2024-04-26_Friday

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00:00:29.920 | It's Friday and today, live Q&A.

00:00:32.720 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:51.920 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:55.520 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:58.320 | My name is Joshua Sheets.

00:00:59.520 | Today is Friday, April 26, 2024.

00:01:02.720 | And on this Friday, as on any Friday in which I can arrange a microphone

00:01:06.800 | and an internet connection and all of that fun stuff, we record live Q&A.

00:01:11.120 | You call in, talk about anything you want, raise any topics you want, any questions you want.

00:01:15.760 | You set the agenda.

00:01:17.280 | I am here to serve you in any way that you desire.

00:01:20.240 | If you're new to Radical Personal Finance, I welcome you here on these Friday Q&A shows.

00:01:33.520 | It works just like call-in talk radio.

00:01:34.800 | Call it open line Friday if you like.

00:01:36.160 | You call in, talk about anything you want.

00:01:38.320 | If you would like to gain access to one of these shows,

00:01:40.000 | you can do that by becoming a patron of the show.

00:01:41.440 | Go to Patreon.com/RadicalPersonalFinance.

00:01:43.920 | Patreon.com/RadicalPersonalFinance.

00:01:46.240 | That will gain access for you to one of these Friday Q&A shows.

00:01:49.680 | We begin with Liliana in Seattle.

00:01:51.840 | Welcome, Liliana.

00:01:52.560 | How can I serve you today?

00:01:53.520 | - Hello, Joshua.

00:01:55.600 | I'm really glad to be here.

00:01:56.800 | Thank you for having me and giving the opportunity to ask you a question.

00:02:00.720 | Doing great.

00:02:02.080 | I've actually been part of your Radical Family Camp, which was amazing and fantastic.

00:02:07.760 | Wanted to thank you for that experience.

00:02:11.280 | And also, I have a question for you today.

00:02:16.480 | I come from, let's say, post-Soviet from Russia,

00:02:21.360 | from one of the post-Soviet countries.

00:02:23.520 | We have this cultural thing that kind of sets up kids.

00:02:30.720 | I have one kid who's just only one and a half years old.

00:02:33.520 | We have this cultural aspect of setting them up for success by working hard,

00:02:40.640 | grinding, studying a lot, and there's this overall belief

00:02:48.800 | that only through the horribles and disadvantages of life,

00:02:56.480 | one can become truly a strong personality and successful personality.

00:03:01.840 | So this is kind of the mindset and mentality I've grown up in.

00:03:07.440 | I also believe that some of my friends from China and from India

00:03:10.960 | also have similar mindsets where they kind of train their kids

00:03:14.800 | to be super successful by studying a lot and working a lot.

00:03:20.000 | And my question is in the realm of those concepts of bringing kids,

00:03:27.920 | because when I came to the West, so to speak,

00:03:31.280 | I found that a lot of families do not have more resources.

00:03:36.800 | First of all, probably our countries that I've mentioned, like Russia, China,

00:03:41.120 | India, have less resources.

00:03:44.000 | That's why it's like a zero-sum game attitude, I could say, to life in general.

00:03:50.000 | But here in the West, it's a much more comfortable life, more resources.

00:03:55.600 | Families sometimes even have some assets in place for their kids.

00:03:59.680 | Some are able to pay for the college and such.

00:04:06.400 | So my question is, what, from your perspective,

00:04:10.080 | can we do to set up our little kid in the future,

00:04:14.320 | like being, I don't know, 15 years or 10 years, whatever,

00:04:17.200 | or to be a resilient, so to speak, successful.

00:04:22.400 | When I say successful, I don't only mean money,

00:04:24.640 | but overall kind of this resilient personality, if you know what I mean.

00:04:28.480 | Person without giving him a hard time, if you know what I mean.

00:04:35.280 | And making it difficult, because I've myself been brought up without food, without money.

00:04:41.200 | After the fall of the Soviet Union, it's really a survival mode,

00:04:45.760 | which I then had to take off myself with a long years of therapy.

00:04:52.320 | Obviously, I don't want to put my child in a survival mode and such.

00:04:58.320 | So what do you think, how can we raise children in a different way

00:05:03.840 | to make them still resilient and motivated to work hard in life,

00:05:11.280 | which every person definitely needs?

00:05:12.960 | I would really love to hear your perspective on that aspect.

00:05:17.360 | Thank you.

00:05:17.920 | I love the question.

00:05:18.720 | Let's pretend that you were going to raise your child the way that you were raised,

00:05:25.440 | meaning that you didn't question the culture.

00:05:27.680 | You didn't think, oh, maybe there might be a better way.

00:05:30.320 | You were just going to reproduce in your child

00:05:33.440 | what your parents and your home culture produced in you.

00:05:36.880 | How specifically would you do that?

00:05:39.680 | What would you do in order to express that culture?

00:05:43.920 | That's a great question to ask.

00:05:47.280 | I love it, because immediately I thought that it's like 50/50.

00:05:51.760 | It's like throwing a child into the water, hoping the kid can swim,

00:05:58.640 | but maybe there will be some problems along the way.

00:06:01.760 | I can say that that's a great question.

00:06:04.480 | No money for education, no pocket money.

00:06:10.240 | You have to start working when you're 16 years old,

00:06:14.160 | really early to provide for yourself and sometimes even for your family.

00:06:18.160 | A really low resource.

00:06:24.560 | Also, along the way, it would be always saying that,

00:06:30.000 | look, the others are doing better than you do.

00:06:33.760 | Look at Mary, a neighbor's daughter.

00:06:40.160 | She's performing better than you in school.

00:06:42.560 | What the hell are you doing?

00:06:43.840 | Those type of comparison in upbringing when you compare the kid to others,

00:06:50.160 | and this is how you negative motivation at its finest.

00:06:54.560 | You could do better than this.

00:06:57.840 | Negative motivation and also not providing any setup for anything.

00:07:07.040 | This is a question that intrigues me quite a lot.

00:07:13.440 | I have a few thoughts on it.

00:07:15.760 | What I don't have is a lot of hard evidence.

00:07:20.480 | I don't have any data that I could present on this.

00:07:24.240 | I haven't found any data on this yet.

00:07:26.400 | There may be books or people who have researched this out there,

00:07:31.600 | but so far, I haven't come across very much of that.

00:07:35.680 | So, I'll cite what I have come across for you,

00:07:41.040 | but just know that most of my answers to this question are coming

00:07:46.480 | from personal experience and from observations of the world

00:07:50.240 | and just a little bit of thought about it not coming from a strong research base.

00:07:53.680 | And if anybody knows of a strong research base

00:07:56.400 | to get me started in the right direction, I would welcome those comments.

00:07:59.520 | I think that it's important to identify specifically what you would do differently

00:08:07.360 | because there are two truths that I think need to go together.

00:08:12.080 | Number one, having character.

00:08:15.600 | We'll just describe it as character.

00:08:17.600 | Having character is foundational and fundamental to success in life.

00:08:24.000 | Having a strong work ethic, I think, is fundamental and foundational to success in life.

00:08:29.840 | And so, if we have the choice between,

00:08:32.960 | let's say that we could just magically produce a child who did have a work ethic

00:08:36.720 | or we could magically produce a child who did not have a work ethic,

00:08:41.120 | I don't think anybody would argue that the child without a work ethic is any better off.

00:08:46.640 | Similarly, if we could produce a child of strong character

00:08:51.520 | versus a child who's not of strong character,

00:08:54.720 | nobody would argue that the child is better off if he doesn't have a strong character.

00:08:59.120 | I think probably the one word we could use for this would be the word "grit."

00:09:04.240 | That's probably where the most research is done.

00:09:06.240 | Angela Duckworth is probably the most famous psychologist

00:09:09.120 | who's written extensively on this with her work of grit,

00:09:12.240 | showing how gritty children, children who have determination and a desire to succeed,

00:09:18.320 | are often the ones who do the best.

00:09:21.040 | And I think that a strong, I'm going to call it military upbringing,

00:09:27.520 | could certainly produce people of character and people of grit.

00:09:34.720 | I think back to a society like the Spartans.

00:09:39.040 | And if you go back and you think about when Lycurgus laid out the law for Sparta,

00:09:44.320 | and he laid out this just hardcore training regimen for the way that

00:09:49.840 | children are being brought up is in very austere conditions with constant discomfort

00:09:55.040 | and constant, you know, constant discomfort,

00:09:58.960 | constant difficulty, constant shortage, constant lack.

00:10:03.600 | Then that did succeed in creating men who were warriors, who were strong and capable warriors,

00:10:10.400 | who were able to do many remarkable things with that basic grit that was built into them.

00:10:18.320 | The challenge is that I'm not sure that grit alone is a sufficient

00:10:24.880 | ingredient in the recipe for success.

00:10:31.680 | I think that grit is useful and helpful, but that it also has downsides to it.

00:10:39.120 | And so, if we only focus on that and that alone, then it seems to me like we're missing

00:10:46.480 | other important attributes and traits that children need in order to build

00:10:53.120 | successful lives for the long term.

00:10:55.760 | So, as you alluded to, I have some friends who grew up in the Soviet Union,

00:11:00.080 | and under that educational system.

00:11:02.080 | And if you go back and you look at the Soviet Union and what that empire was able to produce,

00:11:08.800 | it truly was able to produce some citizens who had stellar academic ability,

00:11:17.680 | incredible mathematicians, and world-class engineers, and things like that.

00:11:22.400 | I see the same thing happening in Asian educational systems today.

00:11:28.560 | I don't know to what degree the current Russian model of education mirrors the culture that you

00:11:35.680 | grew up in, but where I've spent the most time reading about it is in basically what I'll call

00:11:40.400 | the Asian system.

00:11:41.200 | And I would include in that the Chinese system, Singapore, we could include India in that,

00:11:47.840 | where there's just this very grueling approach to academics.

00:11:51.360 | And in Korea, they have a test day where it's all about this one annual test, and the students just

00:11:57.920 | slave away preparing for this test.

00:11:59.920 | And basically, your results on these tests determine your life and where your life can

00:12:04.880 | go in the future.

00:12:06.080 | And again, I think that produces certain qualities, certain characteristics that are positive,

00:12:10.560 | that give good outcomes.

00:12:12.080 | But they also, there's a flip side to it.

00:12:14.160 | There's a lack of creativity that can often be found in that.

00:12:18.400 | I can't cite this, so I could be mistaken about this.

00:12:22.240 | But I have an impression that I've read or seen analysis at some point along the way

00:12:27.280 | of people talking about how in the American model, the American model excels in creating

00:12:36.000 | individuals who are able to be creative.

00:12:38.800 | I have a friend of mine who works for an international school.

00:12:42.000 | And I've spent a lot of time talking with him about universities.

00:12:45.040 | He's a guidance counselor for international students who want to go to university.

00:12:50.240 | And I talked to him about why people choose different universities.

00:12:54.000 | Why would somebody go to the United States as compared to other places around the world

00:12:58.240 | where you can also go and study?

00:13:00.080 | And there are many, I've talked, there's incredible scholarship programs.

00:13:04.800 | The Japanese government has a scholarship program for people who want to come to Japan

00:13:08.320 | and study there.

00:13:09.280 | If you get the scholarship, they'll pay all of your tuition at a Japanese university.

00:13:12.960 | China has a number of scholarship programs where they'll pay all of your university

00:13:16.880 | tuition in China.

00:13:19.040 | The, sorry, Europe is full of universities that are tuition free, even for non-EU citizens

00:13:27.360 | to participate in.

00:13:28.800 | And yet many of the wealthy families that he advises and counsels will still send their

00:13:35.600 | children to the United States and to go to college and pay enormous tuition fees for

00:13:41.120 | the privilege of their attending universities.

00:13:43.520 | And I asked him, I said, why?

00:13:44.480 | And he says, well, one of the things that the United States university system can do,

00:13:50.240 | and just to be clear, I consider the current mainstream US university system to be pretty

00:13:56.160 | flawed, but one of the things that it can do is it can create students who think creatively

00:14:02.080 | about solutions, who think broadly and are able to come up with solutions that aren't

00:14:07.360 | just based upon grinding it out, just applying more work effort or more work ethic to the

00:14:13.600 | problem.

00:14:14.640 | And that can be a whole different skill set.

00:14:17.760 | And so I guess my answer is that I think that both of those things are important, that having

00:14:25.200 | work ethic is important and necessary, having character is important and necessary, but

00:14:30.000 | it's not sufficient.

00:14:31.520 | And in many cases, if you look at basically success in life, if you take an individual

00:14:36.640 | that you think is successful, very rarely would I find someone who I would characterize

00:14:43.040 | as successful broadly.

00:14:44.720 | And we can use finances exclusively, or we can just say broadly successful in life.

00:14:48.720 | Very rarely would I find somebody who just puts nose to the grindstone and does nothing

00:14:54.400 | but work, work, work, work, work, and characterize that person as successful.

00:14:57.440 | If they are successful, they're usually successful in one dimension, in one domain of life.

00:15:02.320 | And life is more varied than that.

00:15:05.280 | So my thought on it is, or at least what I aspire to do, is I aspire to try to do both

00:15:11.920 | of those things.

00:15:13.120 | And my answer for it is to, so specifically, usually we're talking about something related

00:15:20.960 | to education and schooling.

00:15:22.240 | Now, you mentioned money and basically negative reinforcement.

00:15:25.360 | Compare yourself to that other person over there.

00:15:27.120 | I'll get to those in just a moment.

00:15:28.640 | But in terms of an educational system, I myself have a tendency to disparage those kinds of

00:15:38.160 | educational systems that cause people to just work all the time.

00:15:42.640 | I don't think that they're effective.

00:15:44.240 | And I think we have good data from learning science to show that they're not nearly as

00:15:48.160 | effective as they could be.

00:15:49.360 | And even in terms of work, what a lot of people who we would label as workaholics often do

00:15:55.280 | is they confuse effort with effectiveness, or they confuse volume with effectiveness.

00:16:06.720 | And at its core, while many disciplines and skills need volume in order to acquire skills,

00:16:15.600 | at its core, most things can be improved by proper application and creative and efficient

00:16:24.080 | methodologies.

00:16:25.440 | And so probably the best example from an educational perspective would be to study the teaching

00:16:34.240 | or the learning of mathematics.

00:16:36.240 | And there's a balance here.

00:16:38.080 | There's a war that wages of what is often labeled as the drill and kill approach, where

00:16:43.280 | you just do mathematics constantly, nonstop mathematics, more, more, more, more, more,

00:16:47.520 | systematically, as compared to learning to think about why you're doing what you're doing

00:16:51.760 | so that you understand the math.

00:16:53.280 | And what they have—recently I finished—and I would cite here the book Range by David

00:16:59.440 | Epstein, the subtitle is Why Generalists Succeed in a Specialized World.

00:17:05.200 | And one of the things I learned from that book that I read recently that I had never

00:17:08.560 | understood was how—why certain math techniques are being emphasized.

00:17:16.160 | The author of that book, Epstein, cited a study that some learning psychologists had

00:17:21.840 | done where they had gone into math classrooms all around the world, and they had recorded

00:17:28.160 | in detail some of the math lessons that were being taught.

00:17:31.840 | And they carefully detailed everything that the teacher was doing, everything that was

00:17:35.920 | said.

00:17:36.480 | They videotaped them.

00:17:37.440 | They had transcripts.

00:17:38.400 | And then they followed the students' test scores and their long-term effectiveness with

00:17:42.160 | mathematics.

00:17:43.280 | And they discovered that when the teacher basically taught mathematics with a rote learning

00:17:52.240 | approach of, "Hey, this is how you do long division.

00:17:55.920 | You just do this into this into this into this.

00:17:57.680 | You do this step.

00:17:58.240 | You bring down the number here," then the student was never able to incorporate those

00:18:03.680 | mathematical techniques at a deeper level.

00:18:06.720 | But if the student—if the teacher focused on a conceptual teaching of it rather than

00:18:12.240 | a procedural approach, then they wound up with better outcomes.

00:18:15.680 | And for me, that was an enormous lightbulb moment, because I, like many, have griped

00:18:20.240 | about the modern methods of teaching mathematics.

00:18:25.520 | In the United States, the debate over this has been related to what is called the Common

00:18:30.080 | Core Standards.

00:18:30.960 | And—

00:18:31.920 | I'm Jane Perlez, long-time foreign correspondent and former Beijing bureau chief for The New

00:18:38.160 | York Times.

00:18:39.360 | I've been a foreign correspondent in lots of places—Somalia, Indonesia, Pakistan—but

00:18:46.400 | nowhere as important to the world as China.

00:18:49.040 | I mean, China is not dropping anti-democratic paratroopers into Montana.

00:18:54.080 | But, of course, we did see things like the weather balloon/spy balloon riveting the whole

00:18:59.040 | country for a week.

00:19:00.800 | This is Face/Off, an eight-part series in which we'll take you behind the scenes to

00:19:06.080 | key moments in the tumultuous U.S.-China relationship.

00:19:10.240 | We'll speak with a diplomat, a spy, a tech reporter, a U.S. admiral, even Yo-Yo Ma.

00:19:16.480 | Plus, my pal and noted China historian Rana Mitter joins the conversation.

00:19:22.080 | We'll look at what's driving the two nations apart and explore whether anything can help

00:19:27.120 | bring them back together.

00:19:28.560 | Face/Off launches April 9th.

00:19:31.200 | What many people find is they send their child off to fourth-grade math or fifth-grade math,

00:19:37.040 | sixth-grade math, and the child comes home with some weird, like, boxing approach.

00:19:42.160 | And the—it's like, why are you trying to solve your division problem with these weird

00:19:45.200 | boxes?

00:19:46.320 | And the parent, very well-meaning, as I myself have done, says, "Listen, I'm just going

00:19:50.640 | to teach you how to do it.

00:19:51.440 | This is the easier way.

00:19:52.480 | And look, this is how you do long division."

00:19:54.320 | I now understand what the Common Core approach is trying to accomplish in a way that I didn't

00:20:00.160 | before.

00:20:00.560 | It's trying to get at the conceptual thinking and the conceptual understanding of mathematics

00:20:05.360 | rather than just the procedural basis.

00:20:07.360 | Now, the flip side, we can't—I don't think it's smart to be extremist about it.

00:20:10.960 | On the flip side, you could say, "Well, it's just a drill and kill."

00:20:13.760 | But on the other side, you need to have enough practice with the actual concepts in order

00:20:18.400 | to really master them.

00:20:19.600 | Practice leads to mastery.

00:20:22.000 | And so, with many things related to education, I would like to see it go through the middle

00:20:28.400 | and benefit from understanding and then have sufficient amounts of practice rather than

00:20:35.200 | just kind of drudgery, working it through nonstop.

00:20:39.600 | Taking education further, if you look at what different systems produce, a system that is

00:20:48.080 | based upon rote learning, rote practice, rote repetition can produce outcomes where the

00:20:56.240 | student actually has the ability to do the work.

00:21:00.240 | But that doesn't seem to be a very intelligent preparation of the student for life.

00:21:06.320 | And so, if I'm running a communist system where I'm trying to create workers who will

00:21:13.200 | fit into the collective and I need workers who are very skilled with the basics of engineering,

00:21:18.480 | then I would be inclined to go for that kind of approach.

00:21:23.280 | But if I'm trying to create well-educated students who are prepared for life and prepared

00:21:27.840 | and understand their strengths, their weaknesses, their skills, their interests, then I need

00:21:32.080 | to give more time for that.

00:21:33.760 | And my observation of basically coaching a lot of people with big life decisions has

00:21:39.120 | been that if someone doesn't have a diverse exposure to the world and time to get to know

00:21:47.200 | himself, then he's unlikely to be able to make good life decisions for himself.

00:21:51.200 | He feels lost once he gets out of a constrained system.

00:21:55.040 | So, I'm opposed to just constant, never-ending rote learning from an educational perspective,

00:22:02.480 | because I don't think it gives us the outcome that we're looking for of a prepared human

00:22:07.680 | being who is well-educated, but is also prepared to succeed in life generally.

00:22:12.960 | I think it just creates a highly skilled drone who is able to do computations very quickly

00:22:19.680 | and very effectively.

00:22:20.720 | Now, going on to the handling of money, this is another big question, another big debate.

00:22:27.520 | I grew up probably similar to how you did in the sense that my family didn't have a

00:22:32.640 | lot of money, and so in even the U.S. American culture, there's a strong ethos of pull yourself

00:22:40.800 | up by your own bootstraps.

00:22:42.240 | And so, I didn't have a lot of money when I was in college, or excuse me, when I was

00:22:46.080 | in high school.

00:22:46.640 | I didn't own a car, but my dad would let me borrow one of the family cars to drive myself

00:22:50.080 | to school.

00:22:51.040 | And when I asked him for some money on occasion, he would give me some money.

00:22:55.120 | And I worked and I had some of my own money, but I would go to the gas pump and put in

00:22:59.840 | six dollars of gas because I couldn't afford any more.

00:23:02.320 | And I would – so I know what it's like to not have pocket money.

00:23:07.200 | I know what it's like to – I paid for all of my schooling.

00:23:09.840 | My parents paid for my high school, and then it was always understood that when it comes

00:23:16.160 | to college that it would all be on me.

00:23:18.320 | And I appreciate that because I do feel that that was helpful to me in terms of building

00:23:24.000 | character.

00:23:26.160 | From a more mature perspective, though, I don't think that it was necessary for me

00:23:31.280 | to build character.

00:23:32.640 | And what I now look at is I see how much further behind I am from where I could be if my parents

00:23:41.520 | had had more resources and if I had been able to pursue more interesting opportunities.

00:23:47.040 | And the specific example I would give is this.

00:23:49.600 | When I was in college, I heard of people doing unpaid internships.

00:23:55.040 | And at the time, I couldn't even imagine why somebody – how could somebody go and

00:23:58.800 | do an unpaid internship?

00:24:00.000 | How could I go and work for free?

00:24:02.880 | I was working three jobs my freshman year, and I couldn't imagine going and taking

00:24:06.800 | an unpaid internship.

00:24:07.840 | And today I look back and I realize that I should have gone and done the unpaid internship.

00:24:14.240 | And I see very clearly that when people, especially young people, get involved in just

00:24:19.040 | constantly working, they lose out on the opportunities to advance based upon relationships,

00:24:26.080 | skill building, and creativity because of this intense focus on money.

00:24:31.520 | I was recently talking to somebody about my advice for a teenager.

00:24:36.080 | And this teenager is working at a job in fast food, earning money.

00:24:42.160 | And my comment of my kind of behind-the-scenes advice was I said, "That's wonderful.

00:24:47.520 | That's really great that she has a job.

00:24:49.200 | She's 15 years old.

00:24:50.240 | She has a job.

00:24:51.200 | She's making money.

00:24:52.080 | She's working at a fast food restaurant.

00:24:53.840 | Awesome.

00:24:54.240 | That's fantastic."

00:24:55.120 | That job should not continue for more than three months.

00:24:58.080 | And if she continues to try to work a job like that for more than three months because

00:25:04.320 | she needs money, then I consider that an enormous opportunity cost, a lost opportunity for her

00:25:10.960 | to try something very, very different.

00:25:12.720 | I think a 15-year-old should absolutely go and get a job in fast food and do it for three

00:25:18.320 | months.

00:25:18.560 | But then after three months, she should go and get a job as an orderly in a hospital,

00:25:23.200 | or she should tag along in a law office, or she should go and babysit in a professional

00:25:29.600 | daycare.

00:25:30.640 | And then she should go and you should try different things.

00:25:33.200 | You need to get exposure to different things.

00:25:35.120 | And so the big downside that poor people who grow up poor face is that they've never had

00:25:40.800 | the exposure to life.

00:25:42.000 | They've never had the chance to build relationships.

00:25:44.080 | They've never had exposure to interests.

00:25:46.080 | And so they see the world as a world of financial scarcity.

00:25:50.320 | And that's where they only have one model for making money, which is work harder at

00:25:56.800 | my job, spend less, save more in just that standard model.

00:26:00.800 | And in my interactions with wealthy people over the years, I've come to see how that's

00:26:07.920 | not what wealthy people do.

00:26:10.080 | And there are alternative models that are in many ways superior.

00:26:14.480 | And I'll just share one more personal story.

00:26:16.160 | When I was in the financial planning business, I was mentoring.

00:26:23.440 | For a time, I ran our college internship program and I was recruiting college students.

00:26:28.240 | And I enjoyed working with new representatives.

00:26:31.120 | And I would go out and do joint work with them and mentor them and do things like that.

00:26:35.200 | And I was good at what I did.

00:26:38.560 | I had a lot of technical knowledge.

00:26:40.000 | If you want to question on some technical thing related to financial planning, Josh

00:26:43.280 | was the guy.

00:26:43.840 | I was always the guy who answered all the questions.

00:26:46.320 | And so I had a good deal of pride in my knowledge from financial planning perspectives.

00:26:51.840 | And we hired this guy into our company who was the son of-- he was a rich kid.

00:27:00.000 | And his job working at the company was the very first job that he had ever had.

00:27:06.800 | And I was pretty jealous of him.

00:27:09.440 | I wouldn't probably have said it at the time, but that's truly what it was.

00:27:13.680 | His parents were super wealthy lawyers from the Northeast.

00:27:16.880 | He'd come down to Florida.

00:27:17.920 | They had a Florida home.

00:27:18.880 | He's staying in their Florida home for free.

00:27:21.120 | He was staying in-- he had access to his dad's 40-foot fishing boat.

00:27:25.360 | And he was out every weekend on the fishing boat with all the guys and all the girls in

00:27:29.280 | this million-dollar boat that he had access to.

00:27:31.280 | And yet he comes in and he knew nothing about financial planning.

00:27:36.240 | He didn't have a clue.

00:27:37.680 | He didn't know what a Roth IRA was.

00:27:39.280 | He didn't have a clue.

00:27:40.000 | And he comes in and gets this job selling insurance and ultimately becoming a financial

00:27:44.240 | planner.

00:27:44.640 | He didn't have a clue about any of that stuff.

00:27:46.640 | I was shocked at how ignorant he was.

00:27:48.240 | And so I thought, there's no way this guy makes it.

00:27:52.240 | There's not a chance in the world that he's going to be successful.

00:27:55.600 | He doesn't have any work ethic.

00:27:56.800 | He comes in, drives in his BMW that daddy bought for him.

00:27:59.520 | Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:28:00.640 | Here I am, Mr. Proud.

00:28:02.560 | I pull myself up by my bootstraps guy.

00:28:05.920 | That guy went on to sell more insurance and set enormous records.

00:28:12.560 | And today he's a managing partner with that company making millions of dollars a year.

00:28:16.880 | Basically, far more successful than I ever was because he had a totally different sphere

00:28:23.200 | of knowledge.

00:28:23.840 | I had technical knowledge.

00:28:25.840 | I was a good worker bee.

00:28:26.960 | I was a good engineer.

00:28:27.920 | I had technical knowledge that I had acquired from my hard work ethic.

00:28:37.280 | But he had a totally different set of knowledge that I couldn't even relate to.

00:28:40.720 | And his parents did nothing for him in his career.

00:28:45.520 | They probably introduced him to some of their friends.

00:28:48.800 | He probably sold life insurance policies to some of their friends.

00:28:51.600 | But that was it.

00:28:52.560 | My parents did the same things.

00:28:53.840 | I sold life insurance policies to my parents' friends.

00:28:56.640 | But they had given him a totally different view of the world.

00:29:01.280 | And I couldn't relate to it because I didn't grow up in it.

00:29:03.840 | But he makes millions and millions of dollars with his business, just a totally different

00:29:10.160 | skill set.

00:29:11.120 | So I'd say that it's an interest of mine to try to say, how can you balance these things?

00:29:17.200 | And I don't think that work ethic is always best achieved through purely academics or

00:29:26.160 | even just through working for money.

00:29:27.680 | Because my friend did have work ethic.

00:29:33.280 | He had plenty of work ethic.

00:29:34.720 | And I don't know all the tools that his parents used to help him develop work ethic.

00:29:39.520 | A lot of times it's sports or athletic endeavors.

00:29:42.800 | There's many ways to acquire work ethic.

00:29:48.480 | But just doing more academics is not actually helpful.

00:29:51.920 | And it's not actually helpful for financial success or for life success in a world, at

00:29:58.160 | least the United States.

00:29:59.760 | I don't know if it's any difference in terms of resources in the United States versus

00:30:04.240 | the Soviet Union.

00:30:05.680 | I don't know.

00:30:06.480 | But I think it's probably about the same in any country.

00:30:09.200 | Because it's not those worker bee skills that often pay off the most.

00:30:15.440 | It's relationship skills.

00:30:17.360 | It's the ability to think creatively.

00:30:20.720 | It's the courage to take risks and to make intelligent decisions.

00:30:25.200 | These are what launch people up the ladder so much faster.

00:30:28.640 | It's not just doing more.

00:30:30.960 | And I think we have to acknowledge that and then look for ways to incorporate that.

00:30:38.640 | Very practically, I have a 10-year-old.

00:30:41.040 | And I've noticed this in myself.

00:30:43.520 | My 10-year-old, two or three years ago, says, "Daddy, I need to get a job.

00:30:48.000 | I want to make money."

00:30:49.200 | And I look at him and it's like, "What do you need money for?

00:30:51.440 | I pay for everything."

00:30:52.560 | And, "Well, I don't know.

00:30:53.920 | But I just need to get a good job."

00:30:54.960 | And my answer to him was, "It would be pointless for you to get a job right now because you're

00:31:00.480 | far better off to spend your time on intellectual pursuits and developing yourself."

00:31:05.120 | And that's, I think, the same thing.

00:31:08.000 | That if we look at the pathway that wealthy people take their children on, it's not – yes,

00:31:14.400 | there are benefits to going and working a summer job.

00:31:17.280 | You get exposure to different things.

00:31:18.800 | Those things are helpful.

00:31:20.240 | But at its core, I don't want my children to struggle financially because that's going

00:31:27.200 | to magically do something for them.

00:31:28.960 | I don't think it does.

00:31:29.920 | I think that if you are one who struggled financially and if you come through that,

00:31:35.120 | that can put a hunger in you.

00:31:37.120 | But you're starting off way behind where you otherwise could be.

00:31:40.000 | And I think it makes a lot more sense for us to support children while also having encouraging,

00:31:47.680 | strong work ethic, strong focus.

00:31:50.400 | But it's not a matter of just work, work, work, work more.

00:31:53.360 | It's a matter of developing the skills in another context.

00:31:58.480 | And then finally, in terms of basically negative motivation, I don't know that – I'm pretty

00:32:06.240 | uncomfortable with negative motivation.

00:32:08.320 | I would not say to my children, "Look at so-and-so.

00:32:12.560 | He's doing better than you.

00:32:14.000 | So, therefore, you should do more poorly."

00:32:16.560 | I couldn't cite this, again, with sociological data, but I'm fairly confident that that

00:32:22.720 | doesn't produce good outcomes.

00:32:25.920 | It really doesn't.

00:32:26.720 | I would never say that to an adult.

00:32:28.880 | And it just doesn't produce good outcomes.

00:32:32.000 | The best outcomes that an individual experiences in his life come from when he has something

00:32:41.600 | that he wants to do, and he has motivation for his own reasons to pursue that thing.

00:32:47.120 | And parents beating on children and saying, "So-and-so is doing better than you are.

00:32:52.160 | Shape it up," then that's not a helpful thing.

00:32:56.640 | It's more likely to cause people to say, "I'm not doing this.

00:33:00.080 | I'm not doing your goals.

00:33:00.800 | I'm not following your goals.

00:33:02.480 | I don't care what so-and-so is doing.

00:33:03.920 | That's not important to me."

00:33:04.960 | And then also, I think it's a toxic trait for adults to have.

00:33:10.480 | We should never take ourselves and compare ourselves to other people as a sign of how

00:33:18.080 | we're doing.

00:33:18.800 | The only rational person that we should use for comparison is the person that we were.

00:33:24.080 | So, we should focus on looking back and taking satisfaction and confidence and pride in the

00:33:30.240 | progress that I have made, based upon, compared to who I was in the past, and look at how

00:33:35.600 | well I'm doing, and then learn to rejoice with other people who are also doing well,

00:33:40.400 | but not compare ourselves to them.

00:33:41.920 | So, in summary, I think that those traits are useful and important, but I don't think

00:33:47.280 | that they're the traits of wealth and of wealthy people.

00:33:51.920 | I think that they are the traits of basically poor people who become factory workers and

00:33:56.960 | see the world through a scarcity model, who don't know themselves, and they don't prepare

00:34:01.760 | and equip people for success.

00:34:03.600 | And I think that you can do both of those things.

00:34:06.320 | I think you can be very skilled with academics.

00:34:08.560 | I think you can have a strong work ethic.

00:34:10.800 | And I think that you can do it in a generally positive environment where you haven't done

00:34:17.040 | everything to basically climb a mountain that you don't actually care about climbing.

00:34:31.840 | What do you think, Liliana?

00:34:32.800 | Yeah, I guess there's a lot to think about.

00:34:37.200 | I want to thank you for bringing in their perspective.

00:34:40.000 | I really love the idea about looking into other ways to bring up the motivation, the

00:34:46.880 | work ethic through athletics and sports and other activities.

00:34:50.880 | And I really love the thought about kind of the financial need not to be the main motivation

00:35:00.640 | to work.

00:35:01.140 | I really love this idea.

00:35:03.280 | I think I will have a lot to think about.

00:35:06.640 | And thankfully, I have some time before the kid grows up enough to do any work.

00:35:13.120 | So I have a lot of information.

00:35:16.480 | And thank you for citing the research.

00:35:20.160 | I've written it down, so I'm going to take a look at it.

00:35:23.200 | And thanks a lot.

00:35:24.160 | I really love your perspective.

00:35:25.520 | My pleasure.

00:35:26.320 | I would add in closing, as I move on, I would add that perhaps one more comment would be

00:35:32.480 | appropriate.

00:35:33.440 | As a parent, it's important to always observe what is happening and then respond to what

00:35:41.760 | you see happening.

00:35:42.560 | So let's just use the example I cited from my own parenting role.

00:35:47.280 | Right now, my 10-year-old, just as the example, the one who's saying I want to get a job,

00:35:53.360 | my 10-year-old is doing very well in academics and is generally showing broadly good work

00:35:59.680 | ethic, good focus, making good progress in academics.

00:36:02.640 | Now, let's assume for a moment that all of that stopped.

00:36:06.800 | Let's assume that there's no progress being made.

00:36:10.160 | He's just turning into a lazy bum, not showing any character, no integrity, just wanting

00:36:15.680 | to do nothing.

00:36:16.320 | Well, now, I would go in a different direction.

00:36:20.160 | And we would say, all right, let's get you a job, right?

00:36:22.480 | Let's put the screws to you.

00:36:26.240 | And I could imagine myself, let's say I'm a mega gazillionaire, and I have a child who

00:36:31.520 | is 20 years old and getting out of college and driving daddy's BMW and has $10,000 a

00:36:40.640 | month on his debit card that I just put there automatically for him.

00:36:44.400 | And he has no motivation.

00:36:46.240 | He's doing coke in the clubs on the weekend and sleeping in till 1 p.m.

00:36:50.560 | every day and doing nothing with his life.

00:36:52.160 | Well, now, everything changes, right?

00:36:56.400 | Now, you need to bring a different system, a different approach so that there is motivation

00:37:03.280 | to change.

00:37:03.920 | And so, as a parent, it's our job to identify and say, are you progressing?

00:37:10.400 | Are you making progress?

00:37:11.440 | Do you need to apply yourself more?

00:37:13.520 | And is the environment that you are in appropriate at this stage of development?

00:37:18.320 | And so, I think that we should always be aware of the fact that we can and should change

00:37:24.080 | things as necessary to respond to the actual events happening.

00:37:29.040 | Ben in Arizona, welcome to the show.

00:37:30.240 | How can I serve you today?

00:37:31.120 | Hey, Joshua.

00:37:34.320 | I was glad to finish your three-hour podcast you recorded yesterday.

00:37:39.440 | It helps inform the back half of my question today.

00:37:42.800 | Great.

00:37:43.360 | I want to know your thoughts on the GLP-1 drugs known, I don't know, Wagobe, Ozempic

00:37:53.440 | that will assist individuals with unusually rapid weight loss.

00:38:00.720 | I know you've said before publicly on the podcast and a lot of people probably keep

00:38:06.800 | it private to themselves that they have a hard time getting those last few pounds off.

00:38:11.440 | They have a hard time either staying motivated or eating right or whatever.

00:38:16.080 | These GLP-1, semaglutide, Ozempic as most people call it have been called the miracle

00:38:25.680 | drug and you've seen probably a lot of people have heard about people taking those.

00:38:29.360 | I just want you to riff on it a little bit and you can tie it back to in your financial

00:38:37.360 | career as a financial planner, there's probably been things not lose weight fast, but gain

00:38:45.280 | money fast.

00:38:46.240 | Maybe not a get-rich-quick thing, but oh, if you do this, here's an unusually rapid

00:38:53.120 | way to gain wealth.

00:38:55.680 | What is the mindset or long-term or what are your thoughts on this?

00:39:02.480 | I haven't heard you talk about this and it's been a couple of years now that these drugs

00:39:08.080 | have been on the market.

00:39:08.800 | I appreciate the question.

00:39:12.720 | I would generally not comment on something like that because while I'm aware of them

00:39:17.120 | and I read casually, I wouldn't want to profess any kind of expertise that I don't have.

00:39:23.440 | I have not studied them deeply and I'm not deeply knowledgeable about them.

00:39:29.680 | I'm aware of them, I've read about them, and so I'll give you my straight answer.

00:39:33.440 | Except in the context of a Friday Q&A when you toss me up a softball and say, "Hey,

00:39:39.760 | what do you think about this?"

00:39:40.640 | where I'll always answer.

00:39:42.000 | I don't do podcasts about things that I don't know about.

00:39:44.240 | Okay, I'm pushing the limit.

00:39:47.840 | Yeah, it's good.

00:39:48.960 | Let me answer it.

00:39:50.320 | First, the only drug I use is caffeine.

00:39:53.680 | I drink coffee and that's the only drug that I use.

00:39:56.160 | And I think in general, it's important for us to be skeptical of drugs because they are

00:40:04.000 | miracles and we should be skeptical of them for a few different reasons.

00:40:09.040 | And so specifically with regard to weight loss drugs, I think that these drugs will

00:40:13.680 | probably turn out to be real lifesavers for a lot of people.

00:40:16.960 | And there are many, many people who have been unable to lose weight, they have diabetes,

00:40:22.320 | they have all kinds of issues.

00:40:23.600 | And if this drug can help that to happen, then I think that the downsides of their obesity

00:40:30.320 | or their diabetes are so severe that they will be better off consuming the drug.

00:40:35.760 | And so I have no problem with people taking them.

00:40:38.800 | I think in general, we should be slow to take any kind of external substance.

00:40:44.160 | And the reason for that is I think we have an excessively high confidence in the safety

00:40:51.040 | of bodily inputs and we shouldn't be so confident in that.

00:40:56.720 | The body is a very complex, I don't even want to use the word machine because that

00:41:02.720 | puts the wrong image in our mind.

00:41:04.240 | It's a very complex organism and it's very hard to predict what a particular substance

00:41:12.800 | or a particular input or additive will do.

00:41:16.160 | And I have very low confidence in the current regime of efficacy testing and safety of most

00:41:26.080 | drugs and most inputs to the body.

00:41:29.520 | And my reasons for that is partly due to the testing process in terms of how the short

00:41:38.640 | term trials work and how they measure the harm.

00:41:44.240 | I appreciate that biologists have developed advanced models to try to project long-term

00:41:51.040 | effects based upon short-term data, and I don't trust them.

00:41:55.680 | I think that there's abundant reasons to see that in some cases, harmful effects from certain

00:42:03.360 | types of drugs, certain types of medical treatments only show after decades of use for some people.

00:42:12.800 | And I could cite example after example after example after this, I'll intentionally keep

00:42:17.440 | it just a little vague in general, but short-term safety testing is not sufficient for somebody

00:42:26.960 | who's generally healthy.

00:42:28.160 | Let me use a non-drug example.

00:42:30.320 | Recently I was amazed to see, a month or two ago, the patient using Elon Musk's Neuralink

00:42:39.120 | technology, and he was using Neuralink to control a computer.

00:42:44.000 | And it was just remarkable to see.

00:42:46.960 | But this patient is entirely paralyzed and he's able to use this Neuralink technology

00:42:52.240 | to control a computer.

00:42:53.840 | I think that's a perfect application.

00:42:56.560 | He's obviously a perfect study participant to be using this technology.

00:43:00.800 | And if I were paralyzed, I would probably be quickly on the list to try to say, "Hey,

00:43:05.200 | I want to get Neuralink."

00:43:06.880 | But for me as a healthy individual with a properly functioning body, for me to go and

00:43:12.480 | sign up for Neuralink and say, "Let me just get started with this technology.

00:43:16.400 | Let me always be the early adopter," is a very foolish way of making a decision.

00:43:21.520 | So it's much wiser to be a little slow, to be a late adopter, and let technologies work

00:43:27.280 | their way out and prove their way out.

00:43:29.280 | So if somebody is 600 pounds and they have failed for 20 years at losing weight, bring

00:43:37.520 | on the Ozempic, right?

00:43:38.800 | Absolutely.

00:43:39.520 | But if you've got an extra 15 or 20 pounds, then I think it would be crazy for you to

00:43:46.480 | try to treat that with a drug just from a pure, basic standpoint of risk versus reward.

00:43:54.240 | Because you wouldn't be a severe acute case of somebody whose life is literally going

00:43:59.360 | to be…you're going to be dead in 10 years without this drug.

00:44:01.760 | Now, that doesn't mean that there's another element to it as well.

00:44:07.440 | And so when there's a drug available, people often go for what they see as the quick fix.

00:44:14.000 | And as you alluded to, people do this with money, and they do this with physical drugs.

00:44:19.760 | And so they say, "Well, look, here's this magic thing."

00:44:22.880 | I remember when I was in high school and I was fat, and I would read these ads and I

00:44:29.840 | would go and I bought these fat-burning powders and different things like that.

00:44:33.840 | I was always looking for a quick fix.

00:44:36.240 | I was looking for a way to try to get a quick result.

00:44:40.560 | And all I did was burn money and take stuff that, you know, ephedrine and whatnot at the

00:44:44.880 | time that I have no idea what it did or didn't do to my body, and it wound up…and it didn't

00:44:50.800 | wind up with any long-term good.

00:44:52.880 | And so it's really important, I think, to do a good detailed analysis of what actual…what

00:45:01.760 | if you're actually doing the fundamentals, if you're actually doing the fundamentals

00:45:07.760 | of life building and skill building.

00:45:10.880 | And so one of the things that I found interesting when I got older is I went back and I found

00:45:14.880 | some of my fat pics, like the before pictures that fat people take when they're going

00:45:18.880 | to go on a diet.

00:45:20.000 | And I look back at them now with detachment, and I realized I wasn't actually all that

00:45:25.040 | fat.

00:45:25.760 | I was just what today would be labeled as skinny fat.

00:45:28.560 | I didn't have as much muscle as I should have had.

00:45:31.040 | And if I had just found a way to build an active lifestyle and focused on building an

00:45:36.960 | active lifestyle, if I had become active, then all of the fatness that I was worried

00:45:41.840 | about and I was looking for drugs would have disappeared.

00:45:44.000 | And the same thing applies then to money.

00:45:47.760 | I had an experience a year or so ago where somebody was going on and on about how he

00:45:54.560 | was…he had invested with this thing, and he was going to make millions and millions

00:45:58.720 | of dollars.

00:45:59.440 | And I asked him about it, and it was instantly…it was obvious to me that it was a Ponzi scheme.

00:46:06.240 | And it was just a textbook Ponzi scheme.

00:46:08.480 | And the guy's going on and on about all the millions that he's going to have in two

00:46:12.160 | months' time because of this incredible new thing that is being done.

00:46:16.560 | And I just thought, like, this is so stupid.

00:46:18.880 | This is such a stupid waste of time for you to be going down this pathway when you're

00:46:24.000 | not even doing the basics of good personal finance.

00:46:27.040 | And maybe it's necessary that we all do that.

00:46:30.080 | When I was in college, we all got involved in trading futures and doing orange juice

00:46:33.920 | futures and things like that.

00:46:34.880 | Didn't have a clue what we were doing and went flat broke.

00:46:37.440 | And it's the same thing that maybe you just got to realize that it's better for you

00:46:41.440 | to take the long, hard path because it's much more predictable without necessarily

00:46:46.480 | denying that there may be performance-enhancing drugs that can help you at certain times,

00:46:50.960 | and there may be really great investments that come along at a certain time.

00:46:56.640 | The people who gain the most from performance-enhancing drugs are not fat people sitting on their

00:47:02.480 | couch.

00:47:03.200 | You know, a guy who's just fat and not going to the gym and starts taking Trend, all he's

00:47:07.440 | going to wind up with is terrible back knee, and he's not going to look any different.

00:47:11.280 | He's going to destroy his heart and have terrible acne all over his back.

00:47:14.720 | But the guy who's in the gym all the time and really has the fundamentals down, that's

00:47:23.120 | the guy who benefits from the performance-enhancing drugs, if that's his goal.

00:47:26.800 | And you can do this in the mental space.

00:47:28.320 | You know, I've never taken Adderall, but I've never used nicotine.

00:47:32.560 | I've never taken Adderall.

00:47:33.680 | But I wouldn't be opposed to somebody using those drugs, but they need to be used in

00:47:41.040 | moderation in a specific application.

00:47:43.040 | Or another example would be caffeine, right?

00:47:45.280 | I periodically stop using caffeine because I don't want to be addicted to anything.

00:47:50.800 | And then we get to a point where the caffeine, just the usefulness of caffeine, wears off.

00:47:56.000 | And if you are already doing the good stuff, if you already have good study habits, and

00:48:01.120 | you have good work habits, and you're really making progress on your goals, and then you

00:48:06.880 | want to use a nootropic, you want to use Adderall or some other nootropic or even just straight

00:48:12.960 | caffeine to get you through and to amp you up on just on a big project, to finish up

00:48:20.160 | a great project or get you prepared for an important presentation or something like that,

00:48:25.200 | then great.

00:48:25.680 | That's a good use of a drug.

00:48:27.600 | But it's not a good use of a drug on a standard thing.

00:48:29.920 | If you go to the gas station where you are, I was in Arkansas a couple weeks ago, and

00:48:36.240 | I was filling up my car.

00:48:39.680 | And there was a young redneck dude, probably 20 years old.

00:48:44.640 | And he's coming out of the gas station with three Monster Energy drinks, getting ready

00:48:49.120 | to go and mow lawns all day.

00:48:53.600 | And it's just kind of the classic thing.

00:48:55.120 | It's happening to so many young people is that they're consuming enormous amounts of

00:49:00.400 | caffeine.

00:49:00.960 | And they're doing it because they're not sleeping.

00:49:03.840 | And it's a destructive thing that's ultimately going to lead to long-term problems.

00:49:08.560 | It's not a good performance enhancer.

00:49:11.120 | So any kind of enhancement, even from an investment perspective, I have no problem with people

00:49:17.680 | taking speculating on various investments, trading very aggressively and things like

00:49:24.320 | that.

00:49:24.480 | I think that's all perfectly fine.

00:49:26.160 | But the people who profit the best off of that are those who have all of the basics

00:49:31.600 | covered.

00:49:32.400 | And then they take a portion of their portfolio and they speculate on something that could

00:49:36.800 | really work for them.

00:49:38.240 | People who go after Get Rich Quick scheme don't generally wind up rich themselves.

00:49:42.720 | It's just the sponsor of the scheme who winds up rich.

00:49:45.680 | And I think the other aspect of it is that if you take the easy way, even when it works,

00:49:53.760 | there's two major problems.

00:49:55.600 | You've always had what it takes to make it happen.

00:49:58.960 | And we know the right tools can make it easier.

00:50:01.520 | At Strayer University, we're always thinking about new ways to set you up for success.

00:50:06.560 | That's why we give you a brand new laptop when you enroll in a bachelor's program.

00:50:10.800 | So you can start off on the right foot and keep striving.

00:50:14.080 | Visit strayer.edu to learn more.

00:50:16.560 | Eligibility rules, restrictions and exclusions apply.

00:50:19.600 | Connect with us for details.

00:50:20.960 | Strayer University certified to operate in Virginia by Shell.

00:50:24.000 | When I was in high school, I knew a guy personally who had gotten super rich in the dot-com mania.

00:50:32.880 | And he was a young guy, had built some random company that he had sold for and was involved

00:50:38.560 | in.

00:50:39.040 | And he was in his early 20s driving a Porsche, doing awesome, going on and on about all of

00:50:45.360 | his wealth.

00:50:46.800 | And I watched it.

00:50:47.680 | And a year later, the dude was totally broke back working some just dead end job trying

00:50:53.040 | to pay his bills.

00:50:54.000 | And Porsche was gone and everything was gone.

00:50:55.760 | That was the earliest exposure I had to people making it big really quick.

00:50:59.680 | And I realized the same principle that you can trace with lottery winners, that when

00:51:04.960 | people come into a windfall of any kind, if they haven't grown and they haven't become

00:51:09.760 | capable to handle the windfall, inevitably the windfall disappears because they didn't

00:51:15.040 | become the kind of person who could handle it.

00:51:17.760 | And the way I like to say it is that the most important thing about becoming a millionaire

00:51:22.800 | is becoming a millionaire.

00:51:25.600 | If you, if somebody dies and leaves you a million dollars and you don't think like a

00:51:29.840 | millionaire and you haven't had the hard one experience that comes from earning a million

00:51:33.760 | dollars yourself, there's a pretty decent chance that you won't be a millionaire for

00:51:37.280 | long because you yourself didn't become a millionaire.

00:51:41.040 | That doesn't mean that you can't quickly become a millionaire.

00:51:44.160 | So when I counsel people who come into a big windfall and here's a couple million dollars

00:51:48.880 | that I wasn't expecting, then I think that you can become a millionaire very quickly,

00:51:53.600 | probably a few years, a year, two years, three years.

00:51:57.200 | But you have to become the millionaire and it doesn't happen just because you get these

00:52:02.320 | results.

00:52:03.040 | And I would say the same thing that happens is this guy, some guy starts using steroids

00:52:06.960 | to improve his gym physique and he's doing it after he just spent six months in the gym.

00:52:12.080 | I don't think he's ever going to mentally be as strong as the guy who's been in the

00:52:17.280 | gym for years and built his body the hard way, the slow way, getting slow results.

00:52:23.280 | That guy's going to have a bulletproof psychology and he's going to be confident in who he is

00:52:27.520 | and what he's done.

00:52:28.800 | And then if he adds steroids to that in the future, it's not going to affect him very

00:52:32.240 | much.

00:52:32.720 | But the guy who comes in and he's six weeks in the gym and goes ahead and starts using

00:52:36.000 | steroids, that's going to mess him up psychologically because he knows he'll never know what it's

00:52:40.720 | like to not be fake.

00:52:42.400 | And he'll always be insecure about that.

00:52:46.800 | So that's how I would comment on it, to say that if somebody's in a dire circumstance,

00:52:50.720 | take drugs.

00:52:51.440 | Absolutely take drugs to try to save a life.

00:52:54.000 | There's no problem with that.

00:52:56.160 | But if not in a dire circumstance, there's an enormous productivity to doing something

00:53:00.720 | the hard way because of the confidence that it builds in you.

00:53:05.680 | You know, for not wanting to answer the question, you gave a really good answer to the question.

00:53:10.720 | I appreciate that.

00:53:12.160 | I asked the back half of that question.

00:53:15.440 | Sure, go ahead.

00:53:16.000 | So with your podcast yesterday, I got thinking, I'm within your demographic that you talk

00:53:28.160 | about with your podcast audience, except for I'm single.

00:53:32.320 | I know you have a lot of families listening.

00:53:34.640 | I'm 35.

00:53:35.920 | I'm single.

00:53:36.480 | I'm five foot eight and not, yeah, I have a few extra pounds, but I'm decently average,

00:53:42.400 | pretty decent looking with an above average income and above average savings.

00:53:48.240 | That's except for the family part.

00:53:50.080 | That's your demographic for your audience.

00:53:51.680 | Sure.

00:53:52.000 | One thing you mentioned yesterday is that when you're looking for a partner and you

00:53:57.280 | do want to get married, you should optimize for physical attractiveness.

00:54:03.920 | One thing that when you're in your, when you've been working a while, you have saved.

00:54:10.080 | Yeah, I've been in the gym, but there's various other options that are available

00:54:15.840 | to you when you have money to optimize for physical attractiveness.

00:54:19.680 | There's various lists, hucks, augmentations.

00:54:28.400 | How do you view that and surgeries or things like that in terms of

00:54:33.520 | optimizing yourself for physical attractiveness?

00:54:37.680 | I would give basically the same answer to it, meaning I don't have any particular reason

00:54:45.360 | to say that somebody shouldn't do, somebody shouldn't engage in some form of plastic surgery.

00:54:53.280 | I've recommended it to people.

00:54:55.520 | I have a child whose ears stick out kind of far and I've changed that child's hairstyle

00:55:01.040 | a little bit, but if it is something in the future and you can just get your ears tucked

00:55:06.400 | back and that helps you, then great.

00:55:07.680 | I don't think it's that severe, but just saying that I don't think that's a problem

00:55:12.080 | to engage in plastic surgery or anything that you think could help you.

00:55:17.760 | What I think the problem is exactly what I just described is simply that have you done

00:55:24.000 | the necessary kind of initial work.

00:55:26.720 | So, I do think that you, if you want to marry, I think that it's important that you optimize

00:55:33.120 | attractiveness at every level, but it's important to be aware of what are the basic

00:55:39.520 | things that actually really are fundamental for attractiveness.

00:55:44.400 | So, here would be an example.

00:55:46.160 | The most attractive trait, I think, for men is generally confidence, personal confidence.

00:55:53.360 | You can be a man and your body can look anything.

00:55:56.800 | Your body can be, you know, any shape, any size.

00:55:59.600 | You can have all kinds of wacky things "wrong" with you.

00:56:03.440 | But if you are a confident person and you just express this self-confidence, you're

00:56:09.360 | ambitious, you know where you're going, then that, I think, is probably the fundamental

00:56:16.080 | thing that is the most attractive to women.

00:56:20.320 | So, that's the first thing to focus on.

00:56:23.600 | Then let's say that your ears, let's say you have one ear that sticks out and one

00:56:27.200 | ear that doesn't.

00:56:27.920 | Then the second thing after just like personal confidence would be to come back and say,

00:56:34.640 | "Well, are you in shape?"

00:56:35.680 | You know, if I'm coaching you and I'm saying, "How can you attract a really high-quality

00:56:42.560 | wife?" then I think assessing your fashion and all of those things are really important.

00:56:48.800 | But what's funny about fashion is that if you're in great shape, if you're strong,

00:56:53.280 | if you're muscular, if you're athletic, you can put on any clothes and they all look

00:56:57.360 | good on you.

00:56:58.320 | But if you're fat and lumpy, then you can spend a thousand dollars on some fancy duds

00:57:04.400 | and it just doesn't look very good on you.

00:57:06.480 | And so, trying to optimize for the most important thing is personal confidence, then trying

00:57:11.360 | to get in as much shape as possible.

00:57:13.680 | Then you go and you say, "You know what?

00:57:14.960 | I got this one ear that sticks out and the other ear is not so much and I go and see

00:57:18.240 | a plastic surgeon and see if I can get my ear tucked in."

00:57:20.640 | Sure, fine.

00:57:21.680 | You know, go ahead and get it tucked in.

00:57:23.200 | And that may be something that improves your confidence.

00:57:25.520 | It's not that you have to do one thing or another.

00:57:30.960 | So, let's say you're going to the gym and you're working out and you're counting

00:57:35.520 | your calories and you're counting your macros and making progress, then does that mean that

00:57:40.720 | you can't go ahead and buy new clothes and then feel better because you don't look

00:57:44.480 | like a bum?

00:57:45.040 | No, it doesn't.

00:57:46.240 | You can do all of these things simultaneously and there's no reason not to do them basically

00:57:50.640 | simultaneously.

00:57:52.000 | But don't go down the pathway where you think, "Well, you know what?

00:57:56.080 | I'm 30 pounds overweight and I dress like a slob, but if I just had, you know, I don't

00:58:00.880 | know, a tummy tuck or whatever, that would make a difference."

00:58:03.600 | No, don't do an 80/20 analysis and say, "What are the 20% of things that if those

00:58:10.080 | were right would solve all the difference?"

00:58:12.320 | And in terms of optimizing for attractiveness, everything matters.

00:58:16.640 | The most important thing is building confidence and having and expressing confidence.

00:58:20.960 | And we could talk about how to do that, but that's the fundamental thing.

00:58:25.680 | And then becoming as strong and as athletic as you are capable of being, which also feeds

00:58:31.840 | into confidence.

00:58:32.960 | Those are the 20% of things that give you 80% of the results.

00:58:36.640 | Then you add on the clothes and you add on charisma and you practice, you take some dancing

00:58:41.520 | lessons and you kind of do those other things, then those will all add in and help you to

00:58:47.120 | feel more confident.

00:58:48.080 | But don't think that if you just pay a plastic surgeon to cut off the end of your nose that

00:58:53.520 | somehow that magically changes anything.

00:58:55.760 | That's that would be how I would approach it.

00:58:57.280 | Perfect.

00:59:01.680 | Great.

00:59:02.080 | And thank you for expounding on the question.

00:59:05.600 | I didn't think that those two would lead into each other, but after listening to your podcast,

00:59:10.000 | I thought, well, let's ask that second half of the question to find out.

00:59:13.680 | So thank you.

00:59:14.880 | Yeah, my pleasure.

00:59:16.000 | And I would just say, I mean, obviously I don't know anything about you, your situation.

00:59:18.800 | I would just say that if you do want to get married and in line with kind of the most

00:59:22.800 | recent podcast that I did, you need to, I'll do another podcast.

00:59:27.200 | Probably I'm planning to do another podcast in the coming days where I'll go over this

00:59:32.960 | specific question in a little bit more detail.

00:59:35.040 | But what I want you to know is that it comes down to number one, who you are and do you

00:59:42.320 | have the expression, do you express the characteristics and qualities that are attractive to someone

00:59:51.200 | who you would consider to be an ideal wife?

00:59:53.840 | So you need to have those characteristics and qualities and they need to be expressed.

00:59:58.080 | So that's the first thing.

00:59:59.040 | And then it's just a numbers game.

01:00:00.720 | And so what, because there's two things that can be true.

01:00:04.240 | You can be a guy who's just full of self-confidence and totally jacked and you dress like you're

01:00:10.960 | on the cover of a fashion magazine and everything is great and you have all the money in the

01:00:15.680 | world and all the income and you sit in your house and you don't ever meet women.

01:00:19.920 | Well, it ain't going to work, right?

01:00:21.920 | On the other hand, you could be out there meeting 20 new women a week and none of them

01:00:27.200 | say yes when you ask them on a date.

01:00:28.720 | And now we know, hey, there's something fundamentally wrong with the basic attractiveness you have

01:00:34.880 | or the character that you have and your ability to express it.

01:00:37.680 | So both of those are important.

01:00:39.520 | You want to cultivate the characteristics and traits that are going to express attractiveness

01:00:46.880 | and then calculate how many opportunities you have for that and take a look at that

01:00:52.720 | and then just see which of these needs to be optimized.

01:00:55.520 | Chances are it's probably more on option B than it is on option A, because you probably

01:01:02.880 | are just a normal attractive guy.

01:01:05.920 | But what often happens is that men don't actually set a goal to get married and they don't go

01:01:11.280 | out and they don't go meet women, they don't try, they don't do it, and then they sit around

01:01:15.440 | and wonder why year after year after year they continue to be single.

01:01:18.640 | So just calculate both of those things.

01:01:20.400 | They should be optimized, but there's two sides of the equation.

01:01:24.240 | We go to Mava in Texas.

01:01:25.680 | Mava, welcome to the show.

01:01:26.400 | How can I serve you today?

01:01:27.280 | Hi, Joshua.

01:01:29.440 | Thanks for taking my call.

01:01:30.880 | I'm just interested to follow up on a question I asked last week, given that I put a little

01:01:36.720 | bit more thought into your response and just it helped to verbally express what it is that

01:01:44.560 | I've been thinking about.

01:01:46.240 | So just as a quick summary, kind of a working mom versus full-time mom comparison, and you

01:01:55.360 | expounded on that quantitatively and then also qualitatively.

01:01:59.600 | And I think kind of with the three options you presented, you know, mother being a caregiver,

01:02:08.000 | daycare, or a third option, just kind of with my situation have actively explored and participating

01:02:15.520 | in the third option, which is conducive to like a fully remote role and just kind of

01:02:21.360 | the lifestyle that my family currently has.

01:02:25.520 | But I think what you said that resonated was not to decide now, but put a plan in place

01:02:31.280 | such that being a full-time parent at home and considering home education and similar

01:02:38.800 | kind of lifestyle would be possible.

01:02:42.080 | So I just wanted to kind of explore that avenue further in terms of the plan in place.

01:02:48.320 | And I think from, you know, a financial standpoint, I've consumed enough of a general personal

01:02:55.120 | finance content, including your podcast over the last like seven, eight years that the

01:03:01.600 | financial piece seems fairly understood and straightforward.

01:03:05.760 | But thinking kind of in terms of what are my general, I hesitate to use such a strong

01:03:11.440 | word, but like reservations or what concerns me, what causes me to be afraid about being

01:03:17.680 | just kind of in the home instead of in the workplace kind of comes down to three main

01:03:25.440 | points.

01:03:26.320 | So I'd be interested just to kind of hear your thoughts and how you would go about addressing

01:03:30.960 | these reservations that I have just from your perspective personally, but also just kind

01:03:36.960 | of being part of a homeschool, non-traditional, single income community seeing trends at large.

01:03:46.320 | So my first concern is just kind of around losing intellectual trajectory because it's

01:03:54.480 | kind of stereotypical, but mom, kids at home, just not able to engage in continued growth.

01:04:03.920 | And I really value just kind of engaging with ideas, engaging with other adults to explore

01:04:13.760 | ideas.

01:04:14.320 | And that's really been helpful to have a professional setting to explore that, but just kind of

01:04:18.960 | thinking how to continue that if I was fully at home.

01:04:22.880 | And then the second reservation is just kind of not wanting to land in a scarcity mindset,

01:04:29.760 | because I know just thinking about the five points you have in approach to building wealth

01:04:35.520 | of increased income, decreased expenses, invest, avoid catastrophe, optimize lifestyle.

01:04:40.640 | Like a lot of times the stay-at-home mom, the stay-at-home parent gets really obsessed

01:04:45.520 | with number two, decreasing expenses.

01:04:47.520 | And I would say that I have a decent approach to optimize and know which expenses actually

01:04:56.000 | bring value to my life, but I just don't care for that mentality where you feel as though

01:05:03.760 | you can't make a difference on the top line.

01:05:06.080 | So suddenly your impact for the family gets really invested on line two of just like decreasing

01:05:13.280 | expenses and of course supporting numbers three through five.

01:05:16.560 | But basically just I have concerns about landing in a scarcity mindset kind of like financially

01:05:23.680 | or even just as an outlook as to what I bring or deliver, because I don't want to just get

01:05:36.880 | stuck there.

01:05:37.920 | And then the third reservation would just be kind of, because I tend to be results oriented,

01:05:43.280 | a slight concern about starting to view children or home like as a project to, I don't know,

01:05:50.320 | optimize their education, try these different things with whether it be curriculum or learning

01:05:56.960 | styles or just something that becomes perhaps too intense where suddenly if I'm viewing

01:06:02.640 | too much of children's success like as a metric to be optimized, it becomes kind of oppressive

01:06:10.800 | or there's like a risk of losing relationship because my focus is very solely and squarely

01:06:19.920 | on my children.

01:06:21.360 | So just curious what you would say maybe to each of those reservations or if you kind

01:06:28.160 | of have a broad response.

01:06:30.160 | Appreciate your thoughts.

01:06:31.120 | You're turning into one of my favorite callers.

01:06:32.880 | I hope you'll keep this up because these are such useful and interesting questions and

01:06:37.840 | I really appreciate them.

01:06:41.440 | First, with regard to losing the concern of basically losing intellectual engagement in

01:06:49.920 | terms of if you became a full-time mom, I think this is absolutely something to be cautious

01:06:55.680 | of and be aware of and to be asking the question, but it's relatively easily solved.

01:07:00.720 | It's not going to be relatively easily solved at all times, but it's relatively easily solved

01:07:08.640 | if you have it as a specific goal.

01:07:13.520 | So I have heard lots of full-time mothers complain about this and talk about this and

01:07:19.520 | say, "Well, I just spent all my time, all my day with children and where's my adult

01:07:23.760 | interaction?"

01:07:24.320 | And adult interaction, I think, is necessary.

01:07:28.160 | It's something that is really good for you.

01:07:30.480 | It's good for all of us.

01:07:31.520 | I would say that in many ways, the same exact concern that you have is the same concern

01:07:37.760 | that I have and it's something just simply that relates to being an entrepreneur, being

01:07:42.400 | a solopreneur, somebody who's fairly isolated because I work by myself in my home office.

01:07:48.400 | It's the same basic risk.

01:07:50.400 | Children can be demanding and there will be phases in life in which you really don't

01:07:57.680 | want to see anybody.

01:07:59.120 | And so my wife, when she has a baby, she doesn't want to go anywhere.

01:08:02.480 | She doesn't want to see anybody.

01:08:03.520 | She just wants to be at home and be with her baby and I don't want to go and see anybody.

01:08:08.800 | And so I wouldn't say to you, if you have a baby and you're at home for a month, that

01:08:14.320 | you should expect to go and engage with your intellectual engagement.

01:08:19.200 | So that's what I'm trying to be honest, to say that you're probably going to be isolated

01:08:24.560 | and intellectually stultified at that period of life because your sleep schedule is all

01:08:28.880 | erratic and you're just happy to nest and be at home and not go anywhere, not see anybody,

01:08:33.040 | not do anything.

01:08:33.760 | But that doesn't mean that when you have a six-month-old baby that you have no further

01:08:40.080 | intellectual engagement with the world.

01:08:41.760 | So let's break intellectual engagement into two things.

01:08:44.000 | The first thing is adult contact.

01:08:48.080 | Do you have adult contact with other people?

01:08:50.480 | What I found really remarkable when I left my job was that I basically also left all

01:08:58.560 | my friends that were from that job.

01:09:00.880 | And I think that's normal, but it was surprising to me.

01:09:04.160 | I didn't expect it.

01:09:05.600 | And so the first thing is just to probably squarely look in the eye and say that if I

01:09:11.040 | were to leave my job and be a full-time mom, most of the friends that I have at my job

01:09:16.240 | probably aren't going to continue to be my close friends.

01:09:19.520 | Maybe it's easier for women.

01:09:21.840 | I've observed some of the women in my life that they do have the ability to keep friendships

01:09:27.040 | more, maybe it's easier for women than it is for men, but in general, your reason for

01:09:32.880 | being friends with those specific people is probably your job and your workplace.

01:09:37.200 | And so if the job and the workplace ends, then that ends some of that adult social contact.

01:09:44.240 | But that doesn't mean that you can't bring adult social contact into your life.

01:09:50.880 | How I would look at it would be to say that the time that you spend working at a job can

01:09:57.920 | also be viewed as an impediment to your social contact with adults.

01:10:02.160 | And I think that if you had a vision for this as a mother, even if as a full-time mother,

01:10:08.480 | if you had a vision for your social life, you can pack your schedule as full of social

01:10:14.240 | contact as you want.

01:10:15.920 | The natural and obvious thing that often happens is you wind up building friendships and relationships

01:10:21.440 | with other mothers.

01:10:22.720 | And so very commonly, I see mothers will have a play group.

01:10:26.240 | They go to the park with their friends and everyone goes and sits at the park on Tuesday

01:10:31.760 | morning from nine o'clock to noon.

01:10:33.520 | You go to the latte and play place and you get your latte with your girlfriends and the

01:10:39.760 | kids play on the play place and you enjoy contact that way.

01:10:43.840 | So there's all kinds of opportunities that you have where you wind up interacting with

01:10:48.480 | other moms, moms of young children, because often there's an age banding to that.

01:10:54.320 | Usually you would meet those moms.

01:10:57.120 | They're all at the park probably now.

01:10:58.800 | And so you just don't see them because you're at the office.

01:11:02.240 | So it's not that hard to basically build friendships with people at your local park,

01:11:07.200 | at your local gyms, at your local activities.

01:11:10.240 | A lot of times also a mother will have some kind of group of people that she meets from

01:11:14.640 | her local church.

01:11:15.760 | Even if you don't attend a local church, a lot of churches will have various moms groups

01:11:19.440 | where they'll get together on Wednesday morning at nine o'clock and there'll be lots of other

01:11:22.880 | women.

01:11:23.360 | And those are a great outlet because those other mothers have the same need and desire

01:11:27.200 | you have for adult contact.

01:11:28.880 | In addition, I think that one of the things that I see is often not talked about is basically

01:11:37.600 | the idea of mother or wife as a socialite in our current era.

01:11:43.440 | Now, I don't know how much of this is true.

01:11:45.440 | I'm stereotyping here just as an observation.

01:11:48.080 | So I don't know how much of this is true.

01:11:49.920 | But if you went back and you kind of thought of a stereotypical 1940s housewife, the way

01:11:56.320 | that she's viewed on some TV program or some book that you read, then the 1940s housewife

01:12:04.640 | often had a very, very active social life.

01:12:08.000 | And you'll see things in a movie where Tuesday night, there's a bridge club at her home.

01:12:12.560 | And on Thursday morning, she's down at the ladies charity relief service that she's being

01:12:18.640 | involved in.

01:12:19.600 | And then on Friday night, she and her husband are hosting a cocktail party.

01:12:24.160 | And then on Saturday, they're hosting an event at the local pool.

01:12:27.280 | And you can just kind of expand from there.

01:12:30.320 | But there's a whole element of wives and mothers being responsible for community events and

01:12:37.040 | creating community culture that has been lost because most women are now at their jobs.

01:12:43.680 | And so if you're at your job all day, and that's where you're getting your social contact

01:12:48.240 | from, then it's an unusual woman who wants to host a Tuesday night bridge club or a Friday

01:12:54.960 | night cocktail party.

01:12:56.560 | But if you are an active, energetic mother who wants to be more social, then you have

01:13:02.960 | the opportunity with your time being freed up to engage in more of those activities and

01:13:07.680 | to host more of those things.

01:13:09.680 | And probably once you get your baby to, I don't know, six months old, six months old

01:13:14.480 | are pretty easy because usually by then they've, well, sometimes, as long as they're not sick,

01:13:18.400 | I've had a bunch of sick babies.

01:13:19.440 | So ideally, six month olds can be fairly easy.

01:13:22.640 | They've kind of settled into the world.

01:13:23.840 | They're no longer newborns.

01:13:24.880 | They're strong and they're healthy, but they're not running around everywhere.

01:13:28.240 | Then you can create those points of social contact and you can have time to do them more

01:13:34.960 | than you otherwise have time to do.

01:13:37.920 | And so this is a big benefit.

01:13:40.480 | I see this as a benefit for me as a husband is if my wife had a job and she had to go

01:13:47.600 | to a job every day, she's going to get off at five o'clock, then I don't feel good as

01:13:52.880 | a husband about saying to her, "Hey, let's have three families over on Tuesday night

01:13:58.960 | and let's have a nice meal for them."

01:14:01.280 | But if you don't have a job and you have the afternoon free and the day before and

01:14:05.120 | you can do meal prep and you can be a hostess, then it opens up the opportunity for your

01:14:10.160 | family social life to increase and to be more engaged because you're not tired from working

01:14:14.800 | all the time.

01:14:15.800 | You're not stuck going to work every day.

01:14:17.840 | And I think that you can do a lot of those things and they're depending on your lifestyle.

01:14:22.400 | I mean, I've given the 1940s examples, in today's world, a lot of times, and we'll

01:14:28.960 | get to kind of homeschooling or home education in a moment, but a lot of times, a lot of

01:14:33.040 | moms will have a homeschool co-op and, "Hey, on Thursday afternoon, I'm going to have

01:14:37.040 | the homeschool co-op over and then we're going to have small group for our church.

01:14:41.280 | We're going to host that on Wednesday night."

01:14:43.280 | There's just so many things that could be done if you're interested in socializing

01:14:49.120 | with other adults.

01:14:50.400 | There are lots and lots of things that could be done by you when you have time that opens

01:14:55.200 | up and is freed up for you.

01:14:57.600 | But most, again, I'm stereotyping, but it just seems to me because most women today

01:15:03.480 | have jobs, they don't have the time or the energy to engage in hosting people in their

01:15:10.320 | homes, nor do they have the time and energy to engage in the charity functions, all the

01:15:17.920 | community things that were once done by many women as far as building the base in the community.

01:15:26.160 | So let me just go to community things as well.

01:15:30.320 | Impact or intellectual engagement doesn't have to only come from paid work.

01:15:37.320 | I'm skeptical.

01:15:38.320 | I mean, you might have a really intellectually engaging job, but most of us, our jobs become

01:15:43.640 | somewhat repetitive over time.

01:15:46.240 | I think that in many cases, you would have opportunity for you to build more intellectual

01:15:53.360 | engagement with something that you care about if you have more time.

01:15:58.360 | This is why people are often pursuing early retirement and financial independence.

01:16:03.080 | They have these things they want to do if they have more time.

01:16:05.480 | Well, if your husband was able to earn the income that your family needed, and you then

01:16:11.640 | had your time freed up, you've achieved an expression of financial independence.

01:16:17.920 | No, you're not together living on the income from your investments.

01:16:22.600 | But I'll tell you a secret, he's probably happier having a job to go to, and you probably

01:16:28.040 | are happier having your time now.

01:16:30.360 | And you can then go ahead and engage in those intellectual engagements.

01:16:34.120 | And so, I used to go to all these charity meetings and political clubs and socialite

01:16:38.680 | things all around Palm Beach, and I did it because I was prospecting for clients in my

01:16:43.600 | financial planning business.

01:16:45.400 | And women are the cornerstone of those things.

01:16:47.640 | Women are the activists of local organizations.

01:16:51.200 | And what's cool about those kinds of opportunities, let's say that you have an issue that you're

01:16:55.680 | really passionate about, and you become a local activist for that issue, and you're

01:16:59.720 | hosting clubs and events, and maybe you're hosting breakfasts for a political candidate,

01:17:04.160 | or I don't know, whatever it is that you're doing, and you're really involved in those

01:17:07.880 | things, you'll get more actual socializing and actual intellectual engagement from those

01:17:12.280 | pursuits than you ever get with your current dozen co-workers that you interact with in

01:17:17.600 | the context of your profession.

01:17:19.640 | But probably right now, you're not doing very much of that, because the job is an impediment

01:17:24.760 | to that kind of socializing.

01:17:26.800 | In addition, if you really want to have intellectual engagement, I think that, and here I'm switching,

01:17:33.420 | to be clear, from social engagement, of socializing with other adults, to intellectual engagement.

01:17:38.680 | If you want to have intellectual engagement, then I think that being a full-time mom is

01:17:44.680 | a really great way to do that.

01:17:47.040 | Some of my favorite writers that I enjoy reading are full-time moms.

01:17:52.560 | They're also academics and engaged in writing, but there's a good synergy between their family

01:18:00.280 | life and their intellectual pursuits.

01:18:03.160 | And so I see this with professionals who are writing books, there are people who write

01:18:08.160 | influential blogs, or write and publish essays frequently, there are people who are doing

01:18:13.840 | original research, I know a lot of women who do activism of various kinds, and they're

01:18:19.160 | engaging in activism, and it's all around their children's schedules.

01:18:23.960 | Because that kind of work, and that kind of intellectual engagement can clearly be done

01:18:28.820 | with children involved, it just doesn't require them to go to an office outside the house

01:18:34.560 | for eight hours a day, and be there eight hours a day, every single day.

01:18:38.720 | And so intellectually, you can have all kinds of intellectual engagement, and you can have

01:18:42.160 | all kinds of professional engagement around children.

01:18:46.160 | Now I would just give one caution to say that I have found it very hard to see how, I don't

01:18:54.880 | know how moms run a business and take care of their children full-time.

01:19:01.560 | I've tried this, I've tested this with my children, maybe if it's one or two children,

01:19:07.440 | maybe you can do it more easily, you can certainly do it more easily when you enroll your children

01:19:11.520 | in school, if you enroll your children in school when they're older, but the caution

01:19:14.960 | I would give is that don't expect to be running a business as a mom and think that you're

01:19:19.200 | going to be able to do six hours of productive work, because the way that the work changes,

01:19:24.920 | I don't think that being a mom is the hardest job in the world.

01:19:28.120 | And I think that it's wrong for us to say that.

01:19:30.680 | It's not the hardest job in the world.

01:19:33.800 | What it is, however, is it's difficult because it is a continual, constant job.

01:19:41.120 | And so, because you're responsible throughout the day, then you can't put together, right

01:19:49.320 | now I can go to my office and I can sit down in my office and I can spend eight hours alone

01:19:52.840 | and I can just get in the flow and the zone and just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

01:19:56.360 | When I'm with children, I can get 15 minutes here, I can get 20 minutes there, I can get

01:19:59.920 | an hour at naptime, but I can't get like five hours put together just because I told my

01:20:05.200 | children, okay, I'm going to go and work now.

01:20:07.680 | And I think that's what's demanding about being a mom, is that you're on all the time

01:20:11.040 | and you're continually, you don't get that like focused mental time.

01:20:16.520 | But if you can come up with activities that fit into that life and work, okay, I'm going

01:20:20.720 | to read an hour here on this subject, I'm going to browse, I'm going to do a few minutes

01:20:24.880 | of my Twitter feed here, 15 minutes here, I'm going to answer some emails there.

01:20:29.340 | You can insert this work into your workday.

01:20:32.840 | Now, in addition to that, I think that if you were interested or became interested in

01:20:36.960 | home education, that I think a lot of home educators, I myself included, find that one

01:20:44.040 | of the most interesting things about having children is that you can fix your own educational

01:20:50.480 | deficits in your homeschooling.

01:20:53.160 | Because now you get the chance to go through and teach them all the stuff and you get to

01:20:56.540 | learn a lot of stuff alongside them.

01:20:58.960 | And I see this, my wife talks about this, about all the stuff that she's learned homeschooling

01:21:03.180 | our children.

01:21:04.180 | I see this with all the stuff that I've learned about homeschooling our children.

01:21:07.060 | You can go through and you can read things alongside your children, you can learn things,

01:21:10.620 | you can find new applications.

01:21:12.260 | And I find home education to be very intellectually rewarding, especially if you're doing it in

01:21:17.220 | a serious manner and you're shooting for a high level education.

01:21:21.360 | And so even if I don't think the right model is to think that you, the model of home education

01:21:25.660 | that I think is incorrect is to think that somehow you have to teach your children all

01:21:29.460 | the stuff, you don't.

01:21:30.980 | Your job is to be a facilitator, but you can read along with them, you can read to them,

01:21:35.820 | you can be looking through their books.

01:21:36.820 | And if you choose a really challenging curriculum for your children's home education, you'll

01:21:40.860 | learn more from that curriculum than you ever did from your own schooling back in the day.

01:21:47.500 | So it is important to plan for losing social contact with other adults, but that can be

01:21:52.740 | planned with actually proactively going for it.

01:21:58.020 | And intellectual engagement is just a choice.

01:22:01.300 | Either you disengage and you just become the person who's not engaged or you keep intellectual

01:22:06.260 | engagement as part of your life and your lifestyle.

01:22:08.940 | And I think that it's perfectly possible to be very socially connected with other adults

01:22:13.880 | and highly intellectually stimulated, even if you were a full-time mom.

01:22:17.980 | I'll pause there.

01:22:18.980 | What are your thoughts on that, on my answer to your first question?

01:22:21.860 | Yeah, I think that was a helpful overview.

01:22:27.580 | You basically were outlining points about looking to history, for example, there's no

01:22:32.660 | need to reinvent and that maybe even my skew or thought about a stereotype of losing adult

01:22:40.340 | contact is kind of exposed to because I am occupied during business hours and not aware

01:22:51.220 | of what else is happening.

01:22:52.220 | So I think exploring those avenues, thinking about it intentionally, exploring it before

01:22:56.380 | necessarily committing, deciding or exiting the workforce is a good avenue to kind of

01:23:05.180 | just kind of remove some of the concerns I have.

01:23:10.180 | And so those are good avenues to explore, appreciate those thoughts.

01:23:14.700 | Good.

01:23:15.700 | What you have right now is financial freedom because you have a high income.

01:23:21.300 | What you don't have right now is time freedom.

01:23:24.460 | If you did choose to become a full-time mother, you would give up a measure of your financial

01:23:29.220 | freedom of the excess income, the extra disposable income that you're earning from your salary.

01:23:35.340 | But what you would gain would be time freedom and time control.

01:23:39.020 | So I want to be honest to say you don't get total time freedom because now you're caring

01:23:42.820 | for a child.

01:23:44.300 | And so that structures your life in a certain way.

01:23:47.840 | But you do have full control over how you use your time.

01:23:52.460 | And children can be easily integrated into life.

01:23:55.980 | And so you could, if you're the kind of person, if you're the kind of woman who is motivated

01:23:59.860 | to be socially connected to others, you can have a much more active social life than you

01:24:08.860 | have right now as you engage in it and as you build your skills.

01:24:16.060 | And so the reason I say skills is that as a parent, you do acquire some different skills.

01:24:23.220 | So I take my children out to eat all the time.

01:24:25.580 | You've got a baby.

01:24:26.580 | I've got a 15-month-old baby.

01:24:28.220 | There are many times where I need to sit the baby next to me, sit the baby on my lap, and

01:24:31.540 | I have to carry on a conversation while listening to four other children and just making sure

01:24:34.780 | that everything is okay.

01:24:36.300 | That's a skill that you develop.

01:24:37.300 | And then before you have children, I always, when I'm with single people, I'm like, listen,

01:24:41.780 | you've got my full attention.

01:24:43.300 | Just because I'm looking and listening to four other people doesn't mean my attention's

01:24:46.020 | not on you.

01:24:47.220 | And so you'll observe that you'll build those skills naturally.

01:24:50.180 | They'll be acquired.

01:24:51.180 | But you can have a very, very active social life if you want it.

01:24:54.940 | And you can, and I would also say that you can do this really beautifully as you build

01:25:00.460 | a network.

01:25:01.460 | Let's pretend that you couldn't pay a babysitter, but you still wanted to engage in an active

01:25:06.280 | social life.

01:25:07.280 | Well, when you have time freedom, you can have a thing where on Tuesday morning, every

01:25:11.540 | other Tuesday morning, I've got my girlfriend who lives across town who's got a two-year-old

01:25:15.260 | and I've got a baby.

01:25:16.620 | She's going to come over here and bring her baby one Tuesday morning, and the next Tuesday

01:25:20.160 | morning I'm going to swap with her, and that's going to be my morning where I go to my favorite

01:25:23.740 | Pilates class and have a latte by myself at Starbucks on my way home.

01:25:28.380 | She's going to take care of my baby for two or three hours while I go and do that.

01:25:31.580 | And there's one thing.

01:25:32.580 | Oh, by the way, let's just go ahead and visit for an hour or two after I get back, after

01:25:36.620 | each of us gets back, and we'll swap that out every other Tuesday.

01:25:39.540 | On Wednesday, I'm going to have my mom come over and take care of the children at lunchtime.

01:25:44.380 | Just be here for an hour or two, feed them lunch and play with them while I go and have

01:25:49.380 | lunch with my former coworkers every Wednesday.

01:25:52.060 | And then on Thursday night, we're going to invite people over from church, or that's

01:25:56.820 | going to be our hosting night.

01:25:57.980 | So every Thursday night, there's going to be someone coming over.

01:26:00.660 | And my point is that you can do this if you have the motivation and the vision for it.

01:26:05.900 | You can do it without spending money on it, and you can have access to childcare, and

01:26:11.660 | you can have access to social contact.

01:26:15.460 | It's totally doable if you have the vision for it and the desire for it.

01:26:20.080 | The reason I keep emphasizing if you have the desire for it is that some moms, they

01:26:23.560 | just do well in a kind of an isolated environment.

01:26:27.940 | And they find that they're so focused on, you know, I'm doing all my homeschooling,

01:26:31.380 | I don't want to go and socialize all the time.

01:26:33.700 | And so not all women do this, but it's not because they couldn't, it's often because

01:26:37.780 | they don't want to at this particular phase in life.

01:26:40.800 | Moving on to the second question you asked, of not wanting to land in financial scarcity.

01:26:46.160 | Two things occur to me.

01:26:47.880 | Number one, I don't know about the nature of your husband's income.

01:26:54.220 | And I don't particularly want to ask, I just want to say that one of the things that many

01:26:59.940 | men find is that when they don't have to think about managing two careers, the opportunities

01:27:10.540 | that they have are much bigger.

01:27:13.900 | I can't guarantee it, because if your husband just has a straight up job, and okay, he has

01:27:17.740 | a job, and he's not going to change, and he's going to get cost of living raises, and he's

01:27:23.820 | not super aggressive about building his income, or anything like that, fine.

01:27:28.740 | But I think in general, if you put a dual income, two people together, and you contrast

01:27:36.340 | that with a motivated man whose wife is a full-time mother, I think the motivated man

01:27:42.420 | will often, can often wind up earning much more money, because of his freedom to go after

01:27:49.500 | bigger opportunities.

01:27:51.420 | So let's say that he was offered a promotion.

01:27:54.340 | Well, if you've got a job, and you live in Dallas, and he lives in Dallas, and he's offered

01:27:59.500 | a promotion to move to Washington D.C., if you have a dual income couple, then you've

01:28:05.060 | got to negotiate that between two jobs, and it becomes a real tussle.

01:28:09.100 | What about my career?

01:28:10.100 | What about my job?

01:28:11.100 | What am I going to do in Washington D.C.?

01:28:13.380 | If you have one job, then it just comes down to, is this the right move for our family,

01:28:17.860 | for our social contact, for our children?

01:28:20.620 | And if you want to pick up and move to Washington D.C., you pick up and move to Washington D.C.

01:28:25.020 | In addition to that, especially if you have children, the problem that dual income families

01:28:29.340 | face with children, is they're always trying to split all of the parental duties right

01:28:33.980 | up the middle to keep it fair and equitable.

01:28:36.300 | And so, okay, you pick up the children from daycare on Monday, and you've got to be there

01:28:39.740 | at 5.05 to pick them up, otherwise we get charged extra if we're late.

01:28:43.700 | And I'll pick them up on Tuesday, and you pick them up on Wednesday.

01:28:46.700 | And so, your husband's at the office on Monday afternoon, and there's a big meeting and a

01:28:53.060 | big client opportunity, and someone says, "Hey, why don't you come to dinner with us?

01:28:56.820 | I'm meeting so-and-so big shot."

01:28:58.140 | "Oh, no, I can't, because I've got to go and pick up the baby from daycare.

01:29:02.100 | And I can't do that, because then my wife will be mad at me, because this was her night

01:29:04.560 | that I'm supposed to go pick up the baby from daycare."

01:29:06.900 | There's an enormous pressure.

01:29:08.220 | Now, I don't want husbands to ignore their wives or be not present or anything like that.

01:29:16.380 | There are times in a man's career, however, where if he has the mental freedom to pour

01:29:21.780 | on the work during a period of time, because he knows that his wife and his children are

01:29:27.740 | taken care of, then he can make much bigger moves and get much farther ahead in his career

01:29:33.460 | quicker.

01:29:34.780 | I'm not convinced that it's just an automatic given that we'll always have lower income

01:29:41.980 | because a mom becomes a stay-at-home mom.

01:29:44.300 | I think in some cases, and I don't want to say many, because I can't prove many, but

01:29:48.140 | I'll just say some.

01:29:49.740 | In some cases, being freed up as a man to really go after your career without having

01:29:56.100 | to try to simultaneously negotiate with your wife around her career and negotiate about

01:30:00.980 | who's going to take care of the children, and I've got to go on this business trip and

01:30:03.780 | all these other things.

01:30:04.820 | It allows you to make potentially bigger moves and to go farther faster.

01:30:09.920 | If you look at the most successful businessmen in America, it's very unusual to find them

01:30:15.860 | being a dual income family.

01:30:18.460 | It's very common that the most financially successful men will have a full-time wife

01:30:25.540 | so that they know my children are well cared for, my wife is well cared for, and I can

01:30:30.020 | focus on the money and I can make a lot more of it because of my freedom.

01:30:35.540 | I view this as an enormous benefit for me as a husband and as a man.

01:30:40.620 | I view the fact that my wife doesn't have a job as an enormous asset rather than a financial

01:30:47.780 | liability because it frees me up to be able to travel if I need to, to be able to go after

01:30:53.220 | opportunities, to work early and late when I need to, to take spur-of-the-moment meetings.

01:30:57.580 | I would not make as much money as I do if we were both earning an income and then trying

01:31:03.340 | to negotiate our parental responsibilities evenly down the middle to try to handle things.

01:31:11.380 | One thought on finances is that you may wind up, in the fullness of time, if your husband

01:31:17.180 | has a career that offers him where there's opportunity, and if he's making, if I remember

01:31:21.540 | he's right, a couple hundred thousand dollars, there's clearly opportunity, you may wind

01:31:25.140 | up four years from now having a much higher household income than you do today because

01:31:30.360 | he has additional flexibility.

01:31:32.380 | I can't guarantee it, but I would say it's a strong possibility.

01:31:36.520 | On the flip side also is that you are, depending on your professional training and your interests,

01:31:43.400 | I think that you can massively contribute to your family's finances in ways that go

01:31:50.500 | far beyond clipping coupons and cutting costs, especially if you hone your skills or have

01:31:57.440 | any interest in doing things like managing your family's investments.

01:32:02.140 | One of the great problems that dual-income couples face is generally, both of them are

01:32:07.060 | always focused on their jobs and always focused on their careers and they just got to make

01:32:10.940 | more money, make more money.

01:32:12.700 | And so because of the cost of working, generally expenses are higher than they otherwise need

01:32:19.460 | to be, and generally there's very little time available for focusing on investments and

01:32:24.020 | finding good investments.

01:32:26.060 | In the beginning that's okay, but as your family accumulates capital, it becomes much

01:32:29.700 | more important that you manage the capital effectively to make good investments than

01:32:34.860 | that you make more money.

01:32:37.660 | And so looking at your $120,000 income, you have an income amount that is being reduced

01:32:45.180 | by taxes, you could probably save some money by running your family's budget efficiently

01:32:50.060 | because you have time to take over the finances of the management of the budget and make sure

01:32:54.820 | that we've got all the best packages and all of our expenses are as low as possible.

01:32:59.340 | But if you also focus on developing interest and expertise in investment management and

01:33:04.500 | you manage your family's investments, you can contribute to your family in an enormous

01:33:09.980 | amount.

01:33:11.420 | The most common way I see this is if a husband has a business and his wife does real estate,

01:33:18.100 | that's a very, very common thing.

01:33:19.780 | A lot of times she'll get a real estate license and because she may sell a couple of houses

01:33:24.660 | a year just from personal contacts, especially if she's very social, you can take the baby

01:33:28.620 | with you to a lot of stuff, you can work the work around some of the other things.

01:33:32.160 | But more importantly, if you become the one who's finding the real estate, finding the

01:33:36.060 | deals, managing the tenants, managing the contractors, managing the investments, you

01:33:41.100 | can get really great performance out of an investment portfolio.

01:33:44.660 | If you're interested in other avenues of investing and you become Ms. Crypto or Ms. Airdrop

01:33:51.260 | or Ms. whatever, gold coin collector, whatever it is, you can start to develop and exercise

01:33:59.200 | knowledge in ways that you can't right now.

01:34:02.540 | And so I think that if you're interested in the family's overall financial well-being,

01:34:08.260 | that you can contribute enormously even if you're not generating income.

01:34:11.900 | And what I love about this is and then that's to say nothing finally, that's to say nothing

01:34:16.540 | of you having a business of your own as well that you manage.

01:34:21.380 | And so I really get annoyed if I am counseling a couple where they're a dual income couple

01:34:28.580 | with both of them earning W2 income.

01:34:31.020 | That is the least efficient way to build wealth in the United States.

01:34:34.380 | You're highly taxed.

01:34:35.820 | You have no time freedom and the lack of time freedom means you can't find inefficiencies

01:34:45.020 | in investment markets, whatever markets you're interested in to exercise.

01:34:48.940 | My favorite is to have one high income because that gives you stability of income that can

01:34:56.060 | be useful for borrowing ability just for stable financial management.

01:35:00.220 | And then to have you be the one who manages the contractors of the rehab, the flip house

01:35:05.220 | that you guys are working on and finds the next deal and builds a little business that

01:35:11.180 | you know we have a build a little very tax friendly business that gives you guys the

01:35:15.460 | ability to sink to have a whole bunch of deductions for things that you enjoy doing anyways.

01:35:20.700 | So there's a lot of opportunities that go much beyond cost cutting that if you're motivated

01:35:24.940 | to pursue, you could pursue that would enhance your family's financial standing.

01:35:28.500 | Appreciate your thoughts.

01:35:29.500 | Yeah.

01:35:30.500 | Just to kind of think of what works with lifestyle and vision, I guess it kind of comes back

01:35:42.860 | to vision.

01:35:43.860 | That's kind of the theme.

01:35:46.140 | Kind of have some idea of what I might be interested in and actively explore it to kind

01:35:52.580 | of address some of these concerns that I have.

01:35:56.860 | Thanks for sharing those thoughts.

01:35:58.420 | Yeah.

01:35:59.420 | My pleasure.

01:36:00.420 | Now to number three.

01:36:01.420 | You said, "Okay.

01:36:02.420 | Well, I don't want to be this like hyper focused.

01:36:03.420 | I'm going to use the term tiger mom who's just all obsessed with how my child is doing

01:36:08.660 | and you need to do just a little bit better and we need to raise your IQ just a little

01:36:12.780 | better and blah, blah, blah."

01:36:14.700 | I would say that my answer to this is just the fact that you're concerned about that

01:36:19.140 | means you're not going to be that.

01:36:22.180 | On the contrary, I think it's much more important that you be the kind of really engaged mother

01:36:26.840 | that your children ultimately will need.

01:36:29.740 | You've probably listened to my series on how to invest in your child.

01:36:33.300 | I think that ... Now, I don't know.

01:36:36.780 | Time will tell because some psychologists just basically say, "None of it matters.

01:36:41.740 | It's all innate characteristics and blah, blah, blah.

01:36:44.020 | Here's all the evidence that parental input really doesn't make any difference.

01:36:47.500 | How you're born is how you're born."

01:36:49.420 | I don't really believe it, although I'm sensitive to their data and I don't believe it.

01:36:53.820 | I think you can make an enormous difference in your child's long-term outcomes.

01:36:57.880 | That's why I really want moms to be engaged.

01:37:03.400 | I want you to feel like you do have a mission.

01:37:05.480 | I want you to be on a mission for your children and I want you to engage in that fully.

01:37:12.040 | I think that there is enormous evidence on basically everywhere you look of the power

01:37:18.480 | that you as a mother have in the long-term outcomes that your children experience.

01:37:24.240 | Everything from the bonding that you have with a baby and the importance of breastfeeding

01:37:27.760 | in your baby's long-term outcomes and just the engagement and the play and the character

01:37:32.440 | formation and the vocabulary formation and the intellectual ability that you can instill

01:37:36.440 | and everything.

01:37:37.440 | It just goes on and on and on of the things that can be done.

01:37:41.920 | I would say that could you be too obsessed with the outcomes that your children are having?

01:37:50.080 | Yeah, you probably could.

01:37:51.700 | I would say that probably the best solution to that is have three babies.

01:37:55.840 | Because if you have one and it's all about my one little precious and you're just hyper-focused

01:38:00.960 | on that one baby, then you could probably smother your one baby.

01:38:04.480 | If you have three children, then you're probably not going to smother the one because you're

01:38:08.040 | too busy managing three.

01:38:10.960 | You can still make enormous progress.

01:38:13.460 | But on every single metric, an involved parent, we don't know where the limits of human capacity

01:38:20.920 | are.

01:38:21.920 | So, I have proved and am proving this in my experiments.

01:38:27.080 | I'm probably more obsessed with this than you could ever be and testing this and trying

01:38:31.760 | that and doing this and let's see what this outcome could be.

01:38:35.680 | But on basically every level, if you care about your child's physical formation, you

01:38:41.080 | can have the healthiest athlete in the world.

01:38:43.360 | If you care about your child's academic performation, he can finish a master's degree by the time

01:38:48.080 | he's 19 years old.

01:38:49.560 | If you care about your child's social life, he can have friends on every continent.

01:38:56.080 | There's no limit to what's available.

01:38:58.880 | And I think that your children are enormously privileged when you can create that kind of

01:39:04.480 | environment for them and you can be their coach.

01:39:07.640 | You can be the person who's digging into the research and who's doing it.

01:39:11.080 | And I think we need more of that.

01:39:13.240 | And so, if you become hyper obsessed with it, my only comment would be create an outlet

01:39:17.120 | for it.

01:39:18.120 | So, I'll read your mom blog.

01:39:19.400 | I love mom blogs.

01:39:20.400 | I'll read everything that you're doing and I'll try to learn from them and try to apply

01:39:24.080 | them.

01:39:25.080 | But our children are our future and I believe personally that motherhood specifically, fatherhood

01:39:33.240 | also, I believe that motherhood is a noble calling and that you can accomplish that the

01:39:40.720 | world needs your children.

01:39:44.360 | And I mean that on a physical sense, that the world needs your babies.

01:39:49.480 | And I mean that on the sense that the world needs your children and the world needs you

01:39:54.480 | to be engaged with them and productive so that they become pillars of society.

01:40:01.240 | Our children are the asset that we most need.

01:40:04.720 | And you know, I stole that line from my mom because she used to have a lot of children

01:40:11.680 | and people would make nasty comments to her that anybody with big families always hears.

01:40:18.480 | And her answer, which is remarkable because she's a very humble woman and usually not

01:40:22.780 | this snarky, but I don't know how many times she actually said it, but she said, you know,

01:40:26.720 | the answer I finally settled on is just simply the world needs my children.

01:40:30.840 | And I'm talking to you right now because of my mother and the work that she did for me.

01:40:38.760 | And she is enormously responsible for who I am.

01:40:45.120 | She's not a perfect mother, but I'm grateful for her labor in my life.

01:40:49.600 | And to the extent that I have the opportunity to be here speaking to you at the moment,

01:40:54.320 | I owe an enormous portion of that to my mother and I honor her for my life.

01:41:02.480 | And the idea to me that somehow, this is why I don't like to tell women that they shouldn't

01:41:07.360 | have jobs.

01:41:08.360 | I don't feel like that's my place.

01:41:09.920 | That's up to them and their husbands to work it out.

01:41:13.000 | But I do want to really solidly, solidly represent the fact that not all important work is measured

01:41:19.540 | in dollars.

01:41:20.940 | If my mom needed money, there's not a limit to how much I would give her.

01:41:25.200 | If my mom were in need, there's no limit to that.

01:41:29.320 | And I look at my mom at 80 years old with her six children and her 16 grandchildren.

01:41:36.360 | And as far as I can tell, she has an enormous reward for her years and years of labor.

01:41:45.700 | And it seems to me much more satisfying for her to have the joy of that than if she had

01:41:57.680 | earned whatever she would have earned through her working lifetime.

01:42:01.160 | My mom did take a job.

01:42:04.320 | So when my parents were younger, my dad was in the Navy.

01:42:08.060 | He was gone for six months at a time.

01:42:10.600 | And so she didn't have an income at that point in time.

01:42:13.200 | She was trained.

01:42:14.200 | She had a training and certification.

01:42:15.600 | She has a college degree.

01:42:16.600 | She was a trained teacher.

01:42:17.960 | And then they had children.

01:42:19.160 | My parents were missionaries abroad and they had children.

01:42:22.080 | And she was raising with small children.

01:42:23.560 | And there was a point in time at which they decided they didn't want to continue homeschooling.

01:42:28.720 | And so she took a job at the local private Christian school in order to get the tuition

01:42:33.680 | reduction for my family.

01:42:35.820 | She worked that job while all of us worked our way through.

01:42:38.200 | And then after they didn't need the tuition reduction anymore, then she came back and

01:42:43.320 | was a full-time wife and mother again.

01:42:46.320 | And that was the time that she had a job.

01:42:49.040 | My point, what I'm saying is that, so it's not that I don't think that you can't have

01:42:53.040 | a job.

01:42:54.040 | And you're having a job may be strategically useful and helpful and important.

01:42:57.880 | But the impact that you can have at your job can be measured in one dimension.

01:43:05.040 | The impact that you can have as a mother can be measured in a different dimension.

01:43:09.960 | And if you did become very results-oriented and focused on your children as a project,

01:43:15.040 | I don't see that as a bad thing.

01:43:17.340 | And if you're too weird about it, then someone will correct you and you'll recognize, "Hey,

01:43:22.800 | I don't want to be that weird."

01:43:24.640 | On the contrary, I think that work is really important.

01:43:28.640 | And it's to be honored.

01:43:31.000 | I honor you if that's the path that you go down.

01:43:34.240 | And your children will honor you if that's the path that you go down, as I honor my mother.

01:43:39.920 | And I think that this is the best way I can express what I want to say on it, is that

01:43:46.600 | our society has broadly settled on financial earnings as the basic metric of value in life.

01:43:57.840 | And our society has broadly brainwashed our daughters and young women into unidimensionally

01:44:07.360 | calculating their value based upon their income.

01:44:11.760 | And I wish to push against that and say that income for any person, man or a woman, is

01:44:18.960 | a very thin measure of value, and that we have lost something enormously important in

01:44:25.360 | our society.

01:44:26.960 | We've lost babies, as the show that I released yesterday shows.

01:44:30.520 | We've lost babies, and our society, our population around the world is collapsing.

01:44:35.320 | We've lost social integration, social cohesion.

01:44:39.760 | We've lost all of the important work that women once did of engaging in their communities

01:44:44.800 | and solving problems.

01:44:46.360 | Women, traditionally speaking, even today you see it in voting rates and in activism

01:44:51.920 | in organizations, but women are the ones who get things done in their communities.

01:44:57.320 | And our communities are hollowed out because many of our women are sitting in a cubicle

01:45:05.200 | making their boss rich instead of making their community better.

01:45:10.160 | And so our communities suffer for it, and our families are suffering for it.

01:45:14.340 | And so I think that if you and your husband, between you guys, if you go down that path,

01:45:21.080 | it's something that is worthy of honor and respect, and you can feel proud of your work.

01:45:27.060 | And while you don't have the same metric as making more money than your girlfriend, I

01:45:32.760 | think that if you imagine yourself at 80 years old able to reflect back on your life and

01:45:39.720 | see your children happy, healthy, married with children of their own, you see your grandchildren,

01:45:45.180 | you look at your community where you have impacted this issue, that issue that's important

01:45:49.280 | to you, you've engaged with people, you see the people's lives, even just in terms of

01:45:53.000 | personal ministry towards people.

01:45:56.320 | There are people all around you that are hurting, who are hungry, literally hungry, who are

01:46:00.920 | hurting, who are homeless.

01:46:02.440 | And I've watched my mother pour out her life taking care of people her entire life.

01:46:08.920 | And at the recent family camp that I hosted, I brought my parents to that.

01:46:18.640 | And in the context of kind of our closing event, my dad was sharing a story.

01:46:23.640 | And throughout my lifetime, I watched my parent host at least, I don't know, I would say 30,

01:46:30.680 | but maybe that's too many, more than 20, certainly more than 20 people who I've watched my mother

01:46:36.560 | care for in various capacities throughout her lifetime.

01:46:41.720 | And so the point is to measure your life not exclusively with financial income, but to

01:46:47.080 | measure it more broadly and then make whatever choices seem appropriate for your family at

01:46:51.600 | this point in time.

01:46:52.880 | So that would be my closing remarks.

01:46:57.440 | Thank you for the questions.

01:46:58.440 | I appreciate it.

01:47:00.200 | That wraps up today's Friday Q and A show.

01:47:02.160 | If you would like to join me on next week's call, you can do that by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

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2024-04-26_Friday_QA