RPF0111-Steve_Maxwell

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00:00:17.360 | little game. Humor me for just a moment. Do you have a rent payment or a mortgage payment?

00:00:26.560 | What would your life be like if you didn't have that? And even better,

00:00:33.360 | think what your life would be like if you had never had one. Never. Right from the beginning.

00:00:41.680 | First house you ever lived in was a house you paid cash for.

00:00:46.880 | I'm not talking about doing it at the age of 45, but at the age of 23?

00:00:52.800 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. Today on the show,

00:01:14.160 | we're going to be talking with a man who's the father of eight children

00:01:19.760 | and his three oldest have all purchased their own houses for cash while in their early 20s

00:01:26.800 | before they got married. That'd be a conversation worth listening to, right?

00:01:32.400 | I first heard about today's author when somebody had sent me a link to his book. He wrote a book

00:01:46.800 | called Buying a House Debt-Free. The author's name is Steve Maxwell. He and his wife, Terry,

00:01:52.880 | they're Christians. They run a Christian ministry, essentially working with people trying to provide

00:01:57.600 | some practical instruction and advice on the daily practicalities of life. I saw this book and I

00:02:04.400 | bought this book called Buying a House Debt-Free. I was blown away by the stories in the book.

00:02:08.720 | I think you're really going to enjoy today's show. A lot of times, I firmly believe that

00:02:16.080 | you can't judge somebody. You can't criticize somebody. You can't bring an ad hominem attack

00:02:22.000 | and say, "Just because you haven't done something doesn't invalidate ideas." Ideas should be judged

00:02:26.800 | on their merit based upon logic. There are some ideas where we have good ideas, but if there's no

00:02:32.400 | one that's actually done it, then the idea doesn't have nearly as much power as you wish it would

00:02:39.040 | have. My guest today, Steve Maxwell, he certainly has the clout behind his ideas. He has been a

00:02:48.240 | consistent man and it's really, really neat to read the story of how he's worked with his sons

00:02:53.920 | to help them to buy their houses debt-free. Again, all of his sons are on track to buy

00:02:59.200 | their houses debt-free. The three oldest have already done it and the younger two are on the

00:03:06.480 | way saving for it. So it's going to be a great interview. I think you'll really enjoy it.

00:03:10.240 | Sometimes I listen to interviews like this and I think, "Man, I missed it. I totally missed it

00:03:17.040 | when I was younger." But I have an opportunity with my children. At the moment, we just have

00:03:22.400 | one. We're hoping for more, but with my son at least to hopefully shape his life in a different

00:03:29.680 | direction. I am totally inspired by the content of today's interview and by this book. A couple

00:03:34.720 | of quick summaries. In just a moment, I'm going to play the interview for you. Interviews with

00:03:40.320 | authors are always a little bit tricky because when somebody's written an entire book, they can't

00:03:44.800 | summarize a book in an interview. So an interview tends to be less about, "Here's the outline of the

00:03:50.880 | book and the lessons of it." The beginning of the interview is fairly chatty in the sense of just

00:03:55.280 | Steve telling his story. It's really fun to hear the individual stories of how his sons found and

00:03:59.840 | purchased their houses. The experiences range from smaller price tags to larger price tags,

00:04:05.920 | from fixer-uppers to very nice fancy houses. So the beginning of that and then we get into a little

00:04:10.720 | bit of his philosophy and then some practical tools. I will come back at the end of the

00:04:15.360 | interview and share with you a couple of the actual ideas from the book. It's a great book.

00:04:23.680 | It's well worth your time and your energy. But it's hard to get an author to say, "Here's the

00:04:30.400 | outline of what I want to do," because they want you to read their book. So I want you to read his

00:04:34.000 | book as well, but I will come back at the end and summarize a few of the very practical ideas that

00:04:39.760 | he implements and talks about in the book. A couple of quick announcements. For those of you

00:04:43.600 | who are listening to me on iTunes or who have been subscribed in iTunes and are wondering where I went,

00:04:50.240 | still make sure I broke the iTunes feed and deleted all my iTunes subscribers a couple weeks ago. So

00:04:54.880 | I think this will be about the last time I'll mention it. But please, if you're not receiving

00:04:57.920 | updates on the show, all you need to do is just simply unsubscribe, search for the show in the

00:05:02.320 | iTunes store, and resubscribe. If you'd like to get a hold of me, my email address is joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

00:05:08.160 | You can find me on Twitter @radicalpf, on Facebook, facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

00:05:14.960 | I would love to hear from you. I've learned my lesson about not building out further

00:05:24.240 | connections and newsletters and things like that. A lot of exciting changes coming in the show.

00:05:28.880 | I'll mention a couple of them at the end of the show today. I'm working hard to ramp up the

00:05:35.040 | professionalism of the show, working hard to build up the content. I'll mention a couple of those

00:05:39.200 | things at the end of the day and kind of share with you the plans for December and the new year.

00:05:43.360 | But for now, here's Steve.

00:05:44.640 | So Steve, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate your making

00:05:51.120 | time to be with me today. Well, I am delighted to be with you, Joshua.

00:05:55.280 | I'd like to invite you to share your story, but as introduction, I am going to read back to you

00:06:03.360 | the first three paragraphs of the preface of your book, because I thought this was an amazing preface

00:06:09.040 | to a book. And when I first read it, it was very interesting. And then I'd like you to share

00:06:14.080 | the backstory, behind your story with your family. So the first three paragraphs of your book say

00:06:19.520 | this, "Three of our sons have purchased their homes debt-free with cash before they were married.

00:06:25.680 | As we write, our two younger sons are working toward that goal. It's not rocket science,

00:06:30.400 | and it's certainly not impossible to achieve the goal of owning a home debt-free while still in

00:06:35.760 | one's twenties. Simply put, it is a way of life. Some suppose that our sons had certain special

00:06:41.840 | advantages that enabled them to buy their homes debt-free, and that not everyone has those

00:06:46.560 | advantages. Our sons had no special advantages or circumstances, but only a vision set before

00:06:53.120 | them of hard work in their own business, denial of self-gratification, and a mindset for saving

00:06:58.640 | money. Plus, they experienced the blessing of the Lord. We believe that most young men are capable

00:07:04.960 | of beginning married life, owning their first home debt-free. And we believe that after reading

00:07:10.160 | Buying a House Debt-Free, you will agree with us. We have seen that it isn't a matter of whether

00:07:15.920 | they will fail in this quest, but whether they will choose to go for it with a serious level

00:07:20.960 | of commitment. You will be encouraged as you see your sons rise to a new purpose in life."

00:07:25.920 | This is a totally amazing introduction to a book. And yet, to the best of my knowledge,

00:07:33.680 | it's actually true. How on earth did you do that? And what's the story behind it?

00:07:38.400 | Oh, listen, I'm just smiling. I was enjoying every bit of what you're reading, because

00:07:45.760 | it isn't hard. This is what's so shocking. I think today people have been so

00:07:57.920 | mesmerized by the current way of life that practical things are just seen as hard to

00:08:05.920 | believe, and they don't understand. And so, Nathan was the first, and I think he was 24

00:08:14.000 | when he bought his house. But he'd been saving for, oh, really probably since, seriously, around

00:08:24.480 | 1819. And by the way, tell me when you want me to drill down a little bit on some of the detail.

00:08:31.920 | And it was really, it was just a very natural thing when the widow's son across the street

00:08:42.800 | came over and just said, "We understand. We befriended them. We understand that Nathan

00:08:48.640 | might be interested in the house. And so we're going to sell it. Mom's going to be moving. And

00:08:54.720 | so are you interested?" But what was really fascinating about that is, first, Nathan came,

00:09:03.280 | Nathan was talking to him and told him, yes, he was interested. And the son said he would

00:09:11.680 | come back and have the house appraised and give Nathan a price without a realtor, so there'd be

00:09:16.960 | some savings there. And so Nathan told him he was very much interested. He came back with a price

00:09:23.360 | and about a week later or so, something like that. And what was really very fascinating is

00:09:31.520 | the price was about $10,000 more than Nathan had in the bank. And Nathan at that point said,

00:09:40.160 | when he told him the price, he said, "Great. Thank you very much. And I'll get back to you

00:09:45.680 | and let you know if I want to get it." He could have said, "Listen, I don't have the money.

00:09:51.840 | And I'm sorry. I'm committed to not borrowing." But he said he didn't say that. And so then he

00:10:01.920 | went, we just talked about it a little bit and he started praying about it, what the Lord would

00:10:09.840 | have him to do. And then I meet with the guys weekly and I remember the meeting, that meeting.

00:10:20.000 | And I said, "So Nathan, has the Lord shown you anything?" "No, no, he's not shown me anything."

00:10:25.760 | And then I think the next one, it was, and so you, "Has the Lord showed you anything?" And he said,

00:10:35.600 | "Well, yeah, Dad, the Lord said to get it." Now at this point, he still didn't have the money,

00:10:40.000 | the remaining balance. And I thought, "Well, okay, this is very interesting." And then he

00:10:46.240 | went on to say, "And Lord's also telling me it's time to get married." So that was a shock. We were,

00:10:52.560 | "Wow, okay. Did he say who?" "Well, no, not who yet." And obviously there was no audible voice

00:10:59.600 | or anything like this. It's just a young man that's grown up with a relationship with the Lord.

00:11:05.680 | And so in his heart, he felt these things. So that was the beginning of a journey.

00:11:13.520 | And if you'd like, I can finish out a little more of that story at this point. Would you like to

00:11:19.520 | hear the rest of it? - Yeah, and make sure I want to hear, go ahead and finish that story. But then

00:11:23.040 | I also want to hear at what age your other children bought houses and how much they paid for them,

00:11:28.080 | as far as cash, to get the idea of the numbers behind it. - Sure, sure. And I think it's in the

00:11:34.720 | Home Debt Free book. And now I will, at this point, just without looking it up, I think it was

00:11:43.200 | somewhere around 80-some, a thousand, maybe 88, somewhere in there, that he told him he won for

00:11:52.480 | the house. And Nathan had, it was about 10,000 less. So then Nathan is officially on record with

00:12:01.200 | his family, anyway, of saying that he was going to tell them he was going to get this house.

00:12:07.280 | And this was, I'm thinking maybe October. And then it was about a week after that, Nathan got a

00:12:19.520 | email from a national publisher of technical materials and said that they were interested

00:12:27.440 | in Nathan writing a book for them on Windows security. That is Windows, the operating system

00:12:35.040 | security, as opposed to doubles, you know, or your Windows SASH security. So he had been on,

00:12:48.800 | I think, a message board related to Windows security, and he'd been answering and dialoguing

00:12:55.360 | on some questions. So it wasn't just this email, just totally out of the blue. He had been

00:13:01.120 | interacting with these people all on a pro bono basis, just totally free and participating, and

00:13:07.280 | he was there to learn. And at the same time, he was sharing other things with them. And so they

00:13:13.920 | obviously had a very good understanding of his knowledge. But here he is, a homeschooled young

00:13:23.840 | man, never been to college, and all of a sudden they're saying that they would pay him to write

00:13:30.240 | this book. And they needed it right away. And I think it was six or eight weeks, something like

00:13:39.280 | that. And he would have editors working for him, and by all appearances, this amount would actually

00:13:50.000 | cover what he was lacking in his, for needing for the house. And so we were pretty excited about

00:13:56.400 | that. But in the contract that he had to sign, they had penalties if he didn't finish on time,

00:14:02.320 | because they said they needed it right away. So he is still praying about it, and he felt

00:14:10.480 | good about it, and I did too. And he's working for Western Auto, their corporate, their data center

00:14:17.920 | in downtown Kansas City at that point. And so he's got a full-time, call it job, as a contractor.

00:14:24.720 | And then so he had Saturdays, and we don't work on Sundays. So with nights and Saturdays,

00:14:32.000 | that isn't a lot of time. But he jumped in, he gave it everything he had. And at the end of the

00:14:41.280 | time period, he wasn't done. He was close, but not done. And so he wrote him and asked if they

00:14:52.160 | would give him an extension, and they wrote him back, they said, "Oh, Nathan, we knew you could

00:14:56.240 | never do it in that length of time. However, we need this right away. We had to keep the pressure

00:15:01.760 | on. So absolutely go for it. You're good." And he finished it. I think they gave him two more weeks,

00:15:07.520 | and he did it. And so you've got the feeling of accomplishment there. You have then God's

00:15:15.760 | provision of the additional money that's required. And frankly, probably maybe even to top all of

00:15:23.760 | that, you've got a young man who's seen, he can hear kind of in his heart a leading of the Lord,

00:15:32.800 | and know God is behind it and will follow through. I don't know what that's worth. I don't have a

00:15:41.200 | price tag on that. And yet, then so he went ahead and got the house, and they're still in it. We've

00:15:53.200 | done an addition to it. I say we, it was a collective family effort. And it's just really,

00:15:59.040 | it's been exciting. So he was 24 when he got it. I'm guessing he was, my wife's the date person,

00:16:05.840 | okay? She knows the dates. I'm not into dates. So he was probably 25 when he got married.

00:16:14.480 | So they've been there, and four children later, and it's been a great house for them.

00:16:20.960 | Wow. So he was your oldest then, and was the first of your sons to buy a house?

00:16:25.040 | Yes.

00:16:25.360 | And then what's the story on the next one?

00:16:28.080 | Well, but I would say also, and we've had a vision. We have written up a vision statement

00:16:33.040 | years ago of things that we really believe the Lord would have us for our family, a direction

00:16:38.880 | from. And it's again, nothing mystical. It's just virtually going through the Bible, and certain

00:16:46.800 | verses would stand out to us, like that they would be ambassadors for Christ. They would be obedient.

00:16:53.040 | They would love others. They would, just a number of things like that. And one of them was that they

00:16:59.360 | would buy their houses, and well, they would be debt-free for houses and vehicles and all that

00:17:04.640 | stuff. So this has been cast before them for years. It's been an understanding is this, this is who we

00:17:14.560 | are.

00:17:15.840 | So it's a vision that's just been laid out before the whole family. And so it isn't about, okay,

00:17:24.640 | you're 18 now. I want you to understand these things. And it's not been that. This is just

00:17:31.280 | who we are. It's our way of life. This is what we're working towards. Jesus Christ is who we

00:17:39.840 | live for. I mean, wait, he died for us. We're here to live for him. And so this is, that's why it's

00:17:49.120 | not just step one, two, three. It's the life that we live. And so anyway, Nathan was the oldest,

00:17:56.560 | and it was exciting just to see how that all came about. It was the neighbor that came over

00:18:06.800 | and knocked on the door. So then Christopher, and most of the children are a couple years apart,

00:18:13.520 | so then we had Christopher. And he, what was it? So he would have been even in his late 20s,

00:18:25.680 | later 20s, and not married. They don't date. One of that was one of the things that we kind of

00:18:32.080 | encouraged them in is, by the way, dating costs a lot of money. You probably dated, right?

00:18:38.160 | No, my wife was the first woman I ever had a relationship with.

00:18:43.200 | Wow, that's beautiful. All right. And but see, most, I dated with him finding my wife. Well,

00:18:49.440 | dating is expensive. And so if they don't date, then you save a whole lot of money in that.

00:18:56.800 | So Christopher obviously then wasn't dating, and just he wanted to get married, but had his eyes

00:19:06.800 | open, and, "Lord, okay, we're looking who this might be." But somewhere in there, some other

00:19:16.000 | neighbors approached him and said, "Hey, Christopher, we've got this house." And there were

00:19:21.760 | two retired school teachers, and they're just great people. And you can imagine, two retired

00:19:28.240 | school teachers are not putting much wear on a house. And so this house was just immaculate. And

00:19:35.280 | he was very, the dad, or the husband, I should say, not a dad, the husband was very careful

00:19:42.560 | and maintaining it. So it was a great house. And I think they wanted, I also had that in the book,

00:19:48.960 | might have been 125 for it or something. And so they asked him if he was interested.

00:19:55.680 | And it was also happened to be fairly close to Nathan's house. And so he said, "I'll tell you

00:20:04.480 | what, I'll start praying about it." And he starts praying. And we were actually on a trip. And I

00:20:10.880 | just kind of remember it was getting close to the time he told him he'd get back to them,

00:20:15.360 | because they wanted to move. They were in the process of building a house, and they needed to

00:20:19.120 | have a decision. And it just kind of kept going on. And finally, he just said, "I got to tell him,

00:20:25.040 | dad, I got to tell him, but I'm just, I just don't have an answer. I mean, I don't, it's not a yes.

00:20:31.680 | I don't understand why. But it's, so if it's not a yes, it's got to be a no. And I don't have peace

00:20:42.160 | about it. And I'm the one saying, wait a minute. I mean, I'm careful." You're trying to control

00:20:48.320 | yourself. "This house is gorgeous. It's not going to take any work. It's right, kind of backyard

00:20:57.360 | neighbors with Nathan's, nice neighborhood. It's a good price. You got the money, you know, I mean,

00:21:05.360 | I just, but he said no. And I said, okay, okay. So then a short, oh, I don't know. Oh, no. And

00:21:14.640 | then on top of that, then the house next to that house, he'd been, he would kind of watch over

00:21:22.720 | their house for them when they travel. Well, they came to him and said, "Well, Christopher,

00:21:26.800 | why don't you buy our house?" So he had the money for the first house. He just didn't.

00:21:32.720 | Yes, he had the money for the second house too. And the second house was really even nicer.

00:21:37.440 | The mom was this gifted decorator and it was even nicer. And so he prayed about that. He was

00:21:45.760 | praying about that. Somewhere in there, our house, well, we have this ministry, Titus2.com. And

00:21:58.800 | the house really, the main floor is 2000 square feet. So it's a pretty good size house with a

00:22:05.520 | full basement under it. And so we had the ministry in one portion of the basement.

00:22:12.000 | And since it involves books and we'd have books stacked there, and then we actually ended up

00:22:20.160 | stacking some books down the hallway, another bedroom. And then we had even at one point,

00:22:25.200 | which is a story on the, built a shed out back to the maximum size the city would allow. And

00:22:31.200 | then we were storing books there and we still kept generating more books. And so we had kind of this

00:22:40.720 | mini crisis, call it. What are we going to do? We're out of room. And so we're discussing it

00:22:51.280 | and pray about it. And then somewhere right in there is when, I think it was Terry one day said,

00:23:00.960 | "Well, Christopher, you want to buy this house?" And we had totally redone the main floor,

00:23:10.480 | put in all new oak trim and doors and things. And it was just, we just liked the house very much,

00:23:17.680 | nothing opulent, just very comfortable and energy efficient. It had 10 inch walls. And so all of

00:23:24.800 | that, it was just, but what are we going to do for space? So Christopher said, "Well, I like this

00:23:31.600 | house a lot. I think I'd be interested in it. Let me pray about it." So at the same time, if we had

00:23:40.560 | bought a lot of this property right behind his house, not knowing what we'd use it for, but

00:23:46.960 | anyway, so we said, "Christopher, you know, we can't give you any bargain on this because we

00:23:54.240 | need the money to seed money to build a house there back there behind this. And so it's got

00:24:03.600 | to be good for you, son. If you just have to know that's what the Lord would have you because it's

00:24:09.440 | no deal. And we just, he'd have to get it appraised. And if it looked like enough that we

00:24:16.160 | could work with and he was good with it, then it would be good. And that's the only way that it

00:24:27.840 | would work for all of us." So he said, "Yeah, great." We got it appraised and they came in at

00:24:35.840 | 210 and he had the money. I don't know how much more, but he certainly had the money

00:24:42.160 | without a problem. And as he prayed about it, he said, "Yeah, I'd love to get the house."

00:24:48.560 | I mean, so is this ideal or what? Can you imagine? I mean, we wouldn't have borrowed

00:24:54.080 | and yet how would you build a house without money? And where would you live? I mean, all of this

00:25:02.320 | stuff. I mean, I know people have those kinds of issues all the time, but here it was...

00:25:08.640 | How old was he when he bought the house?

00:25:10.880 | He was, I think, right at 28.

00:25:13.360 | Okay. So at 28, he'd saved over $200,000 to pay for a house.

00:25:17.280 | Yes. And so that property is adjacent to the one we're at now. And so building the house,

00:25:23.920 | we just walked over. I mean, is that convenient or what?

00:25:28.320 | You can't beat lunch break when you can walk back to your own kitchen instead of having to

00:25:31.600 | bring a lunchbox to the job site.

00:25:33.440 | Oh, yeah. So he was happy. We were just amazed at how the Lord worked all that out.

00:25:41.200 | But in the new house, the whole entire basement would be dedicated to Titus II.

00:25:51.680 | And then we would do a story and a half. And so the upstairs would be where what was like the

00:26:00.080 | living. The boys had a bedroom. There were two bedrooms. And so that would be upstairs.

00:26:04.560 | And so it was pretty comparable to that current house, but just with the whole basement,

00:26:12.320 | well, walkout basement where we could bring pallets in for books. And so that's how it all

00:26:18.960 | worked. And it took us about three years to build it. We did have it roughed in, but then we did

00:26:25.200 | all the sheetrock, the plumbing, the electrical, the tile with the whole main floor is all tile.

00:26:33.360 | We did all the concrete work outside. It was over a hundred and I think twenty five cubic yards of

00:26:40.160 | concrete. But I give you those details because the philosophy that the Lord has led us to is

00:26:51.360 | you learn, you work, and you do it yourself. And so we didn't know anything about concrete work,

00:27:00.960 | except like at Christopher's house when we built the shed, we just read up a little bit on it.

00:27:08.480 | We did this big, long kind of drive sidewalk that a pallet jack could go to the back to the shed.

00:27:15.200 | And it was all family. It's all family projects. That's how we learn. And the worst case I knew,

00:27:23.840 | OK, what if you have to jack hammer it out and throw it away and start over? You will have

00:27:30.240 | learned a lot in the process. And that first let me tell you that first sidewalk, even though it

00:27:37.920 | was relatively smooth and you could push a pallet jack back there just fine. I mean, it wasn't lumpy

00:27:45.760 | or anything, but it was it was ugly. It was really ugly. Sure. I believe that's how you learn. I'd

00:27:53.120 | love to I'd love to kind of find out more of how you did it, but I don't want to skip past your

00:27:59.760 | third son. How old? So your third son then also bought a house. And how old was he and how much

00:28:04.080 | did he pay for that house? OK, so then Joseph was 24. See, we have we have a Sarah, we have Sarah

00:28:13.440 | under the two boys, older boys, and then in a six year span where there were no children.

00:28:21.040 | And then Joseph, the last actually five or reversal babies. So then Joseph, who was who was

00:28:28.720 | then 24, I think at that time, and he just really felt the Lord leading towards marriage. And and

00:28:37.440 | he'd been looking at houses and this house was it's about a mile away, whereas the other two are

00:28:44.400 | pretty close. And it was a little I just say a little distressed. I mean, they had it was very,

00:28:55.840 | very dated, you know, kind of crummy carpet. Some of the ceiling, the sheetrock work was quite dated

00:29:06.480 | and and yet but the price I think they they had been asking, I think, oh, maybe closer to 100 for

00:29:17.520 | and and then all of a sudden they came down to maybe 80 some. And no, I think I think that was

00:29:28.640 | I'm sorry, I wish I the book may have more details on in that regard, but I think it was around 100.

00:29:35.040 | And then and then Joseph went looked at it and he offered them somewhere around 70.

00:29:42.000 | And he was able to pay cash for that as well. That's impressive.

00:29:46.400 | Where I'd like to go from here is I'd like to talk about how, but I would first like to start

00:29:52.160 | talk about why. Why was it such a big deal to hold this vision in front of your children? Why does it

00:29:59.520 | matter so much? What's the big deal about buying a house debt free to you guys?

00:30:04.000 | Well, the point is, is certainly in my lifespan, the houses that we had owned up until eventually

00:30:14.480 | with Christopher's, that was all with a mortgage. And mortgage, it's just always there. You don't

00:30:25.200 | get out of it. In fact, I could look, there was Jesus uses, he uses sin as an example and then

00:30:32.960 | compares it to debt because, you know, people because people universally understand they don't

00:30:39.040 | like being under obligation like that under debt. And so then he used that and tied it to sin to say,

00:30:46.960 | and that's how you feel once you resolve your sin. So, but the debt, it's uncomfortable.

00:30:56.720 | I mean, frankly, and as a believer, I didn't even come to understand it as much until later,

00:31:04.320 | even as I studied. But, but the reality is, it's called, it is called a promissory note. I am

00:31:13.120 | promising that I am going to pay this. Well, I can't tell you what's going to happen tomorrow.

00:31:23.840 | I wish I could, but I can't. And if I can't tell you tomorrow, how can I tell you next week? How

00:31:32.880 | can I say in a month, in a year? I talked to a dad that 20, I think 26 years with Hewlett Packard,

00:31:45.920 | 26 years. And now he's been laid off. 26 years. And their whole downsizing, I think, could be

00:31:59.520 | close to 55,000. General Electric, when Jack Welch took over, I think there were over 400,000

00:32:08.880 | employees and eventually downsized for sure, I think down even around 300,000 if they're not

00:32:15.280 | lower now. And Jack Welch, in his book Straight From the Gut said, said that the days of corporate

00:32:24.960 | loyalty are over. The, you know, that essentially the only way there's any kind of job security is,

00:32:34.560 | is pleasing a customer. So one can't count on it. You just can't. And so here's always that debt.

00:32:42.960 | We, we've known so many through our Titus II, we've just known a lot of families that have

00:32:48.720 | heartbreak. I mean, losing a house, absolute heartbreak. And so as long as one has that,

00:33:00.160 | that, that note, there's no promises, no guarantee that something's not going to happen that causes

00:33:09.200 | you to lose your house. So for you, then it's primarily from the perspective of essentially,

00:33:15.120 | you've made a promise to pay and because you let your yes be yes and your no be no,

00:33:20.000 | when you promise to pay, then therefore there's a moral obligation to pay. And by entering into

00:33:25.200 | a promise to pay, you're not sure if you're making a borrow. You're not sure if you can

00:33:30.000 | fulfill that. Is that, is that the primary theme that, that stands out to you? Absolutely.

00:33:35.360 | Right. That makes sense. Cause I, I struggle. One of the questions that I have when,

00:33:40.160 | when reading your book is when I look at it and I think it through, you know, to me,

00:33:45.840 | so I come from a financial planning background and I like, you know, I think it's, it's, it's

00:33:50.640 | great to have a house paid off, but to me it's not really, it doesn't seem like a big deal one way or

00:33:55.920 | the other because in the current situation, at least where I live, there's no possibility of

00:34:01.360 | ever removing any of your payments in the sense that even if you have your principal and your,

00:34:07.360 | your mortgage balance paid off, you know, where I live, my property taxes are 3000 bucks a year

00:34:12.880 | and my homeowner's insurance is 3000 bucks a year and I live in a fairly modest house. So

00:34:17.440 | even if I, even if I, even if I, you know, pay off the mortgage, that still doesn't change that

00:34:25.360 | there's still going to be a monthly or annual obligation there. So it doesn't seem to me like

00:34:30.000 | there's any emotional value beyond, it just doesn't seem like there's much value to it.

00:34:35.680 | And then even I used to think, I guess, I used to think that there was some

00:34:39.680 | connection to, I guess, an emotional piece of just, hey, you know, we own this thing.

00:34:47.200 | And then I ran into an issue with the code enforcement in my county and I discovered

00:34:50.880 | that the code enforcement officials, if they don't like something that I do, all of a sudden,

00:34:54.960 | they can put a lien up to a thousand bucks a day on my house and there's nothing I can do.

00:34:59.520 | And that destroyed any last, for me, that destroyed any last vestiges of

00:35:05.760 | idealism about any ever owning your property, period. So like, it just doesn't seem that big

00:35:14.000 | a deal to me. Meaning that whether the house is paid for or not, we, in our current system,

00:35:20.400 | it's impossible to ever own your own property. And even when you think you do own your own

00:35:24.800 | property, you don't. Yeah, you are paying, you're right.

00:35:29.360 | The point is you're paying your taxes in some ways, rent to the state.

00:35:34.640 | Right.

00:35:35.040 | And that is, you know, that is the way it is. But let's, you know, if the economy totally goes south

00:35:43.280 | and you have a whole vast numbers within a city that can't pay, well, you know, yes,

00:35:54.560 | they could eventually, I don't know what they did in the depression. Do you have a handle on that?

00:35:58.400 | Would they do it?

00:35:59.120 | Depends on what the depends on what the situation is. I mean, you just see that

00:36:02.560 | depends on where you are and you just see the market works its way out. And I mean,

00:36:06.880 | if you look back over the housing crisis since 2008, you can see our entire culture

00:36:11.280 | used to it used to be that not being able to pay and I'm speaking culturally, not morally,

00:36:18.240 | but from a cultural perspective, it used to be that not being able to pay your mortgage was a

00:36:22.000 | shame, was a source of shame. And there was a cultural shaming that happened because that

00:36:26.880 | was dishonorable, where I've seen me personally in the last five years has entirely changed.

00:36:32.400 | And it's become that many of those negative connotations have disappeared culturally

00:36:40.080 | speaking. Doesn't make it right or wrong, necessarily. I don't want to judge my

00:36:44.560 | moral or ethical standpoint based upon culture, but I have seen that change in the culture.

00:36:49.280 | Yeah, that is interesting. But I still listen. So if things get really bad,

00:36:56.080 | I have an electric bill. In fact, I know we had somebody write us two weeks ago,

00:37:02.640 | and they had no money. Well, they had just enough money either for the rent or the electric bill,

00:37:07.520 | one of the two. They paid the rent and so virtually had their electricity cut off.

00:37:13.840 | And that's an option. They have a house. They are in a house. They have a place to stay.

00:37:18.640 | And that is it. The same can go with water. And I see that as different. Now, if it gets all the

00:37:25.520 | way down to your property taxes, yes, still, I mean, the lowest denominator there. Yet,

00:37:34.080 | I still, it's not a promise. I'm not breaking my promise. And I am attempting to pay them as I can.

00:37:44.000 | And they want their money is really what they want. So it's just, I think so often it's used

00:37:50.800 | as an excuse, though, as an excuse, as opposed to being responsible and just getting as much

00:37:58.960 | out of the way out of there off my, well, you know, as I can, like some will say, wait a minute,

00:38:06.000 | I could never own a house debt free because in our area, they may be $500,000.

00:38:12.160 | I had a gal from Australia, New Zealand, I think she was writing me that and she was she was being

00:38:20.720 | kind of sarcastic and said, well, in our area, you just couldn't, you just can't do that.

00:38:25.600 | And then she went on to say, and I think I even used the example of the book.

00:38:30.160 | And so I bought my house, I got my mom making mortgage payments. And besides, if I'd have paid

00:38:37.840 | that money down, I wouldn't have been able to travel the world like I have. You see, because

00:38:44.720 | usually what you'll find is it gets in the way of people's fun that they want to have.

00:38:50.560 | And that's what in fact she was doing is she wanted to have her fun. Whereas if she would

00:38:56.480 | have spent, put everything she could down to get that house down and then work to pay it off.

00:39:02.240 | It's just, it's a promise that has been kept. And one doesn't have to also at the same time,

00:39:13.920 | frankly, worry about it if things get really bad.

00:39:17.840 | Right. And I know it's probably unusual pushback and maybe it's a generational shift or I don't

00:39:25.040 | know. I guess when I think about it, I have a world of admiration for your sons and the path

00:39:33.280 | they've been on. I think that's really phenomenal what they've been able to achieve. But sometimes

00:39:42.000 | I wonder, just sometimes I worry, me personally, I worry about the opportunity cost of what they

00:39:48.960 | could have done with that money. So for me, when I think about the idea of a young man spending

00:39:54.720 | $200,000 of his hard earned money that he saved, and especially if that's the bulk of his savings,

00:40:02.960 | I get so nervous about putting that and sinking that into a house where I have no control over

00:40:08.480 | it. And now if something happens, it's incredibly focused in one geographic area. It's mainly

00:40:14.960 | useful primarily for me to live in. And that's just about it. And I can think of so many other

00:40:20.480 | ways that I would personally be much more comfortable investing that money instead of

00:40:25.840 | purchasing a house. And so, but other previous generations have a very different field.

00:40:31.120 | And so what I try to figure out is, am I wrong? And I just simply don't have the benefit of,

00:40:36.000 | for you, maybe 40, 50 years of hindsight. Or is there a shift in our culture? That's what I worry

00:40:43.280 | about. Well, and I think, how do you, Joshua, I think, you see, once you've got the money,

00:40:54.080 | so for example, let's take John. He's next after Joseph, okay?

00:41:02.880 | And so he's now 23. He, they all have pretty much are developing businesses. So, John, at the same

00:41:14.560 | time as he's developing, saving, as he's saving, first he and Joseph had a construction business.

00:41:21.520 | They had learned a lot of skills, and they just felt that that was, and we encouraged,

00:41:28.800 | trying stuff, doing stuff. So, they started this construction business. But with our traveling,

00:41:35.600 | as we would travel with Titus Two related things, then we found that, well, it's a little hard for

00:41:44.320 | a construction company. You give a quote, well, I'll be back in a month or something. You know,

00:41:49.120 | that's not necessarily ideal. And then also they were seeing that with Joseph. Joseph started,

00:41:56.240 | and I'm another part of the story here, he started programming when he was 10 years old.

00:42:01.440 | And so, at this point, they're in their late teens, pretty much, and he saw that the programming

00:42:11.040 | money was really better than the construction money. And it wasn't, you're not out in the

00:42:18.400 | Kansas hot and the Kansas cold, and sitting at a desk a lot more comfortable. I'll have another

00:42:23.120 | cup of coffee, thank you very much. And so, they decided that some of the desk work, computer work

00:42:33.040 | was better. Well, John, about that time, had an opportunity, a friend that needed some,

00:42:39.280 | we'll call it in more general terms, agricultural design. And so, John decided, saw a need, and he

00:42:51.600 | went ahead and invested what money he had at that point. At that point, I don't think he had much

00:42:59.920 | over 5,000 in the bank, but still the emphasis is on saving. And at the same time, kind of along

00:43:08.400 | with what you were saying, I think, they had been investing in tools. They bought a truck,

00:43:12.320 | they bought a trailer, they bought tools. And so, that's income generation, and that's what they,

00:43:18.720 | so they had invested in that. And so, John's now making a direction shift. So, he

00:43:24.000 | starts this agricultural design business, and he just is pouring his heart into it. Well, so now,

00:43:34.080 | here he is, oh, I don't know, probably, certainly three years, three, maybe four, and no more than

00:43:41.680 | five years later, he has gotten to where he's pretty much the premier design, call it, studio

00:43:50.160 | in that segment as an independent designer. And so, as such, so he invested, he invests a fair

00:44:01.760 | amount in traveling and different trade shows, call it knowledge acquisition, contacts, making

00:44:10.000 | contacts. And so, that slowed down his savings, but now his savings are really starting to pick up.

00:44:17.600 | So, yes, I understand about, well, where you invest, but we just really feel that one can do

00:44:27.520 | both. - Right. And I think about it, it's applicable to me because I have a one-year-old son. My wife

00:44:33.760 | and I, we have a one-year-old son. And as I think about, okay, what's the vision that I have for him,

00:44:40.080 | there's almost this constant tension in the financial planning business between what's

00:44:47.360 | mathematically correct or what we expect from the outcome of an investment versus the emotional side

00:44:54.560 | and perhaps the non-measurable and money values of life. You see this often in financial planning

00:45:00.240 | with the question of, should I invest or should I pay off debt? And so, different people have

00:45:05.120 | different ways of answering it. And I love the focus and the idea that three of your children

00:45:13.120 | have been able to purchase houses debt-free in their 20s is remarkable in our culture.

00:45:17.840 | But that makes one part of me say, well, if they take that and not buy a house and just keep

00:45:24.320 | investing instead of $200,000, they'd be up to a million bucks or something right now.

00:45:28.720 | And then they'd be truly financially independent. Then they would be in a position where

00:45:34.320 | they can live off of the income from their investments, which frees them to constantly

00:45:39.600 | increase their business skills and business opportunities instead of what I perceive,

00:45:44.320 | sinking a bunch of money into a house and then moving on. And then you're out of money because

00:45:50.560 | you put it all on a house. That's the conundrum that I try to solve in my head.

00:45:56.480 | Oh, listen, absolutely. And I don't fault you. I mean, I understand where you come from. But see,

00:46:06.640 | with Titus II, I come in contact with so many dads that have had some of these investment

00:46:18.800 | philosophies and that becomes, they're going to leverage it and they're broke.

00:46:28.160 | Then they don't have a place for their family. There's not the stability of at least a house.

00:46:37.840 | And so when you're leveraging in other people's money, I mean, Sam Walton said

00:46:45.040 | that there was a day that went by that he didn't feel the weight of his personal debt.

00:46:53.120 | And so it is so nice peace. What is peace of mind worth? I think it's worth a lot, frankly.

00:47:06.800 | Because I don't know how you can, I personally, by all means jump on this. I don't know how you

00:47:14.240 | can have debt and not presume upon the future. And we're told not to presume upon the future.

00:47:22.560 | So how can one do that?

00:47:24.240 | Right. It's an interesting theological conundrum. And I'm not sure that I've settled it in my mind

00:47:34.480 | personally, just simply because I've read and thought about it. And it seems that,

00:47:39.040 | you know, even in the end of your book, I can't remember which one of them it was that I read

00:47:44.800 | of yours, but even in the end of your book, you're clear to point out it's not that debt is a sin,

00:47:48.000 | but debt is, in your opinion, in your theological understanding, but rather that debt is a

00:47:52.560 | presumption upon the future. And so it's unwise. And so I don't exactly know how to solve that

00:48:00.000 | conundrum. And I think it through. That's why I don't talk. Anyway, I think it through and I look

00:48:04.960 | at it from different angles. I go back to at this stage, like at this stage in my life,

00:48:10.960 | my wife and I, we bought a house and we purchased it. We didn't pay cash for it. We put down about

00:48:22.480 | 20% on it. And it wound up, at the time I felt confident about the decision, but it wound up

00:48:26.800 | really hurting me because unexpectedly I made a business change and I had sunk all my money into

00:48:31.680 | this down payment on a house. And so here I was following, you know, following all of the,

00:48:36.640 | following the ideas and the ideals of prudent planning, saying, okay, put down a healthy

00:48:44.480 | down payment on a house. And then through a variety of circumstances, I had a bunch of money

00:48:48.560 | tied up in a house right when I was ready to start a new business. And looking back,

00:48:52.720 | did I make a mistake? I don't know at this point, it was too recent for me to look back and say I

00:48:56.480 | made a mistake. And even if I did, what's the point other than just to learn from it? I can't,

00:49:00.160 | I could sell my house and change from it. But when I look at it, I just get, houses end up being

00:49:06.400 | expensive sinks of money rather than a, necessarily a quality investment.

00:49:17.280 | And what's, but what I struggle with is however, is that I can't, I'm a very kind of calculator

00:49:21.920 | focused person, but you can't necessarily always bring calculations into it because for my wife,

00:49:27.440 | the pleasure of having a house that she's comfortable in and, you know, it's very different

00:49:33.760 | for her versus me. So I'm usually at this point, a little bit slow to share my opinion, just because

00:49:38.720 | I haven't, I don't think I've experienced enough, enough to know. I don't think I have enough life

00:49:46.720 | experience to know exactly what's right, which is why I seek out older people. And I ask them

00:49:50.240 | these questions to try to figure out if I'm wrong or right. Well, and see, not only that,

00:49:54.240 | even from a financial guy, you know, a financial guy appreciates money. And so, so how much did

00:50:02.080 | you, what would, what'd your house cost? $220,000. Okay. So are, are you, I mean,

00:50:07.200 | you're going to know far better than me. Chances are you're paying over a hundred thousand in

00:50:10.560 | interest on it. I'd have to run the, I'd have to run the schedule, but I would say less than that.

00:50:16.000 | Three and a half, three and a half percent loan. So it's probably, yeah.

00:50:19.360 | Wow. Okay. But even, even say, let's, let's go get ridiculous. Maybe it's even 60,

00:50:24.880 | 70,000 that you're paying in interest. Right.

00:50:26.960 | Wouldn't you like that? If I wrote you a check, wouldn't you like that?

00:50:33.040 | And here you get into the problem of opportunity costs, because the question is,

00:50:37.680 | well, if I spend the, if I, what would I do with that money if I didn't do it otherwise? And if I

00:50:43.120 | were consuming it and spending it, then yes, the interest would be, it would be better to pay off

00:50:48.160 | the interest. But if I take that extra money and I invest it, and if I don't, if I invest it at,

00:50:54.880 | in excess of the interest rate on the debt, then mathematically the $60,000 is not a big deal in

00:51:01.520 | comparison to whatever the other money could be. And so that would be, that would be, or if I just

00:51:07.840 | simply deferred the, the housing cost and I don't want to go too deep into this, but this is always

00:51:12.960 | the war in financial planning. Because if I took that $200,000 and let's say that I had it in cash

00:51:18.640 | at 20 years old and I invested it, and let's just, you'd say I invested it at 10 for 10 years,

00:51:25.040 | 10 years at 10% interest, then now with no further contributions at the end of 10 years,

00:51:30.320 | I'm up to half a million bucks. Whereas I would never, I would basically just expect the house

00:51:35.600 | to grow at the rate of inflation unless I were improving it. And so I would view the house as,

00:51:40.480 | it's not a wise investment, it's a lifestyle choice. And I always try to say, well, let me

00:51:44.000 | build investments first rather than, rather than lifestyle. So go ahead and respond to that. And

00:51:49.760 | then I want to move on to kind of how you did it, because this is a, this is a never ending circle

00:51:54.240 | that we go around and around and around. - Listen, absolutely. And I think, I think

00:51:59.120 | that's it. I mean, it really, each must, each must settle it in their own mind and be at peace with

00:52:06.720 | it. Absolutely. And, and I think, you know, as, as for us, when we look at the, the uncertainty of

00:52:16.000 | even the financial markets, the, the, the country, who would have thought of, you know,

00:52:24.320 | the Twin Towers incidents, you know, all that. So that's why, and each has to base, do it based on

00:52:31.840 | value to each one. And so we don't, we don't ever judge or even really scratch our heads, you know,

00:52:38.320 | on when, when somebody makes different choices. It's just each, each has to be at peace.

00:52:43.680 | - Right. And I think, so for me, the idea of having fallback plan, you know, because you can't

00:52:48.320 | control things to me, that's, that, that would be key. Me personally, if I were, if I'm planning

00:52:53.760 | from that perspective, I don't think I would, I wouldn't choose this house, which is, you know,

00:52:59.040 | semi fancy and big and expensive to be that fallback plan. I would, if I were working on

00:53:04.320 | that fallback plan, I would, I think like, this is where you get into this constant question of why

00:53:08.400 | am I getting out of debt? I would keep the mortgage on this property and I'd buy, you know, an acre of

00:53:13.200 | land in the country and put a $10,000 mobile home on it. And that would be kind of, okay, if my

00:53:17.920 | financial life falls apart and I'm not able to make that promise, then I would have a place to

00:53:23.360 | retreat to that wasn't subject to, that wasn't subject to the bank as kind of my backup property

00:53:29.680 | to keep my family together. But you got to look at every situation. I'd like to move on and just

00:53:36.800 | talk about, and by the way, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and, and, and feedback.

00:53:41.440 | It's a subject I think a lot about and I am inclined personally, I think I place a lot more

00:53:49.600 | weight on the non-measurable, non-financially measurable things of life. Because to me,

00:53:56.240 | the only value of money is to fund life. And so if I'm spending all of my time,

00:54:01.680 | if I'm spending all of my time pursuing what was the appropriate, perfect mathematical solution,

00:54:07.920 | and I neglect and my wife is, is feeling insecure because, you know, I'm taking big risks with

00:54:14.160 | business and with leverage, then that may impact my marriage. And if my marriage falls apart,

00:54:18.960 | that destroys my life. Far better to walk away from a couple hundred thousand dollars of potential

00:54:24.960 | interest and keep my family strengthened and start from that strong home base. That's going to make

00:54:29.840 | a much bigger difference in my life in the long run. Excellent. Now, and listen, I'll even give

00:54:34.160 | you a little personal little example on that. So we were in, in Seattle area and had this very nice

00:54:42.800 | home with a mortgage on it. And I, so I thought, Oh, I need to be debt free. And so, and there you

00:54:52.400 | have one way to do it. There's two ways to do it. One is, is just sell the house. And the other way

00:54:57.760 | is to pay it off. Then that would, the one way is a little more painful, takes more discipline.

00:55:04.480 | By the way, those that didn't describe me at that time. And, and so, but my wife was

00:55:12.560 | on board, but she loved that house. And, and so we put it up for sale and sold it immediately.

00:55:20.560 | Person walked in, loved it. Yes, we'll take it sold. And then we moved, I was working for Boeing

00:55:28.880 | at that time and we moved closer to where I was working and, and it was a rental house, big rental

00:55:36.560 | house. However, it, it just wasn't as, it wasn't as nice. It wasn't even in the, had a country feel

00:55:44.000 | to it, you know, many standards, not bad. It just, it just wasn't like the other one. And so here,

00:55:50.720 | my wife now, let's say celebrating being debt free, sitting on the back steps crying, you know,

00:55:59.200 | because of the one versus the other. So, so that, that emotional component is, is huge. And really

00:56:09.200 | the lesson I learned in, yes, I could go debt free at that point, but you still have to live somewhere

00:56:15.680 | and the family is very important. Yeah. I'll share another personal anecdote that I,

00:56:22.240 | that I was really convicted in recently is I'm this very personally, I'm, I'm this very extreme

00:56:27.840 | kind of person always saying, well, let's go to the, you know, to the far end of, of whatever the

00:56:31.920 | subject is. I mean, my show is called radical personal finance. So I often talk constantly,

00:56:37.040 | probably too much. Well, listen, honey, let's go live in an RV or let's go live in a tiny house.

00:56:41.280 | Let's go like do these, do these things that are going to be financially so much superior. And my

00:56:48.800 | wife is, is, is, is, she's an amazing woman and she's game for just about any adventure. And,

00:56:56.240 | but one of the things I realized is that I wasn't, you know, her focus, everything that is

00:57:00.960 | the current, she spends all of her days here in the home and everything goes out of the house here.

00:57:08.160 | And so we have a very different emotional connection to the stuff and their living

00:57:13.840 | circumstances and, and, and just to that. And I think I was being insensitive to her needs

00:57:19.520 | just simply by kind of focusing on, well, look, I, you know, I can live, I can work out of a,

00:57:23.840 | I can work out of a backpack and I can, and I was just being very insensitive and I was really

00:57:28.480 | convicted about that. And I decided that's it. I'm going to, I'm not going to complain anymore.

00:57:33.200 | I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be insensitive anymore. And that really helped

00:57:39.360 | me to kind of free myself from this idea that I had to go and live out of my backpack, which is,

00:57:44.960 | I mean, it's okay that I would do that if I were single, but I'm not single and loving my wife

00:57:50.240 | means something very different. That's right. And then you've got a little one now. And I mean,

00:57:56.000 | I saw your, your string of photos of that little guy. So I sense that little guy's kind of important

00:58:01.600 | to you and he's going to continue to rock your boat and influence your decisions over time. And,

00:58:09.360 | and so, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's an exciting journey. All right. So we got a little bit,

00:58:15.040 | a little bit off on that. Where do you want to bring us back to?

00:58:19.440 | So how did you, how did your sons actually do this practically? What steps did you take as a

00:58:24.800 | father? I know you starting with a vision, but then practically to make this happen, because

00:58:31.360 | when your 23 year old son bought a house, this is the age at which is normal, normal advice in our

00:58:37.360 | society is that that's the age that, that your son would be graduating from college and would

00:58:41.040 | have maybe $30,000 of student loan debt getting ready to start his career. So what practically

00:58:45.440 | did you do differently such that three of your kids so far have been able to buy their houses

00:58:50.880 | debt-free? Yeah, well, it really is. We desire to prepare them. It's a journey. It's a process.

00:58:58.800 | And I mentioned with Joseph how when he was 10, he started programming, learning,

00:59:06.400 | learning programming. Nathan, when he was probably, oh, certainly early teens is when

00:59:16.320 | their granddad was teaching. So it was asked what I thought about it. He was willing to teach them.

00:59:25.200 | It was a Radio Shack course on DOS. And so those, those two little guys, Christopher and Nathan

00:59:34.880 | would go trucking over to granddad's house. I think it might've been once a week and they would

00:59:40.000 | go through DOS and learn. And so, and that was kind of the beginning. So then over time, it's

00:59:48.080 | about looking for needs and filling them and what we can learn in the process. So then eventually

00:59:55.840 | Terry and I in the early nineties were asked to lead a homeschool group here in town.

01:00:03.440 | So your kids, your kids are all homeschooled? Yes. So we, we agreed to do that. We had a

01:00:09.600 | newsletter. So we said to Nathan, Hey, would you be the, call it the editor? You know,

01:00:14.160 | we would write this stuff, but would you, would you put it in a newsletter for us? And so he,

01:00:19.200 | he jumped on again. It's, it's the exercising of then skills and abilities. And, and, and in that

01:00:26.320 | process and back then is when WordPerfect was, was you know, WordPerfect and Word, but WordPerfect

01:00:34.480 | was what we were using and, and he would get on a message board and when he'd have questions on

01:00:40.960 | formatting or different things. And, and so he over time he developed quite the reputation. I mean,

01:00:49.680 | and they, over time people started asking him questions and eventually then they,

01:00:56.880 | and WordPerfect invited him to be what's called a SysOp that he would be official part of it

01:01:06.320 | and answering questions. And, and that was a pretty big deal to this, this guy. And he wasn't

01:01:11.680 | that old at that point, I'm guessing somewhere 15, 16, and maybe even up to 17 through some of those

01:01:18.560 | years. And there were some perks, there was no pay, but it was perks. And, and, and so eventually

01:01:25.680 | though he, you know, so he's learning, he's, he's being challenged, he's growing and, and getting

01:01:32.240 | more technical. So then finally there was just some, it just was a time that we thought for him

01:01:41.120 | to stop and he, he agreed to stop that. But he had envisioned a career in computers. Well,

01:01:49.280 | about that time his sister saw a job opening downtown at a computer store that taught computer

01:01:55.600 | classes to, to the army officers from the, from the fort here. And, and so he didn't have a driver's

01:02:01.920 | license. I drove him down there, but he walked in there with a letter of recommendation on WordPerfect

01:02:07.040 | letterhead about his abilities to, in, in, in WordPerfect. And so here's this, the, the owner

01:02:14.480 | there who needs somebody to instruct. And he looks at Nathan who's partly shaving and, and he needs

01:02:22.160 | somebody. And then he looks at this letter again and finally says, okay, let's go for it. So at

01:02:28.800 | that point he, he started making, that was 25 an hour. So that was still a few years ago. He was

01:02:36.080 | making 25 an hour and I'm a electrical engineer. And frankly, when I, when I stopped or quit working

01:02:46.640 | in corporate America in '97, that's roughly what I was making. So here my son in his first

01:02:53.120 | kind of a job like that is, is making equivalent to what I was making per hour.

01:03:00.320 | It's pretty amazing. It, what's clear to me though, from your story is that one of the reasons why

01:03:07.600 | one of the themes and one of the tools that you were able to employ in order to accomplish this

01:03:14.000 | as a father was that your children had a broader focus to their education than simply academics.

01:03:20.160 | And there was a focus on academic skills, yes, but also vocational skills and developing skills

01:03:27.520 | at the market values. And I am really concerned about our broader culture because it seems to me

01:03:34.160 | that we extend childhood from zero to essentially at this stage is 20, 25 years old. And I had a

01:03:43.360 | remarkable experience in a previous company of working with a young man who had just gotten out

01:03:49.120 | of college and he was, he came from a very wealthy family and he never, he never wanted for anything,

01:03:54.960 | but he had just gotten out of college and for the first time in his life, he was working a job and

01:03:59.440 | was working a, it was his first job and he was 20 in his mid-20s. Now, thankfully he wasn't

01:04:06.720 | existing under the pressure of student loan payments or anything like that because his

01:04:11.040 | parents had paid for that for him. But I get, I'm so, I'm concerned that the average person

01:04:16.720 | graduating from mainstream government schooling doesn't have any ability to go and do that.

01:04:23.040 | But yet we, that, that your son, like you said, how old was he when he was earning $25 an hour?

01:04:28.240 | Oh, he was, he was 17, almost 18.

01:04:31.280 | Right. And this is the world that we live in. And, but yet we've got to help children to

01:04:37.600 | develop those vocational skills. And it's just simply not being done in mainstream culture.

01:04:42.080 | It's a real concern of mine.

01:04:43.280 | See, that's why, Titus too, primarily it does practical kinds of things for the ladies

01:04:50.880 | scheduling because it's practical, it's applying her time, it's making the best of her time.

01:04:55.680 | When we, we have, we just did a communication book. Communication is essential in every,

01:05:01.760 | in every aspect of life. It doesn't matter what you're going to do, man, woman,

01:05:05.760 | you know, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. And so, that, even the ability to communicate

01:05:13.600 | is just absolutely so, so lacking today. People carry on a conversation. They can,

01:05:19.600 | might be able to talk, but to be able to, to dialogue and, and learn. I mean, so we've,

01:05:26.160 | we've scratched the surface, for example, with you, Joshua, I have, I would just, you know,

01:05:31.440 | I'd have a blast getting to dig a little deeper inside that head, frankly. And I just, I just,

01:05:39.040 | I just love that kind of thing. And what, you know, what can I learn from this guy?

01:05:43.520 | And communication is what, and what enables us to do these things. And so, I mean, even when I

01:05:50.480 | graduated, I was a double-A, graduated from a reasonable school, went to work for Rockwell.

01:05:55.920 | And I remember the first time I had to write up a business letter.

01:05:59.920 | I was, I remember just, I was, I was at a total loss. I just didn't have to, to have to do it.

01:06:10.240 | Whereas our guys, and please understand, I'm not bragging, but I'm using them as an example.

01:06:16.000 | The skills that our guys have developed, I list a few of them in the book, and not just the boys,

01:06:22.720 | the girls, they are so strong in the skills they have. And, and so, and I can tell you stories

01:06:33.680 | about other, other young men and young women, you know, that have these kinds of skills.

01:06:38.240 | And that's what it's about. If you put aside the entertainment, which is going to cost you a

01:06:42.960 | fortune, you know, that's going to bleed you dry. You put aside the entertainment and make learning,

01:06:49.120 | well, let's use the word fun, make learning fun. It's, it's limitless what you can do with young

01:06:57.120 | people. And, and that's what really is the preparation for life. Your jobs, people are

01:07:03.440 | looking for their jobs to, to be their security. Well, again, HP's cutting 55,000 possibly jobs.

01:07:12.000 | People just become a cog, even if you're an engineer, you're, you're whatever, whatever

01:07:17.520 | you go to school for, you just become a cog. And, and then it becomes the business's financial

01:07:23.840 | responsibility to find who can do this job for the least amount of money, and therefore the

01:07:29.200 | greatest profit for the company and its shareholders. So, I think kids have to be,

01:07:35.520 | and adults as well, we need to be, we need to be robust. We need to be versatile, flexible,

01:07:42.080 | and, and constantly learning. Right. It's a,

01:07:46.960 | we have such a major opportunity. And especially when guiding young people, we have such an amazing

01:07:56.800 | world that we live in, where there's more access to the market. Like you said, I mean, a 12 year

01:08:03.760 | old today can go on fiverr.com and hire their services out as a, or go to 99designs.com and

01:08:11.280 | compete exactly as effectively as a graphic designer, as somebody who is, you know, 42 years

01:08:18.320 | old and has been designing for 10 years. It's all about skill. It's all about the application of

01:08:22.880 | skill. And I love, I mean, the stories in your book are plentiful, just illustrating to me

01:08:30.320 | the benefit that can come with home education as being an opportunity to train. And I want

01:08:35.920 | to give the math. So, because I thought this was really remarkable when I actually sat down and did

01:08:40.320 | it. And I was just thinking, okay, it sounds so impossible to be able to save. And your second

01:08:47.360 | son, I think his name was Christopher, who had paid basically $200,000 for the house. And I

01:08:54.400 | thought, well, how much would it take to save $200,000 for a house? And then I thought back

01:09:00.880 | and I thought of the work that I did over the years and the money that I squandered as a boy.

01:09:06.320 | And so, I think I started working, well, I don't remember when I wasn't working jobs, but from the

01:09:11.920 | age of, I was educated at home through seventh grade and then I went to a private school from

01:09:17.280 | seventh through twelfth grade. So, I had to work around the normal school calendar, which was an

01:09:21.360 | advantage that your children had over me. But I still, I think I earned about, probably about

01:09:26.640 | $5,000 a year until I graduated from high school. And then I earned probably, while I was going to

01:09:33.280 | college, I probably earned $20,000 to $40,000 each year just doing just average normal work.

01:09:39.680 | Until my final year of college, when I raised my income up to about $40,000 my final year of

01:09:44.400 | college. So, I thought back and I did the math on it and I said, okay, $200,000. Let's say that if

01:09:49.840 | I had been able to cut out a lot of the entertainment and the foolish things that I spent a lot of my

01:09:54.800 | money on and the lifestyle, and especially if I'd cut out the education costs, my college education

01:10:01.520 | costs were $20,000 a year. And I paid probably half of that by my best guess without having

01:10:09.040 | detailed numbers. The other half was covered by scholarships. If I hadn't, and I live in a world

01:10:14.880 | where I don't, the degree that I have, the only thing that it opened up to me was that in order

01:10:20.160 | to get my certified financial planner designation, they do require a four-year college university

01:10:24.880 | degree. But looking back, knowing what I now know, I could have taken the degree for, I could have

01:10:29.680 | taken the degree, I could have done that for $5,000, knowing what I know now, instead of $80,000.

01:10:35.920 | And so I look at it and I say, if I'd saved $10,000 each year from, say, from 18 through 22,

01:10:44.480 | that'd be $40,000. And then if I'd saved $15,000 a year just towards the house cost,

01:10:50.800 | then there I've got, I'm getting a lot closer. And I did the math and I realized how,

01:10:55.600 | in many ways, the story of what your sons did should be normal. That should, in the sense that

01:11:02.160 | it's not, they really, as you said in the preface, I'm sure they're great young men,

01:11:07.600 | but there's nothing special about them in terms of, it's just a different path.

01:11:11.280 | Yes. And so I think about this with my son and I think, wow, what if we switch these ages around

01:11:19.440 | and we shorten up and take care of the academic stuff at an earlier age and then add in the

01:11:25.040 | vocational stuff much earlier? And what an amazing future. Frankly, I'm not so sure that

01:11:33.920 | the powers that be would be very happy if we had many people doing that, because all of a sudden,

01:11:37.840 | we'd have a society of free men and women again who weren't enslaved to the tax-paying system.

01:11:44.800 | You know, but listen, Joshua, friend, you got it. I mean, you really have. It's nothing

01:11:53.520 | abnormal. It's just the doors that it opens. And when people realize what young people are capable

01:12:03.920 | of and not incapable of, it just changes the whole frame of mind that, well, for example,

01:12:13.680 | you're business-oriented. You've probably seen a ton of articles, I've seen them, that all say,

01:12:20.720 | you got to work your passion, work your passion. You got to be able to do what you love. I mean,

01:12:27.760 | really, it sounds good. I mean, so you got all these guys that love hunting and fishing,

01:12:31.200 | and they're thinking, wow, you know, yeah, why am I working hard and sweating like this? I need to

01:12:38.160 | do the other. But now consider, and this is what really Christ would say, but now consider the

01:12:45.440 | concept of, maybe I should love what I do. Think about your wife. Do you think every aspect of

01:12:53.600 | taking care of your son, she absolutely just, I mean, you know, he just got sick and without

01:12:59.520 | getting graphic here or there, you know, and she is just absolutely thrilled to go take care of

01:13:04.800 | those needs. Not a chance. Yes, yes. Cleaning the bathroom, or you know, you maybe, if you split

01:13:10.640 | that, it's the same thing. It's, life is not going to be to where you absolutely just love everything

01:13:18.880 | you do, but how much better to train our sons and our daughters to love what they do.

01:13:26.960 | Right. And what's funny is, what I laugh at, what I notice, let me not say laugh at, I notice

01:13:34.800 | oftentimes that what's old is new and what's new is old. There's a book, I forget the title of it,

01:13:41.760 | but this guy got very famous, but young man, very famous by, I'm trying, I can't come up with the

01:13:52.400 | name of it. He got very famous writing this book that basically doing your passion is wrong. And

01:13:59.040 | that the whole advice of like, go do what you're passionate about is baloney. This is a very

01:14:04.000 | popular book. And I played an excerpt of a speech he gave on my show. And his whole point was,

01:14:11.440 | it said, you can do two things. You can either do the work that you love, or you can love the work

01:14:16.640 | that you're doing and do it so well. And that's what makes room for you to do what you love.

01:14:20.560 | And I thought to myself, every 85 year old preacher must be cringing in his seat of the fact

01:14:25.360 | that he's, they've been preaching this for 50 years. And now it's very hip and popular as long

01:14:31.280 | as a cultural society. It's a best-selling book. The guy's all over the press saying,

01:14:37.280 | put your heart into your work. So essentially, as I would sum up, and I don't want to spoil the book.

01:14:48.800 | I want people to buy it and hear your whole idea. But basically the way that you did this with your

01:14:54.080 | sons, as I took away the formula, was to focus on building academic ability and then also concurrent

01:15:04.240 | with that, after laying a basic foundation of academic ability, then building in vocational

01:15:09.200 | skills and then dedicating time and resources toward exercising those vocational skills so that

01:15:15.840 | at a young age, your sons were able to make money and even a substantial amount of money compared to

01:15:21.120 | many others by developing skills. And so you invested in them by providing the equipment for

01:15:26.320 | that. Then encouraging and permitting the time where instead of needing to spend eight or nine

01:15:31.040 | hours or 10 hours a day locked up in a school doing busy work, they were able to spend maybe

01:15:38.640 | four hours a day doing academic work and another four or five hours a day doing earning work.

01:15:44.240 | And then by building in an ability for entrepreneurship, all of your children

01:15:49.040 | seemed to have their own business and their own independent form of livelihood,

01:15:52.800 | which obviated the need to go to university, which cut out the cost of university, and then

01:15:58.560 | allowed them to continue saving money towards their goals. And then when you put that formula

01:16:04.720 | together, it's relatively simple, right? You know, listen, I'll tell you now I know why

01:16:10.960 | you're the guy on that end of the mic, because what a great summary, truly. You encapsulated

01:16:18.400 | it very nicely. And so good job on that. By the way, I had forgotten, I would also encourage

01:16:26.320 | people that also like a little bit of taste of this. At Titus2.com, there's a newsletter,

01:16:34.880 | it's called Seriously Dads. And they're very short, but they're designed to be very challenging,

01:16:42.720 | little emails. And so that might be, you know, it's all going to be stuff along this line.

01:16:50.480 | So it isn't going to be fun and games, no jokes. But may we be men and challenge each other

01:16:57.520 | towards that. And may we raise sons to be men, not just big boys. So that's the thrust of what

01:17:04.960 | we're about. I'd like to close just with, I think, two final questions. And so throughout this

01:17:12.960 | conversation, and even in the title of your book, and even in the statement that you just said,

01:17:19.120 | you have talked about sons, raising sons. And in your book, it says buying a debt-free house,

01:17:25.920 | equipping your son. So there's a reason why you have son in the title of your books.

01:17:33.200 | Is there a difference between how you encourage and raise your sons and their financial path

01:17:38.720 | versus your daughters? And if so, what did you do differently and why?

01:17:43.200 | Okay. Well, we'll see if you—that's a mouthful, Joshua.

01:17:49.200 | I told you it wouldn't be an easy interview.

01:17:52.000 | Oh, it's great. No, no, you may have to bring me back on track, okay, just to remind you of that.

01:17:58.960 | But for example, the daughters, I mean, because as Christians, the typical role is, yes, the man

01:18:06.640 | is the provider. And so that is—and that's the primary audience is going to be Christians. That's

01:18:13.760 | what they're going to relate to and understand. And in the very beginning of the book, we say,

01:18:18.720 | "And oh, by the way, daughters are going to benefit from this as well." And so it just depends. Each

01:18:27.360 | one has to choose what they're—and all of our, really, Mary just turned 18. And so all of our,

01:18:35.120 | quote, "children" are adults. And we don't dictate to them. They're making choices.

01:18:40.160 | So for example, on the daughter side, and I could—oh, I would just love to tell you even

01:18:48.800 | just some of the stuff about our daughters. I mean, certainly, of course, there's the typical,

01:18:54.240 | I mean, they all love to—they love to sew and certainly cook. But Sarah, for example,

01:19:00.560 | 10 years ago, we came to her and said, "You know, Sarah, the children's books that we see out there,

01:19:07.840 | well, we don't see a lot of positive books out there. Usually—well, here's an example. Terry,

01:19:15.360 | for example, Terry one day noticed—you know what a spitwad is. She noticed some spitwads

01:19:22.960 | on the walls. And—but she knew what they were, but where in the world do these things come from?"

01:19:32.160 | And so she asked the children, "Children, what—where did this come from? What is this up

01:19:37.440 | here?" Well, it turns out it was some children's classic, kind of classic children's book that had

01:19:45.600 | this stuff in it. And so they were learning what we would consider bad examples, bad behavior out

01:19:55.200 | of the children's books. And so—and that's very customary for them. And so we said to Sarah 10

01:20:04.160 | years ago, "Honey, why don't you write children's books but that don't have negative in them, that

01:20:12.640 | actually are positive peer examples and encourage children?" Because the written word is extremely

01:20:20.480 | powerful and especially for young children. I'm telling you, you know, your little guy,

01:20:24.640 | when he's three years old, if you started reading the Moody books to him,

01:20:29.840 | first off, you would find he'd absolutely love them. And second thing, it's going to be encouraging

01:20:36.320 | him to love his parents. And by that time, if they're siblings, to love his siblings. I mean,

01:20:41.520 | it's this host—to love the Lord, there's host of positive things as opposed to negative examples.

01:20:48.480 | So anyway, she's been writing ghosts for 10 years. She just came out with her,

01:20:52.800 | really, I guess, ninth and 10th—well, the 10th would have been the Christmas book. But she's

01:20:58.880 | been doing that. So she's an accomplished author. And those books go around the world.

01:21:05.760 | Children are saved through them. Moms and dads actually tell us how much they love these books.

01:21:12.160 | So I mean, you talk about power and influence in a positive way. Because by the way, the same

01:21:19.040 | thing, the children in the example, they work, they have their own little home businesses. And

01:21:24.160 | it's all the things that we're talking about here, those are modeled with the children. So that's

01:21:32.640 | Sarah. But in that process, she has been—now, if this is going too long, you tell me. Sarah has

01:21:40.720 | been the manager of Titus 2 since, call it 2000, roughly, since back in 2000. So she is one sharp

01:21:52.320 | lady when it comes to managing a business, whether it be bookkeeping, tax laws, through the different

01:21:58.640 | states, an absolute phenomena when it comes to organization, incredible at communication, her

01:22:10.240 | skills, Adobe Photoshop. It used to be Quark, and now it's InDesign. And so she used to know

01:22:20.080 | QuarkSort. So you see I'm giving you, these are all professional-level skills that she has.

01:22:28.240 | And then now Anna, who's the next in line, and Anna's probably

01:22:33.440 | 22, I'm guessing, somewhere in there. So Anna now, she has a lot of skills when it comes to—she

01:22:45.920 | does e-books and also the book layout now. So she has taken over InDesign.

01:22:54.080 | And that's been a lot of—I guess she's also been working with some photography and some other—but

01:23:00.000 | those are primarily for Anna. And also, all the five younger ones are all very accomplished

01:23:07.760 | musicians, and that was all self-taught. So Anna has spent a lot of time on music.

01:23:14.400 | And then finally, Mary now, but she's just graduated, homeschooled, graduating now.

01:23:21.280 | And we're finding she's an incredible artist. So we are fueling that. And she just did the art,

01:23:29.680 | the drawing in Sarah's most recent book. So we're always looking, how can we expand

01:23:36.720 | their abilities and challenge them? In our home, if I ask you to do something,

01:23:43.680 | and I mean, you know, nicely, if I ask you to do something, you go, "Well, I don't know how to do

01:23:48.160 | that." Then the answer is, "That's fine. We'll just give you a little longer to do it." And that's

01:23:57.440 | life. That's life. Yeah. To me, this is—you're hitting on one of my hot buttons. You talked a

01:24:04.240 | little bit in—I think it was your Buying a House Debt Free book—about autodidactism. And in the

01:24:09.920 | world we live—being an autodidact, a self-taught learner, and the world in which we live, we live

01:24:15.520 | in such an amazing time. I mean, let's see, in the last couple of weeks, I learned how to—well,

01:24:21.120 | right now I'm learning piano. I found some YouTube courses. So I take the iPad and I

01:24:27.520 | toss it on the piano and I print off the stuff online. And I watch these piano lessons on

01:24:32.400 | YouTube and I watch the instructor. And there's all the lessons that I need. I found a kid,

01:24:38.800 | a TED Talk one time of this kid in, I think it was Pakistan, somewhere in that region of the world.

01:24:45.760 | Very poor, but he taught himself something like 15 instruments in that scenario. I've taught myself—I

01:24:52.480 | mean, the world of learning that we live in—I taught myself how to cut my wife's hair.

01:24:56.560 | So I've been doing that. And I've been learning how to use a computer program. The first thing I

01:25:02.560 | do is like, "I don't know how to use this program." I go to YouTube and type it in and say, "Let me

01:25:06.560 | learn how to do it." And this opens up. It's hearkening. So what happens is there's this

01:25:10.560 | cultural war. I see this cultural war that happens in popular culture. And one of the major things

01:25:17.280 | that people try to do is divide it along gender lines. And to me, at least my vision, that's a

01:25:23.680 | whole involved conversation, which is probably appropriate in another forum. But to me, I look

01:25:28.960 | at it and I say, "I don't care that much. I mean, genders matter. Men are not women and women are

01:25:35.120 | not men." That doesn't mean that somehow women are destined to be stuck in the house as the cultural

01:25:44.800 | battle goes, barefoot and pregnant, and then the man is going to go off and conquer the world.

01:25:50.800 | I desire to be at home and present with my family. And that's no different for my wife versus me.

01:25:56.880 | There is a difference in responsibility. And the key is that both of us need to be freed and built

01:26:02.720 | up with those skills and with those abilities. And that I think a wise parent should be looking

01:26:08.320 | to equip their children with skills and with abilities. And those skills and abilities go

01:26:14.080 | beyond just academic skills. I want to close with, I'm going to read an excerpt from a book here.

01:26:23.280 | And I've been wanting to share just this. It's about a page and a half on the show. And I'll

01:26:27.280 | take the liberty of doing it now and then give you an opportunity to respond. Because this is

01:26:34.160 | right up your alley. But this is just a page and a half from John Taylor Gatto's book called

01:26:39.200 | An Underground History of American Education. And this is in a section entitled Extending Childhood.

01:26:45.360 | And to me, I think this is important information that people need to know. And it says, and I'm

01:26:50.480 | leaving out just a few sentences in it to keep it concise. So there are, I am skipping one,

01:26:56.320 | a couple of sentences here and there. "From the beginning," and this is John Taylor Gatto writing,

01:27:00.880 | "From the beginning, there was a purpose behind forced schooling. Purpose which had nothing to

01:27:05.280 | do with what parents, kids, or communities wanted. Instead, this grand purpose was forged out of what

01:27:11.200 | a highly centralized corporate economy and system of finance bent on internationaling itself was

01:27:21.280 | thought to need. That and what a strong centralized political state needed too.

01:27:26.160 | School was looked upon from the first decade of the 20th century as a branch of industry

01:27:31.600 | and a tool of governance. In a speech he gave before businessmen prior to the First World War,

01:27:37.120 | Woodrow Wilson made this unabashed disclosure. "We want one class to have a liberal education.

01:27:44.480 | We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity to forego the privilege of a liberal

01:27:50.720 | education and fit themselves to perform specific, difficult, manual tasks." By 1917, the major

01:27:58.560 | administrative jobs in American schooling were under the control of a group referred to in the

01:28:02.720 | press of that day as "The Education Trust." The first meeting of this trust included representatives

01:28:09.600 | of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National

01:28:14.640 | Education Association. "The chief end," wrote Benjamin Kidd, the British evolutionist in 1918,

01:28:21.840 | was to "impose on the young the ideal of subordination." At first, the primary target

01:28:29.280 | was the tradition of independent livelihoods in America. Unless Yankee entrepreneurialism could

01:28:34.960 | be extinguished, at least among the common population, the immense capital investments

01:28:39.920 | that mass production industry required for equipment weren't conceivably justifiable.

01:28:45.920 | Students were to learn to think of themselves as employees competing for the favor of management,

01:28:51.360 | not as Franklin or Edison had once regarded themselves as self-determined free agents.

01:28:56.240 | Only by a massive psychological campaign could the menace of overproduction in America be contained.

01:29:02.480 | That's what important men and academics called it, the menace of overproduction.

01:29:09.120 | The ability of Americans to think as independent producers had to be curtailed. Certain writings

01:29:15.440 | of Alexander Inglis carried a hint of schooling's role in this ultimately successful project

01:29:20.640 | to curb the tendency of little people to compete with big companies. From 1880 to 1930,

01:29:26.800 | overproduction became a controlling metaphor among the managerial classes, and this idea would have

01:29:32.320 | a profound influence on the development of mass schooling. I know how difficult it is for most

01:29:38.240 | of us who mow our lawns and walk our dogs to comprehend that long-range social engineering

01:29:43.840 | even exists, let alone that it began to dominate compulsion schooling nearly a century ago.

01:29:49.680 | Yet the 1934 edition of Elwood P. Cumberley's Public Education in the United States is explicit

01:29:56.400 | about what happened and why. As Cumberley puts it, "In this, it has come to be desirable that

01:30:03.200 | children should not engage in productive labor. On the contrary, all recent thinking is opposed

01:30:09.760 | to their doing so. Both the interests of organized labor and the interests of the nation have set

01:30:16.320 | against child labor." The statement occurs in a section of Public Education called, "A New

01:30:23.600 | Lengthening of the Period of Dependence," in which Cumberley explains that, "The coming of the factory

01:30:30.080 | system has made extended childhood necessary by depriving children of the training and education

01:30:36.880 | that farm and village life once gave. With the breakdown of home and village industries,

01:30:42.160 | the passing of chores, and the extinction of the apprenticeship system by large-scale production

01:30:47.520 | with its extreme division of labor and the all-conquering march of machinery, an army of

01:30:53.840 | workers has arisen," said Cumberley, "who know nothing." Furthermore, modern industry needs

01:31:00.640 | such workers. Sentimentality could not be allowed to stand in the way of progress. According to

01:31:06.160 | Cumberley, with "much ridicule from the public press," the old book subject curriculum was set

01:31:12.400 | aside, replaced by a change in purpose and "a new psychology of instruction which came to us from

01:31:19.520 | abroad." That last mysterious reference to a new psychology is to practices of dumbed-down schooling

01:31:26.480 | common to England, Germany, and France, the three major world coal powers, other than the United

01:31:32.640 | States, each of which had already converted its common population into an industrial proletariat.

01:31:38.880 | Arthur Calhoun's 1919 "Social History of the Family" notified the nation's academics what

01:31:45.600 | was happening. Calhoun declared that the fondest wish of utopian writers was coming true. The child

01:31:52.080 | was passing from its family "into the custody of community experts." He offered a significant

01:31:59.520 | forecast that in time we could expect to see public education "designed to check the mating

01:32:06.000 | of the unfit." And I'll stop there because it's a long, lengthy quote, but it's interesting when

01:32:12.240 | you get into these certain things. I think we have a moral responsibility in an age and time in which

01:32:17.520 | it's easier than ever to train children to be productive, autonomous, self-independent,

01:32:24.880 | functioning members of society with skills to provide for the needs of their life and the

01:32:29.600 | skills of learning the needs of their life. I think it's utterly criminal how we've removed

01:32:34.480 | that foundation of practical education from children. And if you look at the net result in

01:32:42.240 | our society and you look at the rising wage gap, the rising wage gap for men, the rising wage gap

01:32:49.120 | for women, the difference between the wages at the lower end and the wages at the top end,

01:32:55.760 | and you look at it, you can come to many different conclusions. But I often come to the conclusion

01:33:01.040 | that, interesting, labor is consistently getting cheaper. Why is labor consistently getting cheaper?

01:33:07.200 | And I keep looking to find the statistics on this. I've read, but I haven't been able to prove it to

01:33:11.040 | my satisfaction. Even in the course of gender roles, it gets very, very sticky. I try to read

01:33:19.440 | various people that talk about gender issues, and it's a big conversation that often with a show

01:33:25.440 | like mine gets you into trouble. But one of the things that I often wonder, do you not notice the

01:33:29.200 | fact that historically, that a man could support his family with his wage, and when you double the

01:33:37.760 | workforce, you have the salaries. And that's essentially what's happened in our culture,

01:33:43.680 | is if you double the workforce, you have the salaries. And I've worked in financial planning

01:33:47.840 | with so many families who are just so struggling and frustrating to struggle. They're frustrated

01:33:56.640 | with how do they improve their situation. And as I work with them to go through the situation,

01:34:01.520 | oftentimes just some very simple changes can make a dramatic difference. But we have the

01:34:06.880 | opportunity in starting, and by teaching skills, and pursuing another path, and building vocational

01:34:13.040 | skills that are needed and valued in the market. I mean, as your own story shows, and I pray that

01:34:21.200 | you continue to have continued success, and that you can maintain a clean testimony, and that

01:34:27.360 | because you can lay out for those of us who are younger and look at the problems of the world and

01:34:32.880 | say, "How do these problems get solved?" I think that what you've done is an important

01:34:37.600 | aspect of solving those problems. I give you the last word.

01:34:40.880 | Listen, I've had a delightful time. I mean, truly, I think any number of these different

01:34:48.640 | areas, we could just kind of keep going on. I mean, because they're fascinating. We lose sight,

01:34:56.080 | I think people lose sight that the educational system, certainly once you get into brick and

01:35:01.840 | mortar colleges, it's a business. And it's about turning out product. And people have to look at

01:35:14.640 | all the factors that are going on versus just, "I've got to prepare my children."

01:35:20.000 | And it doesn't mean just because everybody else does it, it doesn't mean that that is the best

01:35:29.040 | way today. And I'll stop because I really, I just feel so strongly about it. We could really,

01:35:41.600 | this whole thing siloing, you come out of the schools and you're only trained in a little

01:35:47.360 | narrow fields versus being like you're doing, flexible, learning, expanding. This is what

01:35:53.360 | we model it first as parents, and then we work with our children and teach them as well.

01:35:59.680 | Steve, I thank you for making the time to come on the show today. I've really enjoyed it.

01:36:03.520 | And so your website is titustothenumeral2.com. And how many books have you written at this point?

01:36:10.480 | Any idea? I think Terry and I, we've probably got 10 and Sarah maybe is close to about 10 as well.

01:36:18.560 | So that's great. And we have that for men seriously. It's for really guys that are

01:36:26.320 | serious, serious about what their job as dads is. And they can sign up there as well.

01:36:32.000 | Right. I've read, let's see, I think I've read three of your books. I've read

01:36:36.720 | Buying a House Debt Free and Raising Sons to Provide for a Single Income Household. And then

01:36:41.440 | also your book, Redeeming the Time. And I have on my desk here, the book, Making Great

01:36:44.640 | Conversationalists, which is, I could do interviews on all of those subjects. I think that they're

01:36:50.320 | incredibly, incredibly valuable. So titustwo.com. And I would encourage people if you want to get

01:36:55.200 | the full story on your process, on the path that you've done, Buying a House Debt Free is a great

01:37:03.600 | book. And I will look forward to the update after all of your children are older. I'll look forward

01:37:10.080 | to hearing when they're all in their thirties and forties, hopefully they look back and at that

01:37:15.200 | point in time, hopefully they'll be proud of what you raised them. And then we'll find if there's

01:37:20.960 | the issue, then that'll come out. But I love to hear, I would love to talk with them and hear

01:37:26.720 | their stories. It would just be so interesting to me. Steve, thanks so much for coming on the show.

01:37:30.640 | I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you.

01:37:32.560 | Pretty inspiring, eh? I told you it would be cool. It's such a cool story. It's so neat to hear

01:37:39.440 | people who have accomplished things. I'm still not sure. I really struggle with the idea of just

01:37:45.920 | holding the vision of the house being the ideal, but I certainly understand why Steve does that.

01:37:53.360 | I struggle with that a little bit personally, but I love the tangibility of that or the tangible

01:37:57.920 | nature of that as a goal for a young person, of holding that as a specific, tangible goal.

01:38:03.760 | You'll have to think about that and you'll have to decide how or what you want to apply from that.

01:38:09.120 | But I really encourage you, get Steve's book and read it. It's well worth reading.

01:38:13.920 | He does a really good job in his book of presenting this as a comprehensive plan.

01:38:18.720 | And frankly, it's pretty simple. Hold a vision before your child, hold a vision of what they

01:38:26.560 | can accomplish, and then help them build up a high amount of income through building job skills,

01:38:32.720 | through building work skills, through exposure, through creating businesses of their own.

01:38:37.200 | Hold that vision of income and then help them to keep their expenses low and then build the

01:38:43.760 | character in them that they can do it with a vision where instead of saying, "Oh, I just can't

01:38:47.680 | spend any money and I got to go out and get out from under my parents' household and go out and

01:38:51.200 | blow a bunch of money," hold the vision of why you're doing and how you're helping.

01:38:54.880 | So that's essentially what the topic is. Also, the book is well worth getting just for the stories

01:39:02.320 | at the beginning of each chapter. There are a total of 15 chapters in the book. And at the

01:39:06.480 | beginning of each chapter, Steve tells a different story of a different young man and his story

01:39:12.560 | towards buying a house. And so I hope you enjoy that. It's really a great book. He does a good

01:39:17.360 | job of laying it out in a comprehensive way and it's totally integrated. It's really worth reading,

01:39:22.480 | really inspiring. And I'm definitely thinking a lot about that and how to hold that vision

01:39:28.000 | before my son. I hope you check it out. Real quick before I hit the music, I just want to

01:39:35.760 | give you a quick preview of what's going to be coming over the next couple of weeks.

01:39:39.520 | Tomorrow on the show, I plan to record and release the show that I had planned on Gratitude

01:39:46.320 | and Gratitude and Optimism. I think it'll be a great show. And so I plan to do that tomorrow.

01:39:51.360 | And then on Friday, I'll be doing the Friday Q&A. I've got lots of questions and I love getting

01:39:56.480 | those questions. I still will need more voicemail questions. So if you want to call in those

01:40:01.120 | questions on the voicemail line, just go to the website at radicalpersonalfinance.com,

01:40:05.360 | hit the Leave Me a Voicemail button. You can do it right on your phone, right from the road.

01:40:09.360 | I'll hopefully try to do it when it's quiet. That'll help to play it on the show. But you

01:40:12.560 | can do it right from your phone or from your computer and leave me the voicemail. And I do

01:40:16.000 | have a number of email questions as well. So I'll be doing that on Friday. Next week, I've recorded

01:40:20.640 | a bunch of interviews. I've got some really great interviews lined up. I've got an interview with

01:40:25.040 | Doug Nordman, who is, we're going to talk about the history of early retirement. He's known as

01:40:31.280 | Nords all over the internet and the early retirement forum. That's a great interview.

01:40:35.520 | I've got an interview recorded with Jeff, who writes at the Sustainable Life, talks about

01:40:40.160 | the integration of sustainability and green living and early retirement, personal finance.

01:40:46.800 | I've recorded an interview with a man named Jonathan, and he has a site called 10K to Talent,

01:40:51.920 | where he talks about how to help your son or daughter develop their talent and understand

01:41:01.680 | how they can apply their talent in a way that the market would recognize. It's a really great

01:41:04.880 | interview. I've recorded an interview with Scott Young, who is the guy who did the MIT challenge,

01:41:13.760 | where he put himself through the MIT computer science curriculum in about a year. That's a

01:41:17.440 | really great one, where we talk about college. We talk about college and other ideas surrounding

01:41:26.000 | how to learn more easily. I also have an interview with a man named Dr. Vern Poythress,

01:41:31.920 | who is a professor. He talks about some things that he has helped with children and helping his

01:41:40.160 | children, helping his two sons matriculate to manhood at the age of 12. We had an interesting

01:41:46.480 | discussion around that and how to help that. I may play all five of those interviews next week.

01:41:51.040 | My concern is I've wound up somehow recording a bunch of interviews on family, kids, all this

01:41:57.280 | stuff. This show is not the raising kids show. There have been several interviews with Christians

01:42:06.800 | and a lot on religious faith. That's also not the point of this show. I need a week or two.

01:42:14.640 | I may play all these back to back next week, just so that I can get some time. I've got to get some

01:42:19.600 | stuff squared away on the website and get things improved. It is in rough shape. I need to really

01:42:24.080 | amp up the professionalism. I need to dedicate some time to that. I may next week play all five

01:42:28.800 | of those shows and do interviews. I may not, just because I need to vary the content. I don't want

01:42:35.600 | this to just all be... This is not the Christian personal finance show, which is taking me to the

01:42:42.720 | next thing. I do have a bunch of more interviews scheduled this week on some other topics. I found

01:42:47.600 | a couple of Canadian financial advisors that I've got interviews scheduled with,

01:42:52.160 | which will be good. I've got some interviews scheduled with a young lady who runs a personal

01:42:59.280 | finance blog for teens. I've also had an interview scheduled with a man named Ben Falk,

01:43:05.040 | who is a permaculture designer and really a neat guy focused on sustainable development.

01:43:10.720 | It's just a really, really cool guy. He does some really neat work up in New Hampshire,

01:43:15.200 | Vermont. I can't remember which state. I've got a bunch of cool interviews. I need to do

01:43:18.960 | some more technical interviews. I've got an interview lined up with Paul Merriman,

01:43:25.040 | who is a financial advisor, a former financial advisor, has a neat financial planning website.

01:43:29.120 | He's written a bunch of books to help many of you guys. I'm doing plenty of technical content,

01:43:33.920 | but I just needed some time. What I could really use some help with, I've got a bunch of topics

01:43:38.560 | on my list of potential topics that I'm going to be doing shows on. I also have a bunch of shows

01:43:45.840 | that I want to interview people on, things that I'm not expert enough with. I've had several

01:43:51.760 | recommendations from some of you people with Bitcoin guests, Canadian guests, which is

01:43:56.640 | something. I would love to talk with some people about ethnic differences in financial planning.

01:44:02.960 | If any of you know anybody, I'm interested in different cultures' approaches to financial

01:44:08.560 | planning. Asian cultures, I would like to do a show on the Haitian and Latino practice. I don't

01:44:17.440 | know what it's called in Spanish. In Creole, it's called a soul, where they do this idea where

01:44:23.440 | everyone chips in. Every month, everyone puts in 100 bucks, and then each or every week, and then

01:44:28.080 | each week, it goes to a different person. That allows them to accumulate larger amounts of money.

01:44:31.920 | I'd love to do an interview on that. If you know much about that topic or if you know someone,

01:44:36.000 | could you get in touch with me? Email me, Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I'd love to do

01:44:39.840 | learn some about different religious approaches to money. I'm familiar with Christian theology on

01:44:50.080 | money, and I'm a little bit familiar with some Jewish teachings on money. I've talked with a

01:44:54.800 | few Jewish rabbis, but I'd love to bring somebody on the show who would talk about that and also

01:45:01.440 | Islam. I know there are Islam teachings and Islamic law about money. I'd love to learn about

01:45:06.880 | that. I'd also love to learn if there are other religions that have. I don't know if Hinduism or

01:45:11.840 | Buddhism have teachings about money. If any of you are experts in that or if any of you know anybody

01:45:16.640 | who you think would be an interesting guest on that topic, I'd love to learn about that.

01:45:21.040 | That would probably help to balance the content out a little bit on this show, which I think would

01:45:27.520 | be interesting. I'm just interested in those topics. I don't know anything about them.

01:45:31.680 | If any of you are on those topics, I would love to hear from you with suggestions. If you have

01:45:39.040 | other show suggestions, other show guests, I've got a couple of guests that I'm working on on

01:45:43.680 | some of the technical things. I'm going to do a show on the fiduciary standard versus the

01:45:46.960 | suitability standard. I ripped Tony Robbins apart on that, but I owe you guys an entire show so you

01:45:51.840 | understand that concept and that conflict that exists in the financial planning business to

01:45:56.560 | explain it clearly. It's not fair of me just to tear Tony apart, but I need to actually provide

01:46:04.000 | the education on that topic. I'm working with an attorney on that. I've got plenty more technical

01:46:09.200 | financial planning shows coming. I just wanted to give you a heads up on what's going to come,

01:46:12.880 | but I need to get some time. I'm going to be applying a bunch of interviews over the next

01:46:15.600 | couple of weeks so that I can get some stuff squared away on the site. Be thrilled. For those

01:46:20.880 | of you who aren't members, I'd love for you to consider joining the membership site. Major focus

01:46:26.160 | for me also is to enhance that. I've got an idea. I'm not going to take any more time today to go

01:46:30.720 | over, but I've been working hard on that to add some more content there. I'm going to leave it

01:46:39.920 | there, but I've been working hard on developing some content there. I had some conversations

01:46:44.720 | today with a First Perspective sponsor that I think will be a sponsor I can feel comfortable

01:46:49.920 | endorsing on the subject that I get more questions from you guys than anything else about how do I

01:46:55.040 | find a great financial planner and a great financial advisor. I've been trying to solve

01:46:58.960 | that question for you, and I think I may have it. I've got to work out some details with them still,

01:47:05.200 | but I'll be bringing that to you hopefully over the next couple of weeks as well.

01:47:08.560 | Exciting times on the show. I've been enjoying it. I hope you guys are too.

01:47:13.040 | Working hard to make this great. I love your feedback. I love your suggestions. Feel free.

01:47:16.960 | Comment on the show. Make sure you can email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I love those.

01:47:21.920 | Love the reviews as well. I'm going to read one review as we go out here from iTunes.

01:47:27.040 | This review comes from CQ and CQ says, "Highly recommended. Most inspirational. I love this

01:47:33.360 | podcast. This is a perfect example of why podcasting is such a great tool to help people

01:47:38.000 | improve themselves through a wide variety of available subjects. It's obvious that Joshua

01:47:42.800 | is passionate about teaching personal finance and helping his listeners get a handle on their

01:47:46.160 | finances. If you are here because you are working your way out of debt, trying to reduce your

01:47:50.480 | spending, don't know how to invest or plan for college or home or retirement, or you just want

01:47:54.400 | to simplify your life, Joshua has already built a huge resource. He doesn't just cover the highlights,

01:47:59.920 | leaving you unable to apply those ideas to your own situation. He gives plenty of examples and

01:48:03.680 | when helpful, breaks out the calculator so you can follow along. Just subscribe and start."

01:48:08.000 | That's awesome. I thank you. Makes me feel so good reading that because it's getting across.

01:48:14.080 | It makes me feel like I'm doing okay and getting better. So thank you for those reviews. I'd be

01:48:20.080 | thrilled if you haven't left a review. I'd be thrilled if you would leave a review. Don't do

01:48:23.760 | it for any other reason than me. I love to get them. They pop up on my phone and they make my

01:48:28.000 | morning. They usually come in around 5 a.m. or I wake up pretty early and I take a look at my phone

01:48:33.680 | and boom, there's a review. It's awesome and I get really excited. So if you value the show,

01:48:38.240 | leave me a review on iTunes or on Stitcher. That also does clearly help the show, helps other

01:48:43.920 | people feel good about it, helps with some of the social proof and it means a lot. So you can do it

01:48:49.040 | right from your phone. You can do it right from the computer. It's easy to do but I value those

01:48:53.600 | and I thank each of you who has left a review. Back with you tomorrow. Talk to you soon.

01:49:00.720 | [Music]

01:49:28.800 | Thank you for listening to today's show. This show is intended to provide entertainment,

01:49:33.680 | education and financial enlightenment. Your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any

01:49:42.800 | actionable advice without knowing anything about you. This show is not and is not intended

01:49:50.960 | to be any form of financial advice. Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you

01:49:59.760 | find to be caring, competent and trustworthy and consult them because they are the ones who can

01:50:07.360 | understand your specific needs, your specific goals and provide specific answers to your questions.

01:50:15.760 | Hold them accountable for your results. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate

01:50:21.280 | in today's show but I'm one person and I make mistakes. If you spot a mistake in something

01:50:26.560 | I've said, please come by the show page and comment so we can all learn together.

01:50:31.200 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here. With Kroger brand products from Ralph's,

01:50:36.560 | you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger brand's proven

01:50:41.360 | quality products come at exceptionally low prices and with a money-back quality guarantee,

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RPF0111-Steve_Maxwell_Interview