720-Seven-Rings-of-Liberty-What-Do-You-Do-When-Youre-Free-9357
00:00:00.000 | ♪ Blessing in the mornin' ♪
00:00:03.000 | ♪ Come back Sunday morning ♪
00:00:05.000 | California's top casino and entertainment destination
00:00:08.000 | is now your California to Vegas connection.
00:00:11.000 | Play at Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel
00:00:14.000 | to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences
00:00:17.000 | for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
00:00:21.000 | ♪ We got the store to sell ♪
00:00:23.000 | Two destinations, one loyalty card.
00:00:26.000 | Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more.
00:00:31.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:33.000 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:35.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need
00:00:38.000 | to live a rich and meaningful life now
00:00:40.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:41.000 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:43.000 | My name is Joshua. I am your host.
00:00:44.000 | And today we're going to finish out
00:00:46.000 | a long-running video series here on Radical Personal Finance.
00:00:50.000 | Excuse me, audio series. The video part is new.
00:00:52.000 | But on the audio podcast, we finished out a series
00:00:55.000 | last couple of months called "The Seven Rings of Liberty,"
00:00:59.000 | "Seven Rings of Freedom," where I talk to you
00:01:01.000 | about the things that you can do
00:01:03.000 | on the way to financial independence
00:01:06.000 | that will help you to achieve ultimate financial freedom,
00:01:09.000 | the things that you can do while you're building your way
00:01:13.000 | to financial freedom.
00:01:15.000 | It's my own personal conviction that one of the biggest mistakes
00:01:19.000 | that we make in modern financial planning
00:01:22.000 | is we wait until we have tons of money
00:01:27.000 | to experience the riches of life.
00:01:30.000 | And yet I think that's really fundamentally flawed
00:01:33.000 | with everything that we know about how life works.
00:01:36.000 | We know that the thing that is not guaranteed in life
00:01:39.000 | is more time.
00:01:40.000 | Now, of course, money is not guaranteed as well,
00:01:42.000 | but we're none of us guaranteed tomorrow.
00:01:45.000 | And so time is the most precious thing.
00:01:47.000 | And so it's my firm conviction that we owe it to ourselves
00:01:51.000 | to work diligently to enjoy the daily fruits of wealth
00:01:56.000 | while we're actually on the way to financial freedom,
00:01:59.000 | that we don't have to actually wait all that long,
00:02:02.000 | wait forever, until we are financially free.
00:02:04.000 | And so this series that I did called "Seven Rings of Freedom"
00:02:07.000 | was my attempt to give you some ideas,
00:02:09.000 | some things that have helped me to achieve
00:02:12.000 | massive levels of liberty, massive levels of freedom,
00:02:15.000 | while working towards ultimate financial independence,
00:02:18.000 | while working towards ultimate financial freedom.
00:02:21.000 | Now, ring number one, we talked about spiritual liberty.
00:02:24.000 | I did a whole show where I talked to you about the value.
00:02:27.000 | If you can become personally free,
00:02:29.000 | if you can become spiritually free,
00:02:32.000 | you can be in any kind of external circumstance,
00:02:35.000 | any kind of slavery or bondage that you may happen to fall into,
00:02:40.000 | and you can go through it with relative ease.
00:02:43.000 | You can go through it without feeling like you're a slave,
00:02:47.000 | because if you're free inside, if you're spiritually free,
00:02:51.000 | you can enjoy the circumstances of life.
00:02:54.000 | Talked about it on the level of spiritual freedom,
00:02:57.000 | in terms of religious freedom,
00:02:59.000 | talked about it in terms of being free from things like substance abuse,
00:03:02.000 | things like being addicted to some kind of substance.
00:03:06.000 | You can have all the money in the world,
00:03:08.000 | but if you're a drug addict, you're not free.
00:03:10.000 | Meanwhile, if you're not a drug addict,
00:03:12.000 | you can be free even if you don't have all the money in the world.
00:03:15.000 | So that was ring one, was spiritual liberty.
00:03:18.000 | Ring number two is I talked about spousal liberty.
00:03:20.000 | I talked about how much freedom my wife and I have enjoyed in our lifestyle
00:03:24.000 | from simply being in a situation where she's a stay-at-home mom,
00:03:28.000 | and how that's been one of the best, most freeing lifestyle decisions
00:03:32.000 | that we ever made, and why I highly recommend it.
00:03:35.000 | Number three, we talked about family liberty.
00:03:37.000 | I shared with you some ideas about the value of home education
00:03:40.000 | and how that gives us total freedom over time,
00:03:43.000 | the ability to come and go throughout the world as we like,
00:03:46.000 | the ability to be completely and totally free as a family
00:03:50.000 | based upon educating our children at home.
00:03:54.000 | It's remarkable.
00:03:56.000 | Those, however, were more lifestyle choices.
00:03:58.000 | They weren't so nuts and bolts.
00:04:00.000 | And that was where in the fourth show in this series,
00:04:03.000 | I moved to spending liberty,
00:04:04.000 | and I talked about the value of being free from debt.
00:04:07.000 | I shared with you how if you're totally debt-free,
00:04:09.000 | you have total control over your income.
00:04:12.000 | You can live on your income if you're totally debt-free.
00:04:15.000 | Right now, as I record this on May 6, 2020,
00:04:19.000 | there are a lot of us who are really struggling right now
00:04:22.000 | because of the economic effects from the coronavirus fallout.
00:04:26.000 | But I guarantee you, if you are completely debt-free,
00:04:30.000 | you are struggling a lot less than so many people who have worries,
00:04:34.000 | constant and never-ending worries,
00:04:36.000 | about the amount of payments that they have to make.
00:04:39.000 | That's a real, real opportunity to gain freedom.
00:04:43.000 | When you have no payments,
00:04:45.000 | your future is never determined by your past
00:04:49.000 | because you've made no promises for your future.
00:04:52.000 | It's really one of the simplest ways that you can gain
00:04:55.000 | an almost total level of personal freedom,
00:04:58.000 | is by becoming and committing to staying completely debt-free.
00:05:02.000 | The next ring, we talked about business liberty,
00:05:05.000 | and I talked about the value of entrepreneurship.
00:05:07.000 | I shared how, as an entrepreneur,
00:05:09.000 | you have almost total freedom to do anything you want,
00:05:13.000 | the total freedom to live your days as you want to live them,
00:05:16.000 | to control your time,
00:05:17.000 | which is one of the most powerful forms of freedom.
00:05:20.000 | Entrepreneurship gives you control over your days.
00:05:23.000 | It gives you freedom of association,
00:05:25.000 | the ability to work with people that you work.
00:05:27.000 | It gives you freedom of purpose,
00:05:28.000 | the ability to create businesses that you believe are valuable.
00:05:31.000 | And how, if you're an entrepreneur,
00:05:33.000 | you already experience almost total freedom
00:05:37.000 | while you're building up money
00:05:39.000 | to experience that level of financial freedom.
00:05:42.000 | Then, in ring number six, I talked about freedom,
00:05:44.000 | state liberty, freedom from government.
00:05:47.000 | I talked about how, if you'll put together a lifestyle
00:05:50.000 | and you'll be strategic about the governments
00:05:52.000 | that you choose to ally yourself with,
00:05:54.000 | then you can really build probably the most freedom of lifestyle
00:05:59.000 | that's been possible throughout human history.
00:06:02.000 | I talked with you about how the secret to accomplishing that
00:06:05.000 | is not to try to choose one government
00:06:07.000 | that's the best in the world at everything.
00:06:09.000 | It doesn't exist.
00:06:10.000 | But to choose multiple governments
00:06:12.000 | and to work with each government
00:06:14.000 | where each government is really the best
00:06:16.000 | and to choose to put yourself under governments only strategically
00:06:22.000 | and that how governments don't respect their individual citizens,
00:06:25.000 | but they do respect other governments.
00:06:27.000 | So, if you can put one government against another government,
00:06:29.000 | you really open up tremendous opportunities for yourselves.
00:06:31.000 | We talked about state liberty.
00:06:33.000 | And then, in ring number seven, we talked about financial liberty,
00:06:36.000 | true financial freedom where you have so much wealth
00:06:40.000 | and so much income coming in that you'll never spend the money.
00:06:44.000 | For the rest of your life, you never have to make your decisions
00:06:46.000 | based upon the money itself.
00:06:49.000 | For the rest of your life, you're genuinely and truly free
00:06:52.000 | of the need to earn money.
00:06:54.000 | And what a luxury that is,
00:06:55.000 | and yet how ultimately and eminently attainable it is for all of us.
00:07:01.000 | Now, in this show, I want to cap off this particular series, though,
00:07:04.000 | with a comment on what do you do after you're free?
00:07:10.000 | Because if you actually look at the details
00:07:12.000 | and you think about what it means,
00:07:15.000 | what freedom really means,
00:07:18.000 | you don't have to wait.
00:07:21.000 | And the lesson I want to impress upon you right now
00:07:24.000 | is that you don't have to wait for years and years and years
00:07:30.000 | in order to experience this lifestyle of freedom.
00:07:33.000 | You can have it now.
00:07:35.000 | You don't have to wait.
00:07:36.000 | Now, the whole point of the series was to demonstrate to you
00:07:39.000 | that you don't have to wait until you're ultimately financially free,
00:07:42.000 | until you're a multimillionaire and financially independent,
00:07:45.000 | in order to experience the freedom of lifestyle.
00:07:47.000 | But today, I want to hammer that home
00:07:49.000 | by talking about what you will actually do
00:07:53.000 | when you've reached all of these stages.
00:07:57.000 | The only one of these stages that I haven't personally reached yet
00:07:59.000 | is that financial liberty.
00:08:00.000 | I don't yet have enough money to live purely on the income from my investments.
00:08:04.000 | I think someday I will, and I'll report back to you.
00:08:07.000 | It's certainly a goal that I have.
00:08:08.000 | I'll report back to you what that's like when I achieve that goal.
00:08:12.000 | But when I reflect on it,
00:08:15.000 | and when I talk to lots and lots of people
00:08:17.000 | who have already achieved that goal,
00:08:19.000 | what I realize is you don't need to achieve it in order to live well.
00:08:25.000 | You can live well now if you will break these chains in your thinking.
00:08:31.000 | So let's talk about what you're going to do when you've reached this.
00:08:33.000 | Pretend that you have this almost total freedom that I described to you.
00:08:37.000 | You're spiritually free.
00:08:38.000 | You're at peace with God and with yourself.
00:08:41.000 | You're not a slave to any addictions or substances.
00:08:45.000 | You have freedom of association.
00:08:46.000 | You have freedom with your family.
00:08:48.000 | You can come and go.
00:08:49.000 | You have enough money where you can come and go.
00:08:51.000 | You're not worried about the future.
00:08:52.000 | You have income sources that are sufficient to supply your needs.
00:08:55.000 | You're even free of different governments.
00:08:57.000 | You make your way around the world.
00:08:59.000 | What are you going to do?
00:09:01.000 | Well, you're still going to have to get up every day and do something with your life.
00:09:06.000 | I love to ask the question when I help people do financial planning,
00:09:09.000 | and we talk about financial independence.
00:09:10.000 | I talk to them and I say, "Listen, what you need to start with is by saying,
00:09:14.000 | 'What would you do if you inherited $10 million?
00:09:17.000 | What would you do if a rich uncle died and left you $10 million tax-free?
00:09:20.000 | What would you do?'"
00:09:22.000 | Well, I think the things that most of us would do are fairly common.
00:09:27.000 | The first thing is we would have some fun,
00:09:30.000 | some kind of hedonistic pursuit or endeavor that we really would enjoy engaging in.
00:09:36.000 | That hedonistic pursuit might be as simple as taking a vacation.
00:09:40.000 | Maybe you take your children to Disney World.
00:09:42.000 | For some people, they've never had the chance to do that,
00:09:44.000 | and that would be something they would really, really look forward to.
00:09:47.000 | Your hedonistic pursuit of fun might be much bigger.
00:09:50.000 | You might buy a helicopter and learn how to fly,
00:09:52.000 | or you might finally go ahead and sign up for that NetJets membership
00:09:56.000 | so you can jet all around the world on private flights
00:09:59.000 | and finally kiss commercial flying goodbye.
00:10:02.000 | Maybe you would go and travel around the world for a year.
00:10:05.000 | You might do it as a backpacker, or you might do it in style.
00:10:08.000 | Most of us have some kind of hedonistic enjoyment pursuit
00:10:12.000 | that we would really enjoy doing, those things that are on our bucket list.
00:10:17.000 | So we would do some of those things.
00:10:19.000 | You would probably do something to upgrade your circumstances of your life to some degree.
00:10:24.000 | For example, you might finally replace the back deck.
00:10:27.000 | It's been rotting and bothering you and you just haven't gotten around to it,
00:10:30.000 | but because you got $10 million, you would call the contractor and say,
00:10:33.000 | "Listen, I want a big, beautiful deck here.
00:10:36.000 | I want this thing to be really nice and I want it to be stocked,"
00:10:39.000 | or maybe put in a nice backyard cooking station.
00:10:44.000 | You might upgrade your car.
00:10:45.000 | Maybe you don't really love your car, but you think, "If I got a new car, that would be really nice."
00:10:49.000 | There would be some kinds of consumption items that you would buy.
00:10:53.000 | You might upgrade your house. You might upgrade your phone.
00:10:56.000 | You might upgrade your wardrobe, something like that.
00:10:59.000 | But then we would get to some of those things that you would want to do
00:11:03.000 | if they freed up more time.
00:11:05.000 | Maybe you would tell yourself, "If I only had all the time in the world and I didn't have to work,
00:11:08.000 | then I would finally get in shape," or "Then I would finally learn Spanish,"
00:11:12.000 | or "Then I would finally write that book."
00:11:15.000 | Now, maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't.
00:11:18.000 | I think a lot of times we fool ourselves when it comes to those kinds of pursuits.
00:11:22.000 | But most of us do have some things that if we just had a little more time,
00:11:26.000 | then we could make more progress.
00:11:28.000 | What you see is often if you study people who retire,
00:11:31.000 | if they're retiring intentionally, they often will start to do some of those things
00:11:35.000 | when their time is freed up.
00:11:38.000 | But here's the reality for most of us.
00:11:41.000 | Pretend that you had all the money in the world.
00:11:43.000 | Pretend you retired.
00:11:44.000 | Pretend you took a year to travel the world or take your children on a cruise
00:11:48.000 | or go camping and hike the Appalachian Trail.
00:11:51.000 | Fast forward a year. You've done that stuff for a good, solid year.
00:11:54.000 | Pretend that you've upgraded the things in your life that you really wanted to upgrade.
00:11:57.000 | You bought some nicer, fancier stuff.
00:12:01.000 | Well, what are you going to do then?
00:12:04.000 | Because what's going to happen is you're still going to wake up on Monday morning,
00:12:08.000 | and you're still going to have to do something.
00:12:11.000 | You're still going to wake up on Wednesday and have to do something.
00:12:16.000 | It's going to be Wednesday, May 6, 2020, at 1:44 p.m. as I record this,
00:12:22.000 | and you're still going to have to do something.
00:12:26.000 | And those some things that you're going to want to do in those situations
00:12:30.000 | are probably the same kinds of things that matter to you now,
00:12:34.000 | except possibly with a slightly less intense focus on finances.
00:12:41.000 | You're still going to care about the people that you spend time with.
00:12:45.000 | You're still going to care about the amount of love in your life.
00:12:49.000 | You're still going to care about service towards other people.
00:12:54.000 | You're still going to care about your daily activities.
00:12:58.000 | You're still going to need to spend the day in some way that you care about.
00:13:02.000 | And what I think most people overestimate is how fulfilling consumption
00:13:06.000 | or just frivolity and fun really is.
00:13:11.000 | I was very fortunate that I learned this lesson when I was in high school,
00:13:14.000 | and I had two jobs in high school that fundamentally altered how I viewed work.
00:13:22.000 | To back up, one of the first more adultish jobs that I had--
00:13:27.000 | I had a number of different jobs, lots of jobs when I was in high school--
00:13:30.000 | one of the first adultish jobs that I had was in seventh grade,
00:13:33.000 | I got a job working as a helper for a tile setter.
00:13:37.000 | And I was working on the tile crew, and I was just a helper,
00:13:41.000 | which means I carried boxes of tile or I mixed up mud.
00:13:44.000 | I grouted floors. It was about as technically proficient as I got.
00:13:47.000 | I never got to the point of actually laying out a beautiful floor.
00:13:51.000 | But what I learned very quickly was how hard that work really was.
00:13:55.000 | I also learned how, if I worked hard, I could earn a lot of money,
00:13:58.000 | because I earned a lot more money than most seventh graders really did.
00:14:02.000 | I earned a lot more money than most people who were in that situation earned
00:14:08.000 | because I put myself in a situation where I was productive, because I worked hard.
00:14:14.000 | But still, I realized that it wasn't really for me.
00:14:18.000 | I would get to the end of the week, and even when I was seventh grade,
00:14:21.000 | my back would hurt because of leaning over and scrubbing a floor or grouting a floor.
00:14:26.000 | And I realized, man, this is really tough work.
00:14:29.000 | Well, fast forward a little while later, a few years later, I had a different job.
00:14:33.000 | And this job was an office job.
00:14:35.000 | And I was hired to do some basic kind of office-type work,
00:14:39.000 | but unfortunately, there wasn't as much work for me to do
00:14:44.000 | as we ultimately thought there was going to be.
00:14:46.000 | Unfortunately, I put myself in a situation where I had a job and I had an income,
00:14:52.000 | but there wasn't a lot to do. They were overstaffed.
00:14:54.000 | And so I would come into work every day with a book.
00:14:56.000 | Now, I loved to read. I still love to read.
00:14:58.000 | And I would come in every day with a big, thick novel,
00:15:01.000 | a nice Tom Clancy book, an 800-page novel,
00:15:04.000 | and I would just sit and read all day.
00:15:06.000 | But after a few days and a few weeks of this, I was done.
00:15:10.000 | And for me, this would have been my dream job.
00:15:13.000 | You're telling me that I can just sit around and read all day, every day, read novels,
00:15:17.000 | and my boss knows about it, and I'm getting paid for it?
00:15:19.000 | This is a dream job.
00:15:22.000 | But I was completely and totally done after a very short amount of time.
00:15:29.000 | I realized there's something about reading when it's a rest from work that makes it special.
00:15:38.000 | But when reading, especially fluffy reading, right, novels, reading for fun,
00:15:42.000 | is all you do, you quickly are bored by it.
00:15:46.000 | Now, a couple years later, I had a different job.
00:15:48.000 | And in this job, I got a job teaching wakeboarding and water skiing to children.
00:15:56.000 | And so I was part of a summer camp, and my job was basically running,
00:16:00.000 | being a staff member at the summer camp.
00:16:03.000 | And all day, I would show up to work in a pair of board shorts and a pair of flip-flops.
00:16:06.000 | I would take kids out on the boat, and I would teach them to wakeboard, water ski.
00:16:09.000 | I'd drive the boat.
00:16:11.000 | Now, in many circumstances, you would say this is the dream job, right?
00:16:15.000 | Totally comfortable, totally relaxed.
00:16:17.000 | It's a lot of fun.
00:16:18.000 | Some of the children were older.
00:16:19.000 | Some of them were teenagers.
00:16:21.000 | But all I got to do is drive a ski boat.
00:16:23.000 | A lot of people desperately look forward to their ski vacations when they are saying,
00:16:28.000 | "Okay, I can finally go out on the lake."
00:16:30.000 | They're desperately looking forward to the opportunity to finally get out on the water.
00:16:38.000 | And I could ski and wakeboard any time I wanted.
00:16:41.000 | By the end of the first summer doing that, I was bored stiff
00:16:46.000 | because there was no real opportunity for me to grow.
00:16:49.000 | I was doing the same thing over and over and over again.
00:16:53.000 | And over the years, what I've noticed for me is that that's kind of a recurring--a recurrence.
00:16:58.000 | For me, the things that I really dislike about many jobs are when I wind up in a situation
00:17:04.000 | where I don't have the chance to grow.
00:17:07.000 | When I was a mainstream financial advisor, my biggest frustration with that job was
00:17:11.000 | I was having the same conversation over and over and over and over and over again.
00:17:16.000 | And I was always trying to find some new and interesting area to study
00:17:19.000 | and new clients to go after so I could expand my intellectual engagement with the world,
00:17:24.000 | but doing the same thing over and over and over again, it didn't matter the money.
00:17:27.000 | What mattered was there was an opportunity to grow.
00:17:29.000 | But I've noticed this is the same with many other people.
00:17:32.000 | Now, maybe not everybody. Maybe not.
00:17:35.000 | It has seemed to me that there are people who are totally comfortable doing the same thing
00:17:43.000 | day after day after day after day, that they're just completely relaxed and at ease
00:17:48.000 | without a lot of change in their life.
00:17:53.000 | Who am I to say what's right for anyone else?
00:17:56.000 | Who am I to say what someone else has to do with their life?
00:17:59.000 | I don't know.
00:18:00.000 | All I know is that's not me.
00:18:02.000 | And most likely that's not you either.
00:18:06.000 | Because if you're sitting here engaging with a program like Radical Personal Finance,
00:18:11.000 | we're not entry-level stuff.
00:18:15.000 | Most people do not have the ability to stay with one argument for 17 minutes and 52 seconds.
00:18:22.000 | Most people have checked out after 60 seconds, if that.
00:18:25.000 | And so the fact that you're here indicates you're not probably that kind of person.
00:18:30.000 | And so the dreams of that kind of person probably just don't resonate with you.
00:18:36.000 | They don't resonate with me.
00:18:38.000 | I can't help that kind of person.
00:18:40.000 | But I'll tell you, because you're here, I know you're the kind of person who's much more engaged with life
00:18:46.000 | and is much more engaged with work, with contribution, with meaning than most other people.
00:18:52.000 | And that won't change when you're financially independent.
00:18:56.000 | That won't change when you can travel anywhere in the world that you want to travel.
00:19:01.000 | That won't change when all of a sudden you can do anything you want.
00:19:05.000 | You'll still crave that sense of contribution, that sense of purpose, that sense of meaning.
00:19:11.000 | And you will need to build a lifestyle that engages with that.
00:19:18.000 | And I am convinced the most effective way to build that kind of lifestyle is going to be to keep work in your life.
00:19:28.000 | I think one of the worst things that you can do is to withdraw from work,
00:19:33.000 | to put yourself in a situation where, "Yeah, I used to do this and that.
00:19:37.000 | I used to engage with all these things, but now I don't.
00:19:41.000 | Now I'm just relaxed and retired."
00:19:44.000 | This is a real mistake.
00:19:52.000 | One of the most important things that you can do is to stay engaged with life and to stay engaged with work.
00:19:58.000 | Now, the cool thing that would be different if you were financially independent
00:20:03.000 | is you would put yourself in a situation where you get to define your work environment.
00:20:15.000 | But I hope you noticed what I just said.
00:20:18.000 | Because if that's where you would be when you're financially independent, why not do it now?
00:20:26.000 | Why not do it now?
00:20:28.000 | And that's where, when you think about all the things that I talked about,
00:20:30.000 | when we talked about freedom from debt, when I talked about entrepreneurship,
00:20:33.000 | you have the ability to do all that stuff now.
00:20:36.000 | Right now, as I record this show, I'm sitting in a beautiful garden.
00:20:40.000 | I try to come up with, especially now that I'm doing a video of Radical Personal Finance,
00:20:44.000 | I try to come up with an interesting thing for you to look at while you listen.
00:20:47.000 | But I'm sitting in a beautiful garden.
00:20:51.000 | Doubt me if you're listening to this through the audio.
00:20:53.000 | Come on by youtube.com/radicalpersonalfinance.
00:20:55.000 | Find the episode of today's show and you'll see it.
00:20:58.000 | Here I am in a beautiful garden doing work that I care about,
00:21:02.000 | seeking to help you, to encourage you, to speak to you, which I would do for free,
00:21:06.000 | even if I were totally financially independent.
00:21:11.000 | I would still do it.
00:21:12.000 | Now, I've asked myself a lot of questions.
00:21:14.000 | Would I still do it as much as I do it? I don't know.
00:21:16.000 | I'll report back when I'm financially independent.
00:21:19.000 | But I'll tell you this.
00:21:21.000 | In business, you can completely manufacture reality to fit your world,
00:21:30.000 | to fit any way you want.
00:21:34.000 | And it's the same with life in almost every dimension.
00:21:41.000 | Right now, you and I, right now, you and I experience more freedom in our lives
00:21:49.000 | than almost anybody throughout human history.
00:21:52.000 | Now, I'm not blind to the ways that freedom is eroded.
00:21:57.000 | I'm very open about my desire for freedom.
00:21:59.000 | I get very frustrated when people want to try to come and take freedom away.
00:22:02.000 | But what I have noticed is that the more that I just simply live as a free person
00:22:07.000 | and start to do all of the tactical things that I talk about here practically every day,
00:22:14.000 | the less I care about what they say, what they do.
00:22:18.000 | Their rules are--I don't mean for this to sound as snarky and as arrogant as it does,
00:22:23.000 | but the rules are for someone else.
00:22:26.000 | You can--if I don't like them, I just go somewhere else.
00:22:31.000 | Now, I'm not murdering people, right?
00:22:33.000 | There's an ethical layer, which is why we started with spiritual liberty.
00:22:36.000 | When I made the comment about spiritual liberty,
00:22:38.000 | I talked about how the very first level of discipline is to bring yourself under self-control,
00:22:43.000 | to be freed from those demons so that you can live an upright and moral life.
00:22:47.000 | But in that situation, you basically have all the other freedoms.
00:22:52.000 | And at this point, I just don't see any reason to wait.
00:22:57.000 | At this point in time, I don't see any reason why any of us should wait
00:23:03.000 | to build the kind of life that we don't want to retire from.
00:23:11.000 | Most of the restrictions that we're under,
00:23:18.000 | most of the things that we think are an obstacle, are all in our head.
00:23:26.000 | They're all in your head.
00:23:29.000 | And once you're freed from those restrictions and you realize how incredibly free the world is
00:23:34.000 | and how incredibly abundant your options are,
00:23:39.000 | it's a little overwhelming, frankly, at times, but it's stunning.
00:23:50.000 | You don't have to wait.
00:23:55.000 | And that, to me, was kind of the blinding revelation of what I've learned over the last six years
00:24:01.000 | as I have done radical personal finance.
00:24:05.000 | When I started this show, I was focused on the financial solutions.
00:24:11.000 | And I saw glimly how if you did a few basic financial things,
00:24:22.000 | it would lead to more financial independence.
00:24:24.000 | But I thought money was the key.
00:24:27.000 | I thought money was the magic necessary ingredient.
00:24:33.000 | It's not that money doesn't matter.
00:24:35.000 | It certainly does.
00:24:37.000 | But it's not the magic necessary ingredient.
00:24:41.000 | What's needed if you care about freedom is the right mindset,
00:24:46.000 | the right understanding of the world, some basic tactics.
00:24:53.000 | You may need to work.
00:24:54.000 | For example, maybe you're deeply in debt.
00:24:56.000 | Well, you can't just walk away.
00:24:57.000 | I guess I shouldn't say you can't just.
00:24:59.000 | Some people just say, "Well, that's it. I'll walk away."
00:25:01.000 | People who are buried in one country under a mountain of debt,
00:25:04.000 | they just walk away and go to a different country and start over again.
00:25:08.000 | I guess there's probably a time and a place to do that.
00:25:11.000 | But I'm talking within a proper ethical constraint.
00:25:14.000 | I'm not crazy, and I think we should always do the right thing,
00:25:18.000 | even whether the law allows it or not.
00:25:21.000 | But generally, that period of pain, that period of work is relatively short.
00:25:27.000 | Maybe right now you're waking up during an economic crisis,
00:25:29.000 | and you're saying, "I cannot afford all the money that's flowing out of my life.
00:25:32.000 | I've got bills everywhere. I've got all this stuff,
00:25:34.000 | and I am completely and utterly trapped."
00:25:37.000 | Well, it might take you a month or a couple of months to sell all your stuff,
00:25:41.000 | to change, to move from an expensive living situation to another.
00:25:44.000 | It might.
00:25:46.000 | But a few months from now, you can be in a radically different situation.
00:25:50.000 | As I've talked about when we talk about budgeting,
00:25:52.000 | the best recommendation I would have for you is make some radical lifestyle change
00:25:57.000 | that makes all that stuff easy, because that solves the emotional problem.
00:26:01.000 | You're trapped in here.
00:26:03.000 | You're a victim of your own affluence and your own success
00:26:05.000 | because you've used it to establish a lifestyle.
00:26:08.000 | And it's not that you couldn't cut all that stuff off.
00:26:11.000 | It's not that you couldn't dramatically change your expenses.
00:26:15.000 | You could.
00:26:17.000 | You could move from a big expensive house with a million-dollar mortgage
00:26:20.000 | into a cheap little apartment today. You could.
00:26:23.000 | But you're stuck in your head.
00:26:26.000 | What will my friends think in terms of your reputation?
00:26:29.000 | What will my friends think? What will my family think?
00:26:33.000 | Now, you could just kind of be a master of that and say, "I'm not going to care.
00:26:37.000 | I'm going to just get over it."
00:26:39.000 | That would be one solution, and some people are able to do that.
00:26:43.000 | Or you could find another solution.
00:26:45.000 | This is the time. Sell the house. Pack up your suitcases.
00:26:47.000 | Go travel around the world for a year, whatever your version of that is.
00:26:51.000 | Maybe go and retreat to a monastery to find yourself.
00:26:54.000 | Go spend a year living an ascetic lifestyle in a monastery.
00:26:58.000 | Find something that you're willing to engage in
00:27:01.000 | that has the side benefit of getting rid of all the payments.
00:27:05.000 | That might be one solution.
00:27:08.000 | But we're all going to want just about the same things.
00:27:13.000 | You're going to want to do work that matters.
00:27:16.000 | You're going to want to make a contribution to society.
00:27:20.000 | You're going to want to experience love and love others.
00:27:24.000 | You're going to want to be loved and love others.
00:27:27.000 | You're going to want some creature comforts.
00:27:30.000 | There's a real lifestyle upgrade from sleeping on the floor versus sleeping in a bed.
00:27:35.000 | Some people believe there's health benefits sleeping on the floor.
00:27:38.000 | Maybe so. I like sleeping in a bed.
00:27:40.000 | I don't like to be cold at night. I don't like to be rained on.
00:27:43.000 | So there's a basic level of comfort that we all need.
00:27:48.000 | But you're already there, right? It's crazy talk to even talk about that stuff.
00:27:51.000 | You can have that with a $100 Walmart tent, a $20 blow-up air mattress.
00:27:58.000 | Now, we're not at that level of advancement.
00:28:03.000 | But all the stuff that you're struggling with, all the stuff that I'm struggling with,
00:28:06.000 | it's all in your head.
00:28:08.000 | And if you'll recognize that,
00:28:11.000 | and you'll recognize what you would want after you became financially independent,
00:28:18.000 | you can just go ahead and skip the whole process.
00:28:23.000 | And that, for me, is the revelation that I did not expect from these last five years of work.
00:28:29.000 | I thought when I started this, I thought, "Okay, I want to create a business that I'll want to care about,
00:28:36.000 | that I'll want to do.
00:28:38.000 | I want to create a business that has the opportunity for me to grow,
00:28:41.000 | for me to adjust into different things,
00:28:43.000 | so I don't have to have the same conversation every single day of personal finance 101 or life insurance 101."
00:28:49.000 | Then I started doing it, experiencing some success.
00:28:53.000 | And then I realized what the business bought me was a huge level of freedom.
00:28:58.000 | Freedom of time, freedom of association, financial freedom, freedom of purpose,
00:29:03.000 | the ability to create my stuff how I wanted to do it,
00:29:06.000 | how I wanted to say without asking somebody else for permission.
00:29:11.000 | And when I started, I had a very intense bunch of financial goals.
00:29:15.000 | Then I realized that although I see value in financial goals,
00:29:19.000 | it wasn't necessary to achieve them to experience the level of lifestyle freedom that I was working towards.
00:29:27.000 | I didn't expect that.
00:29:29.000 | I didn't expect that.
00:29:31.000 | What I learned from coaching others, from talking to others, is that that's often a common experience.
00:29:38.000 | You start off thinking that what you want is financial independence.
00:29:43.000 | You start off thinking that if I could just have enough money, then I'll be totally free.
00:29:47.000 | And what you realize is, no, I wouldn't have to wait.
00:29:51.000 | One of my favorite kinds of articles to read is where someone who is a personal finance blogger,
00:29:57.000 | a financial independence blogger especially,
00:29:59.000 | someone who's retired early says, "If I lost it all, here's what I would do over again."
00:30:05.000 | Love those articles.
00:30:07.000 | And any time you find one, what you'll find, at least I shouldn't make an absolute statement like that,
00:30:16.000 | it seems to me that when I read those articles, a common refrain that I find
00:30:22.000 | is people would not put themselves into bondage again just in order to achieve financial independence.
00:30:30.000 | Now, they would still live frugally.
00:30:31.000 | They would still pursue a good income.
00:30:33.000 | They might go ahead and take a job that does have more demands upon their time and demands upon their person
00:30:41.000 | than if they were financially independent.
00:30:43.000 | I think that there are certainly people who, if they love traveling around the world,
00:30:47.000 | if they're financially independent, they might go ahead and say,
00:30:49.000 | "It's really efficient for me to go back into a six-figure corporate job."
00:30:54.000 | But they wouldn't put themselves into slavery just to achieve financial independence
00:30:58.000 | because it's not necessary.
00:31:02.000 | There are tactics and techniques that will lead to independence,
00:31:07.000 | and I've covered those in these Rings of Freedom.
00:31:11.000 | But what would I do if I went broke?
00:31:14.000 | I would do what I talked about in this show.
00:31:17.000 | I would layer in all the other financial--sorry, in this series.
00:31:20.000 | I would do what I talked about in this series,
00:31:22.000 | and I would layer in all the other good financial planning.
00:31:24.000 | I would layer in asset protection, so if I went totally broke,
00:31:27.000 | I would still come out with money that I could start again.
00:31:29.000 | It's a lot easier to make things happen when you have money.
00:31:32.000 | But I would never go back into a place of slavery.
00:31:36.000 | I often joke with my wife, but it's not a joke.
00:31:39.000 | But I would point out to her all the businesses that I would do
00:31:41.000 | instead of going back into the corporate environment.
00:31:44.000 | I'd point out to her the food truck,
00:31:46.000 | or I'd point out to her I'd keep a list of Internet businesses
00:31:49.000 | and digital businesses because there's so much value
00:31:51.000 | in a good digital business.
00:31:53.000 | It buys you a huge level of freedom and independence
00:31:56.000 | that almost nothing else--it's more attainable than almost anything else.
00:32:01.000 | But at the end of the day, I wouldn't just put everything on
00:32:06.000 | hoping that someday you'd have money.
00:32:11.000 | It's the single biggest regret that I have about when I was
00:32:14.000 | a traditional financial advisor in years past.
00:32:16.000 | I would talk to people, and in hindsight what I can identify
00:32:19.000 | is that they would always leave my office more discouraged,
00:32:22.000 | often more discouraged than they would come in.
00:32:25.000 | And I would sit down and I would say, "You've got to have more money.
00:32:29.000 | You've got to stack up more money.
00:32:31.000 | Look, you're behind on your retirement savings."
00:32:33.000 | They were behind on their retirement savings,
00:32:35.000 | but they were stinking rich.
00:32:38.000 | They just didn't have anybody who could translate that
00:32:40.000 | into what that meant for them.
00:32:45.000 | So here's my point.
00:32:47.000 | You're going to want, after you're financially independent,
00:32:50.000 | the same things that you want today.
00:32:56.000 | You're probably going to want to do the same things
00:32:58.000 | that you want to do today.
00:33:03.000 | So why not do them now?
00:33:06.000 | Why not skip the whole process of getting rich
00:33:09.000 | and go ahead and live rich first
00:33:15.000 | while on the path to financial independence?
00:33:23.000 | There are some basic decisions that you can make along the way
00:33:26.000 | that will help you to achieve that.
00:33:30.000 | If you look at rich people who have their priorities straight,
00:33:32.000 | they care about their children, they want time with their children.
00:33:36.000 | One of my favorite examples would be Mohamed El-Erian.
00:33:39.000 | He was formerly a big wig at PIMCO Funds.
00:33:43.000 | He was an incredible investment manager,
00:33:47.000 | and he quit a number of years ago.
00:33:49.000 | He left PIMCO, and he retired from that business
00:33:51.000 | because he wanted to have time with his family.
00:33:54.000 | He was sick and tired of getting up at 2 in the morning
00:33:56.000 | to follow the Asian markets to be prepared
00:33:58.000 | for the open of the U.S. markets.
00:34:00.000 | What's interesting is that today,
00:34:02.000 | he has a perfectly functional business.
00:34:04.000 | He just does it from home.
00:34:06.000 | He goes on Twitter, talks about things on Twitter,
00:34:08.000 | appears on news things, writes a little bit, does some consulting.
00:34:10.000 | Now, I'm sure he doesn't need to.
00:34:12.000 | I'm sure he's totally financially independent,
00:34:14.000 | could live on the income from his investments,
00:34:16.000 | but he still does it, and he has time with his family,
00:34:18.000 | which is what he wanted.
00:34:20.000 | Well, my answer is, that's great for him.
00:34:22.000 | I'm glad that he made that decision,
00:34:24.000 | but why shouldn't you and I make the same decision?
00:34:27.000 | What, just because we don't have $20 million?
00:34:29.000 | So what?
00:34:31.000 | You don't need $20 million to spend time with your children.
00:34:34.000 | What you need is the choice to spend time with your children.
00:34:38.000 | This current time we're in has proven
00:34:40.000 | that they can go to school online.
00:34:43.000 | No excuse for any of us not to homeschool our children at this point.
00:34:46.000 | You've already been forced to,
00:34:48.000 | so why not continue it if you want time with your children?
00:34:50.000 | You want the time to be more fulfilling?
00:34:52.000 | Well, then build some kind of lifestyle that allows that to happen.
00:34:55.000 | But we're all going to want about the same things
00:34:57.000 | that we want in the future that we want today.
00:35:00.000 | That's the key.
00:35:02.000 | There's a lot of commentary about money.
00:35:06.000 | People talk about money, and they say,
00:35:08.000 | "Well, are rich people bad?"
00:35:10.000 | Right? "Are rich people bad because they're rich?"
00:35:13.000 | It's not been my experience.
00:35:15.000 | I think what happens is,
00:35:18.000 | rich people become a little bit more
00:35:21.000 | of what they were before they were rich.
00:35:23.000 | It's just amplified by the money.
00:35:25.000 | People who were generous before they're wealthy,
00:35:27.000 | they're usually generous after they're wealthy.
00:35:29.000 | People who are parsimonious before they're wealthy,
00:35:32.000 | they're usually parsimonious afterwards.
00:35:35.000 | People who are selfish before, selfish afterward.
00:35:37.000 | People who are abusive before, abusive afterward.
00:35:40.000 | The money just enables them to live a bigger lifestyle.
00:35:43.000 | And so here's the great thing about it.
00:35:46.000 | If you're in a situation now where you're free,
00:35:49.000 | you're going to be more free when you have more money.
00:35:51.000 | But if you're trapped right now,
00:35:54.000 | if you're not living free,
00:35:56.000 | you're going to be more trapped when you have more money.
00:35:59.000 | At the end of the day, the rules and the structure
00:36:02.000 | is all right here. It's all in your head.
00:36:06.000 | Now, you can't change what's in your head overnight.
00:36:11.000 | I've read lots of people who've talked about and said,
00:36:13.000 | "You know what?
00:36:15.000 | If you just change your mindset, everything is fixed."
00:36:18.000 | Maybe you can do that, but I've never been able to do that.
00:36:21.000 | I've always needed tactics and time.
00:36:23.000 | It's always taken me time to change my mindset
00:36:25.000 | because I don't want to lie to myself.
00:36:27.000 | Maybe that's a flaw.
00:36:28.000 | I often admire those who can just change their mindset
00:36:31.000 | evidently in a moment.
00:36:33.000 | What I want to encourage you is if you're like me,
00:36:35.000 | if that's hard for you, if you do the stuff day by day,
00:36:38.000 | if you take the actions,
00:36:40.000 | over time that sense of freedom will start to become a part of you.
00:36:48.000 | What I'm sharing with you is a transformation
00:36:50.000 | that I didn't expect from the work that I've done
00:36:53.000 | in the last five years, but I'm glad it's happened.
00:36:57.000 | But it doesn't fire me up to just quit and do more fun stuff.
00:37:01.000 | I love to do fun stuff.
00:37:03.000 | I love to play, and I'm excited about the big play
00:37:08.000 | that I get to do with my family over the coming years.
00:37:10.000 | I am excited.
00:37:12.000 | I'm excited even about the expensive play
00:37:15.000 | that I can do over the next coming years.
00:37:17.000 | I enjoy spending money. It's fun.
00:37:23.000 | But I'm more excited about the work than about the play.
00:37:30.000 | In the same way that going skiing on the lake is really fun
00:37:34.000 | when it's a respite or an after-work activity
00:37:38.000 | after a long day of hard work,
00:37:41.000 | play of any kind, even big expensive play,
00:37:44.000 | is really fun when it's a respite, a rest,
00:37:48.000 | after a long week or month of hard work.
00:37:52.000 | Don't expect that financial abundance and financial freedom
00:37:55.000 | and achieving that level seven goal
00:37:57.000 | is just going to completely change everything.
00:38:00.000 | It's not.
00:38:01.000 | Will it buy you more opportunities?
00:38:03.000 | Yes, it will.
00:38:04.000 | I'm convinced you don't need two million bucks to do it.
00:38:07.000 | As I talked about in ring number four,
00:38:09.000 | where we talked about spending liberty, debt-free and savings,
00:38:15.000 | where I talked to you about being debt-free,
00:38:17.000 | buys you liberty.
00:38:18.000 | It's hard to really experience that level of liberty
00:38:21.000 | when you're in debt.
00:38:22.000 | It really is.
00:38:25.000 | Having savings, important.
00:38:27.000 | The three numbers I went over, remember, $1,000,
00:38:29.000 | buys you access to the top 50% of society.
00:38:33.000 | $1,000 in the bank, that's it.
00:38:35.000 | I don't know what that is on a global basis,
00:38:37.000 | probably top 20% of the globe in terms of level of wealth.
00:38:41.000 | $1,000 buys you access to the top 50% of society.
00:38:45.000 | Doesn't that seem like kind of a small price to pay
00:38:48.000 | to go from the bottom 50% to the top 50%?
00:38:51.000 | $1,000.
00:38:52.000 | Anybody who sets the goal, works at it, can achieve that.
00:38:57.000 | $10,000 is the next level that I've talked about.
00:38:59.000 | $10,000 buys you almost any choice in life that you want.
00:39:03.000 | You can go anywhere, do almost anything,
00:39:06.000 | adjust to almost anything, and then of course the third level,
00:39:09.000 | which was simply $100,000 in the bank.
00:39:12.000 | $100,000 in the bank, the world is yours.
00:39:16.000 | The only thing you can't do on $100,000 is not work forever,
00:39:20.000 | but you can not work for now.
00:39:23.000 | That's your price of financial admission,
00:39:25.000 | and you can achieve that fast.
00:39:27.000 | The other stuff will all take care of itself.
00:39:30.000 | Don't expect that financial independence
00:39:31.000 | is going to transform your life.
00:39:34.000 | Build a life after financial independence that involves work,
00:39:38.000 | that involves connection, that involves service,
00:39:42.000 | and then enjoy reaching that milestone of financial independence
00:39:45.000 | while you look forward and press on to the next one.
00:39:49.000 | Thank you for listening to Radical Personal Finance.
00:39:50.000 | Make sure you subscribe to the show.
00:39:52.000 | Subscribe wherever you're watching this now, Facebook, YouTube.
00:39:55.000 | If you're listening on the podcast, subscribe to the podcast.
00:39:58.000 | Regularly new episodes coming out all the time.
00:39:59.000 | If you'd like to support the show, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.
00:40:02.000 | Support the show on Patreon.
00:40:03.000 | That gives you access to the Friday Q&A shows.
00:40:05.000 | Going to be coming out with a bunch of new stuff over in the store,
00:40:08.000 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.
00:40:09.000 | New courses coming out in the coming weeks.
00:40:12.000 | I'll share with you more details when those are live.
00:40:14.000 | Thank you for listening.
00:40:15.000 | Be back with you soon.
00:40:17.000 | The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options
00:40:20.000 | to celebrate traditions old and new.
00:40:22.000 | Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos,
00:40:26.000 | your go-to shrimp cocktail, or your first Cajun risotto,
00:40:30.000 | Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions.
00:40:34.000 | Ralph's, fresh for everyone.
00:40:36.000 | We've locked in low prices to help you save big store wide.
00:40:39.000 | Look for the locked in low prices tags and enjoy a free meal.
00:40:42.000 | Ralph's, fresh for everyone.
00:40:46.000 | extra savings throughout the store. Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone.