00:12:59.400 | We do the thing that seems best to us.

00:13:01.240 | If in hindsight later we would make a different decision, we can't blame ourselves for that

00:13:05.480 | or engage in this feeling or emotion of regret.

00:13:08.480 | After all, we did the best we could with the information that we had.

00:13:11.040 | All we can do is go on and make a different decision in the future.

00:13:13.280 | So I don't like the actual feeling of regret, but I like harnessing thinking about the fear

00:13:17.680 | of regret as a way of identifying the differences between things.

00:13:22.640 | So vision, regret, consequences is the next one.

00:13:28.240 | I would just say – I wish I had a better, beautiful name for this – but there are

00:13:32.200 | some consequences – and here I'm mostly thinking about negative, although they can

00:13:37.040 | be both positive and negative – there are some consequences that I'm willing to accept.

00:13:41.920 | So for example, losing money, losing some amount of money, I'm willing to accept it.

00:13:47.340 | Losing a grade or failing a class or something, I'm willing to accept that.

00:13:51.160 | Death, doing something that could result in death, I'm not really willing to accept

00:13:56.840 | it.

00:13:57.840 | Divorce, not willing to do something that's going to result in that as a consequence.

00:14:02.560 | There are a few others.

00:14:03.560 | Bankruptcy is serious.

00:14:05.040 | I'm willing to consider bankruptcy as a reasonable consequence if the benefit of success

00:14:11.200 | is big enough, but in general, if something's going to wipe me out, you generally don't

00:14:15.880 | want to do that.

00:14:17.840 | And bankruptcy has a different impact depending on where you are.

00:14:23.520 | If you're 20 years old and you didn't have a fortune or you're 30 years old and you

00:14:27.560 | hadn't made a fortune yet and you pursue something and you wind up bankrupt, big deal,

00:14:31.880 | not a big deal.

00:14:32.880 | On the other hand, if you've got $100 million in the bank and you're 50 years old, the costs

00:14:37.920 | of going bankrupt at that time are much more significant.

00:14:41.200 | And so you'll consider the costs on a varying way.

00:14:46.120 | I guess the final one is one that I've said publicly many times, but I haven't heard

00:14:53.000 | anyone say it except I can cite where I learned it, but it just comes from Stephen Covey's

00:14:57.160 | win-win or no deal.

00:14:59.100 | But over the years as I thought about decision-making through the lens of practicing that habit

00:15:05.480 | of always going for a win-win or no deal outcome, I realized that in decision-making, making

00:15:13.680 | decisions where you have one good option and a lot of bad options is easy because you just

00:15:18.980 | choose the good option.

00:15:20.580 | The only thing that's hard about decision-making is either when you have multiple good options

00:15:25.900 | or you have multiple bad options.

00:15:28.420 | So that's what's hard.

00:15:30.300 | So how can you change a decision from having multiple good options to having one great

00:15:36.540 | option and no good options?

00:15:39.060 | Or sorry, one option that's – you need to have clear disparity of your decisions.

00:15:46.620 | You're trying to choose – and so if you have decisions that are kind of similar, then

00:15:51.340 | you have to figure out how to make them different from each other so that you can differentiate

00:15:56.080 | between them.

00:15:57.300 | Because at the time at which you have a good option or a great option as contrasted against

00:16:03.260 | non-good options, then your decision will now be easy.

00:16:06.900 | So even if you have multiple good options or multiple bad options, the process is the

00:16:11.260 | same.

00:16:12.260 | There's two pathways you can go down.

00:16:13.900 | Pathway number one is you can look deeper at those decisions until you can understand

00:16:23.140 | more clearly what the costs and benefits of a decision are.

00:16:28.060 | So you can say, "Well, if I go down option A, yeah, I might only be making – yeah,

00:16:33.740 | I might be making 20% less on day one, but that's going to put me in a pathway to make

00:16:38.340 | 200% more on day 1,001."

00:16:42.020 | And so that's actually more alluring to me.

00:16:45.140 | Or another guy might say, "You know what?

00:16:47.180 | If I go down option A, there's a good chance I might lose my job entirely, but option B

00:16:52.980 | is a much safer thing and I don't want to be without a job, so I'm going to stick

00:16:56.460 | with option B."

00:16:57.800 | So we try to amplify the attributes of a decision in some way until in our mind with our own

00:17:10.220 | kind of punch card, the decisions are now different.

00:17:14.480 | And this is why I think you'll see people who have some maturity, they'll often just

00:17:19.600 | be very confident in their decisions.

00:17:21.200 | You meet a guy who's an entrepreneur through and through and he can't imagine going back

00:17:25.800 | to the world of an employee because he values opportunity and freedom and flexibility, et

00:17:31.840 | cetera, more than he values perceived stability, safety, security.

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00:18:07.140 | On the other hand, there are guys who look at it and say, "Absolutely not.

00:18:10.680 | I value stability, safety, security, and my weekends off and my evenings off, et cetera,

00:18:16.200 | much more than I value the opportunity to go big or go bust."

00:18:20.280 | And so it's just a matter of playing with the options until for you yourself, they are

00:18:25.480 | differentiated.

00:18:26.480 | Now, what if you can't do that?

00:18:28.440 | What if you're looking at three options and they're still kind of all feel the same way?

00:18:31.880 | There's three cars and they're still kind of all feel the same way.

00:18:34.680 | Well then I think you look for another option and you just sit tight and you drive the car

00:18:39.720 | you're driving until something comes along that's markedly better or until the circumstances

00:18:44.560 | in your life change and things are markedly better or different in some way.

00:18:50.200 | And so as you go through life, things will change and things will change for you.

00:18:55.640 | And so just sitting tight and waiting either until there's a new option that's a lot better

00:19:01.640 | or something has changed so that you're now in a different situation and can perceive

00:19:06.980 | it differently is perfectly reasonable.

00:19:10.680 | I think that that is all of the models that come to mind right off the bat.

00:19:17.640 | They're probably imperfect, but those are the best ones that I've used over the years.

00:19:21.440 | Thanks.

00:19:22.440 | I think maybe I didn't quite get this out of my question.

00:19:26.800 | Specifically with, so as far as a big picture vision, I think I'm in a much better place

00:19:32.080 | than I pretty much ever have been of where I want to be three to five years from now.

00:19:37.440 | And I have an idea of like, the ideal thing that I would like to do to get there is make

00:19:42.760 | a transition to this remote job, kind of change my career path, right?

00:19:49.800 | I'm not sure how to.

00:19:53.000 | And if I could just be applying internally, which is easy, and I have time for at the

00:19:56.640 | moment.

00:19:57.640 | That's why I like, you know, I can do that while I'm at work.

00:20:00.160 | And no one questions me sitting over there job shopping on my company computer, you know,

00:20:06.280 | on break.

00:20:08.960 | So that's straightforward.

00:20:09.960 | And if I could be doing that and finding out, can I just do that immediately?

00:20:14.440 | Like I kind of think I can, then, or am I actually not qualified for these jobs yet?

00:20:19.600 | I need to gain more experience.

00:20:22.580 | I would do that.

00:20:23.580 | But that like, there's no, none of those jobs available right now.

00:20:26.600 | So then I'm considering this alternative.

00:20:29.360 | And it's the the time bound and lots of uncertainty, sort of a, I'm at the base of the cliff.

00:20:37.480 | My goal is to climb to the top of the cliff, I could go left, or I could go right.

00:20:41.920 | How do you weigh, you know, which one is going to be the easier path sort of thing?

00:20:47.560 | I could, like specifically this situation, probably in three weeks be working at a job

00:20:53.680 | that isn't really an improvement over what I'm doing is not super interesting to me,

00:20:59.920 | but has a decent amount of downtime that I could spend on development work, right?

00:21:03.760 | Like there's corporate trainings I could take, there's cross functional projects I could

00:21:08.120 | volunteer for, etc, etc, that I could have time to do things that weren't in my core

00:21:12.440 | responsibilities.

00:21:15.280 | I don't think I'd like that job as well.

00:21:17.200 | But that would be a decent way to prepare myself.

00:21:20.240 | Or I can hold out and keep trying for the really hard jobs that I'm barely qualified

00:21:26.320 | for, you know, I'm a good candidate, but there's somebody else that's just as good and more

00:21:30.000 | experienced in that area.

00:21:31.640 | And that might take me months to land one of those jobs, which is that job would move

00:21:39.760 | me forward down my path.

00:21:41.760 | So we're doing the training.

00:21:43.560 | Does that make sense?

00:21:44.560 | Sort of the A B, which is a little better, which is a little worse, I got to decide now

00:21:48.640 | which one do I spend time on that sort of thing.

00:21:51.360 | So then I think that if you go through all of that stuff that I said, you just flip a

00:21:55.600 | coin and you pick one and you go.

00:21:57.440 | The key is that you're taking action.

00:21:59.560 | And so I would apply for the jobs and I would set a time bound.

00:22:03.200 | So meaning I would say, all right, I'm the sounds like the ideal path would be to get

00:22:09.000 | the higher, better job that I'm not sure if I'm qualified for.

00:22:13.040 | So what can I do?

00:22:14.040 | The first thing I would do is go and find somebody who is in that job or who is over

00:22:19.160 | that job and take that person for lunch or sit down in the office and just ask for a

00:22:24.760 | meeting and say, I want this job.

00:22:28.580 | What do I need to do to be qualified for it and how can I qualify myself?

00:22:32.880 | And find out if there's a reasonable pathway to qualification for that.

00:22:37.200 | And in most cases, if you just simply go to somebody who's in that job and you say, I

00:22:42.640 | want your job, how can I be, or probably slightly better, I want to be your co-worker.

00:22:48.040 | I'm not sure if I'm qualified right now.

00:22:50.120 | Can you tell me what I would need to do to become qualified?

00:22:52.560 | They can lay it out.

00:22:54.920 | If a guy is working as a secretary in an attorney's office and he wants to become a paralegal,

00:23:01.200 | then all he's got to do is ask a paralegal how to do it and a few months later he can

00:23:05.040 | be a paralegal.

00:23:06.040 | If a guy is working as a paralegal and he wants to be a lawyer, all he's got to do is

00:23:09.200 | ask a lawyer how to become a lawyer and in a few years he can be a lawyer.

00:23:12.840 | If a guy is a lawyer and he wants to become partner, all he's got to do is go to partner

00:23:16.640 | and ask him, what do I need to do to become partner and then do the stuff.

00:23:20.440 | And so qualifications are things that can be achieved fairly quickly generally and the

00:23:25.320 | process of being ambitious and going and asking for what those necessary qualifications are

00:23:30.840 | is often an important step in bringing yourself to the notice of those who are around.

00:23:35.120 | And so whoever is involved in that department or in that job, etc, then I would systematically

00:23:41.640 | go and make your interest known.

00:23:44.680 | Everyone knows, I mean employers want people who want to have the job and it's hard to

00:23:49.720 | find people with motivation and so I think that shows motivation, etc.

00:23:53.560 | Now if you find out that there's a reasonable pathway to that, then just focus on qualifying

00:23:58.280 | yourself in whatever plan you can.

00:24:01.960 | And if you can be qualified for that within say, I don't know, three months, six months,

00:24:06.480 | whatever your timeline is and then looking forward you look at it and say, alright six

00:24:10.800 | months from now I can be qualified for it.

00:24:13.120 | Meanwhile I'm going to start going out and doing my how are you's and who are you's around

00:24:17.080 | the company so that the people in that department know me and I'm going to apply for every one

00:24:22.040 | and I'm going to hand deliver my application and I'm going to send a box of chocolates

00:24:25.840 | and say, listen did you get my application, I really want this job.

00:24:30.760 | That showing that you want a job and you want it more than another person is a really good

00:24:35.000 | qualifying thing in and of itself.

00:24:37.720 | And so maybe that works out.

00:24:39.720 | If those qualifications however are beyond your window of time and you look at it and

00:24:44.520 | say, it's probably going to take me two or three years to get there and I'm not actually

00:24:48.320 | going to be qualified for the job without three years and that's not my timeline, then

00:24:53.000 | move to option B.

00:24:54.880 | At the end of the day it really doesn't matter what choice you make because if you make the

00:24:59.920 | choice and it turns out to be the so-called wrong choice, now you'll know that it was

00:25:05.760 | the wrong choice and you would pivot back quickly.

00:25:08.760 | And I think that it's more important to be speedy with making decisions so that you can

00:25:13.480 | gain actual data from the marketplace or from the job experience itself rather than to sit

00:25:19.880 | and to think and to think and to think and to think.

00:25:23.000 | And so we want to avoid wipe out.

00:25:25.360 | Again we want to avoid anything that could be completely destructive to us but as long

00:25:29.640 | as we're avoiding wipe out, just make a decision and go on.

00:25:32.800 | And as soon as you make the decision, you'll probably know within very short order whether

00:25:38.080 | it was the right decision or the wrong decision because now you're not dithering about trying

00:25:41.760 | to figure out everything in your head.

00:25:43.040 | You're dealing with actual results.

00:25:44.880 | Okay.

00:25:45.880 | Thanks.

00:25:46.880 | That makes sense.

00:25:49.760 | I have gone out and reached out and spoken to hiring managers and I think maybe my issue

00:25:55.960 | with this particular decision is I think I'm very on the cusp of I'm looking at jobs that

00:26:01.200 | I am qualified for but there are likely many likely to be more qualified applicant than

00:26:07.080 | I've had that on a couple of the jobs I've been turned down for already.

00:26:12.040 | We would have been very happy to hire you but this guy was three quarters of a percent

00:26:15.320 | better or one manager told me they basically literally said they flipped a coin and I lost.

00:26:22.640 | So yeah.

00:26:23.640 | Yeah.

00:26:24.640 | Thank you.

00:26:25.640 | So as far as any details of that, you're on the right track.

00:26:29.480 | I would just add go from there and make sure that you're expressing your desire because

00:26:36.240 | if things are that close, I mean you know as well as anyone, if you were hiring someone

00:26:41.720 | to work beside you, you would want someone who really wants the job and so express the

00:26:46.640 | desire and try to do that in a stronger way in addition to just the straight out qualifications.

00:26:54.080 | Kyle in the state of Washington, welcome to the show.

00:26:55.480 | How can I serve you today?

00:27:00.320 | Kyle is gone.

00:27:02.160 | We will wait for him to show back up.

00:27:03.920 | We go to Las Vegas, Nevada.

00:27:05.720 | Welcome to the show.

00:27:06.720 | How can I serve you today?

00:27:07.720 | Hey Josh, I appreciate you hosting the session today.

00:27:11.680 | My pleasure.

00:27:13.120 | I've got a question.

00:27:16.600 | Overall I think my wife and I have done a pretty good job in regards to accumulating

00:27:20.920 | that we're focusing on income and reducing expenses but one area I have to give myself

00:27:28.600 | an F in is estate planning.

00:27:31.840 | As a father with two younger kids, I've got a six-year-old and a nine-year-old, I want

00:27:39.400 | to make sure we have that buttoned up more.

00:27:42.400 | The obstacle I have is that I think from a family and value standpoint we have people

00:27:50.880 | within our circle that we would be comfortable raising the children if something happened

00:27:56.920 | to both my wife and I.

00:27:59.080 | But my challenge is I think as part of that conversation figuring out who to be an executor

00:28:08.280 | on our estate, talking finances, I would say that some of the family dynamics that would

00:28:15.440 | change a lot of things.

00:28:16.640 | I don't think they realize maybe what we've been able to accomplish and trying to one,

00:28:25.600 | clean up our estate but also be sensitive to not creating other problems while I'm alive.

00:28:32.440 | I don't know if you have any advice on where to start or maybe how to approach it.

00:28:37.800 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:28:38.960 | Do you know, if you were sitting in a lawyer's office, do you know what you want to happen

00:28:45.080 | to your assets and your estate, etc.?

00:28:47.720 | Do you know how that would come about legally speaking?

00:28:51.320 | Philosophically, I don't know how to do it in practice but I think my kids are too young

00:28:58.760 | to, I would assume to directly inherit anything but if somebody would have to step in and

00:29:06.120 | raise them to maturity in our absence, I'd want them to obviously have the resources

00:29:12.840 | funding to be able to do that where I wasn't creating a burden on somebody else.

00:29:17.880 | And then obviously any kind of surplus or excess be left to our children.

00:29:24.160 | So I'm going to do something that always makes guys like me nervous which is to be prescriptive

00:29:29.640 | or just give suggestions without actually polling you for details of your estate and

00:29:35.280 | assets and things like this.

00:29:36.840 | So I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice because a proper advisor would ask

00:29:43.680 | you a lot of questions about what you own, what you want to accomplish, etc.

00:29:46.800 | But what I sense happens a lot of times on this topic of estate planning is simply that

00:29:52.600 | because it is so under discussed, then people don't actually know what their options are.

00:30:01.280 | So I'm going to give you what I think is probably about the right solution for about 80% of

00:30:06.840 | young parents in situations perhaps like yours.

00:30:11.560 | It's not the right solution in all situations but it's the right solution for about 80%

00:30:16.600 | of people.

00:30:18.360 | Basically if you have a decent amount of assets and those assets can be created based on investments

00:30:26.100 | that you've made, those assets can be created just purely on life insurance that you have.

00:30:30.320 | It's not unusual for a young father to have $3 million of life insurance.

00:30:33.840 | Well guess what?

00:30:34.840 | That's a lot of money and your kids can't inherit it so you need an estate plan for

00:30:37.880 | it, etc.

00:30:39.120 | And so if you've got a few million bucks or you're on your way to a few million bucks

00:30:42.320 | but you don't have anything that's super sticky, for example you don't own a business that

00:30:48.680 | you're a 50% interest in or something like that that requires specific planning about

00:30:53.040 | what would happen to the shares of the business or you're not a part of a family trust of

00:30:58.240 | some kind or a family business is passing down, etc.

00:31:01.720 | You've just got some money, you've made some good financial decisions, you've accumulated

00:31:05.040 | money, it's spread across a variety of normal assets.

00:31:07.880 | You have equity in your house, you have vehicles, you have 401k accounts and other retirement

00:31:12.720 | accounts, you've got some physical assets, you've got some insurance and you've got some

00:31:16.420 | other investment properties and things like that.

00:31:20.600 | Let's assume that there's no special needs involved, etc.

00:31:23.160 | What I think makes, and you're young, there's no reason to expect that you're going to die,

00:31:26.660 | it's just a matter of covering your bases, having a will, etc.

00:31:31.420 | The basic thing that you want to do is have two things accomplished.

00:31:36.900 | Number one, you want to designate the ideal person that you want to be the guardian for

00:31:45.860 | your children and hopefully there would be a few.

00:31:50.320 | Ideally you would have three.

00:31:51.320 | In my will I have three.

00:31:54.740 | If my wife and I are dead, I want this person to raise my children, to be the guardian of

00:31:59.220 | my children.

00:32:00.340 | If that person is unavailable or unwilling, I want this person.

00:32:03.340 | If that person is unavailable or unwilling, I want this person.

00:32:06.440 | Just know that guardianship, you cannot force guardianship in your will, but what you can

00:32:12.980 | do is make it very clear what your desires and intentions are and that has a lot of weight

00:32:18.020 | with the court and a lot of weight with anybody who would be the guardian of your children.

00:32:22.540 | So you're trying to establish who you would want to be the guardian of your children and

00:32:26.100 | you're trying to make that clear so that your children can be raised according to your and

00:32:31.980 | your wife's vision for them.

00:32:34.420 | The second thing that you are trying to do is to make sure that your children are provided

00:32:40.020 | for financially, both while minors and also according to your wishes as adults.

00:32:47.780 | So if your children were adults, it would be no problem, you could just leave your money

00:32:51.480 | to them or of course if you could establish certain restrictions in a trust, etc.

00:32:57.120 | But the basic problem is that you've got a six-year-old and a nine-year-old and they're

00:33:01.140 | legally incompetent to inherit money, especially a lot of money.

00:33:05.380 | And so you need somebody to care for the money and so thus you're going to need some kind

00:33:10.820 | of trust and you're going to need a trustee to care for the money.

00:33:15.500 | And that trustee can be the same person who is the guardian, but it doesn't have to be

00:33:21.100 | the same person who is the guardian.

00:33:23.280 | And so what I think works well for most people in your situation is simply this.

00:33:29.020 | You decide who the guardian of your children would be.

00:33:33.160 | And if you have multiple people, then you could put them in order of your preference,

00:33:37.220 | then you do that.

00:33:38.500 | Then you decide who do I trust that would love, that loves those children and absolutely

00:33:45.720 | will do the best thing for those children.

00:33:48.620 | And it doesn't have to be the guardian, but who do I trust would fight for those children's

00:33:52.140 | interest.

00:33:53.180 | And you can designate that person as the trustee of what's going to be your family trust.

00:33:59.420 | Now in some cases I think it works nicely to have a co-trustee.

00:34:03.580 | So I don't want to go, I don't want to say what exactly I have done, but I'll just say

00:34:10.180 | that in many cases if the guardian of your child is a co-trustee with someone else who's

00:34:19.580 | not caring for the children, but who's someone else who is competent to be able to just provide

00:34:26.020 | supervision and make sure the children are being cared for, then that can be a nice safeguard.

00:34:31.200 | Then what you do is you go to your lawyer and you have your lawyer write a will for

00:34:35.620 | you, and inside of your will you're going to create a testamentary trust.

00:34:41.140 | This is a trust that only comes into being upon your death, when your last will and testament

00:34:48.140 | is opened.

00:34:49.140 | So all the trust documents are there, but it doesn't exist, it's not funded, it's just

00:34:52.860 | sitting there in your will.

00:34:54.660 | And then in that testamentary trust you simply designate the trustee or the co-trustees for

00:35:02.340 | your assets, and you direct that the trustee or the co-trustees are to distribute money

00:35:09.180 | from the trust for the support of your children and for their education and maintenance and

00:35:16.660 | support.

00:35:18.020 | And I think that if you have a trustee that you are confident in, then you want to give

00:35:23.100 | your trustee as much latitude as possible.

00:35:25.720 | So in my own trust I have it written with a wide degree of latitude.

00:35:29.740 | I trust my trustee, I've chosen someone that I believe will do the best, and so I want

00:35:34.460 | to give that person a wide degree of latitude.

00:35:38.060 | And there's plenty of money there in the trust, so they don't have to shortchange it.

00:35:43.180 | But the idea is that you want the guardian to know that the guardian can care for the

00:35:48.820 | children and there's going to be ample financial resources to compensate the guardian for his

00:35:55.140 | work in caring for the children.

00:35:57.660 | So the children are not a financial burden on his finances.

00:36:01.140 | And then the children are going to be properly cared for, they're going to have everything

00:36:03.780 | they need covered for education, health, maintenance, and support.

00:36:07.540 | And then you can decide the trust terms, but what I think makes a lot of sense is give

00:36:13.380 | the trustee ample control to distribute for education and for maintenance and support,

00:36:21.580 | and then set a time, something like around the age of 30, for full disbursement of all

00:36:27.020 | of the trust funds directly to the beneficiary, directly to your children.

00:36:32.300 | Then once you have that trust, then all you do is you simply go through all of your assets

00:36:37.900 | and you title as the beneficiary of all of your assets that have beneficiary designations

00:36:45.300 | the trust established under the will of your name.

00:36:48.340 | And then any other assets will be handled by the will itself, and you'll direct that

00:36:53.300 | all of the assets will be put into that.

00:36:56.100 | And then direct, you don't have to direct, but you can just give the trustee the right

00:37:02.420 | to sell property.

00:37:03.940 | And then, so you would say the trustee of course can sell my real estate, et cetera,

00:37:07.900 | the family home, all of this stuff can be sold, all of the money can be put into the

00:37:12.420 | trust.

00:37:13.420 | And then separate from that, you just write your own letter of intent, and just write

00:37:19.220 | your letter of instructions or letter of understanding to the trustee.

00:37:23.260 | And this is not a binding, a legally binding thing, but is basically your way of saying,

00:37:27.900 | "Hey, if I died today on November 17, 2023, then I think it would make the most sense

00:37:34.180 | for my house to be sold and for our rental house to be sold, but I don't think it would

00:37:40.300 | make a lot of sense for this raw land that we have over there to be sold."

00:37:44.920 | So I would suggest that you as a trustee that you continue to own the land, but you go ahead

00:37:48.460 | and sell these other houses and turn them into cash.

00:37:50.860 | Then five years from now, you just go ahead and print up a new letter and say, "Hey, I

00:37:54.260 | think now it's time that that raw land would actually be sold because of such and such."

00:37:58.340 | And again, you would probably sell it yourself if you thought it was time to be sold.

00:38:01.600 | But you can write any kind of instructions like that that you want, and you can update

00:38:04.620 | those whenever you want.

00:38:06.460 | And then your last kind of tool in the tool belt is if you feel you need it, if you're

00:38:11.060 | not sure who to designate as trustee or as co-trustee, then just simply hire a professional

00:38:16.980 | trustee and/or designate a professional trustee in your kind of third line of succession or

00:38:25.060 | something like that.

00:38:26.420 | And so you can just hire a professional trustee who will be the steward of the accounts.

00:38:31.580 | And the fees are reasonable, and you'll know that there's a professional who's looking

00:38:36.020 | out for the interests of my children.

00:38:38.740 | And at the end of the day, if any of the people, the individuals that you have selected are

00:38:44.260 | not willing to serve, then that's taken care of.

00:38:49.420 | And then does that make sense to you?

00:38:51.700 | That something like something would be helpful for you?

00:38:54.220 | Yeah, that was very helpful.

00:38:56.980 | I wasn't familiar with that type of trust.

00:39:00.160 | When it comes to a professional trustee, would that typically be somebody that a law firm

00:39:07.380 | could refer me to, or where do you go looking for someone of that?

00:39:12.120 | It's a professional service.

00:39:13.540 | So you have all these big firms you've heard of, or maybe like Northern Trust or Bessemer

00:39:18.500 | Trust or whatnot.

00:39:20.220 | There's these trust companies that quite literally, this is what they do.

00:39:24.300 | They are professional trustees, professional money managers, et cetera.

00:39:28.140 | It doesn't have to be one of those big expensive firms, but it will often be somebody who does

00:39:35.380 | their job as a professional trustee.

00:39:37.500 | It can be a lawyer.

00:39:39.180 | It can be a financial advisor, or it can be somebody who actually does this as a job.

00:39:44.940 | You don't have to designate that.

00:39:46.800 | But yes, your lawyer will have, when you sit with your lawyer and you say, "Could you recommend

00:39:51.780 | someone?"

00:39:52.780 | Your lawyer will have a long list of people that he works with that he can confirm and

00:39:55.980 | say, "Hey, this would be a great person for you to consider."

00:39:58.900 | And actually, it doesn't have to be specified in the documents.

00:40:02.780 | You just indicate that there needs to be a professional trustee, and then the people

00:40:07.260 | who are involved with your estate, your executor, et cetera, they'll go through the process

00:40:11.980 | of finding a professional trustee to serve if your previous trustees are unwilling to

00:40:16.540 | serve.

00:40:17.540 | >>Trevor: Okay.

00:40:18.540 | So it doesn't need to be on retainer or anything.

00:40:21.260 | It's really just kind of as needed basis.

00:40:23.900 | Okay.

00:40:24.900 | >>Josh: In my trust, I have this person as primary co-trustees, these two people.

00:40:31.100 | I have the guardian of my children and another trusted person as co-trustees at the first

00:40:37.580 | level.

00:40:38.580 | I trust the people that I'm choosing.

00:40:40.900 | So here's always this balance with legal documents.

00:40:45.460 | The legal document is not actually necessary if you're dealing with people who are trustworthy.

00:40:53.460 | But if you're dealing with people who are untrustworthy, the legal document is not sufficient

00:40:58.640 | to control them.

00:41:00.460 | So the legal document in some sense is pointless because trustworthy people will do the right

00:41:05.620 | thing and untrustworthy people will probably try to do the wrong thing regardless of what

00:41:11.460 | happens with the legal document.

00:41:13.020 | But what the legal document does is it gives formal power to certain people and to the

00:41:18.980 | court to make sure that there's sanctions in place if people act wrongly.

00:41:26.740 | And so I want to give maximum latitude to the guardian of my children.

00:41:32.200 | But I also want there to be a legal sanction there, somebody else who is involved, who

00:41:38.540 | is able to supervise things.

00:41:41.340 | And I want the court to be able to hold those persons responsible for acting in the best

00:41:45.620 | interest of my people, my children.

00:41:47.500 | So that's why we have the court documents in place, is they just provide a legal mechanism

00:41:54.660 | that somebody can be prosecuted, control can be done, legal documents can be created, etc.

00:42:01.140 | And those people have the right to do that with the document.

00:42:06.940 | And then just one last clarification for the execution on this.

00:42:11.420 | In naming the trust a beneficiary, that would be a secondary beneficiary, right?

00:42:16.980 | And I would still have my wife be primary?

00:42:19.340 | Right.

00:42:20.340 | Exactly.

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00:42:49.260 | Offer in soon, see dealer for details.

00:42:52.180 | Exactly.

00:42:53.180 | And so usually you and your wife will have a mirror will and testament, mirror will and

00:42:58.340 | trusts.

00:42:59.340 | So all of the provisions of it will be the same except flipped.

00:43:03.220 | And then all of the primary beneficiaries on all of your accounts will be your wife.

00:43:08.020 | She will have all of your money if you're dead, and she'll take care of the children.

00:43:12.820 | And then it's only the trusts only come into action if both you and your wife die simultaneously

00:43:20.200 | or within short order and she hasn't changed the affairs.

00:43:23.380 | That makes sense.

00:43:25.660 | Awesome, Josh.

00:43:27.140 | Very helpful.

00:43:28.340 | I appreciate it.

00:43:29.860 | Yeah, my pleasure.

00:43:30.900 | And so to cover myself and to be professionally appropriate, like this is just a general outline.

00:43:39.460 | Your lawyer's job is to engage in more specific fact finding, more specific discussion of

00:43:46.500 | appropriate options for you, deal with any specific relationships and things like that

00:43:51.620 | that you yourself might be worried about.

00:43:55.100 | But a lot of times you're just confused because you don't know what the options are.

00:43:58.580 | And what I've described I think is probably the best option for about 80% of people in

00:44:03.540 | the life stage that you are.

00:44:04.980 | And I want to say quickly and clearly, this will be different when you're 60 years old.

00:44:09.420 | Things will be very different when you're 60 years old.

00:44:11.180 | You have a different set of considerations, et cetera.

00:44:13.300 | But for young parents who are just saying, "I know I need to get a will because I want

00:44:16.300 | to establish the guardianship of my children, but I don't know how to do it and I ought

00:44:19.420 | to know something about it," what I've described will I think work about 80% of the time.

00:44:23.860 | All right, we move on.

00:44:25.020 | We'll go back to Kyle.

00:44:26.020 | Kyle in Washington, are you there this time?

00:44:27.700 | Man, I got so nervous I just hung right up on you.

00:44:31.420 | I have that effect.

00:44:32.780 | Usually it's...

00:44:33.780 | I'll skip the rest of the joke.

00:44:35.580 | Welcome.

00:44:36.580 | We're glad you're here.

00:44:37.580 | So these have been great questions.

00:44:42.740 | I've got some pretty kindergarten-y stuff to ask in comparison today.

00:44:46.620 | I just...

00:44:47.620 | I periodically go to your Twitter and scroll through a month or two of your posting, and

00:44:51.860 | I don't like to interact on the computer.

00:44:54.100 | I just have a Twitter account to read you and a handful of other folks.

00:44:59.940 | But I've got a handful of what I hope could be rapid fire questions.

00:45:04.140 | I don't know if you'll let me do that.

00:45:05.580 | Oh, yeah, sure.

00:45:06.580 | I think it'd be fun.

00:45:09.900 | One quick comment, though.

00:45:10.900 | A handful of Q&A shows ago, a guy called and was worried about AI being the next nuclear

00:45:17.580 | bomb and how scary it all was.

00:45:21.460 | And your guy, Jack Spierko, had an episode on...

00:45:25.300 | Kind of right after I heard him expresses his fears.

00:45:30.260 | And he talked about AI as being a weapon.

00:45:33.860 | And if your enemy has a weapon and you don't have that weapon to be able to utilize in

00:45:38.140 | the same fashion as your enemy, then you're doing yourself a disservice.

00:45:41.940 | So instead of sticking your head in the sand and ostriching away from it, you should turn

00:45:46.100 | to it and utilize it for what it's good for.

00:45:48.380 | And I thought that was a good way...

00:45:51.940 | You try looking at things positively, and I thought that was a good way to...

00:45:55.860 | It's a pessimistic view still, but it's a good way to wrap your head around what the

00:46:00.660 | real threats are is by learning what it is and getting involved.

00:46:04.660 | And I thought that was kind of neat.

00:46:07.500 | I love what you just described.

00:46:09.220 | I think that's a great point that Jack made.

00:46:12.340 | Absolutely.

00:46:13.340 | Yeah, it's good.

00:46:15.780 | One thing you posted about human foot-shaped footwear.

00:46:20.660 | There was some guy on there that was putting up all these different shoe brands.

00:46:25.820 | I'm a similar height to you, and I think we have the same size foot.

00:46:32.140 | I'm running a size 16.

00:46:33.380 | And I'm curious what kind of shoes you're finding that are good for your feet.

00:46:37.740 | Right now I'm using an Ultra because it's the only company I can find that makes a shoe

00:46:41.540 | that shape that big.

00:46:43.580 | Yeah.

00:46:44.580 | I do not have any currently.

00:46:46.820 | I do not have any barefoot shoes.

00:46:49.580 | I have tried to buy them a couple times, and due to the size of my feet, they're just not

00:46:54.660 | available.

00:46:57.020 | Except for one that I think you – I assume you probably just mentioned that I've been

00:47:00.980 | intending to check out.

00:47:03.740 | My embrace of the kind of barefoot shoe thing is simply involved just primarily trying to

00:47:11.380 | be barefoot at most times.

00:47:13.740 | And so I try to do all of my walking, do my 10,000 steps barefoot.

00:47:19.580 | I try to do my running and my sprints barefoot.

00:47:22.380 | I try to just be barefoot more and more, and I don't have currently any barefoot shoes.

00:47:28.940 | I have been intending to get more deeply into it, like getting the toe spacers and the toe

00:47:33.700 | socks and everything like that.

00:47:35.740 | Since I don't live in the US, I can't get that stuff easily.

00:47:38.220 | If I were in the United States, I would have the whole stuff.

00:47:40.340 | But because I have to plan ahead and buy it all and pick it up when I go into the US,

00:47:45.420 | then it's just one of those things that just hasn't been a big priority.

00:47:49.040 | So mostly I just try to be barefoot as much as I can, and then the rest of the time I

00:47:54.180 | just wear normal shoes.

00:47:55.740 | But I am conscious of it.

00:47:57.460 | I've wanted to get my children into – kind of the same actionable thing with my children

00:48:03.820 | is that I just try to encourage them to be barefoot most of the time.

00:48:07.780 | And I don't have a whole suite of barefoot shoes for them.

00:48:11.820 | Primarily the cost, like you go out and you think about paying 80 bucks, 60 bucks, 70

00:48:19.020 | bucks times five every time you need shoes, and then three months later they've outgrown

00:48:24.420 | them.

00:48:25.420 | And so I've just mostly just encouraged my children to be barefoot.

00:48:29.460 | And I hope that's good enough.

00:48:30.900 | So I'm not a purist on that topic, though the barefoot stuff makes a lot of sense to

00:48:34.620 | me.

00:48:35.620 | Right.

00:48:36.620 | Yeah, I know my kid uses his shoes for bike breaks.

00:48:38.780 | It's pretty hard to justify a hundred-dollar bike break like that.

00:48:44.140 | Yeah, I've got to step up my barefoot game.

00:48:47.020 | I haven't been doing that.

00:48:49.860 | What about our prepper menu?

00:48:51.380 | So you've talked about in the past working out a more healthy prepper menu.

00:48:55.780 | And I think about this, you know, we have food if we need it, and it's not the greatest.

00:49:01.860 | And you know, we don't feel great when we eat it as a family.

00:49:06.060 | Typically we don't eat beans and rice all the time.

00:49:09.340 | And you know, is there any place you would go?

00:49:12.660 | I know you say you've been out of that kind of for a while.

00:49:14.980 | But you know, aside from buying a great big freeze dryer and making my own, you know,

00:49:22.540 | what do you do?

00:49:23.540 | Eat versus donate, I guess, is my question there.

00:49:29.220 | You know, if I'm just going to have these beans and rice laying around, do I just donate

00:49:32.940 | them every five years and buy new beans and rice and I end up never touching it?

00:49:37.260 | Yes.

00:49:38.760 | So I would say I think I kind of think of this as a barbell strategy in the world of

00:49:44.000 | food prepping.

00:49:47.140 | First I think there's a scale and by scale I mean a continuum.

00:49:56.180 | And it seems like a lot of people want to get the best thing for all circumstances and

00:50:03.860 | it's not possible.

00:50:05.700 | So if you want, for example, the cheapest prepper food, the cheapest prepper food is

00:50:11.820 | going to be to buy bulk wheat, bulk corn, bulk beans and bulk rice to get mylar bags,

00:50:18.580 | seal them up yourself and set them away in five gallon buckets.

00:50:23.060 | That's going to be your cheapest way to get huge amounts of calories stored for the long

00:50:27.620 | term.

00:50:28.900 | The problem is that the majority of us don't eat that ever, like really ever.

00:50:34.060 | And so one of the challenges, it's always been a challenge with preparedness food, has

00:50:39.060 | been teaching people how to even use this stuff.

00:50:41.620 | I did it once as an experiment I guess with like wheat berries and making a wheat berry

00:50:47.020 | gruel.

00:50:48.020 | But the classic thing with wheat berries is people don't have a grinder, nobody bakes

00:50:51.900 | bread, et cetera.

00:50:52.900 | And so we just don't eat this stuff.

00:50:54.940 | So yeah, it's bulk calories but there's a whole skill set associated with actually acquiring

00:50:59.580 | it and using it.

00:51:00.980 | The technological revolution for long term storage food has been the freeze dried food.

00:51:05.960 | And freeze dried foods are great.

00:51:08.940 | They're tasty.

00:51:10.540 | They are relatively nutritious.

00:51:13.140 | They at least have calories and they last for 30 years.

00:51:16.340 | The problem with the freeze dried food is usually the cost, that they're substantially

00:51:20.620 | more expensive than just stocking up on calories.

00:51:23.740 | And so you have to ask yourself, am I the kind of guy who has the money that I can just

00:51:28.300 | go and buy freeze dried food and set it away for 30 years and forget about it?

00:51:33.140 | Or am I the kind of guy who needs to develop the skills so that I can't solve with money?

00:51:38.140 | I have frequently recommended with private consulting clients, guys who, I'm not saying

00:51:43.140 | you're a centimillionaire, but there's a lot of guys who just need to go to Costco and

00:51:48.500 | buy a pallet and spend $8,000 or $10,000 and buy a pallet of freeze dried food from Costco

00:51:55.460 | or whatever it is and just literally buy the freeze dried food, put it in a dark room in

00:51:59.740 | a safe place and forget about it.

00:52:01.420 | And at least you know I'm done with that.

00:52:04.020 | Now is that true preparedness in the sense that you've learned how to be self-reliant

00:52:08.220 | and self-sufficient for a 30 year great collapse?

00:52:11.220 | No, but it's a tremendously valuable insurance policy and the cost of it over the next 30

00:52:18.300 | years will become totally negligible as compared to the peace of mind.

00:52:22.540 | And so I think that if, as long as someone is not completely broke, that freeze dried

00:52:27.900 | food, substantial quantities of it, just bought from any of the large number of excellent

00:52:33.740 | people selling it is great.

00:52:36.660 | And of course you should do a little bit of practice with it, buy some, use some, etc.

00:52:41.860 | But that's your fast way to spend money to solve the problem.

00:52:45.300 | The flip side is I think you have the standard thing of a deep pantry.

00:52:50.660 | That's not that hard to do of just buying a little bit extra of the stuff that you do

00:52:54.700 | and that's not going to get you to years of preparedness, but it will get you to a few

00:53:00.380 | months of preparedness of food.

00:53:02.580 | And then for health food, I think the secret is chest freezers and lots of frozen meat

00:53:07.660 | and frozen other stuff as well, but frozen meat.

00:53:10.140 | I think that's where your health food is.

00:53:12.300 | And so if you have a couple of extra chest freezers and you have a generator and some

00:53:16.560 | way of keeping those freezers going, then that's where I think your deep stock of health

00:53:21.700 | food is.

00:53:22.700 | I consider meat to be the primary health food.

00:53:25.620 | I could exist completely healthily on nothing except meat and meat has the unique benefit

00:53:31.620 | of lasting for quite a long time frozen and we can use it regularly from a frozen state.

00:53:38.220 | And so if you just have an extra chest freezer or a couple of extra chest freezers and you

00:53:43.700 | have some fuel source to keep them going, so some guys will have one propane chest freezer

00:53:48.480 | and one electric chest freezer with a generator to power it or some version like that, then

00:53:55.220 | just fill them full of meat.

00:53:56.420 | And if you've got $5,000 worth of meat in your freezer, you've got a couple of months

00:54:00.580 | of stuff, of food, of high quality health food.

00:54:08.220 | And I think that with those two things put, actually I guess I said three things, but

00:54:11.940 | those three things put together, a stock of freeze dried food set aside somewhere that

00:54:16.700 | you're probably never going to touch, it's going to sit there and 45 years from now it's

00:54:19.740 | going to be thrown away.

00:54:21.580 | And then a deep pantry that's a few months worth and then a good supply of meat in the

00:54:25.780 | freezer, you've got great health food that's going to last you for a long time.

00:54:30.060 | There's a lot more that can be done.

00:54:32.740 | My friend Stephen Harris has this info product that he sells on how to preserve eggs for

00:54:38.220 | years at a time.

00:54:39.260 | And so you go and have buckets full of eggs preserved in a, I think it's a lime solution

00:54:44.540 | and it works great.

00:54:45.700 | Like all the stuff works, but a lot of that, that pepper stuff just becomes a hassle.

00:54:49.920 | And so what I've described is the lowest hassle for a medium cost.

00:54:53.340 | And I think that works for a lot of people, the beans and the corn and all that I think

00:54:58.980 | is great also.

00:55:00.580 | And there's two ways.

00:55:01.580 | So if somebody has the energy to go and do that, great, you can order a lot of that stuff

00:55:06.620 | pre-prepared if you know how to, if you know how to use it.

00:55:10.060 | The other thing that makes, that I think makes sense is just if you're, if you're uniquely

00:55:14.380 | concerned about a crisis, then just go and stock up more of it.

00:55:18.700 | And so the classic one that I recommend is just corn.

00:55:22.100 | You know, you can, Harris is the one who taught me all the corn stuff, but he does all this

00:55:27.780 | stuff with corn, teaches you how to use it and make food with it and whatnot.

00:55:32.560 | And so you can just go to tractor supply.

00:55:34.660 | If there's a, if there's some kind of thing that you're worried about, then just have

00:55:38.260 | on your mental checklist, first place I'm going to go is tractor supply and I'm going

00:55:41.500 | to get 30 bags of feed corn and that 30 bags of feed corn is going to last you through

00:55:45.940 | the, you know, for a couple of years with no special preservation, no buckets and mylar

00:55:51.540 | bags and things like that.

00:55:53.300 | But it gives you the ability to feed your neighbors and feed your neighborhood.

00:55:55.940 | And if, if, if you don't use it, then the cost is so cheap that you're out a few hundred

00:56:00.580 | bucks and you feed the deer.

00:56:01.820 | I guess not that big of a deal.

00:56:03.420 | So I think that, you know, I don't have 50 gallon, five gallon buckets of stuff in my

00:56:08.220 | house.

00:56:09.220 | If I lived in a place where I could have it, I would probably want it.

00:56:12.500 | But I think that I think of it like a barbell strategy, a stock of freeze dried stuff, a

00:56:17.380 | heavy pantry and heavy meat in the refrigerator.

00:56:20.180 | That's the health food for virtually all things.

00:56:22.420 | And the real reality is the idea of not being able to buy food for years at a time is, is

00:56:29.700 | pretty unlikely.

00:56:31.260 | And so for many people, especially in the United States, you know, food shortages, crises,

00:56:36.580 | things like that, they're going to be short to medium term things.

00:56:40.660 | And you can, and it's not that nothing is available.

00:56:43.920 | It's just that maybe not everything that you previously used was available.

00:56:48.100 | So as Spirico used to point out, if you've got three months worth of food storage, realistically

00:56:53.860 | that three months could probably be pretty easily turned into six months just with stocking

00:56:58.300 | up half time at the grocery store.

00:57:00.540 | And so it's not an all or nothing thing.

00:57:02.300 | You're not, we're not, we're not going to live in a, in a world in which today everything

00:57:06.780 | stops.

00:57:07.780 | We sit in our homes and eat nothing but stored food for three years and then emerge like

00:57:11.220 | that.

00:57:12.220 | Just not, I can't, I can't come up with an event in which that actually is the case.

00:57:16.300 | Yeah, it happens on TV, right?

00:57:18.700 | Not in practice.

00:57:19.700 | Yeah.

00:57:20.700 | Yeah.

00:57:21.700 | And I, we're already kind of doing that, right?

00:57:22.980 | I mean, that's a heavy pantry in a freezer full of food is, is just a cost effective

00:57:26.980 | way to exist as far as I can tell.

00:57:29.100 | And so, yeah, like you say, adding to the barbell is a good, good way to go about it.

00:57:39.860 | I read a lot of Peter Zahan's books at your recommendation probably five, six months ago.

00:57:46.260 | For some investment questions that I had and I'm looking, having difficulty finding counter

00:57:51.480 | opinions to him that are reputable.

00:57:54.460 | And I'm curious if you, who, who have you read that carries a lot of weight in that

00:58:00.540 | space and may or may not agree fully with what Mr. Zahan has proposes probably in our

00:58:09.700 | future as a globe.

00:58:11.180 | And then I'll stop with the rapid fire stuff.

00:58:12.820 | The most interesting one was that I saw Zahan himself say that he had, was doing a debate

00:58:18.660 | with Ray Dalio.

00:58:20.780 | I haven't seen the, I haven't seen any video or audio of that, but I would look forward

00:58:26.020 | to, to that.

00:58:27.740 | Short answer is I have not found.

00:58:30.260 | So the problem, here's the problem I have with Zahan.

00:58:34.500 | I kind of feel like he is a, an enormous cheerleader of the United States.

00:58:41.860 | And I kind of feel like he's on the CIA payroll because as somebody said to me, like, you

00:58:47.460 | know, the stuff he says, the stuff he says is basically an American politician's wet

00:58:52.060 | dream.

00:58:53.060 | You know, it's like rah, rah, rah, US is so well positioned, everywhere else is terrible

00:58:58.740 | and whatnot.

00:58:59.740 | So I kind of have this feeling that, especially given his background, you know, being involved

00:59:04.620 | in those circles and, and his work in DC and his work in years past, I almost feel like

00:59:10.980 | he's got a nice check that clears every month from the CIA or from the, some, you know,

00:59:15.700 | political group or something.

00:59:16.780 | So that he just keeps saying nice things about the United States.

00:59:20.040 | But the problem is that he backs all this stuff up with data and I can't find a, a compelling

00:59:27.860 | data driven, you know, alternative to that.

00:59:31.540 | There are a few people who ideologically don't agree with him.

00:59:36.260 | Zion basically waves his hand and discounts anything kind of culture related.

00:59:42.260 | He's very dismissive of, of anything culture war related.

00:59:48.620 | And I think, you know, fine that to a degree, like certainly geography is probably more

00:59:55.060 | important than culture in many cases, but you know, culture wars often turn into actual

01:00:02.940 | wars.

01:00:03.940 | And so who knows?

01:00:05.060 | But I feel like that's a weak point that he just kind of glosses over that and doesn't

01:00:09.060 | give a lot of credit to that.

01:00:11.260 | I find it interesting and slightly maddening how he never talks about, he doesn't spend

01:00:18.540 | much time in any of his books talking about structures of government.

01:00:22.700 | Does government matter, right?

01:00:24.240 | Is there actually benefit in the, the, the concept of, of a democratic republic, an experiment

01:00:32.100 | in, in, you know, liberty and ordered liberty like the United States is, or was just all

01:00:36.820 | geography?

01:00:37.820 | I, I wish he would deal with that a little bit, but, but I don't have, there are not

01:00:42.820 | a lot of people who, who just, who, who derive data.

01:00:48.140 | Most of the time I look for his haters and most of the time it's just an emotional reaction.

01:00:51.940 | And I, so this is a rambling way of saying I can't cite a single name specifically that,

01:00:59.700 | that I would say is, is kind of someone who is writing in contra to him.

01:01:06.300 | Now I have not looked in the last few months, maybe something has been developed in the

01:01:09.700 | last few months.

01:01:11.100 | What I do think is interesting is to spend some time imagining the world on the other

01:01:18.860 | side of the nation state.

01:01:22.100 | And so I've always thought that the writers of, hold on, let me look, have you ever read

01:01:28.300 | The Sovereign Individual with James David, here we go, come on, auto correct doing its

01:01:38.460 | job again.

01:01:39.860 | So there's a book, it's 15 years old, called The Sovereign Individual, Mastering the Transition

01:01:44.480 | to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Reese Mogg.

01:01:50.400 | It's an old book, but I think it's still a timely book.

01:01:53.660 | And one of the things that, that as a primary lens of analysis that those authors use is

01:02:04.460 | basically the logic of violence.

01:02:08.500 | And the basic point, it's a hefty, hefty book, so it's hard for me to summarize it, but one

01:02:16.020 | of their biggest points is they talk about how the logic of violence is basically an

01:02:22.540 | inescapable point of analysis.

01:02:27.300 | And they describe how in different phases, based upon this transition, based upon the

01:02:38.380 | tools of violence, et cetera, you have different phases.

01:02:41.420 | And I have, years ago, flippantly I used to say, oh, the nation state is only a temporary

01:02:50.540 | thing, but I didn't have a clear alternative for it.

01:02:57.460 | And it's something that we're so accustomed to thinking of the nation state as supreme

01:03:03.500 | that it's very hard for us to even visualize something other than the nation state.

01:03:09.300 | The whole concept of the nation state is so built into our mode of thinking, and it's

01:03:14.500 | done that way by those who want to see the nation state continue.

01:03:20.140 | They're trying to keep it going, so they want it to be.

01:03:22.780 | But the point of the nation state is that it's only a solution for certain things at

01:03:28.980 | a certain time.

01:03:30.580 | And I'm desperately flipping to try to get my copy of The Sovereign Individual open so

01:03:34.260 | I can read to you something from it, because it talks about the stages.

01:03:42.020 | And so here is, I'll just read slightly from the introduction, because they do a good job

01:03:48.900 | of this.

01:03:49.900 | So here we go.

01:03:51.580 | The fourth stage of human society.

01:03:53.860 | The theme of this book is the new revelation of power, which is liberating individuals

01:03:58.400 | at the expense of the 20th century nation state.

01:04:01.860 | By the way, again, this book was written in 2000, released in 2000, so more than 15 years,

01:04:08.260 | 23 years old.

01:04:10.140 | Innovations that alter the logic of violence in unprecedented ways are transforming the

01:04:14.300 | boundaries within which the future must lie.

01:04:17.660 | If our deductions are correct, you stand at the threshold of the most sweeping revolution

01:04:22.140 | in history.

01:04:23.820 | Faster than all but a few now imagine, microprocessing will subvert and destroy the nation state,

01:04:30.140 | creating new forms of social organization in the process.

01:04:33.320 | This will be far from an easy transformation.

01:04:36.300 | The challenge it will pose will be all the greater because it will happen with incredible

01:04:40.100 | speed compared with anything seen in the past.

01:04:44.080 | Through all of human history, from its earliest beginnings until now, there have been only

01:04:48.700 | three basic stages of economic life.

01:04:51.900 | One, hunting and gathering societies.

01:04:54.540 | Two, agricultural societies.

01:04:56.960 | And three, industrial societies.

01:04:59.340 | Now looming over the horizon is something entirely new, the fourth stage of social organization,

01:05:06.380 | information societies.

01:05:08.140 | Each of the previous stages of society has corresponded with distinctly different phases

01:05:12.900 | in the evolution and control of violence.

01:05:15.980 | As we explain in detail, information societies promise to dramatically reduce the returns

01:05:21.540 | to violence in part because they transcend locality.

01:05:27.260 | The virtual reality of cyberspace, what novelist William Gibson characterized as "a consensual

01:05:33.620 | hallucination" will be as far beyond the reach of bullies as imagination can take it.

01:05:39.640 | In the new millennium, the advantage of controlling violence on a large scale will be far lower

01:05:44.500 | than it has been at any time since before the French Revolution.

01:05:48.780 | This will have profound consequences.

01:05:51.380 | One of these will be rising crime.

01:05:53.580 | When the payoff for organizing violence at a large scale tumbles, the payoff from violence

01:05:58.580 | at a smaller scale is likely to jump.

01:06:01.580 | Violence will become more random and localized.

01:06:04.780 | Organized crime will grow in scope.

01:06:06.540 | We explain why.

01:06:08.260 | Another logical implication of falling returns to violence is the eclipse of politics, which

01:06:13.180 | is the stage for crime on the largest scale.

01:06:16.220 | There is much evidence that adherence to the civic myths of the 20th century nation-state

01:06:20.340 | is rapidly eroding.

01:06:22.460 | The death of communism is merely the most striking example.

01:06:25.780 | As we explore in detail, the collapse of morality and growing corruption among leaders of Western

01:06:30.200 | governments are not random developments.

01:06:32.660 | They are evident that the potential of the nation-state is exhausted.

01:06:36.480 | And many of its leaders no longer believe the platitudes they mouth, nor are they believed

01:06:40.820 | by others.

01:06:42.100 | So I would read the whole book to you if I could, but it's a great book and I would

01:06:46.020 | commend it to you.

01:06:47.500 | But it's, I think, one of the more interesting comments on this.

01:06:52.380 | And I think that if you haven't read it, this is a good time to read it, because the predictions

01:06:56.580 | of it are 23 years in the past.

01:06:59.140 | And yet they've held up broadly quite well.

01:07:02.980 | And what's interesting to me is that when I consider the changes that have happened

01:07:08.160 | in society, in my experience of it, it very much reflects some of these macro trends that

01:07:19.380 | Reese and whatever his name is, predicted way back in the year 2000.

01:07:26.280 | And it's left me, and I think a lot of people, with a great deal of uncertainty.

01:07:32.140 | And so I've been talking recently publicly about why I left the United States.

01:07:36.880 | And it's been a very strange emotional process for me, because I identified deeply with what

01:07:45.420 | it meant to be an American.

01:07:46.980 | And I watched my country completely change and transform.

01:07:50.760 | And I've observed that there are a couple of things that have happened.

01:07:53.200 | I'm stereotyping broadly.

01:07:54.720 | But there are some people, most people, have just simply changed their politics, their

01:08:02.460 | ideas completely.

01:08:03.620 | In the 20 years that I've been paying attention to politics, there has been almost a complete

01:08:09.820 | flip-flop on so many issues between right-wing and left-wing people.

01:08:15.900 | And not on all.

01:08:16.900 | Obviously, there's distinctions between the political parties.

01:08:20.960 | But the Republicans of today don't believe what the Republicans of a decade ago said

01:08:25.820 | they believed.

01:08:26.820 | And the Democrats of today don't believe what the Democrats of a decade ago believed.

01:08:31.200 | And my question has always been, why?

01:08:33.300 | What happened?

01:08:34.500 | Because I thought I understood politics, and then politics completely transformed underneath

01:08:38.180 | me.

01:08:39.180 | And to me, it makes more sense that some of these things are happening in terms of these

01:08:42.980 | trends.

01:08:44.300 | And a lot of them are being driven by the information age and the information revolution.

01:08:48.560 | And so to me, the sovereign individual has been always a useful pathway through that.

01:08:56.340 | And yet it deals with things that Zion doesn't talk about.

01:09:00.380 | He basically assumes static, continual change.

01:09:04.860 | He doesn't, in his analysis, I haven't seen any integration of dynamic events.

01:09:14.060 | And he also does everything.

01:09:18.140 | He uses politics and geography as his primary.

01:09:23.140 | Demographics and geography are his big tools.

01:09:25.940 | But I think that there needs to be some conversation about the nation state itself, and are there

01:09:31.180 | things to do that.

01:09:32.220 | So if I were having dinner with him, that's what I would ask him about.

01:09:35.100 | I'm certain he has thought about it.

01:09:37.100 | He just hasn't written about it, nor have I found him talking about it.

01:09:40.260 | So if I were interviewing him, or if I were having dinner with him, those are the things

01:09:44.140 | that I would probe him on.

01:09:45.900 | Yeah, that's interesting.

01:09:48.100 | My wife and I were talking about that very thing.

01:09:51.820 | How do you reconcile the leader of the communist world coming to California and everybody going

01:09:59.180 | and shaking hands with the guy versus what if we didn't do business with them?

01:10:04.780 | What does that look like with our culture the way it is?

01:10:07.300 | Who starts the manufacturing back up if we quit doing business entirely?

01:10:11.340 | That type of thing.

01:10:13.580 | Those type of questions are really hard to answer.

01:10:16.180 | And then you look at Zion, and I don't know.

01:10:19.180 | There's these big gaping, maybe not big gaping gaps in his logic or what he decides to analyze,

01:10:27.500 | but what else is he missing?

01:10:29.540 | I don't see anybody dropping big chunks of what he's missed in front of me.

01:10:35.220 | So I appreciate the recommendation.

01:10:37.500 | I think it's good to look and obviously try and if it's something you agree with, turn

01:10:44.980 | it upside down.

01:10:45.980 | And if you're just trying to learn, then you should do the same thing.

01:10:48.740 | Right, right.

01:10:49.740 | Shake it out and see if it holds up.

01:10:52.060 | There are other people, just to be clear, there are other people who write on some of

01:10:56.100 | these topics.

01:10:57.100 | I haven't read all of them.

01:10:58.820 | I've read some of them.

01:10:59.820 | I think Tim Marshall's book, Prisoners of Geography, I put that into our homeschool

01:11:05.660 | curriculum.

01:11:07.060 | My son, my eldest, just read that last semester.

01:11:10.340 | I think that's interesting.

01:11:12.380 | I've been reading a couple of Jared Diamond's books.

01:11:16.020 | I read his book Crisis a couple years ago, and I'm in the process of reading Guns, Germs,

01:11:20.820 | and Steel, which I never read.

01:11:22.500 | It's an interesting perspective.

01:11:25.700 | Neil Ferguson is interesting.

01:11:27.540 | Ian Bremmer has some books that are on my list.

01:11:29.740 | I haven't read his stuff yet.

01:11:31.540 | I've read all of George Friedman's books.

01:11:34.820 | Friedman, Zeyhan used to work for Friedman, and I like Friedman's stuff.

01:11:40.140 | It's in many ways very similar to Zeyhan.

01:11:43.140 | So those are interesting, you know, it's an interesting space.

01:11:47.580 | It's a very unique space, that idea of predicting the future, because you can pretty much say

01:11:53.300 | and do what you want.

01:11:54.380 | People see what they want to believe.

01:11:56.260 | I respect Zeyhan enormously for his defense, robust defense with good data of his events.

01:12:05.340 | But I continue to believe, I believe that number one, people can change, and number

01:12:11.500 | two, I believe that God is in control, sovereignly ordering things according to his macro plan.

01:12:18.500 | So that religious dimension is an element that certainly Zeyhan gives no accounting

01:12:24.900 | to whatsoever, but that I myself do.

01:12:27.420 | So those are my comments.

01:12:28.900 | Anything else?

01:12:29.900 | We finished the rest of your questions, or do you have anything else?

01:12:31.900 | I don't know, I mean, they're kind of geeky.

01:12:34.900 | Go ahead.

01:12:35.900 | What do I have on here?

01:12:36.900 | These tweets, Fred, sometimes you put up, there was a really good one about this guy

01:12:42.940 | who was smoking a lot of pot, and then he chronicled how he'd quit and all the effects

01:12:49.980 | that it had on him and his family, and it was fantastic.

01:12:53.220 | And I wanted to share it with everybody I knew that picks the pipe up, and man alive,

01:12:57.300 | it got deleted.

01:12:58.300 | Is that the nature of Twitter?

01:13:01.180 | I don't spend a lot of time.

01:13:02.180 | It is the nature of Twitter.

01:13:03.180 | It happens.

01:13:04.180 | It is, and I've done it myself.

01:13:05.180 | It's so unfortunate.

01:13:06.800 | When you start getting attention, it's overwhelming.

01:13:10.940 | It's funny because I guess some people like going viral.

01:13:14.460 | I've gone viral twice, and both times I've ended up deleting the threads because it was

01:13:21.020 | just so uncomfortable to be the subject of a firestorm.

01:13:25.300 | It's so different than anything that you are accustomed to.

01:13:31.540 | And so if there's anything good, you always have to save it and screenshot it of the stuff

01:13:35.460 | that you want.

01:13:36.820 | But that issue – Yeah, I love to learn.

01:13:38.460 | I am fascinated with that issue, and I have been rethinking – with the issue of marijuana

01:13:44.220 | specifically, just drugs specifically.

01:13:47.700 | I'm really interested – I've been kind of trying to figure out what do I believe

01:13:53.820 | on that subject.

01:13:54.820 | I've gone on various sides of it.

01:13:56.980 | When I was younger, I was like, "Well, of course drugs should be criminalized."

01:14:03.140 | Then I got into the libertarian stuff, and it's like, "Well, who's harmed, et cetera?"

01:14:08.780 | And then you look – one of the things that's been interesting is that since in my lifetime,

01:14:14.340 | when most of those – we've watched – the whole trend has been towards legalization

01:14:20.260 | of marijuana broadly, and more important than legalization, broad-scale acceptance of marijuana,

01:14:27.340 | and then also legalization of many other drugs.

01:14:29.780 | I have a hard time saying anything good about anything that's happened in the United States

01:14:34.180 | with that.

01:14:35.180 | You travel across the country, and I mean, it's a hellscape in many places, and it's

01:14:40.140 | not just San Francisco, right?

01:14:42.100 | You go to the deep south and some of these towns that have been just destroyed, you look

01:14:45.500 | at all the stuff that's happened right now with the fentanyl crisis, et cetera, and it's

01:14:50.020 | crazy to me.

01:14:51.300 | And so I certainly don't hold to the libertarian position anymore.

01:14:57.140 | I keep my mouth shut generally, but it's fascinating to watch.

01:15:01.020 | And just this week, speaking of interesting things, just this week I was watching – there's

01:15:06.420 | been some video come out of a recent thing that Peter Hitchens, the UK columnist, did.

01:15:16.460 | You know Peter Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens' brother?

01:15:18.500 | Yeah.

01:15:19.500 | Okay, so Peter – I love Peter.

01:15:21.180 | I love Christopher.

01:15:22.180 | Christopher was awesome.

01:15:23.180 | He was my favorite fiery atheist debater.

01:15:27.300 | Peter is his brother, and Peter is equally fiery, but in a totally different way.

01:15:32.740 | He's a Christian, but most of his stuff is political.

01:15:36.080 | So he signed up for this thing where they put him into prison, and it was for a TV show,

01:15:44.020 | but they sent him to prison for three days in like a mock environment for him to experience

01:15:48.100 | this.

01:15:49.140 | And so there was this video of him that was widely seen where he's sitting there debating

01:15:55.320 | a bunch of ex-cons who were in this prison experiment with him, and he's saying how

01:15:59.600 | he believes that marijuana is the most dangerous drug.

01:16:03.500 | And I find this very fascinating because I have come to hate marijuana because of the

01:16:11.360 | destruction that it wreaks on the people of destroying their ambition, etc.

01:16:17.680 | But I've kind of swallowed the line that, okay, at the end of the day it's probably

01:16:22.760 | less destructive than alcohol.

01:16:24.760 | And so just this week I was saying I need to read what Hitchens has written on this

01:16:27.880 | and see what he cites because it was just a fascinating argument that we're having

01:16:31.440 | right now.

01:16:33.160 | And I guess to me the biggest frustration to me has been the widespread acceptance of

01:16:40.440 | marijuana and drugs in our society because I've watched it happen.

01:16:44.520 | I have a friend of mine who is kind of a semi-retired 60-something guy, and he was always an ambitious

01:16:53.200 | go-getter.

01:16:54.200 | He was a professional athlete at one time, go-getting business guy.

01:16:57.260 | He was kind of a conservative, not super-political, but conservative anti-pot kind of guy.

01:17:04.540 | He started smoking pot, and now he just smokes pot every day.

01:17:07.980 | And it just seems like such a waste to me that we allow that stuff to destroy the potential

01:17:12.580 | of our society.

01:17:13.580 | But thankfully I don't have to make any public policy on it.

01:17:16.780 | - Yeah, people aren't very honest about what it really does, I don't think.

01:17:20.620 | They say, "Oh yeah, what's the difference?

01:17:22.180 | If you do that or do some beer, well, I'll tell you there's a big difference."

01:17:26.540 | People start out their day and end their evening with that stuff.

01:17:29.380 | They don't typically do that with liquor.

01:17:32.020 | You can abuse anything, but man alive.

01:17:35.740 | That was a really good tweet thread.

01:17:37.420 | I'm going to have to start screenshotting if I want to share stuff like that.

01:17:42.380 | Anyhow, all right, good lesson.

01:17:46.060 | Appreciate it.

01:17:47.060 | - Yeah.

01:17:48.060 | Last one.

01:17:49.060 | - Yeah.

01:17:50.060 | Back books.

01:17:51.060 | You heard your back a while.

01:17:53.740 | I listened to everything you ever said and then I bring up these little tiny things way

01:17:57.580 | after you mentioned it.

01:17:58.700 | So I don't expect you to remember, but you talked about, "Hey, I hurt my back and it

01:18:01.820 | laid me up and it really depressed me.

01:18:04.180 | And I decided I can't be depressed about this.

01:18:07.580 | I need to get up and get after it."

01:18:09.220 | But it takes a lot out of your sales.

01:18:11.420 | And I had the same thing.

01:18:12.420 | I went from blue collar to white collar to blue collar and I hurt my back and I read

01:18:18.500 | a bunch of books about it.

01:18:19.940 | And I'm just curious, I read Dr. Stuart McGill's books and wrote her book.

01:18:25.420 | He's got some really expensive books and I thought I got what I needed from his main

01:18:30.540 | one everybody recommended.

01:18:31.540 | And Robin McKenzie, he's out of New Zealand and he wrote some treat your own back stuff.

01:18:37.060 | And there's some other folks, but I'm just curious what you did or what you read or if

01:18:41.020 | you did anything or if you just kind of laid around and got better.

01:18:45.860 | Being six foot seven and a half inches tall, you and I kind of are in the same boat.

01:18:50.420 | Eventually you're going to tweak your back and you got to be strong.

01:18:53.820 | Right.

01:18:54.820 | Yeah.

01:18:55.820 | I do not have any chronic pain of any kind, including back pain.

01:18:59.020 | And so I'm very grateful for that.

01:19:00.760 | The tweaking the back story, again, you'd probably go in a long time, but I remember

01:19:05.320 | distinctly when I was, I think it was 26 years old and it was the first time I hurt my back.

01:19:18.720 | I was serving, I was setting up a, I can't remember what the holiday was.

01:19:22.880 | It was doing breakfast omelets on the beach for all my friends.

01:19:25.920 | I hosted this big party on the beach in Florida and I was setting up my omelet station to

01:19:31.960 | make omelets and I leaned down to pick up something from the ground, nothing heavy at

01:19:36.080 | all and I tweaked my back and I couldn't move.

01:19:39.080 | And I went home and spent the next two days sitting in the recliner and it was, what was

01:19:44.760 | shocking about it is I've always enjoyed robust physical health, which is an enormous blessing.

01:19:50.500 | And when you enjoy robust physical health without fighting for it, you take it for granted.

01:19:56.280 | And when it's taken away from you, you all of a sudden stopped taking it for granted.

01:20:01.360 | And so that experience was what opened my eyes to the incredibly difficult experience

01:20:08.160 | that so many people have.

01:20:10.000 | One other time I tweaked my back and then I, over the last couple of years, I have this

01:20:16.140 | occasional neck pain that happened for some reason.

01:20:19.840 | And so I visit the chiropractor about once a month and as long as I do that, I don't

01:20:24.500 | have any trouble.

01:20:25.760 | All of my research into back pain indicates to me that the vast majority of it is due

01:20:30.920 | to weakness in the back.

01:20:32.440 | And so the most important thing to do is to strengthen the back and stretch it.

01:20:36.960 | So stretching and strengthening the back.

01:20:39.000 | I had a neighbor when I was growing up, redneck neighbor, who was injured.

01:20:44.080 | He was a diesel mechanic and he was injured, bunch of messed up discs and whatnot.

01:20:47.880 | They put him on total disability and he endured pain for a long time.

01:20:53.240 | And then finally one day he walked out on his back porch and he said, "I'm going to

01:20:57.400 | fix this thing."

01:20:58.400 | And he reached up and he grabbed one of the rafters on his back porch and he just started

01:21:01.640 | hanging every day.

01:21:03.080 | And he hung and he hung and he hung and he hung.

01:21:05.040 | And he cured himself of his back pain just by hanging on his back porch every day.

01:21:09.280 | And so as best I can understand, the majority of back pain should be treated by strengthening

01:21:16.720 | the back, which is probably lifting heavy weights and all of the stabilizing muscles,

01:21:22.160 | etc.

01:21:23.160 | But strengthening the back with appropriate exercises is the key to avoiding back pain.

01:21:28.840 | And so I've realized that you're a fool if you take your health for granted and I'm doing

01:21:35.080 | everything I know to do and everything I'm able to do to be one who's actively building

01:21:39.560 | stronger health.

01:21:40.560 | And as Mark Ripito says, "I want to be hard to kill."

01:21:43.880 | So stronger people are more useful in general and harder to kill.

01:21:47.280 | Love that guy.

01:21:48.960 | Yeah, I forget.

01:21:50.560 | Oh man, I forget the guy.

01:21:52.360 | See, I was writing down the names of the books because whenever I call you, I always blank

01:21:55.760 | on that.

01:21:56.760 | But I forget I bought that guy's book too, The Hanging from the, oh, what's his name?

01:22:00.040 | John something or other, I think.

01:22:01.960 | Anyhow, yeah, there's a guy that he's a proponent of hanging for shoulder to avoid shoulder

01:22:06.840 | surgery.

01:22:07.840 | But I started doing that and I found it helped me back out quite a bit too.

01:22:11.600 | Absolutely.

01:22:12.600 | Yeah, you can't take it for granted, man.

01:22:13.760 | You're strong until you're not.

01:22:14.760 | And then you get laid up by part of an omelet bar.

01:22:18.040 | What do you do?

01:22:19.040 | I mean, it's really, yeah, it could take the wind out of your sail.

01:22:22.040 | Big time, big time.

01:22:23.040 | Yeah, but I just thought I'd ask because you're a big reader.

01:22:26.520 | Appreciate your time, Joshua.

01:22:27.760 | Happy Thanksgiving.

01:22:28.760 | Love the questions.

01:22:29.760 | Makes life easy for me when you call me up and throw me softballs.

01:22:32.440 | So thank you very much and happy Thanksgiving to you.

01:22:36.360 | And with that, we close down today's Friday Q&A podcast.

01:22:39.840 | Thank you so much for being here.

01:22:41.320 | It's been a pleasure.

01:22:42.320 | Remember that if you would like to be here for one of these Friday Q&A shows, all you

01:22:45.360 | need to do is go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, sign up, support the show on Patreon.

01:22:50.760 | That allows me to meter the inflow of calls.

01:22:55.120 | So go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

01:22:57.840 | Today we only have three calls, plenty of time for everybody.

01:22:59.960 | Sometimes we get more, sometimes less, but I would love to have you on next week's show.

01:23:04.440 | As we go, remember that I'm heavily promoting my international events right now.

01:23:09.580 | Most importantly, the event in Panama that we're hosting in January.

01:23:12.160 | This weekend I'm getting on the phone with my partners of that to wind up all those decisions

01:23:17.960 | and everything associated with that.

01:23:19.040 | So sign up now, please.

01:23:20.560 | Go to expatmoney.com/radical, link in the show notes today.

01:23:27.120 | And then if you're interested in some of the internationalization stuff that I've been

01:23:29.400 | talking about, internationalskateplan.com.

01:23:32.120 | Internationalskateplan.com is the course that I sell.

01:23:34.480 | Talk to you very soon.

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2023-11-17_Friday_QA