RPF-0050-Interview_with_Pat_Schulte_from

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00:00:10.480 | at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. Would you be

00:00:15.600 | interested in learning everything you can from a man who started with an eight dollar an hour job

00:00:20.240 | after college, parlayed that job into a career as a commodities trader, retired at the age of 30,

00:00:29.520 | and has proceeded to spend the next 10 years traveling the world with his family?

00:00:34.080 | Welcome to episode 50.

00:00:54.560 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast for today, Thursday, August 28, 2014. I thank

00:01:02.000 | you for being here. This is an episode that I have been wanting to bring you for a while.

00:01:06.720 | Today we're going to speak with Pat Schulte, who is the writer and adventurer found at

00:01:13.680 | bumfuzzle.com. Sailor and RVer, a vanner or a van dweller, I guess would be the term,

00:01:22.000 | commodities trader, man of international mystery and intrigue. Perhaps that's a little bit grandiose,

00:01:31.680 | but as you'll see in today's show, I really don't think it is too grandiose. I've been looking

00:01:36.160 | forward to bringing you this interview. Before I play the interview for you, I'm just going to

00:01:40.720 | share with you a little bit about the background. This is a blog. I've mentioned it a couple of

00:01:44.160 | times on the show. It's a blog that I've read for a couple of years and I've thoroughly enjoyed.

00:01:49.600 | It's a wonderful blog. I would highly encourage you to check it out at bumfuzzle.com.

00:01:54.160 | But to pique your interest before the interview, Pat Schulte is a really intriguing guy.

00:01:58.800 | Today was my first time talking with him on the phone and I really enjoyed that.

00:02:02.880 | He's somebody who in many ways seems to have cracked the code on the American dream.

00:02:09.600 | Like I mentioned prior to starting the music, he started out of college with an $8 an hour job

00:02:18.160 | working on a Minneapolis exchange. He sold his pickup truck for $5,000 to start his

00:02:25.680 | stake for trading. Worked as an independent trader for the next coming years, ultimately

00:02:31.280 | moved to Chicago so he could trade on the commodities board there in Chicago. I assume

00:02:36.640 | the mercantile exchange, but I'm not an expert on what board or what exchange he was trading on.

00:02:42.720 | Traded primarily soybeans futures. At the age of about 30, he and his wife decided to quit.

00:02:49.280 | They had done well, made a lot of money and decided to quit and go sail around the world.

00:02:53.360 | So they flew down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They bought a sailboat,

00:02:56.560 | spent the next four years sailing around the world on the 35-foot catamaran,

00:03:00.640 | then came back to the US, sold their boat, did an across the country race called the Great Race in

00:03:09.680 | their 1965 Porsche 356, decided to take another road trip, bought a 1958 Volkswagen bus, and then

00:03:18.800 | proceeded to do a 60,000 mile road trip in that, visiting, let's see, I think it was something like

00:03:24.400 | 25 countries. So yeah, 28 countries, 60,000 miles, 525 days on the road. And they had visited about

00:03:32.400 | 45 countries on their original sailboat. Got pregnant, moved to Mexico, had a baby,

00:03:39.120 | bought another sailboat, lived on that sailboat in Mexico and around Mexico and California for

00:03:43.920 | a few years, had another baby, then came back to, sold the boat, came back to the States and bought

00:03:49.040 | a 1966 Dodge Travco RV and have been traveling around the country for the last 11 years.

00:03:55.680 | So hopefully that'll pique your interest. And Pat has written a couple of books,

00:03:59.440 | one about a sailing adventure and one about trading. He currently earns his income trading

00:04:05.440 | stocks, excuse me, trading options, as he clarifies in the interview, he doesn't trade

00:04:09.760 | stocks very much anymore. So trades options and that's how he funds, mostly funds his lifestyle.

00:04:14.160 | And I assume a little bit of income here and there from the books and perhaps other things as well.

00:04:18.560 | So I've been looking forward to bringing you this interview. I am sure you're going to enjoy it.

00:04:24.320 | Oh, and I forgot to mention, I screwed up at the beginning of the show and I didn't hit the record

00:04:29.040 | button on the interview. And then I actually did it twice. The first time Pat was a minute into his

00:04:33.760 | talk and I thought I'd hit the record button, but I have to hit it twice and I didn't hit it the

00:04:38.480 | second time. And then I said, "Hey, sorry, I stopped him." And then we started again. And then

00:04:43.600 | I realized that I thought I'd hit it and I didn't hit it. So I screwed it up. So you're missing the

00:04:49.280 | first about 10 seconds of the show, but hopefully that's not a big deal. Here's the interview.

00:04:53.280 | So the first time, just a moment ago, I had hit record and then I didn't do it. So I apologize.

00:05:01.840 | I screwed up the recording, but I do want to thank you for being with us. And a personal thank you

00:05:07.200 | just for all the work that you've done on your site and the intro of shared people, just your

00:05:12.560 | site and your books. But I appreciate all of the work that you've done over the years of building a

00:05:17.600 | comprehensive website and putting together the books that you've written. So thank you for all

00:05:22.320 | the hard work that you've done. Yeah, of course. Thanks.

00:05:25.200 | Where I'd like to start, if you're willing, is just share with us a little bit about your story,

00:05:29.280 | maybe over about the last 10 or 20 years or so. Sure. Yeah. Well, my wife and I met back in high

00:05:36.320 | school and so we've always kind of had each other and we're able to take challenges on. And early

00:05:43.520 | on, I'd always wanted to be a trader. Watching the guys in the New York Stock Exchange on TV

00:05:49.440 | and everything, I always thought, "Wow, that looks like the job for me." And it turned out

00:05:53.200 | there was a small exchange in Minneapolis, the Commodities Exchange. So right out of college,

00:05:59.280 | I kind of started in on the ground floor there and just kind of worked my way up as a clerk and

00:06:04.800 | everything. And then as a broker and learned as much as I could from the smartest guys there that

00:06:10.400 | I could find. And then eventually I went out on my own in Chicago. I was trading soybean options and

00:06:17.040 | all sorts of different agricultural products and just focusing on options though. And things went

00:06:25.360 | well, fortunately. And all our friends kind of started to head off into the suburbs and started

00:06:32.880 | having kids. And my wife and I, we just kind of realized, "Oh, we're not quite ready to do that.

00:06:37.040 | We're looking to do something just kind of crazy and different and kind of run while we got the

00:06:44.160 | money and make something fun happen." And so we decided one night over beers to go sail around

00:06:52.240 | the world. It sounded about as crazy as we could come up with. And just a few months later, we were

00:07:00.720 | on a boat for the first time, our own boat, and just setting off.

00:07:04.960 | Mad Fientist Had you ever sailed before that? Or did you

00:07:07.680 | know anyone who sailed? Or where did the idea actually come from?

00:07:09.840 | Mike You know, as a commodities trader, I was off.

00:07:13.280 | The markets closed early every day. So I was home by like 1.30. And so I'd be on the internet

00:07:19.920 | looking for... I got into the whole... I got a travel bug. I wasn't really a traveler or adventurer,

00:07:25.760 | but I got into that bug. And so I was always searching things out. And at the time, there

00:07:31.120 | wasn't a whole lot out there. I mean, this was like 2002 or 2003. But I found one blog about

00:07:38.960 | these people sailing around the world. And I thought, "That sounds pretty awesome." And they

00:07:43.200 | didn't seem to really know too much about what they were doing. So I figured, "What the heck?"

00:07:47.680 | Mad Fientist So you sailed around the world. And how long were you guys gone?

00:07:51.680 | Mike Yeah, we did that for four years. And we were

00:07:54.160 | about halfway through when we realized, "You know what? I don't think we're going to go back to

00:07:58.080 | Chicago." And we had always planned, "I'll just go back to Chicago and just pick up where we left

00:08:03.920 | off." But about halfway through, we thought, "There's a better life out here than just

00:08:08.640 | working to make money, to make more money, to keep working." Just the cycle.

00:08:16.240 | And so we've just kind of continued travels.

00:08:20.000 | Mad Fientist It's interesting to me about just that exposure,

00:08:24.400 | because it seems to me – and let me just, instead of saying it, let me ask you this question. Did

00:08:28.720 | your perspective of what kind of lifestyle was okay to choose change over the years as you got

00:08:36.080 | out and traveled and expanded your horizons? Mike

00:08:38.720 | Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, when we first took off, we just told Tam and, "Hey, this is just a break

00:08:45.360 | from life. We're going to go do this thing, and it'll be an adventure, and it'll be a great story

00:08:51.360 | for our kids someday," kind of thing. But like I said, somewhere along the way, things just kind

00:08:58.160 | of changed, and that became our life. And the idea of going back to our previous life just wasn't

00:09:06.560 | appealing anymore. Suddenly, we were like, "Wow, we really don't need much of anything. We can

00:09:13.200 | live. We can travel the world on a fraction of pretty much what we're spending just to live

00:09:22.080 | downtown Chicago and go to work every day." Mad Fientist

00:09:25.760 | Do you have the money just to do that for the rest of your life, or do you see it running out

00:09:31.520 | at some point? Are you going to need to go back to work?

00:09:33.840 | Mike Yeah, well, that's part of the thing, too,

00:09:37.200 | is I kind of became a big proponent of mini-retirements. I guess that phrase has been

00:09:47.680 | coined at some point. I think it was in the four-hour work week or something. But I kind of

00:09:52.240 | figured, do stuff while you can, and you can always work. You might not always be able to make

00:09:59.440 | as much money as you once were. You might not be able to step right back into the same thing you

00:10:04.320 | were doing. But there's always work, and there's always options out there for smart people willing

00:10:11.120 | to work hard. Excuse me one second. What is it? I know I'm on the phone. Sorry.

00:10:22.400 | Mad Fientist My little one's not walking yet,

00:10:24.640 | but I'm sure that in the future, sometimes in the background of my show, you can hear him crying

00:10:29.280 | as he lies down or something. I'm sure in the future, he's going to walk in and interrupt my

00:10:34.400 | shows in the future. I think that's how it should be.

00:10:36.240 | Mike Well, that's my four-year-old. She's so

00:10:38.080 | amazed to hear me on the phone that she had to come see what the heck was going on. She's like,

00:10:41.200 | "I heard you talking to somebody. What's going on?"

00:10:44.000 | Mad Fientist Yeah, I thought you made a good point of that

00:10:47.040 | in your book about the mini-retirements. It's one of the themes I especially admire. You have a

00:10:52.080 | four-year-old, and your son is three, four and three. It seems to me, and I've said on the show,

00:11:00.880 | and I'm curious if you agree, it seems to me like the whole way that we approach life is so twisted.

00:11:05.920 | You probably don't know. I come from the background of a financial planner. I worked

00:11:11.040 | six years as a professional financial advisor and financial planner. The whole deal that is preached

00:11:16.800 | in the financial planning world that I grew up reading personal finance books is you're supposed

00:11:20.240 | to save for retirement, save for retirement. The way I figured it out is you're supposed to go to

00:11:24.560 | college, graduate from college, work really hard, have kids, buy a house, get a mortgage,

00:11:28.640 | work really hard during those years to establish your career to earn money. Then you're supposed

00:11:33.360 | to save, save, save, save, save, so you can hit this magical point of 60 or 65 years old,

00:11:38.160 | having enough money to retire, which takes a huge amount of money. It's a massive amount of money

00:11:43.760 | if you're just going to say, "I'm not going to work." Then the other thing is we're not supposed

00:11:46.320 | to count on Social Security, so therefore you've got to save it all yourself. All during this time,

00:11:51.680 | you miss your kid's childhood. Right about the time you hit maybe 50, you hit your stride,

00:11:56.000 | you're in the peak of your career, you can afford to pull back a little. You turn around and your

00:11:59.520 | kids are gone. Then you hit 60 and you hit early retirement. Your kids are doing exactly the same

00:12:04.400 | thing you're doing. Now all you have to do is go to Florida and golf and drive your Mercedes around

00:12:09.520 | West Palm Beach, Florida, where I live. It just seems like a stupid way to live to me,

00:12:13.200 | but that's what our society is built on. Yeah, it's just a cycle. One of the things that always

00:12:18.800 | drives me nuts is the whole thing, you work until 65 and then everybody tells you you have to have

00:12:23.440 | like 80% of your last year's earnings to retire or something. I always think, "Really? When you're

00:12:31.440 | like that old, you need 80% of your maximum earnings? What do you need all that money for

00:12:38.720 | then?" I don't know. Our lifestyle has shown us that we really don't need that much. I certainly

00:12:47.760 | don't need 80% of this huge number to be earning that much in my investments and everything else

00:12:54.800 | at 65. I can live a real fulfilling and fun and exciting life unless. I don't know. It's just a

00:13:05.840 | different way and we've managed to find it. I ran your numbers one time off your budget.

00:13:12.240 | It's got to be one of the most visited pages on your website. You put on there your budgets for

00:13:17.280 | your sailing trip, your driving the Americas, your Mexico sailing trip, and now your current

00:13:22.000 | costs for your RVing. I went through one time and I ran the numbers. I'm doing this off the top of

00:13:28.160 | my head, so if you know the averages, let me know. One thing that's clear from your writing is you're

00:13:32.160 | not exactly a penny pincher. You seem to spend freely on anything that comes in a plastic bag

00:13:46.400 | that you can eat and anything that comes in a bottle. I say that tongue in cheek, but with a

00:13:52.720 | chuckling thing. You don't have any problem spending on food or spending on things that

00:13:58.320 | you want to do. You don't seem to try to worry too much about stressing about a specific budget,

00:14:03.680 | but it's hard to spend that much money when you don't have a lot of place to put stuff and you

00:14:09.120 | don't own a car and don't own a cell phone. I went through your budget even for your sailing

00:14:13.760 | trip. The way it comes across in your writing, you went down and you bought an almost brand new boat.

00:14:18.960 | You paid almost $160,000 for that. You sailed it for four years, was it?

00:14:26.240 | Yeah. Four years all around the world,

00:14:28.720 | down to Australia, New Zealand, all through Africa, the Mediterranean, back to the US.

00:14:32.880 | You had massive boat problems. You sank, what was it, 30,000, 40,000 bucks into fixing the boat in

00:14:39.760 | New Zealand? Yeah.

00:14:41.280 | So then I took it and I pulled out your ending, what you sold the boat for, and I calculated that

00:14:48.640 | your total monthly budget, including depreciation on the boat and repairs, came to something like

00:14:54.080 | $4,000 a month, right? Yeah, I think so. That's about it.

00:14:58.240 | And that included the flights, that included everything. It was somewhere between $4,000

00:15:02.400 | a month, including depreciation on the almost brand new boat and your massive repairs,

00:15:07.280 | because the boatmaker screwed you. Yeah. Basically, I ran the numbers once too,

00:15:13.920 | and I don't have them in front of me, but without the big repair bills, the number is more like

00:15:20.160 | $2,800 a month. It depends on how you look at it. It's either high or low to live on, but it's also,

00:15:30.000 | at that time, especially on that trip, we were planning most of the time just to go back to work

00:15:36.480 | and save money. So it was like we were really free spending. So we were spending as much money as we

00:15:42.000 | wanted, and we're still only spending $2,800 a month. And that was to see, I mean, we went to,

00:15:46.960 | I don't know, 45 countries or 50 countries. I mean, it was like, that was a massive trip.

00:15:54.720 | I don't know. It was four years.

00:15:57.920 | And we managed to do it on $2,800 without a month, without even trying.

00:16:05.280 | Right. I mean, without any effort, we were able to

00:16:08.080 | spend under $3,000. Do you remember what you sold that boat for when you finally sold it? Or I think

00:16:14.240 | you listed it publicly. If you didn't, let me know. Yeah, I think it was $140. Yeah, it was $140.

00:16:20.240 | So we bought the boat for $157, sold it for $140. And if we hadn't had all those problems.

00:16:26.320 | And that was the other thing is that I think, so I've never sailed. I'm intimidated by sailing.

00:16:32.800 | But I think, how could you spend $160,000, $157,000 on a boat? And I mean, you basically

00:16:40.320 | went and did it in a weekend. But when you come back with a sailboat, you had $17,000 of

00:16:46.640 | depreciation plus the 30 grand of repairs. So you wound up with $47,000 of costs spread out over four

00:16:53.200 | months. Right, about $1,000 a month, right? Right, exactly. And I couldn't believe it. And then

00:17:00.320 | so then your next adventure after your trip across the country, you bought the Volkswagen, right?

00:17:06.960 | Yeah. Yeah.

00:17:07.840 | And you bought this fancy, epic looking Volkswagen van. And you spent, let's see,

00:17:12.880 | I'm looking here at your page, 60,000 miles, 525 days on the road. And you probably averaged about

00:17:18.320 | $2,500 a month of expenses for that, right? Yeah, that's about right.

00:17:22.560 | Somewhere in that. And then your next sailboat, you got wiser.

00:17:26.160 | Oh, yeah, let's not forget on the VW bus. So we paid $22,000 for that. Fully restored,

00:17:31.760 | you know, really nice. And then we sold it in England for 15,000 pounds. So basically,

00:17:37.680 | it was roughly the exact same price. So it cost us, we drove it 60,000 miles,

00:17:42.160 | beat the crap out of it, and then sold it. You and your wife certainly have a penchance

00:17:48.480 | for old fashioned vehicles that keep you up underneath them, though, don't you?

00:17:52.160 | Yeah, we love it, man. You like style.

00:17:55.040 | Yeah, we do. It's fun. So I won't go through, I mean, every number,

00:17:57.920 | but just for the sake of time, but it's certainly, I would point people towards the budgets, because

00:18:02.800 | the key is, and it took a while for me to figure it out, living a standard lifestyle is expensive,

00:18:08.320 | and you're locked in. But living a non-traditional lifestyle, if you can eliminate the expenses of

00:18:15.680 | the standard lifestyle, going on vacation in the United States is expensive, because you have all

00:18:20.640 | your current costs, but then you have your vacation costs on top of them. But if you can adjust to an

00:18:25.200 | adventure, then it can really cut your costs. Yeah, for sure. Most people, when they take a

00:18:31.040 | week vacation, they'll spend what we do for two months of steady traveling.

00:18:36.240 | So I didn't mean to steal the limelight. I want to go back to getting started in trading. In the

00:18:42.800 | end of your book, Live on the Margin, you told the story, you said that you got started, you were

00:18:48.000 | making basically minimum wage, something like that, and you got your bank set up by selling

00:18:54.800 | a pickup truck and using that money for trading. Is that true?

00:18:58.320 | Yeah, that's totally true. I started out as a pit reporter. Basically, I watched the traders make a

00:19:05.840 | trade, and then I called it into my little headphone, and then I got punched into the

00:19:09.520 | computer, and blah, blah, blah. And that was eight bucks an hour for four hours a day.

00:19:14.400 | That was like, I'm a college graduate with two degrees, and that's what I'm working for.

00:19:20.000 | But yeah, you got to start at the bottom sometimes to get your foot in the door.

00:19:24.480 | And then I caught the attention of one of the brokers, one of the big brokers there,

00:19:30.640 | just for being a guy that looked like I gave a crap. And then I worked my way up from there.

00:19:37.360 | He was a mentor to me. And after about a year or two of learning, just following everything,

00:19:46.160 | and reading books, and being taught as much as I could, my wife and I, we sold my pickup,

00:19:51.920 | put $5,000 into a trading account, and she said, "All right, here's your shot."

00:19:56.240 | She'd been supporting us, essentially. I'm making no money. And so she's like, "Okay,

00:20:03.360 | here's your shot." And it just went up. It always went up from there. I never put any more money

00:20:10.880 | into it. And you were trading your own money. So when you went to Chicago, you weren't working for

00:20:14.960 | somebody, you were trading your own account. Correct, yeah.

00:20:17.840 | So is that still possible to do? Because I never even knew that was possible.

00:20:20.720 | Sure, yeah, it's possible. It's rare. It was even rare in my day, 10 years ago. But yeah,

00:20:29.440 | you can lease a seat. At the time, I think my lease was like $300 a month, to lease a commodities

00:20:37.680 | badge, and get in the pit and trade options. I think I had $50,000 to put in an account when I

00:20:47.360 | got to Chicago. I was able to trade in Minneapolis with a very small account to start, because I

00:20:52.640 | worked for a clearing firm. And they were kind of like, "All right, we'll let you slide on some of

00:20:56.080 | this margin, because while you work for us, we'll just keep your money."

00:20:59.440 | Right.

00:21:00.240 | Indenture servitude.

00:21:02.720 | Yeah, exactly. But yeah, you needed a little bit of bankroll before you got to Chicago and

00:21:07.920 | played with the big boys there. But yeah, it's totally possible.

00:21:11.680 | So how did you learn? Was it reading books? Was it mentors? Was it all of the above? Because

00:21:16.240 | I'm very interested. So I've never traded at all. And I want to talk through some of your book and

00:21:22.640 | some of the trading. I've always come from more of the investment background and primarily just

00:21:27.680 | working in financial planning, which has nothing to do with portfolio management. But I'm interested

00:21:31.920 | in trading. How did you learn from the beginning? If you were going to go back and redo it,

00:21:37.040 | how would you learn again to become a skillful trader?

00:21:40.240 | Well, definitely, I think the way I did learn was the best way. I mean,

00:21:44.480 | started from the bottom, worked my way up. There was about three guys on that trading floor who I

00:21:51.600 | thought were especially smart, especially successful. And I really tried to become

00:21:59.200 | friends with them and learn as much as I could from them. And I was also fortunate, because like

00:22:03.040 | I said, my boss was a mentor to me. And I mean, like on day one, he handed me this big, thick

00:22:08.320 | book. It's from Sheldon Natenberg, and it's called Options, Volatility, and Pricing, I believe. And

00:22:14.800 | it's a textbook, really. But it's all about options. And I mean, if you need to learn

00:22:19.600 | anything about options, it's in there. And I devoured it. And he quizzed me every day.

00:22:24.160 | And he just constantly quizzed me for, I don't know, for a year. I mean, we'd just look up at

00:22:30.560 | the screen, and he'd say, "Okay, what are the $6 calls worth?" or whatever it was. And he'd say,

00:22:39.200 | "Okay, what's going to happen if the futures drop a buck?" or whatever. I mean, he would just

00:22:44.400 | constantly give me these little scenarios and ask me what would happen. And I just learned that way.

00:22:51.760 | Is that something that becomes second nature over time, just by doing it?

00:22:57.040 | Like you kind of internalize the formulas?

00:23:00.080 | Yeah, I think so, definitely. I mean, options are all I trade now. I don't trade much anymore.

00:23:06.240 | But I do trade, and I still trade successfully. But I trade stock options now, solely options.

00:23:14.960 | And for me, it's just, I mean, I don't even think about it anymore. It's like riding a bike. It's

00:23:21.680 | just, it's options. But for a lot of people, just that word is enough to turn them off,

00:23:26.080 | because they just can't seem to grasp it. But I think if you break options down into the real

00:23:32.080 | basics, and you just kind of keep hammering away at it, it's something that you really can learn.

00:23:36.640 | I think a lot of traders could take advantage from trading options.

00:23:41.520 | So Pat, I don't believe you, because the markets are efficient, and there's not anything you can

00:23:47.520 | do to find an inefficient market. You need to just simply buy an index fund. So I think you're

00:23:52.400 | lying to me. What do you say to that? Well, I don't know. I don't think they're quite as

00:23:56.720 | efficient as people would like to believe. I mean, there is, there's manipulation out there.

00:24:03.680 | You have to kind of decide, I don't know what your, I don't know how to say it exactly,

00:24:11.600 | but how much risk you're willing to take on, and how much you can ride out sometimes.

00:24:17.520 | You know, you kind of have to be, sometimes you do have to be good at kind of seeing

00:24:22.800 | where something is acting. It's just not acting the way it should, you know. A stock might go

00:24:30.800 | down, and you're just like, well, that doesn't make any sense. You know, there's nothing,

00:24:35.840 | based on reality, there's no reason this should be happening. And in truth, I think that is true,

00:24:42.560 | that that can happen. So it is, it's something that you have to be able to ride out. I don't

00:24:50.240 | know. Do you track your performance in an academic way of some kind? No, I don't. No,

00:24:58.160 | I wish I did. But do you feel like, I mean, an honest feeling, I think you have the ability to

00:25:06.800 | be intellectually honest on an honest feeling. Do you have any sense of what your personal

00:25:10.320 | returns have been? Have they been in excess of the market returns? Oh, I think they've been

00:25:14.880 | very similar to market returns. I don't think I've ever really underperformed too badly,

00:25:21.360 | maybe a couple percent. But I've also had some really good years that are, that far outperformed

00:25:27.520 | the market. But if they've been similar to the market returns, then why bother with all the work

00:25:32.240 | of trading? Why not just sit tight and collect market returns? Well, I think that's, yeah,

00:25:38.000 | well, that's a good point. I mean, like I said, I've had some years that are significantly,

00:25:43.120 | and when I say significantly, I don't mean like the market made 10% and I made 12. I mean like

00:25:49.600 | the market made 10% and I made 80, that sort of thing. You know, sometimes, especially with me

00:25:57.200 | trading options, you can hit a big winner. And if you trade it right, you let it ride, maybe you can

00:26:05.760 | add on as you're making, as the trade's going up, instead of taking profits every time.

00:26:11.200 | Which is a hard thing to learn, because everybody's saying, "Okay, take profits,

00:26:15.760 | take profits." But sometimes you've got to realize the trend is still up, and you can buy more,

00:26:22.240 | and you can buy more, and you can ride it. I don't know. I mean, I have a hard time trying to

00:26:28.000 | teach trading. Because, you know, for me, a lot of it is just kind of, I don't know,

00:26:35.040 | I don't want to say gut feeling, because that really sounds ridiculous. But I don't know. I

00:26:43.120 | mean, I kind of put so many different variables together in my own mind. It's not just laying

00:26:49.520 | things down on paper and saying, "Here, here, here, and this is what I'm going to do." I don't

00:26:55.600 | know, it's hard to explain. But when I was in the pits, especially, I was what's called a short

00:27:00.400 | volatility trader. And when you're doing that, like, I'm basically short a bunch of options,

00:27:07.440 | and I want futures to essentially do nothing, would be my best scenario. But as futures would

00:27:17.120 | take off, if they go higher, at that point, I was supposed to buy in order to stay hedged. This

00:27:23.440 | might be too technical. But if I bought up high, and then the market tanked again, well, then I was

00:27:32.080 | supposed to sell down low my future. So then you end up chopping yourself, you know, you're making

00:27:38.720 | some money on your options, but now you're losing it all because you're hedging so badly. And I

00:27:45.760 | think part of my thing was that I was able to kind of sit tight a lot and not make those bad

00:27:51.600 | decisions. I was able to ride things out a little better. And again, part of that was my situation,

00:27:57.760 | especially back then, where I really didn't have anything. And it was just me and my wife. And if

00:28:04.960 | we lost everything, you just start again, right? And nowadays, I guess my risk tolerance is

00:28:11.440 | slightly lower, but it's still kind of along the same lines. And I don't know. So I don't always

00:28:17.200 | advocating that everybody jump in and trade, but I am advocating that everybody learn how to trade.

00:28:24.800 | Because I think if nothing else, you're taking some control and learning something that's

00:28:31.760 | definitely valuable. I mean, everybody should know how to manage their own money and how to

00:28:37.680 | trade that money. It's interesting because in your book, you talk about exactly what you said

00:28:45.200 | as far as taking control of your money. And I'm no longer a financial advisor, but I come from

00:28:50.080 | that background. And I've struggled with this over the years. I reached the conclusion when I was

00:28:57.120 | managing portfolios that the only rational thing that a financial advisor can do as far as managing

00:29:04.800 | portfolios is help clients control their emotions. And if you're going to hire a portfolio manager,

00:29:11.600 | you have to trust your portfolio manager to do the trading. And so my job as the in-between

00:29:16.480 | between clients was to help them manage their emotions. But I also came to the conclusion and

00:29:21.680 | basically buy and hold and commit to holding no matter what happens. But that's exactly the

00:29:27.680 | opposite. You lampoon that in your book. But I've come to the conclusion, and feel free to disagree

00:29:33.520 | with me. I'm asking the question because I invite your comment. I've come to the conclusion that it

00:29:39.120 | very much depends on what type of person you are. And the type of person who's going to be a

00:29:43.360 | successful trader is the kind of person that's going to more likely to listen to everyone say,

00:29:48.480 | "You can't beat the market. You just got to buy and hold. You can't beat the market." It's going

00:29:51.840 | to say, "Forget that. I think I can and I want to do it and be gutsy enough to go off and do it."

00:29:56.960 | And I don't know how to control for that because I think that in some ways,

00:30:01.920 | the advice to trade is great advice for certain personality types and it's horrible advice for

00:30:09.600 | other people. And it very much depends on the personality type. What do you think? Am I wrong

00:30:13.920 | or am I right? No, I think you're exactly right. I think there are certain people that no matter

00:30:17.760 | how much they learn about trading, they're never going to be good traders. I mean, that just goes

00:30:21.280 | without saying. They're emotional people who are just, you know, the second that market starts

00:30:28.320 | ticking down, they're in full panic mode and then it gets down a little bit more and they just sell

00:30:34.240 | everything. And then of course, it just reverses and goes back up. And they're the ones that,

00:30:39.760 | like I said, they chop themselves up. They're selling low, they're buying high because they

00:30:43.520 | can't ride anything out. They just have that fear. And again, I still think everybody needs

00:30:51.200 | to learn how to trade. Even those people, I think, should learn how to trade. I just think it's a

00:30:54.400 | valuable thing to know. And plus, we should all learn things that we're that are uncomfortable

00:31:00.400 | with. I think everybody should be learning all the time. But those people also shouldn't be putting

00:31:08.320 | all their money in trading everything. You can definitely learn how to trade without putting a

00:31:16.960 | lot of money at risk. Go ahead. How would you pursue if someone wanted to learn how to trade

00:31:23.520 | in addition to buying your book? Would you recommend they go out and buy options, volatility,

00:31:28.720 | and pricing? Or how would you teach someone to trade? Just an average person listening to this

00:31:33.920 | show that says, "Hey, I want to live in an RV and travel full time for the last 10 years and be with

00:31:38.560 | my kids and make money in stocks." How would you encourage someone to learn how to trade today?

00:31:43.200 | Yeah. Well, I think the easiest way, for the average person that's never made a trade,

00:31:48.000 | that they've got a 401(k) or whatever and might have had to pick a couple of different

00:31:53.920 | mutual funds or something over the years, but that's about it. Those people, I think,

00:31:59.360 | they should open a small account, something they're comfortable with putting at risk,

00:32:04.160 | and trade stocks. I don't think everybody should just immediately start trading options. I think

00:32:08.960 | you need to just learn how to actually make trades, how to navigate your way around the website,

00:32:14.320 | whichever broker you choose to use, and just learn to make a few small trades.

00:32:19.200 | I also think, when I say that, I don't mean pick some wild penny stock that you've never heard of

00:32:27.360 | before or some company that you know nothing about, but a friend of a friend told you about it. I

00:32:32.400 | think it's important for people to pick a few, I say pick 10 to 20 stocks, things that you use

00:32:39.120 | every day, things that you're happy with, brands that you're happy with. I'll throw this out. If

00:32:47.920 | you eat at McDonald's every day for lunch, there must be a reason for that. You must like them,

00:32:52.880 | and you must be happy with the service or whatever it is. I don't know exactly, but

00:32:57.600 | you must be happy about that company and also, so great, so buy a little bit.

00:33:04.960 | But then you're also able to watch and see how things change over time. If all of a sudden,

00:33:09.040 | you're looking at it and you're like, "Wow, this menu isn't changing. They're not adding such and

00:33:16.160 | such and doing this or that," you're able to see things and make decisions based on your real

00:33:23.200 | actual world experience versus trying to play catch up by doing research online, following the

00:33:32.640 | news on some company that you really have just, you can't even conceive of how they are actually

00:33:37.440 | making money, some semiconductor business or something. What does the average Joe really

00:33:42.800 | know about any of these companies or how they work? You don't. So you choose a few companies

00:33:49.200 | that you're comfortable with and that you use on a daily basis, and you get into it that way,

00:33:54.160 | I think is the easiest way. It seems like

00:33:58.560 | we're doing a lot of just thinking lately about why we don't learn to trust ourselves.

00:34:03.200 | It's a big subject, but it seems like in our society, we're taught not to have any confidence

00:34:08.400 | in our own ability to make decisions or to do anything. I felt this myself. I'm intimidated

00:34:17.360 | by sailing. I'm intimidated by mechanical things because I've never been effective.

00:34:21.520 | I've never felt confident with my ability to fix stuff, but somehow we're taught in our society

00:34:27.200 | and we're essentially conditioned not to trust yourself, but you have to look to an expert.

00:34:32.240 | I am increasingly coming to the opinion that there's a place and a role for experts, but it's

00:34:39.920 | probably better to learn to trust yourself and learn something about it. A good place to start

00:34:44.080 | would be to invest in what you know. Yeah. I don't know if I've always been

00:34:48.160 | that kind of person that's willing to just jump into things. I guess I have been, but

00:34:54.160 | you learn all these things and then you're able to put them into practice. I'm visiting my mother

00:34:59.360 | right now and her central vacuum had stopped working. She's like, "Oh, the vacuum's broken.

00:35:05.200 | That's it. We're screwed." I went down in her basement and I looked at this big contraption

00:35:12.560 | and I took it apart. I was like, "Okay, I guess here's a motor. I'll take that out."

00:35:19.120 | I ended up putting a new motor in it and it works again. Why would I have ever known to do that?

00:35:25.120 | We're so ingrained to just, "Oh, that's broke. I couldn't possibly. What do I know about that? I

00:35:30.320 | couldn't do anything," instead of just learning how to do it or just jumping in and figuring it

00:35:34.880 | out. I think the same thing like we were talking about with the stocks. If you pick something that

00:35:40.000 | you know, then you can be confident in your own decisions. Whereas, if you pick a company you have

00:35:46.400 | no idea about, you don't know anything about it, then any decision you do make is going to be based

00:35:51.920 | solely on other people. A lot of people like that. They want to be told. If you go online these days

00:36:00.240 | and you type in any stock, you're going to get wild opinions for bullish and you're going to get

00:36:06.000 | wild opinions for bearish on every stock. How do you choose? You have to know.

00:36:12.720 | I think, and I regret some of my own conditioning. When I was younger and I was studying,

00:36:19.520 | no one came alongside me and told me, "Josh, be self-confident. Why don't you pick some?"

00:36:26.400 | Just start having some fun with some companies that you individually think are going to be good.

00:36:31.120 | I was so brainwashed by personal finance books that I can't possibly have an opinion. I can't

00:36:36.720 | possibly have an idea that would be helpful. I'm not smart enough to do this. If the mutual fund

00:36:42.480 | managers can't beat the market, why are you doing it? You should go and just focus on something

00:36:47.440 | else. When I look back at it, now clearly, we remember the things that we would have gotten

00:36:52.400 | well and it's easy to have survivorship bias and confirmation bias. Seriously.

00:36:56.800 | I look back and there have been a number of times when I have felt very strongly,

00:37:01.840 | "This is a company." I think Chipotle, for example. Chipotle was something that the instant

00:37:07.520 | I went to Chipotle for the first time and I heard all of my friends raving about it, I said,

00:37:11.920 | "This is a company that's going to be incredibly successful. My wife and I go out of our way to

00:37:17.120 | eat there whenever we can. That should tell me something." But I didn't have the confidence

00:37:22.880 | to act on it and to move on it. That's a perfect example of what I'm saying.

00:37:28.160 | The company that you go, "Wow, this is great. I love this company. I want to invest in it."

00:37:33.600 | And then if all of a sudden you're like, "Wow, every bite of meat you're getting is all fatty

00:37:40.480 | and gross or something," you're going, "Okay, something's changed. Our quality control is off.

00:37:43.920 | I'm going to get out of this. Something's not the same as it was back then."

00:37:47.840 | But otherwise, you're just riding it up because you're like, "This is still a great company."

00:37:52.560 | I've been thinking about how I can teach my son. I have a son who's almost one year old

00:37:56.960 | and I've been thinking, "Okay, how am I going to teach him to invest?" I've been exactly what

00:38:00.880 | you're saying, trying to think through what are the companies that he's likely to know from an

00:38:05.600 | early age? What are the brands that he's likely to be aware of? Then I'm going to buy him some stock.

00:38:10.800 | We're going to talk about that. We're going to use that as a teaching tool to say,

00:38:16.000 | "You need to pay attention to these companies that you're doing business with from a few years old on

00:38:20.880 | to help him think like an investor."

00:38:23.680 | It's a great idea.

00:38:24.400 | Your book title, the book that you wrote with your friend Nick Kelly,

00:38:33.040 | what do you mean by "live on the margin"?

00:38:37.360 | In the book, we talk about going out and living your dreams, doing these mini-retirements,

00:38:50.560 | whether that's flying off to Bali to surf for a year or sail around the world or

00:38:56.320 | something much less ambitious. Everybody's got these things that they want to do and everybody's

00:39:02.560 | putting them off to 65, which then causes them to never happen. We're saying, "Yeah, you can do it.

00:39:10.080 | You can go out there. You can live on the margin." When we say, "Live on the margin," we mean

00:39:13.360 | we're talking about this is also a trading book. We're saying you can trade a little bit of that

00:39:18.560 | money that you're using and maybe you can extend your burn a little bit. We're saying

00:39:23.520 | you're spending X amount a month to live this dream. You've got Y. You've got this many months

00:39:35.040 | to basically do this. What if you traded a little bit of that money during this adventure, which is

00:39:42.960 | basically what I do. I don't trade all the time. I'm off doing all these different things, traveling

00:39:50.800 | all over the world and living all over the world and doing all these things. I'm only trading very

00:39:56.640 | rarely. I trade when I see opportunities that I think are interesting and also when I have time to

00:40:04.480 | feel like taking time away to actually do the trading. I'm not making enough necessarily

00:40:12.960 | all the time to cover all my expenses, but I'm making enough to extend my time out there.

00:40:19.440 | Now, instead of going back to work at 35, now I'm 40. Maybe I can go a few more years yet.

00:40:27.120 | If I keep trading and making a little bit of money here and make a little bit of money there,

00:40:32.720 | then I'm 45 and I'm still going.

00:40:35.680 | Tom: Running out of money is not the end of the world because if you look at the variety of

00:40:45.280 | experience that you've gained from doing things that are maybe non-traditional, there are always

00:40:50.800 | options. Once you've done it once, it's almost like you've cracked the code and you can pursue

00:40:56.560 | something else. If you look at people who are successful entrepreneurs, they usually have a

00:40:59.360 | string of failures in their wake and it takes them time. I personally feel sometimes like I'm on a

00:41:06.160 | mission against retirement, but it wasn't until I read a book. I worked as a financial planner

00:41:12.880 | and I couldn't figure out why isn't retirement working because I thought, "Well, retirement's

00:41:17.520 | easy." After all, I read Automatic Millionaire. All I need to do is just set aside 15%, cut out

00:41:23.600 | my latte factor, plunk it all into mutual funds, and I'm going to be set.

00:41:27.600 | Tom: You'll be done, man.

00:41:30.960 | Steven: I'm ready to go. I consumed all of these books and I just started looking at it and I said,

00:41:37.920 | "But it's not working for people." It really bothered me and I could never figure out why.

00:41:43.360 | Why is it not working? I read a book called Out of Print. I went back and I started researching

00:41:49.440 | the history of retirement. There's actually a book called The History of Retirement. If

00:41:54.160 | you're interested, I did a show on it. What I learned is that retirement was invented as a

00:42:00.720 | political solution to an unemployment problem. That's the whole basis of it.

00:42:07.200 | Tom: I'm sorry.

00:42:09.200 | Steven: Go ahead.

00:42:09.600 | Tom: Because people were already retiring earlier, weren't they?

00:42:13.360 | Steven: Throughout history, people have never retired. Retirement was always seen as something

00:42:20.400 | that was a negative thing. So the idea of being put out to pasture and not working

00:42:26.160 | was not an idea that most people wanted. And if you looked at what happened, and people worked

00:42:32.480 | from the time that they were born through death. They just simply pulled back as they got older.

00:42:36.400 | But primarily you can trace it back, and usually the person who's attributed to it is Bismarck,

00:42:42.640 | Chancellor Bismarck in Germany. And what was happening in that day, depending on what

00:42:46.640 | historical account, I still can't figure out what's the truth. I've heard conflicting accounts,

00:42:51.600 | and I haven't found any source that's academically rigorous to convince me of what it actually was.

00:42:57.760 | But it was either he was trying to eliminate some of his political competition,

00:43:01.760 | or he was trying to stave off extra socialism coming into Germany. And so he instituted a

00:43:08.000 | system of retirement in Germany. But in the U.S., if you trace back the history of retirement,

00:43:13.120 | it goes largely back to the Great Depression, where you had a period of high unemployment,

00:43:18.240 | and it was generally thought that that unemployment was going to be a systemic

00:43:22.240 | problem going forward. And so how do we lower the unemployment numbers? Well, we take workers out

00:43:28.960 | of the numerator or the denominator, whatever it is. And that way we can lower the percentages.

00:43:34.480 | But the people didn't buy it. And so then as productivity increased from, again,

00:43:39.120 | these are some of the academic research, and I'm not 100% confident on this, yes, but you could get

00:43:43.920 | more work per hour out of the workers, but you couldn't get it out of the older workers. So then

00:43:48.240 | mandatory retirement came in at 65, and people protested and protested and protested. And it

00:43:53.120 | wasn't until about the 1950s when the idea of marketing retirement as a golden age of leisure

00:43:59.680 | came about. And this whole societal transformation has happened since about the 1950s, when Florida,

00:44:07.920 | going down and playing golf at Florida in about the 1950s became a doable thing.

00:44:12.640 | So throughout history, retirement was seen as a curse, and now it's seen as the ultimate goal.

00:44:18.000 | And so then everybody feels guilty about, "I have to be saving for retirement. If I'm not saving for

00:44:23.680 | retirement, I feel guilty." And then all the money's locked away in qualified accounts.

00:44:28.320 | And it just seems like the perfect storm of, some people are perfectly happy, but many people are

00:44:33.680 | completely miserable, and they don't trust themselves enough to change, because I'm going

00:44:37.280 | to fall behind on retirement. And it doesn't seem like the joy of life is quite there. And that's

00:44:44.080 | just been my observation. In your book, you said, I'm quoting, "The fact of the matter is this,

00:44:49.760 | you can always make more money, but you can't make more time."

00:44:52.560 | Right. It's true, isn't it?

00:44:55.680 | It is.

00:44:56.080 | Yeah. I'm really trying to live those words. I lived my entire 30s just traveling, having fun,

00:45:06.720 | doing amazing things, writing. I would have never written two books. I would have never written

00:45:13.440 | dozens of magazine articles. I would have never done any of that. So I learned an entirely new

00:45:18.160 | skill. I met countless amazing people. And another great thing about traveling is you meet all these

00:45:25.200 | different people that are doing the same thing, and you're like, "Oh, geez, how do they do it?"

00:45:28.400 | You learn all these different ways of making it in the world that you would have never been exposed

00:45:35.200 | to just going to your job every day and being around the same people every day.

00:45:39.680 | But yeah, I completely erased my 30s without actually working a job. And I love it because

00:45:49.920 | I'm like, "I can always make more money." When I'm 60, whatever, however old I am, I can work.

00:45:59.360 | I might not make a ton of money, but I can work and I can get by. I don't know. Things will be

00:46:06.480 | okay. They will. And two quotes I want to read from your work. One was from your book, Bum Puzzle,

00:46:14.320 | and you may have put it in a blog post, but I just wrote it down when I was reading the book.

00:46:18.080 | You said, "It's too bad everyone waits until old age to go sailing."

00:46:22.160 | Tell me about your battle with the cruising community.

00:46:28.480 | Well, I don't know. I was younger then. I was a little more cheeky.

00:46:34.240 | Yeah, I've sensed that over the years.

00:46:37.360 | I mean, the cruising community is largely much older. It's the people that I'm kind of saying

00:46:45.200 | right now. I'm saying, "You're doing it wrong," but that's how they all did it. And I don't know.

00:46:54.640 | But that's one of those things, sailing around the world. It's not easy. It's physically

00:46:59.920 | challenging all the time. It's mentally challenging. And you're walking through these

00:47:06.720 | countries. You're really putting yourself out there. And it's like, man, it's so much easier

00:47:13.440 | as a 30-year-old or whatever to be doing this than it is to be doing this at 65. You're stronger and

00:47:21.920 | you're more vibrant. I don't know. So I was always like, "Gosh, it's too bad more people

00:47:28.240 | don't do this at 30 than at 65." Right. And you made a comment about

00:47:34.000 | in your book Live on the Margin, spearfishing at 90. When was the last time you saw an active

00:47:40.160 | 90-year-old out spearfishing? And then I want to read one paragraph. You said, "We certainly aren't

00:47:45.040 | ageist or think that as we age, we become less capable. We don't believe that at all. But if we

00:47:50.240 | had a dollar for every time one of these older cruising couples said to us, 'You guys are doing

00:47:54.800 | it right. We wish we had done this at your age,' we would be eating a lot more steak and a lot less

00:47:59.520 | hamburger. Let's listen to our elders. If they say, 'Go when you are young,' then let's believe them."

00:48:04.880 | Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how many of those people are like, "Well, yeah, not one person ever said,

00:48:09.920 | 'You're doing it wrong.' Like, wow, that's stupid. Why would you do such a thing when you're young?

00:48:17.600 | I mean, that's just silly. Not one person out there ever said that." The people back home that

00:48:22.800 | were plugging away, still on the treadmill, sure. I'm sure a lot of them thought that. They're like,

00:48:28.880 | "Boy, you're making a mistake. You're not going to be able to retire when you're 55 now." But

00:48:34.880 | the people that are actually out there doing it, they're like, "Man, that's right. That's the way

00:48:38.960 | to do it." I think some of the most valuable literature we don't read enough of is what

00:48:45.920 | are the people who are old and about to die, what do they say? It's certainly striking when you see

00:48:53.520 | that how little of a place most of the things that we, when we're younger, are obsessed with

00:48:58.960 | have in what they say and how much it's all about not regretting, living without regrets.

00:49:04.000 | Yeah. Yeah. And again, going back to the ageist thing, I hate this conversation often. It starts

00:49:10.720 | to sound like we're ageist, but the numbers are there. I mean, how many people, I don't know exact

00:49:17.200 | numbers, but it's like 75% of us are even going to live to 65. And of those 75%, how many are

00:49:24.960 | actually going to be physically capable still to do these adventurous things, their lifelong dreams?

00:49:30.640 | There's only a fraction of those that are going to be able to. So, I mean, your odds, if you wait

00:49:36.720 | to 65 to do the things that you always wanted to do, the odds of that happening are slim. And it's

00:49:41.840 | not because I'm just saying that. It's because that's the way life is. That's the real numbers.

00:49:47.280 | That's our bodies. That's life. Statistically, yeah, it is. You have lived on a sailboat

00:49:56.080 | in a Volkswagen van and in an apartment and in an RV. Which have you enjoyed the most? Sailing,

00:50:04.640 | RVing, the van? What have you enjoyed the most? Yeah. Well, I don't know. It's easy to say the

00:50:13.360 | land-based RV, the VW, and now we've got a 27-foot vintage RV that we travel around in, too.

00:50:22.000 | It's easy to say that because it's less of a challenge as far as boats, man. There's just

00:50:28.560 | no way to describe how much work boats are. Constant work. Engines and everything else.

00:50:35.760 | After we sailed around the world, I said, "Oh, never again. We're done with boats."

00:50:40.160 | And then a couple of years later, when we were pregnant with our daughter, we were like, "Well,

00:50:46.880 | that was a pretty good life for kids. You're on the water all the time. You're always outdoors.

00:50:53.600 | It's great." So we bought another boat and we did that for another three years or so,

00:50:59.280 | three or four years. We just recently sold that back to the RV. So I don't know. They both had

00:51:04.560 | their pluses and minuses for sure. But I don't know. We're having fun. We're having fun with

00:51:10.160 | the RV now. In a few years, that might change and we might get another boat. Who knows?

00:51:14.880 | It seems, I think at some point, we'll end up trying the boating thing. But

00:51:22.480 | I'm scared of just being bored. It seems really boring to me. Correct me, but I've never sailed.

00:51:30.960 | But it just seems like hours and hours and hours of boredom punctuated by a couple of minutes here

00:51:38.480 | and there of excitement and a minute or two of sheer terror. Yeah, it is. And that's part of

00:51:45.520 | the reason for me, boats are for going somewhere. Otherwise, they do get boring. We ended up on this

00:51:53.520 | last boat staying in Mexico for about three years. And then that's why we ended up selling it at the

00:51:58.320 | end. It was like, "You know what? We don't really have a plan for a big sailing adventure now.

00:52:02.400 | We weren't really interested in going around the world again or anything on a boat."

00:52:06.880 | And so it just wasn't doing it for us. We ended up stuck in one place for a while,

00:52:14.320 | longer than we would have liked to. Whereas on land, it's like, "Okay, if you get bored at all,

00:52:19.680 | you just up and move. It's time you just go." So there is that.

00:52:25.200 | It does seem like if you want to travel a lot of miles and go for a long adventure,

00:52:31.440 | it's depending on what the cost of the boat is. It's hard to travel as many miles as cheaply as

00:52:38.320 | on a boat. I mean, if you want to go around the world, if you can sail, it seems like it would be

00:52:43.760 | the cheapest way to do it on the lowest budget if you are a boat person and can sail.

00:52:48.080 | Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I mean, you can get yourself on a good, solid monohull,

00:52:54.080 | ready to go around the world for, I don't know, $50,000, which is considerably less than what

00:53:03.360 | we did on our first boat. But yeah, it's definitely possible. And if you don't run

00:53:08.960 | into major, major repairs, which you probably won't on an older boat, you can live pretty cheap

00:53:16.080 | out there. Right. One other question on the money that I want to switch to and ask you about how you

00:53:22.320 | think about risk and fear. And we'll kind of finish up on that unless there's anything else

00:53:26.320 | that you want to talk about. Question is this. You and your wife found yourselves expecting a

00:53:33.840 | baby and didn't have any health insurance. Now, I've read a little bit of your report, but share

00:53:38.800 | with us what you did and some of the numbers involved as far as how to have a baby in an

00:53:42.640 | affordable way without health insurance. Yeah. Well, yeah, we kind of knew we weren't

00:53:47.760 | going to have health insurance. I mean, we'd been traveling forever, so we obviously didn't have

00:53:51.680 | health insurance in the States. It really wouldn't have done us any good. So yeah,

00:53:59.440 | when we got pregnant, we were in Argentina. And by the end, we were in, I think we were in France

00:54:05.840 | when we had the first ultrasound and we just walked into the clinic, paid $50 and an ultrasound,

00:54:12.960 | walked out. And then we ended up flying back to the States and we went and saw one doctor.

00:54:18.880 | And it was just outrageous. I mean, the price they wanted for everything, cash was just insane. So we

00:54:26.880 | said, you know what? We're off to Mexico. So we just loaded up our car and we just drove down to

00:54:32.640 | Mexico and had the baby down there. Yeah, it costs $3,000 for everything. That was all in, $3,000.

00:54:42.000 | And the quality down there was exceptional. We loved the experience so much that when it was

00:54:48.960 | time to have our second child, we went straight back. Same doctor, same everything. So yeah.

00:54:57.200 | >> That was $3,000 for a C-section, right?

00:54:59.680 | >> Yeah, for a C-section. Yeah. And a couple days in the hospital and everything, doctors,

00:55:04.880 | everything, the whole works, that was everything. That was for the couple months beforehand doing

00:55:10.240 | all these different tests and everything else. I mean, it's definitely affordable and it's doable

00:55:16.640 | down there. >>

00:55:18.480 | It just seems like to me, that's one of the, in my experience, I think a lot about how to help

00:55:24.640 | people get over fear. And I don't think everybody wants to live in an RV. I have a desire to do

00:55:31.280 | that. So I'm attracted to a lot of people who do that. But I don't think everybody wants to live

00:55:36.320 | in an RV. I don't think everybody wants to sail. But I think many people have certain things that

00:55:42.960 | they would like to pursue, but they don't. And I try to figure out why. And to the best of my

00:55:49.120 | knowledge, I currently have a list of three things that are key. Number one is people fear, what am

00:55:55.760 | I going to do about health insurance? Number two, they fear, what am I going to do about my kids

00:56:00.560 | and their schooling? And then number three, what am I going to do about my savings and retirement?

00:56:05.520 | And what am I going to do with that? And those three things to me seem so simple. Forget about

00:56:12.720 | the idea of traditional retirement. If you get old and broke, the government will support you

00:56:18.400 | anyway. So don't worry about that. I'll come back and I'm going to actually ask you if you

00:56:24.480 | have an opinion on school, but I think school is the worst place you can put your kids.

00:56:27.760 | So anything you do is better than putting them in school, because if you want to destroy them,

00:56:33.040 | put them in school. That's my opinion. And then health, there's so many options around the world.

00:56:37.920 | The rest of the world doesn't have the same problem we have. And I just was thinking, in the

00:56:43.760 | US, if you're having a baby and it's a C-section and I don't have health insurance, well, guess

00:56:49.120 | what? You got a problem. But there are other options. Yeah. No, we could have easily just

00:56:55.120 | gone bankrupt having a baby up here. Easily. But yeah, there's other options. And everybody's

00:57:01.360 | fearful of, not everybody, but a lot of people are just fearful of going to other places,

00:57:07.040 | going to other countries. I mean, we went down there. We don't really speak the language. We

00:57:11.680 | kind of do, but not great. And we were kind of on our way down to go to Mexico City. We thought,

00:57:17.440 | OK, we'll go to Mexico City. We like that. It's a cool city. I'm sure they've got great health care.

00:57:22.640 | They've got big hospitals. So what the heck? And then somewhere along the way, we ended up in

00:57:27.440 | Puerto Vallarta instead. And we thought, eh, we kind of like the beach better, so we'll stay here.

00:57:33.360 | And yeah, it was really not that difficult. Health insurance has never been a concern of

00:57:38.160 | ours as far as getting things done down there. If something catastrophic happens, yeah, well,

00:57:45.120 | I don't know. I don't know exactly what the situation will become then.

00:57:49.040 | Well, you deal with it when it comes. And yeah, you deal with it when it comes. And it's not that

00:57:55.200 | prudent planning is important, but sometimes I have a tendency to take prudent planning to the

00:58:00.880 | extreme where it binds you up. Yeah. Yeah. It can tie you down. Being overly prudent, it will just

00:58:07.680 | strap you right down. If you try to plan for every single contingency, you just won't go

00:58:14.080 | anywhere. You won't do anything because you can't. You can't prepare for everything.

00:58:17.680 | Do you have any plans for schooling your kids? Yeah. Yeah. We talked just recently. We kind of

00:58:26.160 | started talking about it more. We've been getting the question since day one, but what are you going

00:58:31.520 | to do? But yeah, no, we're not doing traditional school. That's a certainty. Yeah. We'll be

00:58:37.600 | homeschooling, doing some sort of program or whatever, but I'm not sure exactly. Unschooling,

00:58:47.200 | schooling, homeschooling, we'll be doing something, but it'll be us, and we'll be

00:58:51.680 | teaching our kids and showing them the world as much as we possibly can. I'm thrilled to hear

00:58:56.560 | that. Any option is better than putting them into the government school system. Yeah. I can't

00:59:02.320 | imagine giving our kids what we've given them and then saying, "All right, well, it's time to move

00:59:07.200 | back to the States, and I'm putting you in this school, and you're going to sit there for eight

00:59:10.640 | hours a day, and you are going to sit and not talk and not run around and not play, and that's it."

00:59:18.480 | I couldn't do that to them. It destroys your ability to live any kind of lifestyle that is

00:59:23.920 | affordable, because it's affordable in the sense of it immediately locks you into the US cost of

00:59:31.920 | living. It immediately locks you into traveling on holidays when prices are the highest. It

00:59:36.880 | immediately locks you into short-term travel instead of longer-term travel. It immediately

00:59:41.280 | locks you into needing a car to get them there and then needing a car to go to soccer practice,

00:59:45.120 | and it just locks you in. It's so simple to me, and I won't go deep in education, but

00:59:51.600 | when you start researching the history of education, you start understanding

00:59:55.680 | why the school system exists, and it has nothing to do with the great learning opportunities,

01:00:02.160 | then it's an easy one to get free of. Yeah. I think it goes back again to trusting yourself.

01:00:08.000 | We talked about it with stocks and with trading, but it goes back to you can apply that to your

01:00:13.040 | kids as well. Why do we trust somebody else to do this for us? Why can't we do it ourselves?

01:00:19.120 | Do you think you're an idiot? You don't think you're smart enough? Or you just don't want to?

01:00:26.080 | Or what is it? I don't know. Right. It seems like if you are in control,

01:00:31.040 | you can take advantage of some of the most amazing educational opportunities that have

01:00:35.040 | nothing to do with school, whether that's putting your daughter in preschool like you did in Mexico,

01:00:38.960 | whether that's going to... I'm interested in one summer and going up to New York and going to some

01:00:43.920 | of the Chautauqua conferences that they have, or going to the conferences and seminars where

01:00:48.240 | there's real educational opportunities. But once you're free of it, you can do it yourself.

01:00:53.360 | And an interesting idea on the schooling, and then we'll flip to the last thing and wrap up. But

01:00:57.680 | you ever notice that you can sue... If you have an attorney that fails you, you can sue that

01:01:02.800 | attorney for breach of contract. If you have a doctor that messes things up, you can sue that

01:01:06.640 | doctor for malpractice. But you can't sue your child's teachers for screwing up your kid.

01:01:13.600 | True. So true.

01:01:16.240 | That's anecdotal, but to me, there's something about it.

01:01:20.240 | Right.

01:01:21.200 | How do you think about risk, fear, and uncertainty? How do you balance those things?

01:01:29.520 | Well, sometimes I think I'm a bad person to ask that. Personally, I've always been able to take

01:01:37.600 | on risk and live with it without my heart racing, without my palms sweating. I've just been able to

01:01:46.880 | do that. And I know that everybody can. So it's really, I guess, about managing that risk and

01:01:52.640 | only taking on small bites. Like we said with trading, you start out small,

01:01:58.800 | you just learn the basics. You're learning and you're teaching yourself something and you're

01:02:02.720 | probably going to lose some money along the way. And that's probably not such a bad thing.

01:02:07.440 | But you need to learn to manage that risk and then to just kind of add on a little more and

01:02:13.040 | a little more and a little more, I think. Risk is how you're going to make real money. That's how

01:02:20.720 | you're going to outperform the market. So I don't know. I don't know exactly what the answer is with

01:02:26.880 | that, but start taking some on. Don't try to avoid all the risk. It might be the biggest thing.

01:02:34.720 | So it may be easier for an outsider to see sometimes how people think. So I'll share what I

01:02:43.280 | see in reading your writing and just reading your writing, basically. And I'm interested in it if

01:02:49.520 | you agree with it. But I don't think that you take on a lot of risk because I think with a trader's

01:02:55.280 | mentality, you're always thinking about how do I manage risk? And it seems to me that this is one

01:03:02.160 | of the great – we only have one word. It's called risk. And it drives me nuts because are we talking

01:03:07.760 | about standard deviation risk or are we talking about – like in looking at a portfolio. People

01:03:13.440 | have one word, risk. But to somebody who's comfortable with the actual factors going on,

01:03:23.680 | risk means many things. In investing, there are many kinds of risks.

01:03:27.600 | And I think, for example, entrepreneurs, people often view entrepreneurship as risky.

01:03:33.280 | I have never met an entrepreneur who isn't very risk-averse. I'm sure they exist.

01:03:37.520 | But the entrepreneur thinks about risk differently and they manage it in a different way.

01:03:42.640 | And I think that the same thing. I mean, to me, with no sailing experience, sailing a boat across

01:03:49.920 | the ocean seems risky, especially being out in the middle of the ocean seems risky. But every person

01:03:55.360 | I've ever met who is a sailor says that being out in the middle of the ocean is the safest place you

01:04:01.360 | can be. I experienced this when flying. When I'm flying in an airplane, a commercial airline,

01:04:09.920 | I get nervous and I'm listening to everything and I'm thinking, "Oh, this plane is going to fall

01:04:15.760 | out of the sky." But if I go flying in a private airplane, I have a brother-in-law who's a pilot,

01:04:20.640 | and I have an uncle who's a pilot, and a father-in-law who's a pilot, and they're

01:04:24.000 | very comfortable with the plane being on its side or going down or going up because they know where

01:04:28.880 | the margin is. So what I view as very risky, that unknown thunk, they're not scared by because they

01:04:34.640 | know exactly what's going on. >> Yeah. For me, I think a lot of it,

01:04:38.480 | I've always been a guy that thinks in terms of probabilities. I'm thinking of statistically.

01:04:44.880 | I don't know, for instance, when we were sailing through the Red Sea area,

01:04:48.880 | that's a pirate area, the Gulf of Aden there. But I knew that the year before, some 500 boats had

01:04:58.800 | gone through there, and of those, only five had been pirated in some way, just robbed or whatever.

01:05:05.680 | So I'm thinking, "Okay, that's a 1% chance of something bad happening." For me, at the time,

01:05:13.440 | especially with no kids, 1%, yeah, I can roll that dice. I think I mentioned on my blog at that

01:05:20.640 | time, I was like, "You know what? If somebody gave me an opportunity, they said, 'This has got a 99%

01:05:26.240 | chance of being successful,' I would dump everything into that. So why would I be afraid of

01:05:33.280 | sailing through that area?" And it's the same thing for flying in an airplane. Statistically,

01:05:38.880 | it's just obscene to think that you're going to crash. And you can apply that to so many things,

01:05:44.800 | just sailing around the world. It sounds scary and dangerous, but the reality is, statistically,

01:05:52.160 | you're going to make it. Even if your boat does sink, statistically, you're still going to make

01:05:57.280 | it. The odds just don't support the fear. YARO: And even if the worst case happens,

01:06:04.080 | you could rebuild. I think you are friends, or at least read the ... I think you're friends with

01:06:10.800 | them, because I think you said that on your blog, with the Rebel Heart boat. And I didn't ever read

01:06:16.480 | their writing until they lost their boat. But I've been fascinated by just reading and looking at

01:06:24.240 | what they've done. And the reality is, here's the worst case scenario that I think I could imagine.

01:06:28.720 | You're out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You're a thousand-something miles away from land,

01:06:34.080 | and everything goes wrong with your boat. Everything goes wrong with your communication

01:06:38.160 | system, and you've got a sick baby. And the worst case scenario happens. You lose the boat. They

01:06:43.360 | lost their boat. But thank God, they're all fine and their baby is fine. And he was ... I don't

01:06:52.720 | remember his name. Do you remember his name? ERIK: That's Erik.

01:06:55.280 | STEVE: Erik. Okay. So he was prudent. He was prudent. He had the necessary things that

01:06:59.200 | he needed, and their lives were saved. And at this point in time, it seems like,

01:07:05.040 | yeah, they lost their boat. And I'm sure that wiped them out. But you can just tell they're

01:07:09.520 | going to rebuild, and they're going to rebuild a lot faster. And you can make a great ... Yes,

01:07:15.600 | I'm sure it's incredibly disheartening that their whole dream was lost on the bottom of the sea.

01:07:21.920 | But it doesn't mean their dreams are over and doesn't mean that their life is over.

01:07:25.280 | Yeah, absolutely not. I mean, you can see, if you know them, read all their blog, you know that

01:07:29.920 | they're happy. They're thriving. They've got jobs again. Their kids are healthy and happy.

01:07:36.720 | But they're also ... They're living a very small life. They're living as small as they can

01:07:44.800 | to rebuild and get back to the point that they were so they can sail off again.

01:07:50.000 | And yeah, it was a dramatic, terrible thing. But again, it's not the end of the world.

01:07:55.760 | But they picked themselves up, and they're on their way again.

01:07:59.040 | Right. And in some ways, I just love hearing stories like that, because that's so much more

01:08:04.000 | meaningful than the people who just seem to have it all handed to them, and everything goes perfect.

01:08:07.840 | Yeah. Because life doesn't go perfect.

01:08:09.840 | Yeah. And I always talk about that, too. When people say, talk about ... Just keep referring

01:08:15.280 | to sailing around the world or whatever, or even just going and living on a boat, I always tell

01:08:19.680 | people, do it. And what's really the worst thing that's going to happen? You're going to decide,

01:08:25.360 | well, this isn't for us, or we don't like it. And great, okay, so you're going to sell that boat,

01:08:30.080 | and you're going to go back to doing whatever else you wanted to do. And you're going to be

01:08:33.840 | out of a little money, but you're not going to be broke. You're not going to be destitute. It's not

01:08:40.560 | going to be the end of the world for you. You'll be able to pick yourself up again, and you'll be

01:08:44.720 | fine. Right. And even if you are broke and destitute, you can still rebuild, because

01:08:49.440 | you still have your skills. And barring the loss of your physical health or your physical life,

01:08:54.240 | you can rebuild. Which is what's going to happen when you're older, much older.

01:08:58.800 | So do it now while you've still got all those opportunities.

01:09:04.480 | Right. I'll lob you one softball, and then we'll wrap, and then we're done.

01:09:08.640 | If you could redesign the American dream, and if you could speak to someone, like I'm sure you do

01:09:16.720 | when you meet a reader or a friend or someone, if you could speak to a young couple, a young family,

01:09:23.280 | something like that, what words of encouragement would you give them? And what would you tell them

01:09:28.720 | to do? And what would be your anthem of the American dream? The American dream. Basically,

01:09:35.520 | what I would tell people to do is save up some money, take that first mini-retirement, go out

01:09:41.920 | for a year, two years, three years, as long as you could, and go back to work and do it again.

01:09:47.280 | And every time, I think every cycle that you do that, all these different dreams and all these

01:09:52.320 | different cycles that you're going to go through, that you're going to need less as time goes on,

01:09:57.600 | but you're going to be richer. Maybe not exactly financially every time, but definitely through

01:10:04.000 | your life experiences, your connections with other people, your friendships, everything in

01:10:11.120 | your life is going to be so much better. And it's just go out and do these things, but don't

01:10:17.680 | just fall into this trap that we have to do things a certain way. It just doesn't have to be that way.

01:10:24.400 | Your website is bumfuzzle.com. Your books, one of them is Bumfuzzle, which is about your sailing

01:10:30.400 | adventures. Your other book is Live on the Margin, which is an introduction to the finance of living

01:10:36.000 | a slacker lifestyle and also an introduction to technical trading. And let's see, Twitter is

01:10:41.120 | Bumfuzzle, right? It is, yeah. Anywhere else online that you want people to find you?

01:10:45.840 | Oh, geez, I don't know. I'm on Facebook. It's @patschulte or Bumfuzzle. You can type in either

01:10:52.560 | one. I'm sure you'll find me. But yeah, check us out on Bumfuzzle.com. That's where we share our

01:10:57.840 | life and our experiences. It's all out there. Yeah. And I would encourage someone. It's one

01:11:02.080 | of the most beautiful sites on the internet. And just as far as you take great pictures,

01:11:06.240 | and there's tons of pictures. And there are 10 years of archives going from your original post

01:11:12.240 | where you decided over beer and pizza to sail around the world. And then you flew down to Fort

01:11:17.280 | Lauderdale, bought a boat coming up to current day in Portland. Yeah, it's all there. It'll take a

01:11:23.280 | long time to catch up, but you'll get there. Yeah. Pat, thanks so much for coming on the

01:11:26.800 | show. I appreciate it. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Joshua. I appreciate it.

01:11:31.600 | And that's the interview. Pat, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I know

01:11:35.280 | it's challenging. It's challenging for you to find a time when you know where you're going to

01:11:41.680 | be enough to do Wi-Fi. We've been working on that interview for a long time, but I appreciate

01:11:46.000 | you're making the effort. I really do. It was awesome. I'm going to close this show. And I

01:11:52.720 | just want to take a moment just to point out some things that I've learned from Pat's story. And

01:11:58.640 | sometimes it's easier to see other people than it is to see ourselves. Even at the end,

01:12:04.080 | it's hard to self-analyze. And in our society, we're kind of taught that we're not supposed to

01:12:08.560 | necessarily look at ourselves too much. But here are some things that I've observed as

01:12:15.760 | general trends among people like Pat. And I just feel like many people would--not

01:12:20.720 | everybody, but many people would enjoy the type of lifestyle that he lives. Number one,

01:12:26.000 | he did have an idea of what he wanted to do from an early age. He said he wanted to be a trader.

01:12:30.000 | He would see them on TV and say that I wanted to do it, be a trader. That's great. If you have an

01:12:34.160 | idea of something that you'd like to do, don't suppress that. Don't say, "Oh, I could never do

01:12:39.680 | that." Follow it. Pursue it. See where it leads you. Next, he got a job at eight bucks an hour,

01:12:44.960 | but he didn't get a job because he needed a job during the money. I'm sure that he'd worked at

01:12:48.560 | many jobs younger in his life. He got a job which would be close to something that he wanted to do

01:12:54.960 | to get his foot in the door to learn something. If there's a company you want to work at,

01:12:59.520 | go get any job at that company and prove how great you are and get promoted 16 spaces up,

01:13:05.120 | you know, 16 levels up. But get a job close to something that you can learn about.

01:13:09.920 | So if you're going to work for a job, as many of us are going to need to do,

01:13:14.240 | at least stay in a job where you can learn something that's going to be useful for you.

01:13:17.760 | If you're working in a restaurant, view working in the restaurant as giving you the knowledge that

01:13:23.920 | you need to run your restaurant someday. Next, he built a stake. Now in his situation, that was a

01:13:31.680 | fairly modest stake. He sold a pickup truck for five grand. That was what he started with, trading

01:13:36.720 | off of. But he built a stake of cash. If you don't have cash, you got to get some. Now again, he had

01:13:43.840 | a truck that he could sell, he could build from, but if not, you got to figure out a way to save

01:13:47.280 | cash. That's why when I did that Walmart show on how to become a multimillionaire on a minimum wage,

01:13:52.000 | if you don't save money on a minimum wage, you have to, or there's no chance of getting ahead.

01:13:56.400 | You can't say, "Oh, I only make minimum wage, so I can't save money." No, you got to say,

01:14:01.920 | "I only make minimum wage, so I've got to save money." He took managed risks. And that's what

01:14:07.920 | all about trading, especially if you get into options trading. We didn't get into the technical

01:14:11.600 | details today, A, because he's written an entire book on it, and B, it's challenging to get into

01:14:16.080 | the technical details unless you even start with what are options. So I'd like to do some shows.

01:14:21.440 | It's not high on the priority list, but at some point I will do some shows on what are options.

01:14:25.280 | In the meantime, go read his book. But options trading is a way of controlling and managing

01:14:29.440 | your risks. He learned and studied a lot. Anybody who's going to sit down and read options,

01:14:36.800 | volatility, and pricing is a serious, dedicated student, and you can hear that. I guarantee

01:14:43.200 | he's read dozens and dozens of books from other people, and he was getting close to people and

01:14:48.240 | learning. So you have to learn and become excellent. You have to control expenses.

01:14:52.640 | And this is one of the things that I think investors often do better than most other people,

01:14:56.640 | or traders or investors, whatever. You have to differentiate the term, but in this case,

01:15:01.120 | it doesn't matter. If you're going to build a stake, you can't go and take that stake and blow

01:15:05.840 | it on a BMW. Now, if you made a million bucks this year and you want to buy a $50,000 BMW, fine. But

01:15:12.000 | if you've got $200,000, you can't afford to destroy your portfolio by going and taking a BMW.

01:15:18.480 | So it's very clear when you read his writing about his story, then it's clear that he controlled his

01:15:24.960 | cash, and they didn't necessarily -- they weren't super frugal. They weren't penny pinchers. They

01:15:30.480 | weren't extreme couponers, but they just didn't spend a ton of money. Next, notice that they

01:15:37.680 | followed their dreams. They didn't wait. They pulled the trigger and followed those dreams,

01:15:41.440 | not knowing where they would lead. And guess what? They led to different places than they

01:15:44.560 | thought they would lead. And now they have a multidimensional experience, multidimensional

01:15:49.120 | skill set. And over the last 10 years -- it's funny, we didn't talk much about what do you do

01:15:54.240 | if you run out of money. In some ways, in the beginning, to pique your interest, I said he

01:15:58.480 | retired at 30. Who knows whether he's going to stay not working or whether he's going to need

01:16:02.480 | to work. But the key is today. He spent the last 10 years, if nothing else, he spent the last 10

01:16:08.480 | years building up a huge website. He's got followers of his website that will enjoy meeting

01:16:13.760 | up with him all over the world. That allows him to save money. When he was working on his bus this

01:16:17.760 | last summer, he had a listener or a reader of the show that offered him the use of his garage for

01:16:23.920 | all the winter up in, I guess, Minnesota, I think it was, to work on his garage. That's something

01:16:28.240 | that would cost somebody money. But he's built up other kinds of equity beyond just financial equity.

01:16:33.520 | He's built social equity. And if he put out a note on his blog saying, "I'm considering

01:16:41.280 | taking a job of some kind," not a doubt in my mind he'd have multiple, multiple six-figure jobs

01:16:47.520 | offers to him within the week. And I bet you some of those six-figure job offers would be multiple

01:16:54.160 | six-figure job offers. Because what he's done is he's expanded his influence. He's put together

01:16:59.360 | a portfolio showing, "Here's what I did and here's what I can do." So even though he's spent the last,

01:17:08.000 | what is it, 10 years playing, so to speak, he's actually built a portfolio and built an incredible

01:17:14.960 | base that if he wanted a job, I mean, I guarantee you he could have a job offer for multiple six

01:17:20.400 | figures within a week. Other kinds of equity. And finally, it's clear from his writing that

01:17:31.040 | he holds the future loosely. I struggle with this one because I'm so much of a planner. I'm very much

01:17:39.280 | one of those people that wants to have everything figured out. And I'm learning just to hold the

01:17:43.280 | future loosely and see life as an adventure. Excitement comes from change. This is one of

01:17:48.720 | the things that seems to be missing. Excitement comes from change. It's more fun and more exciting

01:17:54.080 | to pursue multiple careers in multiple fields because guess what? Every one of them you can

01:17:57.680 | learn from. And it's way more exciting to have a new career that you're learning something in and

01:18:01.760 | being challenged in than to do the same old humdrum thing you've always done no matter how much,

01:18:06.320 | no matter how good you are at it. I want to close with reading two paragraphs from his book. This

01:18:13.120 | is from the first chapter of his book, Bumfuzzle. And again, strongly recommend, go and buy his books

01:18:18.160 | and read them. "On my last day of Friday, I walked into the pits and told a couple of friends that I

01:18:23.680 | wouldn't be there on Monday. I was done, and Ali and I were going sailing. Nobody really believed

01:18:29.360 | me, but the talk soon circulated around the pits and before long everybody knew. The trading floor

01:18:35.360 | is really a different world compared to an office job. Here the news was met almost universally by

01:18:41.440 | whispering behind my back, most trying to determine how much money I had really made on

01:18:46.160 | such and such trade and the others predicting my demise at sea. There were no pats on the back or

01:18:52.240 | high fives. When the final bell rang, I tore up my remaining trading cards and dropped them on the

01:18:57.760 | floor for the last time. As the pit emptied out and I was left standing there staring up at the

01:19:03.040 | blinking price quotes circling the walls, one of the largest brokers in the building walked up to

01:19:08.160 | me. He was a nice guy whom I had stood five feet away from for three years and made thousands of

01:19:13.520 | trades with, but with whom I'd never really just had a talk with. It was well known by the traders

01:19:19.920 | that he was worth north of twenty million dollars, lived in the ritziest neighborhood, owned a bunch

01:19:25.440 | of outside businesses, and drove six-figure cars. In these circles he was a god. He stood alongside

01:19:32.160 | of me, put his arm over my shoulder, and said, "I wish I had done the same thing when I was your age.

01:19:38.080 | Now it's too late, so I just come in here and hang out with all of you every day, day after day."

01:19:46.320 | We stood there talking for a few more minutes, and I realized that this guy,

01:19:49.600 | whom everybody held up on a pedestal, was actually filled with regrets. While everyone

01:19:55.040 | else was busy wishing they lived his life, he suddenly wished he could go back in time and live

01:20:01.200 | mine. There's a time and a place for everything. There's a time to buckle down and work,

01:20:06.960 | sacrifice, work overtime and study. There's a time and a place to pull off and relax and

01:20:14.640 | spend. There really is. There's a time and a place for everything. So just consider

01:20:19.120 | where you are and make sure you don't let fear and indecision keep you from pursuing something,

01:20:26.160 | if you know clearly that it's what you want to pursue.

01:20:31.520 | Thank you all for listening today. I want to finish today's show just with a special thank

01:20:37.920 | you. I pulled up iTunes just a few minutes ago just for fun. I check this about once a week or

01:20:42.080 | so and check to see how the show is doing. I was thrilled and humbled to find that

01:20:48.640 | we are currently listed at number eight in the new and noteworthy section for the business section.

01:20:57.200 | That is amazing to me. That's a very competitive section on iTunes to be in the business section.

01:21:07.840 | That's so humbling to me. That gives us a lot of exposure for the show. I want to thank you.

01:21:12.160 | It was through your reviews and your subscribing and your telling other people that that has

01:21:16.960 | happened. That's so valuable. iTunes is not everything, but the way this works is that

01:21:22.160 | when you launch your show, you can have up to eight weeks in the new and noteworthy,

01:21:25.360 | from my understanding. That can give you a lot of exposure. I have heard from several

01:21:29.520 | listeners who have found the show through the new and noteworthy. Thank you. I was even more

01:21:37.200 | thrilled to pull up the investing section and find that we are listed as number one in the

01:21:41.440 | investing section. That is awesome and super, super thrilling. Then I was also super humbled

01:21:48.320 | to pull up just the podcast section. Right now, the show is number 18, if I counted right,

01:21:56.720 | in all of the new and noteworthy for all shows from all genres. I want to thank you.

01:22:02.720 | I never would have dreamed that I could make it. I was hoping that we could get the show into the

01:22:07.440 | new and noteworthy for the investing section. I was hoping that it would be maybe potentially

01:22:11.440 | for the business section. I never would have dreamed we could be there for all podcasts.

01:22:14.960 | I want to just say thank you to you and ask you for your help. We're currently listed at number

01:22:19.840 | 18. I would love to have a stretch goal of being able to get over into that first screen on new

01:22:24.800 | and noteworthy. That happens because of your reviews, your reviews and your subscribing.

01:22:31.120 | If you haven't left a review yet, I know I ask every day. It just pays me back so much. I want

01:22:35.520 | to read you a couple of these reviews and just tell you how meaningful they have been to me.

01:22:39.840 | Last time I read you, there was an interview called So Informative, a five-star review from

01:22:46.400 | India by Jason. For an in-depth look of how to get your financial life in order,

01:22:51.440 | you got to listen to this. Five-star review from the US, excellent, by Jay Rosen.

01:22:56.400 | This is a very detailed and thorough podcast about personal finance. It has helped me to improve my

01:23:01.520 | financial game tremendously. That means the world to me. Five-star review from, looks like,

01:23:06.800 | Seco, Florida. Action may be the most humane thing we do with the ideas in our head. Joshua

01:23:12.880 | Sheets' show provides the inspiration and practice to engage in action. Ideas are meant to be acted

01:23:17.760 | on and not just thought about. Look forward to the next episode. Hugely helpful. Five-star review by

01:23:24.160 | Tutu. Joshua does a great job preparing for and delivering insightful financial information

01:23:28.320 | without going too deep. Great podcast. Thank you. This one was super meaningful to me,

01:23:32.400 | and I want to read it to you. It's a US five-star review from Anesh.

01:23:35.120 | I have a meaning to write a review as I have obsessively digested this content over the

01:23:39.840 | previous three weeks. My life truly is different in three weeks. I've always been curious about

01:23:44.160 | lifestyle design, and I love how the host is able to look at finance from so many creative angles

01:23:48.640 | with the ultimate goal of freedom. Josh feels like a positive friend you wish you had, keeping

01:23:52.880 | you motivated to get your life in order. I especially appreciated the show on spin farming,

01:23:57.120 | as it gave me an idea I can immediately implement from my home. Now the trick is to convince the

01:24:01.440 | wife of all these amazing ideas. I've combined this content with early retirement extreme,

01:24:05.920 | mad scientist, and get rich slowly to feel very informed. And then, Josh, I appreciate

01:24:10.720 | your obsessive desire to continue to make the show better, but I reassure you the show is amazing.

01:24:14.640 | Please do not dedicate any more shows to explaining your philosophy of podcasting,

01:24:18.720 | because you already have so many disciples. You do not need to justify your approach any longer.

01:24:22.560 | Keep up the excellent work. I missed your daily shows during the conferences. The daily shows in

01:24:26.080 | the past kept me going." Anesh, that is so heartwarming, and I just want to thank you

01:24:29.600 | personally for that review. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Podcasting is a very intimate

01:24:34.000 | communication, and every day when I do this, I just feel like, "How would I speak to my best

01:24:38.880 | friend, and how could I encourage today?" I love how you are taking the ideas that I'm sharing and

01:24:44.240 | combining them with other ideas that you have learned from other places. That's how creativity

01:24:48.880 | works, is take the ideas that I share. They're just my journey as far as me learning from other

01:24:54.080 | places that I have learned, and apply them in your situation. All financial planning has to

01:24:59.040 | ultimately be personal. And thanks also for the reminder to quit explaining philosophy of

01:25:06.400 | podcasting. You're right. I'm not going to do it anymore. It's clear that many of you are enjoying

01:25:11.200 | the show and appreciating it, and it's doing exactly what I hope to do. I'm not going to

01:25:14.960 | apologize anymore for the show, and if I do, you hold me accountable. So many emails say, "Joshua,

01:25:18.960 | quit." It's challenging because it's a growth of confidence. I've never done a podcast before,

01:25:24.880 | so it's hard for me because I don't feel like I'm very good at it. So then when you do that,

01:25:30.640 | you're quick to pull back and just talk about how you're not very good at it. But I'm done. I'm not

01:25:35.440 | going to do it anymore. Thank you for the reminder. Five-star review from Abby in the U.S.

01:25:41.920 | This is a great podcast. I appreciate the advice. Five-star show from GDURHUXHXH.

01:25:51.760 | The show is packed with great information. I wish it would have existed 20 years ago.

01:25:55.360 | You and me both, if it had existed 20 years ago, I would have been listening to it for the last 20

01:26:00.640 | years, and I would have been 20 years ahead of where I am. Five-star review from Chris. Great

01:26:05.440 | show to learn personal finance. Joshua presents many things that most other bloggers and podcasters

01:26:10.560 | aren't talking about in an accessible way for most to understand, especially find the emphasis

01:26:14.560 | on tax planning beneficial. Thank you, Chris. Yes, we're going to do a ton more on tax planning

01:26:20.080 | because that's one of the biggest expenses that we all face, and there are a lot of ideas. We've

01:26:23.920 | just set the basis, and I've got dozens more shows planned on that. Ian Farmer in Canada.

01:26:29.600 | Inspiring and informative podcast about the economics of life. I enjoy this show for the

01:26:33.840 | unique take on personal finance. I don't make a lot of money and haven't thought too much about

01:26:37.360 | saving or wealth in the past, so this is good for me to get introduced to personal finance.

01:26:41.920 | Enjoy the interviews with people on unique and creative paths to meeting their goals. Ian,

01:26:45.760 | thank you. I hope that you can continue to enjoy the creative approach and to design your own

01:26:51.520 | approach to finance. BJ, five-star review in the US. Best financial podcast. This is by far the

01:26:59.360 | best financial podcast out there. I look forward to Joshua's podcast every day and strangely don't

01:27:04.080 | mind my commute home. I've listened to almost every episode, and there are so many financial

01:27:07.920 | behavioral tidbits in each episode. I've recommended this podcast to many people and

01:27:11.520 | can't wait to follow the progression. BJ, thank you. That's what I'm hoping, is that every day

01:27:15.680 | this show will be here for you and to encourage you and keep you going forward on your goals.

01:27:21.840 | Finally, new one from Ivan in the US. Five-star review. Original personal finance content from

01:27:27.920 | an amateur. Great podcast. Original and intriguing. Thank you, Ivan. Just a special

01:27:32.320 | [inaudible 00:01:36] excuse me. Just a special request. This feedback, and thank you to all of

01:27:42.320 | you who've emailed me as well. This feedback is what I love it. It's just so thrilling to me.

01:27:47.840 | If you would, I would be really beholden to you. If you'd take a moment and leave a review on the

01:27:53.040 | show, it would help so much. We're almost about to be kicked out of the New and Noteworthy. It

01:27:57.520 | would be so thrilling to be on that first page of New and Noteworthy for all podcasts. We're at

01:28:01.520 | number 18 right now. If each of you would just leave a review and a rating, that would be super

01:28:06.560 | huge. Tell someone else about the show. I would so appreciate it. We'll be back tomorrow. I'm

01:28:12.480 | going to be doing a Q&A show. I've got some questions to go through. If you've got questions

01:28:17.520 | for me, feel free to shoot me an email. I still am trying to make the time to get the speak pipe

01:28:25.200 | installed on the site. Also, I got to fix the commenting system. If any of you are techie

01:28:29.440 | people and know how to do this stuff, I could sure use some help. I got to figure out how to go from

01:28:34.480 | live fire back to the WordPress without losing all of your great comments. I've just discovered that

01:28:38.800 | the comments aren't showing up. I got to fix that. If any of you guys have...I don't know.

01:28:43.760 | I guess I'm asking for help, but I don't know how to do it. I just am stretched with all the

01:28:47.760 | techie stuff. Thank you so much for listening. Come back tomorrow for some awesome Q&A and some

01:28:54.320 | interesting tidbits to send you into the weekend. If you enjoyed today's interview,

01:28:59.520 | I would love to do more interviews like this. If you have a favorite blogger, podcaster,

01:29:03.280 | or friend, if you have an interesting story, shoot me an email, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

01:29:08.240 | I would be thrilled to bring you on the show. We can all learn from one another.

01:29:11.520 | The thing about the show is wherever people are at in the process, if you're making minimum wage,

01:29:18.000 | it's hard to learn a ton from somebody who's making 10 million bucks. I want to have people

01:29:23.200 | on the show that are making just more than minimum wage, but on the other hand, I want to have people

01:29:26.320 | making 10 million bucks so we can all learn. That's my vision. I'm just so thrilled that many

01:29:32.320 | of you are getting it and along for the ride. We've got good things in store. Have a great day,

01:29:37.440 | everybody.

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01:30:18.160 | [music playing]

RPF-0050-Interview_with_Pat_Schulte_from_Bumfuzzle