2024-05-24_Friday

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.500 | Is your California dream feeling more and more distant?

00:00:06.460 | You've got countless apps and influencers

00:00:09.260 | telling you how to do it their way.

00:00:11.380 | And your expert aunt who might be giving

00:00:14.640 | a bit too much advice.

00:00:16.560 | Tips, hacks, and experts are everywhere these days.

00:00:21.580 | But when it comes to real estate,

00:00:23.380 | the question to ask is, who's your realtor?

00:00:27.180 | Because a California realtor is the only person

00:00:30.200 | who can bring your dream home.

00:00:32.580 | Someone who gets that buying a home

00:00:34.540 | is one of the most complicated and stressful things

00:00:37.300 | you can do, but can still make it possible on your budget.

00:00:40.780 | A California realtor can read the constantly shifting market

00:00:44.820 | and they're out in front for all of the tough stuff.

00:00:47.460 | So you can get to the good stuff.

00:00:50.140 | So who's your realtor?

00:00:51.780 | Because no one cares more about helping Californians

00:00:55.300 | live the California dream than California realtors.

00:00:59.160 | - Today on Radical Personal Finance is live Q&A.

00:01:03.280 | (upbeat music)

00:01:05.860 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:01:20.500 | a show dedicated to providing you with knowledge,

00:01:22.180 | skills, insights, and encouragement

00:01:23.860 | that you need to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:01:26.540 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:01:27.900 | in 10 years or less.

00:01:29.260 | My name is Joshua Sheets.

00:01:30.100 | I'm your host.

00:01:30.920 | Today is Friday, May 24, 2024.

00:01:35.060 | Always fun when we get those dates.

00:01:36.620 | And on this Friday, as we do on every Friday,

00:01:38.740 | in which I can arrange a microphone and a camera

00:01:41.020 | and all that good stuff, we do live Q&A.

00:01:43.920 | (upbeat music)

00:01:51.580 | Live Q&A works just like call and talk radio used to,

00:01:53.980 | or at least probably still does.

00:01:55.060 | You call in talking about anything that you want.

00:01:57.460 | You can gain access to one of these Friday Q&A shows

00:01:59.700 | by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

00:02:02.380 | Sign up to support the show on Patreon

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00:02:06.860 | and that will gain access for you

00:02:08.180 | to one of these Friday Q&A shows.

00:02:10.460 | This is probably your cheapest way to talk directly with me,

00:02:12.840 | as long as you don't mind my using your questions,

00:02:16.220 | your comments, your feedback, your controversies,

00:02:18.860 | whatever you have to talk about as content for the show,

00:02:21.460 | then that's fine.

00:02:22.420 | You can do that, again, by becoming a patron.

00:02:24.620 | Remember right now, as I record this on May 24,

00:02:27.060 | the consulting calendar is open,

00:02:29.380 | and I'm running a sale on it.

00:02:30.380 | So if you would like to book a consulting call with me,

00:02:32.980 | do that by going to radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult,

00:02:37.100 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult.

00:02:39.660 | That will gain access to you to my consulting calendar.

00:02:42.380 | Sign up now, as it'll be this next two weeks

00:02:45.220 | where those calls are available

00:02:46.740 | before I have some summertime travel.

00:02:48.700 | So I hope that you will sign up.

00:02:49.940 | We begin today with John in Florida.

00:02:51.780 | John, welcome to the show.

00:02:53.020 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:02:54.580 | - Hey, Joshua, and happy Memorial Day weekend to you.

00:02:58.020 | - And to you.

00:02:58.860 | - Thank you.

00:03:01.060 | So I have a good question here.

00:03:03.900 | I recently retired from the military,

00:03:06.820 | and now with my military pension

00:03:10.160 | and the new career that I have,

00:03:11.940 | my wife and I have found ourselves in a situation

00:03:15.700 | that we're unfamiliar with.

00:03:16.740 | We have a lot of extra margin in our budget,

00:03:21.740 | and I'm just trying to be smart with it.

00:03:24.700 | We've been enjoying it for the last couple of months,

00:03:28.220 | catching up on spending that we'd held off.

00:03:31.140 | But now that we've done that and everything,

00:03:34.860 | how can I be smarter with this surplus

00:03:38.700 | versus just finding ways to spend it every month?

00:03:41.420 | - Sure.

00:03:42.260 | How old are you currently?

00:03:43.420 | - I am 40.

00:03:45.460 | - 40 years old.

00:03:46.300 | And you said you started a new career

00:03:48.100 | in addition to your pension payment, is that right?

00:03:50.940 | - Correct, yes.

00:03:51.820 | - And how much are you earning at the new career?

00:03:55.020 | - The salary is just under 100K, like 97,000.

00:03:59.420 | - And then how much is your pension?

00:04:01.220 | - 84,000, with the vast majority of it being tax-free.

00:04:08.700 | - Great.

00:04:10.380 | Does your wife also generate income?

00:04:12.040 | - She does.

00:04:14.100 | She's a real estate agent,

00:04:15.460 | so it's hit or miss,

00:04:17.140 | but we probably can plan on her bringing in

00:04:19.900 | an extra 20 to 40 a year, I would think.

00:04:24.180 | - And about how much do you guys usually spend

00:04:26.500 | prior to this time of recent increases

00:04:29.860 | to kind of make up for lost time?

00:04:31.980 | About normally, what do you think your budget normally is?

00:04:34.820 | - We normally were spending between 7,000 and 8,000 a month.

00:04:42.620 | We now have like 15,000 a month available.

00:04:47.620 | - Do you have children?

00:04:49.220 | - Two young children, yes.

00:04:52.020 | - Okay.

00:04:53.580 | And about how much is your current net worth

00:04:56.340 | in terms of savings and investments?

00:04:58.140 | - We're just under 600,000, like 570.

00:05:03.780 | - Okay.

00:05:05.620 | What are the options that you're considering choosing among

00:05:08.660 | in terms of what do you think you wanna spend the money on?

00:05:12.660 | - Well, I mean, we would like to purchase a new house

00:05:17.660 | and retain our current one as adding,

00:05:22.300 | we currently have a rental property.

00:05:24.220 | We would like to make our current house a rental

00:05:27.180 | and get a new one.

00:05:28.100 | But with interest rates right now,

00:05:30.780 | that's becoming quite a challenge.

00:05:32.260 | So our short-term goal is pocketing some savings

00:05:36.060 | to add our down payment.

00:05:38.660 | - Okay.

00:05:39.580 | Do you think you ever wanna retire fully?

00:05:41.980 | - Fully, yeah.

00:05:44.180 | I think that's probably a ways off, but yeah.

00:05:48.780 | - Why would you want to retire fully?

00:05:50.620 | - Well, I think with my pension,

00:05:55.820 | I would have the ability to,

00:05:58.340 | it at least would provide the flexibility

00:06:01.980 | and cover the life necessities.

00:06:04.620 | Anything above and beyond that would,

00:06:06.980 | I would need to earn something

00:06:09.180 | to cover non-necessity fund money.

00:06:12.220 | But I don't think I wanna work behind a computer

00:06:16.140 | for the rest of my life.

00:06:17.980 | - Why not?

00:06:18.820 | - There's gotta be more to life than just in an office,

00:06:23.860 | but I don't know.

00:06:25.060 | I had a six month period between leaving the military

00:06:27.820 | and starting this career

00:06:28.820 | where I spent most of my time at home.

00:06:30.540 | And I do think I maybe squandered it a little bit

00:06:32.380 | and didn't fully take advantage of it.

00:06:34.900 | But I did enjoy being home

00:06:36.780 | and having the extra time with my young children.

00:06:39.220 | - How old are your children currently?

00:06:42.620 | - Three and seven.

00:06:45.140 | - Okay.

00:06:45.980 | Do you tell me about your vision

00:06:47.540 | for the kind of father you'd like to be,

00:06:49.180 | the kind of family you'd like to raise your children in?

00:06:51.860 | - I wanna be able to continue

00:06:59.020 | being a positive influence and role in their lives,

00:07:01.620 | showing up in their lives,

00:07:02.700 | influence and role in their lives,

00:07:04.100 | showing up to their major milestones,

00:07:06.060 | setting some core values.

00:07:10.060 | The values have been instilled in me to be successful.

00:07:16.580 | I feel like I'm successful.

00:07:18.260 | And then my youngest is special needs.

00:07:23.020 | So her needs are still a little,

00:07:25.660 | we're gonna figure out as she gets older

00:07:28.340 | what her limitations will be.

00:07:30.620 | But just, I need to think about that some more,

00:07:35.620 | I think, being put on the spot a little bit.

00:07:38.940 | - Sure, sure.

00:07:39.780 | Well, I won't keep probing, although ordinarily I would.

00:07:45.300 | I want you to think about some of these questions,

00:07:47.540 | and I'm gonna give you some more as we talk.

00:07:51.260 | But let me give you a few different layers to think about

00:07:54.740 | in terms of the money.

00:07:55.580 | First, in terms of your financial situation,

00:07:57.740 | you have a great net worth.

00:07:59.340 | You have more money coming in right now

00:08:01.780 | than you're spending.

00:08:03.140 | And thankfully, a significant amount of your income

00:08:05.960 | is guaranteed for life.

00:08:07.660 | This is a wonderful combination

00:08:09.900 | because it gives you a strong stability

00:08:14.540 | underneath your financial situation.

00:08:16.580 | Having a military pension is fantastic.

00:08:19.100 | To be 40 years old, have a military pension

00:08:21.580 | of $84,000 a year is amazing

00:08:26.180 | because now if you got sick, if you got hurt,

00:08:28.660 | if you didn't wanna work,

00:08:30.060 | you could just retire on that for the rest of your life.

00:08:32.660 | It would be less of a lifestyle

00:08:33.780 | than you're currently accustomed to,

00:08:35.540 | but you could do it, and that's an option for you.

00:08:39.300 | So it's a wonderful job that you've done

00:08:41.740 | to put yourself in this situation.

00:08:43.820 | Because of the military pension,

00:08:45.540 | there's a lot less pressure

00:08:47.220 | on other aspects of your finances.

00:08:50.780 | It doesn't mean you won't still want to save money,

00:08:53.460 | but there's less pressure

00:08:54.700 | on other aspects of your finances.

00:08:56.920 | So you have a lot of choices.

00:08:58.860 | And so let's talk through some of those choices

00:09:00.860 | and think of some ways to consider

00:09:03.060 | what might work out for you.

00:09:04.860 | First, you can simply consume the money.

00:09:07.740 | There is no one that I have ever met

00:09:10.440 | who in the fullness of time

00:09:13.660 | can't figure out ways to spend excess money

00:09:17.620 | just because it's there.

00:09:18.820 | Going from seven or $8,000 a month

00:09:22.180 | to $15,000 a month of expenses

00:09:25.980 | might seem like a lot today,

00:09:28.360 | but if you get used to it for the next three or four years

00:09:30.920 | instead of just three or four months,

00:09:32.740 | then pretty quickly that'll be your standard,

00:09:35.220 | and it'll be very easy to suck it up.

00:09:37.780 | Some of these expenses will be related to your children.

00:09:40.660 | At three and at seven,

00:09:42.780 | there haven't been that many things

00:09:44.780 | that you really could or want to spend money on

00:09:47.700 | with regard to your children

00:09:48.740 | that would suck up all this extra money.

00:09:50.860 | But in the coming years,

00:09:52.060 | there'll be many, many things

00:09:53.440 | that you could spend the money on.

00:09:55.020 | Children can be a bottomless pit for money.

00:09:57.980 | Everything from private school tuition

00:10:00.080 | that can easily suck up 20 or $30,000 per year

00:10:02.980 | for each of them,

00:10:04.100 | all kinds of extracurricular things,

00:10:06.020 | life enrichment things, personalized coaching,

00:10:08.300 | classes, all kinds of consumption.

00:10:10.120 | I mean, I could blow your entire budget

00:10:12.540 | just in consumption for your children.

00:10:14.460 | And it'll all feel great

00:10:15.780 | because it's all investing in your kids.

00:10:17.860 | It'll make you feel good 'cause it's not just about us.

00:10:20.740 | Then you get to the whole layer of family experiences.

00:10:23.460 | And so there's a whole long list of things

00:10:25.420 | that you could buy, a new house, and a new truck,

00:10:27.520 | and a new ski boat, and a new RV.

00:10:29.340 | And you can spend all this money

00:10:31.220 | just in terms of facilitating family experiences.

00:10:33.900 | And again, this is great stuff.

00:10:35.180 | This is all really useful things

00:10:39.060 | that would genuinely enhance your family experiences.

00:10:42.740 | Those are options.

00:10:44.360 | So there's plenty of ways to consume it

00:10:47.180 | even without seeming frivolous.

00:10:49.500 | It doesn't seem frivolous

00:10:50.620 | to enroll your child into an expensive school.

00:10:52.660 | It seems like a good thing to do,

00:10:54.660 | and yet it will quickly suck up your money.

00:10:56.460 | And I would encourage you

00:10:57.380 | that those are all options for you.

00:10:59.460 | In addition, then of course,

00:11:01.060 | remember that you really should be spending money

00:11:04.020 | on any therapy or additional support

00:11:07.200 | that would help your younger child to flourish.

00:11:10.100 | One of the things that often happens

00:11:12.380 | is people who have some form of handicap

00:11:14.860 | or a special need, however we label it,

00:11:17.220 | in many cases with a determined father

00:11:19.300 | who is going to war for that child

00:11:21.900 | and who has the money to spend on treatments,

00:11:24.360 | a lot of conditions can be fully changed

00:11:27.060 | just based upon the determination of a parent.

00:11:29.180 | Not all, I'm not being foolish with what I say,

00:11:31.300 | and I don't know anything about

00:11:32.540 | the particular features of your child.

00:11:35.460 | Just simply saying that a lot of times

00:11:37.660 | things can be changed with determination and with money.

00:11:40.980 | And you probably have both of those things.

00:11:43.620 | So there are lots of things there.

00:11:45.600 | What I would say is there are a few areas though

00:11:48.740 | that will probably feel better in the fullness of time

00:11:52.420 | than just purely wandering into it and consuming it,

00:11:55.580 | even if you can justify the consumption.

00:11:57.860 | Number one, you should consider having more children

00:12:00.700 | if you're able to or if you want to.

00:12:02.580 | Having more children is something

00:12:03.900 | that frequently people don't do

00:12:05.820 | because they don't feel like they can afford it.

00:12:08.300 | Well, if you feel like you can afford it

00:12:09.880 | and you have a little extra money,

00:12:11.420 | I've never yet met, they're probably out there,

00:12:14.380 | but I haven't yet met anybody

00:12:16.740 | who has regretted having more children.

00:12:19.060 | I have met many people who have regretted

00:12:20.980 | not having more children.

00:12:22.460 | And so since you have a little bit of financial wiggle room,

00:12:25.940 | it should be a relatively straightforward thing

00:12:27.900 | if you and your wife don't want to have more children

00:12:29.660 | to have more children.

00:12:30.940 | And then of course that comes with

00:12:32.380 | an associated increase in costs.

00:12:34.660 | But having more children and trading some of the finances

00:12:38.520 | for more love in your life over the long term

00:12:40.620 | and a bigger opportunity to impact the world

00:12:42.660 | through the work with your children

00:12:44.260 | is probably going to pay off big time.

00:12:46.460 | Number two, you should consider very, very carefully

00:12:49.280 | and very deeply the kind of lifestyle

00:12:52.000 | that you want your children to have,

00:12:54.020 | the kinds of things that you want them to actually do.

00:12:57.860 | If you have a vision that is different

00:13:02.360 | than the normal mainstream

00:13:05.140 | of what you're trying to accomplish

00:13:07.100 | in raising your children,

00:13:09.160 | you might find that really being focused on that,

00:13:12.980 | either with the extra money or with the flip side

00:13:16.460 | of earning just a little bit less money

00:13:18.660 | so that you earn what covers your income needs

00:13:22.700 | so that you can be free to invest into your children

00:13:25.820 | in whatever ways are appropriate,

00:13:27.900 | I doubt that's a decision that you'll regret.

00:13:30.820 | That's one of the things that I have purpose to do

00:13:33.060 | is that I have purpose to say that I like to make money,

00:13:37.000 | making money is great, I want to make a lot of money.

00:13:40.080 | But I can make a lot of money at any point in my life.

00:13:43.200 | I'm firmly persuaded that high levels

00:13:46.760 | of involvement with my children

00:13:48.800 | and high levels of investment of time

00:13:51.280 | and also money in my children at a young age

00:13:54.120 | is probably when the money pays off the most.

00:13:57.320 | And so you can invest into them

00:13:59.200 | with time and dedication and focus

00:14:02.120 | and it'll pay off enormously in the long run.

00:14:04.840 | As an example of this,

00:14:07.240 | and I see this a lot of times with military guys,

00:14:09.180 | there's this ex-military guy that I like.

00:14:12.000 | I don't think he publishes anymore,

00:14:15.320 | but he has this YouTube channel called Analytical Survival,

00:14:18.680 | something like that.

00:14:19.500 | I found him years and years ago.

00:14:22.200 | And he has this super interesting

00:14:27.200 | survivalist prepping YouTube channel

00:14:30.720 | where he's super hardcore about all these

00:14:33.720 | hyper great organization with all of his projects.

00:14:37.260 | But then he started to turn his prepping channel

00:14:40.400 | into a homeschooling channel.

00:14:42.000 | And he has a son, as best I could figure out

00:14:44.920 | from years ago when I used to watch him.

00:14:46.160 | He has a son and he brought the same intensity

00:14:49.000 | that he brought to all of his prepping endeavors

00:14:51.160 | and to his military organization into homeschooling his son.

00:14:54.360 | And he's clearly an amazingly dedicated homeschool dad.

00:14:57.440 | And his son is light years ahead.

00:15:00.940 | And if to the academics and experiences

00:15:04.480 | that you want your children to have,

00:15:06.360 | they don't usually require much money,

00:15:08.360 | but they require some time.

00:15:10.080 | And it's not that difficult for you

00:15:11.720 | if you take an interest in it as a father

00:15:13.800 | to make certain that your children

00:15:15.120 | are two or three or four grade levels ahead of their peers,

00:15:18.520 | purely based upon the interest,

00:15:20.040 | purely based upon your being there.

00:15:21.920 | And the best time to do that stuff

00:15:23.780 | is when they're young in the elementary years.

00:15:26.080 | I think there are very good reasons,

00:15:27.760 | very compelling reasons to have children enrolled

00:15:30.760 | in traditional mainstream structures of school

00:15:34.540 | as they reach their middle school years

00:15:36.360 | and their high school years.

00:15:38.120 | But there are very few reasons that I can find

00:15:41.320 | why that's a good decision in the elementary school years

00:15:44.320 | for those who have an alternative choice.

00:15:46.480 | And if you do have time flexibility

00:15:49.760 | and you have financial flexibility,

00:15:51.340 | you can bring in all kinds of fascinating lifestyle choices.

00:15:55.180 | I'm not saying what's appropriate for you.

00:15:56.640 | I'm trying to lay out a menu of things

00:15:58.080 | that I find interesting and motivating.

00:16:00.580 | And so if you've got, let's say, three years from now,

00:16:03.800 | you've got a 10-year-old and a four-year-old

00:16:05.200 | or 11-year-old and a five-year-old, whatever winds up.

00:16:07.240 | I get the split, 11 and six is perfect.

00:16:09.800 | And you load up in a pickup truck and a pickup truck camper

00:16:14.800 | and you spend a year or two wandering

00:16:17.120 | from Canada to Mexico with your children,

00:16:19.720 | you're going to have a closeness of relationship

00:16:23.080 | that is basically impossible to have

00:16:25.600 | in the modern mainstream American lifestyle.

00:16:28.200 | And it can be facilitated based upon your work flexibility,

00:16:31.840 | the fact that you can, over the next four years,

00:16:35.320 | you can buy one or two more houses

00:16:36.900 | that are going to be rental houses.

00:16:38.120 | And then you plan and you work at your job right now

00:16:40.680 | over the next three or four years.

00:16:42.180 | But then you plan a three or four year sabbatical

00:16:44.840 | and time off and really build that relationship

00:16:47.280 | with your children when they're at a wonderful age

00:16:49.280 | to benefit from travel, benefit from world schooling.

00:16:52.840 | And you've got the financial structure in place

00:16:56.140 | to facilitate your doing that.

00:16:59.800 | And you come back richer than when you left,

00:17:02.040 | but it's all built upon the vision of what you want to do

00:17:05.920 | mixed with the base that's provided by your pension

00:17:09.880 | and then being smart with the extra money.

00:17:12.320 | If you have a short or medium term goal like that,

00:17:15.940 | then it will bring into focus what you should do

00:17:18.680 | with this extra money.

00:17:20.280 | So as I used in that example,

00:17:22.800 | if you know that I'm going to take three years off

00:17:25.560 | when my eldest is 10 years old or 11 years old,

00:17:29.120 | four years from now,

00:17:30.440 | then my plan is I'm going to take four years off

00:17:32.600 | and we may not use all of it world schooling,

00:17:34.600 | but we'll spend a year or two in the United States

00:17:36.920 | and North America.

00:17:38.200 | Then we'll go to Europe for a year.

00:17:40.080 | Then we'll go to Asia for a year.

00:17:41.340 | Then we'll come back and we'll enroll the children

00:17:43.440 | in high school in the United States.

00:17:45.040 | That's a perfectly reasonable plan.

00:17:47.040 | But it would give you a focus then

00:17:48.360 | as to what you should invest in.

00:17:49.920 | And so now you're going to get more serious and say,

00:17:52.440 | all right, I'm not going to buy the forever house

00:17:54.420 | because the children are still young

00:17:55.920 | and I'm going to set up and I'm going to buy the big house

00:17:58.640 | when we get back and enroll them in high school,

00:18:00.760 | but I'm going to go ahead

00:18:01.600 | and pick up a couple of more rental properties.

00:18:03.600 | And that's going to be my focus.

00:18:05.200 | So over the next four years,

00:18:06.400 | my goal is to buy two more cash flowing rental properties.

00:18:09.200 | And what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy them

00:18:10.520 | as quickly as possible now that I have the excess money

00:18:14.260 | that can be spent on these mortgage payments

00:18:16.160 | so that I have this set aside.

00:18:18.180 | So the goal brings into focus what I should do to achieve it.

00:18:22.700 | Now, the other pathway that we can go down,

00:18:24.640 | let's assume that nothing of what I've said so far

00:18:27.180 | is relevant.

00:18:28.420 | So then we just flip to long-term impact

00:18:30.860 | and long-term investing.

00:18:32.480 | There is absolutely nothing wrong

00:18:35.080 | with just taking this money and tossing it aside,

00:18:38.000 | all the extra money, tossing it aside every month

00:18:40.080 | in an index fund.

00:18:40.920 | - We're Raiders.

00:18:41.740 | - We're neighbors.

00:18:42.680 | - We're trailblazers.

00:18:44.000 | - We're at the top of our game.

00:18:45.600 | - And we're more than the strip.

00:18:47.160 | - We're beyond your wildest expectations.

00:18:49.280 | - We're headfirst into the currents of change.

00:18:51.400 | - We love a good challenge.

00:18:52.760 | - A better cost of living

00:18:54.040 | and an incredible retirement plan

00:18:55.640 | as a teacher in Las Vegas

00:18:57.120 | by the Clark County School District.

00:18:58.880 | We are Vegas.

00:19:00.360 | We are CCSD.

00:19:02.040 | Start your adventure at teach.ccsd.net.

00:19:05.440 | We are CCSD.

00:19:07.120 | Start your adventure at teach.ccsd.net.

00:19:11.280 | - And your net worth will grow so fast if you do that.

00:19:16.320 | And if you do that systematically,

00:19:18.320 | you'll have millions of extra dollars a few years from now,

00:19:21.960 | more than a few, I'm being a little bit excessive there.

00:19:24.200 | In a decade from now, you'll have so much extra money

00:19:26.560 | that you're not currently planning on,

00:19:28.360 | and it'll move you to a totally different state.

00:19:30.720 | And again, your children are likely to form

00:19:32.960 | a significant part of your vision.

00:19:34.760 | So now you can be thinking about,

00:19:36.280 | I wanna get a couple of houses, one house for each child.

00:19:39.280 | I'm gonna make sure that the children are really set aside

00:19:41.840 | so that they're financially taken care of

00:19:43.680 | so they can have freedom, they won't go into debt,

00:19:45.880 | I'll pay for their college, all those kinds of things.

00:19:48.240 | Or just general wealth building.

00:19:50.460 | And so there's nothing wrong with just saving the money,

00:19:54.240 | and your future self will be much more glad that you did it

00:19:58.000 | and that you eased into consumption more slowly

00:20:01.520 | and more strategically

00:20:02.560 | instead of just sucking up all the money.

00:20:04.680 | Finally, what I would say is,

00:20:06.320 | you should be really focused on making certain

00:20:09.120 | that your career is optimized

00:20:10.840 | not only for financial production,

00:20:13.000 | but also for meaning and long-term impact in the world.

00:20:16.240 | One of the traps that people fall into mentally

00:20:18.760 | when they need money is they always chase the thing

00:20:21.880 | that provides them with the most short-term financial gain.

00:20:25.760 | And that's a reasonable thing.

00:20:26.840 | If you've got bills, you've got children,

00:20:28.640 | you need the money, you want the money,

00:20:30.080 | and so you choose the job or the career

00:20:32.160 | that gives you the most direct path to money.

00:20:34.920 | When you get a little margin in your life

00:20:37.480 | and you don't need money quite so urgently,

00:20:40.000 | which is the situation that you're in,

00:20:42.080 | then you can think about it on multiple levels of analysis.

00:20:45.520 | And you can look at your job and your career

00:20:48.200 | from the perspective of long-term impact

00:20:51.480 | or meaning in some personal way that's appropriate for you.

00:20:55.080 | This can be done in a financial perspective.

00:20:57.080 | So very frequently, I'll work with somebody

00:20:59.120 | who once you've gotten the wolf away from the door

00:21:01.800 | a little bit financially,

00:21:03.120 | you know, guy's piled up two or $3 million,

00:21:05.680 | and he's on track, everything is good,

00:21:09.440 | then he can pull back and he can say,

00:21:11.440 | "All right, I'm not chasing now any additive projects.

00:21:15.440 | "I'm not gonna chase a project

00:21:17.560 | "to add another million or $2 million.

00:21:20.200 | "I'm gonna chase a genuine multiplier project.

00:21:23.640 | "So I'm gonna go for an opportunity,

00:21:25.320 | "build a business that's a longer shot,

00:21:27.840 | "but has a bigger long-term outcome.

00:21:30.680 | "I'm gonna try to go from $2 million of net worth

00:21:32.800 | "to $20 million of net worth for the next five or six years,

00:21:35.800 | "knowing that it might not work.

00:21:38.600 | "I might still be stuck six years from now

00:21:41.000 | "with a $2 million net worth,

00:21:42.760 | "but that's more motivating than the idea

00:21:45.000 | "of just staying in the normal course

00:21:47.520 | "and just focusing on going from $2 to $3.5 million."

00:21:51.920 | And then the flip side is,

00:21:53.880 | it's not always measured in money,

00:21:55.280 | but sometimes it's measured in impact.

00:21:57.400 | You analyze your life and you analyze the things

00:21:59.600 | that you're engaged in, that you care about,

00:22:01.160 | and you say, "If I could really make an impact,

00:22:04.640 | "imagine myself 10 years from now,

00:22:06.160 | "20 years from now, 30 years from now.

00:22:08.320 | "If I could really move the needle

00:22:10.040 | "for this cause that I care about,

00:22:12.240 | "this position that's really important to me,

00:22:14.600 | "this need in society that I really wanna change,

00:22:17.480 | "this problem that's staring us in the face,

00:22:19.880 | "if I could really move the needle in that direction

00:22:22.800 | "and I could invest the next 20 years of my life

00:22:25.160 | "into changing that,

00:22:26.760 | "even if I didn't make a lot of money at it,

00:22:29.440 | "it would really be satisfying to me

00:22:31.480 | "to know the difference that I made in the world

00:22:33.720 | "because of that."

00:22:34.720 | And so you pursue something that has

00:22:36.880 | an extraordinarily high potential return of impact

00:22:39.840 | or change in the world,

00:22:41.240 | even if it returns a little bit less money.

00:22:43.880 | So there are, of course, many other pathways

00:22:46.360 | that we could go down,

00:22:47.560 | but that's kind of just a menu of ideas.

00:22:49.920 | And if you think about that menu of ideas

00:22:53.160 | and something resonates with you,

00:22:54.640 | or over the coming months you find a goal

00:22:57.320 | that resonates with you,

00:22:58.760 | then having a clear goal will bring into clarity

00:23:02.200 | what you should do with your money.

00:23:04.120 | There aren't really any wrong things

00:23:06.040 | that you could choose to do with the money.

00:23:07.720 | You could consume it, you could invest it,

00:23:09.640 | you could do any number of things,

00:23:11.440 | and they're all fine based upon your goals.

00:23:14.280 | And so if you don't yet know what to do

00:23:17.160 | with the extra money, which is the question you called,

00:23:20.560 | what I would encourage you

00:23:21.840 | is just set the money aside for now.

00:23:24.320 | Set a specific budget for your family

00:23:27.840 | that's something like what your current expenses are.

00:23:31.760 | You don't need to tighten the screws, do everything,

00:23:33.880 | but don't also allow in a bunch of inflationary spending.

00:23:36.680 | Just set the budget at a reasonable number

00:23:38.920 | for where it is right now,

00:23:40.040 | and set aside all the excess money

00:23:41.680 | into a savings account for now.

00:23:43.880 | And then spend a lot of time getting as clear as possible

00:23:47.520 | on what your goals are.

00:23:49.280 | Spend time with your wife.

00:23:50.640 | What are her goals?

00:23:51.480 | You may be able to fund something

00:23:53.120 | that she's always dreamed of.

00:23:54.360 | She may not have always dreamed of being a real estate agent,

00:23:57.720 | but she may have always dreamed

00:23:58.760 | of impacting the world in some other way.

00:24:01.160 | And so when your goals are clear,

00:24:03.720 | then the specific financial plan

00:24:05.440 | of what you should invest in will also be clear.

00:24:09.080 | - Wow.

00:24:09.920 | I like a little bit of all three scenarios you discussed there.

00:24:15.880 | I need to re-listen to this and sit down with my wife

00:24:21.280 | and go over some of it,

00:24:22.800 | because I definitely think that doing something

00:24:27.800 | that might not make a lot of money

00:24:30.040 | definitely falls in line to getting involved

00:24:32.840 | in doing something with my daughter.

00:24:35.240 | And then I like the idea of taking a sabbatical.

00:24:38.480 | And you brought up some really good points, Joshua.

00:24:42.240 | Thank you.

00:24:43.080 | - Good, my pleasure.

00:24:43.920 | Yeah, spend time talking with her, spend time dreaming.

00:24:47.000 | And by the way, you can do all of these.

00:24:49.720 | Recognize, and this is probably difficult

00:24:51.960 | if you just got out of the military.

00:24:53.680 | My experience working with guys in the military is,

00:24:56.640 | it's very difficult to know what you want to do,

00:25:00.040 | because you made a decision 20 years ago

00:25:03.240 | that you weren't gonna think about what you wanted to do,

00:25:05.360 | because you were gonna live your life under orders.

00:25:07.880 | And in a way, what you're experiencing,

00:25:11.280 | having retired recently from the service,

00:25:15.040 | what you're experiencing is kind of what a lot of

00:25:16.960 | high school and college students experience.

00:25:19.360 | And I'm touching on this because I want people to hear it

00:25:22.360 | both from a high school and college perspective,

00:25:24.240 | as well as from your specific perspective.

00:25:27.120 | One of the things I think is a real harm

00:25:29.600 | in the way that we teach children

00:25:32.280 | is we prescribe their high school career to them,

00:25:35.560 | and in some cases, their college career.

00:25:37.600 | But we prescribe their high school career so tightly

00:25:41.160 | that it's unusual for a high school student

00:25:43.920 | to have any time or bandwidth to explore

00:25:47.600 | what he himself is actually interested in.

00:25:50.800 | So then he gets to age 18,

00:25:52.640 | and people say, "What are you gonna do?"

00:25:53.720 | And he's at a loss because he's not accustomed

00:25:56.920 | to looking into the future.

00:25:58.360 | He's not accustomed to looking into himself

00:26:01.120 | and looking at the world.

00:26:02.320 | He's not even aware, really,

00:26:03.680 | of the options that are out there.

00:26:05.280 | He's not thinking about what he could do,

00:26:07.840 | and it takes a long time for him to figure that out.

00:26:10.800 | And a lot of times, this explains some of the challenges

00:26:13.520 | that people go through of going to college and flunking out

00:26:16.160 | and then going back and changing majors five times.

00:26:19.560 | If a high school student has not had any experience,

00:26:23.520 | and he hasn't had years of people asking him

00:26:26.400 | what he wants to do, and he hasn't exercised agency

00:26:29.640 | in actually pursuing the things that he wants to do,

00:26:32.280 | how is he supposed to have the skills

00:26:33.720 | to be able to say, "This is what I wanna do,"

00:26:35.760 | and go after it?

00:26:37.080 | So I think we need to take this into account

00:26:39.360 | in how we train teenagers

00:26:41.480 | so that teenagers have much more agency and autonomy

00:26:44.320 | from an early age so they build the skill,

00:26:47.040 | the muscle, the ability to actually know what they want

00:26:51.080 | and then have experience of going after it.

00:26:53.960 | Now, if you joined the military

00:26:55.920 | when you were a very young man,

00:26:57.600 | you haven't asked,

00:26:59.400 | other than, "Do I wanna stay in or get out?"

00:27:01.200 | You haven't been asked,

00:27:02.680 | "What do you want to do for 40 years now?"

00:27:06.280 | And so your what-do-I-wanna-do skills

00:27:09.000 | and your muscles in that department

00:27:11.200 | are much weaker than someone else

00:27:13.000 | who was unschooled as a child

00:27:14.800 | and has decades of experience

00:27:16.560 | of just doing the things that he wants to do.

00:27:18.540 | So part of the process of getting out of the military

00:27:21.880 | involves you spending time strengthening those muscles.

00:27:25.400 | That cannot be done in a week or a month or even a year.

00:27:28.800 | It's gonna be a multi-year process.

00:27:31.200 | But you can do all of those things.

00:27:34.040 | You could, and I would suggest to you

00:27:36.520 | that from knowing what I know about people

00:27:38.760 | and goal planning and the kinds of things

00:27:40.600 | that resonate with people,

00:27:42.200 | I would encourage you to take something

00:27:43.600 | like a three-year time horizon on your current job

00:27:46.640 | and not go beyond three years.

00:27:48.740 | Because if you, for the next three years,

00:27:50.880 | work at this job, have all this extra money,

00:27:53.720 | you focus on using it to really enhance

00:27:56.160 | your financial situation.

00:27:58.000 | Maybe we'll have a real estate crash.

00:28:01.300 | Wouldn't that be great?

00:28:02.140 | In the next year or two.

00:28:03.080 | And you could buy a couple of more rentals

00:28:04.800 | or whatever works out.

00:28:06.240 | And then at that point in time, your eldest would be 10.

00:28:09.640 | 10 is an amazing age to go traveling.

00:28:12.540 | If you go traveling now at seven and four,

00:28:16.520 | or seven and three, your children will not,

00:28:19.920 | your youngest will not remember any of it.

00:28:22.160 | But if you go traveling in a few years

00:28:24.080 | and you've got a 10-year-old,

00:28:25.460 | he or she will really engage with that.

00:28:27.600 | And then as your children start to grow,

00:28:30.200 | you've got plenty of time.

00:28:32.180 | You know, imagine yourself with teens

00:28:36.000 | and your teens are in school every day

00:28:37.720 | and you've got money, you've got time.

00:28:40.140 | Well, you can go ahead and put in 20, 30, 40 years

00:28:42.980 | at a career that you're really engaged with, with outcomes.

00:28:46.100 | You and your wife may build a business together.

00:28:48.060 | You may have a dream project of some kind.

00:28:51.040 | The world's totally available to you

00:28:54.600 | and you have built the good foundation

00:28:57.000 | to make this kind of planning easier

00:28:59.440 | than for most other people.

00:29:00.680 | So congratulations.

00:29:02.100 | Just recognize that there's a good chance

00:29:03.880 | that your here's what I want muscles

00:29:07.680 | are probably a lot more atrophied

00:29:09.720 | because of the career choice that you previously made.

00:29:12.040 | And it's gonna take you a few years

00:29:13.500 | to whip those muscles into shape.

00:29:16.880 | - That was spot on, you know, everyone was asking

00:29:21.360 | when I was leaving the military, what I wanted to do.

00:29:23.360 | And, you know, my answer was when I was 18 year old,

00:29:26.280 | John wanted to join the Navy.

00:29:28.280 | He never gave any thought at all

00:29:29.680 | to what 40 year old John would do after the Navy.

00:29:32.060 | - Exactly.

00:29:32.900 | - That was spot on and that's great advice

00:29:34.840 | to pass on to, you know, high schoolers

00:29:37.920 | that are considering the military as an option.

00:29:40.000 | - Yeah, great.

00:29:40.960 | I think it works well.

00:29:41.840 | I think it's a good option.

00:29:43.520 | Meaning that it can pay off as it's paying off for you.

00:29:45.900 | It's just a different choice.

00:29:47.380 | So the financial rules for you to follow is number one,

00:29:51.100 | don't go into debt.

00:29:52.320 | So do not go into debt for anything.

00:29:54.800 | If you, and let me just describe.

00:29:56.800 | You could buy a house.

00:29:57.840 | If you buy a house, make certain that the mortgage on it

00:30:00.320 | is a low enough amount that you could fire sale the house

00:30:02.920 | in a few weeks, pay off the mortgage and be free of it.

00:30:05.720 | Beyond that, don't pile up payments of any kind.

00:30:08.400 | So do not go into debt.

00:30:10.280 | As long as you don't go into debt,

00:30:12.480 | then financially you can't really screw this up.

00:30:15.500 | So you just need to live on what you're making.

00:30:17.520 | And if you're making the higher amount with the job

00:30:19.960 | and your wife's income and the pension and all that,

00:30:22.440 | then awesome, you'll live on the higher amount.

00:30:24.560 | If you can't, if you're gonna get rid of the higher amount

00:30:27.420 | by doing something different,

00:30:28.800 | arrange a lifestyle that exclusively lives on your pension.

00:30:32.800 | And if you do that, you won't have any financial regrets.

00:30:36.580 | You'll be fine financially.

00:30:38.240 | All of the options are available to you.

00:30:40.420 | Kyle in Washington, welcome to the show.

00:30:41.880 | How can I serve you today, sir?

00:30:43.400 | - Hi, Joshua.

00:30:45.160 | I am kind of nervous today

00:30:46.940 | 'cause I'm gonna challenge you

00:30:47.780 | on something that you've stated.

00:30:49.060 | - Well, I'm the nervous one, come on.

00:30:51.160 | (laughing)

00:30:52.920 | - It's odd for me to try building frameworks

00:30:55.000 | for you to look at.

00:30:55.840 | So I show

00:30:58.000 | 1016.

00:31:01.000 | You talked about

00:31:03.480 | the trades being boring to you.

00:31:08.560 | And you've talked about this a couple different times.

00:31:11.140 | And I would like to call in,

00:31:13.860 | I'm calling to challenge that viewpoint a little bit

00:31:16.800 | because I think that,

00:31:17.960 | not to demean the amount of time

00:31:21.040 | that you've spent in the trades,

00:31:22.280 | but I don't know if you have personally enough time.

00:31:26.000 | I'm sure you've met plenty of people that have

00:31:27.880 | and have given you good advice about like,

00:31:29.400 | don't be a car mechanic.

00:31:30.400 | You're gonna hate being a car mechanic.

00:31:31.840 | But if I may, I'd like to just address that a little bit.

00:31:36.520 | - Please do, absolutely.

00:31:37.760 | The floor is yours. - Okay.

00:31:39.720 | Thank you.

00:31:40.560 | So you said I've done some carpentry.

00:31:43.440 | I've done, I've worked for a tile setter.

00:31:45.880 | You don't wanna be,

00:31:47.160 | I think the Twitter poster said,

00:31:51.640 | you don't wanna be hanging sheet rock for 30 years.

00:31:53.760 | And that's all entirely true.

00:31:55.800 | Like if you're gonna be on a framing crew,

00:31:57.480 | you're probably gonna get bored in a few years.

00:31:59.180 | If you're gonna be hanging sheet rock,

00:32:01.040 | you're gonna get bored in a few years.

00:32:02.360 | But I think that people don't see those trades.

00:32:06.320 | There are a lot of other trades out there

00:32:08.000 | besides these horrific, beat your body up.

00:32:11.300 | I'm a scaffolder and I'm only gonna do scaffolding

00:32:13.520 | until my body's used up.

00:32:15.060 | And so I think, if you're gonna take

00:32:19.260 | and coach a young man down the road of the trades,

00:32:24.740 | you really need to look and see that it's really a much more,

00:32:28.600 | you can take a much more overarching approach.

00:32:33.240 | Yeah, you're gonna hang sheet rock for a few years

00:32:35.280 | until you graduate to being a finisher.

00:32:37.060 | And then you're gonna finish for a few years in track homes

00:32:40.300 | until you get really good.

00:32:41.340 | And then you're gonna go finishing in hospitals.

00:32:43.240 | And then you're gonna go finishing in high-end homes.

00:32:45.320 | And then you're gonna be running a finishing crew.

00:32:47.760 | The same thing for the tile setter.

00:32:49.120 | You're not doing any interesting problem solving

00:32:52.140 | until you start laying out crooked rooms

00:32:54.440 | or laying out interesting tile designs

00:32:57.360 | or going into the stonemasons union

00:33:00.520 | and learning how to do structural stone work

00:33:03.960 | and brick work and things like that.

00:33:06.040 | You're not gonna be doing interesting problem solving

00:33:10.260 | if you're framing the same house 10 times.

00:33:11.960 | But if you're building custom homes,

00:33:14.240 | maybe that is a lot more interesting problem solving.

00:33:16.960 | And so, yeah, certain trades can get boring.

00:33:20.720 | If you work at Grease Monkey, you're gonna get bored.

00:33:22.800 | But if you're taking apart an electric car

00:33:25.960 | that we're not allowed to fix on our own

00:33:28.120 | and learning how it works, you're a lab coat diagnostician.

00:33:31.760 | You're not some tradey,

00:33:33.820 | you might have grease under your fingernails,

00:33:36.240 | but dude, you're learning all manner of different systems

00:33:41.240 | and computerization

00:33:42.720 | and taking apart other people's engineering.

00:33:44.640 | And yeah, you're not degreed

00:33:45.860 | and you're not working as a knowledge worker

00:33:49.640 | in the strictest sense of the word.

00:33:51.400 | But building that type of knowledge base,

00:33:55.960 | I think is really important

00:33:57.640 | before you can move on to the next step.

00:33:59.360 | And not every trades person

00:34:01.280 | is gonna start a sheetrock company

00:34:02.840 | or start a framing company or a scaffold company

00:34:05.360 | or anything like that.

00:34:06.240 | But I think that it's something that really gets overlooked.

00:34:09.280 | And I did the same thing.

00:34:10.800 | I don't wanna be a car mechanic,

00:34:11.960 | so I'm just gonna quit being a car mechanic.

00:34:13.540 | But there are ways that you can,

00:34:17.360 | if you wanna be a car mechanic, you can.

00:34:18.920 | And then you can start an automotive repair shop

00:34:21.680 | and all of a sudden you're a business owner

00:34:23.040 | and you're not just a trades person,

00:34:24.320 | you're learning business

00:34:25.240 | and you're learning community outreach

00:34:27.440 | and all these different things.

00:34:28.640 | And I think it gets, I know that was a short show,

00:34:30.980 | but I think that the trades get minimized in that way.

00:34:33.480 | Like it's boring and it becomes uninteresting

00:34:38.480 | and it beats your body up.

00:34:39.560 | And certainly there are trades like that,

00:34:41.160 | but there are also trades that aren't.

00:34:43.200 | And that's why I'm calling.

00:34:45.880 | - I think it's a fair apology for the trades.

00:34:49.940 | And what I probably should do is I should go ahead,

00:34:54.040 | I have intended to, it's one of the many things on my list,

00:34:56.460 | but I should go ahead and create a standalone podcast

00:35:00.560 | that is a standalone apology for the trades.

00:35:03.880 | I used to, I've lost the spreadsheets,

00:35:06.440 | but years ago I created a bunch of spreadsheets

00:35:09.600 | and I was trying to figure out the payoff

00:35:12.480 | of a college degree that had a certain cost

00:35:17.480 | and yet that made a certain higher income

00:35:21.200 | as compared to somebody who went directly to work.

00:35:25.920 | The basic idea that let's say that somebody starts

00:35:28.280 | at 18 years old and gets a job making $45,000 a year

00:35:33.120 | and earns 45,000 at 18 and 45,000 at 19, 45,000 at 20

00:35:38.040 | and increasing with inflation of course,

00:35:40.320 | as compared to somebody who goes to college for four years

00:35:43.240 | and gets out and maybe starts at $55,000,

00:35:47.280 | which of course is not guaranteed in any way,

00:35:50.280 | but it starts at $55,000, but yet had to pay it back

00:35:54.180 | and the lost value of money.

00:35:55.560 | And anyway, I used to have spreadsheets,

00:35:57.360 | but I lost them all.

00:35:58.280 | And so there is a good argument that you could be made

00:36:01.200 | from a financial perspective.

00:36:03.080 | In addition, I've known a lot of people

00:36:05.720 | who've built a lot of wealth in the trades

00:36:08.040 | and it's especially just with things like side work.

00:36:12.200 | I was amazed when I watched how many electricians I knew

00:36:16.000 | who as very young guys,

00:36:18.560 | yeah, very young guys are making six figures

00:36:21.400 | because they had a day job working for an electrical company

00:36:24.680 | and all their side work was just never ending.

00:36:27.280 | And so I totally see what you have said.

00:36:30.320 | I would add another argument,

00:36:32.280 | which also aligns with the line of thinking

00:36:34.040 | that you're going down.

00:36:35.600 | I've for years observed that many people

00:36:38.840 | who are very intelligent get funneled

00:36:41.560 | into a few automatic jobs.

00:36:46.320 | You often get funneled into medicine

00:36:49.200 | or they get funneled into law

00:36:51.520 | or they get funneled into banking or investing,

00:36:54.160 | Wall Street, something like that.

00:36:56.160 | And for years, I have said, usually flippantly and offhand,

00:37:00.080 | that if you're the kind of guy who has the mental ability

00:37:05.080 | and the motivation and the grit and the determination

00:37:09.040 | to go and be a lawyer,

00:37:10.800 | you're probably better off to go and start a daycare company

00:37:15.800 | or a trades business or something, open a junkyard,

00:37:21.440 | some kind of scrap metal place,

00:37:24.000 | doing something where there are fewer wickedly smart people

00:37:28.280 | competing with you.

00:37:29.600 | It's kind of like the classic thing about college selection.

00:37:32.240 | I heard a talk a number of years ago by a psychologist.

00:37:34.900 | I forget the name, so I can't cite him,

00:37:36.960 | but he was giving a talk at Google

00:37:39.060 | and he gave the presentation and his point, he said,

00:37:43.480 | if you have the ability to get into Harvard,

00:37:47.320 | you should certainly not go.

00:37:49.720 | And his point was that if you are one of the smartest people

00:37:53.840 | and you've worked hard for years

00:37:55.360 | to build this amazing resume and you stand out

00:37:57.800 | and you have the ability to go to Harvard,

00:38:00.180 | the day you get to Harvard,

00:38:01.640 | you're gonna be, instead of being filled with confidence,

00:38:05.640 | you're gonna be beating yourself up as the dumbest,

00:38:08.360 | most dim-witted, underachiever in the entire school

00:38:12.120 | because you're surrounded by the cream of the crop

00:38:15.080 | that's all smarter and better than you.

00:38:17.120 | And that is what's going to affect your self-image.

00:38:19.560 | He said.

00:38:20.400 | - We're raiders.

00:38:21.240 | - We're neighbors.

00:38:22.120 | - We're trailblazers.

00:38:23.480 | - We're at the top of our game.

00:38:25.020 | - And we're more than the strip.

00:38:26.600 | - We're beyond your wildest expectations.

00:38:28.680 | - We're head first into the currents of change.

00:38:30.840 | - We love a good challenge.

00:38:32.200 | - A better cost of living and an incredible retirement plan

00:38:35.080 | as a teacher in Las Vegas

00:38:36.560 | for the Clark County School District.

00:38:38.360 | We are Vegas.

00:38:39.840 | We are CCSD.

00:38:41.520 | Start your adventure at teach.ccsd.net.

00:38:44.900 | We are CCSD.

00:38:46.600 | Start your adventure at teach.ccsd.net.

00:38:50.400 | - On the contrary, if you are good enough

00:38:52.600 | to get into Harvard and instead you go

00:38:54.960 | to the local state university,

00:38:57.680 | you're gonna be the big man on campus.

00:38:59.440 | You're gonna be the top of your class

00:39:01.440 | and your self-image is gonna be amazing

00:39:04.300 | because you recognize I'm smart, I'm sophisticated.

00:39:06.760 | I have all these things going for me.

00:39:08.960 | And that psychological confidence is gonna flow with you

00:39:12.080 | for the rest of your life.

00:39:13.520 | And so what I'm saying as far as if someone is smart enough

00:39:16.420 | to be a doctor, then if that person who's really smart

00:39:20.000 | instead goes and opens an auto mechanic shop,

00:39:22.580 | then he's probably going up against people

00:39:25.440 | who are not so academically intelligent

00:39:28.080 | and yet they are, and so he'll be able to do better

00:39:33.040 | because the competition is less fierce

00:39:35.120 | than all of the physicians that he's surrounded with

00:39:37.000 | at medical school.

00:39:38.080 | So I would add that as another argument

00:39:40.320 | in favor of choosing something like the trades.

00:39:44.140 | The problem that I tried to describe for me,

00:39:48.100 | and I wonder if there are different kinds of intelligence.

00:39:51.560 | So I'll describe just briefly

00:39:53.820 | why I am not attracted to the trades.

00:39:56.460 | And this is different from why someone else

00:39:59.260 | may or may not be attracted.

00:40:01.380 | I think I myself have enough experience

00:40:05.120 | and enough components of the trades to know that for me,

00:40:08.860 | it's not a good fit.

00:40:10.480 | The reason it's not, I've got years

00:40:12.540 | of doing it in different things.

00:40:15.580 | I worked in a different trade all through high school,

00:40:18.500 | through college in variety.

00:40:20.580 | There are, I haven't done plumbing.

00:40:22.800 | That's about the only thing I haven't done.

00:40:24.760 | I've done roofing, I've done carpentry,

00:40:26.360 | I've done electrical work, I've done tile,

00:40:28.640 | I've done cabinet, no, I've not done cabinets.

00:40:31.680 | So I mean, the point is that I've been around a lot of it,

00:40:33.920 | been around a lot of job sites.

00:40:35.760 | And what I always just discovered

00:40:37.400 | is that I feel incompetent with my hands.

00:40:40.640 | And I have a good friend of mine that I grew up with,

00:40:43.440 | and it seemed to, always seemed to me

00:40:45.720 | like he had this magic skill

00:40:48.280 | that he could touch something

00:40:51.300 | and he could instantly understand how it works.

00:40:53.340 | Like the way that stuff fits together.

00:40:54.780 | He's an electrician today,

00:40:55.740 | he works at a nuclear power plant, makes great money,

00:40:58.220 | never went to college, made great money all the way through.

00:41:01.140 | But he and I are night and day different.

00:41:03.860 | He's got this ability that I just,

00:41:06.020 | anytime I'm with him, I see,

00:41:08.180 | he's got this physical spatial awareness

00:41:10.340 | of how things work and how they go together.

00:41:12.340 | And he'll sit there and he'll build something

00:41:14.100 | and he'll work and he'll get it just right.

00:41:16.020 | Me on the other hand, if it doesn't work

00:41:17.700 | and the angles don't fit, I'm just annoyed as anything.

00:41:20.260 | And if the bolt breaks off,

00:41:21.400 | then I got to deal with this other thing.

00:41:23.160 | Whereas for me, ideas just flip together like that.

00:41:26.340 | And so I can listen to a snippet of a conversation.

00:41:29.600 | And in my mind, it's just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

00:41:32.520 | I understand, here's the argument,

00:41:33.760 | here's where it's coming from, here's how it fits,

00:41:35.400 | here's where it flows in, here's what the person thinks,

00:41:37.320 | here's what's likely to happen

00:41:38.240 | because the person believes this way.

00:41:39.920 | It just, it's very obvious to me

00:41:42.120 | that my brain works differently in that capacity.

00:41:45.080 | What I don't know is if that's trainable

00:41:47.440 | or learnable, was it something that I grabbed

00:41:50.600 | that is just a natural reflection of my core genius

00:41:54.280 | or is it a natural reflection

00:41:56.000 | of just what I pursued over the years

00:41:58.200 | and I put the time in, I have no idea.

00:42:00.240 | But that's for me why I would choose something different

00:42:03.560 | because a lot of the day that I would spend in the trades,

00:42:07.540 | I would spend it frustrated by things not working

00:42:10.000 | the way that they're supposed to be.

00:42:11.620 | And that I haven't built the skills to deal with it.

00:42:15.600 | Maybe it's just an undone skillset.

00:42:18.680 | So I think there are differences of people

00:42:21.160 | and my point in that Twitter thread,

00:42:24.040 | I don't know if I would have written it the same way,

00:42:26.040 | it was just someone else did.

00:42:27.440 | But my point is that there is rightly a pushback

00:42:31.040 | against the pathway of going to college

00:42:33.680 | because college has been so oversold for so long

00:42:37.040 | that a lot of people are very frustrated and hurt

00:42:40.160 | because of their decision to go to college

00:42:42.000 | instead of to go to be involved in the trades,

00:42:45.560 | something like that.

00:42:46.640 | But the flip side of that is that in the coming years,

00:42:49.100 | I now hear constantly,

00:42:51.120 | when I first did shows against college years ago,

00:42:53.580 | I felt like I was one of the leaders.

00:42:55.440 | Today, I hear constantly everyone saying,

00:42:57.880 | don't go to college, don't go to college, go to the trades.

00:43:00.200 | And so I fear that we're gonna make the opposite switch

00:43:02.800 | and we're gonna funnel people wrongly into the trades

00:43:06.200 | who shouldn't be in the trades.

00:43:07.380 | They should be in some kind of mental work

00:43:10.200 | that is work with your mind

00:43:12.360 | and creating things with your mind

00:43:15.400 | rather than creating things with your hand.

00:43:17.400 | And so what I think, if I'm elected emperor of the world,

00:43:22.400 | what I'm going to do is I'm going to say,

00:43:25.040 | people should have experience in both things fully.

00:43:30.040 | So if I were elected emperor of the school system,

00:43:32.480 | I would immediately bring back shop class.

00:43:34.920 | I would immediately bring back home economics.

00:43:37.400 | I would immediately bring back those things

00:43:39.320 | because one of the most valuable aspects

00:43:41.620 | of those types of classes are to expose people

00:43:46.560 | to things they otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to.

00:43:49.240 | And so I want to have the son of two lawyers,

00:43:53.120 | mom and dad are hotshot lawyers.

00:43:54.960 | I want him to be in shop class building a table

00:43:57.560 | and discover that he loves building a table.

00:44:00.400 | And then simultaneously, I want to make certain

00:44:03.840 | that there's coding classes

00:44:05.880 | and that people are also exposed to knowledge work.

00:44:08.180 | I want the humanities, I want mathematics,

00:44:09.920 | I want science, I want the coding classes.

00:44:12.920 | I want the son of the carpenter to be taking coding classes

00:44:16.920 | and building something as a high school project

00:44:19.480 | because he may discover

00:44:20.840 | that this is really an engagement with him.

00:44:23.000 | And then I want those things to be done

00:44:25.000 | over enough time, enough years,

00:44:27.360 | so that the young person gets a really good sense of,

00:44:31.000 | is this something that feels good to me

00:44:34.040 | or is this something that doesn't?

00:44:35.960 | And that by that exposure,

00:44:37.160 | people will properly self-select into the trades

00:44:40.380 | who should be in the trades

00:44:41.320 | and people who shouldn't be in something else.

00:44:43.640 | That would be my vision.

00:44:44.500 | I think your points are totally valid.

00:44:46.440 | And it would be my vision

00:44:48.740 | that there should be enough experience

00:44:51.380 | that each person has in order to select properly.

00:44:55.280 | - Yeah, agreed.

00:44:58.220 | And that's another thing people forget

00:45:00.280 | is a lot of journeymen have four years of apprenticeship

00:45:04.420 | before they're journeymen.

00:45:06.660 | I mean, you get a degree of sorts.

00:45:08.740 | A lot of times they'll give you an AA

00:45:10.660 | along with your journeyman card.

00:45:13.400 | And so, yeah, I don't disagree with you.

00:45:18.180 | And I think another point you made was,

00:45:20.520 | you run into a lot more intelligent people

00:45:22.260 | and you can get a lot more camaraderie

00:45:23.860 | and stuff like that in knowledge work.

00:45:25.860 | And I don't disagree with that.

00:45:28.040 | I'm still having a tough time figuring out

00:45:29.540 | which one I like more, knowledge work or physical labor.

00:45:32.860 | And so I bounce back and forth between those two things.

00:45:36.220 | And not to say anything about those people in the trades,

00:45:38.420 | but they are fewer and farther between

00:45:40.260 | if you wanna be challenged on an intellectual level

00:45:42.700 | very often.

00:45:43.540 | And so, yeah, I didn't think that you were speaking against

00:45:48.540 | for any specific reason.

00:45:51.060 | And I think that you can know yourself well enough to say,

00:45:54.060 | I just get too frustrated when I'm working on cars.

00:45:56.380 | It makes me angry.

00:45:57.220 | Even if I have all the right tools,

00:45:58.620 | I'm not gonna be a mechanic.

00:46:00.080 | - Right.

00:46:00.920 | - Yeah, incredibly valid.

00:46:03.940 | I would also say that probably,

00:46:06.420 | we've kind of lost this in our current day,

00:46:09.700 | but our culture was built by farmer philosophers,

00:46:14.700 | by warrior poets, by philosophical craftsmen.

00:46:20.440 | It shouldn't be the case that it's either you do one thing

00:46:25.940 | or another thing.

00:46:27.180 | And in fact, many people over the years

00:46:31.060 | have drawn great solace from their physical work.

00:46:35.140 | One of the things that I think is very satisfying

00:46:37.660 | about physical work is you can go and you can do the work.

00:46:40.460 | You can see the outcome, what you've created quickly.

00:46:44.180 | And when you're done with the work,

00:46:45.340 | you can leave the work there.

00:46:47.080 | It's taken me years to just grow comfortable

00:46:49.540 | with the constant low-level anxiety that comes from business

00:46:53.180 | that the work never finishes and it always is with you.

00:46:56.700 | It always stays with you.

00:46:58.340 | And I often have thought how wonderful it would be

00:47:01.220 | to have a job where I went to work,

00:47:03.380 | I did the job, and then I went home.

00:47:05.640 | And how satisfying that would be to know that I'm done.

00:47:08.660 | I don't have to think about it anymore.

00:47:10.400 | I'm genuinely free of this job because I went to work,

00:47:13.120 | I did the job, and now I've left.

00:47:15.140 | And that's something that a mechanic

00:47:18.100 | or any kind of tradesman gets the satisfaction of knowing

00:47:22.860 | that I never get that satisfaction because I've never done.

00:47:25.460 | It's never enough.

00:47:26.300 | There's always more that I could do and I just quit.

00:47:28.860 | So there are many benefits.

00:47:30.700 | And also intellectual rumination frequently happens

00:47:35.700 | in concert with working with your hands.

00:47:40.400 | And so you'll find many great people throughout history

00:47:43.900 | who were great thinkers or great statesmen

00:47:46.160 | or great inventors that they didn't eschew physical work.

00:47:51.160 | They rather found that it was an important component

00:47:54.180 | of their life balance.

00:47:55.740 | And I would say that there's probably people

00:47:58.760 | who've been funneled into college

00:48:00.660 | who would give that intellectual engagement

00:48:04.020 | if they were still in trades.

00:48:05.220 | One of the things that I made in a separate show recently,

00:48:07.940 | I made the point, is that the sorting mechanism

00:48:11.420 | of the United States college system over the last 100 years

00:48:16.220 | has basically enormously succeeded at grabbing anybody

00:48:22.920 | who's good at academic level work

00:48:25.520 | and shunting them into the college path.

00:48:28.520 | Prior to standardized testing,

00:48:30.720 | there were lots of people

00:48:31.840 | who were academic intellectual geniuses

00:48:34.520 | who would go and work a job with their hands

00:48:37.520 | or run a factory or do some kind of job

00:48:40.060 | that didn't include college.

00:48:41.960 | And they would indulge their evening hobby

00:48:44.480 | of studying ancient philosophy

00:48:46.320 | or translating the Hebrew scriptures.

00:48:48.600 | That was a very normal thing in the past.

00:48:51.040 | But now the mass testing system has succeeded

00:48:55.840 | at finding all those people

00:48:57.200 | and kind of automatically shunting them

00:48:58.960 | into the college space because, hey, listen,

00:49:02.680 | you've got a high IQ that is demonstrated

00:49:05.240 | by your success on these tests

00:49:07.120 | for mathematical and verbal reasoning.

00:49:08.880 | So we've got to get you into college.

00:49:10.280 | And so they're just not in the trades like they once were

00:49:13.280 | because of that.

00:49:14.120 | And the trades suffer for that

00:49:15.320 | and the people suffer for that

00:49:16.440 | because sometimes genius is lost

00:49:19.800 | because somebody is working

00:49:22.080 | an unfulfilling middle-manager white-collar job

00:49:24.680 | when he'd be a lot better off

00:49:25.840 | swinging a hammer in the daytime

00:49:27.120 | and reading Greek philosophy at night.

00:49:28.960 | - Absolutely.

00:49:31.160 | Yeah, you're speaking about a good family friend of mine.

00:49:35.120 | The guy I knew dabbled in languages.

00:49:37.040 | He knew seven languages

00:49:38.200 | and he worked in a drop forage plant

00:49:40.720 | and got sick of it and moved on to be a machinist

00:49:43.280 | 'cause you're working with an eighth of an inch

00:49:45.040 | instead of a thousandth of an inch.

00:49:48.800 | We were at a garage sale one time, my family,

00:49:50.520 | and we bought this guy an unabridged dictionary.

00:49:52.800 | Best present I ever got.

00:49:54.120 | But you don't expect that guy

00:49:57.480 | at the drop forage plants to know seven languages.

00:49:59.760 | - No, no, no.

00:50:01.480 | - Yeah, you never do.

00:50:02.920 | Not anymore, like you say, yeah.

00:50:04.600 | - Well, I appreciate the pushback.

00:50:07.080 | I think it's important points that you're making

00:50:09.680 | and I've gotten several bits of feedback

00:50:12.200 | on that podcast episode.

00:50:13.600 | I have a clarifying show that I've recorded

00:50:16.880 | 'cause I had a lady that asked me a bunch of questions

00:50:18.520 | based on what I said about men and women

00:50:20.400 | and I guess I'll go ahead and release it.

00:50:22.480 | But it's interesting how that struck a chord

00:50:25.960 | with several listeners.

00:50:26.800 | I'm really glad that you called in and made your comments.

00:50:29.320 | Thank you very much, Kyle.

00:50:30.960 | - Thank you.

00:50:32.080 | - And with that, we move on to Ben in Florida.

00:50:34.960 | Ben, welcome to the show.

00:50:35.800 | How can I serve you today?

00:50:37.040 | - Hi, Joshua, I have a tax planning question.

00:50:41.920 | Never too early in the year to start thinking about that.

00:50:44.960 | - That's the best time to be thinking about it

00:50:46.920 | 'cause you get to April 14th and you're done.

00:50:49.840 | There's nothing left anymore.

00:50:51.360 | - That's right.

00:50:53.400 | I need to realize about $100,000 worth of gain

00:50:57.920 | of appreciated stock this year

00:51:00.400 | and in the spirit of being a radical personal finance

00:51:05.400 | listener and listening to your show,

00:51:07.440 | I would like to start planning now to pay what I owe

00:51:12.440 | but also as little as I should.

00:51:15.600 | I'm a W-2 employee.

00:51:17.200 | I maxed out my 401(k).

00:51:19.520 | I do not own any real estate or any side business.

00:51:24.520 | So I'm maxing out 401(k), maxing out HSA.

00:51:29.520 | What are my other options?

00:51:31.320 | I'm open to buying real estate if there is depreciation

00:51:36.080 | I could take this year.

00:51:37.520 | If I can buy some sort of business

00:51:39.840 | and then depreciate those assets this year,

00:51:42.640 | that would be a little harder to do to find a business

00:51:46.360 | and buy it and depreciate before the end of the year.

00:51:50.840 | I'm trying to think of ideas

00:51:52.200 | so I can start researching further

00:51:55.120 | and maybe find a separate tax professional

00:51:58.120 | to help me execute strategies.

00:51:59.760 | - This stock that you have, how long have you owned it?

00:52:03.960 | - Long enough that it's long-term capital gains.

00:52:09.120 | - Okay.

00:52:09.960 | So just privately owned stock, a single stock?

00:52:13.720 | - Yes.

00:52:14.560 | - Okay.

00:52:15.400 | - And I have done some charitable contributions.

00:52:20.160 | That's what I've done.

00:52:21.600 | On some of it, I have done the charitable contributions

00:52:26.120 | so I can not pay capital gains on those shares

00:52:30.000 | and also deduct that

00:52:31.560 | because it will be above the standard deduction.

00:52:34.480 | - Okay.

00:52:35.320 | - But there's more that I will need to pay

00:52:38.640 | that I want to, if this can get me into real estate

00:52:42.000 | or something else, some other strategies

00:52:44.680 | that I can think about.

00:52:46.000 | - Do you have any losses, any long-term capital losses

00:52:50.280 | from another portion of your portfolio?

00:52:52.240 | - Not as much as I would need to offset the gains.

00:52:58.560 | - Okay.

00:52:59.400 | - I have some.

00:53:00.600 | - Well, that's, so that's your,

00:53:01.960 | so when you're dealing with capital assets

00:53:04.720 | that are not business assets, just purely capital assets,

00:53:08.160 | then what happens is you take all

00:53:10.600 | of your long-term capital gains

00:53:12.720 | and you net those against all

00:53:14.240 | of your long-term capital losses.

00:53:16.360 | And that results in your figure.

00:53:18.880 | You take all your short-term capital gains,

00:53:20.280 | you net those against short-term capital losses as well.

00:53:22.680 | And that creates your figure.

00:53:24.640 | So if you have $100,000 of long-term capital gains,

00:53:29.080 | the first thing you should look for is,

00:53:30.880 | do I own other assets that are long-term capital assets

00:53:35.880 | that I don't want to hold anymore?

00:53:38.040 | So I'm selling Coca-Cola stock and I don't wanna,

00:53:41.560 | I'm not gonna, I'm selling company A stock

00:53:43.720 | where I have $100,000 of gain,

00:53:45.640 | but years ago I bought company B stock

00:53:48.240 | and I've got $30,000 of losses of that stock.

00:53:51.160 | And I don't wanna own it anymore.

00:53:53.080 | So I'll go ahead and sell that.

00:53:54.440 | And you wanna realize those capital losses

00:53:56.360 | and net them together.

00:53:57.720 | That's your first reliable strategy.

00:53:59.400 | 'Cause there's not, the short answer is

00:54:00.640 | there's not much you could do in what you're describing.

00:54:04.080 | So the first thing is look around in your portfolio

00:54:06.720 | for other long-term capital losses

00:54:09.360 | that have assets that you don't wanna hold anymore

00:54:11.840 | and sell those assets and net the assets against your gains.

00:54:16.840 | Now you have the ability then,

00:54:20.200 | if you wanna have those assets,

00:54:22.200 | you have the ability to,

00:54:24.800 | let me think just for a moment, my brain is going fuzzy.

00:54:27.560 | Doing this live, I always get this fuzzy.

00:54:35.080 | So basically what we wanna avoid is the wash sale rule,

00:54:39.920 | but we can sell assets that are at a loss

00:54:42.160 | and we take the losses and then you can buy them back

00:54:45.640 | if you want to have them.

00:54:47.080 | So that's what you're looking for.

00:54:48.880 | And so there shouldn't be any reason,

00:54:53.400 | there shouldn't be any reason

00:54:56.600 | you can't sell the other assets.

00:54:58.800 | And then if you want to own them,

00:55:00.880 | buy them back in the fullness of time.

00:55:05.400 | I need to go back and pull up,

00:55:07.120 | and I don't have it live on air,

00:55:09.000 | I need to go back and pull the wash sale rules up.

00:55:11.400 | So that's what you wanna look at

00:55:12.880 | and make certain that you don't violate something there.

00:55:15.800 | And my brain just went fuzzy on this for a moment.

00:55:17.920 | So--

00:55:19.520 | - The 30 days you can't purchase the same stock

00:55:23.240 | or significantly similar 30 days before or after

00:55:27.520 | to not violate the wash sale rule,

00:55:29.480 | is from what I understand.

00:55:30.720 | - Right, so the point is that you have the ability

00:55:32.960 | to sell assets at a loss and net them against your gains.

00:55:37.860 | Beyond that, basically you're stuck with charitable donations

00:55:43.760 | or paying the tax.

00:55:46.680 | You can't depreciate real estate assets

00:55:48.520 | against stock sales.

00:55:51.500 | So beyond what I've just described,

00:55:53.600 | I'm not aware of any useful planning technique

00:55:57.280 | that is applicable here that you can do.

00:56:02.280 | Let me just think for a moment as we're talking,

00:56:03.700 | but that's it.

00:56:05.200 | So you're gonna just sell the stock and pay the tax.

00:56:07.940 | Beyond that.

00:56:10.200 | - Okay, and while you talk,

00:56:11.960 | there was a couple of years ago

00:56:12.880 | where I did do the foreign earned income exclusion.

00:56:16.020 | That was great.

00:56:16.860 | I'm not gonna qualify for that this year, and that's fine.

00:56:20.000 | - It won't make a difference.

00:56:20.840 | It's only on earned income.

00:56:22.240 | - Okay, okay.

00:56:24.840 | - Yep, foreign earned income exclusion is pointless

00:56:27.200 | because it only applies to earned income.

00:56:28.920 | This is not earned income.

00:56:29.840 | This is capital gains income.

00:56:31.280 | - Okay, great.

00:56:34.020 | And then, so I can't depreciate real estate losses

00:56:36.480 | against stock capital gains.

00:56:38.800 | I was trying to think of a way this could get me into,

00:56:41.800 | instead of owning paper assets or stock,

00:56:45.080 | I could start getting real estate

00:56:47.520 | and also lower my taxes owed.

00:56:52.520 | But it sounds like there's not much else I can do

00:56:56.080 | to offset that large amount of capital gains in stocks.

00:56:59.840 | - No, there's not.

00:57:00.680 | You can do like-kind exchanges on all kinds of property,

00:57:04.800 | but you can't like-kind exchange a stock into real estate

00:57:09.080 | 'cause they're not like-kind,

00:57:10.120 | and so you're not exchanging them.

00:57:12.120 | Like-kind exchanges are not just limited to real estate.

00:57:14.720 | They're not just 1031 exchanges,

00:57:16.840 | but they're not applicable to stock here.

00:57:19.520 | So what I would say is,

00:57:22.400 | have you thought about borrowing against the stock

00:57:23.920 | instead of selling it?

00:57:25.480 | Could that be a solution for you?

00:57:27.120 | - No, the stock is getting acquired,

00:57:31.980 | so it's gonna be a for sale.

00:57:33.600 | So I cannot do anything.

00:57:35.920 | - No, there's nothing you can do.

00:57:37.080 | I mean, that's it.

00:57:38.620 | So, and especially since you have earned income,

00:57:40.840 | you're not gonna have a loss on income.

00:57:43.360 | So basically, look around your portfolio,

00:57:46.000 | look to see any other capital, long-term capital losses,

00:57:49.120 | sell those assets, take the loss,

00:57:51.440 | recognize the loss on those other assets

00:57:53.580 | that you don't wanna own anymore.

00:57:55.200 | You'll net those other long-term capital losses

00:57:57.480 | against these long-term capital gains

00:57:59.760 | that will reduce the total amount of capital gains reported,

00:58:02.620 | pay the tax, and move on.

00:58:03.800 | Be grateful that currently,

00:58:05.520 | capital gains taxes are still low.

00:58:07.160 | There's always these ridiculous tax proposals

00:58:09.440 | to tax capital gains, like ordinary income,

00:58:12.120 | and just be grateful that you're in that situation

00:58:14.040 | that, or it's not there, or we're not there today.

00:58:16.540 | - Yeah, we're not there today, hopefully.

00:58:19.920 | Hopefully it stays that way, but time will tell.

00:58:21.920 | - Yeah.

00:58:22.760 | On the whole, long-term capital gains taxes

00:58:25.540 | are very reasonable.

00:58:26.640 | There is, I mean, I'm just going through

00:58:29.700 | my inventory of ideas.

00:58:32.080 | None of them are gonna apply to you.

00:58:33.480 | There are other ideas that can be used.

00:58:35.520 | There are things when you have zero income,

00:58:37.720 | you may be in the zero long-term capital gains bracket.

00:58:40.720 | There's all kinds of other things,

00:58:41.820 | but if you're earning income, as you described,

00:58:44.240 | it's a forced sale, as you described,

00:58:46.640 | then I'm not aware of any other idea

00:58:48.820 | that could be used to offset the gains.

00:58:52.400 | So just be grateful the capital gains tax rates

00:58:54.480 | are reasonable compared to how they are

00:58:56.760 | in many other places in the world.

00:58:58.240 | If you don't find them reasonable,

00:58:59.600 | then take steps to extricate yourself entirely

00:59:02.680 | from the U.S. tax system.

00:59:04.580 | Puerto Rico is a great option for long-term traders.

00:59:08.000 | You're not gonna move there, though.

00:59:09.000 | That's not applicable, and it's just the price

00:59:11.680 | of being a U.S. citizen.

00:59:12.880 | - Okay, well, thank you.

00:59:16.280 | - My pleasure, anything else?

00:59:18.680 | - Nothing else.

00:59:19.520 | I asked about, I'm the one that asked

00:59:21.520 | about those info a couple weeks ago,

00:59:22.880 | so I'm glad to get a finance question in

00:59:25.320 | instead of that, so thanks for your broad knowledge

00:59:29.440 | across many topics.

00:59:30.840 | - The problem with broad knowledge, it can be useful,

00:59:33.400 | but the problem with broad knowledge

00:59:34.760 | is just like my brain froze up

00:59:36.120 | in thinking about wash sale rules.

00:59:37.600 | This is the kind of thing that,

00:59:38.720 | when you talk about so many things all the time,

00:59:40.240 | all of a sudden you get into the nitty gritty,

00:59:42.040 | and I should have all those things

00:59:44.720 | able to summon instantly,

00:59:46.800 | but unfortunately sometimes I don't, so.

00:59:50.780 | Thank you so much for calling.

00:59:51.700 | If you would like to join AXS, anyone else,

00:59:53.400 | if you'd like to join me on next week's Friday Q&A call,

00:59:55.540 | remember you can do that by becoming a patron of the show.

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01:00:07.140 | In addition to that, remember that consulting calls

01:00:09.660 | are open right now, and what I do is,

01:00:11.660 | when people do consultations with me,

01:00:13.740 | I always read the notes in advance,

01:00:15.020 | and if I know I've got something,

01:00:16.060 | I've got watch sale rules pulled up on my screen

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01:00:22.060 | If you'd like to book a consulting call with me,

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