RPF0174-Stages_of_Financial_Independence
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00:01:02.640 | Today I want to dig into the stages of financial independence.
00:01:12.720 | I'm going to give you the roadmap to go from completely broke and dependent on others to
00:01:19.600 | absolute and total financial abundance.
00:01:40.240 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:01:43.840 | This is the show where we talk about wealth. We talk about wealth from every single direction,
00:01:49.680 | but we have a heavy, heavy focus on financial independence. Today I'm going to give you the
00:01:56.320 | roadmap. This is my roadmap. I've come up with this, and I want to get your feedback on it.
00:02:01.520 | I want to hear if it works for you. Stay tuned.
00:02:09.840 | As many of you know, I've been working, depending on when you listen to this,
00:02:15.600 | I've been working hard on getting the new website renovated and out. As I record this,
00:02:20.480 | today is April 2nd, Thursday, April 2nd, that this show will be going out, 2015.
00:02:28.080 | The whole process and the project for the last few weeks has been to get the new website going.
00:02:32.640 | Well, that is and was a major challenge and continues to be. It's certainly not finished,
00:02:37.280 | but at least it's live. Now I've got the massive task of properly categorizing all the past
00:02:43.120 | content while still pushing forward with the new content. That's what's taking up a lot of my time
00:02:47.920 | at this point. The biggest challenge of actually getting a new website released is how to organize
00:02:53.440 | the content and how to organize the information. Frankly, if you are a regular listener or a
00:02:58.800 | long-time listener, you probably very rarely actually go to the website. You probably are
00:03:04.720 | listening to me through some sort of simple mobile podcast subscription app, usually on a phone. This
00:03:11.520 | may be iTunes, or it might be an Android app, or it might be our own app, which by the way,
00:03:16.720 | the best way to listen is just use the Radical Personal Finance app. It's free, and it's in every
00:03:20.960 | mobile app store. Just search Radical Personal Finance and you can find that.
00:03:24.480 | So that's how most people listen and interact with the show. In some ways, that works really
00:03:29.280 | well, especially if you're starting from the beginning and you're listening from the beginning
00:03:34.160 | all the way through the end. That would be a great idea. I'd love it if every listener did that
00:03:39.280 | because this show is a cumulative show. I try very hard not to repeat topics that have been
00:03:45.360 | covered before. If I'm repeating a topic that has been mentioned, it's because I'm bringing
00:03:50.400 | another angle to it or trying to bring something out of it. So this show is intended to be a
00:03:55.280 | cumulative project. Certainly, I'm not perfect at that. Sometimes I do repeat myself or repeat a
00:04:00.880 | topic, but that's the guiding principle in my mind. So there's not really much of a way for
00:04:06.320 | me to easily organize things on a podcast app. Basically, you just scroll through the listing and
00:04:11.200 | look at the show titles. If I do a good job with my show title, you'd be interested in one or
00:04:15.440 | interested in another. Then hopefully, most of you at some point will go back and start at the
00:04:19.360 | beginning and put up with the difficult ones, the ones where I was still learning. If you get a
00:04:25.760 | little bit into a show and say, "This is not useful to me," then just skip it and go on.
00:04:29.120 | That's the hope. But then, however, at this stage, this episode is episode about 174. So by the time
00:04:39.920 | you get into 174 episodes, it's not realistic to think that new listeners will go and start from
00:04:46.240 | the beginning. So I need to provide some way to actually organize these shows and organize this
00:04:52.960 | content. I've had an outline in my mind of what I'm doing. I've actually had a physical outline
00:05:00.400 | as well. The primary outline that I work from a list of show topics that I have, of ideas that I
00:05:05.760 | have, people that I want to talk to, things that I have come across in the last 10 or 15 years that
00:05:10.640 | I want to share with you. Then it's just a matter of what's the best way to do it. Sometimes,
00:05:14.640 | the best way for me to do it is to sit down and do the show myself. Sometimes, I try to find
00:05:19.120 | somebody. Sometimes, an audience member suggests someone and I'm able to bring them on. That type
00:05:23.840 | of thing works. But I also have been working from the CFP topic areas. One of my goals is to present
00:05:32.560 | to you over the course of perhaps 1,000 episodes all of the information that you would need to know
00:05:37.760 | to sit for and pass the certified financial planner exam. Then I'm systematically working my
00:05:45.280 | way through the formal financial planning topics. So with the new website, I really struggled and
00:05:49.280 | tried to figure out how do I organize this information for a new listener? How do I give
00:05:54.000 | you a roadmap? The funny thing is there are various aspects and various ways that you need to look at
00:06:00.720 | financial information. There are some financial information that a financial planner would need
00:06:05.280 | to have that – let's say – let me use an example. Let's say we're talking about something
00:06:09.280 | like elder care or long-term care planning. If you're 20 years old and your parents are young
00:06:15.120 | and healthy and on their own and not worried about caring for your grandparents or grandparents,
00:06:18.720 | you're not thinking very much about long-term care planning. So unless you're a financial planner,
00:06:22.880 | there's little need for you to sit down and become an expert in that area. But a financial planner
00:06:27.840 | needs to become an expert in that area. So I'm constantly facing this challenge and I went into
00:06:32.720 | it with my eyes wide open. But because I've kind of made my show to appeal to in some aspects,
00:06:40.480 | professional financial advisors and in other aspects, laypeople, heavily interested laypeople
00:06:46.160 | who are not financial planners, just interested in their own financial journey, then I constantly
00:06:51.120 | have this tension between these two camps because the type of content and teaching that I would do
00:06:56.080 | towards a financial advisor is different than somebody who's just looking at their own situation.
00:07:01.680 | So the major challenge for me with the site was how do I organize the content?
00:07:05.040 | And then also how do I profile the content in an attractive way so that if somebody lands on the
00:07:11.440 | site, then they're able to look at it and say, "Well, how do I navigate through this content?"
00:07:16.400 | And I'm going to share briefly with you what I came up with and how I've done that. But I'm
00:07:21.520 | going to emphasize to you today and walk you through the stages of financial independence
00:07:26.080 | that I've designed. But here is what I came up with. I came up with four primary ways for me
00:07:31.200 | to organize the content. And these are primarily ways of thinking about the steps you can take
00:07:37.440 | because financial information needs to be processed at different levels. At some levels,
00:07:42.880 | it's what am I doing now? What am I actually focusing on right now? At other levels,
00:07:47.440 | it's what's the technical information that I need to know as background information to make a
00:07:51.600 | decision? At another level, it's vision. What's my vision of where I'm going and what's my plan
00:07:56.880 | for how I'm going to get there? So there are many different levels. And I came up with a total of
00:08:01.120 | four different paths through the content. And in my daily shows, I bring them out basically every
00:08:08.640 | day, mostly – just about every day. I am essentially working my way through these four
00:08:14.080 | different areas. And you need to keep these – well, for most of you, it's primarily three areas. For
00:08:21.280 | those of you who are interested in financial planning, it's actually four. But you need to
00:08:24.480 | keep these things in your mind as frameworks. And so the first topics – and if you'd like to see
00:08:30.560 | this, you can go on the website at RadicalPersonalFinance.com, select the dropdown topics,
00:08:35.920 | and you'll see these dropdown in four different columns. But the first column and the first area
00:08:40.880 | is actually what you can do and that's your wealth building strategy. That is the five-step
00:08:49.280 | wealth building strategy that those of you who are patrons of the show have received access to
00:08:53.600 | the presentation that I did, the very concise presentation that I did on these five steps.
00:08:57.600 | But this is in essence my five-step, ten-word financial plan. These are the only five things
00:09:02.720 | that you can do. And it starts with the first three that I have mentioned on the show again
00:09:07.920 | and again and again, which is increase income, number one, increase income, number two, decrease
00:09:13.200 | expenses, number three, invest wisely, and then number four and five, I haven't mentioned so much
00:09:18.880 | on the show, but they are kind of – I call them lenses that you have to overlay on top of the
00:09:23.600 | first three steps. Number four is avoid catastrophe and number five is optimize lifestyle. I'll do an
00:09:29.680 | entire show on that at some point. But for now, those of you who are patrons of the show,
00:09:32.960 | you have that information in that little video that was on the confirmation page that I made
00:09:38.080 | for you. And if you're not a patron of the show, you should be and you can get that with as little
00:09:42.560 | as a buck a month to support the show. So it's a really excellent short little presentation that I
00:09:47.680 | did. It's a video presentation with some nice interactive slides. You can find that. Go to
00:09:53.520 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and you'll be able to see that yourself after you sign up as a
00:09:58.240 | patron. And so that first category, that's actually what you do. So every day, every week, every
00:10:04.960 | month, all you're essentially doing is the things that are in that first category. That's all you
00:10:10.960 | can control. All you can focus on is increasing your income, decreasing your expenses, and investing
00:10:17.360 | the difference wisely. From time to time, you need to pick your head up, look at your situation, and
00:10:22.080 | look around, make sure that you're doing intelligent risk management planning and avoid catastrophe.
00:10:27.280 | And then all along the way, you need to constantly be assessing everything that you're doing
00:10:30.880 | and optimizing it and saying, "How am I increasing my income? How am I decreasing my expenses?
00:10:37.520 | Or excuse me, how am I earning my income? Is it in an optimal way for me and my goals?
00:10:43.440 | How am I spending my money? Is it being spent in an optimal way for me and my goals?
00:10:49.360 | And how am I investing my money and my life? Am I investing it in a way that's ideally suited for me?"
00:10:56.880 | And that's optimizing lifestyle. And I can fit everything that we do with financial planning
00:11:02.000 | into those five steps and those 10 words. At some point here, I'm going to write a book pretty soon,
00:11:07.040 | and that's my outline. 10 words, 5 steps. But then inside of those 10 words and 5 steps,
00:11:14.640 | there are nearly infinite choices of ways that you can mix those up in an individualized way.
00:11:21.440 | The second category is actually where you are. So the first category is what you do,
00:11:28.960 | what you can control. Number two is where you are in your journey. And I call this the stages
00:11:34.560 | of financial independence. That's what I'm going to focus on today in just a moment after my
00:11:38.800 | introduction. I'm going to walk through those stages of independence, going from stage zero,
00:11:44.880 | financial dependence, to what I've called stage seven, financial abundance. We'll come back to
00:11:52.240 | that in a minute. But that's where you are, and all of us are at different stages of that journey.
00:11:58.720 | The third category that I have on the organizational structure here is what I call
00:12:05.760 | traditional life event planning. And this is actually how most people think of financial
00:12:10.560 | planning. They think of certain things that you're supposed to do at certain points of life and
00:12:16.480 | certain financial decisions that you should make. This is valid. That's why I've included it. This
00:12:22.480 | one has the most entries, actually. This is valid. But in fact, it's not the most useful because
00:12:31.680 | there's generally little or no vision attached to it. And so what happens is people generally
00:12:37.520 | wander in and out of these decisions without knowing why they're making them. But it is
00:12:42.400 | important to understand the things that are going on at each of these decision points so that you
00:12:48.400 | can have an idea of what these categories are. I'm going to go through them, how I've split them out
00:12:52.320 | on the site, just because, again, this is an audio program. So I don't want you to feel like you have
00:12:56.160 | to pull out your phone and do something unsafe while you're driving down the road. But here are
00:13:00.320 | the traditional life events that I have selected to profile. Education in college, buying or leasing
00:13:07.840 | a car, getting a new job, the loss of a job, marriage, renting an apartment, buying a house,
00:13:16.880 | having babies, training children, widowhood or widowerhood, divorce, elder care,
00:13:24.640 | pre-retirement, and retirement. And these are not so much stages of life, but rather they are
00:13:34.000 | events of life. And they may or may not occur for some or all of us, and they may or may not occur
00:13:43.520 | in a certain order for some people. But each of these events has some specific considerations that
00:13:49.600 | you need to be aware of. And so over time, there will be a curriculum associated with each of those
00:13:54.880 | life events. But those are unique to each person depending on where they are.
00:13:59.520 | And so part of that is just me organizing, saying these are important things that have
00:14:05.600 | major financial ramifications in our life, so I need to make sure that they're well covered in
00:14:10.000 | the show topics. But then also part of that is kind of a sales hook on the website to get somebody
00:14:16.000 | who shows up there without being familiar with the show to look at it and say, "Oh, I'm interested in
00:14:21.040 | elder care," something like that. For most people, they will be most familiar with those first three
00:14:27.280 | categories. But the fourth category is actually the professional advisor focus. This is the formal
00:14:32.960 | financial planning topics. The certified financial planner curriculum, and that's not the only
00:14:39.440 | curriculum, but it's just the kind of the most popular in the industry, so that's what I've
00:14:43.520 | loosely modeled this off of. But the certified financial planning curriculum is basically
00:14:47.680 | divided into five sections, into what they call general principles, income tax planning,
00:14:53.760 | insurance planning, investment planning, retirement planning, and estate planning.
00:14:58.240 | Is that five or six? That's six. Excuse me. Six sections. General principles,
00:15:02.320 | income tax planning, insurance planning, investment planning, retirement planning,
00:15:05.280 | and estate planning. So in each of those categories, most financial planners or financial advisors
00:15:12.400 | will be aware of that outline. I've expanded it a little bit to try to make it a little bit more
00:15:18.080 | friendly to a layperson. So here are the formal financial planning topics as I've listed them.
00:15:23.040 | I've called it general principles, education planning. I've split that out, and that usually
00:15:27.360 | comes in under general principles in the formal curriculum. Income tax planning, insurance planning,
00:15:32.480 | employee benefits planning, that is usually combined with insurance planning in the CFP
00:15:37.760 | curriculum. Investment planning, retirement planning. I've included charitable giving here
00:15:42.720 | as a separate section because I've got a lot of content that I want to cover with regard to
00:15:46.880 | charitable giving over time. That's not just the formal CFP stuff. And estate planning.
00:15:52.880 | Now, within my outline, actually, I have many more topics that aren't covered on the CFP exam
00:16:00.400 | because obviously the CFP is primarily rules and regulations and specifics. It's not so much
00:16:06.400 | larger consumer-focused planning ideas. So I've got a lot of stuff I'm going to cover that's not
00:16:13.040 | in that outline. If you're interested, by the way, many of you have asked about what are the
00:16:18.000 | different types of things, when am I going to cover this, and am I going to cover this other
00:16:21.920 | question? I've gone ahead and included the outline that I have in my personal notes on each of the
00:16:26.960 | pages under that section. So under the formal financial planning topics, under general principles,
00:16:31.680 | you can click on that and you can see that I'm going to cover the financial planning process,
00:16:35.520 | financial statements, cash flow management, credit, debt, and personal financing strategies,
00:16:39.200 | financial institutions, financial services organizations, consumer protection laws,
00:16:43.040 | financial planning for special circumstances, behavioral finance, economic concepts, et cetera.
00:16:48.480 | Now, I am aware, of course, that those – and if you go and look at that, you'll see that that
00:16:54.800 | includes the CFP outline for those of you who are financial planners, but it also includes more.
00:16:59.600 | So that outline in time, what I envision is each of those outline statements plus more that I'll
00:17:06.320 | be bringing in over time, each of those outline statements will ultimately lead to a series of
00:17:11.840 | shows or a show covering each of those topics. So – and that's primarily the Wednesdays – usually
00:17:17.680 | I do them on Wednesdays – the Wednesday formal financial planning shows. For example, yesterday,
00:17:21.760 | the show on the introduction to life insurance, that actually covers one of the specific CFP
00:17:28.000 | outline criteria, which is personal uses for life insurance. That's why I covered that in the way
00:17:33.360 | that I did on the show. So that's where we're going in the long term and there'll be many more
00:17:37.520 | things. There are lots of aspects of things that we talk about. What comes to mind is entrepreneurship.
00:17:45.280 | When I talk about entrepreneurship, where does that fit? There's no category here on the topic,
00:17:50.320 | although obviously it does – maybe it will have its own. I tried to simplify these as absolutely
00:17:55.680 | as much as I could because I didn't want to be overwhelming, but I did try to make them make
00:18:01.680 | sense. Entrepreneurship, what are you doing there with entrepreneurship? Well, you're increasing
00:18:04.720 | income and you're optimizing your lifestyle and then also then there are specific aspects of it.
00:18:11.440 | So at some point, I may create kind of another catch-all or a couple other categories, but for
00:18:17.280 | now I've kept it with these specific topics. So these are organizing principles. You can look at
00:18:22.160 | your wealth-building strategy and you can think about what do I do next. That's my wealth-building
00:18:25.920 | strategy. You can look at your stages of financial independence and you can say, "Where am I in my
00:18:30.640 | process?" You can look at the life event planning and if you're facing a forthcoming life event,
00:18:35.280 | you can go and say, "I just lost my job. What do I need to be doing right now that I just lost my
00:18:39.360 | job?" Then you can look at the formal financial planning topics, which is in essence your
00:18:43.760 | academic curriculum that you need to be fully competent in our very complex modern financial
00:18:50.720 | life. So that's how I've laid it out and I hope that's helpful to you just kind of as an intro.
00:18:56.080 | All these shows as of right now is in April 2. I've still got to go back through all the
00:19:01.120 | archive and I can't outsource because I'm the one who can map this stuff and map all of the
00:19:05.680 | shows in here. That's not done yet. So feel free to go by the website and check it out.
00:19:10.080 | Then in time, that'll be coming. So hopefully that's a good introduction to you guys. I hope
00:19:14.400 | you'll benefit from that. Now, I'd like to share with you the stages of financial independence
00:19:20.640 | that I have designed. I'm interested in your feedback. This is not something that I've covered
00:19:26.480 | on the show in a verbal format before. It's been something that's been in my private notes that
00:19:30.400 | I've been thinking about. Essentially, what I've tried and wanted to provide is a roadmap.
00:19:37.520 | Me personally, I'm very much a roadmap type of person. I like to lay out a plan and say,
00:19:44.240 | "Okay, here are the steps that I need to follow." The way that I do goal planning, I say, "What's
00:19:48.720 | the goal? What are the steps I need to go?" and then just start working my way through the steps.
00:19:52.560 | I like to have an idea of where I'm going to go. Simple example, sometimes people wonder,
00:19:58.960 | "Joshua, why do you have so many financial planning designations? Why do you sat down
00:20:01.600 | with a notebook one day?" I said, "I know I want to get a bunch of financial planning
00:20:04.720 | designations." I sat down and I looked through the entire course catalog that was available.
00:20:08.880 | I figured out an ideal way to work my way through all of the classes in the most efficient way
00:20:14.160 | possible so that there would be maximum overlap between the classes and the different designations
00:20:19.120 | because some classes could be used for multiple designations. I laid it out. I just made a list
00:20:24.160 | of all the classes and I just started taking them as quickly as I could. I just scheduled the exams.
00:20:27.680 | I'd usually schedule the exam three months out and get the book, read the book, take the exam,
00:20:33.040 | schedule the next exam for three months, get the book, read the book, take the exam. You just work
00:20:37.440 | your way through and all of a sudden, boom, you've got a bunch of financial planning designations.
00:20:40.720 | It's not that big of a deal. So roadmaps are useful for me and as I've observed the financial
00:20:46.880 | industry in general, they're useful for other people. This is one of those things that gets
00:20:52.720 | a guy like me a little bit annoyed because I think, "Well, don't tell me how to get there.
00:20:59.360 | I shouldn't tell people what to do." But the reality is most people seem to like to be told
00:21:04.000 | what to do. Now, whether that's something inherent in who we are as individuals or whether it is
00:21:11.760 | something that is conditioned into us by society, I have no idea. But it seems to me from anecdotal
00:21:18.560 | observation that most people just simply like to be told, "Here's what you need to do."
00:21:22.560 | Most people react well to that. So it doesn't bode well for the style of teaching that
00:21:28.320 | I do with Radical Personal Finance where I don't tell you what to do. I just say,
00:21:31.360 | "Here's the information you need to make a decision." That's not very popular in popular
00:21:35.200 | culture but I can't quite go so far as to adopt what most people do and say, "Well,
00:21:40.000 | here's how you have to do these things in your life. I think we should change culture."
00:21:44.160 | But roadmaps are valuable. The best example, probably the most famous one is I've marveled
00:21:50.720 | for years at the power both in my life and in observing other people's lives of Dave Ramsey's
00:21:58.160 | Seven Baby Steps. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Dave Ramsey is kind of the most
00:22:03.840 | admired and definitely the most popular, most followed personal finance guru in our current
00:22:11.040 | day at least in the United States. His most famous book is called My Total Money Makeover in which he
00:22:17.040 | lays out seven baby steps. The baby steps are modeled on that movie. I don't remember what
00:22:22.960 | the name of it was but we're talking about the psychiatrist. You take baby steps instead of big
00:22:28.480 | steps. He gives people this very clear prescription and his prescription, let's see if I can remember
00:22:34.720 | the baby step one is save $1,000 in the bank which is basically what he calls a starting
00:22:39.840 | emergency fund. Then baby step two is pay off all your debt. Baby step three is save six months'
00:22:47.600 | worth of expenses as an emergency fund. Baby step four is save 10 or 15% for retirement. Baby step
00:22:56.400 | five is save for college. Baby step six is pay off your house early. Baby step seven is get really
00:23:06.000 | wealthy and give and invest and something like that. Those baby steps are brilliant for people
00:23:14.320 | who are struggling and in debt because it gives them, especially the first three, it gives them a
00:23:19.440 | clear game plan to run on. After that, the whole thing kind of falls apart because no one really
00:23:24.000 | knows exactly what to do and where does the 15% for retirement come from and how much should I
00:23:29.520 | save for my kid's college and should I really pay off my house early and et cetera and what does
00:23:33.680 | save and invest and get fabulously rich and give much money away actually mean? What are the
00:23:37.040 | mechanics of that? So it falls apart over time but it gives people just this amazing action focus.
00:23:44.640 | So I've thought about that from the perspective of financial independence. If you look at all of
00:23:49.680 | the well-developed financial independence curriculum, there's some sort of progression in
00:23:56.080 | there. I can't remember – quote them off the top of my head but your money or your life, they give
00:24:00.240 | I think it was like eight steps – sorry, it's nine steps of – for your money or your life,
00:24:07.280 | nine steps to transform your relationship with your life, with your money and achieve
00:24:12.720 | financial independence. So there are nine magical steps. Step one, make peace with the past.
00:24:17.680 | Step two, be in the present and track your life energy. Step three, where is it all going,
00:24:21.760 | the monthly tabulation. Step four, three questions that will transform your life.
00:24:25.680 | Step five, make life energy visible, make your wall chart. Step six, value your life energy,
00:24:31.040 | minimize spending. Step seven, value your life energy, maximize income. Step eight,
00:24:35.360 | capital on the crossover point and step nine, managing your finances. So they give nine steps.
00:24:40.400 | So as human beings, we need some organization to our life is my point with all this.
00:24:44.320 | The problem is that most of the steps, many of the steps that people talk about are not
00:24:50.720 | really steps that you can do. So for example, you can't do step four of your money or your life,
00:24:59.120 | ask three questions that will transform your life. You can't do that step. You can just ask
00:25:03.200 | three questions. So people try to connect these oftentimes and try to organize financial
00:25:10.960 | information so it's actionable. Authors will try to connect things that are where you are versus
00:25:17.200 | what you do and they try to integrate these things. So in Dave Ramsey's seven baby steps,
00:25:24.320 | step one, save $1,000 is very different than step two, pay off debt because save $1,000 may be done
00:25:31.520 | in three seconds. You might have it already and just allocate that and say, "This is my emergency
00:25:36.880 | fund." Maybe it wasn't separated before. But paying off debt might take years,
00:25:44.080 | become fabulously wealthy and get a bunch of money in one way. Step seven, that's the rest
00:25:47.520 | of your life. So when I thought of this, I said, "It should be a difference of what you do and
00:25:53.600 | where you are. But where you are is important because it gives you an idea of where you're
00:25:58.320 | going." So that's why mine, your wealth building strategy, this is what you do. Stage is a financial
00:26:05.200 | independent. This is where you are. So it starts with stage zero, which is financial dependence.
00:26:11.760 | Forgive me if I went too long on that. I'm just trying to give the background to this of how I
00:26:15.280 | came up with this. But as I came up with it, here are the ones I've come up with. Stage zero is
00:26:19.600 | financial dependence. All of us begin from a place of dependence on others. Some of us revert to a
00:26:28.400 | place of dependence on others. We all begin as babies. We're dependent on our family, on our
00:26:35.360 | parents, on our guardian, on an orphanage. We're dependent on someone else to provide for our
00:26:42.400 | needs. So we need to transition from that stage of financial dependence to being on our own.
00:26:48.320 | It might not just be that we're young. It might be that we've had a setback in life. Perhaps we have
00:26:54.640 | lost our job and lost our house and moved back in with your parents or maybe had a terrible accident
00:27:02.800 | and became disabled for a period of time and you're being cared for by an institution of some
00:27:08.240 | kind. My point is it doesn't matter why, just simply that stage zero is financial dependence
00:27:13.920 | where we're dependent on other people. So we've got to move from stage zero to stage one, which
00:27:19.600 | I've called stage one, financial solvency. So the first stage of financial independence is to become
00:27:28.400 | self-supporting and to be financially solvent. Specifically, that means that you're able to
00:27:35.200 | support yourself on your own income without the aid of others and that you're current on all of
00:27:41.440 | your bills. I had to include both of those things. I originally in my mind had this split out into
00:27:49.120 | two stages. I had financially self-sustaining, which was on your own basically. Then I had
00:27:55.680 | financially solvent, which was current on all your bills and I decided it was too complicated.
00:27:58.880 | It needed to have fewer steps. So I've collapsed them into a single stage, supporting yourself
00:28:06.560 | and current on all of your bills. That's financially solvent. Now, going from stage zero
00:28:11.760 | to stage one, going from financial dependence to financial solvency might be very simple and
00:28:16.880 | very easy or it might be massively challenging. For example, if you're just getting your first
00:28:25.200 | job and all of a sudden you go from no income to having income and if your expenses are low,
00:28:29.920 | then it's very simple. You can quickly go from financial dependence to solvency.
00:28:33.920 | Or if let's say that things have been really tough, you've fallen behind on your bills,
00:28:39.120 | you're starting out, you had a very low income or an unreliable income and you need to – you're
00:28:43.920 | behind on your bills and so then to become financially solvent might have a lot of work
00:28:48.000 | associated with it. You might need to work really hard. You might need to cut expenses to the bone.
00:28:52.720 | You might need to renegotiate with all of your creditors and get caught up on your bills,
00:28:57.600 | renegotiate your debt agreement such that you can actually handle your payments. It doesn't
00:29:01.520 | matter why you're behind. It just matters that you've got to transition to solvency
00:29:07.200 | where you're supporting yourself on your income and your current on all of your bills,
00:29:13.760 | paying as agreed with all of your creditors. Now, also I should say that
00:29:20.480 | this – you can run these things depending on how you run your finances. If you're a family unit,
00:29:25.120 | then I just pull this as a family unit. If you're an individual, run it as an individual. However,
00:29:29.440 | you want to do that, it doesn't really matter. I think these stages can be applied
00:29:32.800 | regardless of how you organize your finances. So get financially solvent. That's stage one.
00:29:40.080 | Then from financial solvency, we need to move to financial stability and that's stage two.
00:29:48.320 | Once you are current on all of your bills, you need to build a buffer account.
00:29:52.960 | I don't care. Call it what you will, an emergency fund, cash reserves or any day
00:29:58.720 | fund. It really doesn't matter. The point is that you have money saved,
00:30:02.640 | a little bit of a buffer account. This is an incredibly important stage
00:30:14.240 | and this money needs to be money that's easily available to you, both for the bad times and for
00:30:20.320 | the good. Things happen. Problems happen. Unexpected problems happen. Cars break. Jobs
00:30:26.320 | are lost. Kids break their legs. There are unexpected medical bills and illnesses and
00:30:32.480 | disabilities, unexpected pregnancies and all kinds of things. Problems happen and you need
00:30:38.000 | to have some cash in your life where you can deal with them. But also, unexpected opportunities
00:30:43.920 | happen. You're driving down the road and there's a great deal on a beautiful car if you have cash
00:30:49.600 | and you can walk over and hand the guy $100 bills and get yourself a great deal. You're down at the
00:30:54.160 | flea market or you're cruising Craigslist and all of a sudden, there's a real steal of a buy if you
00:30:59.120 | can move quickly. You need financial stability and you need savings and savings give you financial
00:31:06.720 | stability. Now, how much savings? I don't know. Frankly, I think that's going to be very different
00:31:13.040 | for most people. At this point, I would err on the higher side, higher than most people because
00:31:18.960 | I look at cash as opportunity. So unlike some financial advisors who say, "Well, just have
00:31:26.480 | three months of cash and then put everything in retirement accounts," I really don't like that
00:31:30.000 | advice. I like to have a lot of cash because I've seen the power of back to optimizing lifestyle.
00:31:37.920 | I've seen the power that cash can have on your ability to optimize your lifestyle. If you have
00:31:41.920 | cash, you can really do some amazing things. You can buy the RV for the summer vacation because you
00:31:49.120 | see it on the side of the road at a real steal of a deal. You can own it for two months and then you
00:31:53.680 | can flip it and turn around and do more. Well, you can't do that if all your money is locked up in
00:31:58.160 | your 401(k). But if you have cash where you can buy it, run it, and sell it and maybe your total
00:32:06.720 | cost was you lost $500 on taxes and you sold it for what you bought it for, that leads to really
00:32:12.480 | being able to optimize your lifestyle. So I don't know how much the money should be. I love also
00:32:20.400 | Dave Ramsey's $1,000 emergency fund. I think he's proven, if you look at the success that people have
00:32:26.960 | had following his program, he's proven that having that just small amount of money can really be a
00:32:32.480 | good kickstart for so many normal, everyday, median income earners. Saving $1,000 can mean
00:32:40.160 | the difference between going deeper into debt and getting out of debt. So for some people,
00:32:44.480 | it might be $1,000. For others, it might be $10,000. For others, it might be $100,000.
00:32:49.280 | And I think that should vary depending – for others, it might be more.
00:32:53.600 | It should just simply vary depending on where you are. But my point is you need financial stability
00:33:00.640 | and that means you need savings. And I think you need to sit down and figure out what is my goal
00:33:06.800 | for a target level of savings. If you don't have a goal, I would say go with six months of expenses.
00:33:12.000 | It's as good of a rule of thumb as any. At some point soon, I'll teach the CFP curriculum. They
00:33:17.680 | give either three or six months of expenses depending on whether you are a single individual
00:33:22.960 | with a job or whether you're a married couple with dual income versus single income. They always
00:33:28.000 | go back and forth between the three and six months. I think six months is as good as anything.
00:33:31.920 | But if you want to use a different number, use a different number. If you have some savings
00:33:36.560 | and if you're current on all your bills, then you are now financially stable. You're at stage two.
00:33:42.080 | And you can move from stage two to stage three. Stage three is debt freedom. Now,
00:33:51.600 | unfortunately, because of my more nuanced ideas and approaches to debt, I can't be as
00:33:58.080 | simple and declarative as get out of debt. You have to get out of debt at stage three.
00:34:02.960 | Not all debt is created equal. It's simply not. So you've got to look at an individual situation.
00:34:09.440 | There are massively different types of debt and you've got to look at what your investment
00:34:15.520 | options are as well. But I do think most people should consider getting out of debt
00:34:21.600 | early in the process. And the reason is because I think that if you're able to get out of debt,
00:34:27.520 | then you're simply more free. And remember that our long-term goal is financial
00:34:34.080 | independence and financial freedom. The ability to simply adjust your life
00:34:39.760 | and your lifestyle to whatever your current income is, that is powerful.
00:34:46.400 | It doesn't really matter why the debt exists. If you don't have any pre-obligated
00:34:52.160 | income payments, you haven't obligated your future income, which is what a debt is,
00:34:58.320 | then you're able to pivot on a dime and change. You're able to leave one job and go to another
00:35:04.400 | job in another city that you're starting at a lower pay, but it's really got much bigger potential.
00:35:08.800 | You're able to leave the mind-numbing corporate job and move to the risky startup. And all you've
00:35:13.600 | got to do is just simply transition a couple of things and cut your current spending, but you
00:35:17.600 | haven't pre-committed all your income. See, this is the major trap of debt, especially consumer debt,
00:35:22.880 | not investment debt. The major trap of debt is that you are requiring a future higher income.
00:35:29.760 | You're a middle management employee doing well, enjoying your corporate life. You pre-commit,
00:35:35.280 | you're earning $100,000 a year. You've a couple of car payments, a little bit of student loan
00:35:40.480 | payments, a mortgage payment, maybe a vacation property, whatever, just normal American lifestyle.
00:35:47.760 | And then all of a sudden, you get a call from a friend. You're in the computer business. You get
00:35:50.640 | a call from a friend and you know this business has massive potential, but your friend is
00:35:55.840 | bootstrapping it, can't afford to pay you a lot of money. Well, if you don't have any debt, then you
00:36:00.560 | can take that risk because you're not pre-obligated with payments. But if you've got a lot of debt
00:36:08.000 | and in order to make the risk, you got to go home and convince your spouse that we're going to sell
00:36:12.160 | three cars, we're going to move out of this house, we're going to move, it just doesn't go so well.
00:36:16.320 | And so you're more likely to stay with the theoretically safer option and you might miss
00:36:24.000 | out on the big win. You might also miss out on the big loss. You'll have to judge the opportunity.
00:36:28.880 | My point is that freedom is not that hard to buy and it's largely involved with freedom from debt.
00:36:36.560 | So you got to sit down and look at your debt and create a plan to dump the debt or at least dump
00:36:42.800 | the debt that's not getting you closer to financial independence. You've got seven mortgages on 11
00:36:49.120 | rental properties, then I think you're well on your way to financial security and financial
00:36:54.320 | independence even if the debt is not paid off. So to me, this is not a clear saying that you must
00:37:02.560 | pay off debt before you get to this other stage. You simply need to consider it and have a plan.
00:37:06.960 | For the debt, being debt-free is powerful from a lifestyle perspective. It's simple, quick freedom.
00:37:14.960 | Next stage is stage four, financial security. So we're going from stage three, debt freedom,
00:37:22.560 | to stage four, financial security. Here how I define financial security is essentially the start
00:37:28.320 | of independence and freedom. If you are trying to go from zero dollars of investment income
00:37:35.680 | to enough dollars of investment income to cover your entire lifestyle,
00:37:39.200 | that's going to be a big difference. If you're going from zero dollars of savings to
00:37:45.680 | covering $100,000 a year from savings, that's going to take a long time. So how do you stay
00:37:53.200 | motivated? Well, how my mind works is I stay motivated by partitioning off certain levels
00:38:00.400 | of expenses and saying, "These are now covered." On Monday, I shared with you episode 171. I shared
00:38:06.800 | with you to adjust the scale of your budget numbers for maximum mental impact. I shared with
00:38:12.160 | you how I think of my income from radical personal finance. If I have somebody that signs up – let's
00:38:18.000 | say I have somebody that signs up for my Patreon account at – well, let's say I have five people
00:38:24.080 | that sign up at – let's say I have 10 people that sign up at $10 a month. Now all of a sudden,
00:38:30.000 | I know, "Okay, there are my hosting fees. My monthly hosting fees are covered." So I've bought
00:38:34.640 | myself independence from my hosting fees. Or if I have somebody that signs up at $25 a month and I
00:38:40.640 | say, "Well, there's my cell phone costs." So I'm financially independent from my cell phone costs.
00:38:44.960 | So what I'm trying to apply there, I'm not fully financially independent, but at least I have
00:38:49.360 | income. I have a paying subscriber who's able to – who's paying me and now I'm decoupling just a
00:38:55.280 | little bit. I'm a little bit more independent than I was before. So that's the idea that I was trying
00:38:59.440 | to bring to this. So these next three stages are all based upon that. So I call stage four as
00:39:07.440 | financial security and that is where you are able to cover your basic living expenses from your
00:39:14.160 | investment income. So you get to define this for yourself. What I suggest is you got your housing
00:39:23.200 | expenses covered, rent or mortgage payments, your basic utilities, basic food, basic transportation
00:39:29.440 | and basic insurance. Those are the basic need levels of life essentially. When those are covered
00:39:37.120 | by your investment income, you're well on your way with regard to financial independence. You've
00:39:43.920 | achieved financial security. Perhaps you would choose to measure that in terms of a minimum
00:39:49.840 | number. At least if I had $3,000 a month, I would be secure. It's not what I really want to spend
00:39:54.880 | which is $7,000 a month but it's $3,000 a month. Figure out what is the basic level of lifestyle
00:40:00.720 | that you're trying to cover that would help you to feel financially secure to know that if you lost
00:40:05.680 | your job or your primary source of income that you're covered for at least the basics of life.
00:40:12.320 | That's stage four financial security.
00:40:14.160 | Once you get to financial security, then the next goal is financial independence. So I've defined
00:40:24.320 | financial independence is when your current lifestyle expenses can be met with your investment
00:40:30.480 | income. Then you're financially independent. So whatever your current lifestyle is, assuming that
00:40:37.360 | you're living the lifestyle that is pretty much how you want it to be, when that is covered with
00:40:42.800 | your investment income, you're now financially independent. That means that you could
00:40:48.240 | disconnect yourself from work if you want to. Now, does everybody do it at that stage? My
00:40:54.880 | experience has been that no, most people don't. If you're very focused on an early retirement
00:41:00.400 | financial independence goal, then you probably would but most people don't because most people
00:41:08.240 | you know they usually have some things they want to do that's a little bit more than what
00:41:12.000 | they're doing right now. That's where you go into stage six financial freedom. So stage five,
00:41:18.000 | we've gone from stage four financial security with basic living expenses covered by investment
00:41:22.720 | income into stage five which is financial independence which means your current expenses,
00:41:26.160 | needs and wants are covered by investment income. We move into stage six which is financial freedom.
00:41:34.480 | Financial freedom means that all of your lifestyle goals are able to be met by your investment
00:41:42.000 | income. So if you say, "I could get by on this but I'd really love to have a nicer lifestyle in this
00:41:51.200 | area." For some people, it's, "I'd like to travel a little bit more luxuriously. I'd like to have
00:41:56.000 | two boats or a boat or an RV. I don't want to choose between this house and the other house.
00:42:01.440 | I want to own both houses." Whatever your ideal lifestyle goals are, sit down and write them down
00:42:07.760 | and figure out how to meet them. Once you can meet those ideal lifestyle goals from your investment
00:42:14.000 | income, you now have financial freedom. The key is that it's your list of the things that you
00:42:22.160 | actually care about, not my list, your list. When your list is covered by your investment income
00:42:30.800 | and by your financial plan, you are now fully financially free.
00:42:35.280 | Which leads us next into stage seven which is financial abundance. I've added this stage because
00:42:44.960 | this is a stage that many people don't think about. It's the most challenging stage of all in
00:42:50.560 | my opinion but it's not a bad challenge. It's a different challenge. See, going from financial
00:42:58.320 | dependence to financial solvency can be a major challenge for some people.
00:43:02.640 | But the hardest challenge of all is when you have more money than you need
00:43:07.920 | to meet any goal that you have and you have to figure out, "What do I do with it?"
00:43:12.400 | If you've never been there or if you've never interacted with people who are there,
00:43:18.000 | perhaps you don't believe me. Most people say, "Oh, that's a challenge I'd like to have." It's
00:43:21.040 | a challenge you will have probably. If you do the stages and work your way through it,
00:43:24.880 | it's a challenge you will have. Then you'll look back and say, "You know what? That was
00:43:28.000 | really challenging." Because now you have to decide how to responsibly manage the surplus.
00:43:36.240 | You've got more money and more wealth than you're ever going to need to fund your own
00:43:40.960 | lifestyle expenses and there's a margin of safety built in. But now, what do you do with the rest of
00:43:45.840 | it? How do you allocate it properly? How do you make sure that it accomplishes something good and
00:43:55.840 | not something evil? Who's going to control it? Who's going to control it when you can no longer
00:44:02.080 | control it? It's a major challenge, but it can be an enjoyable one. That's why I've included it here
00:44:11.200 | is stage seven, financial abundance. There's a different set of planning and ideas and
00:44:15.920 | major different set of thought process that you have to achieve. You will probably go from,
00:44:21.200 | in stage four, five and six, you're focusing on what are the investment returns and what's the
00:44:25.280 | best investment plan for me to cover my lifestyle goals and my lifestyle needs and my income needs.
00:44:30.720 | Then you'll transition to saying, "How can I invest this money for impact?" Or if I've invested
00:44:37.600 | it purely for income, "How can I invest this income for impact?" Those are my ideas. Those
00:44:47.120 | are my stages of financial independence that I've come up with. I'm interested in your feedback.
00:44:52.640 | The feedback that I got on this previously was that it's too many, too complicated.
00:44:56.800 | Well, I didn't want it to be so big. I could collapse some of these, but the problem is if
00:45:03.120 | you collapse them, you lose out on the ability to measure where you are. I think, for example,
00:45:07.760 | for me, I'm celebrating $2,000 a month of income from radical personal finance. Right now,
00:45:16.160 | with the Patreon page, we've got 114 patrons and $1,191.50 a month. I'm celebrating that number.
00:45:24.000 | It's not the $6,000 number I need in order to turn away advertising, but it's a good start.
00:45:29.840 | I've achieved a degree of financial security with that. I've achieved a degree of financial
00:45:37.600 | independence. I want to measure that and celebrate that. It's not financial freedom. It's not
00:45:42.800 | financial abundance. It's nowhere near what I need to meet my financial goals, but it's worth
00:45:48.480 | celebrating. That's the point that I'm trying to get across. I really don't want to put these down
00:45:55.920 | anymore. I've already gotten rid of a few stages that I thought of that just weren't really
00:45:59.520 | tangible. Here's what I would like to leave you with. First, just quickly recount them in order
00:46:07.280 | so you can think about them. I'm going to leave you with an action step. Stage zero, financial
00:46:11.040 | dependence, where you're dependent on others and you need to transition to being dependent on
00:46:17.200 | yourself, to be self-supporting. You're going to go from stage zero, financial dependence,
00:46:21.680 | to stage one, financial solvency. Solvency means you're able to support yourself on your own income
00:46:27.280 | without the aid of others and that you're current on all of your bills and obligations.
00:46:31.040 | Moving from stage one, financial solvency, to stage two, financial stability, requires that
00:46:39.440 | you set aside some cash reserves, money that's available for unexpected problems and unexpected
00:46:46.960 | opportunities. To transition to stage three, debt freedom, you need to sit down and make a plan
00:46:54.480 | and say, "What's my plan for paying off debt? Should I go ahead and eliminate my student loans
00:47:02.720 | or should I not? Should I pay off my mortgage or should I not?" That's debt freedom, make a plan.
00:47:10.000 | Sometimes the answer is, "I need to clear all these debts," because clearing all the debts
00:47:16.080 | leaves you free to go and do something different. Sometimes it means, "No, I'm comfortable with
00:47:22.160 | these debts. They're all on favorable terms and they're not a factor in my life and so therefore
00:47:27.040 | I'm going to allocate my money into a different direction." Then we need to go from stage three,
00:47:32.240 | debt freedom, to stage four, financial security. That's where your basic living expenses are
00:47:39.680 | covered by your investment income. Moving to stage five, financial independence,
00:47:45.520 | your current lifestyle expenses are covered with investment income.
00:47:49.600 | Moving to stage six, financial freedom, all of your lifestyle goals that you have set for yourself
00:47:56.400 | are covered with investment income. Once your list is funded, you're financially free and you
00:48:02.880 | move into stage seven, financial abundance, which is where hopefully you'll be for the rest of your
00:48:07.280 | life. Here's my action step for you. You'll notice that this is primarily a mental construct and I
00:48:13.520 | haven't really defined numbers behind these things. That's intentional because you've got to decide
00:48:20.800 | this for yourself. My goals are not your goals. Your goals are not my goals. For me to tell you,
00:48:26.640 | "You have to save this percentage of your income," or, "You have to have this certain goal,"
00:48:30.160 | that's a foolish thing to say. It's different for all of us.
00:48:33.120 | I don't particularly value Lamborghinis and yachts and a condo in Miami and a condo in New York and a
00:48:40.400 | condo in Paris. I don't value those things, but it doesn't mean that you don't. The things that I
00:48:49.920 | value, you might not. The key is to define them for yourself. Here's my action steps for you today.
00:48:56.720 | Figure out where you are on these stages and figure out what it would mean to you to go from
00:49:01.600 | the stage where you are to the next stage. Are you dependent? If so, what would it take for you to
00:49:08.560 | become solvent? Are you solvent? If so, what is your number for when you will declare yourself
00:49:15.280 | stable? Is it six months of cash or is it two years of expenses? Is it $5,000? $1,000? Because
00:49:25.120 | you're getting started? $5,000? $50,000 or $100,000? What would it take for you to be free from debt
00:49:32.240 | and should you be focusing on that first? What is financial security defined as for you?
00:49:38.640 | What is financial independence defined as? What is financial freedom? What are all those stretch
00:49:43.760 | lifestyle goals that you may or may not do but you think you'd probably like to do?
00:49:47.520 | Then ultimately, what is financial abundance and what would you like to do? That's a show for
00:49:54.560 | another day, but the reality is if you can skip mentally right to stage seven, I think it'll
00:50:00.960 | transform the rest of your life. If you can skip right to the point of saying, "How can I invest
00:50:07.680 | for impact?" That goes back to what you can do with optimizing lifestyle. It can transform things,
00:50:14.080 | but that's a show for another day. Those are my ideas. Those are my stages of financial
00:50:20.080 | independence modeled in some ways off of other people's things but largely just due to me sitting
00:50:25.760 | down and trying to think through it as I can't really copyright an idea in this type of space
00:50:30.480 | because in many ways, these things are self-evident, but I think they're the most useful to me.
00:50:34.800 | If you'd like to look at them, I've got some pretty cool little icons chosen for them. I like
00:50:39.200 | the icons that I picked. Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com and click on Topics and just
00:50:44.880 | click on the Stages of Financial Independence and figure out where you are. I hope they're
00:50:48.640 | useful for you. I hope they can be a useful mental organizing model for you. Really, that's primarily
00:50:54.800 | all of what financial planning is and what these financial topics are. It's mental. A financial
00:51:03.120 | plan is a mental thing. It's a plan. It's not all it is. Yeah, it's got fancy paper and fancy
00:51:09.520 | graphs and all that stuff. That's just all salesmanship, which is valuable, but the most
00:51:13.600 | valuable thing is you knowing where you are, having a vision, having a plan, having a goal.
00:51:18.640 | Yes, these are mental things and they're different for each one. That's where there could be problems
00:51:23.520 | with one stage versus another, but it's just a mental construct, but it's a useful mental
00:51:29.040 | construct because it keeps you focused. You know where you are in your journey. Define them for
00:51:35.600 | yourself so that you can know when you have enough. The key is to know what's enough for you.
00:51:42.160 | It's pointless to chase after more, more, more, more, more. Unfortunately, especially in the
00:51:46.720 | U.S. American context, that's basically what we do is just constantly chase after more, more, more,
00:51:51.360 | more. Get off that treadmill and define the plan for yourself. Define what each of these stages
00:51:58.080 | means. Define what enough is. Remember, it's your plan. You could change it any time. If you reach
00:52:02.080 | a certain stage and realize, "You know what? It's not enough. I need to change something,"
00:52:06.320 | no problem at all. Recognize that you can't do anything. You can't do any of these stages.
00:52:11.840 | You can only increase your income, decrease your expenses, invest wisely, avoid catastrophe,
00:52:19.920 | and optimize your lifestyle. That's what you can actually do. Focus on what you can do.
00:52:25.600 | Learn what you need to learn from the life event planning or from just the comprehensive financial
00:52:29.680 | planning curriculum. Understand where you are, but apply it to your life with what you can do.
00:52:34.480 | That's it. That's all I got for you today. If this has been helpful for you, I'd be thrilled
00:52:40.240 | if you would become a patron of the show. If you're not already, to those of you who are,
00:52:43.440 | thank you. I don't say that enough. Thank you. I am honored and thrilled that so many of you have
00:52:48.080 | chosen to support the show financially and that you're making this crazy crowdfunding thing work.
00:52:52.640 | We're on our way. The first goal is $2,000 a month. Once we get there, we're currently,
00:52:56.240 | as I said, at $1,191. Once we get there, I got a new intro that I will commission for you.
00:53:00.880 | And then we're on our way to $6,000 per month to keep the show ad-free by June 1. If you can help
00:53:06.080 | get there, I'd be thrilled. Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. Thank you.
00:53:10.560 | Thank you for listening to today's show. If you'd like to contact me personally,
00:53:15.360 | my email address is joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. You can also connect with the show on Twitter
00:53:22.480 | @radicalpf and at facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment,
00:53:31.040 | education, and financial enlightenment, but your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any
00:53:38.800 | actionable advice without knowing anything about you. Please, develop a team of professional
00:53:45.680 | advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they
00:53:53.920 | are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific
00:54:01.280 | answers to your questions. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show,
00:54:07.600 | but I'm one person and I make mistakes. If you spot a mistake in something I've said,
00:54:12.640 | please help me by coming to the show page and commenting so we can all learn together.
00:54:17.440 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.
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