2023-12-15_Friday

00:00:00.000 | The holidays start here at Ralph's, with a variety of options to celebrate traditions

00:00:04.780 | old and new.

00:00:06.060 | You could do a classic herb roasted turkey, or spice it up and make turkey tacos.

00:00:10.860 | Serve up a go-to shrimp cocktail, or use Simple Truth wild-caught shrimp for your first Cajun

00:00:16.560 | risotto.

00:00:17.560 | Make creamy mac and cheese, or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese.

00:00:22.620 | No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your

00:00:26.700 | holiday traditions, Ralph's, fresh for everyone.

00:00:30.580 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, it's live Q&A.

00:00:48.700 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:51.420 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now each

00:00:55.060 | and every day, while also building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:58.620 | My name is Joshua Sheets, I'm your host, and today on the show we do live Q&A.

00:01:02.580 | Works just like Call and Talk Radio.

00:01:03.980 | Call in, ask about anything you want, raise any topics, get any personalized answers that

00:01:08.120 | you desire.

00:01:09.120 | Basically, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, "Open line Friday."

00:01:13.260 | If you would like to gain access to one of these Friday Q&A shows, I would welcome you

00:01:23.820 | to do so.

00:01:24.820 | You can do so by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, support the show on Patreon, and that will

00:01:29.100 | gain access for you to these scheduled Q&A calls.

00:01:33.140 | Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance will gain access to you.

00:01:36.340 | We begin with Martin, and let's see, is it, oops, wrong button, there we go.

00:01:41.260 | Martin, welcome.

00:01:42.260 | Are you in Prague?

00:01:43.260 | Or is this a phone line from Prague?

00:01:44.940 | - Yes, I'm from, hey, Joshua.

00:01:46.900 | - Welcome.

00:01:47.900 | - Can you hear me all right?

00:01:48.900 | - Sounds great, sir, go ahead.

00:01:49.900 | - Thank you.

00:01:50.900 | Long time, I'm from the Czech Republic, Europe.

00:01:55.660 | I've been following your content since 2018, I think, and even grabbed a bunch of your

00:02:01.100 | courses.

00:02:02.100 | I love what you do.

00:02:03.100 | So first of all, thank you.

00:02:04.100 | - My pleasure.

00:02:05.100 | - Now, I'm wondering, in your recent podcast with Mikhail, you touched on this interesting

00:02:11.340 | residency program in Panama, where you only need to spend one day there every two years

00:02:16.700 | in order to maintain your residency.

00:02:18.740 | - Right.

00:02:19.740 | - It's really promising, but I'm a bit lost on the details.

00:02:22.900 | Unfortunately, neither me nor my wife can come with you to Panama in January, which

00:02:28.220 | would be amazing and probably solve this, but it's not possible, unfortunately.

00:02:32.580 | Well, to be more specific with my question, or rather questions, so first, what is this

00:02:39.220 | residency program?

00:02:40.740 | As in, does it have a name by which I could find more information on it?

00:02:46.220 | Can I fill out the application online, or is it a personal visit required?

00:02:51.420 | And if so, is it a matter of going to the immigration office and, I don't know, walking

00:02:56.260 | out two hours later with a permit, or does it take a couple of days?

00:03:02.700 | And then I'm thinking, once the residency permit is approved, do I need to be present

00:03:07.540 | to collect the documents, or can they be mailed to Europe?

00:03:11.340 | I'm asking because if me and my wife are planning a round trip from Europe to Panama, we don't

00:03:16.460 | want to waste time and money by having to go multiple times.

00:03:19.500 | Ideally, we'd want to do it in one go.

00:03:23.140 | I know it's a lot of quite specific questions, but I feel like the answers might be quick

00:03:27.260 | and concise.

00:03:28.740 | - Why are you interested in residency in another country such as Panama?

00:03:35.620 | - Well, I'm in Europe, and as everybody knows, the situation is just not amazing.

00:03:46.820 | We would like to have a plan B, ideally on a different continent.

00:03:53.020 | I bought your international escape plan course, which was great, I could recommend it to anyone.

00:04:02.140 | It's more of like the general understanding of these concepts, but not really many practical

00:04:09.020 | examples which I think wouldn't make sense to put it in the course, but that's what I'm

00:04:14.700 | missing now.

00:04:15.700 | Panama, it's just, it looks good, but I just don't know where to pick up, where to start.

00:04:24.820 | - So I know that you would love specific information, and I would like to give it to you, but I

00:04:32.100 | I'm going to just gently sidestep that for a couple of reasons.

00:04:36.300 | Number one, things change in the world of immigration all the time.

00:04:39.660 | I'm happy to answer specific information, but at the moment, I don't know all of the

00:04:44.140 | answers to your question, because I'm not presenting those sessions at the event in

00:04:49.900 | Panama.

00:04:50.900 | Mikel is.

00:04:51.900 | So he's the one to ask.

00:04:52.900 | I would begin by going to his podcast, which is Expat Money, and search for some of his

00:04:57.820 | episodes, his public episodes that are about Panama, and see those details that are there.

00:05:04.860 | Also, there is quite a lot of information, more specific information around for specific

00:05:10.180 | countries, but I can't answer you exactly all of the details of each of the Panamanian

00:05:16.820 | residency programs, because I'm not current on all of them.

00:05:20.400 | He's going to be the one who's presenting those sessions in January, and I'll be learning

00:05:23.660 | alongside everyone who's there at the event, which, of course, everyone who's able to travel

00:05:29.740 | in January should sign up at expatmoney.com/radical and come and hang out with us in Panama.

00:05:36.340 | What I would say for you, kind of just speaking more generally, is that there are a number

00:05:41.900 | of residence programs that would fit what you're looking for, if by what you're looking

00:05:47.900 | for is just to have basically an ability to have a residence permit in another country,

00:05:56.420 | and a residence permit in another country where you don't have to move there, but a

00:05:59.900 | place where if I wanted to go there, I could.

00:06:03.600 | Some of the better ones are in the Americas.

00:06:06.180 | Probably the top three would be Panama, Mexico, Paraguay are probably the top three that have

00:06:16.420 | minimal kind of time on the ground requirements, and they all work about the same.

00:06:22.740 | Basically you're going to need to make some kind of investment into the country, so Panama

00:06:30.300 | has the Friendly Nations Visa, again, Mikel's going to go over all those details there of

00:06:35.500 | that, but basically there's going to be a variety of different options for you to make

00:06:39.220 | an investment into the country in some way.

00:06:41.900 | Now sometimes that can be done by simply opening a company, so you open a company, put money

00:06:47.020 | in a bank account, et cetera.

00:06:48.720 | Sometimes it can be done by actually purchasing land or something in the country.

00:06:54.220 | Sometimes it's done just by showing, "Hey, I have this amount of money in the bank,"

00:06:58.300 | or "I have this amount of passive income."

00:07:00.620 | So if you have income that is regular and that's coming in from a pension or some passive

00:07:06.020 | source, pretty much, I would say 80% of Latin America, you can get a residence permit with

00:07:11.700 | that.

00:07:12.700 | Now all of the residence permits that I am aware of in Latin America, all of the residence

00:07:19.340 | permits are going to require you to physically go to the country.

00:07:23.540 | None of these countries are doing scams, none of them where it's just, "Oh, fill out something

00:07:27.140 | online."

00:07:28.140 | All of them are going to require you to go to the country, and I would say that if you

00:07:31.820 | don't have at least some connection to the country or desire to have some connection

00:07:37.580 | to the country, then that's probably not a country you should choose.

00:07:40.780 | When it was a few years ago and I was in a position kind of like what I'm guessing you're

00:07:45.500 | in, which means that I didn't have much of a backup plan, I was from one country, I didn't

00:07:51.060 | have a long solution of anything, then I thought to myself, "Oh, you know what?

00:07:55.820 | I'll go anywhere, I'll do anything, et cetera, and I'll definitely go where I can just get

00:08:02.060 | a permit and even if I'm only going just to renew my permit, that's going to be fine."

00:08:06.940 | Well things changed and as time went on, I realized that's probably not really enough.

00:08:12.620 | And so if I were you, I would rather see you choose a residence permit or some kind of

00:08:18.740 | backup plan in a country that has a "less high quality program" but that you actually

00:08:27.780 | want to spend time in or go to or are going to enjoy traveling to than someone with a

00:08:33.340 | better program that you just don't want to go.

00:08:35.780 | And so before I would encourage you to go deep into Panama or any country, I would say

00:08:41.180 | you owe it to yourself to at least visit the place if capable.

00:08:45.980 | Now, you can visit it with the plan of going and establishing for the first time with a

00:08:50.380 | plan of establishing residency, that's fine, I've done that.

00:08:53.100 | But what I'm saying is that if that's the only thing and you don't find other things

00:08:57.740 | that attract you to it, it may not be the best thing.

00:09:00.580 | And so in some cases, you might be better off to choosing something that's closer to

00:09:07.300 | home for where you are in the Czech Republic or looking for something that's closer to

00:09:13.940 | home.

00:09:16.380 | You asked another question that I – oh, costs, I think it was.

00:09:20.540 | Basically, once you – with most residency programs, especially in Latin America, it's

00:09:27.180 | a few thousand dollars of lawyer fees, a few thousand dollars of miscellaneous fees to

00:09:32.260 | get all of your stuff and then the cost of the paperwork.

00:09:35.620 | And so the costs are fairly accessible, it's just a matter of finding out do I need to

00:09:40.860 | purchase property, if I do need to purchase property, how much, is it going to be a good

00:09:45.220 | investment, is there a way to make money on it, etc.

00:09:47.500 | And those are of course very personal questions that are going to come down to how much money

00:09:51.980 | do you want to invest.

00:09:54.180 | The world of internationalization is wide open to somebody who's willing to invest

00:09:59.300 | money and you can make money on it.

00:10:01.300 | You can go to many places where they have formalized residency by investment programs

00:10:08.240 | or citizenship by investment programs and invest in those countries.

00:10:11.620 | And if your investment is large enough, you can – almost any country will roll out the

00:10:15.780 | carpet for you.

00:10:17.020 | But that's where it's fairly personal and you'll want to look through your investment

00:10:20.920 | portfolio and choose something that is appropriate to you.

00:10:24.380 | So I know I'm sidestepping the answer slightly, it's simply because I can't quote off the

00:10:28.740 | top of my head all of the details of the Panamanian programs.

00:10:33.340 | I will be able to after January, but that's Mikel's job.

00:10:38.680 | But did I give you something to think about there?

00:10:41.280 | Do you want to ask another question?

00:10:42.960 | No, I appreciate it, thank you.

00:10:47.280 | I'll just go to Mikel's podcast, but this was also helpful.

00:10:51.520 | Thank you.

00:10:52.520 | Good, good.

00:10:53.520 | Have you also, being from the Czech Republic, have you and – if you're married – have

00:10:57.140 | you and your wife fully looked into your European heritage to see if there are any other options

00:11:02.160 | that are available to you with your European heritage?

00:11:04.880 | Yes, we have.

00:11:07.560 | Unfortunately, everyone's just European.

00:11:11.000 | We would at best get a – maybe get a second passport for another EU country, which is

00:11:20.280 | – well, it's a good start, but it doesn't solve our problems, really.

00:11:27.800 | Not necessarily, but I think you should still do it.

00:11:30.720 | What would be the other country that you might have the ability to claim a passport for?

00:11:35.120 | Sweden.

00:11:36.120 | Sweden.

00:11:37.120 | Yeah.

00:11:38.120 | So I think that Europeans don't tend to do this because they don't see the point.

00:11:41.680 | Like, look, we're all in the EU, there's no point, EU's going to be fine, et cetera,

00:11:46.040 | and they don't go and claim heritage passports because they just don't want to do it.

00:11:51.040 | But I would point out to you a few things.

00:11:52.560 | Your first step, before you go and establish a residency somewhere else, your first step

00:11:57.320 | should be to claim any kind of heritage citizenship that you have the ability to claim, you should

00:12:03.720 | claim it and you should get the documentation for it.

00:12:06.520 | Now one reason people don't do that is they don't want to pay for the passport fees.

00:12:10.440 | Maybe it's 150 euros every 10 years, something like that.

00:12:13.440 | I think that's a small price to pay for something that could be passed along and endure

00:12:17.880 | for your children, be passed along throughout the many years, et cetera.

00:12:22.240 | So you should do it even – but you don't always have to get the passport.

00:12:26.920 | So I've worked with families who didn't have a lot of money, but they had a bunch

00:12:30.400 | of children, and then my point was go ahead and register for the citizenship, get your

00:12:34.560 | documentation, and even if you don't keep the passports current, at least have that.

00:12:39.120 | The next thing is that even within the European Union, yes, it is true that if you were to

00:12:44.760 | put side by side, say, a Swedish passport with a Czech passport, there would be a very

00:12:49.640 | similar profile and both of them give you easy access to the European Union.

00:12:54.880 | That may be true, but that doesn't mean that it's always the case that there's

00:13:00.200 | no value.

00:13:01.200 | So I couldn't comment on Sweden and Czech Republic, but countries I do know about.

00:13:05.420 | Say you're a citizen of France and you have the ability to be a citizen of France, well,

00:13:10.080 | as a French citizen, you would have access to all of the French overseas territories

00:13:14.080 | that you don't have access to as a Czech citizen, or similar with the Netherlands.

00:13:19.360 | The Netherlands, huge number of overseas territories that Dutch citizens can move to with minimal

00:13:24.640 | paperwork but that Czech citizens can't.

00:13:27.760 | And so there are benefits to having the different passports.

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00:14:03.560 | I don't think the European Union as a project is dead this decade, but it's one of those

00:14:11.760 | things where it wouldn't surprise me if in 50 years it were either disbanded or very

00:14:18.040 | different than it is now.

00:14:20.800 | And you see enough cracks in it to recognize the value of having those things claimed.

00:14:25.800 | But countries like Sweden, if you don't maintain your ties to the country, then your options

00:14:29.780 | can be limited there.

00:14:31.280 | So before you go and establish necessarily your foreign residence on the other side of

00:14:38.560 | the world, you should first go ahead and claim any other citizenships that you have access

00:14:46.760 | to and then go ahead and build your plan B of a place that I'd want to go.

00:14:50.920 | And then don't think also that it has to be on the other side of the world.

00:14:54.160 | So Latin America is great and it's pretty accessible from Europe depending on where

00:14:59.880 | you are.

00:15:00.880 | And Latin America has the benefit of being a very open place with lots of great programs

00:15:05.260 | that are a great deal.

00:15:08.260 | But again, if you're not willing to go there and look forward to those trips, then I think

00:15:14.520 | you should consider something that is closer to home where you would actually want to go.

00:15:19.600 | So I know I'm repeating myself there, but claim the Swedish citizenship and for any

00:15:23.160 | other European listeners, go ahead and claim the citizenship.

00:15:27.240 | Even if you don't maintain four passports that all have a red or burgundy cover, that's

00:15:31.240 | fine.

00:15:32.240 | But at least claim the citizenships and keep them current because your children and your

00:15:36.080 | grandchildren may be very grateful that you did.

00:15:38.760 | Thank you Joshua, this is very helpful.

00:15:43.560 | My pleasure.

00:15:44.560 | Thank you.

00:15:45.560 | We move on to Timothy in Virginia.

00:15:46.560 | Timothy, welcome to the show.

00:15:47.560 | How can I serve you today?

00:15:48.560 | Hi Joshua, thanks for taking my call.

00:15:53.040 | I have what probably is a quick question for you, which is I'm hoping you can just give

00:15:57.040 | me a quick and dirty answer to how you would go about sort of a low budget, low hanging

00:16:03.760 | fruit audio recording setup.

00:16:05.800 | So for background, I have a two and a half year old son and he's got one of those sort

00:16:11.120 | of proprietary format music players for toddlers.

00:16:14.600 | And we figured out that he really likes when I record his picture books, put them all on

00:16:19.120 | a card as it turns out in this format for him.

00:16:22.120 | And then he just listens to them over and over again, far in excess of how much time

00:16:25.580 | I could spend reading to him.

00:16:28.400 | Anyway, I just want to sort of up the quality on that a little bit.

00:16:31.920 | I've done recording on my phone and sometimes the microphone isn't great.

00:16:36.760 | And then I guess the other piece of the question is post-processing.

00:16:40.880 | I'm not sure what a good tool would be to get the volume sort of set at the right level,

00:16:44.880 | maybe equalize the different tracks so that again, it just works a little bit better.

00:16:50.360 | Absolutely.

00:16:52.380 | When you recorded on your phone and you said the quality wasn't great, did you take any

00:16:57.120 | pains to create something like a recording booth, even if it was in your closet or something

00:17:02.920 | like that?

00:17:05.800 | Spend it all.

00:17:06.800 | Okay.

00:17:07.800 | So there is your basic problem because if you don't want to spend any money, I'll tell

00:17:12.240 | you the thing that you don't want to spend any money on, you already have it and it's

00:17:15.760 | the phone.

00:17:16.800 | It's your phone.

00:17:18.000 | Not a headset, not necessarily, not an ear pod, air pods or anything like that, just

00:17:23.360 | the actual phone.

00:17:25.160 | And the microphone that is in the phone is perfectly functional and can be perfectly

00:17:31.720 | high quality.

00:17:33.360 | But the kind of microphone that it is requires you to spend some time and effort on basically

00:17:40.640 | an acoustic system.

00:17:41.800 | And so the best thing that you can do is walk into your walk-in closet where you're surrounded

00:17:46.440 | by fabric, coats, et cetera.

00:17:48.920 | Go into the very back corner of the closet, slide aside your coats and whatever soft things

00:17:54.160 | are there hanging and set your phone on the shelf in front of you where it'll be completely

00:18:00.200 | surrounded by fabric in the back of a carpeted closet, et cetera.

00:18:04.240 | And basically what you're trying to do is you're trying to use any version of that where

00:18:08.720 | you have sound deadening.

00:18:11.440 | So for example, I recently recorded sometime back, I recorded a podcast in a hotel.

00:18:18.080 | We were traveling, my family was in the room, there was no business center, we were in an

00:18:21.760 | airport hotel, so I was out by the airport, I couldn't find any decent place to record

00:18:27.200 | like I usually can.

00:18:28.320 | So I wound up going to a corner of the lobby, I pushed the couch back, I sat down on the

00:18:33.040 | floor behind the couch, I took the couch cushions, put them over my head and my audio quality,

00:18:37.560 | no one really would have known that it was perfectly reasonable.

00:18:42.080 | And I tried to create instead of an echoey room, even what I have right now, which I'll

00:18:45.400 | explain in a moment, I tried to create some form of sound dampening.

00:18:49.440 | And so if you do that and then you put your mouth about a foot and a half, two feet away

00:18:53.060 | from the phone, something like that, and you speak in a good tone of voice, you'll get

00:18:56.680 | a perfectly usable recording from that.

00:19:00.040 | And there's really no need for you to go out and purchase other microphones if that's good

00:19:05.240 | enough for you.

00:19:06.640 | But it won't work if you sit at your desk where it's hard surfaces, it won't work if

00:19:11.540 | you are in your living room where there's a lot of echoey space.

00:19:14.780 | It needs to be a small room with as much fabric and padding as possible and then you can just

00:19:19.640 | use your phone.

00:19:20.640 | The second thing that you do with it is then process it and there's lots of audio processing

00:19:27.500 | equipment that you can use if you know what you're doing.

00:19:30.180 | So there's a free one that you can use called Audacity that's available for all of the platforms.

00:19:35.820 | That's the most popular and it's a very powerful audio editing system.

00:19:39.200 | So if you want to trim your audio or you want to break it up into tracks and things like

00:19:43.120 | that, just take the audio file that you created on your phone and then move it into Audacity

00:19:47.960 | on your computer and you can edit it there.

00:19:51.400 | And you can also do any kind of dynamic corrections that you want to do.

00:19:56.300 | What I would recommend to you is use a service, use something called Auphonic.

00:20:03.160 | And Auphonic is A-U-P-H-O-N-I-C.

00:20:06.420 | This is different from Audacity.

00:20:07.920 | Audacity is the free open source piece of audio editing equipment that you can put on

00:20:13.280 | your computers.

00:20:14.280 | Auphonic is an automatic piece of software that will automatically help to improve your

00:20:21.080 | audio quality.

00:20:22.080 | And it basically does two or three things.

00:20:25.380 | The first thing it does is you can run a background noise processor on it.

00:20:30.640 | So let's say that there's some kind of hiss or let's say you have some electrical noise

00:20:34.280 | that slips into your recording or just some background noise or something like that.

00:20:39.560 | Auphonic uses basically an algorithm to trim that background noise out of the system.

00:20:47.200 | The second thing that Auphonic will do is it will level the voices.

00:20:54.040 | And so there is a standard in audio recording for the loudness for an audio track.

00:21:02.360 | And so all professionally produced podcasts or audio books, etc. will have a consistent

00:21:07.960 | loudness factor.

00:21:10.120 | And so what Auphonic will do is it will automatically create that loudness with your voice file

00:21:15.840 | using an algorithm.

00:21:17.320 | And it does a really good job with it and it's really simple.

00:21:19.680 | And so you can actually just put the Auphonic app on your phone and you can buy a little

00:21:23.800 | time from them.

00:21:24.800 | They give you a little bit free.

00:21:25.800 | I don't remember how much.

00:21:27.040 | And then you can just run it through the app and it'll give you the MP3 out the other side.

00:21:30.700 | And so when I record a podcast episode on my phone, I just hold out my phone in front

00:21:35.320 | of me.

00:21:36.320 | And if I find a soft environment, like let's say that I'm on the road, sometimes I'll sit

00:21:40.480 | in a car or someplace where there's fabric and the sound waves aren't going to be bouncing

00:21:44.020 | all over the place.

00:21:45.020 | I'll hold my phone about a foot or so in front of me, I'll record and then I just upload

00:21:49.840 | it straight to the Auphonic app on my phone and then from there it can go straight to

00:21:53.240 | the podcast feed.

00:21:54.480 | In your case, it would just go straight to an audio file that you can download and put

00:21:58.560 | onto your son's MP3 player.

00:22:01.120 | And I would say that that's probably all that you need.

00:22:04.040 | If you want to buy a microphone, then what you're going to look for is, and I won't go

00:22:09.020 | through specific models, I'll just tell you what you need to know.

00:22:11.760 | If you want to buy a microphone, look for something that is called a dynamic microphone.

00:22:17.600 | And a dynamic microphone as contrasted with a condenser microphone.

00:22:22.320 | So if you were to go to a professional audio studio to record your audio book or something

00:22:28.360 | like that, you would be standing in front of a condenser microphone.

00:22:32.840 | And a condenser microphone is really wonderful because it creates a really high quality audio

00:22:37.840 | recording because it picks up all the sound.

00:22:40.460 | But the problem is in order for it to function well, you need to have a very well built sound

00:22:45.180 | booth or sound stage with good acoustics.

00:22:48.440 | A dynamic microphone is the kind of microphone that a news reporter holds in his hands while

00:22:55.440 | he's standing in a noisy crowd.

00:22:57.940 | And it's designed to only really pick up what is close to the microphone and to exclude

00:23:04.000 | most of the noise that's around.

00:23:06.080 | And so I record, basically all of my microphones are dynamic microphones.

00:23:11.600 | And what that means is that I don't really give much thought at all to sound treatment.

00:23:16.560 | I don't record in a sound booth.

00:23:18.960 | I can record basically anywhere because I have a dynamic microphone.

00:23:23.960 | And you can buy a dynamic microphone that you can plug into your computer with a USB

00:23:28.920 | cable.

00:23:29.920 | That works really well.

00:23:30.920 | I'm not current in all the models.

00:23:32.600 | The model that I used to recommend for that was the Audio-Technica ATR2100.

00:23:37.280 | But I'm sure that they have changed that.

00:23:38.760 | But if you just do a web search of some kind for dynamic microphone with USB input, you'll

00:23:44.320 | find lots of those.

00:23:46.120 | And then there's a whole slew of new microphones that are available for podcasters, et cetera,

00:23:51.520 | that will give you a direct connection to your computer so you can record directly into

00:23:54.960 | a program like Audacity.

00:23:56.580 | But you can do it sitting at your desk and you don't need any kind of sound treatment.

00:24:00.320 | And so those are my recommendations of how to start.

00:24:03.840 | But I think your cell phone is good enough as long as you do the recordings in your closet.

00:24:08.520 | Great.

00:24:10.800 | Thanks for all those recommendations.

00:24:11.800 | That's what I needed.

00:24:12.800 | My pleasure.

00:24:13.800 | We move on to Teresa in Missouri.

00:24:15.400 | Welcome, Teresa.

00:24:16.400 | How can I serve you today?

00:24:17.400 | Hi, Joshua.

00:24:18.400 | This is Brendan, not Teresa, but it's okay.

00:24:22.240 | That was surprising.

00:24:24.040 | Go ahead.

00:24:26.480 | I have a question about everyone's favorite topic, which is permanent or whole life insurance.

00:24:32.840 | I've been working with a financial guy from Northwestern about two things, exploring whole

00:24:39.640 | life insurance and then disability insurance, disability.

00:24:43.540 | I'm fine with what he's proposed and everything.

00:24:46.440 | The rates look reasonable.

00:24:48.800 | On the whole life side, however, he's explained it to me several different ways.

00:24:54.960 | And I'll be honest, the whole thing kind of seems like a pyramid scheme.

00:25:01.240 | He shows me this table and the basis is, you don't want everything in the stock market

00:25:07.720 | because you want to draw on a different asset base, which is tax advantage when the market

00:25:13.040 | is down in retirement.

00:25:15.140 | And that makes sense.

00:25:16.600 | But there's, in my opinion, there's ways around, there's ways to achieve that in retirement

00:25:23.460 | or closer to retirement than for me at 27 years old, for me and my wife to open up whole

00:25:29.680 | life policy and pile a bunch of money in there and the cash value doesn't actually break

00:25:36.800 | even until year 13.

00:25:39.160 | And in addition to that, I don't see how the tax advantage-ness of the cash value when

00:25:48.960 | you take it out of the account outweighs that return risk, so to speak, because if anything

00:25:57.360 | changes between me and my wife's age now and 10 years from now, a lot can happen, especially

00:26:03.160 | since we're starting to raise a family and we don't know what our situation is going

00:26:07.440 | to look like after kids are here.

00:26:11.220 | So anyway, I don't think that necessarily outweighs the inflexibility of, or sorry,

00:26:18.440 | I guess rather flexibility, if we were to keep the money in, you know, CD, high yield

00:26:24.340 | savings account, bonds, what have you, just in a brokerage account and manage it our way.

00:26:31.920 | Am I missing something that I haven't considered yet?

00:26:37.040 | Or is that basically it?

00:26:38.520 | What's your household income?

00:26:42.080 | Between my wife and I, we make about $250,000.

00:26:49.200 | Do you need whole life insurance?

00:26:52.040 | Well, to answer that question, you have to say, "Do I need life insurance?"

00:26:57.680 | So remember, first of all, if you do not value having whole life insurance, or let me use

00:27:05.240 | the word permanent life insurance, meaning life insurance that's going to last forever,

00:27:10.360 | I don't think you should buy it.

00:27:12.420 | If it's exclusively an investment play where you're trying to say, "Okay, there's the

00:27:16.960 | cash value and that's the only thing you care about," then I don't think anybody should

00:27:21.960 | buy whole life insurance in that situation.

00:27:24.840 | You need to at least appreciate the whole life insurance, that factor of the whole life

00:27:30.680 | insurance.

00:27:31.880 | So that would be the first thing that I think is important to note.

00:27:36.280 | Now it might be difficult for you in your mid to late 20s.

00:27:39.960 | You said 27 you were?

00:27:41.480 | That's right.

00:27:42.880 | Okay.

00:27:43.880 | Do you currently own life insurance, term life insurance?

00:27:48.480 | The only life insurance my wife and I own is through our employers at that standard

00:27:53.240 | one-year salary.

00:27:57.000 | So I had this conversation exactly with the advisor, I said, "As of right now, if you

00:28:02.800 | remove the word whole and just said, 'Do you need life insurance?'"

00:28:06.280 | I'd say, "No, because if either my wife or I were to die today, we could take off work

00:28:12.520 | for a year with all the money we have saved now, we would be totally fine, and a year

00:28:18.040 | from now, either one of us could pick up and carry on with our lives."

00:28:22.600 | Right.

00:28:23.600 | Right.

00:28:24.600 | So here's where I think.

00:28:25.600 | I think you've got a young advisor who hasn't figured out how to sell guys like you insurance,

00:28:31.920 | and he's being super intellectual, which I'm willing to be intellectual, right?

00:28:35.880 | I don't make any commissions, et cetera.

00:28:38.080 | But I think he's being silly for not first selling you insurance.

00:28:41.520 | Because in my experience, any time I tried to sell a 27-year-old insurance who didn't

00:28:47.720 | own insurance first, they just didn't have the same appreciation of it.

00:28:53.480 | And so if I were in his shoes trying to sell you life insurance, I wouldn't be trying to

00:28:58.180 | sell you whole life insurance, I'd be trying to sell you term life insurance.

00:29:01.840 | And I would speak about it kind of the way that I speak about it publicly, which is somewhat

00:29:06.200 | flippantly.

00:29:07.200 | I would emphasize the fact that, meaning I wouldn't drag you through a long detailed

00:29:11.700 | needs analysis, because you just said it yourself, "I don't need the stuff.

00:29:15.240 | Don't need it."

00:29:16.240 | And after all, if I died, my wife would be fine.

00:29:19.200 | She's got a year worth of stuff, she can go and she can take care of herself, she can

00:29:25.080 | go find someone else, she can work for herself, I'd be fine if she was gone, et cetera.

00:29:28.680 | You don't really need it.

00:29:30.040 | And so the reason you're wrestling with it is because most guys in your situation will

00:29:36.240 | wrestle with it.

00:29:37.960 | Being 27, being male, not having children, never having owned significant amounts of

00:29:42.600 | life insurance, you don't really value those things.

00:29:45.840 | And so you're open to it, that's why you're calling me, but you don't value those things

00:29:51.000 | on a real basis.

00:29:53.000 | What I'll tell you is that I value insurance.

00:29:56.480 | I value it enormously.

00:29:59.480 | And I value it regardless of whether I have children or not.

00:30:03.720 | There's a whole discussion there, et cetera, that it does change quite a lot when you have

00:30:08.040 | children.

00:30:09.240 | But I value the ability that I had as a young man before I really had any significant assets.

00:30:16.600 | I valued the ability that I had to take care of people around me.

00:30:21.560 | And for a 27-year-old guy, non-smoker, you could buy a million dollars of life insurance

00:30:25.960 | for about 50 bucks a month, probably less.

00:30:28.540 | And so in your world, 50 bucks a month doesn't make any difference whatsoever to your budget.

00:30:34.740 | But once you own a term life insurance policy with a million dollars of coverage, and you

00:30:39.800 | recognize that, hey, if I die, my wife is going to be, she's in good shape, or my parents,

00:30:45.400 | they're going to have half a million dollars that's going to see them through, it starts

00:30:48.720 | to change things.

00:30:49.720 | And I vividly remember when I was a young life insurance agent, because remember, I

00:30:53.080 | started selling life insurance at 23 years old.

00:30:55.200 | And so I was trying to sell people who were, I sold a lot of people in my natural market,

00:31:01.700 | people who were not parents, sometimes they were single, et cetera.

00:31:06.000 | And this good friend of mine bought a life insurance policy from me.

00:31:10.680 | And he was a young guy, single guy, he was getting a job, it doesn't matter.

00:31:15.340 | But he bought a term life insurance policy from me, bought a disability insurance and

00:31:19.180 | a term life insurance policy from me.

00:31:21.400 | And there was not much, and it was basically a conversation like this.

00:31:25.040 | And this guy loved to fish, and he would go out on his boat, he would drive up from South

00:31:32.300 | Florida up to his family's place in Southwest Florida, excuse me, Northwest Florida, and

00:31:37.700 | he would go fishing on the bay.

00:31:39.260 | And he told me one time, after he owned the policy about six months or so, he said, you

00:31:43.740 | know, something happened recently.

00:31:44.980 | And he'd gone out fishing on the bay, and he'd done something dumb, and he almost fell

00:31:48.860 | on top of his, I can't remember, maybe it was his spear, I mean, this is a long time

00:31:53.300 | ago.

00:31:54.300 | But he did something where he wondered if he was going to make it.

00:31:57.260 | And he was out by himself on the boat fishing by himself, and he almost killed himself.

00:32:02.160 | And he realized, and he told me, unprompted, he realized how glad he was that he had bought

00:32:08.420 | a term life insurance policy from me, because of the money that it allowed him to pass along

00:32:13.140 | for his family, for his parents, etc.

00:32:18.980 | And that always stuck with me, because I had the same feeling.

00:32:22.100 | I never owned life insurance until I signed up at 23 years old to be a life insurance

00:32:26.260 | agent.

00:32:27.260 | I didn't know what it felt like.

00:32:28.260 | And then I bought life insurance, but I bought it just because I figured I should own what

00:32:31.500 | I had.

00:32:32.500 | But after a while, I started to recognize, no, it feels really good to know that, in

00:32:36.340 | my case, my first beneficiary was my parents.

00:32:39.340 | It feels really good to know that I've taken care of my parents if I'm dead.

00:32:43.900 | Because after all, I'm their son, I'll take care of them, etc.

00:32:46.980 | And so what I've found is that, as the years go by, and you actually have life insurance,

00:32:53.340 | most men appreciate that.

00:32:54.940 | And they start to recognize the value of that, that they're able to take care of their loved

00:33:00.380 | ones even if they're dead and gone.

00:33:02.820 | And by purchasing insurance, they're able to control large amounts of money for their

00:33:08.540 | loved ones if they're not here.

00:33:10.580 | And we have unlimited amounts of confidence, when we're young, in our ability to make

00:33:14.620 | our wives multi-millionaires many times over, and our parents are going to live their golden

00:33:19.540 | age in comfort, etc.

00:33:22.380 | But it's very much ambition when we're young, and yet life insurance is a tool that allows

00:33:27.440 | us to actually make that happen.

00:33:30.120 | And so until you actually own life insurance, I don't think you're going to get any of

00:33:34.620 | those emotions.

00:33:35.620 | You're not going to experience that.

00:33:37.900 | That's only going to come when you actually buy a life insurance policy.

00:33:41.780 | An individual life insurance policy is not at your job, a term life insurance policy,

00:33:46.580 | so it's inexpensive.

00:33:47.740 | And then you'll recognize that, "Hey, I've got this covered, and that's going to be something

00:33:51.900 | that takes care of other people."

00:33:54.100 | So that would be the first thing that I would suggest to you.

00:33:57.220 | Now, the next thing that happens is you need to, if you were to buy permanent life insurance,

00:34:02.660 | you would need to actually appreciate the value of having that life insurance around

00:34:07.580 | forever.

00:34:08.580 | And I don't think this happens as quickly.

00:34:11.000 | But what happens is that when we are younger, we are filled again with unlimited amounts

00:34:17.940 | of confidence about our ability to be rich very, very quickly.

00:34:22.140 | And then what happens is sometimes it doesn't go as quickly as we had imagined, and we suffer

00:34:27.840 | various setbacks.

00:34:29.580 | And a business fails, or we make some dumb decisions and lose a bunch of money, or we

00:34:33.780 | go through a divorce, or something happens.

00:34:38.700 | And what we realize is that life is more precarious.

00:34:42.460 | And it's not unusual for a guy who's, say, 47 – let's say you buy a 20-year term policy

00:34:48.140 | when you're 27, which I don't recommend – but you get to 47, and all of a sudden you realize,

00:34:52.660 | "You know, I'm still a little behind."

00:34:54.860 | And then what happens is also you watch people go through medical things, and you start to

00:34:59.420 | be aware of your mortality.

00:35:01.180 | Usually this happens as you maybe approach about your 35th, 40th, 45th birthday, somewhere

00:35:05.820 | in there.

00:35:06.820 | Whereas at the stage of life that you're in as a young man, you think that it's pretty

00:35:11.620 | unlikely that you yourself would ever be significantly sick or significantly disabled in any way.

00:35:18.820 | But you reach my age, as I'm approaching my fifth decade, and I'm not that much older,

00:35:23.380 | but then I see enough people around that are peers of mine.

00:35:28.520 | And this guy has a stroke, that guy has a heart attack, this guy breaks his legs, and

00:35:32.580 | you realize, "I'm mortal," and that mortality hits you.

00:35:36.020 | And when that mortality hits you, you recognize that while you may be blessed with good genetics,

00:35:40.700 | as I am, and probably you are, and while you yourself may do everything possible to maintain

00:35:45.900 | your health, et cetera, there's a certain amount that none of us control.

00:35:50.900 | And if you wind up behind on your money, and you wind up worrying about your mortality,

00:35:57.060 | then all of a sudden the idea of having whole life insurance hits differently, and you're

00:36:01.300 | more grateful for it, because instead of having to figure out, "Am I going to die this year

00:36:04.540 | or not," then you're worried about those things.

00:36:09.220 | And so those are just some lessons that I learned selling life insurance, and I think

00:36:14.060 | the guy that you're an agent hasn't learned that yet.

00:36:17.080 | Because I think most experienced agents, if they walked into a situation like a sales

00:36:22.100 | situation, if I were advising that agent in the sales situation that he's in, based upon

00:36:26.660 | the two minutes you told me, I would tell that agent, "You're a fool for bringing up

00:36:30.340 | the idea of whole life insurance."

00:36:31.940 | I would sell you disability income insurance, I would sell you a million dollar term life

00:36:35.220 | insurance, maybe two, and I would move on.

00:36:38.140 | And I would come back a year later, and after you've owned those things for a year, I would

00:36:42.100 | check in and see how you're feeling, and then I would just start converting the term life

00:36:45.140 | insurance.

00:36:46.540 | Now we'll move to the intellectual thing about like, well, should one versus another?

00:36:50.220 | But I think just from life experience, that's what's at the core of kind of this conflict

00:36:55.680 | you're feeling, is you don't yet value life insurance, and you certainly don't value whole

00:37:00.020 | life insurance.

00:37:01.020 | It's just purely a cash on cash return, where do I get more money, setting up a seedy ladder

00:37:05.540 | at my bank, or a life insurance policy.

00:37:07.700 | Do you agree?

00:37:08.700 | Yes.

00:37:09.700 | I agree.

00:37:10.700 | All right.

00:37:12.600 | So now let me address your question directly.

00:37:15.140 | And by the way, let me just be to you.

00:37:17.940 | For your situation, I don't think you should buy whole life insurance.

00:37:21.380 | I think you should just buy a disability policy.

00:37:23.340 | I think you should buy a term insurance policy from your guy.

00:37:26.460 | Make sure it's an annual renewable term policy, so you have lots of flexibility.

00:37:30.620 | Buy one for you.

00:37:31.620 | Buy one for your wife.

00:37:32.740 | Let it go.

00:37:34.100 | The other thing is from a purely investment standpoint, because let's talk about kind

00:37:37.540 | of intellectually, et cetera, from a purely investment standpoint, buying whole life insurance

00:37:43.060 | should be behind maxing out all of your retirement accounts.

00:37:48.060 | And so I want to make sure that your 401(k) is maxed out, your wife's 401(k) is completely

00:37:52.860 | maxed out, access to Roth IRAs, if you're eligible, is maxed out.

00:37:57.140 | I want to make sure you're maxing out every possible account, because those accounts,

00:38:01.780 | when pushed against life insurance, they share all of the same benefits that life insurance

00:38:07.900 | has, but yet they're superior because of better potential investment returns, because of stocks

00:38:14.020 | versus bonds, as well as superior for matching money, tax breaks, et cetera.

00:38:20.020 | So it's only after you've maxed out all of those things that we would come back to whole

00:38:24.900 | life insurance and say, "Does this play a role in your plan?"

00:38:30.060 | Does that make sense intellectually?

00:38:32.060 | Yes, it does.

00:38:34.060 | Okay.

00:38:35.060 | Now, life insurance has a couple of features that you can't match yourself in a fixed income

00:38:42.100 | portfolio or something like a seedy ladder.

00:38:45.900 | Those features may or may not be valuable to you based upon where you are in life.

00:38:52.220 | So first, life insurance provides you with an insurance benefit.

00:38:57.380 | I'm not going to go through it in depth, but that's what I mentioned to you, because life

00:39:01.500 | insurance gives you insurance, and that's really valuable.

00:39:04.900 | Because even though your cost of premium versus benefit of death benefit is so much bigger

00:39:10.440 | with term life insurance, $50 a month, $1 million of coverage, whereas with your whole

00:39:15.220 | life policy, it's $600 a month, $1 million of coverage, what kind of policy are you looking

00:39:21.740 | at in terms of numbers?

00:39:24.020 | For me, it was $6,000 a year, and the death benefit immediately was $450,000.

00:39:36.460 | Here's a $5 bet.

00:39:40.260 | Cold drink next time we see each other in person.

00:39:43.460 | Guarantee you, your agent that you're talking to has been in the business less than three

00:39:46.940 | years, guarantee you, because he's doing what I would have done in times past until I learned

00:39:54.500 | that this is a dumb way to sell life insurance and whatnot.

00:39:58.620 | So yeah, $500 a month for what was the face amount you said?

00:40:02.780 | $450,000.

00:40:03.780 | For $450,000, right.

00:40:06.420 | So there's a big difference between $50 a month and over a million of coverage versus

00:40:09.740 | $500 a month and $450,000.

00:40:12.140 | However, if you were to go and put $500 a month into your seedy ladder, it would take

00:40:18.700 | you several decades before you wind up with $450,000 of coverage in it.

00:40:24.020 | And so even though the cost now with whole life insurance is significantly higher than

00:40:30.540 | the cost of term life insurance, you do still get a significant benefit that if you put

00:40:35.860 | that $6,000 in this year, $6,000 for the next three years, you're $18,000 in, but then you

00:40:42.500 | die and your beneficiary gets $450,000, that's a benefit.

00:40:48.220 | And you can't replicate that with a seedy ladder without also going out and supplementing

00:40:53.820 | a term insurance policy.

00:40:55.520 | So that's the first feature that whole life insurance has that your own investment has.

00:41:04.500 | Hello, Jan from Toyota here.

00:41:06.220 | Hi, Jan.

00:41:07.220 | Just wanted to say thanks.

00:41:08.220 | With the Grand Highlander we got at Toyotathon, we've been able to do so much, including five

00:41:13.100 | different ski trips, four family functions, three potlucks, two shopping sprees, and we

00:41:19.420 | even got a really big tree.

00:41:21.740 | Wow, I'm really impressed.

00:41:24.660 | Dealer inventory Mayberry offers our subject to change throughout Toyotathon, which ends

00:41:27.940 | on January 2nd.

00:41:28.940 | See your participating Toyota dealer for details.

00:41:31.420 | Toyota, let's go places.

00:41:34.380 | The second feature that the term insurance has is that it is primarily a fixed income

00:41:42.500 | asset.

00:41:44.020 | And so this can be an advantage or a disadvantage.

00:41:47.340 | The disadvantage is that you're generally going to have a lower overall rate of return

00:41:53.540 | than you will have from your stock investments, because generally the return on bonds is lower

00:42:00.020 | than the return on stocks because lenders make less money than owners.

00:42:05.620 | Owners make more money than lenders.

00:42:07.520 | Of course, the flip side is that you get less volatility.

00:42:10.100 | And in a life insurance policy, in exchange for lower return, you get zero volatility.

00:42:21.460 | So you get an asset that increases in value each and every year on a guaranteed basis

00:42:26.380 | no matter what.

00:42:27.900 | And that can be a useful feature in smoothing out other aspects of your portfolio.

00:42:35.420 | So if you have a highly volatile investment portfolio and you also have money that is

00:42:41.500 | not volatile, then if things are bad in your other investments, in your volatile investments,

00:42:48.220 | at least you still have a pot of money here that is not volatile.

00:42:52.880 | And that's a huge feature that life insurance has that is very valuable in supplementing

00:42:58.700 | those other pots of money.

00:43:00.480 | I think we all of us should never have all of our money in volatile investments.

00:43:05.180 | We should always have a few safer pots of money that are our insurance funds.

00:43:11.900 | And I mean that loosely, but it can be quite literally insurance funds because it balances

00:43:17.000 | out the other things that we're doing.

00:43:19.760 | And so that's a feature of whole life insurance.

00:43:23.280 | You can replicate that feature with a CD ladder, a bond ladder, your own bond fund.

00:43:30.100 | The bond fund can be tricky because if you're in a bond fund and interest rates increase,

00:43:36.360 | then of course your bond values would decrease.

00:43:38.640 | And so you don't face that risk in a whole life insurance policy.

00:43:42.860 | Your cash values will never decrease in a whole life policy.

00:43:46.280 | Whereas if you're investing in a bond fund, your actual values could decrease.

00:43:50.880 | But generally you could build that with, as you said, a CD ladder or individual bond purchases,

00:43:55.920 | a bond ladder of some kind.

00:43:58.000 | The third feature of life insurance is that the inside buildup of cash values is tax deferred.

00:44:05.000 | And so as those cash values increase, there is no current tax owed on those increases.

00:44:13.040 | And that's not the same case if you have your CD ladder or your bond ladder.

00:44:18.480 | So if you build your CD ladder or your bond ladder at your bank, every year that those

00:44:24.320 | bonds come due or mature, you're going to have interest and you're going to pay that

00:44:32.400 | interest at current tax rates.

00:44:34.480 | Whereas the inside buildup of cash values are not taxed currently.

00:44:38.680 | So that's a feature of life insurance.

00:44:41.160 | The next feature of whole life insurance is that in some cases, in some states, cash value

00:44:49.920 | in a life insurance policy is exempt from the claims of creditors by state law.

00:44:56.040 | And so let's say that you accumulate $100,000 in a life insurance policy as compared to

00:45:00.840 | $100,000 in a CD ladder that you have at your bank.

00:45:04.320 | Well if somebody sues you and they win a lawsuit against you, they would be able to claim against

00:45:09.240 | your $100,000 in the bank, whereas they wouldn't be able to if you live in a state where those

00:45:15.440 | assets are protected.

00:45:17.280 | Similar things of bankruptcy claims, et cetera, is that in some cases, in some states, even

00:45:23.320 | through bankruptcy, your assets in your life insurance policy are exempt from the claims

00:45:27.640 | of creditors, whereas the assets that are at your bank are not.

00:45:31.580 | And so for some people that can be more valuable or less valuable.

00:45:37.420 | When we get to the concept of actually withdrawing money, it gets complicated, and I like to

00:45:43.040 | avoid that a lot of times in public conversation because it's a bit sticky.

00:45:50.200 | One feature of life insurance is that you can gain access to the cash values through

00:45:56.160 | the form of a policy loan, and that policy loan is not taxable when you take it out.

00:46:04.380 | And so if you compare that to, say, the CD ladder, there's just not really any comparison.

00:46:10.600 | You wouldn't take a loan necessarily against your CD ladder, although you could in theory

00:46:15.380 | pledge it as collateral, but you wouldn't take a loan.

00:46:17.760 | And because you're being taxed on that on a current basis, it's not perfectly comparable.

00:46:25.020 | This feature of a life insurance policy can be an advantage, meaning you can get the money

00:46:29.860 | out with no tax, but it can also be a disadvantage because what the insurance agent undoubtedly

00:46:34.140 | is not telling you is that if you ever cancel the policy and lapse the policy, cancel the

00:46:38.900 | policy, et cetera, then all of your gain in the policy is taxed to you as ordinary income.

00:46:44.460 | And so if you don't keep the policy in force forever, then all of your benefits, all of

00:46:49.860 | those tax benefits just slide away because now it's taxed to you as ordinary income when

00:46:55.160 | the policy is canceled.

00:46:56.160 | You would get your basis out first to tax-free, and then all of your gain is taxed as ordinary

00:47:00.580 | income.

00:47:01.580 | Now, ordinarily when insurance agents talk about it, they encourage you to plan to keep

00:47:05.820 | the policy in force, and you can keep the policy in force, but you can never quite access

00:47:09.740 | all of the money.

00:47:10.740 | And so you have to actually access – you have to want the policy.

00:47:14.540 | So those are the basic features that do make a life insurance policy different than what

00:47:18.460 | you could have at your bank, the CD ladder or a bond ladder.

00:47:22.780 | I don't know that one is superior to another.

00:47:26.740 | It's just a matter of do you value those features.

00:47:31.020 | What I primarily use my whole life insurance for is simply as my emergency fund.

00:47:36.500 | And so my emergency fund, I keep money in the bank.

00:47:38.900 | I keep cash, et cetera, physical currency, et cetera, as far as my emergency fund.

00:47:43.220 | But I like to have a big emergency fund, and I don't want to go around and keep that

00:47:47.760 | much money in a bank account.

00:47:50.420 | And so this to me is where my whole life insurance policies really shine because they go up every

00:47:57.580 | year.

00:47:58.580 | There's no time where they ever get smaller.

00:48:00.860 | They always go up.

00:48:01.860 | They're completely protected from the claims of creditors.

00:48:04.260 | I don't have to worry about them.

00:48:06.180 | They're private money.

00:48:07.180 | Yes, I have the record at the insurance companies, the money that I own, but that doesn't generally

00:48:12.260 | come up in other things.

00:48:13.700 | They're not tied to my credit score, et cetera.

00:48:16.080 | So it's private money.

00:48:17.560 | And then if I have an emergency and I need a lot of money, I can quickly go and get it.

00:48:22.420 | And of course, I would use a credit card first, and then if I needed to pay off the credit

00:48:25.460 | card, I would just use the life insurance cash values.

00:48:29.160 | And to me, that feels like an appropriate thing for most people.

00:48:34.260 | And so I don't think that you should go and try to buy big, enormous policies or view

00:48:38.740 | this as a primary investment objective.

00:48:41.060 | I think that just for your longer term, safer dollars that you're going to have for a long

00:48:45.100 | time, that's where these policies work out well.

00:48:49.300 | They're not big money makers.

00:48:51.260 | Mine doesn't make me a fortune, but it's a useful asset that complements some of the

00:48:56.260 | other assets.

00:48:58.300 | And I've used on various occasions when I needed cash, and I just go to the policy,

00:49:01.940 | take it out, pay it back in a few months, a year or two, whatever is needed.

00:49:05.660 | And it's really nice.

00:49:06.660 | And the nice thing about it is that the interest rate, when I first started selling life insurance

00:49:10.420 | in 2003, the interest rates were down.

00:49:13.380 | And it just seemed like they just went down, down, down, down, down my entire career of

00:49:16.580 | selling.

00:49:17.580 | Well, now, and so policy interest rates, you get an 8% policy interest rate.

00:49:24.080 | And I always thought, because I could always borrow it much cheaper, that's no big deal.

00:49:28.100 | Today, as interest rates have gone up, then now all of a sudden the idea that you can

00:49:31.540 | borrow against your policy at 8% is a much more attractive thing.

00:49:35.180 | So in summary, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't worry too much about whole life insurance.

00:49:41.820 | I would buy the disability policy.

00:49:43.260 | I would buy a term life policy.

00:49:45.180 | If I were going to buy a whole life policy, I would buy something like a burial policy,

00:49:49.140 | you know, a $50,000 policy, something like that, something that I know I'll want around

00:49:52.580 | forever.

00:49:53.580 | And then I would max out all my investment accounts.

00:49:55.820 | I would take a good hard look at my career plans, etc.

00:49:59.340 | And then I would come back and I would reassess that in the future.

00:50:01.900 | And I would just tell the insurance agent, "Look, I'm open to it, but I'll reassess it

00:50:05.460 | in the future."

00:50:06.460 | And what I want you to be cautious of is the big downside.

00:50:09.780 | One of the big negatives of owning life insurance is that once you commit to a premium payment,

00:50:14.660 | you're committed to the premium payment.

00:50:16.460 | And so real example, where that's not the case with the money you put in your CD ladder.

00:50:22.660 | If you're going to put $6,000 a year in a life insurance, you've got to put that $6,000

00:50:26.580 | every year in.

00:50:27.580 | Well, if you're 27 years old, you've got a dual income, etc., no big deal.

00:50:31.500 | But what if you're 29 years old and your wife's going to stay home with a baby and now your

00:50:35.520 | income has dropped by half?

00:50:37.060 | Well, that can be more difficult to make that $6,000 payment.

00:50:40.260 | And so I'd never want you to put an amount of money in life insurance that you're not

00:50:44.540 | very confident that you can keep making that premium payment no matter what.

00:50:48.560 | And that usually means you want to do something that's meaningful, but a little bit less than

00:50:52.100 | what you would otherwise need.

00:50:53.340 | So those are my comments.

00:50:55.660 | Go ahead.

00:50:56.660 | That helps a lot.

00:50:57.660 | As far as the term policies go, I come back to them and say, "Hey, I'd rather do this

00:51:07.820 | instead.

00:51:08.820 | What limits would you recommend, a million dollars on both my wife and I?"

00:51:12.800 | So you can do this technically with a needs analysis.

00:51:15.700 | That's the correct way to do it.

00:51:17.580 | Needs analysis is where you sit down and you say, "All right, how much debt would need

00:51:20.540 | to be paid off?

00:51:21.900 | How much money would need to be provided, et cetera?"

00:51:24.260 | That's the way that an insurance agent does it, is to do a needs analysis.

00:51:27.820 | When you do a needs analysis, generally you're going to always come out for someone in your

00:51:31.620 | situation with somewhere between 10 to 20 times your annual income of life insurance.

00:51:36.180 | And you do it just that way because our expenditures and our lifestyle is normally calibrated to

00:51:43.900 | our income.

00:51:45.180 | And so you're going to wind up with somewhere between 10 to 20 times your annual income

00:51:49.380 | of life insurance need.

00:51:52.340 | So if your income is 150 and your wife is 150 or 125 and 125, then I would recommend

00:51:59.060 | you buy at least 10 times your income for you, at least 10 times for her.

00:52:03.200 | If you like the idea of insurance and it feels good, buy more.

00:52:08.180 | But I don't think you're there right now.

00:52:09.580 | So with the belief that I have about insurance, I would buy more.

00:52:14.640 | But with the belief that you have about insurance, if you bought a million dollars, a million

00:52:17.700 | and a half dollars for each of you, I would be totally happy because I would know that

00:52:23.340 | I've covered everything from the worst case scenario as an insurance agent, meaning my

00:52:27.260 | ethical duty as an insurance agent.

00:52:29.320 | As an insurance agent, my ethical duty to you, the client, is to persuade you, if I'm

00:52:36.140 | able at all, to buy enough insurance that your loved ones are protected in the case

00:52:40.740 | of either death, obviously, or in the case that you can't get insurance in the future.

00:52:46.140 | So if I'm working with you at 27 years old, you don't have children, but let's assume

00:52:49.820 | that you and your wife want to have children in the future, which would be common, then

00:52:53.500 | I want to make sure that you have at least some insurance if your wife dies on childbirth

00:52:59.240 | or if you, two years from now, get stricken with cancer and now you can't get insurance

00:53:06.460 | anymore for the rest of your life.

00:53:08.460 | And what happens is that just like doctors see a lot of blood, insurance agents wind

00:53:14.320 | up experiencing a lot of difficult stories.

00:53:17.940 | And those stories fill us with, over time, with more conviction to make sure that every

00:53:22.440 | family is taken care of.

00:53:24.140 | And it genuinely does become a moral duty, an ethical duty, to try to make sure that

00:53:29.260 | your family is taken care of.

00:53:30.260 | Now, if you've got at least a million dollars, I can take care of everything.

00:53:33.860 | Your family is not destitute if you're dead.

00:53:37.020 | And so while I would like you to have as much as would be appropriate to your lifestyle,

00:53:42.300 | all I really need in the case of, let's say, that you die when your baby is one year old,

00:53:48.780 | all I really need is five or six years of care for your wife so that she can get that

00:53:55.420 | one-year-old to school age and she can recalibrate and get back to a job, et cetera.

00:54:01.620 | And so basically, a million dollars allows that to happen, whereas a few million dollars

00:54:07.380 | means that if she ever marries again, she marries for love, not money, and the kids

00:54:10.900 | are taken care of, and college funds, et cetera.

00:54:13.620 | But my job is at least enough.

00:54:15.660 | And so a million dollars is at least enough.

00:54:18.500 | And then if you're willing to buy more, you should buy up to 20 times your income.

00:54:22.580 | Got it.

00:54:23.580 | Thank you very much, Joshua.

00:54:24.580 | I appreciate it.

00:54:25.580 | I hope to answer your question.

00:54:26.580 | My pleasure.

00:54:27.580 | Congratulations.

00:54:28.580 | And then we skipped over it.

00:54:30.180 | You said it.

00:54:31.180 | But just make sure that you absolutely get the disability income insurance, because that's

00:54:34.820 | the one that matters.

00:54:35.820 | If you could only afford disability, get disability, and skip the life insurance, because that's

00:54:40.420 | the one that really matters.

00:54:41.700 | We go on to Daniel in Texas.

00:54:42.700 | Daniel, welcome to the show.

00:54:43.700 | What can I serve you today?

00:54:44.700 | Thank you, Joshua.

00:54:45.860 | So my question is about buying a business and then running with it and kind of the attitude

00:54:54.340 | behind it.

00:54:55.340 | The more specific question with that is, would you ever buy a business in a close market

00:55:02.220 | to something you want to do, or close niche, and then try and shift that existing business

00:55:10.780 | to do what you want it to do?

00:55:13.100 | I can give you an example.

00:55:18.300 | Looking at, I would like to start a business doing decorative water features, having some

00:55:22.540 | struggles getting that off the ground into a going venture.

00:55:26.660 | And so I've kind of looked into the realm of, well, what if I bought an existing landscaping

00:55:31.780 | business, especially it's easier to buy ones that are primarily maintenance.

00:55:38.460 | Obviously some of them still do some landscaping installs, et cetera, right?

00:55:41.940 | And then my intention would be over time to basically shift only to the water features

00:55:48.220 | and get rid of the other stuff, at least the lawn maintenance kind of thing.

00:55:54.060 | So I guess my thought is, is that viable?

00:55:59.700 | Does that make sense?

00:56:00.700 | So if I go in there on day one, well, I've lost my entire customer base.

00:56:04.940 | My marketing base no longer matters, right?

00:56:06.780 | Because I've totally done it, I've gotten rid of that.

00:56:10.300 | But if I slowly transition, say, over a couple of years, does that make sense or is that

00:56:15.780 | a bad attitude to have or bad outlook to have when you're looking at purchasing a business?

00:56:21.780 | I think it could make sense, but the primary question to me would be, is this necessary

00:56:28.340 | for you to make the transition?

00:56:31.540 | And is this necessary for me to make the transition?

00:56:35.340 | So if we use that as a specific example, let's play two scenarios here.

00:56:40.220 | Scenario A is you're working a job that you despise, but you're making enough money to

00:56:45.820 | provide you with your income.

00:56:48.980 | You have enough money saved, you can go buy the landscaping business.

00:56:52.100 | You really want to start the water feature business, but you don't have any customers

00:56:55.580 | right now, and you just hate your job with everything that's in you, and the job itself

00:56:59.320 | is keeping you from being able to do the water features.

00:57:01.900 | Well, in that situation, it makes all the sense in the world to me to go and buy the

00:57:05.660 | landscaping business.

00:57:07.260 | That switches you from something that you despise to something that you could tolerate,

00:57:10.900 | and then in the fullness of time, after a few years, you can move yourself fully in

00:57:15.140 | the direction of the water features business.

00:57:17.460 | But it's more of an escape plan from a locked-in situation that you're in right now.

00:57:23.100 | Now, scenario B is let's say that you're doing a business right now that would allow you

00:57:28.260 | to have full flexibility.

00:57:29.860 | You could go and get customers.

00:57:32.160 | You could go and build water features, et cetera.

00:57:35.380 | It's just that you need to find customers first, and you have enough money coming in

00:57:39.500 | from this job that it's covering.

00:57:41.340 | Well, in that situation, the idea of buying a landscaping business as a pathway to the

00:57:46.340 | water features doesn't, to me, make so much sense, unless it provides you with something

00:57:51.540 | that you specifically need.

00:57:53.260 | But if I imagine the water features business, that, to me, seems like a business that you

00:57:58.860 | don't need a lot of infrastructure for.

00:58:01.060 | You need some knowledge, and you're going to need a crew, but you could hire the crew

00:58:04.340 | for the job using day laborers as long as you're there to supervise them.

00:58:08.900 | So unless you needed the landscape business to transition, then it just seems like an

00:58:12.860 | unwieldy path, and after all, you're going to wind up with a couple of broken-down trucks

00:58:16.420 | and a crew of people, two of whom are going to quit on day one, and the other is you didn't

00:58:20.980 | hire them, and they just want to do things the old way, and they want to run a lawnmower

00:58:24.380 | and a weed eater, and they don't want to put in water features.

00:58:26.380 | We don't like this work, et cetera.

00:58:28.020 | It sounds like a real hassle.

00:58:29.340 | So I think the compelling reason, to me, would be, is this a better transition from where

00:58:34.340 | you are?

00:58:35.340 | If so, go for it.

00:58:36.420 | If not, does this help you in some way that just going directly after the water features

00:58:42.260 | business doesn't provide?

00:58:45.060 | Sure.

00:58:46.060 | That makes sense.

00:58:49.060 | Yeah, I was kind of thinking about it as there's obviously all of that, right?

00:58:59.240 | It seems like it would also, one, it's kind of the statistics are statistics, right?

00:59:05.220 | But at least according to the statistics, a business that's purchased with an SBA loan,

00:59:14.420 | which partially just represents that the numbers have been adequately run to make sure they

00:59:19.100 | actually work, right?

00:59:20.620 | When the seller says, yeah, it makes a million dollars in revenue, it actually does, and

00:59:25.780 | that's not been fudged around with, right?

00:59:27.460 | So they have a, accordingly, a 98% success rate, as opposed to a startup, which has,

00:59:35.100 | I don't know, probably overall, it's less than 5%, something like that.

00:59:39.620 | Certainly it's not high.

00:59:41.820 | Now, I'm assuming that the business kind of in the SBA statistics is going relatively

00:59:49.140 | in a straight path, right, as opposed to shifting its course.

00:59:52.760 | But it seems like that could be a far more successful path.

00:59:56.780 | And worst case, to some degree, you buy a job that you don't love, but you have all

01:00:01.300 | the benefits of owning your own business along with that as well.

01:00:05.580 | So that was kind of the pathway in some ways as I was thinking about it.

01:00:10.900 | And I think what you just said, though, aligns with what I'm saying.

01:00:13.500 | So if you're stuck right now in a situation that, if you're stuck in a situation right

01:00:19.460 | now that is not allowing you all the freedom that you would like to have to build the water

01:00:25.460 | features business, and if you are willing to own the landscape business, then absolutely,

01:00:30.660 | go buy the landscape business, as long as you're willing for that to be your primary

01:00:35.140 | day job.

01:00:36.140 | But when you started asking, it sounds like you really don't want to do landscaping, you

01:00:40.140 | want to do water features, and I don't know how successful you would be switching from

01:00:46.740 | landscaping to doing water features.

01:00:49.260 | And so to me, it seems like it's more important to go as directly in the direction of your

01:00:55.700 | goals.

01:00:57.400 | If the water features are what you want to do, then go after the water features as diligently

01:01:04.620 | as possible, and only change course when you need to.

01:01:08.660 | And so something like a water features business, to me, seems like the kind of thing that all

01:01:13.660 | of your expenses, most of your expenses, can take place after you actually book some business.

01:01:24.180 | So you don't need a lot of infrastructure.

01:01:26.820 | You might need to do a project or two so that you can show people what you've done.

01:01:30.380 | Maybe it's your house, your neighbor's house, or something like that.

01:01:33.260 | But a lot of your work is just a matter of booking the business, and once you actually

01:01:37.460 | have a check that clears the bank, then you can go out, hire the laborers, purchase the

01:01:41.940 | equipment, you can rent all of your stuff, and you can get the work done, and that will

01:01:46.900 | teach you more.

01:01:48.180 | So business failure and success, those statistics are interesting to look at, but they're not

01:01:57.940 | a good guidance of what you yourself should expect.

01:02:01.940 | So for example, do a majority or at least many new businesses fail?

01:02:05.500 | Absolutely, they do.

01:02:06.860 | But if you look at the businesses that fail from people who've run businesses before,

01:02:12.380 | the percentage is much, much lower.

01:02:14.580 | And so people who've run businesses successfully understand how to run businesses, and their

01:02:18.300 | new businesses don't fail.

01:02:20.020 | And I think one of the big reasons their new businesses generally don't fail is they don't

01:02:23.820 | spend any money until they make money, and they only spend money when they make money.

01:02:27.700 | And so what is different from me now versus me when I was 20 years old, when I was 20

01:02:32.980 | years old and I wanted to start a business, I would have gone out, bought a new pickup

01:02:35.740 | truck, put my sign on the side, and been like, "Look, I got a great business.

01:02:38.900 | Today, I'll go rent a U-Haul pickup truck or a U-Haul van and keep the expenses down

01:02:43.500 | and just do it in a U-Haul van until you get to the point where that's just not appropriate

01:02:48.060 | and you need more equipment."

01:02:50.180 | And so I think experienced business people understand you get money in the bank first

01:02:55.380 | and you sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and then you only start buying stuff when you

01:02:59.260 | absolutely need it and when the business has proven itself.

01:03:02.460 | So I think the best model for what you're describing is five years from now, if you

01:03:07.740 | own a landscaping business that makes you a good living as expected based upon the numbers

01:03:13.640 | that you're describing and you do one water feature a year, are you happier with that

01:03:18.300 | decision or are you happier staying with what you're doing right now, not having to deal

01:03:23.420 | with the business, not having taken out a bunch of debt, et cetera, and doing one water

01:03:29.220 | feature a year?

01:03:30.220 | Which of those is the better fit?

01:03:32.580 | Yeah, that makes sense.

01:03:38.060 | Probably the second one.

01:03:39.060 | And that's partially I'm at a place where I have lots of flexibility with my job, which

01:03:43.440 | is great, but it's also not providing for me monetarily in the way that I would like

01:03:51.180 | it to at this point.

01:03:52.180 | So I'm trying to parlay all of that and also not put our family in a bad financial place

01:04:00.540 | by just going for it kind of thing.

01:04:04.940 | So in that situation, don't go into debt.

01:04:08.020 | Don't buy a business that you don't want to own.

01:04:10.000 | Don't go into debt.

01:04:11.400 | Just market like crazy and develop, do a water feature in your yard.

01:04:17.720 | Make sure you create a portfolio of ideas, even if it's just a portfolio of other people's

01:04:22.240 | ideas and go to the neighborhoods where those kinds of things might be interested and figure

01:04:26.760 | out how to get marketing materials in front of those people.

01:04:29.600 | Maybe it's door-to-door, flyering a neighborhood, I don't know, but making some kind of targeted

01:04:39.440 | ads, targeting people on Facebook, on whatever it is in your area.

01:04:45.600 | Create some ways of advertising and just spend some money on advertising and marketing and

01:04:50.000 | go and meet with some people.

01:04:51.400 | Do some water features on Saturday-Sunday jobs, take a week of vacation, do a water

01:04:56.640 | feature on a week of vacation if you need to, but get some actual business done and

01:05:01.880 | then start getting the referrals from the business and see if there's repeat business.

01:05:06.520 | And then just quit your job when your job is getting in the way of your business.

01:05:11.600 | To me, that's a more direct path.

01:05:13.640 | You won't go into debt.

01:05:14.880 | You won't assume all of the unknowns of the crews and the deferred maintenance on the

01:05:18.660 | trucks and all the stuff that you're going to pay for and you'll be doing the business

01:05:22.220 | that you want to have and probably you'd have a better business because again, the water

01:05:26.640 | features business won't need much overhead.

01:05:30.200 | You can do most of it with rented equipment.

01:05:32.080 | You can do most of it with day laborers, etc.

01:05:35.880 | And so that lower overhead will lead to a higher chance of success as well versus all

01:05:41.100 | of the overhead of the existing lawn maintenance business.

01:05:44.440 | That'd be my guess.

01:05:45.440 | Sure.

01:05:46.440 | That makes sense.

01:05:47.440 | All right.

01:05:48.440 | Okay.

01:05:49.440 | Cool.

01:05:50.440 | Keep me in the loop.

01:05:51.440 | Thank you much.

01:05:52.440 | Want to hear about it in the future.

01:05:53.440 | And with that, we go to Billings, Montana.

01:05:54.440 | Welcome to the show.

01:05:55.440 | How can I serve you today?

01:05:56.440 | Hey Joshua.

01:05:57.440 | I was curious if your thoughts have changed at all on food insecurity and famine kind

01:06:06.080 | of on a global level.

01:06:07.080 | You had an episode maybe a year ago or so.

01:06:10.360 | I think you had some relevant concerns and just curious if that's changed, if any of

01:06:15.840 | those things that you were concerned about played out or maybe you haven't thought about

01:06:20.240 | it anymore.

01:06:21.240 | Just curious.

01:06:22.240 | That's a good question.

01:06:23.240 | So I would not create that show today because I don't have the same pressing fear or concern

01:06:30.400 | or need to warn as I felt at that time.

01:06:34.840 | We've had good global harvests.

01:06:36.520 | We've had all kinds of good news.

01:06:39.540 | And so most of the worst-case scenarios of the last year or two were avoided.

01:06:45.700 | And so I'm incredibly grateful for that.

01:06:48.440 | I'm a little chagrined because I don't enjoy being wrong about stuff, but I'm confident

01:06:56.500 | that I'd made the right decision of warning about things that I did at the time.

01:07:01.160 | From a systemic basis, the risks continue to be high, and there are real problems.

01:07:13.120 | I'm just not as emotionally invested in them as I was.

01:07:17.080 | And so I think things were better.

01:07:19.340 | I'm grateful that nothing horrific for most of us has happened over the last year.

01:07:24.120 | There are still significant problems.

01:07:25.860 | There's every reason to be concerned about food insecurity on a long-term basis, but

01:07:30.560 | it didn't emerge over the past year.

01:07:34.400 | I think if I went back and listened to that podcast, I'd try to be very responsible in

01:07:38.480 | how I talk about things.

01:07:39.760 | I think I would be satisfied with what I did.

01:07:43.660 | On that issue, it was funny.

01:07:46.040 | When Gary North was alive, I asked him a question one time in his forums because Gary North

01:07:50.200 | was a big proponent of Y2K concerns.

01:07:54.680 | He acquired the moniker of Scary Gary because of all of his Y2K warnings, and he was warning

01:08:00.840 | about Y2K and writing all over the place.

01:08:03.960 | I asked him, I don't know, sometime 2018, somewhere like that, I asked him if he regretted

01:08:10.360 | it.

01:08:11.360 | And he made a comment to me of something like, "It's much more important to be courageous

01:08:17.040 | enough to speak the truth as you see it than it is to worry about your reputation," or

01:08:22.040 | something like that.

01:08:23.600 | He was more eloquent, but that was the basic idea, was that there's a good chance that

01:08:28.920 | you're going to be wrong about things.

01:08:30.560 | But if you care about people, you owe it to yourself and to them to have the courage to

01:08:34.640 | act, even if you're wrong, and to say things how you see it.

01:08:40.000 | So I'm satisfied with that.

01:08:41.400 | Now, what do you do for it?

01:08:42.880 | I think the actual preparation is exactly the same, and so I felt a need at that time

01:08:51.800 | to go a little bit beyond my usual laconic attitude and encourage people strongly.

01:08:57.240 | But I think that all sensible men and all sensible women should be prepared for famine

01:09:03.120 | at all times, because famine has been one of the biggest killers of mankind throughout

01:09:08.160 | all of recorded history.

01:09:10.560 | And even though our societies have done seemingly a better job of distributing food, et cetera,

01:09:21.200 | for us, it's one of those things that is so core that we really should be prepared at

01:09:25.300 | all times.

01:09:26.300 | And the cost of preparation from a financial cost is very, very low.

01:09:31.960 | Generally speaking, most of us don't spend that big of our money on food.

01:09:37.800 | And so living in the West, it's ironic that our need for preparation seems lower than

01:09:42.440 | a lot of people.

01:09:43.440 | We're not living in Pakistan and dealing with horrific climate change and all kinds of issues

01:09:48.280 | that they're dealing with, so we don't think about it.

01:09:51.180 | But on the other hand, if we wanted to actually protect ourselves, you know, 5,000 bucks spent

01:09:54.640 | and you're covered, your family is taken care of.

01:09:57.240 | And so I think that all people should have some reserves of food.

01:10:01.720 | I think that all people should have some long-term reserves of food, and that it should be enough

01:10:06.320 | that if there is a disruption, a couple of bad harvests, a climatic change, a volcano

01:10:12.280 | blows off and wrecks crops this year, natural gas means that we can't fertilize as much

01:10:16.920 | as possible.

01:10:17.920 | So the impact of famine and the potential for famine is very, very high.

01:10:22.360 | And so we should absolutely be prepared for it at all times.

01:10:26.080 | It's a sensible thing to do.

01:10:28.560 | And the easiest time to prepare for famine is when no one else is preparing for famine

01:10:32.920 | and food is abundant.

01:10:34.020 | So I'm grateful that I was wrong about my biggest worries, but I still stand by the

01:10:42.040 | value of the need to be prepared for bad scenarios like famine.

01:10:46.040 | Yeah.

01:10:47.040 | I appreciate your insight and also glad we didn't have a famine.

01:10:52.880 | Do you have time for unrelated?

01:10:55.920 | Sure.

01:10:56.920 | Go ahead.

01:10:57.920 | Second question?

01:10:58.920 | Yep.

01:10:59.920 | Sure.

01:11:00.920 | I'm curious for someone that is learning a second language, would you typically recommend

01:11:06.680 | that they would get to the point of some level of fluency before adding a third language?

01:11:14.160 | Or is there benefit to adding additional in parallel?

01:11:20.160 | And then I guess, you know, is there an estimated amount of time that you think on an ongoing

01:11:25.720 | basis is needed kind of per foreign language to keep at a fluent or semi-fluent level?

01:11:34.200 | I think it would be different.

01:11:36.100 | If someone is learning a second language, I think my answer would be different than

01:11:42.520 | if someone is learning a fourth language.

01:11:47.300 | If you've never acquired a second language to a high degree of fluency, then I think

01:11:55.320 | that's an experience that you will want to go through before trying to do it in a second

01:12:00.280 | and a third language because it changes your confidence level.

01:12:05.560 | And so if you're interested in languages, but you haven't demonstrated that interest

01:12:10.280 | even to the point of learning a second language to a moderately high degree, then I think

01:12:19.160 | you should do that first.

01:12:20.760 | Because after you've done that, your confidence will be very high.

01:12:24.360 | I think there's a somewhat well-known polyglot named Steve Kaufman.

01:12:29.800 | And Steve Kaufman is a guy in history.

01:12:33.880 | He grew up as a monolingual English-speaking Canadian.

01:12:37.660 | He studied a little bit of French in high school, etc.

01:12:40.880 | But his first real second language was when he, after high school, went to France as a

01:12:48.800 | laborer and ultimately learned French after being inspired by a very enthusiastic French

01:12:56.320 | teacher.

01:12:57.560 | And after learning French, he went to college in France, etc.

01:13:00.960 | So after learning French to a high degree, that inspired him where some years down the

01:13:06.240 | road, he was working for the Canadian Diplomatic Corps.

01:13:10.160 | And he raised his hand and said, "I can learn Chinese."

01:13:14.040 | And that started his career and ultimately started his true multilingualism.

01:13:18.400 | But it was all based upon the confidence that he had developed from learning French to a

01:13:23.200 | high level.

01:13:24.200 | Now, once you have that confidence and once you've figured out kind of what works for

01:13:28.280 | you, because if you talk to language learners, all language learners will have a different

01:13:32.200 | idea of what works for them.

01:13:34.200 | Some people just want to sit around and watch movies.

01:13:36.000 | Some people just want to sit around and read.

01:13:37.440 | Some people want to study grammar books.

01:13:38.800 | Some people want to take classes, etc.

01:13:40.880 | And so all of the lessons that you learn in learning your second language are things that

01:13:46.880 | will dramatically infuse your approach with future languages.

01:13:51.200 | Now, if somebody has successfully learned at least a foreign language, then I think

01:13:58.040 | the answer to the question is much more related to interest and goals than it is actual technique.

01:14:05.920 | From my experience and from listening to a lot of polyglots talk about it, the human

01:14:12.760 | brain seems perfectly capable of distinguishing among languages without very much confusion.

01:14:20.920 | It may be true that if you're just starting for the very first time, and again, you've

01:14:25.920 | never learned a foreign language, starting to study Italian and Spanish or Spanish and

01:14:29.960 | Portuguese simultaneously, that's not smart.

01:14:33.480 | You want to have some separation.

01:14:35.480 | But a skilled Spanish speaker who can certainly study Portuguese and keep them distinct, it's

01:14:43.280 | more just a matter of time, of how much time are you actually going to do this and what

01:14:46.760 | kind of results do you want.

01:14:50.240 | True polyglots don't seem to have any real skill or aptitude for languages that can be

01:14:57.000 | measurable.

01:14:58.360 | What they do have is they have interest, and that interest causes them to put in the hours,

01:15:04.120 | and then the hours result in high skill in languages.

01:15:07.480 | And so if somebody has a high interest and they want to learn three new languages simultaneously

01:15:13.880 | to the point where they're totally ready to put four hours per day into all three of them,

01:15:18.640 | then there's no downside to studying the three.

01:15:22.200 | And if their interest is in learning the three languages rather than in learning one language

01:15:26.940 | to a high degree, that would be the qualifying factor.

01:15:29.440 | Do what you want to.

01:15:30.440 | We're just doing this for fun.

01:15:32.620 | What I have found is that it's more a matter of, again, they don't really compete, it's

01:15:38.240 | a matter of interest and it's a matter of how quickly do I get results.

01:15:41.600 | So I'm not, I wouldn't term myself as a polyglot.

01:15:46.520 | I speak advanced intermediate Spanish, I speak intermediate French, and I dabble in German

01:15:53.600 | and Latin and Greek and some of the other things, but I just go based upon my interest.

01:15:57.720 | And I don't see that they interfere with one another, but I also observe that the progress

01:16:03.700 | I make only comes when I spend time with the language.

01:16:07.260 | And so it's a matter of, and the languages that I spend time with, I can make progress

01:16:11.660 | in them.

01:16:12.660 | It's just a matter of, do I want to make progress in them?

01:16:15.620 | Is that clear enough?

01:16:16.620 | - Yep.

01:16:17.620 | That makes sense.

01:16:18.620 | Thank you.

01:16:19.620 | Appreciate it.

01:16:20.620 | - Go with what you're interested in.

01:16:21.620 | All right.

01:16:22.620 | We move on to Austin in Louisiana.

01:16:24.620 | Welcome to the show.

01:16:25.620 | How can I serve you today, Austin?

01:16:26.620 | - Hey, Josh.

01:16:27.620 | The reason I'm calling today is I have recently gotten engaged and in preparation for us getting

01:16:38.460 | married, sorry, I'm finishing up a run here, so I'm a little out of breath.

01:16:44.060 | We are looking at signing a prenuptial agreement.

01:16:48.300 | And so I just wanted your thoughts on anything that we should be considering when putting

01:16:52.380 | that together.

01:16:53.380 | Why do you want to sign a prenuptial agreement?

01:16:57.580 | - So going into marriage, we have a pretty big, or what I would consider a pretty big

01:17:03.380 | disparity in our net worth.

01:17:06.960 | And so I'm looking at it from the concept of, if anything were ever to go wrong and

01:17:14.540 | we were to end up getting divorced, that those assets that I'm bringing into the marriage

01:17:20.180 | would be protected.

01:17:21.180 | - Good.

01:17:22.180 | I think that is the appropriate reason and the disparity does make it important.

01:17:29.700 | Which of you has more wealth?

01:17:31.580 | - That would be me.

01:17:34.180 | - And are you already discussing the details of a prenuptial agreement going into that?

01:17:38.380 | Is that a comfortable conversation for you or you haven't started it yet?

01:17:42.700 | - No, we've had the conversation prior to getting engaged and we've actually been together

01:17:48.180 | for approximately nine years at this point, so we're common law in the states that recognize

01:17:53.460 | common law, but we're just making it official in the state we live in.

01:17:56.500 | - Okay.

01:17:57.940 | So the first recommendation is, I would recommend to you the NOLO book, N-O-L-O, the Legal Self-Help

01:18:05.540 | Publishers.

01:18:06.540 | They have a book called "Prenuptial Agreements, How to Write a Fair and Lasting Contract."

01:18:11.580 | And that is always my first recommendation because while you will undoubtedly retain

01:18:18.340 | the services of a lawyer, the work that you and she do in advance will make your legal

01:18:24.220 | fees significantly cheaper.

01:18:26.620 | And it's way better for you to grab a $30 book and work your way through it and spend

01:18:31.900 | 10 hours on it.

01:18:33.740 | And you and she together going through it, that'll drive a good outcome.

01:18:40.260 | And so I would begin with purchasing the book on prenuptial agreements from NOLO.

01:18:46.180 | That's the starting point.

01:18:47.540 | Now that book is a self-help book and I, of course, can't summarize a 400-page book and

01:18:53.980 | I'm not a lawyer.

01:18:54.980 | So most of my education on this subject is just study just like anyone else.

01:19:00.220 | But there are a few principles that I want to bring your attention to.

01:19:03.820 | The first principle is that if you are going to establish a prenup, that process requires

01:19:14.340 | you to make a complete and honest and transparent declaration of all of your assets for both

01:19:23.060 | of you.

01:19:24.420 | And so don't have any illusions for either of you that there's going to be anything hidden

01:19:30.980 | or anything undisclosed.

01:19:33.860 | And so I think the process of going through a prenup book and using the self-help forms

01:19:38.620 | and everything in there to kind of lay things out is almost a good test for are we willing

01:19:43.980 | to communicate about these things and is there any decision.

01:19:47.060 | Because in order for a prenup to be legally binding, it has to have complete disclosure

01:19:52.900 | of all of your assets.

01:19:54.380 | And if you leave any assets out of that disclosure process, that automatically invalidates the

01:20:00.720 | prenup and invalidates the entire process.

01:20:03.500 | I have known people who for this reason alone, they didn't initiate a prenup because they

01:20:07.780 | decided that it was better for them to try to maintain secrecy than it was to do a prenup.

01:20:13.220 | I don't recommend that.

01:20:14.220 | I'm just saying that it's an important point that even moving to the point of a prenup

01:20:19.140 | requires full disclosure.

01:20:21.700 | Number two is that if you're going to establish a prenup, it'll be important that each of

01:20:26.380 | you has your own separate counsel.

01:20:31.980 | And so it's important that you can go through it together, but I wouldn't take, she needs

01:20:36.580 | to have her lawyer, you need to have your lawyer who are looking over your shoulders

01:20:40.700 | and actually making sure that it's fully defensible.

01:20:45.020 | Because in order for the contract not to be invalidated by the court, there has to be

01:20:48.600 | proof that the contract was entered into with good representation and that both parties

01:20:53.880 | were fully informed.

01:20:55.980 | And in this situation, that's super important for her because as the disadvantaged party,

01:21:02.020 | the party who's less wealthy, then she needs to have really good counsel, she needs to

01:21:08.380 | have counsel defending her and making sure that her interests are taken care of.

01:21:12.740 | Because presumably, the way the court will see it, you're the one pushing the prenup

01:21:16.540 | because you're the one who has the wealth.

01:21:18.900 | She's disadvantaged and so therefore you have to defend her in that way and that starts

01:21:23.780 | now.

01:21:24.780 | The third thing that's really important is that in order for the contract to be valid,

01:21:29.220 | there can't be any emotional manipulation or any kind of reason to think that, I forget

01:21:38.980 | the legal terms, but basically it has to be entered into when there's no pressure.

01:21:43.280 | So there's a famous story online of a basketball player or a sports athlete who was engaged

01:21:51.980 | to this girl and he sent her the prenup, like you gotta sign the prenup, but she didn't

01:21:56.780 | sign it.

01:21:57.780 | And she didn't sign it, I'm gonna sign it, I'm gonna sign it, I'm gonna sign it.

01:22:00.060 | We get to the wedding day and she didn't sign the prenup and he called off the whole wedding

01:22:04.860 | even after I spent a lot of money.

01:22:07.340 | And it's an interesting story, he tells the story.

01:22:10.140 | And the point of it is that even if she had signed it on the wedding day when she's breaking

01:22:13.780 | down in tears because he signed off the wedding, it's too late.

01:22:16.620 | The prenup has to be signed long in advance of the wedding and there needs to be no emotional

01:22:21.220 | pressure that could later be used to invalidate the agreement.

01:22:24.080 | So your proper planning needs to include that.

01:22:29.340 | So those are the key things that I always warn everybody about, that in order for the

01:22:33.180 | prenup to be valid, you have to be super careful about how you go about it.

01:22:36.900 | And then it's a matter of sitting down and laying out, here is what works and it's gotta

01:22:45.040 | be fair to you and fair to her.

01:22:47.380 | And so going through the self-help book I think will be a good way for you to do that

01:22:51.060 | pre-work and then when you're ready to sit with your lawyers, their job will be a little

01:22:54.780 | bit easier and a little bit less time-consuming.

01:22:56.860 | Okay.

01:22:57.860 | And then do you have a moment for a follow-up?

01:23:02.460 | Absolutely.

01:23:03.460 | Go ahead.

01:23:04.820 | So on that same line of thinking as two people that are getting ready to officially merge

01:23:10.760 | their lives, would you have any other recommendations as we're looking at our finances, starting

01:23:17.260 | to combine finances and all that, of things that we should do prior to our marriage or

01:23:24.140 | shortly thereafter to kind of just strengthen our household financially?

01:23:29.060 | How old are you guys?

01:23:31.140 | I'm 39.

01:23:32.140 | She's 33.

01:23:33.140 | And do either of you have children?

01:23:36.420 | We do not, but that is kind of in the plans for us in the near future.

01:23:42.060 | I don't know.

01:23:44.780 | I guess what I would say is it's hard.

01:23:50.980 | The way that you've gone about this relationship makes it hard because there's no bright line

01:23:55.220 | indicator.

01:23:56.220 | So, for example, normally you say, "Well, don't merge any finances until you're married."

01:24:01.620 | But as you said, well, common law marriage, some people consider you married and right

01:24:05.060 | now if you left her and abandoned her, she could probably bring a suit against you because

01:24:10.420 | of and possibly file some claim against you.

01:24:14.500 | It's better that the fact that you don't have children is important.

01:24:18.780 | But it's not as simple and as obvious as unmarried married.

01:24:25.960 | So I guess what I would say is that it's better to keep things as separate as possible until

01:24:32.340 | you're married because your legal protections come with marriage and also your legal opportunities.

01:24:39.780 | So simple things like transferring money, a husband and wife had the unlimited ability

01:24:45.060 | to transfer money between each other without any issues.

01:24:47.700 | So you could transfer money, transfer assets, all that stuff.

01:24:50.940 | Meanwhile, if she's not your legal wife and you give her a car because you wanted to,

01:24:56.220 | well, technically you should have filed a gift tax return, things like that.

01:25:00.260 | It all becomes muddy, et cetera, because our legal system is structured around marriage.

01:25:05.240 | So since you're moving in the direction of marriage, I would say just work on the prenup

01:25:10.400 | as quickly as possible and then move to the marriage as quickly as possible.

01:25:14.080 | There's no reason to wait a long time for marriage and then fully merge everything.

01:25:20.200 | And the good thing is that you're young enough that I think that you'll be able to do that

01:25:23.360 | with minimal problems.

01:25:25.000 | Where most of the issues get really difficult is when two people are together in their middle

01:25:29.120 | age and both of them are calcified in their independence and unwilling to submit to one

01:25:34.880 | another, unwilling to work together, unwilling to do those things.

01:25:38.680 | And that's where it just doesn't seem like getting together doesn't seem like a good

01:25:41.820 | idea in the first place.

01:25:42.820 | It's like we've got to keep everything separate.

01:25:44.680 | But both you and she being together for nine years, you've been together when young, you're

01:25:49.360 | probably well-suited for each other.

01:25:51.160 | I would just say do the prenup conversation and then get the wedding done and get to it

01:25:56.360 | and then merge everything fully and work it out between you.

01:26:00.920 | But don't muddy the waters of the prenup conversation by trying to merge things and arrange property,

01:26:09.200 | etc.

01:26:10.200 | You just pay all the bills just like you have been and get the prenup and the marriage done

01:26:17.280 | and then merge her and she'll be your wife.

01:26:20.160 | That's how I do it.

01:26:21.160 | Okay.

01:26:22.160 | Yeah.

01:26:23.160 | Okay.

01:26:24.160 | I appreciate the feedback.

01:26:25.160 | My pleasure.

01:26:26.160 | Congratulations and I hope that everything works out well and that the conversations

01:26:29.200 | go smoothly and productively.

01:26:32.080 | And just one quick comment, I've got you muted Austin and I'll just say this real quick before

01:26:36.280 | I move on to the next caller.

01:26:37.640 | I think that the conversation around the prenup is more important than anything else.

01:26:42.320 | Just basically to judge like how well are we able to do this.

01:26:45.480 | And a fair prenup I really believe needs to take care of your wife and this is your duty.

01:26:52.360 | And I guess I'll moralize for just a moment because it is really important to me.

01:26:59.720 | There are a lot of men who are taken advantage of in divorce court.

01:27:04.800 | There are a lot of men who have been ruined in divorce court.

01:27:08.920 | And that is why many men don't want to marry and it's very common in marriage circles for

01:27:14.560 | those men to say, "I'm never getting married and if I do get married, I'm going to get

01:27:20.760 | a prenup."

01:27:21.920 | And I do think that when there is a significant disparity in wealth, you need to have a prenuptial

01:27:26.840 | agreement.

01:27:27.840 | That is appropriate.

01:27:29.280 | However, in the same way that even working out the details of it, a prenuptial agreement

01:27:35.000 | does not mean that if we divorce, I get everything and my wife gets nothing.

01:27:41.440 | That is immoral.

01:27:43.200 | If a woman comes and marries you and especially if she gives up her life and her livelihood

01:27:50.200 | to be your wife, she is deserving of legal protection.

01:27:55.820 | And so I'm very sympathetic to men who get wronged by divorce courts.

01:28:03.560 | But I'm more sympathetic in many cases to women who get wronged by divorce.

01:28:09.880 | And this is where unfortunately it's a very difficult time to work through in our modern

01:28:15.360 | era.

01:28:16.560 | Because since the inception of no fault divorce, everything has gotten muddied.

01:28:22.760 | I believe that if a man or a woman abandon his or her marriage vows, that is cause for

01:28:33.360 | appropriate sanctions.

01:28:36.840 | And so let's say that a man comes along, he's married to a woman, the woman is faithful

01:28:41.920 | to him, but he is unfaithful to her.

01:28:45.720 | He commits adultery against her, he abandons her, etc.

01:28:49.640 | Well I want the court to have full power to invade his life, invade his finances, etc.

01:28:55.960 | and take care of her.

01:28:57.240 | Because in entering into a relationship with him, in bearing his children, in caring for

01:29:02.720 | his home, etc. to say nothing of any financial contribution that she brought into it, she

01:29:08.080 | deserves to be cared for.

01:29:09.400 | And so I want the court to have that power.

01:29:11.880 | On the same hand, let's say that a man and a woman are married, and the man is perfectly

01:29:16.380 | faithful but the woman is unfaithful to him, and she commits adultery against him, or she

01:29:21.280 | abandons him, or does some great deed that is wrong and violates the marriage contract.

01:29:27.600 | Then I absolutely do not want the man's life to be destroyed to provide for her, because

01:29:33.080 | that's immoral.

01:29:34.080 | If a woman walks away from the marriage and she abandons her work, why should she be paid

01:29:38.280 | from the man on an ongoing basis alimony and child support, etc.

01:29:42.880 | But on the other hand, if there was wrong done and the man was wrong, then absolutely

01:29:46.960 | he should pay child support, alimony, etc.

01:29:49.080 | And I think most people agree with this.

01:29:51.400 | The problem is, has become very acute in the age of no-fault divorce.

01:29:56.600 | Whereas now, as a man and a woman, you can divorce each other for any reason or for no

01:30:00.440 | reason at all.

01:30:01.440 | And of course most people don't do that, there's always a reason.

01:30:04.240 | But because a man and a woman can do that, it eliminates all safety from marriage.

01:30:10.400 | So if in this situation where you're getting married and your wife is coming to the marriage

01:30:17.880 | with you, if she decides five years from now, she just doesn't have the feelings for you

01:30:22.400 | anymore, and she turns around and she wants to leave, legally speaking, she can do that.

01:30:26.280 | She can divorce you and leave.

01:30:27.760 | And that's where the prenup is really important.

01:30:30.660 | But the flip side of this is that you owe her a duty of care as your wife.

01:30:38.180 | And so let's assume that you and she are married, she bears you your children, and 15 years

01:30:46.640 | from now she has three children, and then you decide, "I'm going to up and divorce her."

01:30:50.900 | Your prenup had better compensate her properly for her work and for her contribution.

01:30:58.220 | It's super, super important, morally speaking.

01:31:00.540 | You are responsible for her.

01:31:01.780 | You are her husband, you are her head, and therefore you must care for her and provide

01:31:07.240 | for her even in the case of divorce.

01:31:10.220 | So the prenup has to reflect this moral truth and it has to be weighty enough on you and

01:31:15.260 | weighty enough on her that you're in it and in it for life, otherwise, you know, don't

01:31:20.260 | get married in the first place.

01:31:21.620 | So the easiest thing to do is when people are young and they get married, they get married

01:31:27.660 | young and they build it together, right?

01:31:29.580 | So my wife and I married relatively young.

01:31:32.140 | We didn't have much when we started and I don't have a prenup and nor would I want one

01:31:36.020 | nor would I advise one because we're in it and she is just as responsible for the success

01:31:43.260 | of our family as I am.

01:31:44.740 | We are a team.

01:31:45.740 | We are indivisible.

01:31:47.220 | That's different than if you're, you know, 60 years old and she's 30 and you've built

01:31:53.460 | your...

01:31:54.460 | Well, there's obviously a different situation.

01:31:56.060 | And so you guys being closer in age, you just want to work this out and you want to be very

01:32:00.180 | clear and I want to be clear to you as the wealthier party that as you're working this

01:32:05.060 | through, your agreement, what you agree, what you reach in your agreement has to be not

01:32:10.780 | only legally acceptable, which is where you'll get the advice of the lawyers and what the

01:32:15.740 | courts and everything would actually uphold because remember, this contract, if this contract

01:32:19.820 | is deemed to be unfair, then it can be held as null and void by the courts and so it has

01:32:25.420 | to be fair.

01:32:26.580 | But just in your own psychology, you need to embrace fully the idea that, you know,

01:32:32.980 | I'm responsible and that I owe her and that her job, if she's going to be my wife, it's

01:32:39.420 | not like you bring everything to the marriage because you got the money and she brings nothing.

01:32:44.420 | What she brings to the marriage is enormously important and is enormously valuable and you

01:32:49.580 | just want to recognize it emotionally.

01:32:52.420 | So it's hard to go too deep into that stuff without insight, but just hopefully that's

01:32:57.780 | a small encouragement that puts you in the right frame of mind, Austin.

01:33:02.660 | No, that's great stuff to think about, Joshua, and I appreciate you taking the time to go

01:33:08.980 | a little bit deeper than just consulting a lawyer, which you always do.

01:33:12.500 | You never disappoint on that front.

01:33:14.460 | Good.

01:33:15.460 | My pleasure.

01:33:16.460 | It's really important because it's a super emotional issue and the way that I think these

01:33:21.820 | issues are dealt with, especially in a sea of men who have been hurt by divorce court

01:33:27.380 | and who are in difficult situations, is they're just often dealt with very callously.

01:33:32.340 | And I think we need to deal with them appropriately.

01:33:36.700 | We need to speak directly to men and directly to women that when men and women sin and they

01:33:41.840 | violate their marriage vows and they divorce, etc., it needs to be dealt with.

01:33:46.300 | But our courts are in a wreck because they've lost the ability to deal with this.

01:33:51.780 | And they treat all divorce claims seemingly as the same, and morally they are not the

01:33:58.940 | same.

01:33:59.940 | So talk about those things and work them through directly with her, and I think you guys, congratulations.

01:34:05.620 | I think you guys are going to have great success.

01:34:07.380 | We finish up today in the great state of Indiana.

01:34:08.820 | Welcome to the show.

01:34:09.820 | How can I serve you today?

01:34:10.820 | Hey, Joshua.

01:34:11.820 | Can you hear me?

01:34:12.820 | I can hear you, but we got a little bit of digital lag, so go ahead and let's make sure

01:34:17.980 | it's clear.

01:34:18.980 | All right.

01:34:19.980 | Well, I'm happy to get on the line, first of all.

01:34:25.700 | Thank you for all you've been doing.

01:34:28.700 | And I just got a couple of questions.

01:34:32.820 | I am that listener that you've been talking about.

01:34:36.620 | I started listening to you when I was only making about $30,000.

01:34:40.020 | You've inspired me to advance my life and make strides, and I want to thank you for

01:34:46.860 | that.

01:34:47.860 | Wonderful.

01:34:48.860 | That makes my day.

01:34:49.860 | Yeah.

01:34:50.860 | Yeah.

01:34:51.860 | Yeah.

01:34:52.860 | I always hear you say that you don't hear from these scholars, so I just wanted to make

01:34:56.180 | sure you knew I was one.

01:34:57.980 | Thank you.

01:34:58.980 | At the moment, I've kind of transferred from driving CDL commercial vehicles, and I'm making

01:35:08.260 | twice as much as I was two years ago.

01:35:10.860 | And I'm just kind of looking, trying to cast a big net to where I can actually go next

01:35:16.500 | to maybe double my income again, or stuff I can do that.

01:35:21.380 | So I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, and just getting a broad view of the world,

01:35:28.620 | and maybe something I can get into and dive into.

01:35:31.860 | And entrepreneurship kind of seems to have that drawing allure for me, and something

01:35:38.180 | I kind of want to get into.

01:35:40.420 | But with all the advances with AI and everything, it seems like it's a real crazy time to try

01:35:46.980 | to do something like that.

01:35:48.540 | So I just wanted to get your take on the landscape of AI versus business, and what are you thinking?

01:35:57.060 | How old are you currently?

01:35:59.940 | I am 39.

01:36:01.700 | And do you have family that is dependent on you?

01:36:04.820 | Do you have wife, children to support?

01:36:07.460 | I do.

01:36:08.460 | I do.

01:36:09.460 | I have two boys, and my wife is actually pregnant right now.

01:36:12.380 | Oh, congratulations.

01:36:13.380 | Wonderful.

01:36:14.380 | Thank you.

01:36:15.380 | And are you over the road right now, or are you local or regional?

01:36:18.700 | I'm home every night.

01:36:20.620 | So yeah, I'm a dedicated home driver.

01:36:23.700 | All right.

01:36:24.700 | And in terms of your own background, prior to driving, do you have any particular academic

01:36:32.980 | things that you studied in the past?

01:36:34.140 | Do you have degrees, et cetera?

01:36:36.060 | Or kind of starting from zero?

01:36:38.380 | Okay.

01:36:39.380 | I am starting from zero.

01:36:41.740 | I never even graduated high school.

01:36:48.220 | Are you capable of academics if you were interested?

01:36:52.280 | Are things like reading books, taking tests, academic discussions, and things like that,

01:36:57.220 | are you capable of them if you're interested?

01:36:59.860 | Yeah, I believe I am.

01:37:02.420 | I haven't been in school since high school, but when I put my mind to getting the CDL

01:37:08.340 | it was really not a big deal.

01:37:09.900 | I sat down with the manual, took the test.

01:37:12.260 | It was pretty easy for me to wrap my head around the whole thing.

01:37:17.300 | I believe in my last few, about five years of my life, I really got more into audiobooks

01:37:24.580 | and things like that.

01:37:26.580 | So I believe I'm educated.

01:37:28.580 | I believe I can go to school and get something if I was passionate about it.

01:37:34.860 | Right.

01:37:35.860 | So it's important to identify this because there are a lot of people who didn't finish

01:37:45.860 | high school or didn't go to do anything beyond high school who are perfectly cognitively

01:37:50.620 | capable.

01:37:51.620 | They're smart enough to do plenty of college work.

01:37:54.640 | They just never cared.

01:37:56.140 | And it wasn't important to them.

01:37:57.340 | And because they didn't care, it wasn't important to them, they didn't pursue it, et cetera.

01:38:00.420 | They didn't do it at the normal time when it was convenient to do it.

01:38:04.040 | And so that doesn't really say much, but you do need to understand where your strengths

01:38:08.380 | lie, is that if you are interested in an intellectual life or an intellectual job, you need to make

01:38:15.580 | sure that you have a good basic natural strength there.

01:38:18.500 | On the other hand, if you're not interested in that and you're really skillful with other

01:38:22.900 | forms of knowledge and skill, you really work well with your hands, you really work well

01:38:28.400 | with people, et cetera, then you want to have some sense of that.

01:38:31.440 | And so I would begin by taking some kind of psychological career surveys and tests and

01:38:39.160 | get an idea of what the psychologists think might be good careers for me.

01:38:43.200 | That would be a good starting place.

01:38:44.460 | Have you done that yet?

01:38:45.460 | No, no, no.

01:38:46.460 | I haven't done that.

01:38:47.460 | Okay.

01:38:48.460 | I don't have them off the top of my mind.

01:38:49.460 | Yeah, go ahead.

01:38:50.460 | I was just saying, like I just said, I've kind of just been casting a big net to just

01:38:56.980 | see if anything really grabs ahold of me and feels like something I could get into or really

01:39:03.160 | grab ahold of.

01:39:04.160 | I've done really well with skill-based things like construction and a lot of glass work.

01:39:10.560 | I'd sell anything that really took a skill with my hands, but that's all I've really

01:39:17.560 | been able to apply myself to.

01:39:20.000 | Right.

01:39:21.000 | So I would suggest that you take as many career-oriented tests as you're able to.

01:39:28.220 | I don't have my list current.

01:39:30.700 | In my career and income course that I used to teach, I gave a whole list, and some of

01:39:34.460 | those still are valid, but they changed.

01:39:36.120 | So if I woke up in your shoes, I would go to chat GPT, and I would ask chat, and I would

01:39:41.900 | say I'm interested in changing my career, and I'd like to take a list of – I'd like

01:39:47.500 | to take some psychological evaluations to see the kinds of careers that I'm more interested

01:39:51.880 | in.

01:39:52.880 | Please give me a list of 10 different career tests that I should consider taking and see

01:39:58.740 | what's given to you, and take four or five, eight of them, whatever is appropriate.

01:40:03.180 | A lot of them will be done yourself.

01:40:04.780 | A lot of them you could just do online.

01:40:06.020 | A lot of them will cost you $40, $50, et cetera, but those things will give you a starting

01:40:11.120 | place based upon what the psychologists think you might be well-suited for, and regardless

01:40:16.140 | of whether you pursue entrepreneurship or whether you pursue a job or just a career

01:40:21.900 | change of a job to something else, it can inform you about some of the fields that you're

01:40:27.020 | interested in, and that will inform your educational pathway in terms of the next step.

01:40:33.340 | Then in terms of job change and career change, yes, change is omnipresent.

01:40:38.940 | That's always happening, and yes, entire industries are being enormously disrupted

01:40:44.340 | by artificial intelligence, and it's only just getting started, but I don't think that

01:40:51.020 | generally speaking you should worry too much about that.

01:40:54.540 | Rather, you should just simply go where there's opportunity because that's your first thing

01:40:59.380 | is before you leave your job, you need to create something better, and in order for

01:41:04.380 | you to create something better, you have to go and look for opportunity, and once you

01:41:07.580 | find opportunity and you have a job offer for something that's better, then you can

01:41:12.260 | assess it in the light of a risk, and is this job subject to artificial intelligence.

01:41:20.620 | But without a specific idea of a job or idea of a business, there's really no point in

01:41:25.860 | worrying too much about the risks because you're just going to spend time finding reasons

01:41:30.540 | why it won't work rather than reasons why it will work.

01:41:33.460 | The only time that you want to really think deeply about the risks is when you have a

01:41:36.820 | clear positive plan as to what you really want to do, and then you're just testing it

01:41:41.260 | and saying how susceptible is this to self-driving cars, how susceptible is this job or business

01:41:46.180 | to automation, how susceptible is this job or business to offshoring or artificial intelligence,

01:41:52.420 | etc.

01:41:53.420 | But don't do that until you actually have an idea of where you want to go.

01:42:03.660 | Could you list today three different ideas of jobs or businesses or industries that you

01:42:09.060 | think you might be interested in?

01:42:11.740 | Yes.

01:42:12.740 | Okay.

01:42:13.740 | Shoot.

01:42:14.740 | One's a board game making company.

01:42:17.940 | I've already made two of them, just out of a hobby for a gift for a family member, but

01:42:24.300 | they came out really well.

01:42:25.420 | They played through really well.

01:42:27.900 | I felt that there was a lot of passion in that for me, and I figured it had a lot of

01:42:32.220 | leverage and something that I might be able to go.

01:42:35.660 | So I've kind of looked into that a little bit.

01:42:38.860 | Something else is, obviously, the big trend with robots and AI, I would love to play around

01:42:45.260 | and have some kind of little company that makes robots because that just seems like

01:42:49.020 | I'd be ahead of the curve, but that's more fantasy style, but definitely interesting

01:42:55.740 | to me.

01:42:56.740 | And then something else would be like, me and my wife have kind of looked into doing

01:43:02.500 | a franchise kind of restaurant or bar or something like that, but I feel like that's more complex

01:43:14.620 | with a lot of people turner over rate.

01:43:18.340 | Me and her both worked in a lot of restaurants our entire life, so we do know the industry

01:43:22.340 | from kind of front to back.

01:43:27.300 | So those are three things that we've kind of shot around.

01:43:30.580 | Right.

01:43:31.580 | Well, the good news about those three things is that probably with all of them, with possibly

01:43:36.940 | the exception of robots or AI, it doesn't sound like more degrees or academic qualifications

01:43:45.300 | are necessary.

01:43:47.840 | You certainly have to learn a lot, but in terms of getting a college degree, et cetera,

01:43:52.340 | for all three of those, it's not necessary.

01:43:54.460 | So that's one of the themes that I was looking for because if you are interested in a direction

01:44:01.040 | that's going to require more academic qualifications, then your answer is go get yourself a college

01:44:04.980 | degree as quickly as you can, get it done so that you have that.

01:44:08.580 | But if you don't need that, then focus mostly on learning what you need to learn for the

01:44:12.660 | actual task at hand.

01:44:14.700 | For the board game company, that I would say is probably a matter of licensing.

01:44:20.420 | And what I mean is that it would be hard for me to see how you would start a board game

01:44:26.980 | company, but in terms of creating a board game and having a licensing deal for the game

01:44:34.980 | that you have created, that is probably a productive use of time and that's probably

01:44:39.740 | something that you could do with learning your way around, figuring out what do you

01:44:43.380 | need to know about how to license something, how do you negotiate something like that,

01:44:47.900 | figure out who you would speak to in terms of getting your game brought to life, et cetera.

01:44:53.160 | But I would think that if I had created a board game, the first path that I would explore

01:44:57.480 | very deeply would just be selling the license to the board game rather than actually trying

01:45:02.500 | to create a "board game company."

01:45:05.660 | And to me, that seems simple and that seems something you could produce, that seems something

01:45:10.260 | you could pursue.

01:45:11.620 | And so get yourself involved in whatever education is necessary and to kind of figure out how

01:45:16.480 | to go about doing that and then see what kind of contacts you can make and see what options

01:45:20.860 | are out there.

01:45:22.560 | In terms of robots and AI, I would say there are clearly – I don't know anything about

01:45:29.840 | robots.

01:45:30.840 | That would seem to me something where you would need to educate yourself and probably

01:45:35.540 | get involved with a company as an employee of some kind to begin with, unless you tinker

01:45:45.860 | with robots in your garage and have something through.

01:45:50.220 | Creating physical items, physical things requires a whole more complex set of skills than just

01:45:57.100 | creating digital items.

01:45:59.420 | Digital items have a very low barrier to entry because it's just lines of code.

01:46:06.420 | And of course, lines of code can be very complex, but you can learn to use tools very effectively.

01:46:11.980 | I was following a guy's story yesterday on Twitter and he – I guess I should switch

01:46:19.940 | to X.

01:46:20.940 | I hate the name, but I'll switch.

01:46:23.580 | Anyway, he was telling about how he's building up – he's creating AI models for companies.

01:46:33.100 | And he had this video that he had made using AI.

01:46:35.400 | Just this beautiful lady walking on a beach, etc.

01:46:38.460 | Beautiful lady and he was talking about how he's creating customized AI models for companies

01:46:43.980 | to basically create their models, to model their apparel, model their products, etc.

01:46:48.860 | And helping them create their own in-house set of computer-generated avatars for their

01:46:55.500 | products.

01:46:56.500 | And I thought, "Isn't that fascinating?"

01:46:57.500 | That's the kind of business that certainly you need to learn some tools and everything,

01:47:01.060 | but that's the kind of thing that has a lot more opportunity for a guy to hustle rather

01:47:06.940 | than needing technical capacity.

01:47:09.160 | You have to have enough technical capacity to do the work, but that's more of a matter

01:47:12.740 | of going and applying your hustle to finding customers for it and working out the agreements.

01:47:18.600 | And so, things like that are within your reach in terms of AI, and I think there's going

01:47:23.340 | to be a whole slew of opportunities as we watch these new models transform, industry

01:47:29.340 | after industry after industry.

01:47:31.780 | And so, I don't know how relevant coding ability will be to that or how relevant just

01:47:39.460 | hustle will be to that, but you should explore that.

01:47:42.420 | You should explore coding and see if you are attracted to the idea of learning to be a

01:47:46.660 | coder.

01:47:47.660 | There's plenty of resources out there for how to be a self-developed coder, and I think

01:47:52.420 | a year or two of nighttime weekends work could transform you into a perfectly hireable coder

01:47:59.420 | that would make more than what you're making right now and have a lot more upside potential

01:48:05.020 | as your skills grow.

01:48:06.620 | Or you might be attracted to the entrepreneurial side of finding some little niche that makes

01:48:11.140 | sense to you and then applying it.

01:48:14.500 | Robots, on the other hand, because of the intersection with hardware and software, do

01:48:18.940 | have a higher barrier to entry.

01:48:21.040 | And so, while I'm never going to deny that an individual could develop skills and create

01:48:27.540 | a robot in your yard that does something useful, I would think that that would be more appropriate

01:48:33.380 | to finding a job in something that interests you from a robot perspective.

01:48:39.300 | Third one, opening a franchise restaurant or a bar, that's probably your most likely

01:48:45.060 | money maker and absolutely kind of the simplest thing.

01:48:49.500 | It's also, of the three that you said, it's the least likely to be impacted by the risks

01:48:55.820 | of AI.

01:48:56.820 | Restaurants aren't going anywhere.

01:48:58.700 | A bar is always going to be popular, and that's a business that you know based upon your background

01:49:06.180 | and your wife's background, et cetera.

01:49:07.900 | And so, opening a restaurant or opening a bar, to me, sounds like a winner in a totally

01:49:14.540 | protected business from the risks of AI.

01:49:18.740 | And who knows?

01:49:19.740 | Maybe you bring in a robot hamburger machine or a robot drink maker and that's kind of

01:49:24.500 | a component of what you offer.

01:49:27.700 | But that's going to be probably the biggest limitation there would be your access to capital.

01:49:32.220 | So depending on how much money you have saved or depending on how much money you can borrow

01:49:36.660 | or what you have access to in terms of your money that you have saved, investments that

01:49:41.700 | you have, access to other people's money, people that would believe in you, et cetera,

01:49:46.140 | your biggest challenge is just going to be access to capital.

01:49:48.940 | And so, that to me is kind of your highest success probability endeavor that could quickly

01:49:57.020 | free you from trucking, but you're going to have to figure out where to get the money

01:50:01.500 | and you're going to have to have the franchise that you want to do if you want to do a franchise

01:50:05.780 | location.

01:50:06.780 | So, I like all those ideas, all I can just say is keep pursuing it, pursue it aggressively

01:50:11.780 | and then see what you're drawn towards in terms of interest and opportunity, et cetera.

01:50:16.760 | I wish I had something more profound, but that's what I got.

01:50:19.820 | No, no, no, that's, I mean, that's kind of what I expected was, you know, a generalized

01:50:25.060 | summarization and like I just bouncing ideas.

01:50:28.460 | I've got one more question if you've got time.

01:50:31.620 | Sure, go ahead.

01:50:33.340 | Okay.

01:50:34.340 | So, I'm completely sold on trying to homeschool my kids.

01:50:39.220 | I kind of come off in the conversation a little bit overbearing with my wife and I think that

01:50:45.900 | slightly put her off of the situation and I don't, I'd like to try to work on getting

01:50:54.500 | back on track, but I don't think she believes me when I say that the school systems aren't

01:50:59.900 | really doing the best job and that I think we could do better and I think one of the

01:51:05.060 | big thing determining factors is that, well, we just had twin, we have four-year-old twins.

01:51:11.460 | So, when they were born, we were very busy back and forth and they're about four and

01:51:17.900 | they, they'll talk to us, but like they're not having conversations with us, you know,

01:51:24.500 | they'll give us demands and, you know, prompts and, you know, and it's getting a lot better

01:51:30.780 | in the last six months.

01:51:31.780 | It's gotten a lot better, but what happened is we kind of got spooked and we had them

01:51:37.780 | and we wanted to get, you know, some professional help.

01:51:40.620 | So, we signed them up at, you know, a speech therapist and it was at the local school and

01:51:47.100 | they seen them.

01:51:48.100 | They said they, you know, they were a little bit underdeveloped.

01:51:50.620 | They suggested kindergarten, pre-K, and so we were like, well, okay.

01:51:56.380 | And so, now they're already in school and I'm kind of like, I think it's doing good

01:52:03.700 | for them because the teachers all very care and I think at this level, they all are very

01:52:09.140 | interactive and care and I think it's doing good for them.

01:52:13.100 | So, I'm kind of like caught between this like, oh no, school's not that good, but, you know,

01:52:22.620 | but we weren't doing as good a job as we felt like or, you know, I don't know, I just want

01:52:27.740 | to run that by you.

01:52:28.740 | Yeah.

01:52:29.740 | So, your oldest two children are four and then you, do you have another younger or do

01:52:32.380 | you have another older?

01:52:34.300 | I have another older, he's 14.

01:52:36.580 | Okay.

01:52:37.580 | And then your wife is expecting a baby right now?

01:52:39.700 | Yep.

01:52:40.700 | Okay.

01:52:41.700 | So, maybe twins, who knows?

01:52:42.700 | Maybe twins again.

01:52:43.700 | And in terms of your, in terms of your 14 year old, what has been his or her pathway

01:52:48.860 | through school?

01:52:51.700 | Just public schooling the whole time and, you know, I'm really not that satisfied with

01:52:56.660 | it.

01:52:57.660 | Okay.

01:52:58.660 | And how's he doing?

01:52:59.660 | Like, is it working or you said you're not satisfied, but how's he doing?

01:53:04.300 | He's making it through.

01:53:05.640 | He's not interested in it.

01:53:07.380 | Okay.

01:53:08.380 | So, he, you know, he's a typical 14 year old boy.

01:53:12.660 | He did well.

01:53:13.660 | He, you know, the last two years before this, we kind of really had to get on him about

01:53:19.820 | doing his grades.

01:53:20.820 | He just, he's good enough to do the grades.

01:53:23.540 | He's just lazy about getting them.

01:53:25.620 | Right.

01:53:26.620 | So, and then now we're into high school and he's just kind of like, this isn't for me,

01:53:33.500 | you know, I'm doing it because I have to, kind of thing.

01:53:38.340 | And how recent is your personal interest in this topic of homeschooling?

01:53:46.260 | I got to say in the last two years, you know, you kind of hit me with some, some podcasts

01:53:50.500 | and I, you've kind of really gotten me thinking and kind of like analyzing my 14 year old

01:53:55.860 | and seeing some of the bad trends and like, kind of like listening to a more about what's

01:54:01.180 | going on in school and, you know, it's, it's not really a bad school, but like all the

01:54:07.380 | kids, all they want to do or seems like they want to fight.

01:54:10.780 | I mean, like that's, that's the majority of stories that I hear is like, oh, the kids

01:54:17.860 | were fighting in the bathroom or, you know, in the lunchroom or whatever.

01:54:21.860 | And I'm just kind of like, man, do I really want my kid in this area?

01:54:26.980 | Like, and we're in, we're like actually in a good part of town.

01:54:30.980 | Right.

01:54:31.980 | Right.

01:54:32.980 | Okay.

01:54:33.980 | So first of all, I'm glad that you're interested in this.

01:54:37.820 | I'm glad that my content has had an influence on that.

01:54:41.420 | So I think this is however, how you deal with this or how you interact with this, I think

01:54:47.060 | is really important and you're going to get great results if you go about this in a thoughtful

01:54:53.860 | way and, and, and you can get really bad results if you aren't careful and thoughtful.

01:55:03.900 | So let's begin with this, right up until two years ago, you didn't have much interest in

01:55:09.100 | the topic of schooling, education, et cetera.

01:55:13.620 | This is a fairly recent thing for you.

01:55:16.780 | And while it's wonderful that you are now interested, you have to recognize that other

01:55:23.220 | people are going to remember you more about how you were up until two years ago, rather

01:55:28.860 | than how you are today.

01:55:30.460 | And so whenever you get super interested in something and you start educating yourself,

01:55:34.220 | et cetera, you've got to be thoughtful about how you share that with other people and not

01:55:38.220 | just go around telling everyone why they're wrong and rather be, be more considerate in

01:55:44.380 | how you do that.

01:55:45.820 | And so it's your, what you are learning is perfectly valid, but wisdom would say that

01:55:52.340 | you shouldn't just spout it out to everybody else and expect them to just be a hundred

01:55:57.940 | percent on the same board with you.

01:55:59.940 | After all, it took you 12 years with your older child, you had a child who was 12 years

01:56:03.620 | old before you took an interest in his education.

01:56:06.260 | And so you're not going to undo that in two years or in two months.

01:56:11.860 | So it's important for you to be thoughtful and considerate in how you interact with others.

01:56:18.180 | Also in terms of your relationship with your wife, it's really, really important that you

01:56:22.300 | are thoughtful and considerate in how you approach the subject with her.

01:56:27.560 | She has four-year-old twins, regardless of whether they were in school or not, that is

01:56:32.700 | an enormous workload for her.

01:56:34.960 | It is hard work to take care of four-year-old twins.

01:56:38.540 | And then with her expecting another baby, that makes it even more difficult.

01:56:42.620 | And if she's looking at you and she saw that for 12 years, you were totally disinterested

01:56:47.200 | in education of your kid and just, "Oh, send him home, he's doing fine, blah, blah, blah,"

01:56:51.580 | et cetera.

01:56:52.580 | And now all of a sudden there's a random podcast on the internet that you're listening to,

01:56:55.540 | it's got all these weird radical ideas, et cetera.

01:56:58.480 | You're going to need to really be wise in how you approach this subject and you're going

01:57:01.980 | to need to understand what she's willing to do and what she's not willing to do.

01:57:06.960 | Because there's a good chance that regardless of what you do, a lot of it's going to come

01:57:10.400 | down on her.

01:57:12.100 | Now if you can do it yourself, then okay, great, but that's probably not going to work

01:57:19.680 | well until or unless you're able to adjust some of your schedule.

01:57:22.720 | And so it's perfectly understandable if your wife gives some pushback to you with your

01:57:28.200 | latest crazy ideas that aren't borne out by bringing her along with you and are all going

01:57:33.320 | to result in a whole lot of work for her.

01:57:35.480 | And after all, she's going to question what she was doing before.

01:57:38.840 | So you got to be really thoughtful.

01:57:40.500 | And as a husband, a husband who arrives at a great destination and doesn't have his wife

01:57:45.680 | beside him is a failure as a husband.

01:57:48.340 | So one of your jobs is you can never outpace your wife on the change that you're leading

01:57:53.940 | your family in, is that she's got to be right there with you.

01:57:57.620 | And that often means that you're going to go slower than what you otherwise would have

01:58:01.460 | been, but you have to have her with you.

01:58:04.560 | And that means that you have to think together with her and you have to listen to her and

01:58:08.680 | you have to interact in a way that demonstrates that you value her input and that it's not

01:58:14.900 | just you, you know, being a dictator that I heard this great podcast, but rather that

01:58:19.620 | you initiate conversations and that conviction of whatever you guys are going to do with

01:58:24.740 | your children has to come together.

01:58:28.540 | Otherwise it's going to be a complete and total failure.

01:58:31.200 | And so the first thing you should assess is over the last couple of years, what have I

01:58:35.740 | done or what can I do to bring, what have I done to bring my wife together with me to

01:58:40.140 | think with her?

01:58:41.420 | Have I shared with her what I'm thinking about?

01:58:43.540 | That's usually the first thing is that a lot of times as a guy, you spend all your time

01:58:47.740 | thinking and your wife says, you know, Hey, you know, how was your day?

01:58:50.580 | What are you thinking about?

01:58:51.580 | And you're thinking, but you don't want to talk to her.

01:58:53.180 | And so it's important to make sure that she's always in the loop of what you're thinking,

01:58:57.280 | that you open your mouth and you tell her what you're thinking about and the ideas that

01:59:00.340 | you have, et cetera.

01:59:01.340 | And I'm not saying what you have or haven't done, just speaking broadly, broadly on the

01:59:06.300 | subject.

01:59:07.300 | So no criticism here, but you want to make sure that you're really diligent about that.

01:59:10.820 | And then you want to give her time to think about these things.

01:59:14.340 | And then you want to ask her for her input and her perspective in order for her to feel

01:59:18.740 | confident in you.

01:59:20.020 | She has to feel like you care about her.

01:59:22.380 | And the way that we show people that we care about them is generally, we listen to them.

01:59:25.780 | We spend time with them and we listen to them and we take their input and we take their

01:59:29.060 | feedback, et cetera.

01:59:30.340 | And that's the starting point.

01:59:32.020 | So then in that context, if you've done a good job with that, now you can start to go

01:59:36.100 | in a different direction.

01:59:37.500 | But if not, you'll want to start there.

01:59:39.460 | Now, if you don't have super productive conversations, then one of the things that you'll want to

01:59:46.060 | bring in is you'll want to bring in a resource, something that you'll talk about together,

01:59:50.260 | you'll think about together.

01:59:51.820 | So husbands and wives, especially if you don't have, if it's not natural, if you don't naturally

01:59:57.300 | think together, one thing that can be really helpful is to have something that you work

02:00:02.220 | on together.

02:00:03.580 | So a book that you're reading together or a podcast that you're listening to together,

02:00:09.540 | a book that you're listening together, et cetera.

02:00:11.860 | On this subject, school, I now have, I've just finished a book that was new to me.

02:00:15.700 | I now have a starting point that I would recommend to you.

02:00:19.080 | And the book is called Rethinking School by author Susan Wise Bower.

02:00:23.980 | Again, it's called Rethinking School by author Susan Wise Bower.

02:00:28.620 | Susan Wise Bower is fairly well-known in homeschooling circles because she wrote various books, but

02:00:35.340 | her most well-known ones are books called The Well-Trained Mind and The Well-Educated

02:00:38.860 | Mind, et cetera, that are widely used in the classical homeschooling tradition.

02:00:43.520 | But this book, I think it's fairly recent of her, I really appreciated this book.

02:00:47.340 | And what I appreciated the most about it is she does a good job of carefully laying out

02:00:52.100 | some of the great things about the school system and also where a lot of this tension

02:00:57.100 | that we have with the school system comes.

02:00:59.380 | And then she systematically gives good advice for parents at every level of engagement with

02:01:05.740 | the system.

02:01:07.220 | And what's really important about this is that I don't think that the answers are either

02:01:13.780 | you put your children in a government school or you homeschool.

02:01:17.020 | There are a lot of people who can't homeschool, don't want to homeschool, won't homeschool.

02:01:21.580 | And I think we need to have a lot of options beyond that.

02:01:24.020 | And so I really appreciated how she works through this step-by-step.

02:01:28.540 | And if you're going to have your children in the government school, she goes through

02:01:32.460 | how to get the best results out of that.

02:01:35.220 | For example, with your 14-year-old, one of the first things I would do before disrupting

02:01:39.740 | his life would be to focus on afterschooling him.

02:01:43.540 | What I mean is that it's your job, regardless of what the school does or doesn't do well,

02:01:48.860 | it's your job as a father to help him to succeed.

02:01:52.620 | And that means that he's going to have to succeed in the academics where he's good at

02:01:56.060 | it.

02:01:57.060 | And you're going to have to coach him into a life path that is productive so he doesn't

02:01:59.820 | just wander in the desert for 10 years and then wake up as a 30-year-old and say, "Okay,

02:02:03.740 | I'm going to get serious about life 10 years behind."

02:02:06.500 | And so you need to be working with him very intensively as a father regardless of what

02:02:12.380 | school he's in or not in.

02:02:14.460 | And in that process, you will shore up those areas where the schooling is weak.

02:02:18.860 | You'll find solutions.

02:02:19.860 | You'll interact with him, etc.

02:02:21.660 | And a lot of that can be done independent of the schooling.

02:02:26.220 | Other things you want to test on.

02:02:28.060 | So I'm not going to do this in a personalized way.

02:02:30.500 | So I'm going to ask these to you rhetorically.

02:02:32.140 | But other things I'm going to test on is, do you go to your parent-teacher meetings?

02:02:35.860 | Do you know who your children's parents are?

02:02:37.980 | There's a lot you...

02:02:38.980 | Sorry, your children's parents.

02:02:39.980 | Do you know who your children's teachers are?

02:02:43.140 | A very different meaning there.

02:02:50.220 | So are you involved?

02:02:52.420 | You can go a long way towards just simply being involved with your child within the

02:02:56.780 | current school context before you even think about doing something else, before you think

02:03:00.420 | about homeschooling, etc.

02:03:02.660 | And then you can assign your child.

02:03:04.260 | One good way of seeing how homeschooling is going to work is going to be to find out,

02:03:09.420 | is my child willing to take direction from me?

02:03:12.260 | Can I give my 14-year-old a course on Khan Academy and require him...

02:03:16.620 | By the way, Khan Academy has a great career course that maybe you and he could go through

02:03:20.020 | together because you might enjoy that, and talk about that, and will he take assignments

02:03:25.020 | from me there?

02:03:26.540 | Or if I put out resources for him, will he sit down and pick up some of the books that

02:03:33.180 | I leave strewn around the house, or can we...

02:03:35.580 | What can we do?

02:03:36.580 | And so you want to test these things before you just disrupt everything for you to move

02:03:39.580 | in a thoughtful and wise way.

02:03:42.800 | So I would encourage you, go through the Rethinking School book.

02:03:45.860 | Now, in terms of homeschooling, one of the things that you'll really want to do is that

02:03:50.340 | especially if your wife is going to be doing...

02:03:52.820 | Would be doing some of the...

02:03:56.460 | Some or most of the work, right?

02:03:57.780 | I always say that because I do most of the homeschooling for my older children.

02:04:02.660 | My wife does for the younger children.

02:04:04.380 | So our family, I'm the guy who's really into it, but that's not the normal case.

02:04:09.060 | Most of the time, the fathers are not that into it, the mothers are.

02:04:12.740 | And so I think homeschooling moms is an appropriate moniker to use, even though I'm a homeschooling

02:04:17.780 | mom, I guess.

02:04:20.980 | But when dealing with females who are going to homeschool, there's usually a few basic

02:04:26.980 | things that they have to come to conviction about.

02:04:31.340 | And these take time, but I'm just going to list three for you.

02:04:34.040 | Thing number one is, is this normal?

02:04:37.500 | Is this normal?

02:04:38.980 | And if you don't know anybody who homeschools, you've never been around homeschoolers, you

02:04:43.580 | never had the idea, whatever, just the whole normality of this is hard for some people

02:04:50.740 | to get to.

02:04:51.740 | I don't understand this because it's been normal for me my entire life, and I'm surrounded

02:04:56.200 | by people for whom it's normal, et cetera.

02:04:58.940 | And so what's weird for me is the idea that any parent would send their child to a government

02:05:03.620 | school.

02:05:04.620 | To me, that's the craziest thing in the world.

02:05:05.820 | You don't know?

02:05:06.820 | You didn't pick the teacher for your child?

02:05:08.860 | It's quite unthinkable for me, but I recognize that I don't reflect the general trend.

02:05:17.460 | I'm pointing out that influence matters.

02:05:20.500 | And so if your wife doesn't know any other homeschoolers, she doesn't know any homeschooling

02:05:24.420 | family, she's never been around it, she's just going to say, "It's not even normal.

02:05:27.580 | I don't know."

02:05:28.580 | So you have to make sure that you and she both understand, if you're going to go in

02:05:33.080 | that direction, okay, this is normal, and that's going to require exposure.

02:05:37.100 | Number two is going to be a question of, is this good?

02:05:40.460 | Is this good for a child?

02:05:42.900 | Because if somebody has an idea that homeschooling is not good for a child, then no mother is

02:05:48.300 | going to allow her children to be put in a situation that's not good for them.

02:05:51.180 | That would be unthinkable.

02:05:52.340 | That's a dereliction of her duty.

02:05:54.600 | And so you have to be convinced that it's good, and that's also kind of a philosophical

02:05:59.220 | discussion.

02:06:00.220 | How would we know if it's good?

02:06:01.220 | How do we know what a good education is?

02:06:02.780 | What do we want for our children?

02:06:04.060 | What are our ambitions?

02:06:05.140 | What's possible for them, et cetera?

02:06:06.980 | So you want to get around people and hear their stories and just ask yourself, "Is

02:06:12.620 | this good?"

02:06:13.620 | And then the number three is, "Am I capable?

02:06:15.860 | Am I capable?"

02:06:16.860 | And one of the weaknesses that really besets a lot of homeschooling moms is they doubt

02:06:22.420 | their capability.

02:06:23.420 | They think, "Oh, I can't do that.

02:06:26.420 | After all, I didn't go to college," or, "I don't have a teaching degree," or, "How

02:06:30.580 | am I going to teach calculus to my child?

02:06:33.180 | Am I capable of doing it?"

02:06:34.580 | And they really doubt their abilities.

02:06:36.580 | And I think this is something that moms struggle with more than we do.

02:06:41.860 | As men, we're full of unbridled confidence in our ability to do anything, whether we've

02:06:45.460 | ever tried it or not.

02:06:47.300 | Most of it misplaced, but we still have the confidence, whereas women are much more akin

02:06:52.660 | to saying, "Well, I just can't do it."

02:06:55.620 | But that's where you need a plan.

02:06:58.380 | And what you can do is, number one, is you need to build her confidence.

02:07:01.320 | And part of the way you build her confidence is by showing her a way that she can do it.

02:07:05.840 | And so this is where you need to understand, because there's a learning process.

02:07:11.820 | A mother who's never homeschooled her children might exclusively have the idea of what she

02:07:16.680 | was exposed to as schooling growing up.

02:07:18.800 | She's like, "I can't do that.

02:07:20.960 | I can't set up a blackboard in my living room and stand in front of it for eight hours and

02:07:26.240 | watch my child through eight subjects, et cetera.

02:07:28.160 | I can't do that."

02:07:29.700 | But if you understand how different homeschooling can actually be, and often is, from that,

02:07:34.280 | it's different.

02:07:35.280 | And so you'll want to expose to curriculum options.

02:07:38.080 | You want to expose to a little bit of ideas about what you're drawn towards, et cetera.

02:07:42.840 | You want her to understand that she can do it, because the reality is that any mom can

02:07:48.560 | easily homeschool her children.

02:07:51.360 | It really helps if a mother can read and write, at least at a fourth grade level, because

02:07:56.920 | then it makes it a little easier.

02:07:58.720 | But now, being a little joking, but not really, I'm convinced that a mother who had a little

02:08:04.180 | bit of thought, even if she herself couldn't read or write, could effectively homeschool

02:08:09.020 | a child, because we're not dealing with areas where it's the actual specialized instruction

02:08:14.480 | that makes the difference.

02:08:15.680 | Most of it is a matter of a general environment and working on a systematic basis with the

02:08:23.880 | child.

02:08:24.880 | And then she just needs to have the confidence that she can bring in experts wherever appropriate.

02:08:30.280 | So for example, right now, you could probably, because in most places you can, you could

02:08:34.560 | probably have access to all of the special education teachers or all of the therapists

02:08:40.360 | and whatnot in the school system, even if you homeschooled and just sent the children

02:08:43.800 | there for therapy.

02:08:46.680 | Many school districts will allow you to pick and choose what you participate in.

02:08:50.120 | And so you can do things at home that are better at home, and then go and find teachers

02:08:53.840 | for where that's better.

02:08:55.200 | And that's the most important thing that she understands, is that you don't have to make

02:08:58.120 | it up.

02:08:59.640 | There are dozens and dozens of completely done-for-you curricula that are great, that

02:09:04.480 | are really wonderful, wonderful environments that she can just sit down and say, "Work

02:09:08.600 | through the thing with the child, and read these pages from this book, ask these questions,

02:09:13.040 | do these worksheets," et cetera.

02:09:14.480 | It's all laid out by whatever curriculum provider you're interested in.

02:09:18.160 | And then if she needs, if the children need a more advanced teacher, you just go get the

02:09:21.620 | more advanced teacher.

02:09:23.480 | But that takes time to build that belief, and that takes time to build that experience.

02:09:27.160 | So I have it in abundance because of exposure, research, and experience, but it would be

02:09:32.680 | very unusual for her to have that without a good amount of work on your part, and you

02:09:37.160 | guys going and getting exposed, and her knowing other homeschooled moms, and asking all of

02:09:40.800 | her questions, and going to a convention, and seeing all the things, and finding a message

02:09:45.400 | board that she's into, or a Facebook group, or a YouTube channel, or something like that.

02:09:49.320 | I think it's going to take some time for those things to build.

02:09:52.560 | And if she's going to be the homeschooled mom, she's got to be in it, like in it.

02:09:58.720 | It can't be you pushing it on her, or it's just going to create problems in your marriage,

02:10:03.520 | in your house, and with your children.

02:10:05.320 | She's got to be in it.

02:10:06.320 | So your job is to bring her along with you, to work together, to say what's best for our

02:10:10.400 | family.

02:10:11.400 | And then here's my final thing of my fairly lengthy monologue here.

02:10:15.560 | Nothing is forever.

02:10:17.280 | All this stuff can change all the time, and you don't have to decide anything that's for

02:10:21.440 | good.

02:10:22.440 | So I think that classrooms for young children can be wonderful places.

02:10:27.400 | They're just great.

02:10:28.800 | There's a major difference between your four-year-old's classrooms and your 14-year-old's classrooms

02:10:32.520 | in terms of the experience.

02:10:34.840 | Four-year-old classrooms are awesome.

02:10:36.280 | They're just so fun.

02:10:37.280 | The teachers love the children.

02:10:38.680 | The teachers do all the work.

02:10:40.040 | They're fantastic.

02:10:41.040 | Your 14-year-old classroom may be different.

02:10:44.120 | And so things are different at different ages.

02:10:47.040 | And you can enroll your child in school, and you can pull your child out of school, and

02:10:50.260 | you can homeschool for six months, and you can go right back into the government school,

02:10:53.620 | and you can do this thing for a year, and you can do that thing for a year, and you

02:10:56.340 | can try this, and you can drop that, and you can change this.

02:10:59.340 | None of this stuff is permanent.

02:11:00.820 | So don't think that you have to do this forever like this, or you're going to screw up your

02:11:04.460 | child.

02:11:05.460 | Just get an idea, do your research, and be thoughtful, and then go in that direction.

02:11:09.580 | And then reassess regularly and say, "Is what we're doing working, or do we want to change

02:11:14.500 | something?"

02:11:15.500 | Maybe that should give you enough freedom and flexibility in your thinking to approach

02:11:20.500 | your children and say, "What is necessary for my children to flourish?"

02:11:25.340 | Because I conclude with this.

02:11:26.900 | Regardless of what you choose in terms of this particular school, your responsibility

02:11:33.420 | as a father for your children does not change.

02:11:36.580 | Their education is your responsibility.

02:11:40.100 | It's absolutely your responsibility to see that they are educated and prepared in all

02:11:45.620 | ways that they need to be for success in life.

02:11:48.980 | That includes academic knowledge, because we live in an academic society.

02:11:52.180 | That includes moral knowledge, because we live in a moral world.

02:11:55.840 | That includes career knowledge, because we live in a financial system, et cetera.

02:11:59.660 | So you are responsible to prepare your children for that.

02:12:02.900 | And then in that context, as you embrace fully your responsibility, then you can go and say,

02:12:08.220 | "Well, am I going to use the government school?

02:12:10.820 | What aspects of the government school can I use for it?

02:12:12.780 | Am I going to use a private school?

02:12:14.340 | Am I going to use a private tutor?

02:12:15.980 | Am I going to teach?

02:12:16.980 | How am I going to do that?"

02:12:17.980 | And then ask God for wisdom to say, "Here, in this context, is what I can do."

02:12:22.820 | Because you have that responsibility no matter those external factors.

02:12:28.900 | And especially with your 14-year-old, this is where you've got to roll up your sleeves

02:12:32.740 | and you've got to be in there with him every single day, constantly engaging him, helping

02:12:38.820 | him to think, coaching him to where he needs, because these are the most crucial years for

02:12:43.500 | you as a father.

02:12:44.780 | You could disappear out of the lives of your four-year-olds and come back in a year and

02:12:48.140 | pick up where you left off with minimal damage.

02:12:50.380 | But with a 14-year-old, this is where you're on stage.

02:12:54.060 | These are your years.

02:12:55.060 | And so you've got to be in there day and night.

02:12:57.180 | So those are my thoughts.

02:12:58.180 | Hope that helps.

02:12:59.180 | Awesome.

02:13:00.180 | Awesome.

02:13:01.180 | Yeah.

02:13:02.180 | You know, in the last two years, I've really taken, maybe I felt guilty that I wasn't involved

02:13:11.340 | in my son's education as much as I felt like maybe I should have.

02:13:15.180 | Well, I should have been more.

02:13:18.900 | Maybe I think that's the feelings I harbored and why I may have came on so strong to my

02:13:24.640 | wife about pushing to make a better situation for the more children that are on the way

02:13:32.140 | and I think, you know, like you said, the confidence thing is her big issue because

02:13:38.940 | we've had a lot of conversations and we're both kind of on par.

02:13:42.340 | Yes, we think it's a good idea.

02:13:44.780 | You know, we kind of throw it around a little bit, but we're not, we haven't like, you know,

02:13:49.260 | put anything in stone.

02:13:50.900 | And then the fact that, you know, we had to go get them evaluated, kind of like said it

02:13:55.820 | felt like we put us on our heels on the whole situation.

02:14:00.580 | But yeah, yeah.

02:14:01.580 | Thank you so much for going through that again.

02:14:03.780 | And I know you've done the homeschool thing, several episodes on that, but, you know, I

02:14:08.860 | just wanted to shoot it by you.

02:14:11.060 | Yeah.

02:14:12.060 | Keep your ears out.

02:14:13.060 | I have, you know, we're coming up on episode 1000 of Radical Personal Finance and I haven't

02:14:17.540 | publicized what my plans are and whatnot.

02:14:20.220 | And I do intend to continue with Radical Personal Finance.

02:14:22.940 | But as is probably no doubt obvious to any long-term listener of the show, I have enormous

02:14:29.780 | levels of passion for this subject.

02:14:32.940 | And so, I intend to do more on this in the future and share more.

02:14:37.060 | I have enormous levels of passion.

02:14:38.740 | I have increasing levels of confidence from my own experience.

02:14:41.500 | And I just, I believe that this is so important because we are living in a world in which

02:14:46.860 | the systems of the old are not working.

02:14:49.920 | They are collapsing left, right and center.

02:14:52.100 | And we have to envision the systems of the new world.

02:14:54.920 | And so, just very practically with your wife, get around some homeschooled people, you know,

02:15:02.000 | in your local community.

02:15:03.000 | Look for a community in terms of people that you can interact with.

02:15:07.580 | And if you can get her around some homeschool moms, again, whatever function is locally,

02:15:12.080 | there's plenty there for you.

02:15:14.020 | Recognize that with four-year-olds, there is nothing that needs to be done.

02:15:17.800 | And so, yes, you should seek out specialists.

02:15:19.840 | That's your job.

02:15:20.840 | And if those specialists are helping, great.

02:15:22.480 | But there is zero evidence that you need to put your children in school at four, five,

02:15:29.560 | etc.

02:15:31.080 | There are plenty of people who didn't start anything formalized until seven and you're

02:15:35.920 | not behind.

02:15:37.160 | And so, like, you have plenty of time.

02:15:40.000 | There's no reason to stress at all.

02:15:42.000 | Now, with your 14-year-old, you have proven that a man can make it in the world without

02:15:45.800 | a high school diploma.

02:15:47.320 | So you have that experience, but that experience also probably shows you that it's better off

02:15:53.080 | that he have it.

02:15:54.080 | But guess what?

02:15:55.080 | You can write up a high school diploma on a piece of paper with a pencil and a ruler,

02:15:58.720 | and it's just as valid as the high school diploma from your local government school.

02:16:02.920 | It's something that you make up based upon what you do.

02:16:05.640 | And that's what the secret, like, I appreciate when people start looking into it, you're

02:16:10.360 | scandalized.

02:16:11.360 | And you realize, wait a second, my government school doesn't have to be accredited, it just

02:16:14.520 | continues issuing diplomas even if it's not accredited and all kinds of stuff.

02:16:17.760 | So what you really need to focus on is with your 14-year-old, explore the options, and

02:16:22.120 | then figure out what would be some of the best options for him to see to his success.

02:16:28.880 | And at this point in time, we can see even from our discussions with AI and everything

02:16:32.780 | that you're going through, et cetera, probably those subjects that he's studying in school,

02:16:38.280 | I believe they're important for knowledge, et cetera, but it's going to be more important

02:16:41.920 | that you start laboring with him on areas of interest and developing skills, et cetera.

02:16:46.960 | So I'm an academic, I think we need to encourage the academics.

02:16:51.000 | I'm not in favor of abandoning a liberal arts education and just funneling people into trade

02:16:55.480 | schools.

02:16:56.480 | But you want to interact with him and figure out where his interests are and really connect

02:16:59.760 | with him and coach him.

02:17:00.840 | So I will quit.

02:17:02.120 | Thank you all so much for listening to today's Friday Q&A show.

02:17:03.960 | I hope you've enjoyed it.

02:17:04.960 | I have certainly enjoyed it.

02:17:05.960 | I always enjoy these shows, they make me think, they make it easy, I just show up and do my

02:17:09.600 | best to give you my thoughts and hopefully it's useful to you.

02:17:12.800 | Thank you so much for listening.

02:17:13.800 | A couple of things that were mentioned on the show today that I will remind you of,

02:17:16.840 | number one, I had the caller that I called in the beginning about internationalization,

02:17:21.120 | said nice things about my course, unsolicited, internationalskateplan.com.

02:17:25.120 | If you yourself are interested in figuring out a backup plan, internationalskateplan.com.

02:17:29.680 | I would really love for you to come and hang out with me in Panama if you are able or interested

02:17:33.840 | in any of those things.

02:17:35.080 | I feel like I wish I'd done a better job.

02:17:36.920 | I have not looked into the details of the Panama details in the last year and they changed

02:17:40.720 | everything enormously 18 months ago.

02:17:43.240 | So I'll be educating myself on their specific visa options when I'm there in January.

02:17:47.240 | But I'd love for you to come and be there alongside and we'll talk about it over cigars

02:17:50.200 | or cold drinks at night or something like that.

02:17:52.200 | Go to expatmoney.com/radical, expatmoney.com/radical, sign up for that event there in January.

02:17:58.240 | It's coming up soon, expatmoney.com/radical.

02:18:00.240 | And if you'd like to join me next week, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, and with that, I'm out of here.

02:18:16.880 | The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions

02:18:21.120 | old and new.

02:18:22.400 | You could do a classic herb roasted turkey or spice it up and make turkey tacos, serve

02:18:27.200 | up a go-to shrimp cocktail or use simple truth wild-caught shrimp for your first Cajun risotto.

02:18:33.740 | Make creamy mac and cheese or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese.

02:18:38.960 | No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday

02:18:43.480 | traditions.

02:18:44.480 | Ralph's.

2023-12-15_Friday_QA