RPF-0038-Interview_with_Ken

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00:00:29.640 | Radical Personal Finance episode 38.

00:00:32.640 | Would you be willing to live in a van to avoid borrowing money?

00:00:37.640 | My guest today, Ken Ilgunis, did that.

00:00:40.640 | He paid off $32,000 in student loans and then chose to live in a van while going to graduate school at Duke University to avoid going into debt.

00:00:51.640 | [Music]

00:01:07.640 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast for today, Friday, August the 8th, 2014.

00:01:13.640 | Thank you for being here. I'm glad that you're here with me.

00:01:16.640 | Today's show is going to be an interview show with Ken Ilgunis.

00:01:19.640 | He's the guy who lived in a van while going to Duke University and wrote about it and was featured all over the place.

00:01:25.640 | He's written a book about it. And today we're going to talk to him.

00:01:28.640 | I hope that you enjoy hearing a little bit about his philosophy and his experiences.

00:01:32.640 | [Music]

00:01:39.640 | I don't know if that's radical enough for you, but living in a vehicle to avoid borrowing money on student loans, I like that kind of radicalness.

00:01:46.640 | And today's show is going to be fun. You're going to enjoy this interview that I've completed with Ken.

00:01:52.640 | This isn't the show that I had planned for today.

00:01:54.640 | I had a couple of other shows and I decided what I wanted to do the show on.

00:02:02.640 | And I was preparing it, but then I realized that in order to make it worth your while, I needed to do a lot more preparation as far as the numbers and script it out and really have my points tightened up.

00:02:13.640 | I'm excited about the show.

00:02:15.640 | I'm not going to tell you the subject matter, but I think you'll like it.

00:02:19.640 | But I had this interview already scheduled with Ken, and I had planned to release this next week, next Tuesday, as part of the Tuesday interview show.

00:02:27.640 | But I decided to release it today. I think this would be a good show to have a Friday show on.

00:02:32.640 | So today's show is an interview with Ken Ilgunas.

00:02:35.640 | Ken is an author. He's written a couple of books. He's written a blog.

00:02:39.640 | And he's just a fascinating guy.

00:02:41.640 | He is a young man of very wide experience.

00:02:46.640 | And I love talking to people of wide experience.

00:02:49.640 | For some reason, it seems to me that people of varying experience are just far more interesting human beings to talk to than people who've only done one thing.

00:02:58.640 | Ken was originally from New York.

00:03:01.640 | And then, according to his own bio, he fell in love with the idea of Alaska and Thoreau, the writer who wrote about simplicity.

00:03:09.640 | And so he decided to start going on adventures.

00:03:12.640 | He gained some national notoriety when he started his blog, where he was secretly living in a van while going to Duke University as a graduate student.

00:03:20.640 | And he blogged about it, and then somehow it got picked up on the national news media.

00:03:25.640 | And that turned into a book and a number of other things.

00:03:29.640 | It's turned into a couple of other books and some really interesting experiences.

00:03:33.640 | Prior to Duke, Ken spent two and a half years paying off $32,000 in student loan debt while simply just working his way all across the United States, doing various jobs.

00:03:46.640 | He lived in Alaska. He worked as a tour guide.

00:03:48.640 | He hitchhiked over 7,500 miles back and forth across the United States.

00:03:53.640 | He went on an 18th-century canoe voyage across Ontario.

00:03:57.640 | He lived in a ghetto in Mississippi.

00:03:59.640 | He had a job as a backcountry ranger in the gates of the Arctic National Park.

00:04:03.640 | And then just recently, he walked the 1,700-mile proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline, walking from Alberta to Texas.

00:04:12.640 | And he wrote a book about that experience that I hope you'll check out.

00:04:16.640 | So today's interview, we're going to talk a lot about what it's like to live in a van and also some of the philosophy of freedom and how to gain freedom in your life.

00:04:24.640 | I hope you enjoy.

00:04:27.640 | And welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

00:04:29.640 | I appreciate you making the time to be with me today.

00:04:31.640 | I'm honored to be on.

00:04:33.640 | So I was trying to figure out before this show, I was trying to figure out how I first came across your, well, I guess across your name and your story.

00:04:45.640 | And I'm sure that it was something associated with your van dwelling, but I have no idea how I came across it.

00:04:52.640 | I just know that I've been aware of your, at least your van dwelling story for a few years.

00:04:57.640 | And it really caught my interest.

00:05:00.640 | And somehow you wound up kind of being picked up by the major press.

00:05:04.640 | And I think you must be the hero of the van dwelling community these days based upon your experiences in the past.

00:05:11.640 | Do you know how you got everything kind of picked up or how you became so Internet famous for your story?

00:05:18.640 | Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've had a couple waves of popularity.

00:05:23.640 | I had a blog going for about a year and by no means was that popular at all.

00:05:29.640 | I mean, I had my mom and a few friends and a few strangers reading it.

00:05:32.640 | But after that, I wrote an article for salon.com titled I Live in a Van down by Duke University.

00:05:41.640 | And that's not my title, by the way.

00:05:43.640 | That's theirs.

00:05:45.640 | And I had a brief 15 minutes of fame where I did a few interviews.

00:05:55.640 | I was on a few radio shows.

00:05:57.640 | I got a few TV requests.

00:06:01.640 | And, you know, that kind of died out again.

00:06:04.640 | But a couple of years later, I wrote my book Walden on Wheels and I kind of had another wave of fame.

00:06:11.640 | So I'm not sure where you you picked up on my name somewhere in there, but probably in between 2010 and 2013.

00:06:22.640 | So how did you wind up living in a van down by Duke University?

00:06:27.640 | Well, where shall I even begin?

00:06:30.640 | I guess I need to begin with my undergraduate degree.

00:06:34.640 | When I went to the University at Buffalo in New York and I graduated with thirty two thousand dollars in student debt with an English and history bachelor of arts.

00:06:47.640 | And I wanted to get rid of that debt as fast as humanly possible.

00:06:52.640 | I wanted to be a free person.

00:06:54.640 | So I moved up to Alaska and worked odd jobs.

00:06:57.640 | And after two and a half years, I paid it off.

00:07:00.640 | But in the midst of that journey to pay off the debt, I kind of learned that I wanted two things.

00:07:09.640 | And one of that one of those things was I never want to go into debt again.

00:07:15.640 | And the second was that I wanted to go to grad school.

00:07:19.640 | I so missed just the university life and a life of learning.

00:07:24.640 | I was just sick of working 60 hours a week at menial jobs and just feeling like my brain was withering away.

00:07:33.640 | So I had to figure out how I was going to get my degree debt free.

00:07:41.640 | And I had a few options.

00:07:43.640 | One was I could wait and I could save up money.

00:07:47.640 | But to be honest, that didn't appeal to me at all.

00:07:49.640 | I was done waiting.

00:07:51.640 | I wanted to go to school right now.

00:07:54.640 | So I had to figure out a way to afford it.

00:07:57.640 | And one of the things that occurred to me was having lived up in Alaska and seen a lot of interesting lifestyles, subsistence lifestyles,

00:08:08.640 | I think I was kind of inspired by these different ways of life.

00:08:13.640 | And I just was thinking a little bit more out of the box than I normally would have.

00:08:18.640 | While I was up there, I met this old man.

00:08:21.640 | His name was James.

00:08:22.640 | He was 75 or something.

00:08:26.640 | And he had lived in his 1980 Chevy Suburban in the Arctic for six years.

00:08:34.640 | Let me remind you, it gets down to like negative 60 below zero.

00:08:40.640 | So I'm not sure if I was ever hit by an epiphany exactly.

00:08:45.640 | But over the course of these years, the idea of living in a vehicle was growing on me.

00:08:51.640 | So when I got accepted into grad school, it was just like, "Oh, crap. What am I going to do?"

00:08:56.640 | And I had to make a quick decision and I decided to buy a 1994 Ford Econoline.

00:09:03.640 | And move into it.

00:09:05.640 | And move into it, yeah.

00:09:06.640 | So I have this secret. I'll confess something to you.

00:09:09.640 | I have this secret obsession with van dwelling.

00:09:12.640 | And it came -- I know I didn't read of your story when I was in college.

00:09:16.640 | But it was after I was in college, I actually drove a van part of the time when I was in university.

00:09:22.640 | And I never in my life had the idea to live in it from the sense of actually sleeping in it.

00:09:28.640 | I went to school in West Palm Beach, Florida.

00:09:30.640 | So we didn't have the minus 60 degree problem.

00:09:32.640 | We had the plus 90 degree problem.

00:09:35.640 | Which would have been a challenging aspect of staying in the van.

00:09:39.640 | But there was a time when I was in college, when I was living with my parents for this one particular year.

00:09:45.640 | But I was so broke that I couldn't afford to drive the van the 40 minutes back and forth to school.

00:09:51.640 | So I kept all my clothes in the van.

00:09:53.640 | And I kept all of my -- I kept my clothes, my shoes, my books.

00:09:57.640 | Like that was basically my go-to place.

00:09:59.640 | And I would always joke that I was living out of the van.

00:10:03.640 | But after I graduated from college, I started to look back.

00:10:07.640 | And I thought, why didn't I ever think of saving the money on rent?

00:10:10.640 | Because there were several years that I did live on campus.

00:10:13.640 | And I thought, why didn't I just take that the next step and save that money?

00:10:17.640 | And I got thoroughly disgusted with myself when I realized I could have been, I don't know, $20,000 to $30,000 richer.

00:10:23.640 | If I had been willing to be a little bit more radical and a little more extreme.

00:10:29.640 | But I never had the idea.

00:10:31.640 | It's funny how you sometimes have to see somebody else do something to come up with the idea.

00:10:36.640 | Yeah, and I'd say that's kind of how seeing James' living situation changed me.

00:10:44.640 | I think you still qualify as a van dweller.

00:10:46.640 | You think so, even though I never slept in it?

00:10:48.640 | Yeah, I'll grant you that title, me being, as you say, hero of the van dwellers.

00:10:55.640 | Though I don't think anyone else thinks of me that way.

00:10:57.640 | Well, since that time, there have been a couple of times my wife and I have a minivan now.

00:11:01.640 | And there's been once or twice that we have slept in the car.

00:11:05.640 | And I did one time where we went on a trip, an overnight trip.

00:11:09.640 | We went to a wedding, a friend's wedding that was a couple hours away.

00:11:12.640 | And I just took the seats out of the back and tossed a mattress back there.

00:11:15.640 | And then on the way back, we stopped in, I don't remember where, it was like a hotel parking lot.

00:11:20.640 | And we slept in the back, and it worked great.

00:11:22.640 | And we did it another time when we were on the road.

00:11:25.640 | We stayed at a truck stop.

00:11:26.640 | And so I'd rather do that than stay at a hotel these days.

00:11:29.640 | But it's one thing, and that's where the advantages of being a single male is a little easier than if you had four kids that you were trying to get in there.

00:11:38.640 | But I think it's a really cool idea that I never had until I had observed someone else do it.

00:11:45.640 | Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have the van anymore.

00:11:50.640 | But man, when I was driving across country, I just wanted to take a nap.

00:11:53.640 | It was so nice, just park in a parking lot, pull down the shades, take a nap.

00:11:58.640 | And then continue on.

00:12:00.640 | But I don't blame you at all for not living in your van in Florida.

00:12:05.640 | To be honest, I'd rather have negative 60 than positive 90.

00:12:13.640 | North Carolina isn't a mild climb itself.

00:12:19.640 | That's exactly the impression that I've had, is that cold, it's a lot easier to do in the cold.

00:12:25.640 | I found some guy online who was living in one of these small Toyota RVs in Alaska.

00:12:31.640 | And he just has a little wood-burning stove in his RV.

00:12:35.640 | And I thought, man, it's so much easier to deal with cold than it is with heat.

00:12:38.640 | At least when you're off the grid, it's a lot easier to deal with cold than it is to deal with heat.

00:12:44.640 | Oh, absolutely. I was living in 10 degrees.

00:12:47.640 | I think that's about as cold as it got in North Carolina, which isn't bad.

00:12:50.640 | But I slept really well on those nights.

00:12:54.640 | Get myself in some thermal underwear, get in my nice warm sleeping bag.

00:12:58.640 | Oh, man, I never slept that well.

00:13:01.640 | So did it work? Were you able to accomplish your goal of going to school and not going into debt?

00:13:08.640 | Yeah. Yeah.

00:13:11.640 | So I was at Duke for two and a half years.

00:13:15.640 | For those first two years, I lived in my van.

00:13:20.640 | I should clarify, though, that it really wasn't just for the economics.

00:13:29.640 | There was other motivations there as well.

00:13:33.640 | As I said, I lived up in Alaska for a few years.

00:13:37.640 | And I was living a fairly rustic lifestyle.

00:13:42.640 | I had a tiny dorm. I had no cell phone. I didn't have a car.

00:13:47.640 | I ended up hitchhiking about 7,000 miles across the continent.

00:13:51.640 | And eventually I became a ranger up in the gates of the Arctic National Park, where I basically lived in my tent for the whole summer.

00:13:59.640 | And I came to really appreciate that rugged lifestyle and that simplicity.

00:14:06.640 | The thought of going back east and getting into an apartment and, you know, hanging shades and finding a rug to tie the room together was just not appealing to me at all.

00:14:22.640 | So I kind of wanted to nurture that sense of simplicity, frugality, rough living.

00:14:32.640 | And it was also just an experiment.

00:14:36.640 | And I figured, you know, why not take—at the time, I just thought I was going to do it for that first semester.

00:14:42.640 | So I just thought, you know, why not take a few months of your life, just unclutter your life, get down to bare-bones simplicity, cut out as much of the frivolous crap out of your life as you can, and just see how low you can go.

00:14:59.640 | And even if you struggle, even if it's a pain, you're going to learn about yourself and your limits and what you truly need.

00:15:08.640 | And so there's a whole bunch of different elements to this story.

00:15:12.640 | It was an experiment.

00:15:14.640 | It was rough living.

00:15:15.640 | And it was a way to get out debt-free.

00:15:18.640 | What inspired you to pursue—I mean, did you read—what was his name?

00:15:23.640 | Chris—because you wrote a book about McCandless, right?

00:15:26.640 | Chris McCandless, right?

00:15:29.640 | You borrowed that.

00:15:30.640 | I think you have a book that's related to—his name was Chris McCandless, right?

00:15:35.640 | That's right, yeah.

00:15:36.640 | And that's the guy from Into the Wild.

00:15:38.640 | And yeah, I have a tiny book.

00:15:40.640 | It's 10,000 words.

00:15:41.640 | It's on Amazon.

00:15:42.640 | I haven't read it.

00:15:43.640 | It's called McCandless Mecca.

00:15:45.640 | But, no, I wouldn't say I was inspired by him.

00:15:48.640 | I mean, I have all the respect in the world for him, so I don't want to give the wrong impression.

00:15:52.640 | But if I was inspired by anybody, it was Henry David Thoreau, who wrote the lovely book Walden in the mid-19th century.

00:16:02.640 | And he had lived in his cabin in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts, for a little over two years.

00:16:10.640 | And he kind of used that for the same way I was using it, to kind of get back to nature, to live a simple lifestyle.

00:16:18.640 | But really just to experiment.

00:16:20.640 | To kind of look at the world around him with a fresh pair of eyes.

00:16:25.640 | Because, you know, when you're abstaining from all the consumerism, from all the hustle and bustle,

00:16:33.640 | you can kind of view the rest of the world, I think, from a more objective eye.

00:16:39.640 | And that's what I was interested in, too.

00:16:42.640 | Did it change you?

00:16:45.640 | I don't know if it changed me.

00:16:46.640 | I think it kind of confirmed a lot of beliefs and values and theories that I had had.

00:16:57.640 | You know, again, I'd lived a similar rustic lifestyle before, so it wasn't like some completely novel experiment.

00:17:09.640 | And after a while, after a few months, it just became kind of ordinary.

00:17:12.640 | It just felt like I was living in a really tiny and somewhat smellier dorm.

00:17:19.640 | But no, I don't think it changed me.

00:17:22.640 | It just kind of reinforced a lot of the values I'd previously had come to hold.

00:17:30.640 | And the reason I ask the questions is I have some theories that I'm trying to figure out if they're true or not.

00:17:36.640 | But I wonder why people these days seem to find it so challenging to live a life of adventure.

00:17:45.640 | And I find myself drawn to experiencing -- I find myself drawn to wanting to experience new things,

00:17:55.640 | wanting to try new things, wanting to adjust and wanting to change life from time to time.

00:18:02.640 | I don't find myself drawn to wanting to have the same old every day.

00:18:06.640 | I find that if I'm working a job and after I've done it a little while, I kind of feel like,

00:18:10.640 | "Okay, I've maxed out what I want to max out here."

00:18:13.640 | And I find myself being drawn to a life of adventure.

00:18:17.640 | And I find a lot of people already experiencing these lives of adventures,

00:18:22.640 | lives that maybe seem adventurous from the outside.

00:18:26.640 | And it seems so simple to do in this sense.

00:18:29.640 | When I started reading some of your stories, I haven't ever gone up and worked in Alaska.

00:18:40.640 | But it seems to me like the kind of thing that anyone can do.

00:18:42.640 | I mean, you were working some menial, relatively entry-level jobs when you started up there, right?

00:18:47.640 | And you were living in a tent.

00:18:49.640 | So it's not like there's this -- it's not like these things are difficult to do.

00:18:53.640 | You can trot down to your local sporting goods store and buy a cheap tent,

00:18:56.640 | and anyone can move into it and live in it.

00:18:59.640 | But that allowed you to free yourself from your debt.

00:19:05.640 | And to me, I don't know whether it's a personality difference or what,

00:19:10.640 | but I try to figure out what makes some people be willing to have a good time

00:19:14.640 | and do something different while they're paying off debt,

00:19:16.640 | where others just simply seem stuck in the corporate grind,

00:19:20.640 | and they don't really enjoy their life, but they require all of the normal comforts of life all around them,

00:19:27.640 | and they don't seem to make any progress.

00:19:29.640 | So I'm trying to figure out the psychology of it a little bit.

00:19:32.640 | I'm interested if you have any thoughts as far as what you've observed,

00:19:36.640 | because I'm sure that you've come in contact with other people in your travels that live alternative lifestyles.

00:19:43.640 | Do you have any insight as far as what it is that makes someone be willing to consider an alternative lifestyle of some kind?

00:19:50.640 | These are interesting questions, and I think I can write about them,

00:19:56.640 | because these same feelings of reluctance and fear dwell in me.

00:20:05.640 | I know how the routine just becomes your life. You get bored, and then you kind of just get scared.

00:20:13.640 | The longer you wait, the more and more difficult it is to break out of the mold of your routine.

00:20:22.640 | So I'm very familiar with that.

00:20:26.640 | Breaking out of that is tough, and I really think it takes just a leap of faith.

00:20:37.640 | I remember once I was living up in Alaska, and this was a very unadventurous time period of my life.

00:20:46.640 | In fact, it was kind of a low point. I was washing dishes.

00:20:50.640 | I had a graduate degree. I had no money, and I just felt kind of aimless.

00:20:55.640 | I had this spark, this flash of an idea. It was actually my friend's idea, but it affected me as strongly nevertheless.

00:21:06.640 | He suggested we hike the Keystone XL pipeline.

00:21:12.640 | I think we all have those flashes of inspiration, but they all dim.

00:21:23.640 | They all dissipate. They all go away eventually.

00:21:28.640 | But I think the key is just to kind of remember that moment where you were so overtaken by this idea

00:21:36.640 | and to kind of trust that feeling that you had, to kind of trust that it's some sort of guiding light,

00:21:45.640 | some sort of path that you need to follow, because something in you at that time was aching and craving for an adventure of that.

00:21:56.640 | I just think those are things that can't be forgotten.

00:22:02.640 | They're always crazy ideas, and we all have crazy ideas.

00:22:05.640 | Because they're crazy ideas, it's easy to come up with reasons why not to do them.

00:22:12.640 | Like, "Oh, a bear is going to maul me. Oh, a cow is going to stampede over me.

00:22:18.640 | Someone's going to shoot me for going on this hiking expedition."

00:22:22.640 | But I think I've kind of come to realize that those crazy ideas aren't just crazy ideas,

00:22:32.640 | but maybe even messages from fate calling upon you to do something grand.

00:22:39.640 | I take them very seriously, and I think that might be part of the process of breaking free from the ordinary.

00:22:47.640 | I wonder, and I'll share an idea with you, because you point out, I think you make a good point.

00:22:56.640 | It seems like many people have those ideas, but it seems like there are only some people that act on them

00:23:01.640 | and some people that don't act on them.

00:23:03.640 | What occurs to me is, in doing financial planning, I'll give you a little bit of my background.

00:23:09.640 | I worked as a professional financial planner for six years.

00:23:12.640 | One of the things that I learned is I always started every appointment with a new prospective client

00:23:17.640 | or with an existing client with asking people about what their goals were,

00:23:22.640 | like what they were trying to accomplish, what they would like to do.

00:23:25.640 | I would write them down, and I felt like that was a good place to start.

00:23:29.640 | But when I would talk about them, I would come back year after year with some clients,

00:23:36.640 | and we would do an annual review, and I would find out they hadn't done anything towards their goals.

00:23:40.640 | They hadn't actually taken a step. They hadn't actually pursued something.

00:23:45.640 | So I've started thinking a lot about the psychology, and I've recognized that it seems like we think

00:23:52.640 | that we're supposed to have these goals of financial success.

00:23:56.640 | We think that we're supposed to have these goals of a nicer house, a nicer car, fancier clothes, fancier surroundings.

00:24:03.640 | But I've never seen a novel that was written about somebody who is just simply pursuing something newer

00:24:10.640 | and nicer and fancier.

00:24:12.640 | Maybe it's just what I read, but I like to read a novel about an adventurer who built a sailboat

00:24:16.640 | and sailed across the world.

00:24:18.640 | I like reading a novel about somebody who went and traveled in another country.

00:24:21.640 | I like reading a novel about -- we read novels about people who accomplished big things,

00:24:27.640 | but none of these are really financially related.

00:24:30.640 | So I look at the big things, and you recognize that whether you're living in a van in North Carolina

00:24:35.640 | or living in a tent in Alaska or living in a tent in the Amazon, physically you're fairly uncomfortable.

00:24:42.640 | But being uncomfortable is not necessarily a bad thing, so why not just simply choose to be a little uncomfortable

00:24:48.640 | and get that sense of zest for life, that sense of actually following through and doing something.

00:24:55.640 | And it seems like once people make this psychological jump of, "Oh, I really can do it.

00:25:01.640 | What's the worst that can happen?"

00:25:02.640 | And there was a concept -- you mentioned a word when you were saying you were doing it as an experiment.

00:25:06.640 | And I find it really helpful to free myself from the psychology of success or failure just to say something is an experiment.

00:25:15.640 | "I'm going to go and do this as an experiment.

00:25:16.640 | I'm going to start this business as an experiment.

00:25:17.640 | I'm going to try this new hobby as an experiment."

00:25:19.640 | And that way, hey, if the experiment is fun, cool.

00:25:22.640 | If it's not, I quit it and move on.

00:25:24.640 | And it seems like by choosing to do some of these things, by subjecting ourselves in a limited basis to discomfort

00:25:32.640 | or by subjecting ourselves to maybe these alternative ways of approaching life,

00:25:39.640 | that it can help to contribute to getting that mental freedom.

00:25:45.640 | And I've observed that once people have that sense of psychological freedom,

00:25:49.640 | it seems like their life is simple from then on out.

00:25:51.640 | They never get trapped again.

00:25:53.640 | I'm more rambling instead of asking a specific question.

00:25:57.640 | I apologize.

00:25:58.640 | It's just those are some of the pent-up thoughts that I have.

00:26:01.640 | And I try to figure out how to convey them to help people be freed of the trap of modern life where you're a slave in a wheel.

00:26:09.640 | And I don't know how to -- I haven't figured out how to solve it yet.

00:26:12.640 | Yeah, I mean, all that stuff resonates.

00:26:14.640 | I mean, when I go on an adventure of some sort, there's a couple of other things at play.

00:26:23.640 | And one of them is just kind of a perspective on how to live life and having, you know, just through living ordinary life, you observe people.

00:26:33.640 | And it seems that there's some people who are happy and there's some people who are unhappy.

00:26:42.640 | And you look at the reasons why and the decisions they made, and it certainly helps to inform the decisions I make.

00:26:52.640 | And people who tend to take the path more traveled and don't answer those inner longings, they tend to be the unhappier people and the sort of people who I don't want to end up being.

00:27:07.640 | So there's that sort of perspective.

00:27:10.640 | And I kind of think of it as capturing that zest for life in the present, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant.

00:27:19.640 | There's certainly that sort of zest for sure if you feel like you're alive.

00:27:25.640 | So you're kind of addressing the concerns of your present self, but I also think it's kind of addressing the concerns of your future self as well.

00:27:34.640 | You're creating this history for this future self who may not be as bogged down with regret when he's 40, who may not be as likely to experience a midlife crisis, who may not feel so driven to buy a flashy red Corvette to compensate for all those longings he squelched.

00:28:02.640 | And I'd say another thing I have in mind almost all the time, and this is kind of disturbing, but I always have a sense of mortality.

00:28:12.640 | I always know that I'm going to die someday, and I'm 31, and I don't know.

00:28:20.640 | I just see the years ticking by, and whenever I think about it this way, it's just like I only have so much time.

00:28:30.640 | I mean, tomorrow I'm going to be 40.

00:28:33.640 | Tomorrow I could be in an accident, and I could be paralyzed.

00:28:37.640 | Tomorrow I could be dead.

00:28:39.640 | So it's just like screw this mindless consumerism.

00:28:44.640 | Screw this hamster wheel corporate BS.

00:28:49.640 | I'm going to live this life the way I want to live it.

00:28:54.640 | I have the same weird fascination with mortality that you do.

00:29:00.640 | I'm glad I'm not alone.

00:29:02.640 | No, you're not.

00:29:03.640 | And I read a lot of the literature.

00:29:07.640 | I try to not be dogmatic on my show or with people telling them what they should do.

00:29:12.640 | I live in a normal middle class house.

00:29:14.640 | I live very comfortably.

00:29:15.640 | I've got an air conditioner that's running right now keeping my house a very nice 78 degrees, so I don't have much discomfort in my life right now.

00:29:22.640 | But I read the -- and so I'm not trying to tell people they need to do something.

00:29:27.640 | Not everyone needs to go and live in a van.

00:29:30.640 | That's not the point.

00:29:31.640 | But the point is, like, if you read literature, if you look at the stories from people who are diagnosed with a terminal illness,

00:29:38.640 | I'm fascinated with reading the stories because there is this sense of when somebody is diagnosed with a terminal illness

00:29:45.640 | and they're given one year, two years, five years to live, they usually -- they often -- I won't say usually.

00:29:53.640 | Many people completely disrupt their life and change everything about their life.

00:29:58.640 | And I look at that and I admire them for doing it in that circumstance.

00:30:02.640 | And I think to myself, "Why would I wait until I were diagnosed with a terminal illness to disrupt my life?

00:30:08.640 | Why would I not do it now and enjoy the next --"

00:30:12.640 | because I pray I never am diagnosed with a terminal illness like that, but I can go through that and I can adjust my life now.

00:30:19.640 | Why wait?

00:30:21.640 | Yeah, that's kind of like having a deliberate sense of perception.

00:30:25.640 | In that same vein, yesterday evening I was watching this PBS documentary,

00:30:30.640 | and there was this young black man from Florida who's been in jail for the past 11 years.

00:30:38.640 | When he was 14, he committed armed robbery on a bank.

00:30:44.640 | And it turns out he was actually forced to do this by another guy, and he's completely rehabilitated.

00:30:51.640 | And anyone watching this documentary would assume this guy, his name was Kevin, was just totally ready to go back into society.

00:30:59.640 | And he appealed, and unfortunately the judge said, "No, you have to do another 30 to 40 years in jail,"

00:31:06.640 | not for killing anyone, not for raping anyone, but just for trying to steal some money.

00:31:11.640 | And I just was thinking, "Here's this guy in jail. He's going to be in jail for about 50 years."

00:31:20.640 | And here I am checking my email 30 times a day.

00:31:27.640 | He wants to be free, but here I am, what am I doing with my freedom?

00:31:33.640 | Checking my Facebook status.

00:31:36.640 | That sort of thing can contribute to a lifestyle change, for sure.

00:31:45.640 | I get this sense of, I think one of the most powerful exercises I've ever done was to sit down and write my own eulogy.

00:31:54.640 | And I did it as a goal-setting exercise one time, and I would encourage anybody who hasn't done that to do it.

00:32:01.640 | Sit down and write your own eulogy.

00:32:03.640 | And I've heard, there's a couple ways that I've heard that have been useful to me.

00:32:06.640 | One of the suggestions that I've heard is to write your own eulogy.

00:32:11.640 | Sit down and pretend, put yourself mentally there, imagine your funeral, what does it look like, when is it,

00:32:17.640 | and walk in the back of the room and listen to the person, imagine in your mind the person who's going to be eulogizing you.

00:32:23.640 | And think through, what are they saying about you, what do you want them to say about you?

00:32:29.640 | That's one useful mental exercise I've gone through that helped me.

00:32:34.640 | Another mental exercise was pretend it's your 70th birthday.

00:32:38.640 | And pretend that it's your 70th birthday and all of your family has gathered together and they want to hear you give a speech about your life.

00:32:46.640 | What would you tell them on your 70th birthday?

00:32:49.640 | And then the third thing that I have thought through is write your own biography.

00:32:54.640 | Write what you would want someone to write about your biography.

00:32:58.640 | And all of those I think are just useful writing prompts as far as a personal exercise to gain clarity on what you want.

00:33:04.640 | But the thing that I learned from doing them is I want to have a biography, a eulogy, or a speech that's actually interesting.

00:33:12.640 | And in order to have one that's actually interesting, you have to go and live the interesting life.

00:33:18.640 | Why are we obsessed with the most interesting man in the world?

00:33:21.640 | Because he lives an interesting life.

00:33:23.640 | And you can't fake it. You can't always dream about having an interesting life.

00:33:27.640 | You've got to go and do it. But it's never been easier to do it.

00:33:32.640 | I'm interested in your experience with your hike.

00:33:35.640 | So you wound up following through on that experience.

00:33:37.640 | What was it like to hike the course of the XL Pipeline?

00:33:42.640 | I would say that was some of the most fulfilling four to five months of my life.

00:33:51.640 | It took me 146 days to complete the journey.

00:33:56.640 | I was following the proposed path of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

00:34:02.640 | And this was fall 2012, winter 2013.

00:34:06.640 | I'm very passionate about the environment.

00:34:11.640 | I had wanted to test myself on a long journey.

00:34:14.640 | I just wasn't attracted to the typical long distance trails like the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail.

00:34:21.640 | Rather, I wanted to do something a little bit more bold and original.

00:34:26.640 | So it was just this really appealing expedition on a number of levels, as was my van dwelling experiment.

00:34:35.640 | I started off in Denver, Colorado, where my best friend lives.

00:34:41.640 | He and I packaged up about 20 boxes of food.

00:34:46.640 | He would mail those to post offices along my route.

00:34:50.640 | From there, I hitchhiked about 1,500 miles north to Fort McMurray, Canada.

00:34:57.640 | That's where the tar sands of northern Alberta are.

00:35:01.640 | That's the source of the oil that will be run down the Keystone XL, if it's ever approved.

00:35:09.640 | From there, I started in Hardesty, Alberta, and walked 1,700 miles to the Gulf Coast of Texas.

00:35:18.640 | It was a really unique journey.

00:35:21.640 | Because, again, unlike the Appalachian Trail, where there's a trail, there's markers pointing to water, there's three-walled shelters,

00:35:30.640 | there was none of that on my journey.

00:35:34.640 | In fact, there wasn't even public land to walk across.

00:35:38.640 | In order to walk across the Keystone XL, I would have to trespass private property.

00:35:44.640 | So I think I've trespassed more miles than probably any human alive, which is, I guess, something I'm proud to boast of.

00:35:53.640 | Put that on your Twitter handle, right?

00:35:55.640 | Yeah.

00:35:57.640 | So it took you 146 days?

00:36:01.640 | Yeah, 146 days.

00:36:03.640 | How much did it cost?

00:36:05.640 | It was kind of costly, to be honest.

00:36:10.640 | Let's see what I had to pay for.

00:36:12.640 | I probably paid for about $1,000 of food to start off with.

00:36:17.640 | And that doesn't include stopping at diners and buying a pack of Twizzlers or something at whatever grocery store I came across.

00:36:27.640 | It probably cost me close to $400 to ship all that stuff to post offices.

00:36:33.640 | I bought an iPad for it so I could blog along the way.

00:36:39.640 | And I bought a whole bunch of fancy backpacking equipment.

00:36:42.640 | So all in all, it was probably over $6,000, $7,000, somewhere around there.

00:36:49.640 | But a lot of it was investing in good backpacking gear and an iPad, which I still use to this day.

00:36:56.640 | So it wasn't just for that.

00:36:59.640 | Did you camp the whole way or did you stay with people along the route?

00:37:03.640 | For the most part, I camped.

00:37:06.640 | I was going through a section of the country that's barren of people, mostly.

00:37:12.640 | There were several days in a row where I wouldn't see anyone.

00:37:16.640 | You have to imagine yourself on the barren prairie of the northern Great Plains where one family is running 10,000, 12,000 acres.

00:37:29.640 | And you don't even see the home that they're living in.

00:37:32.640 | So you're basically walking across this rolling, grassy landscape.

00:37:38.640 | And you have it all to yourself except for some cows and deer and pronghorn.

00:37:45.640 | So this wasn't the sort of journey where I could have a beer at a pub and sleep on a bed at a hostel every night.

00:37:55.640 | So I had a small one-person tent and I would camp in the most concealed spot that I could find.

00:38:03.640 | And it was really difficult on the plains because pretty much from Alberta to Nebraska,

00:38:10.640 | there are no trees apart from in creek beds and river beds and stuff like that.

00:38:17.640 | So it was kind of tough finding concealed camping spots.

00:38:23.640 | But again, that wasn't a huge issue because it was so wide open.

00:38:28.640 | Do you think the pipeline is going to get built?

00:38:31.640 | Oh, I don't know.

00:38:34.640 | I mean, I was supposed to find out about that, I think, when I was on my hike.

00:38:39.640 | And that was fall 2012.

00:38:42.640 | It's almost two years after that.

00:38:44.640 | And the president keeps putting off the decision for obvious political reasons.

00:38:52.640 | If I had to bet my life on it, I would probably bet that it will be approved.

00:39:01.640 | But I guess I'm hoping otherwise.

00:39:07.640 | But are you opposed to it because of the environmental impact?

00:39:10.640 | Oh, yeah.

00:39:12.640 | I mean, there's a number of reasons why.

00:39:16.640 | I mean, anyone who sees the tar sands--and I flew over them for an hour

00:39:22.640 | and I just saw just a tiny fraction of them--I mean, anyone, environmentalist or non-environmentalist,

00:39:29.640 | would kind of be appalled with what's happening up there.

00:39:32.640 | And the environmental degradation is just complete and just disgusting.

00:39:39.640 | But there's a whole bunch of other issues.

00:39:41.640 | I feel like it's a private property issue.

00:39:43.640 | It's going through people's lands.

00:39:45.640 | I feel like they should have some more power, some more say.

00:39:49.640 | And I think everyone realizes that we need to move away from fossil fuels,

00:39:54.640 | so perhaps the investment money into this project would be used for other projects better.

00:40:03.640 | Yeah, I don't know much about the project.

00:40:05.640 | I'm aware that it is a controversy, but I've never seen it firsthand,

00:40:09.640 | and I'm not familiar with all the issues involved.

00:40:13.640 | So I appreciate the opinion. It's helpful.

00:40:16.640 | Yeah, honestly, you would think that I'd be super passionate about the Keystone XL,

00:40:23.640 | having walked it and spent so much money invested in my project,

00:40:27.640 | and now I'm writing a book about it.

00:40:28.640 | I've been writing a book about it for over a year.

00:40:32.640 | But to be honest, the Keystone XL doesn't intrigue me that much.

00:40:37.640 | What intrigues me is just our relationship with the Earth, where we're going as a civilization,

00:40:46.640 | how we're going to deal with decreasing fossil fuels,

00:40:50.640 | what's this world going to look like in 500 years.

00:40:53.640 | I'm more interested in these big-picture questions,

00:40:58.640 | and the Keystone XL, truthfully, is just a very small, tiny part of that.

00:41:05.640 | It certainly does have a certain symbolic importance for environmental history,

00:41:11.640 | because this is the first pipeline, the first fast public works project

00:41:16.640 | that's being protested on the grounds of climate change,

00:41:20.640 | which shows that we've reached a certain point in how we think about climate change,

00:41:28.640 | to get so revved up about a simple pipeline.

00:41:31.640 | That's significant, even if the Keystone XL is relatively insignificant.

00:41:37.640 | Are you generally optimistic about some of the advancements being made as far as how we live

00:41:44.640 | that will come into play over the coming decades and centuries,

00:41:49.640 | or are you generally pessimistic? What have you learned in your research?

00:41:52.640 | One group that interests me is this English group called the Dark Mountain Foundation.

00:42:03.640 | Have you heard of them?

00:42:04.640 | Never heard of them, no.

00:42:05.640 | Yeah, a couple of writers in England formed this group, and they're all about despair.

00:42:12.640 | They're like, "The world's coming to an end. We would have to keep 80% of the fossil fuels in the ground

00:42:25.640 | to stop the temperature from rising to uncontrollable levels,

00:42:30.640 | so let's stop pretending that we're going to fix things, and let's just despair.

00:42:36.640 | Let's just come to grips with reality."

00:42:40.640 | That intrigues me to a point, just because it's just this very strong effort to be honest with ourselves

00:42:50.640 | and with our situation, even if I don't think that that's a helpful frame of mind to have as a human being.

00:43:01.640 | No one wants that much despair.

00:43:04.640 | To be honest, I don't know.

00:43:07.640 | It's just impossible to think about the future.

00:43:12.640 | We have 7 billion people on this planet that's really only suited for about 500 million

00:43:18.640 | when you factor out fossil fuels and unsustainable agricultural practices.

00:43:25.640 | The question is not if things are going to change, it's when and how.

00:43:30.640 | Is it going to be this doomsday apocalypse, or is it going to be something more civilized and gradual?

00:43:40.640 | I don't have the answer to it, but the questions are intriguing nevertheless.

00:43:47.640 | I'm interested if you don't mind, and I know this probably wasn't the direction you were expecting to go on a finance show,

00:43:52.640 | but I have one more theme, and I won't keep you too long.

00:43:56.640 | I'm interested in your opinion. Feel free to disagree, and please, if you do, disagree.

00:44:01.640 | I'll tell you, in speaking with a lot of young people, you mentioned that you're 31. I'm 29 as well.

00:44:07.640 | I find that there are many people in our age bracket that simply say,

00:44:12.640 | "Why does the world work the way it does? It seems really stupid."

00:44:17.640 | It seems to me it seems really dumb, many of the ways that things work.

00:44:22.640 | But it seems to me that all of the technology exists today to design human settlements, lives, lifestyles in incredible ways.

00:44:40.640 | That's why I like to look at the extreme point of view.

00:44:44.640 | That's why my show is called Radical Personal Finance, the extreme point of view.

00:44:48.640 | Because once you realize what's possible, once you realize the fact that given that you spent $6,000 and about six months traveling the country,

00:44:58.640 | you lived on about $1,000 a month and had a pretty big adventure.

00:45:02.640 | So if somebody hears that, they recognize--

00:45:05.640 | Now, I don't want to go and hike for three days without seeing somebody. That doesn't sound fun to me.

00:45:10.640 | But I can recognize that must have been a transformative event in your life in some ways.

00:45:15.640 | But the point is once you hear that that's possible, then all of a sudden saving $3,000 to go on a one-week vacation,

00:45:24.640 | you recognize I could go on a three-month vacation if I were willing to adjust my lifestyle a little bit.

00:45:29.640 | So in terms of all of the doomsday scenarios, all of the things that people are worried about,

00:45:37.640 | I look at it and I say, "We live in--at least here in the U.S.

00:45:40.640 | And I don't know how to solve the rest of the world's problems.

00:45:42.640 | I recognize having traveled a decent bit internationally,

00:45:45.640 | I recognize that it's a dramatically different situation in much of the world."

00:45:50.640 | But if people wanted to be serious about carbon sequestration, for example--

00:45:54.640 | I have my own issues with the global warming theories.

00:45:58.640 | But let's assume that we wanted to be serious about carbon sequestration.

00:46:01.640 | The technologies exist. If you look at what some of the grass farmers are doing with rotational grazing of cattle,

00:46:08.640 | the amount of carbon that they sequester is crazy. It's huge amounts.

00:46:12.640 | And you look at the amount of open land, it could be dramatically transformed.

00:46:16.640 | When you look at the amount of food that could be grown in our backyards, in our medians,

00:46:19.640 | all along all the wasted public land, if we wanted to, we could completely transform the food system

00:46:26.640 | and nobody needed to be hungry.

00:46:28.640 | Now, how to figure out the economic system to distribute it? I don't know.

00:46:31.640 | I don't know how to solve that. But if we wanted to, we could.

00:46:34.640 | Much of the transportation, much of the driving that we do is unnecessary.

00:46:39.640 | We can completely fundamentally transform so many of the ways that we live our lives.

00:46:45.640 | And how is it that in an era when personal productivity per worker has increased dramatically,

00:46:51.640 | the amount of time that the average American spends working has not?

00:46:58.640 | And you say, well, the reason is because we figured out a way to take any surplus and turn it into consumption, as I would say.

00:47:05.640 | So what if we can just make a psychological shift, adjust the consumption mentality?

00:47:10.640 | I mean, there is a, I hesitate to use the word utopian, but there is a much better world that could be designed.

00:47:19.640 | I look at it, I'm not sure if you're familiar, I'm obsessed with permaculture design,

00:47:23.640 | and I look at something like there was a project, a community that was built out in California called Davis Homes.

00:47:28.640 | And this was one of the few housing developments that was built on ecological design principles.

00:47:37.640 | And so you have houses that are well built, that are ecologically sound, that are well insulated,

00:47:41.640 | that are integrated with the environment. And it seems like a utopian place to be.

00:47:47.640 | So I look at it and I say, all the solutions currently exist that are needed.

00:47:52.640 | And in the world of communication that we have today, where I can go on YouTube and I can find somebody that's showing,

00:47:58.640 | look how I'm doing this, I don't see how our lives cannot get dramatic.

00:48:04.640 | They're better now than they've ever been before, and I don't see how they can't get dramatically better over the coming decades.

00:48:10.640 | But that's my perspective. I'm interested if you agree, disagree, or if you have comments on that.

00:48:15.640 | I hope so. I mean, even if it doesn't happen, it's good to have an optimistic, cheery outlook.

00:48:23.640 | You'll have more hair, for sure.

00:48:27.640 | But yeah, it can be, as an environmentalist who sees so much wrong with the world,

00:48:35.640 | and just kind of seeing just the impossibilities politically and economically,

00:48:45.640 | it can be exasperating. And it's tough to imagine serious, worthwhile change occurring within my lifetime.

00:48:59.640 | But I've kind of just come to terms with it and just said, you know what, here are just a few things that I can contribute to and support during my lifetime.

00:49:09.640 | And if it helps, it helps. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

00:49:12.640 | And I think of one thing as doing anything you can to curb consumption.

00:49:19.640 | We definitely consume too much. And Priuses and more fuel-efficient jetliners, they're not really doing anything to help the environment.

00:49:32.640 | They're just allowing people to drive more and longer and have more people in planes.

00:49:39.640 | So I'm a bit hesitant about technological solutions.

00:49:43.640 | But yes, consumption must be reduced. I'm in favor of a carbon tax, which has proven to be effective in British Columbia.

00:49:54.640 | I think it's good to support the new technologies, the wind turbines and the solar panels and just the other wild ideas people have.

00:50:05.640 | And I think it's important to try to instill a conservation ethic in the breasts of all people to care about the environment, to love it.

00:50:21.640 | And I think that is one of the root problems of our situation.

00:50:27.640 | And I don't think without solving that, I'm not sure how effective technology is going to be.

00:50:35.640 | Because without a true love for sustainability and the earth, it just seems that even with advanced technology, we could always kind of revert back to our unsustainable practices.

00:50:53.640 | So those are four things I can support, one or all of them. If the world goes to hell, okay. I tried.

00:51:02.640 | Right. Well, you work on it on your way. I'm going to work on it on the economic side, because I think that I've got my own ideas.

00:51:10.640 | I think that many of the ecological design ideas and many of the ecological technologies have economic benefits.

00:51:20.640 | So I think, for example, you can -- if you want to influence somebody to drive less in a vehicle, on the one side, you can come at it and say, don't you recognize the impact that you're driving is having on the environment?

00:51:33.640 | And I personally would rather come at it and say, don't you recognize the impact that you're driving is having on your life and on your checkbook?

00:51:40.640 | Like the cost of it and the waste of time and just the frustration of sitting in traffic during rush hour.

00:51:46.640 | And I think we'll probably wind up at many of the similar places.

00:51:51.640 | I agree. Yeah, I mean, I think you can kind of attack the problem from a multitude of angles.

00:51:57.640 | And I think that's going to be the -- that's what needs to happen.

00:52:01.640 | And in a world where we can all be activists, in a sense, in our own way, I think many times we'll arrive at intelligent solutions.

00:52:09.640 | I have one more theme I'd be interested in your comment on, and then I'll give you a chance if you want to -- I'll give you a chance to have the final word.

00:52:16.640 | But I'm interested in your opinion on the value of college in your life.

00:52:23.640 | So you -- college is a popular topic to debate about in our current world, to say you should go, you should not go, it's a waste of money, student loan crisis, you know, go to un-college, figure something else out.

00:52:37.640 | You seem to be an example of somebody who graduated with a -- to use the term of one of your articles, with a crushing amount of student debt, 30-plus thousand dollars.

00:52:51.640 | You paid it off, and then you chose to go back to college.

00:52:54.640 | You graduated with a useless liberal arts degree, at least in your undergraduate, and it didn't wind up with you earning any money.

00:53:01.640 | What's your opinion on the value of a college education in your life?

00:53:06.640 | Yeah, I'm kind of paradoxical, aren't I there?

00:53:09.640 | Right.

00:53:10.640 | You're kind of an extreme case.

00:53:13.640 | Well, it's kind of complex and it's really going to vary per person.

00:53:34.640 | Someone could go to the same courses I did and have the same majors I did for four years and come away with a far less dreamy view of college than I did.

00:53:37.640 | So it depends on the person.

00:53:40.640 | And again, mine wasn't exactly dreamy because even though I really valued my undergraduate education, again, it chained me to the steel ball of student debt, which I'd have to drag with me for a number of years.

00:53:55.640 | But I guess, I don't know, I think there's a smart way to go about college, and that's just to try not to go into crippling debt.

00:54:07.640 | And that's kind of—you know, I complained about that debt coming out of undergraduate school, and those complaints were very sincere.

00:54:15.640 | But I did it very differently for graduate school.

00:54:18.640 | I was not going to go into debt.

00:54:20.640 | I picked an affordable program.

00:54:22.640 | I picked affordable housing.

00:54:25.640 | And I studied what I wanted to study.

00:54:30.640 | But yeah, the liberal arts, it's just always intrigued me.

00:54:36.640 | I consider myself a lifetime learner, and I've thrived in the college setting.

00:54:42.640 | I've taken my education with me everywhere, even if it hasn't contributed to my bottom line at all, even if it actually has put me into debt.

00:54:52.640 | But it's kind of dollars and cents that really can never be taken away, my education.

00:54:59.640 | What was your graduate degree in?

00:55:01.640 | It was in liberal studies.

00:55:03.640 | I went right back to the liberal arts.

00:55:05.640 | Interesting.

00:55:07.640 | But do you make your living as an author now, or how do you support yourself now?

00:55:12.640 | I don't know.

00:55:14.640 | It's kind of—I don't know how I make a living.

00:55:18.640 | My situation cannot really be emulated.

00:55:25.640 | It truly is unique, because one, the average person doesn't get a book deal.

00:55:32.640 | But yeah, I've been living off of Walden on Wheels.

00:55:37.640 | I do the occasional magazine article.

00:55:40.640 | And I find situations where I don't have to pay room and board.

00:55:44.640 | Having lived up in Alaska for those couple years, it's just like, man, I don't ever want to have to pay rent again.

00:55:50.640 | So I do whatever I can to find room and board situations.

00:55:54.640 | And after Duke, I lived in rural North Carolina, where I took care of some guy's land for a couple years.

00:56:01.640 | And I raised chickens in a garden, and I didn't pay for food.

00:56:05.640 | I didn't pay for rent.

00:56:07.640 | And yeah, this is not a typical sort of situation at all.

00:56:13.640 | So in more words than necessary, that's my economic situation.

00:56:20.640 | Would you be willing to take another job, like to take a 40-hour-a-week job again?

00:56:24.640 | Or are you kind of opposed to that?

00:56:26.640 | Oh, man, I don't know if "willing" would be the right word to describe that.

00:56:30.640 | I'd be awfully hesitant to do that.

00:56:34.640 | I mean, having been outside of that 9-to-5 world now for many years, for over five years for sure,

00:56:44.640 | going back to it and having a boss and a schedule and obligations, man, that's just unthinkable, honestly.

00:56:56.640 | I would feel like I'd really sacrifice my freedoms.

00:57:02.640 | So you know what? I'm going to do whatever I can to avoid that.

00:57:06.640 | And my dream of all dreams is to be able to make a living and be financially independent as a writer, as an author.

00:57:16.640 | So I'm working on it.

00:57:19.640 | I'm going back to the college thing, but you basically just proved in your statement,

00:57:25.640 | you just proved one of the points that I make sometimes,

00:57:27.640 | or the things that I've observed and learned from watching people and just observing how they act,

00:57:32.640 | is that I'm convinced that financial freedom and the ability to step out of the rat race, so to speak,

00:57:40.640 | is not much of a financial problem and is very much a psychological problem, like we were talking about earlier.

00:57:48.640 | Because you've gotten out of it, and so you don't want to go back.

00:57:54.640 | Now, we could all describe a situation, and I could make up some scenario where I'm sure you would be willing to go back

00:58:00.640 | for a temporary amount of time to learn or to earn some money that you needed to do something.

00:58:04.640 | But you've been out of it, so now, because of the fact that you're willing to take,

00:58:09.640 | you would probably be willing again to buy another 1994 Ford van and live in it

00:58:14.640 | if that was what you needed to do to continue to follow your dreams, because you've already done it.

00:58:18.640 | You know what it's like. You can take an accurate assessment of what's good about it and everything that's terrible about it.

00:58:23.640 | So you would probably be willing to do it.

00:58:25.640 | And so because you're willing to take that negative aspect of it, and you're willing to deal with that,

00:58:34.640 | then it frees you mentally.

00:58:38.640 | So I think it's a useful exercise that I read.

00:58:40.640 | I remember reading in Tim Ferriss' book, "The Four-Hour Workweek," where he talked about,

00:58:45.640 | "Imagine what the worst-case scenario was and figure out if you can set up a way to take an experiment and try it."

00:58:51.640 | So when I go on a weekend camping trip, I think the same way you do.

00:58:54.640 | I think, "Okay, if this is what living in a van is like, let me try this for a weekend and see what it's like."

00:58:59.640 | It's not so bad, so therefore, if everything goes wrong and I find myself camping in a vehicle, it's not so bad.

00:59:05.640 | I'm willing to go ahead and keep doing what I need to do to follow my dreams.

00:59:08.640 | And so you just proved my point, is that it's psychological.

00:59:11.640 | It's not based upon how much money you have coming in or what your perfectly crafted financial plan is.

00:59:16.640 | It's about you understanding what the tradeoffs and what the advantages are.

00:59:21.640 | Yeah, and I shouldn't give the impression that I'm just this radical, because I do have plenty of questions and insecurities.

00:59:34.640 | But I do take writing a book, which I'm doing right now.

00:59:36.640 | I'm writing a book called "Trespassing Across America" about my hike.

00:59:40.640 | And to get a book deal, you essentially have to write the first draft of the book and this enormous proposal.

00:59:47.640 | And that takes upwards of a year.

00:59:50.640 | So you're working on something for a year without any sort of financial compensation.

00:59:57.640 | I mean, you could work on it, you could submit it, and it could get rejected, and you just wasted a year.

01:00:04.640 | And you lost however much you're worth for a year, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000.

01:00:08.640 | So it's a huge risk.

01:00:10.640 | And then if you get a book deal, they can turn it down when it's finally due and it doesn't meet their standards.

01:00:17.640 | So that's like another year.

01:00:19.640 | So that's potentially $80,000 out the window.

01:00:23.640 | And these are some of the economic realities that I have to live with.

01:00:28.640 | And when I watch my bank account dwindle as I work on an artistic project, I mean, yeah, I think maybe I should go get my teacher's certificate and have a decent job to fall back on.

01:00:45.640 | So I don't want to give the impression that I'm without that conflict because that would be a dishonest way to go about it because it's very much there.

01:00:58.640 | Right. And there's nothing wrong with doing both.

01:01:01.640 | There's no reason why we can't do both.

01:01:06.640 | I mean, there really isn't any reason why you can't work a job when it suits your interest and why you can't adjust when you have something better.

01:01:12.640 | There's no reason to pursue something -- living in a van is not necessarily a goal.

01:01:18.640 | It's a means to an end.

01:01:20.640 | And so desiring a different living situation is -- there's nothing wrong with that, just in what I say.

01:01:25.640 | Back to the concept of the liberal arts education, and with this we're done, at least unless you have anything else that you want to talk about.

01:01:33.640 | I think the reason I thought it was interesting is because you do have a radical experience of extremes.

01:01:41.640 | A liberal arts education, a high amount of student debt, doesn't result in a high earning power in the work world, and yet you then go back and pursue more -- you pay it off, and then you go back and you pursue a greater liberal arts education.

01:01:54.640 | And the thing that I look at is -- I have a business degree, but I went to a liberal arts school, so I learned a lot kind of at the liberal arts.

01:02:02.640 | I wish we did a better job selling the advantages of learning, which is what I think a liberal arts education originally was supposed to be, without tying it to income earning.

01:02:14.640 | Because being learned with an English degree or with a humanities degree or with a liberal studies degree is probably not going to command a high rate of pay in a technical field.

01:02:27.640 | But that doesn't mean that it's not worth the time and the attention and the focus.

01:02:32.640 | But it is a good idea, I think, to be practical about how you pursue it.

01:02:36.640 | So you can get an expensive liberal arts education, or you can get a less expensive liberal arts education, but the value of the education is not going to be driven by the cost that you pay for it.

01:02:47.640 | It's going to be driven by you, the student's motivation.

01:02:50.640 | So to me, the theme that stands out to me among college planning topics is understand what you're trying to accomplish and then work out a plan that's appropriate for your situation of how to accomplish it in a way where you can hit your goals without sacrificing other things.

01:03:06.640 | And I just was struck by that as the theme.

01:03:09.640 | Just in reading your articles, I was struck by that as a theme that I saw in your life.

01:03:14.640 | You weren't going to go in deeply into debt again, but it doesn't mean that you didn't value the liberal arts education.

01:03:19.640 | You just figured out a new way to do it.

01:03:21.640 | Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

01:03:23.640 | I think you put it in terms that I can't do any better of.

01:03:29.640 | But yeah, I mean, it's tough for a young person with – you know, they want to go to a good school, and I don't blame them at all for that.

01:03:37.640 | I mean, we all want to go to a good school and get a good education and create good lives for ourselves.

01:03:43.640 | And then they see the price tag on those colleges and you can't help but question the practical economic worth of a liberal arts degree with these economic realities.

01:04:02.640 | Right.

01:04:03.640 | And it's just kind of a messy situation.

01:04:08.640 | And I guess I feel sympathy for the people who feel compelled to think of the liberal arts in these ways.

01:04:17.640 | I just wish the situation was different.

01:04:21.640 | And you know what?

01:04:22.640 | It can be different on a consumer-to-consumer, student-to-student basis if we were to make those practical choices, if we were to go to a more affordable but less prestigious school and leave with a high-quality education.

01:04:37.640 | With less debt than they would have gotten at the better – so-called better college.

01:04:43.640 | Right.

01:04:44.640 | But we have cultural values and these are very strong forces and they're difficult to push back on.

01:04:56.640 | I think we can develop some new models and that's what I'm hoping for.

01:04:59.640 | I think that in a world of greater access, it seems to me like there's still a huge amount of value of teachers.

01:05:07.640 | And a lot of times people are quick to discount teachers but we all need teachers in our lives.

01:05:11.640 | But we don't need some of the – we can have greater specialization.

01:05:15.640 | And in a world where a teacher can get their message out, I would love to see if there were a great humanities professor or a great specialist and if somebody had done a work of – if somebody were a real subject matter expert.

01:05:31.640 | Let's just stick with humanities.

01:05:33.640 | And they're an expert on, I don't know, Shakespeare.

01:05:35.640 | If I'm a student and I'm really interested in that situation, there's no reason why I can't pursue that and why I can't work at home for a while, prepare all of my curriculum, and why this Shakespeare professor can't go and establish their own little Shakespeare school.

01:05:53.640 | And this can be a large rambling – three large rambling houses connected to form a community of people that are just obsessed with Shakespeare.

01:06:02.640 | And this professor can teach Shakespeare classes and we can spend all of our time paying a minimal amount of rent and food and spend all of our time talking about Shakespeare if that's what we're interested in.

01:06:12.640 | And I'm hoping that – I made that model up off the top of my head, but I'm hoping that things like that with the ability for a world class teacher – look at the number of people that Salman Khan has impacted with his work.

01:06:23.640 | A world class teacher in a specialized area can come and collect the students and the people that are interested in the subject matter can go and study with that expert.

01:06:34.640 | And I'm hoping that we can develop some new ways of doing that.

01:06:37.640 | I hope to interview the guy who did all of the MIT – it wasn't MIT, it was another – he did all the computer science education through free courseware.

01:06:46.640 | He blogged his way through it and he got a job offer from doing it, but he never went to the institution.

01:06:53.640 | So I think there will be more newer models that are going to be created is my point.

01:06:58.640 | And that we can redesign the systems the way that they work to get the benefit of the education that we're looking for without the corresponding cost.

01:07:07.640 | So I hope we can – you and I can each individually contribute to that effort in our own way.

01:07:12.640 | Wouldn't that be nice?

01:07:14.640 | Ken, thank you for being with me. I appreciate it. I hope this was an interesting conversation.

01:07:20.640 | I know it was probably not the normal interview maybe that you've had about your experiences, but these are just some of the – I was interested in hearing your opinions on some of these more wide ranging experiences.

01:07:33.640 | Where can people find you? What would you like people to read of your stuff? What would you like to plug before we go?

01:07:38.640 | I kind of have a dead blog of my name, KenIlgunis.com, which has a bunch of old stories on it.

01:07:46.640 | And my book is Wolden on Wheels and that can be found on Amazon.com and I have two tiny books, The Mechanless Mecca and Walking Across Suburbia, both available on Amazon as well.

01:08:00.640 | And when do you expect your new book to be released?

01:08:04.640 | Summer 2015.

01:08:06.640 | Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us today. I appreciate it.

01:08:10.640 | The pleasure is all mine, Joshua.

01:08:12.640 | And that's the interview. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. I enjoy talking to people like Ken and I'm fascinated with people who just live their life outside the box, who think outside the box.

01:08:27.640 | And a couple of themes that I just want to point out here in the conclusion of today's show.

01:08:34.640 | I mentioned this during the interview, but I hope you picked up on the fact that Ken seems to have a different psychology than many people.

01:08:43.640 | He's certainly got a different psychology than the mainstream person.

01:08:46.640 | Now, it's easy to dismiss certain things that he's done.

01:08:49.640 | To the best of my knowledge, I mean, he's single. He doesn't have kids. He doesn't have a family.

01:08:52.640 | But you know what? I'll get people on the show that I've read and that I've found who are married, that do have kids, that do have families, that are living out of the ordinary radical lives.

01:09:03.640 | And I'll get them on the show and I'll prove it to you.

01:09:06.640 | But don't discount his story, but learn from his story and understand the fact that it has much more to do with psychology than it does with circumstances.

01:09:17.640 | Somehow, some people just have a different way of thinking and a different way of looking at the world.

01:09:22.640 | And I never had that way of thinking when I was younger.

01:09:25.640 | But I never had that way of thinking, but as I've learned from other people and been exposed to other people's ways of thinking, that's helped me to develop a much more creative approach to life.

01:09:37.640 | And I hope that you can learn from Ken's story and from all the stories that I'm bringing you here on the show.

01:09:44.640 | And you can pick and choose what you want.

01:09:46.640 | I don't care if you live in a van or if you don't.

01:09:48.640 | I don't care if you walk across the country or if you don't.

01:09:50.640 | I don't have any plans to walk across the country and I'm not living in a van at the moment.

01:09:53.640 | But I love learning from that story and then just making sure, am I following through on my goals and on my dreams?

01:10:02.640 | Consider what the worst-case scenario is and then consider if there's simply a way to adjust your psychology to make it okay.

01:10:10.640 | And I want to point this out. I'm going to end with this.

01:10:12.640 | Life is much more about how you view it and the psychology than it is the actual circumstances.

01:10:18.640 | I enjoy going camping. I grew up camping with my family.

01:10:22.640 | I enjoy taking my current family -- my current family.

01:10:26.640 | What I mean is that when I was my father's family before, I was a child and now I'm the father and now my family.

01:10:33.640 | I like taking my family camping.

01:10:35.640 | And camping is this thing that we in at least the U.S. American culture, we have this idea of it as being a very -- what's the term?

01:10:45.640 | I guess romantic idea.

01:10:47.640 | We have this idea of it being fun and awesome.

01:10:49.640 | But you know what? Camping is a lot of work and it's really uncomfortable.

01:10:52.640 | You're sleeping on the ground. You're hot. You're cold. You're in a tent.

01:10:58.640 | Everyone has a perfectly good home, a perfectly good house with all the comfort of electricity and food and a soft, comfortable bed sitting at home.

01:11:06.640 | And yet many people still choose to go camping.

01:11:08.640 | Why does anybody choose to go traveling?

01:11:10.640 | You leave the comforts of home.

01:11:12.640 | And the reason is because it's not all about comfort.

01:11:14.640 | Life is not about comfort.

01:11:16.640 | Life is about many things, but the point I'm bringing out at the moment is we crave variety.

01:11:22.640 | We crave new experiences.

01:11:25.640 | Now, whether you view camping as awful, why would anybody go and sleep on the ground and sleep under a tarp,

01:11:33.640 | or as an adventure and exciting has everything to do with your psychology and almost nothing to do with the actual experience of it.

01:11:40.640 | Different people experience different events based upon their predetermined psychology.

01:11:46.640 | So if you're willing to just adjust your psychology and see things as an adventure,

01:11:50.640 | if you're willing to view goal achievement as an adventure, as an excitement, as this fulfilling experience,

01:11:57.640 | if you're willing to view getting out of debt as an adventure, as an experience, it's an awesome road to walk.

01:12:04.640 | It's fulfilling to feel like you're making progress.

01:12:06.640 | If you're willing to view something like doing something extreme, like living in a vehicle, as part of the adventure, then you'll enjoy it.

01:12:14.640 | And it can be this tremendously worthwhile experience.

01:12:18.640 | But it's all in how you view it.

01:12:19.640 | And I mentioned at the end of the interview the concept that I first remember reading in Tim Ferriss' book, "The Four-Hour Workweek,"

01:12:26.640 | and it's been really helpful to me.

01:12:27.640 | I don't know if he took it from somewhere else, but he wrote about it.

01:12:31.640 | And the concept was figure out what's the worst thing that can happen, and then figure out how to be okay with that.

01:12:37.640 | He talks a lot in Tim's writing, he talks a lot about the Stoics.

01:12:41.640 | And the Stoics had a philosophy from ancient Rome, I guess, of figuring out how to be okay with less.

01:12:48.640 | Eat minimal clothing, eat minimal food.

01:12:51.640 | Eat minimal clothing, excuse me, it's Friday afternoon.

01:12:54.640 | Wear minimal clothing, eat minimal food, live in humble circumstances temporarily as experiments from time to time.

01:13:02.640 | And then what you discover is that the fears that people have are really not that great.

01:13:07.640 | I mean, in my mind, just of the little small experiments I've had of camping out in a van,

01:13:13.640 | I've never done what Ken has done or what many people do,

01:13:16.640 | but the small experiences I've had of camping out in a van or camping in a national park

01:13:21.640 | and traveling and staying in hostels and living well on $20 or $30 a day,

01:13:26.640 | that's expanded my mind so that I have a much lower fear of, I guess, life falling apart,

01:13:34.640 | the way that many people fear.

01:13:35.640 | And I view it as just part of the adventure.

01:13:37.640 | Now, am I perfect in that? Of course not.

01:13:39.640 | I'm not the poster child of having all of these things perfectly figured out.

01:13:43.640 | But I just want to encourage you that if you adjust your psychology and just do an experiment,

01:13:47.640 | go live in a vehicle for a night, go spend time in a poor place,

01:13:53.640 | go on a spending freeze and figure out how to have an entertaining life for less.

01:13:57.640 | Then do an experiment the other way.

01:13:59.640 | Go see what it's like to live in luxury.

01:14:01.640 | I fear that I've gone too much on the low-cost side with some of these interviews, even this week.

01:14:08.640 | And I'm going to bring some wealthy people on this show.

01:14:11.640 | I won't tell you all the interviews I've got planned,

01:14:13.640 | but I'm going to bring some wealthy people on this show.

01:14:15.640 | And I want to live a life that's epic.

01:14:18.640 | I hate how that word is so popular these days, but I want to live a life that's big.

01:14:22.640 | I want to live a life that's big, and that doesn't mean always being broke,

01:14:26.640 | and that doesn't mean always spending no money.

01:14:28.640 | But the point is that if your choice is between living in misery and spending lots of money,

01:14:37.640 | why don't you just figure out a way to live an awesome life without spending much money?

01:14:42.640 | And I've had some awesome experiences that have convinced me that that's possible.

01:14:45.640 | And then go about making a lot of money so that you can spend a lot of money.

01:14:50.640 | I mean, there's no rulebook for how life has to be done.

01:14:54.640 | So hopefully that's not too much of a rant.

01:14:56.640 | Hopefully that's not too rambling.

01:14:58.640 | But that's what I'm thinking about today.

01:15:01.640 | It's Friday afternoon.

01:15:02.640 | If you're listening to this on a Friday afternoon, consider what you can do this weekend.

01:15:07.640 | Figure out an experiment.

01:15:09.640 | Play with life.

01:15:11.640 | Life is supposed to be fun.

01:15:12.640 | Life is not all about this idea of don't do anything until you're rich and you can afford to retire.

01:15:17.640 | Figure out what experiment can you do this weekend.

01:15:20.640 | Can you have an awesome weekend without spending a dime?

01:15:23.640 | Not leaving your house, at least not in the car, so not spending one dime.

01:15:28.640 | Frankly, I don't know, do you want to turn off the electricity in your house so you don't have to spend that bill?

01:15:33.640 | I'm not going to do that, but maybe you want to.

01:15:35.640 | But I'm just thinking of don't buy anything extra.

01:15:38.640 | Don't go and get in the car.

01:15:40.640 | Don't do any of that stuff.

01:15:42.640 | Or flip it around.

01:15:44.640 | Can you figure out how to have an awesome weekend and spend a lot of money?

01:15:47.640 | And I know it sounds like I'm contradicting myself.

01:15:49.640 | What I'm saying is let's have varying experiences so that we can appreciate the big and the small.

01:15:56.640 | In the scripture, Paul says, "I've learned how to be a base and how to abound."

01:16:01.640 | And I think that a really fulfilling life is to be able to live at extremes and enjoy either one.

01:16:09.640 | Can you enjoy solitude and can you enjoy busyness?

01:16:13.640 | Can you enjoy adventure and can you enjoy tranquility?

01:16:16.640 | Can you enjoy poverty and can you enjoy riches?

01:16:20.640 | And if so, you can build this tremendous psychological fortress around yourself.

01:16:27.640 | And it has nothing to do with the money.

01:16:29.640 | It has nothing to do with the money.

01:16:31.640 | It has nothing to do with the money.

01:16:33.640 | Did I say it again?

01:16:34.640 | It has nothing to do with the money.

01:16:37.640 | That's today's show.

01:16:38.640 | I hope you enjoyed this interview.

01:16:40.640 | Next week I've got some special things planned for you.

01:16:42.640 | I'm going to be traveling at the end of next week.

01:16:43.640 | I'm hoping to have some shows prepared to be released while I'm gone.

01:16:46.640 | I'm going to be traveling out to Texas, to Dallas, Texas for the Podcast Movement Conference.

01:16:50.640 | And I'll be leaving on Thursday, actually driving out there from Florida, so that will be fun.

01:16:54.640 | I love a good road trip.

01:16:56.640 | But I hope to have some shows ready for you while I'm away.

01:16:59.640 | But if not, you may have a couple of days without it.

01:17:01.640 | But we'll see. It should be fun.

01:17:03.640 | Have a great weekend, everybody.

01:17:05.640 | Make it a big one.

01:17:07.640 | Don't be scared of life.

01:17:08.640 | And I hope that this interview has helped you.

01:17:11.640 | See you next week.

01:17:12.640 | Happy Friday.

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RPF-0038-Interview_with_Ken_Ilgunas