RPF0215-Goals_vs_Means
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00:00:15.200 | Hey, radicals, welcome to the show. My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host.
00:00:19.520 | We're going to call this episode of the Radical Personal Finance podcast more of a coaching call.
00:00:26.320 | This is not necessarily, this is not, certainly not our traditional podcast format. I doubt today's
00:00:32.480 | show will be over 10 minutes. Here during the month of July, I'm going to be releasing a few
00:00:36.720 | short shows here and there as I spend some time loving my wife and loving my kids as we transition
00:00:41.280 | to enjoying our new baby here. So today, I want you to take the time that you would normally spend
00:00:47.520 | listening to the show. Listen to the next few minutes of coaching advice and then turn off the
00:00:54.640 | show or turn off however you listen, phone, internet, whatever, and spend a few minutes
00:01:00.080 | thinking if you're driving, if you can't write, or spend a few minutes writing a few things down.
00:01:06.000 | And I want to talk to you about the question of goals versus means. And I'm not quite sure if
00:01:13.520 | that's the right word for it, but you'll understand in just a moment what I mean.
00:01:16.480 | Here's what I mean. What are your true goals? What are your actual goals?
00:01:24.240 | Very few people actually know what their real goals are. Now certainly if you take some time
00:01:28.800 | and you write down a list of goals, you'll be able to come up with some things that you're
00:01:34.320 | working towards. But depending on how much time you spent thinking about them and working them,
00:01:42.880 | those goals might or might not be your actual goals. Now only you are going to know and be
00:01:50.880 | able to discern and tell whether they're your goals or whether they're your actual goals.
00:01:56.000 | But it's an important thinking process to go through. Let me give you an example. This example
00:02:03.760 | comes from my life. I'm going to give you three specific examples, all of which come from my life.
00:02:08.720 | But let's start with this one. Most of my friends who know me know that I'm,
00:02:14.560 | I was going to say semi-obsessed, but the reality is obsessed with the concept of
00:02:20.080 | travel. My wife likes to joke about how much time I spend looking at different things on travel.
00:02:25.360 | Specifically what appeals to me the most of all the different types of travel that I've done
00:02:29.360 | is what now has the fancy word of overlanding, overland travel. The idea is you have your own
00:02:35.600 | vehicle and you get to travel when and where you want. I have no problem backpacking and
00:02:39.280 | using public transportation, but I just kind of like being able to go where and when I want and
00:02:43.680 | control my own itinerary. Now the interesting thing when you get into the world of travel
00:02:47.520 | and you start looking around in the forums online and the websites that cater to this segment and
00:02:55.360 | this demographic, people who share the interest, it is absolutely astounding how much money and
00:03:02.960 | time people spend outfitting their vehicles for travel and how little time and money people
00:03:09.040 | actually spend traveling. It's incredible. Now I'm a sucker for a fancy truck as much as the next guy.
00:03:16.240 | I can sit here and tell you about the latest Unimog-based RV that will take your family of 11
00:03:22.800 | through the world and can drive through five-foot-deep mud and up to the top of Kilimanjaro.
00:03:27.920 | I think that stuff is as cool as anyone else. I love to sit and look at videos of Land Rovers and
00:03:34.720 | Land Cruisers and they got all of their bumpers and winches and lights. I like that stuff as much
00:03:41.440 | as anyone else. But I can't help but notice how much time and how much money and how much energy
00:03:49.520 | people spend buying stuff to bolt onto their car ostensibly for the purpose of going traveling
00:03:57.920 | and how little time they actually spend on the road. Now here's what's even more interesting to
00:04:04.800 | me. Every place I've been around the world and there are a lot of countries I haven't been to
00:04:08.400 | but I've traveled in some quite varied countries. Everywhere from the large countries of Europe,
00:04:16.320 | Germany and England and Scotland and Austria and all these places, Italy. I've also traveled a
00:04:23.760 | little bit in Egypt and in Haiti and in South America, excuse me, in Colombia, yeah, that's
00:04:28.480 | South America. Also in Nicaragua or Guatemala and where else? A bunch of other places like that.
00:04:36.720 | And the thing that I have noticed is that in those places that I have been, even if whether
00:04:42.160 | you're on the beach in Costa Rica or out in the middle of the jungle, almost nobody
00:04:47.200 | owns a big fancy four-wheel drive vehicle. But I don't know about those of you who live
00:04:53.600 | elsewhere in the world but just about everyone who thinks they're going to travel in the United
00:04:56.640 | States goes out and they got to buy a big fancy four by four. But when you actually go to the
00:05:02.720 | places that many people want to go to, you find that some guy is driving his little two-door
00:05:11.280 | beat-up Toyota Tercel down a rutted back road and parking it on the beach. And then when it
00:05:17.680 | gets stuck and the tide's coming in, you just get six or seven guys and they put a shoulder into
00:05:21.840 | the back of the car and they push it away again. It's not that big a deal. You don't need a $2,000
00:05:26.800 | winch and a $1,000 custom bumper for your car. Now, I'm picking on something that is – again,
00:05:34.400 | like I said, it's something that I like but I think it's a good illustration.
00:05:37.760 | Is your goal to have a big fancy vehicle that seems impressive to everybody or is your goal
00:05:44.400 | to have a big fancy vehicle that is something that you really like? I'm not diminishing that.
00:05:48.720 | I think it's fine to have stuff you like. Or is your goal to travel? Because if your goal is to
00:05:54.000 | travel, all you got to do is get in your car, turn the key and drive. You can drive down to Walmart
00:06:01.520 | and toss a $150 tent in the back trunk and toss a Coleman stove back there and a little sleeping pad
00:06:08.080 | if you want to get luxurious and go. It doesn't cost that much. Just get out there and go.
00:06:20.560 | But see, that would involve overcoming the fear of actually going and that would involve actually
00:06:26.080 | doing something about your dreams and doing something about your goals instead of sitting
00:06:30.320 | around writing on the internet about the next little doodad that you want to buy for your car.
00:06:34.960 | Now, in fairness, I recognize that there are some people for whom their most enjoyable travel is to
00:06:40.480 | be able to go and drive through the middle of the swamp. Fine. Go for it. But for the majority of
00:06:45.760 | people, I think, "Wow, that's not so much. I mean you never put the thing in four-wheel drive and
00:06:48.960 | you just take what you have." So my point is don't confuse your goals. If your goal is to have the
00:06:56.320 | latest, greatest land cruiser with all of the associated farcle that makes it beautiful, fine.
00:07:00.880 | Go for it. But if your goal is to go to Mexico, get some time off, quit your job,
00:07:10.160 | take a couple thousand bucks out of the bank and go to Mexico.
00:07:15.600 | You can skip this whole hassle of spending months and months and months
00:07:19.600 | getting a bunch of stuff ready that you never need. And if your goal is to travel,
00:07:24.960 | you don't have a car, well, take a bicycle. If you don't have a bicycle, go for a walk.
00:07:29.520 | Wasn't that long ago that traveling meant taking a walk and you can still do that. Now, again,
00:07:39.840 | I don't necessarily want to go travel that way. But if I were broke and single and I'm
00:07:45.360 | looking around and saying, "Man, I'm in need of an adventure," I might just go and take a walk.
00:07:49.680 | And you can have some beautiful, amazing experiences when you're walking across the
00:07:55.280 | country for a year. And it doesn't cost as much as buying a $100,000 RV to RV across the country.
00:08:02.000 | Again, filter this through what you actually want. If you want to travel in a certain lifestyle,
00:08:08.640 | fine. But many of you don't. But yet many of you are sitting around thinking, "Oh, I want
00:08:13.680 | this fancy gear." And the reality is just go. Don't waste the time. Just go accomplish the goal.
00:08:21.280 | Two other examples that come to mind is something like a house.
00:08:26.080 | Many people have a dream of a big fancy house. And I think that's great. I live in a world of
00:08:34.000 | fancy houses. And sometimes I'll be over at a friend's house and I'll be and I look around
00:08:38.640 | and say, "Man, my house is not so fancy. I don't have a beautiful pool with a swim up, not a
00:08:45.920 | lanai, a swim up bar where I can serve drinks over the swim up bar and they can sit on the little
00:08:50.480 | pools in the bar. I don't have that. I don't have a 65-inch grill with 16 burners so I can
00:08:57.520 | cook 200 hamburgers at a time. I don't have that." But the question is, do I really need or want to
00:09:05.200 | own that kind of house? Do I really need or want the swim up pool? Or is my actual goal having the
00:09:13.280 | ability to have a good time with my friends, be able to entertain them, be able to have some kind
00:09:20.640 | of forum in which I can spend time with the people that I care about? Now, if you've got the money
00:09:28.800 | and have the fancy house, use it. And if you like to entertain in the pool and so therefore it's
00:09:33.920 | worth the money to you, awesome. But if you figure out that really what you want is just the ability
00:09:39.760 | to entertain some friends, don't wait until you can spend an extra $200,000 on a house that has
00:09:44.240 | a pool with a swim up bar. Get a cooler, find a cool spot down by the beach, stuff the cooler full
00:09:52.000 | of beer, go buy yourself a big fancy $200 grill and drag it down to the beach and make a destination
00:09:58.000 | out of it. Set up a water slide on the hill, an adult water slide, or do something unique that's
00:10:03.840 | going to allow you to create the experience. And you can entertain just as beautifully in a public
00:10:10.320 | park with a little bit of thought and a little bit of creativity as you can with a $200,000 pool.
00:10:16.800 | Think about it. I guess the only other example that I'll mention here is the dead horse that
00:10:26.720 | I beat over and over on the show. This show is dedicated to helping you build financial
00:10:31.360 | independence for you, for yourself and for your family. But I think so much of the time,
00:10:37.760 | especially in this early retirement financial independence community of which I'm a part,
00:10:41.920 | a lot of the time we're focusing on things that aren't an actual goal.
00:10:46.080 | Yes, I want to be financially independent and I want to be financially independent in a basis
00:10:54.640 | where my investments are able to provide for my lifestyle. But that's a farther down the road goal.
00:11:02.240 | And for many of you, that's also a farther down the road goal.
00:11:07.520 | My actual goals are simply autonomy.
00:11:13.920 | The ability to decide from day to day based upon all of my goals, my life on an integrated basis.
00:11:23.280 | My actual goals are just to be able to do what I feel I need to do on each individual day
00:11:27.840 | without somebody saying you need to be here at 8 o'clock in the morning.
00:11:30.320 | So once I identified that, it's much simpler to go the path of entrepreneurship and create
00:11:36.720 | a business that I want to own than it is to save a million dollars. It's much simpler to,
00:11:44.000 | if you recognize that what you actually want is to get out of a job that you hate
00:11:47.840 | and go to a job that you love, much simpler to do that than to save a million dollars.
00:11:53.040 | If you find out that, well, we actually just don't like living in the South where it's hot,
00:12:02.720 | well, go get a job at a bike shop in Boulder, Colorado,
00:12:07.520 | or move to New York and start a plumbing business.
00:12:12.080 | Or if you find out you're tired of the snow, move down and do something interesting. And it doesn't
00:12:20.000 | even have to be anything exotic, but just do something interesting in another place.
00:12:22.960 | A 40-hour a week job as a librarian or as a coffee shop owner in a place that you like to be,
00:12:31.200 | for many of you, is all that you want or need for financial independence.
00:12:37.840 | Now, you'll have to figure out how to apply these ideas and concepts to your life. And my challenge
00:12:45.120 | for you is ask yourself the questions, "What do I want?" And the follow-up question is, "Why? Why
00:12:54.080 | is that important to me?" There's a useful technique sometimes used in coaching or in
00:12:58.640 | counseling. You can use it for yourself to coach and counsel yourself. But the technique is simply
00:13:03.680 | to ask yourself three follow-up questions. "What do I want?" And let me go through a chain as an
00:13:12.960 | example. I want to buy a bigger house. That's what I want. Okay. Why? Well, I feel like my house is
00:13:21.920 | overflowing at the seams. I've got stuff everywhere and I can't get through the hallway because
00:13:25.440 | there's stuff stacked on every side. Okay. So what you actually want is a cleaner house. Why?
00:13:33.120 | Well, I'm really frustrated at the fact that I spend all my time cleaning and moving stuff here
00:13:38.960 | and there rather than enjoying my Saturdays. Okay. So what you actually want is to be able to enjoy
00:13:45.840 | your Saturdays. Why? Well, I really hate what I do during the week and so Saturday is the only
00:13:52.720 | time that I have. So when I work this job I don't like and then I come home and then I have to spend
00:14:00.080 | all my time moving and sorting my stuff then I feel frustrated with that. Ah, okay. So my example
00:14:08.960 | breaks down. I should have come up with a better one but hopefully you see it might be in this case
00:14:14.800 | that the goal is not actually a bigger fancier house but the goal is actually to make that job
00:14:21.360 | change over a period of time and to throw away some stuff. And it might be that the house that
00:14:27.200 | you have is perfectly adequate for what you need and want and those other changes which are simpler
00:14:33.200 | to make and cheaper and easier will help you to get closer to the lifestyle that you imagine.
00:14:41.520 | So my challenge to you is ask yourself those questions. Take your list of goals and ask
00:14:46.720 | yourself why. Why? Why do I want that? Just make sure that you're clear on the reasons
00:14:54.400 | and if you want to own one of those beautiful, beautiful earth roamers,
00:15:00.400 | big fancy RVs, four-wheel drive, you can drive, I mean big expedition vehicles, go for it.
00:15:08.640 | But if in reality what you want to do is toss a hundred dollar tent to the back of the car
00:15:14.240 | and actually spend more time on the road, if that's what you actually want then go for that.
00:15:21.040 | And I wish you good luck and good success on your planning.
00:15:25.680 | Shut the show off. I'm out of here. I got to go back and love my family but I'm out of here for
00:15:29.680 | today. Shut the show off and spend some time thinking about that for today and I'll be back
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