RPF0123-Friday

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00:00:30.000 | Friday Q&A today, and I'm going to handle these three questions.

00:00:35.000 | Number one, what's it like and what do you need to know to be the executor of an estate?

00:00:39.600 | Number two, how do we deal with the disharmony between specialization and generalization?

00:00:46.000 | And what are some things to consider if one spouse decides to stay at home?

00:00:51.000 | Good morning, my name is Joshua Sheets and this is the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

00:00:55.000 | I thank you for being here.

00:00:56.000 | One day late, we're actually, this is a Friday Q&A show,

00:00:59.000 | we're recording it and releasing it on Saturday, getting ready for the holidays.

00:01:02.000 | Thank you for being here.

00:01:04.000 | Going to get today lined up, and I'm just going to answer these three questions.

00:01:07.000 | I've had a good number of questions come in from you guys, and I thank you.

00:01:11.000 | I've got more and more, I mean, I would ask for more and more of them,

00:01:14.000 | especially those of you who can call them in on the voicemail line on the website.

00:01:18.000 | Just pull up RadicalPersonalFinance.com on your phone or on your computer,

00:01:22.000 | and you'll see the little button that says "Send us a voice message,"

00:01:25.000 | and that's how you can call in a question.

00:01:27.000 | Some of them, though, were a little heavy for this morning, a little bit in-depth,

00:01:29.000 | and frankly, I didn't feel like doing any math today.

00:01:32.000 | So I'm going to answer these three more narrative questions,

00:01:35.000 | and then I'm going to line up the interviews that I'll be releasing over the next two weeks

00:01:38.000 | while I'm out of town and enjoying the holidays.

00:01:42.000 | And I hope that all of you have the same thing.

00:01:46.000 | So let's start with a question from Eric.

00:01:48.000 | This is an email question.

00:01:49.000 | Eric says, "Joshua, I've been told by a few different people,

00:01:52.000 | a mother, an aunt, an uncle, and a close family friend,

00:01:55.000 | that I will be named the executor of their estate in their will.

00:01:59.000 | Until recently, I felt like I knew what that would entail,

00:02:02.000 | but lately I'm not really sure, and I'm seriously questioning what I would do

00:02:06.000 | after listening to your response to Brandon's question.

00:02:09.000 | I feel like there's much more to learn.

00:02:12.000 | I do have a fairly good understanding of personal finance subject matter,

00:02:15.000 | so I'm familiar with what the basic things would be,

00:02:18.000 | but I'm curious if any books or lengthy articles have been written on the process

00:02:22.000 | of effectively being the executor of someone's estate,

00:02:25.000 | or if this is something that you'd be doing a future podcast on.

00:02:27.000 | Thanks again, Eric Maryland."

00:02:29.000 | Eric, thanks for the question, and let me--

00:02:32.000 | hopefully it'll set your mind at ease.

00:02:33.000 | It's really not going to be that complicated for the vast majority of people.

00:02:37.000 | Now, I have not myself settled an estate.

00:02:40.000 | I have several friends who are estate planning attorneys

00:02:43.000 | who've worked through the process of settling many of them,

00:02:46.000 | and I've watched it done a few times with people here and there,

00:02:49.000 | and I've actually personally named the executor on several estates that I know of.

00:02:53.000 | When you're the financial planner, you are honored with the responsibility

00:02:59.000 | of being entrusted with this duty.

00:03:02.000 | For the vast majority of people, though, it's really not going to be that complicated.

00:03:06.000 | Most people have fairly straightforward situations.

00:03:10.000 | In essence, you have a few different responsibilities that are yours

00:03:14.000 | as the executor of an estate.

00:03:16.000 | Essentially, your job as the executor of someone's estate is to

00:03:21.000 | basically wind down all of their affairs,

00:03:26.000 | so to close out and terminate all of their financial affairs

00:03:29.000 | and close up all of the unfinished loose ends of their life,

00:03:33.000 | at least the financial and legal aspects of it.

00:03:36.000 | Perhaps you can't solve any relationships that they left unresolved

00:03:41.000 | or any problems that they caused in the world,

00:03:44.000 | but at least you can wrap up their financial affairs.

00:03:47.000 | Your job as an executor is to protect the deceased person's property

00:03:55.000 | from any improper attempts on that property,

00:04:03.000 | take care of any debts or taxes that they owe,

00:04:06.000 | and then to transfer the money or the property to whomever the people are

00:04:10.000 | that they have specified is going to receive it.

00:04:14.000 | Your job is to basically act as a fiduciary toward them.

00:04:22.000 | You essentially need to focus on what would they do in this situation

00:04:27.000 | without any self-dealing, without any attempt to improve your own situation in life.

00:04:32.000 | Now, that's really a fairly straightforward proposition, right?

00:04:37.000 | That's a fairly straightforward thing that you can do.

00:04:41.000 | Now, if somebody's situation is simple,

00:04:45.000 | and this is why I say it's probably not that big a deal

00:04:48.000 | because most people's situations are fairly simple,

00:04:51.000 | then it's not going to be that big of a deal.

00:04:56.000 | Let's say you're family members.

00:04:58.000 | Let's say that they're a median household and they have some money

00:05:04.000 | but most of it is tucked inside just some fairly straightforward investment accounts,

00:05:09.000 | maybe a 401(k) or a 403(b).

00:05:12.000 | Maybe your mother is receiving Social Security,

00:05:14.000 | perhaps a defined benefit pension payout.

00:05:17.000 | Perhaps she owns a house, something like that.

00:05:21.000 | Well, in that situation, it's fairly simple.

00:05:23.000 | Depending on your state and your state's probate court proceedings,

00:05:27.000 | you may or may not need to pass the estate through probate.

00:05:30.000 | The accounts that have beneficiary designations are going to be fairly simple.

00:05:35.000 | So if it's a 401(k), then the money is just going to be going to flow to whoever is listed as the beneficiary.

00:05:41.000 | If she has a life insurance policy, the life insurance company is going to pay that money to the beneficiary.

00:05:46.000 | And so you might simply be left disposing of the house and any personal bank accounts, things like that,

00:05:53.000 | any personal property, personal effects.

00:05:55.000 | But usually for most people, that's really not going to be a big concern or a big challenge.

00:06:02.000 | So in most situations, it really is pretty simple.

00:06:08.000 | Now, there are, of course, situations where it's not simple.

00:06:12.000 | And so those situations where it would not be simple would be if there are unusual assets.

00:06:17.000 | Let's say, for example, that your mother owns a distribution company or an import/export business

00:06:23.000 | and she dies and she has 400 employees and she's the owner of 60% of the stock,

00:06:30.000 | but she has two partners in that business, each of whom own 20% of the stock.

00:06:36.000 | Well, now the disposition of her stock, and especially if that wasn't preplanned,

00:06:42.000 | the disposition of her stock is going to be a bit of a challenge.

00:06:45.000 | How are you going to deal with an orderly transition of the company?

00:06:48.000 | Because depending on the order you may, as the executor of her estate,

00:06:53.000 | you may wind up and step in and have the legal duty and legal obligation to handle her business affairs.

00:06:59.000 | And that may or may not be something that you are equipped to do or equipped to handle.

00:07:04.000 | Perhaps if your mother or your aunt or uncle have great wealth,

00:07:08.000 | perhaps your aunt and uncle have $10, $20, $30, $50 million,

00:07:12.000 | and it's invested in some investment assets that you're not particularly comfortable with,

00:07:18.000 | and now you have to step into place and work through the disposition of $50 million of investment assets,

00:07:25.000 | and you're designated as a trustee in a trust that you aren't,

00:07:29.000 | and you're not comfortable with the language of trust and with the language of actually handling these sort of things.

00:07:36.000 | So on the basic end, which is where most people are going to fall,

00:07:41.000 | it's going to be fairly straightforward.

00:07:43.000 | It's not really that big of a deal.

00:07:45.000 | But if you get into the world of a little bit more complicated, then yes,

00:07:49.000 | being the executor of somebody's estate or being designated as the trustee of somebody's trust

00:07:54.000 | or being designated as, you know, the example from the previous episode was being designated as the guardian of somebody's children.

00:08:02.000 | That can be a much more complicated scenario.

00:08:06.000 | And that would be where you would want to get some help.

00:08:10.000 | Now, my recommendation to you, which is the same recommendation to all clients and to anybody listening,

00:08:17.000 | is make sure that you've done the hard work on your estate in advance.

00:08:23.000 | The most successful settling of estates comes when there's been excellent planning done.

00:08:30.000 | I could go into example after example after example of disastrous celebrity estate cases that have been just not settled well,

00:08:43.000 | have been filled with issues and expenses and costs and all kinds of issues.

00:08:48.000 | That's simply poor planning.

00:08:50.000 | It's better to do the planning in advance.

00:08:53.000 | If you own – if you have either a complicated estate or if you have a substantial estate or if you expect to leave behind a substantial estate,

00:09:02.000 | you want to make sure that you do that planning in advance and spell it out and make the job easy for your executor.

00:09:08.000 | So that would be my recommendation to you is, Eric, if you know that somebody that – for whom you are designated as the executor of their estate,

00:09:20.000 | if you know they have either a complicated situation or if they have a large estate,

00:09:27.000 | that would be where I would be a little bit concerned.

00:09:29.000 | I'd ask some more questions.

00:09:31.000 | I may or may not be able to do anything about it.

00:09:33.000 | It is an honor to be designated as somebody's executor, but you should ask some more questions.

00:09:38.000 | And then for their own sake, they should do some planning in advance.

00:09:41.000 | Let's assume, for example, your close family friend is a – a close family friend is a wealthy real estate investor.

00:09:48.000 | And let's assume that you're in a situation where this person has a portfolio of several hundred pieces of real estate that they're renting out.

00:09:56.000 | Well, wouldn't it be in their best interest to have previously taken care of the disposition of those properties,

00:10:05.000 | whether that was through establishing a trust or a corporate entity of some type

00:10:11.000 | and then distributing the shares or the beneficial interest in the trust to the people in advance

00:10:16.000 | or simply making provision for that in their will?

00:10:19.000 | That would – and then it's – you're just simply following their instructions.

00:10:22.000 | That's much more in their best interest than to have you, who may or may not be an expert in which properties would be better to keep,

00:10:30.000 | which properties are better to transfer, what the tax implications are of each property,

00:10:34.000 | what the depreciated basis is of 123 Elm Street as compared to 567 Maple Street.

00:10:39.000 | They need to do it in advance.

00:10:42.000 | So good estate planning really should be done in advance.

00:10:44.000 | Now, if you are found in the situation where you are the – you are the executor of somebody's estate,

00:10:52.000 | the resource that I would point you to – and hopefully this is going to be a fairly simple straightforward.

00:10:57.000 | Before I get to the resource, again, you probably can do it.

00:11:00.000 | Real quick, as far as the one clarification for you, and this is important for most people.

00:11:05.000 | As the executor of somebody's estate, you're essentially going to be dealing with primarily what is called the probate estate.

00:11:13.000 | And the probate estate in this simplified context simply means what are the things that if the estate is going through probate court,

00:11:21.000 | what are the assets and liabilities that are going to be entered into the probate estate as part of the person's affairs that need to be dealt with?

00:11:29.000 | And this is – put simply, this is going to be any account or asset that is not titled with a beneficiary designation

00:11:37.000 | or does not transfer by mechanism of legal joint ownership arrangement.

00:11:43.000 | So if – again, life insurance is a simple scenario.

00:11:46.000 | If I have $2 million of life insurance, if I die and leave that $2 million death benefit to my brother as a benefit for him,

00:11:57.000 | well, when I die, the executor of my estate has no say over that life insurance amount.

00:12:05.000 | The insurance company is just simply going to contact the beneficiary, my brother, and transfer the money to him.

00:12:12.000 | Now, the executor should notify the insurance company.

00:12:15.000 | If they don't find out about my death from the executive of the estate, that would be one of the duties of the executor hopefully is to notify the insurance company so that they can pay the claim.

00:12:23.000 | But large life insurance companies routinely go through the records of deceased people on social security system to try to make sure that if any of their policy owners have died,

00:12:32.000 | that they can go ahead and pay out the benefits to the proper beneficiary.

00:12:39.000 | So in that scenario, even though that's a large part of my estate, that $2 million life insurance policy, it's not part of my probate estate.

00:12:47.000 | It's not something that the executor is going to have any responsibility in.

00:12:50.000 | That doesn't escape taxes necessarily.

00:12:53.000 | That would be included in my gross estate for estate tax purposes if I'm dealing with estate taxes.

00:12:59.000 | But it means it's a responsibility that my executor doesn't have.

00:13:02.000 | So again, if I were settling a family member's estate, it would probably most of them, most of my family members, it would be fairly simple.

00:13:09.000 | Money is going to flow according to beneficiary designations.

00:13:13.000 | If they have a large non-qualified account that doesn't have a beneficiary designation, that might be achieved through the ownership designation.

00:13:21.000 | So maybe they own that with a joint tenancy agreement with rights of survivorship.

00:13:26.000 | So therefore, the property is going to simply transfer on to the joint owner.

00:13:31.000 | It's a fairly simple process.

00:13:34.000 | Essentially, for most people, when they're settling their parents' estates, I think it basically comes down to marketing the house, listing the house, and selling it.

00:13:42.000 | And again, as a point of simplification, for many people, please don't designate your house to go to multiple beneficiaries.

00:13:51.000 | Don't designate that the family house is going to be sent to four kids and divided equally.

00:13:55.000 | Please designate that the house is going to be sold and that the money is going to be split out.

00:14:02.000 | Or, in your will, designate that the house is going to go to one of your children.

00:14:06.000 | And then if you need to equalize and level the inheritance for your other children, then make sure that other assets are earmarked towards other children.

00:14:16.000 | So if you have a son or daughter who's very interested in the house, then make sure they get the house specifically.

00:14:22.000 | And then transfer the life insurance beneficiary amounts or the 401(k) remainder amounts to your other children proportionately.

00:14:30.000 | Now, to answer your question on resources, the best company and resources that I have found for this type of scenario are the books published by NOLO.

00:14:44.000 | N-O-L-O. NOLO, every book of theirs that I have reviewed has been useful and well-written and accurate.

00:14:53.000 | So they do a really fine job.

00:14:56.000 | They also, one of the great things about their work is they have books that are written on specific scenarios, specific planning scenarios.

00:15:05.000 | So, they have a book, I've looked through it, I don't own it, but I've looked through it at the bookstore and I thought it was good.

00:15:12.000 | They have a book called The Executor's Guide, Settling a Loved One's Estate or Trust, and this is by NOLO.

00:15:18.000 | It's published, the sixth edition was published in February of 2014.

00:15:23.000 | And this is an all-in-one guide for executors.

00:15:26.000 | The Executor's Guide will help you make progress one step at a time through the unfamiliar land of legal procedures and terminology.

00:15:33.000 | It explains how to figure out who inherits, claim life insurance, Social Security and other benefits, understand a will, and determine whether or not probate is necessary.

00:15:42.000 | So, Eric, what I would do is I would get that book.

00:15:44.000 | If when your family members die and you are designated as the executor of the estate, then I would get the book.

00:15:51.000 | And I would just simply follow the step-by-step instructions in that book and I would use that as a guide.

00:15:56.000 | I mean, you certainly could get it now and read it if you are pretty hardcore and good for you.

00:16:01.000 | But that would be the best resource that I have found.

00:16:04.000 | Just in general, I have a blanket general's blanket recommendation of NOLO's resources.

00:16:10.000 | They do really a great job of providing information and all the ones I've reviewed have been really great.

00:16:21.000 | They also have actually three, they have two other books that are listed as well.

00:16:27.000 | I have not reviewed either of these.

00:16:29.000 | In fact, I might get this third one actually because it's something I'm working on.

00:16:33.000 | So, they have the Executor's Guide to Settling a Loved One's Estate or Trust.

00:16:37.000 | They have the Trustees' Legal Companion.

00:16:39.000 | So, if you are designated as the trustee of somebody's trust, then that will help you with an explanation, a clear, plain English explanation of trust and your responsibilities as a trustee.

00:16:50.000 | And then they have a book called Get It Together, Organize Your Records So Your Family Won't Have To.

00:16:55.000 | And that's actually a personal project of mine for this next year is updating my records now that things have changed with my employment situation and my corporate situation and all of that to make sure that things are organized if I die.

00:17:09.000 | So, I might get this one and do this.

00:17:11.000 | I'm planning a couple of shows on that in the future.

00:17:13.000 | So, check that out.

00:17:14.000 | That might be a resource for you all on that situation.

00:17:17.000 | Great question.

00:17:18.000 | Thank you for the question, Eric.

00:17:19.000 | The next question here comes from Blake.

00:17:22.000 | Hey, Joshua.

00:17:23.000 | It's Blake.

00:17:24.000 | I have a question about the philosophy between survivalism versus specialization.

00:17:28.000 | I've started reading The Rational Optimist, and it's very interesting hearing him describe self-sufficiency as poverty, like the hunter-gatherer who has to make everything for himself.

00:17:37.000 | I, like many, am intrigued by the idea of learning to do things, be more self-sufficient, garden, and have chickens.

00:17:44.000 | I've heard you, and I know Mr. Money Mustache and Jacob Lundfisker kind of espouse the same do-it-yourself mentality.

00:17:51.000 | So, I'm curious what your specific thoughts on this are and wonder if it really depends on one's outlook on the future, whether the pessimistic survivalist thinks you should not specialize and if it's the optimistic person who should.

00:18:04.000 | Thanks.

00:18:05.000 | Interesting question.

00:18:07.000 | And for a little bit of background context, just for those who may or may not be familiar with the resources and the terms he mentioned, the book that he referenced is a book that I've recommended to many people.

00:18:16.000 | It's a book by Matt Ridley called The Rational Optimist.

00:18:18.000 | And essentially, Ridley traces the history of many aspects of the development of civilization and illustrates, in essence, how great our lives are.

00:18:28.000 | And you don't have to read the book if you can actually turn around and notice how great our lives are.

00:18:33.000 | But if you struggle with pessimism, if you struggle with looking at the world around and saying, "Man, everything is just nuts and terrible and awful," then a good dose of rational optimism might be a bit of an antidote to the world around.

00:18:50.000 | And in this discussion, there's a constant kind of tussle between becoming a highly specialized individual versus someone with generalized knowledge.

00:19:02.000 | And especially when you get into economic planning, economic world, in the concepts of survivalism.

00:19:08.000 | And I brought – let's see, I think it's just James Wesley Rawls on the show.

00:19:11.000 | He's the – I can't think of anyone else that I've had on at this point who is kind of from that camp.

00:19:16.000 | The ideas behind much of the, I guess, modern survival – I don't know what you call it, industry or community is the basic idea that the world is going to fall apart.

00:19:31.000 | And if the world falls apart, then you need to have a very generalized knowledge of how to do everything yourself.

00:19:39.000 | But I look at this and I can actually fully hold both of these opinions, Blake.

00:19:45.000 | But here's how I would look through it and how I would think it through.

00:19:48.000 | In my mind, Ridley is absolutely right.

00:19:50.000 | I'm not aware of an economist or an economic position that would disagree with him.

00:19:55.000 | If you look at – let's say that you are – what was that guy's name? – Robinson Crusoe.

00:20:00.000 | You're dropped on a desert island and you have the bare nothing to put together your lifestyle.

00:20:08.000 | You are not going to be living well.

00:20:11.000 | One of my favorite books – I enjoyed reading Robinson Crusoe when I was a kid.

00:20:14.000 | I also loved reading Swiss Family Robinson.

00:20:16.000 | And when you read Swiss Family Robinson, it sounds like an amazingly almost idyllic life.

00:20:22.000 | But notice a couple of things. Number one, they weren't an individual.

00:20:25.000 | They were a family. So they were a family of six.

00:20:29.000 | And also they were blessed with a vast amount of resources that were already prepared.

00:20:37.000 | So the whole reason why Swiss Family Robinson winds up being such an ostensibly idyllic existence,

00:20:45.000 | even though it's a fictional story, is because they had a ship that they were traveling on

00:20:50.000 | that was provisioned for the establishment of a new colony.

00:20:53.000 | So it had everything that was needed for the establishment of a human settlement.

00:20:58.000 | And all of the products that were on that ship were previously produced by specialists.

00:21:06.000 | The blacksmiths who hammered out the nails that they later used to build their beautiful house,

00:21:12.000 | those blacksmiths were specialists.

00:21:15.000 | And the miners that mined the raw materials were specialists.

00:21:18.000 | And so they were building upon the work of the specialists.

00:21:22.000 | Now, in my mind, this is one of the advantages.

00:21:25.000 | Because if you actually look, one of the reasons I like bringing Rawls on the show is I enjoy his writing.

00:21:33.000 | And I think it's fun to read novels about that type of topic and use it as testing my own theories.

00:21:40.000 | But you'll notice in one of the interviews that I did with him that he described himself as an optimist.

00:21:46.000 | But he described himself as an optimist long term, and he expects to go through short-term difficult times.

00:21:54.000 | That's fine. I think that makes sense.

00:21:57.000 | The thing that I don't think makes sense is the expectation that society,

00:22:02.000 | if there is some sort of structural, massive structural change in society,

00:22:07.000 | that over a -- I don't know what the term is, the amount of time meaning.

00:22:12.000 | I don't know what the number of years it would be.

00:22:14.000 | But society would adjust and would change.

00:22:17.000 | I like to look at this in the context of war.

00:22:20.000 | I have an interest in some things like World War I and World War II.

00:22:24.000 | And I often play these mental games with myself and say, well, what would I do if I were in Germany or Austria?

00:22:31.000 | Or what would I do if I were in Russia or in France or in England in those eras?

00:22:37.000 | Because coming from a U.S. American context, we've been blessed with a history in my country of essentially the conflict not being close at home.

00:22:49.000 | There have been no wars fought since the Civil War in the 1860s.

00:22:54.000 | There have been no major wars fought in the United States of America.

00:22:58.000 | And so it's such a long-distance idea that we get very complacent with the idea that life will always be how it is.

00:23:06.000 | But I often wonder what would it be like if my grandfather had grown up in Poland or in Germany or in Austria or in France?

00:23:16.000 | How would my grandfather or grandmother have counseled me if they had come from that background?

00:23:24.000 | I don't think they would quite be so – what's the word? I don't think they would be quite so critical of people who think about alternative scenarios.

00:23:39.000 | So in my mind, it's intelligent to think about alternative scenarios and think about what would I do?

00:23:46.000 | What would I do? And play those war games.

00:23:50.000 | If you think that being a generalist and being able to do anything for yourself is going to be great, go out in the woods.

00:23:58.000 | Don't take anything with you and see how long it takes to build a beautiful life for yourself.

00:24:04.000 | I think it may have been Ridley or somebody said, "I'll send you out in the woods with a hatchet and you come back with a computer and see how long that takes you."

00:24:11.000 | It's not going to happen.

00:24:12.000 | The only way that it happens is for people to come together, to specialize in what they actually have knowledge in and can dive deep in.

00:24:22.000 | And that's what society is built upon.

00:24:25.000 | So one of the challenges, however, is people often think in terms of this versus that.

00:24:31.000 | We are polarized in our thinking.

00:24:34.000 | Our method of thinking is generally to look for right or wrong, left or right, black or white, Democrat or Republican, liberal, conservative, etc.

00:24:45.000 | So we have a disease of wanting to look at it and saying either this or that.

00:24:50.000 | Either specialization is right or generalization is right.

00:24:54.000 | I don't see that. I really don't.

00:24:57.000 | I see there being a tension between these two things.

00:25:01.000 | And even if you actually talk to somebody like Rawls, who I think is almost the epitome of survivalism, if you talk to him, you don't hear him saying, "Well, the world is going to be destroyed for the next 50 years."

00:25:13.000 | You see him saying, "I'm concerned about disruptions in the standard of living and so therefore I'm taking defensive measures against this."

00:25:20.000 | Now apply this within the context of financial planning.

00:25:24.000 | Why can you not do both?

00:25:26.000 | Why can you not use the benefits and advantages that you have now and prepare for a disruption of those benefits and advantages?

00:25:35.000 | Something like a salary.

00:25:37.000 | So you have a salary of some kind.

00:25:41.000 | So let's just assume you're working at a job. You have a salary.

00:25:44.000 | Now you build your life based upon that salary.

00:25:47.000 | But what do you do?

00:25:48.000 | Well, a wise person, a prudent person, prepares for a disruption in that salary.

00:25:53.000 | And the disruption could happen for various reasons.

00:25:56.000 | You could be fired.

00:25:57.000 | You could get sick.

00:25:58.000 | You could lose your job.

00:25:59.000 | In that scenario, you need some savings or you need some insurance.

00:26:04.000 | And that's why we have disability income insurance.

00:26:06.000 | That's why we have life insurance.

00:26:07.000 | That's why we have unemployment insurance.

00:26:09.000 | That's why we have medical insurance.

00:26:11.000 | That's why we've created insurance policies.

00:26:15.000 | That's also why we build in margin, why you build in savings and a cushioning fund, that type of thing.

00:26:22.000 | So that if your specialized income is disrupted, that you are in a scenario where you have a greater resilience.

00:26:32.000 | Now that's all that the survivalists are doing.

00:26:35.000 | But they're saying, "Okay, it's not enough for me just to be concerned about if I lose my job."

00:26:41.000 | They're simply saying, "Well, what if society changes?

00:26:45.000 | What if there is a tripling of fuel prices in a short period of time and you have a trucker strike?"

00:26:52.000 | So the truckers go on strike.

00:26:54.000 | All of our food and all of our provisions pass through the transportation industry in some way.

00:27:01.000 | And so now on a mass basis, the truckers refuse to drive because it's actually costing them money to move their trucks.

00:27:06.000 | Is that a realistic scenario?

00:27:09.000 | I think it is.

00:27:10.000 | It hasn't happened in my lifetime.

00:27:12.000 | You think back to what was it, the air traffic controller strike in the – was it the '80s I guess, under Reagan?

00:27:18.000 | These things happen.

00:27:20.000 | They happen less often in the United States of America because we don't have such a unionized, coherent, cohesive movement of people.

00:27:29.000 | You have a lot of individuals and it's notoriously challenging to manage people who think for themselves as individuals, which is – you should see where my brain goes.

00:27:40.000 | Why that is that people are often interested in keeping people from thinking by themselves.

00:27:45.000 | But if that were to happen, you would need a backup plan.

00:27:49.000 | So that's all the survivalists say is I need a backup plan in case of this.

00:27:52.000 | And then the comfort level with the backup plan stretches out for a longer period of time.

00:27:56.000 | In my mind, that's not a contradiction between specialization and generalization.

00:28:01.000 | It's a recognition of the fact that there are some risks that exist and how do I account for those risks.

00:28:08.000 | And not all risks can be solved by placing currency down for a transaction measured in dollars or whatever your currency unit of choice is.

00:28:18.000 | If you're stuck on the proverbial desert island, your dollar bills don't do you any good if you need water.

00:28:25.000 | But perhaps something like a hatchet might.

00:28:27.000 | So that's even why we invented money, why we have the concept of money.

00:28:31.000 | It's the most liquid, barterable commodity that exists.

00:28:37.000 | Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.

00:28:40.000 | I don't think anybody who's planting a garden or raising chickens, unless they're actually doing it, living on it,

00:28:46.000 | I don't think anybody has any concept of being able to support themselves as an individual.

00:28:53.000 | I have hardly been able to find anybody who is – nobody is self-sufficient in today's modern economy.

00:29:02.000 | Because even if you are presently primarily self-sufficient, you got there by using the tools and the technology and the implements that have been created by a specialized interdependent economy.

00:29:17.000 | So if you have built – let's say you've built swales all over your property to properly control the flow of water,

00:29:25.000 | you probably did that with an excavator of some kind. It's a large tool, mechanized tool, that is the result of thousands and thousands and thousands of individual people's specialized contributions.

00:29:38.000 | And that's how it should be.

00:29:40.000 | So I'm not aware of anybody that would say we need to go to a completely generalized do-it-yourself scenario.

00:29:48.000 | But we don't want to get stuck with only having one specialized area of expertise.

00:29:56.000 | We want to have resilience, personal resilience.

00:29:59.000 | And so that's no different than saying I don't want to get stuck with just one income.

00:30:03.000 | One aspect that I've noticed of a difference between entrepreneurs and employees, there's a difference between an entrepreneur's mentality and the mentality of an employee.

00:30:13.000 | Many employees that I have spoken with are attracted to their job because of the safety and the stability of that, the idea that I have a safe and secure job.

00:30:24.000 | This is changing now. This is more so in the past, but I still see it today.

00:30:28.000 | If you ask an entrepreneur – I'll just tell you, for me as an entrepreneur, I view having a job as probably the most risky thing I could do because then I would only have one source of income.

00:30:39.000 | And if I only have one source of income, then I only need one hiccup to happen where my entire stream of income is cut off.

00:30:49.000 | I would rather have ten customers where if one customer leaves me, then I'm left with 90% of my income or 100 or 1,000.

00:30:58.000 | So I see entrepreneurship as much less risky than being an employee.

00:31:03.000 | But that's a mental challenge and a transition.

00:31:07.000 | When we're trained and taught essentially to be employees, to prepare ourselves to get a good job and then to go and search for a good job,

00:31:15.000 | and instead of looking to say, "What's a need and how can I create value and fill that need," which is in my mind the essence of business creation, we go looking for jobs.

00:31:23.000 | When we need income, generally in our society, most people don't say, "Oh, I need some income. Where can I provide some value?"

00:31:30.000 | Rather we say, "Who can give me a job?"

00:31:33.000 | And then we get upset when there aren't enough jobs available or too many people are offering jobs under terms at which we don't want to work.

00:31:39.000 | And then we decry those who simply say, "Well, don't work under those terms."

00:31:43.000 | Now, that's a whole other conversation.

00:31:45.000 | But my point is to show that we have a mindset.

00:31:47.000 | When we need income, we usually think in terms of, "I need a job."

00:31:51.000 | That's not necessarily the only way to create income.

00:31:53.000 | There are many ways to create income.

00:31:55.000 | I do want to – so hopefully that helps as far – that's how I think about it as far as pessimism versus optimism versus whatever.

00:32:03.000 | There are always going to be hiccups that occur in an economy.

00:32:07.000 | I certainly am not willing to bet all of my standard of living on the continuance of my paycheck from one job.

00:32:14.000 | I think that's foolish.

00:32:16.000 | I'm also not willing to bet all of my standard of living on the continuance of one particular country's supremacy or domination in the global environment.

00:32:25.000 | I'm not willing to bet the continuance of my lifestyle on one company that I've invested in being able to continue without some sort of hiccup.

00:32:34.000 | That could be a legal hiccup.

00:32:36.000 | That could be a technological change.

00:32:38.000 | There could be many things.

00:32:40.000 | And so we work within the structure of where we are.

00:32:43.000 | And I don't see there being any distinction between planning for the worst and preparing for the – well, hoping for the best and preparing for the best and planning for what would I do in the worst case scenario.

00:32:55.000 | Just because I plan for something doesn't mean I actually have to do it.

00:32:58.000 | But by having planned it in advance, now I know what I would do.

00:33:03.000 | I always go back to hurricanes.

00:33:05.000 | Many of you might be – no storms.

00:33:07.000 | My family, we have some plans of, "Okay, where would we go if there were a hurricane coming that we had to evacuate?"

00:33:12.000 | In 30 years of living in South Florida, I've never once evacuated for a hurricane.

00:33:16.000 | And it's hard for me to imagine that I would because most of them are really not that big of a deal.

00:33:21.000 | But if there is a Category 5 hurricane bearing down directly on my town, I'm evacuating.

00:33:27.000 | So I need to have a plan in place of where would I go, what would I do, when would I leave so I'm not stuck on the highway like all the people trying to get out of New Orleans were.

00:33:36.000 | I need to be going in advance or I need to be going with a different route.

00:33:39.000 | It's just planning.

00:33:40.000 | It's just good planning.

00:33:41.000 | Same thing with economic changes.

00:33:43.000 | I need to be prepared for economic changes.

00:33:47.000 | Now, another area where the specialization and generalization – I think this is a good question.

00:33:52.000 | I'm kind of talking around it but I hope this different development of it, of the idea would show.

00:33:57.000 | Let's get out of the survivalism versus optimism/pessimism discussion.

00:34:01.000 | Let's talk about in terms of what I should do with my time.

00:34:04.000 | You see this a lot when people discuss what's the highest and best use of my time.

00:34:08.000 | Well, let's say I get paid $300 an hour for drafting legal documents for large corporate mergers as an attorney.

00:34:15.000 | Well, then I should spend all of my time doing the $300 an hour work and I should hire everything done that's able to be done at a lower hour figure, dollar figure, right?

00:34:26.000 | I don't quite buy that either.

00:34:28.000 | I think there's a balance and you have to look at what your example is.

00:34:31.000 | I think of it as something like mowing lawns.

00:34:34.000 | I can mow my own lawn or I can hire my lawn being mowed and there are many situations that will govern that decision.

00:34:44.000 | If I hire it done, then I have many advantages that accrue to me.

00:34:48.000 | I don't have to buy and store a lawnmower.

00:34:51.000 | I don't have to do the work every Saturday going out there and trundling around my yard with a lawnmower.

00:34:56.000 | I can simply sit in the house and work on my podcast.

00:34:59.000 | I can sit in the house and I can draft legal documents if I were an attorney.

00:35:03.000 | I can do that but I also don't get some of the other benefits.

00:35:06.000 | I don't save the money.

00:35:07.000 | I have to have an outlay of cash.

00:35:08.000 | I don't have the exercise.

00:35:14.000 | I don't have that time to think.

00:35:16.000 | For me, driving a lawnmower or walking behind one, I don't have – I have a walk behind one.

00:35:21.000 | It's a nice time to think.

00:35:23.000 | I like to see the output.

00:35:26.000 | I like to look at a lawn and say, "Look, I did that."

00:35:28.000 | So much of my work is knowledge work where I can never actually see the result of it that it's emotionally satisfying to me to sit back and look at a beautifully mowed lawn.

00:35:36.000 | So there are other benefits to it and it's not just an economic transaction.

00:35:41.000 | Here's how I try to organize that myself and I think – I don't know if this is accurate for all people but this is how I think of it.

00:35:49.000 | My organizing principle is self-interest.

00:35:52.000 | What's going to improve my life?

00:35:54.000 | How can I improve my life?

00:35:57.000 | And so this will change depending on my adjustments over time.

00:36:02.000 | There may be a point young in my career where – and there probably is a point young in my career where I need every dollar of capital that I can get.

00:36:14.000 | And I reach a certain number of hours at which I can't do more work beyond this number of hours.

00:36:19.000 | And so the idea that I'm always just – my alternative use of the hour is to spend – is to make $300 an hour preparing legal documents.

00:36:26.000 | I don't want to do that 70 hours a week if I were an attorney.

00:36:29.000 | So saving the $30 a week that it may cost me might be useful to me to accumulate capital to build wealth.

00:36:38.000 | But at some point in time, I've created enough capital and my wealth is producing enough income for me to live on such that I don't need to do that anymore.

00:36:46.000 | At that point in time, it's a matter of what would I enjoy doing more.

00:36:50.000 | And the idea that I always have to mow my own lawn I think is foolish – just as foolish as the idea that I should never own my own – mow my own lawn.

00:37:00.000 | Consider it within the context of what I'm actually doing and what's going to benefit me.

00:37:07.000 | Also be aware of this in your own career.

00:37:10.000 | Professionally, I think it's incredibly important for us to specialize but also to be very aware of the risks that we face in specializing.

00:37:20.000 | So I'm a financial planning professional.

00:37:23.000 | As a professional, I need to be careful of what happens if I specialize in something and that's all I know.

00:37:30.000 | Let's say that I built my career on the ability to pick stocks and pick mutual fund managers that are going to outperform.

00:37:37.000 | What do I do in 2014 when the vast preponderance of academic data says that my ability to pick mutual fund managers and predict them in advance is limited if not non-existent?

00:37:49.000 | That's a tremendous headwind of academic research for me to go upon.

00:37:54.000 | Now I personally – I may not accept that I'm not able to do it but the point is that the headwind that I'd be facing is tremendous.

00:38:02.000 | So if that was what I built my income on and that were my only specialty, I would have a problem.

00:38:10.000 | But if I were a generalist and I had various ways that I could take that ability and I could deploy that further,

00:38:16.000 | then I'm going to be able to advance my career and advance my business in a different way.

00:38:25.000 | So I need to specialize intensely but I also need to be aware of developments in other markets.

00:38:36.000 | And so there's this constant pool.

00:38:40.000 | I mean if you listen to me, I do have a fairly broad generalized knowledge and a deep level of specialized knowledge.

00:38:49.000 | And I think that's probably what we all should do is have a broad generalized knowledge to be aware of changes but also to have a deep level of specialized knowledge.

00:39:01.000 | In order to maximize our income, specialization is very, very important.

00:39:09.000 | That's the way our economy works and that is because of the – it accrues – you're able to accrue advantages,

00:39:17.000 | whether those are advantages of capital, advantages of skill, advantages of labor.

00:39:21.000 | It's almost impossible for me to comprehend at this point why somebody would want to go through the years of work and study that I've gone through

00:39:30.000 | to acquire the level of expertise that I've acquired when they can buy that for a few hundred bucks an hour.

00:39:36.000 | When you look at the use of the time and I say, "Well, do you really want to go and study financial planning for years

00:39:41.000 | or would you rather just simply pay someone?"

00:39:43.000 | And who cares what the price is, $300, $400, $500 an hour.

00:39:46.000 | Isn't it a better use of the investment to spend $300, $400, $500 an hour to simply buy someone's expertise

00:39:52.000 | than it is to spend years trying to do it yourself?

00:39:56.000 | Now, if you're interested in the do-it-yourself, that's fine.

00:39:59.000 | There's no reason why you can't but I just don't understand the economic transaction.

00:40:03.000 | Unless there's an enjoyment level there and it's almost like a hobby thing.

00:40:07.000 | So, you build a career as a financial planner, as a tax attorney, or as a physician on your specialization.

00:40:14.000 | But you don't want to specialize in somewhere where there's not a significant barrier to entry.

00:40:20.000 | You don't want to be a specialist in something that anybody can become a specialist in

00:40:26.000 | because then you're just stuck in terms of competing based on price.

00:40:30.000 | You need to be a specialist in a field where the competition is based upon value.

00:40:36.000 | That's where specialization has advantages.

00:40:39.000 | I'll give you three examples and then we'll move on to the next question.

00:40:42.000 | Consider, here are some different areas of practice that I could practice in financial planning.

00:40:47.000 | I considered practicing in estate planning.

00:40:51.000 | I would enjoy, I do enjoy kind of the science of estate planning.

00:40:56.000 | It's very technical, it's very specific, and it's pretty involved.

00:41:02.000 | And especially with estate tax planning, it's pretty complicated.

00:41:07.000 | I have a personality type that I enjoy complicated.

00:41:11.000 | That's why I've spent 20 minutes here answering a simple question.

00:41:16.000 | So, I don't know how to answer questions like this in three minutes

00:41:19.000 | because my brain works in terms of, "Well, it's this or this or this or that or this or that."

00:41:24.000 | So, I like the field of estate planning.

00:41:26.000 | However, if I look at the size of the market,

00:41:29.000 | and I chose not to specialize in estate planning simply because I can never figure out,

00:41:35.000 | A, how to fund myself to build up the expertise,

00:41:39.000 | B, how to access the people that could afford to pay for that expertise,

00:41:44.000 | and then C, I looked at the size of the market and saw that the size of the market is substantially falling for the need for estate planning.

00:41:51.000 | Some people don't realize how precipitous this is,

00:41:54.000 | but here in 2014, you can, in essence, avoid taxes on the first just under $5.5 million of your estate.

00:42:02.000 | In 2004, ten years ago, that number was $1.5 million.

00:42:08.000 | In 2001, that number was $675,000.

00:42:14.000 | So, 13 years ago, any money that you had when you died, over $675,000,

00:42:22.000 | that money could be taxed at a maximum rate of about 55%.

00:42:27.000 | Whereas today, you have to have essentially over $5.5 million.

00:42:31.000 | It's $5,340,000.

00:42:33.000 | But that's also two spouses.

00:42:36.000 | And so, if you have $5.5 million and your spouse has $5.5 million,

00:42:42.000 | now you've got an almost $11 million ability to escape.

00:42:46.000 | That dramatically lowers the size of the market.

00:42:49.000 | So, if I had specialized in estate planning, the market's just been eroded over time.

00:42:53.000 | So, those are the reasons that I didn't.

00:42:55.000 | Now, another area that I could specialize in is I could specialize in planning for early retirees.

00:42:59.000 | I always thought it was just me who was interested in kind of this crazy, radical, weird approach to money and pursuing early retirement.

00:43:06.000 | I've learned with the advent of the freer communication online that there are many people pursuing the same path.

00:43:13.000 | And so, I could specialize in doing planning for that.

00:43:16.000 | I could start a firm right now and I could specialize in that.

00:43:19.000 | And the problem here is that the market, in my mind, doesn't really justify – I couldn't build a whole business on it.

00:43:28.000 | I think this would have to be a subset of my business because of the propensity of early retirees to live lower-cost lifestyles.

00:43:35.000 | So, if you're living a lower-cost lifestyle, then for many people – and this is not everybody.

00:43:41.000 | This is just many people – they're trying to say, "How can I live this minimum-cost lifestyle?"

00:43:46.000 | And so, then the ability for me to earn fees for valuable work is diminished.

00:43:51.000 | And so, I have a lower incentive to work in that market.

00:43:54.000 | I enjoy it.

00:43:56.000 | But here's the sweet spot for me as far as specialization.

00:43:59.000 | If I were going to start a financial planning firm, I would continue to specialize in serving the wealthy business owner.

00:44:04.000 | And this, to me, is my almost holy grail.

00:44:07.000 | This is the major goal because the specialization – I love the complexity of it, but I'm not frozen out by the small size of the market and the estate-only market.

00:44:18.000 | There's plenty of money in business owners and there's a huge need for my services.

00:44:22.000 | And most importantly, there's a massively high barrier to entry.

00:44:26.000 | It is not easy for a new financial planner who's interested to learn all that information.

00:44:31.000 | So, unlike selling term life insurance at a kitchen table where there's a very low barrier to entry, doing complex business planning is a very high barrier to entry.

00:44:41.000 | So, that would be an ideal market for me to do it.

00:44:44.000 | So, from an area of professional expertise and career development, focus on specializing in an area that you can really demonstrate a major difference and a need for specialization and build a barrier to entry and apply that to a customer base that has the money to pay you.

00:45:03.000 | All of those have to go together for financial success.

00:45:07.000 | Back to lawn mowing.

00:45:09.000 | Growing up, I used to dream of owning a large landscaping company.

00:45:12.000 | For a time in my life, I worked on a landscaping crew.

00:45:15.000 | And I used to just think how cool would it be for me to have Sheetz Lawn Services or Sheetz Landscaping down here in South Florida.

00:45:23.000 | It's everywhere.

00:45:25.000 | I would say not many people mow their own lawns, especially in the large retirement gated communities that are prevalent down here.

00:45:31.000 | So, I always dreamed of having a fleet of trucks.

00:45:34.000 | And to this day, I can still remember the paint scheme.

00:45:36.000 | I would do them bright red and I would have them shiny.

00:45:39.000 | They would be washed every Friday, so they were sparkling all the time.

00:45:43.000 | I used to subscribe to all the industry magazines.

00:45:46.000 | I knew all the lawnmower brands.

00:45:48.000 | I was pretty hardcore on it.

00:45:50.000 | And even to this day, it's still one of those things I wonder, "Could I do it?"

00:45:54.000 | Yeah, I could do it.

00:45:56.000 | But the problem is it's not a good business opportunity that I see because there's no barrier to entry.

00:46:01.000 | Any person who's unemployed can borrow or buy a lawnmower, toss it in the back of their minivan, and go out and start undercutting me on price.

00:46:10.000 | So, I couldn't really see myself as having a high competitive advantage in the residential markets.

00:46:16.000 | So, then what about the commercial jobs?

00:46:18.000 | Well, there's stiff competition there, too.

00:46:20.000 | So, I've worked with a couple of people.

00:46:22.000 | I've asked them.

00:46:23.000 | And part of the areas of specialization would be in design work and ability to maintain high-end homes and have them look beautiful.

00:46:30.000 | But today, how I would look at that market, I would say, "What could I specialize in?"

00:46:34.000 | Today, I would go and do edible landscaping design.

00:46:37.000 | I would design not lawns and pretty bushes and flowers, but I would design edible landscapes for people who live in the suburbs.

00:46:46.000 | And I think that would be really fun.

00:46:49.000 | I think that the demand would be massively high.

00:46:51.000 | If I walked up to a property owner in a wealthy, affluent suburb and said, "Listen, I can transform your landscape and not only make it beautiful, but make it functional and provide for you all of the needs of your household and healthy, organic food that's local food and you can eat it right outside your door," that is a business I think people would pay for.

00:47:10.000 | And there's a higher barrier to entry.

00:47:12.000 | Instead of simply saying, "What's the latest fertilizer that I toss on the ground and plant St. Augustine grass sod and then keep it sprayed," there's a much higher barrier to entry as far as knowing how to design an ecosystem.

00:47:25.000 | So keep these two things together.

00:47:27.000 | Keep an intense deep dive of specialization, but also keep a generalized knowledge so that you can be aware of trends and shifts and changes in the marketplace.

00:47:37.000 | And remember, a breakdown of the division of labor would absolutely cause mass suffering and shortage.

00:47:45.000 | So you need to be prepared for that.

00:47:47.000 | But if you have specialized skills and you have generalized skills, if there were a complete breakdown in society, I'm confident in my ability – I hope this doesn't sound arrogant.

00:47:57.000 | It's just – in my mind, it's just a reality.

00:47:59.000 | I'm confident in my ability to function in any economy because of the learned skills of learning how to work with people, learning sales skills.

00:48:07.000 | Learning how to sell is in my mind one of the most valuable skills because then I could sell anything in the right context.

00:48:14.000 | I could sell an idea.

00:48:15.000 | I could sell leadership.

00:48:16.000 | I could sell the agenda of a group.

00:48:19.000 | And so I could learn to prosper in a different economy.

00:48:24.000 | If oil quadrupled in price, I could learn to prosper in that economy.

00:48:28.000 | So keep those things due together, specialize in something, and get some generalized knowledge.

00:48:33.000 | Good question.

00:48:35.000 | Last question comes from Tom and Tom says, "Joshua, I had my first baby 12 weeks ago.

00:48:40.000 | My wife had always planned on going back to work but with baby around and some guidance from your podcast, we decided she would stay home.

00:48:47.000 | Can you go over some of the considerations, financial and otherwise, that parents should work through when making that decision for them?

00:48:53.000 | Love the podcast, Tom."

00:48:55.000 | Tom, congratulations.

00:48:56.000 | How exciting to have a baby and what an exciting decision.

00:49:00.000 | I'll share some ideas and share some thoughts for you.

00:49:03.000 | And as always with these situations, remember that I am not a prescriptive person.

00:49:10.000 | I would not prescribe what you should do with your life.

00:49:12.000 | So I'm just going to share with you some of the things that I'm learning because there are some tremendous challenges to making this lifestyle transition that I think you could be aware of.

00:49:22.000 | Be aware that I'm a young husband myself and a young father.

00:49:25.000 | So I would not propose to teach somebody and say, "This is – here's my great wisdom."

00:49:31.000 | I'm just going to share some thoughts, some things that I am learning.

00:49:34.000 | And I essentially have four thoughts for you.

00:49:37.000 | Number one is I would encourage you and your family and your wife as she's chosen to stay home.

00:49:44.000 | I would encourage you to together build the value and self-worth that she is going to experience in that decision.

00:49:54.000 | Our society praises economic production as measured in dollars as a suitable definition, a suitable construct for self-worth, a suitable benchmark for self-worth I guess would be a better way to say it.

00:50:11.000 | In our society, you are so-called successful based upon your level of income.

00:50:17.000 | People often say success in other ways but if you look, we always define successful in terms of economic production as measured in income.

00:50:24.000 | Now, this hasn't always been so but today in 2014, we're probably in similar – in a similar peer group, 20s, 30s, young parent, that type of scenario.

00:50:36.000 | I don't know anybody in my peer group that doesn't do this.

00:50:40.000 | And this has largely been taught to us and we've accepted this as a society.

00:50:45.000 | Regardless of people's personal desire to chart their own course, most people, again, measure their self-worth in many ways based upon their income.

00:50:54.000 | And remember, we live in a time with a societal press and a cultural press to disintegrate the family unit.

00:51:04.000 | So we're prone to describe ourselves not by who we are but by what we do.

00:51:11.000 | And what we do is generally defined by the work that we do for which people pay us money.

00:51:16.000 | Now, I'm not sure why your family made the decision you did.

00:51:19.000 | I'm happy for you. I think it's awesome.

00:51:22.000 | I'm not sure why you did it though.

00:51:24.000 | But consider the reasons why you did it and recognize the fact that your decision is very countercultural.

00:51:30.000 | In the progressive society in which we live, your decision and your wife's decision, your decision as a family, will be criticized and condemned by many.

00:51:40.000 | So you need to be very strong and very sure as to why you're doing it so that you can stand up against that criticism.

00:51:47.000 | And that requires a tremendous amount of self-worth and self-confidence to be able to do it.

00:51:52.000 | You need to see clearly what your vision is and why you're doing it.

00:51:56.000 | Because to stand against the press of culture, you've got to know why you're going the other way.

00:52:02.000 | Now, in my mind, just a little bit of encouragement, I cannot imagine a more important job than being a parent and especially a mother.

00:52:13.000 | In my mind, it's the most important job in the world that I can come up with.

00:52:19.000 | But in our society, our society, generally speaking, doesn't seem to value it.

00:52:24.000 | We're taught, especially women, are taught, "Well, there's no worth in that.

00:52:29.000 | Your worth should be measured based upon your economic production, your ability to get a job."

00:52:33.000 | So in my mind, you need to be clearly established a vision of why you're doing it and insulate yourself a little bit from society and build up the meaning.

00:52:44.000 | Know what you're doing.

00:52:45.000 | I've worked with many young couples and some of whom have made that decision.

00:52:50.000 | And even after making that decision, I've talked to many moms, especially if their family is in a challenging financial time, and they've felt this pressure.

00:53:02.000 | They feel like they're shirking their family responsibility by not earning an income.

00:53:07.000 | And if your wife feels that way, I would encourage you to talk about it with her and see is that really true or is that a societally induced pressure?

00:53:18.000 | Because it's a strong, strong pressure in our society, and you've got to see clearly what to do, why you're doing something different.

00:53:25.000 | If you see clearly why you're doing something different, then I think you can stand against that.

00:53:29.000 | But you need a tremendous amount of self-confidence and a sense of self-worth and a clear vision of what the valuable contribution you're making to a family unit by doing that.

00:53:41.000 | That would be one thing, and I would encourage you to spend some time talking about that and building that vision so that you can see that.

00:53:48.000 | Our society, again, doesn't value contributions at home.

00:53:52.000 | We think it's better to hire usually low-paid daycare workers and usually low-paid teachers to take care of our kids so that we can go off and do the valuable, important professional work.

00:54:03.000 | So recognize that.

00:54:05.000 | Number two, I would say economic production is the category of my answer.

00:54:10.000 | I would encourage you guys to think about disconnecting the idea of earning an income and – let me rephrase that.

00:54:19.000 | Don't think of – in this case, your wife.

00:54:23.000 | So don't think of your wife's contribution to the household as her being now economically not contributing to the household just simply because she's not earning an income.

00:54:33.000 | In the same way that we have this massive cultural basically despisement or we don't – we despise the contribution of parents and their families, we also don't know how to measure economic production if it doesn't have a biweekly paycheck associated with it.

00:54:51.000 | Those two things are not the same thing.

00:54:53.000 | Economic production, economic contribution to the family unit is not the same – is not measured only based upon how much is on the net paycheck.

00:55:02.000 | They're not equal.

00:55:03.000 | Every person in the household can contribute economically.

00:55:07.000 | And back to the specialization and the division of labor, it's probably much more effective as I've pointed out here both from the technical financial number sense and also from the greater meaning of life sense.

00:55:19.000 | It's much more effective to specialize in a household and build in other aspects to it.

00:55:26.000 | So hopefully – just – what I have seen happen is that if your wife is choosing to stay home, hopefully she doesn't feel, "Well, then I just don't contribute to the money."

00:55:36.000 | No, I think she can make a bigger contribution in many ways than by earning an income.

00:55:42.000 | And here are a few ways. Number one is by having a little bit more time in her schedule where she's not committed to, say, a 40-hour corporate job, then the lifestyle and the well-being of the household can be much, much higher.

00:55:57.000 | Just the peace and the lifestyle of the family can be higher.

00:56:02.000 | Why is it that so many people want to retire early?

00:56:05.000 | Well, because they want to build a better lifestyle.

00:56:07.000 | Well, you don't have to wait until you're financially independent to do that.

00:56:10.000 | Create it now because what's the point of not living a great lifestyle for the next 20 years so that then you can live it, live the great lifestyle now, and plan it in advance for the next 20 years that you can live it even better?

00:56:23.000 | I think those two things should go together.

00:56:26.000 | At least they do in my mind.

00:56:27.000 | Some people may disagree.

00:56:28.000 | And there are many ways that she can contribute to a much higher lifestyle for your family than what you could afford with her earning a paycheck.

00:56:39.000 | Perhaps that's the quality of education for your family.

00:56:44.000 | Perhaps that's the quality of cuisine that you enjoy because if she enjoys cooking, maybe she has time to cook.

00:56:53.000 | I remember with my mom, I used to read those stories and every year they talk about what is the economic contribution of a stay-at-home mom.

00:57:02.000 | And they would talk about it being something like $180,000 by the time you put those things together.

00:57:06.000 | That is so important to recognize that there is a massive economic contribution with a higher lifestyle.

00:57:13.000 | Number two part of economic contribution might be savings, frugality, thriftiness.

00:57:20.000 | Many of the things that cost money, many times we pay for convenience.

00:57:26.000 | We pay for convenience because we don't have time.

00:57:28.000 | If we have more time, then we don't need as much convenience.

00:57:32.000 | So whether that's my wife and my family, we use cloth diapers.

00:57:38.000 | Now, my wife just really likes cloth diapers and there are ways to do it without one parent being available to do laundry every day.

00:57:45.000 | But frankly, it's a lot harder and there's not as many benefits.

00:57:49.000 | So if you have to buy diapers for your child because you don't have the time to run a load of laundry every day, that's a cost.

00:57:58.000 | And so simply having some time to do something as simple as run a load of laundry every day is simple.

00:58:05.000 | It helps. So contributions and savings.

00:58:08.000 | Then the last aspect I would say would be contributions and earnings.

00:58:11.000 | Don't think, and I would encourage you, consider – don't think that just because your wife has chosen to stay at home and not return to her probably corporate job.

00:58:23.000 | Don't think that there can't be a massive increase in the earnings of the household depending on her skill set and her interests.

00:58:30.000 | Does she have an interest in a certain area where she can start a business?

00:58:35.000 | Not having to create an immediate income can be a powerful leg up in actually establishing a quality business that can create a tremendous income.

00:58:44.000 | I don't equate personally earning a paycheck for a corporate employer as being the same thing at all as creating income from a business.

00:58:57.000 | And there may be many businesses.

00:58:59.000 | It may be – maybe she has an ability and expertise and she's going to build a massive import/export business because now she's got the time to be on the computer and correspond with some suppliers in China and set up a website and do that.

00:59:13.000 | And that's the kind of thing where it's going to take a year's worth of investment to build.

00:59:19.000 | But now she's got the time to do it when she's not depending on that income.

00:59:23.000 | Maybe she has a particular skill or interest in – I don't know – some art like photography.

00:59:30.000 | I know of a friend of mine and a former client who is a – she's a tremendously skilled photographer.

00:59:37.000 | And she's also a speech therapist.

00:59:40.000 | And she's tremendously skilled as a speech therapist but I think she probably makes more money as a photographer because she takes just awesome family pictures.

00:59:47.000 | And in a world where there's so much disposable income and so much of a joy of sharing pictures with social networks and things like that, I mean she could – if she wanted to do it, she could have constant – a constant flow of income coming in from her photography business.

01:00:05.000 | And she's very skilled.

01:00:07.000 | And so that's the kind of thing that if she were working 40 hours a week, how could she do that, work the corporate job and build that business up?

01:00:16.000 | But in the situation perhaps that maybe you're working a traditional 9 to 5 corporate job, perhaps those photography shoots are going to take place in the evening and on the weekend.

01:00:25.000 | And so she may be able to double what she was earning previously at her previous job and still be at home with the kids during the day and then you're at home with the kids during the night.

01:00:36.000 | If that's how your schedules work.

01:00:38.000 | So maybe that's something that you would consider.

01:00:40.000 | So look for a way to build earnings.

01:00:43.000 | There are many types of investments.

01:00:45.000 | Maybe you're going to – maybe she's got a real knack for finding deals on real estate and you're going to invest in rental houses.

01:00:52.000 | Or maybe she's going to manage your investment portfolio and she has the ability now to keep an eye on whatever market that is that you're looking at.

01:01:00.000 | Now she has the time to apply to that where she's not being stressed and pressured at a corporate job.

01:01:05.000 | So consider the economic production that can be done without the constraints of that 40-hour work week.

01:01:13.000 | So that's the second area that I have for you.

01:01:15.000 | The third area that I would have just in this – some of the things that I've learned as a young husband would be with regard to the daily schedule.

01:01:23.000 | One of the biggest transitions and challenges I think, especially for moms, if they come home – I think it's for moms and dads.

01:01:30.000 | I've had this even just me working from home now.

01:01:35.000 | There's a real need for adult interaction and for variety in the daily schedule.

01:01:39.000 | So make sure that you are conscious of that, that you plan for it, and that you make provision for it.

01:01:47.000 | Make sure that if you are going to be out of the house during the day and she's at home during the day, make sure that you're not coming home and flipping on the TV and just saying – and expecting her to be a servant to you.

01:01:59.000 | I think that would be totally destructive to your marriage.

01:02:03.000 | Make sure that you're making and encouraging and making provision for her to have lots of adult interaction without the kids so that she can – because a lot of the work environment, a lot of the reasons that people enjoy going to work, it's not so much having to do with the work, but it has to do with the social interaction.

01:02:24.000 | So if she's for many years enjoyed the social interaction and now she doesn't have the ability to enjoy that anymore, that can be a real stress.

01:02:33.000 | So make certain that you are planning for it and make certain that you're building that into the schedule, that you're building it in to – because that's a real need I think that we all have and we've got to be intentional about it.

01:02:48.000 | The last bit of just encouragement that I would share with you would be with regard to financial management.

01:02:54.000 | Recognize that in choosing to stay home with your son or daughter, she is placing a tremendous amount of trust and confidence in you.

01:03:07.000 | Don't abuse that trust.

01:03:12.000 | That is a tremendously humbling place to put yourself where you are depending on another person to provide your livelihood.

01:03:20.000 | And perhaps as it may have been in – at least it was in my marriage, this may be the first time in your marriage where that's happened.

01:03:27.000 | What is common in our current culture is it's common for most young men and young women to work and earn incomes until they get married and then potentially then one parent will stay home.

01:03:42.000 | And that's when that decision comes.

01:03:45.000 | If that's the case in your scenario, recognize that she is placing a tremendous amount of trust in you and do not betray that trust.

01:03:58.000 | Don't betray that trust.

01:04:01.000 | Make sure that you do not use money as a control mechanism.

01:04:06.000 | If any of us use money as a control mechanism over another person, I think we have a problem.

01:04:10.000 | In my mind, that's immoral. But especially in a marriage, don't use money as a way to abuse another person.

01:04:19.000 | If you ever so much even find yourself thinking about your contribution versus her contribution as measured in financial income or spending and using that as a bargaining chip in a disagreement, you're doomed.

01:04:34.000 | And your marriage is doomed.

01:04:36.000 | Don't ever even think it, let alone use it or say it.

01:04:41.000 | Strike that from your income and see the tremendous sacrifice that she's making.

01:04:48.000 | I personally have the opinion. It's my personal opinion.

01:04:51.000 | I think it is far easier when I look at the – my wife is an amazing person.

01:04:57.000 | When I look at the work that she does in working with our son and just the patience that she has and the tremendous character quality that she has, I think that it is so much easier for her – her life was way easier when she was just out working a job than it is now.

01:05:19.000 | And I would encourage you to appreciate that same thing because in so many ways in today's world, for your wife to make that decision is a sacrifice.

01:05:31.000 | It really is. It's culturally unacceptable. It's culturally despised.

01:05:36.000 | And yet she still wants to do that.

01:05:39.000 | And you had – I would encourage you, honor that.

01:05:43.000 | I think you have to honor that and appreciate it.

01:05:47.000 | Make sure that she does not suffer any loss of lifestyle.

01:05:54.000 | Make sure that money is never used as a bargaining chip.

01:05:58.000 | Make sure that she has plenty of money to spend on her own needs and on her own pleasure as your family's finances can handle.

01:06:07.000 | But make certain that she feels more – I would encourage you, make sure she feels more freedom to spend money now than perhaps she did when she was earning it because that can be a very difficult transition to go from being able to earn your money and spend your money to being dependent on another person to provide the income of which you are now stewarding and spending.

01:06:29.000 | So make sure that she has plenty of money to spend on her needs and on her pleasures.

01:06:34.000 | Don't use money as a control mechanism.

01:06:37.000 | It's immoral to do that over any other person, any other – I feel very strongly about that.

01:06:44.000 | Any of us, we should never be looking to use money as a control mechanism over another person but so much more importantly with your spouse.

01:06:52.000 | Make sure that all of her needs are met in abundance.

01:06:56.000 | Listen extra, extra carefully.

01:06:58.000 | Talk, talk, talk and work on building out a budgeting or cash flow management system that works for the two of you.

01:07:05.000 | And I would – just what I've tried to do at least is go overboard and I don't think I've always done this successfully.

01:07:12.000 | Again, I'm a young husband and a young father and I'm learning a lot but I try to go overboard in making sure that not only is – hopefully I don't want to make myself sound too great but it's my idea and I don't know that I succeed always in implementing it but I try.

01:07:29.000 | Again, make sure that she has more money to spend now than she did before and I hope that it's a great scenario for her.

01:07:37.000 | I see it as the most powerful.

01:07:39.000 | We did that whole long section today on specialization and in my mind it should be applied in the family unit as well.

01:07:46.000 | Is there a real need for specialization in the family unit?

01:07:49.000 | And again, this is one of the most powerful countercultural things I think you can do to take back your lifestyle.

01:07:57.000 | Stop measuring life in terms of how much income is earned on a paycheck.

01:08:00.000 | All we are in that situation is a corporate – essentially a corporate pawn, an employee that can be pulled out, put back in, pulled out, put back in.

01:08:09.000 | We're a unit of economic production as measured in the number of jobs.

01:08:14.000 | That is not the case.

01:08:15.000 | We're human beings, not humans doing.

01:08:18.000 | We're humans being human beings.

01:08:21.000 | So that would be my thoughts.

01:08:26.000 | I think it's tremendously exciting.

01:08:27.000 | I'm excited for you.

01:08:28.000 | Congratulations.

01:08:29.000 | How exciting to have a little baby.

01:08:31.000 | Congratulations.

01:08:32.000 | And thanks for the question.

01:08:34.000 | I hope this was helpful and encouraging for you.

01:08:37.000 | I encourage you guys.

01:08:38.000 | How fun.

01:08:40.000 | That's it for today's show.

01:08:42.000 | I thank you all so much for listening.

01:08:45.000 | Let me give you a quick update as far as what you can expect over the next two weeks.

01:08:48.000 | So again, today is December 20th as I release this.

01:08:51.000 | I will be releasing three interviews next week and three interviews the following week.

01:08:55.000 | Next week I have an interview with Ben Falk.

01:08:57.000 | He is the founder of a company called Whole Systems Design, a tremendous designer, lives on a farm in Vermont, tremendous guy.

01:09:05.000 | On Tuesday I'll be releasing an interview with Dr. Vern Poythress.

01:09:09.000 | He is a professor of theology at Westminster Seminary.

01:09:12.000 | We talked about an interesting thing that he built with his kids of essentially creating a rite of passage for them.

01:09:22.000 | I think it was at the age of 12 that he did it for his kids.

01:09:26.000 | This is an interest of mine.

01:09:28.000 | It was actually suggested by a listener.

01:09:30.000 | I'm releasing it on the day before Christmas.

01:09:32.000 | Some of you who get annoyed by religious – it's not tremendously religious, but some of you get annoyed by that.

01:09:36.000 | Just skip that show if you're interested or whatever.

01:09:40.000 | Friday I will be releasing an interview with Jeff Frewith from the Sustainable Life blog.

01:09:44.000 | He's a young man, lives in Wyoming.

01:09:47.000 | We're going to talk about discussing – we're going to talk about investing in sustainability.

01:09:52.000 | The following week I'm releasing on Monday an interview with Eva from Teens Got Sense.

01:09:56.000 | She is an amazing young lady, writes a financial blog.

01:09:59.000 | I think she's 18 years old, just a tremendous young lady.

01:10:02.000 | On Tuesday the 30th I'll be releasing an interview with Paul Merriman.

01:10:05.000 | He is a very experienced financial advisor, has just a really great story.

01:10:11.000 | Then on Friday another Canadian show for those of you in the Canadian audience with Tim Stobbs from the Canadian Dream at 45, retiring – Canadian Dream Retire at 45.

01:10:21.000 | So those will all be lined up for interviews.

01:10:23.000 | I will be back on the 5th with normal content, doing a lot of work on the show as I'm away.

01:10:30.000 | So thank you guys so much.

01:10:32.000 | Consider joining the membership program if you'd like to.

01:10:35.000 | And as we go, thank you all for your reviews.

01:10:37.000 | Oh, here. This is what I wanted to read today.

01:10:40.000 | Awesome in-depth information and knowledgeable host.

01:10:42.000 | Despite having possibly the worst intro and outro music in the history of podcasts –

01:10:47.000 | There, you can enjoy it for a moment.

01:10:49.000 | The content of the podcast itself is great.

01:10:51.000 | Initially I wasn't a fan of the long show format, but now I really enjoy it as it allows the host Joshua to dive deeper into topics.

01:10:56.000 | I just tend to listen to the shows in 30-40 minute chunks.

01:10:59.000 | As a financial addict who's working towards an early retirement, this show is right up my alley and Joshua asks very intelligent questions.

01:11:05.000 | I was surprised to find out that he's only in his late 20s.

01:11:08.000 | His voice and his intellect makes him sound like a much older man.

01:11:10.000 | I really enjoy the podcast and wholly recommend you subscribe.

01:11:13.000 | And that was from John Knows About Games.

01:11:16.000 | Thank you, John.

01:11:17.000 | Sorry for the music.

01:11:19.000 | In fact, one of the key things that I'm doing this next year is I've been listening to some of the shows and I've gotten annoyed by the music myself actually at the beginning.

01:11:29.000 | And so I'm working hard to essentially get right to the point.

01:11:32.000 | And hopefully that's come through in the last couple episodes.

01:11:35.000 | And as we get over the next year, I'm going to be doing less.

01:11:39.000 | I'm going to be just tightening everything up all across the board.

01:11:43.000 | And that's my number one focus.

01:11:46.000 | So I'm getting right to the point.

01:11:48.000 | I don't know.

01:11:49.000 | I'll bring it back here and there.

01:11:50.000 | But I've kind of gotten rid of most of the music at the beginning of the shows and recognized that when I listen to podcasts, it doesn't matter that I need music or not need music.

01:11:57.000 | I just want to get right to the point.

01:11:59.000 | So thank you for the review.

01:12:01.000 | If you'd like to leave a review, I crave those and value those very much.

01:12:04.000 | Leave a review on iTunes and/or on Stitcher and/or on whatever platform that you are listening to.

01:12:11.000 | And now I leave you with the music.

01:12:13.000 | And have a happy Christmas and a happy new year, and we will talk with you all in 2015.

01:12:19.000 | [music]

01:12:23.000 | [music]

01:12:27.000 | [music]

01:12:30.000 | [music]

01:12:46.000 | [music]

01:12:49.000 | [music]

01:13:15.000 | [music]

01:13:18.000 | Thank you for listening to today's show.

01:13:21.000 | This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment.

01:13:28.000 | Your situation is unique, and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you.

01:13:36.000 | This show is not and is not intended to be any form of financial advice.

01:13:44.000 | Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy.

01:13:54.000 | And consult them, because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions.

01:14:05.000 | Hold them accountable for your results.

01:14:08.000 | I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes.

01:14:15.000 | If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment, so we can all learn together.

01:14:22.000 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.

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