RPF0253-Patron_Conference

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00:00:28.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, it's Q&A.

00:00:30.000 | And for the first time, it's actually the live Q&A,

00:00:34.000 | where you can hear kind of that whole, you know,

00:00:37.000 | caller and host type of interaction.

00:00:40.000 | Kind of cool, huh?

00:00:41.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:44.000 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast.

00:01:02.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host here with you

00:01:04.000 | today to answer your questions, although I'm not actually

00:01:07.000 | answering them today.

00:01:08.000 | This show today is a little different than normal.

00:01:10.000 | This is the audio of that all-patron call

00:01:13.000 | that I did a couple weeks ago.

00:01:15.000 | This is where, as a bonus for all patrons of the show,

00:01:18.000 | I did about a two-hour Q&A.

00:01:20.000 | And this is the audio from that call.

00:01:21.000 | A lot of good questions, hopefully some good answers,

00:01:24.000 | but that's up to you to decide.

00:01:26.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:01:32.000 | Going to go ahead and release this audio.

00:01:33.000 | I was thinking about just making it a patron-only file

00:01:36.000 | or releasing it for the general public.

00:01:38.000 | I decided to go ahead and release it for the general public.

00:01:41.000 | This is a little bit different from the normal style

00:01:44.000 | of the show.

00:01:45.000 | This is not quite as polished.

00:01:47.000 | This is simply the unedited audio from the conference call.

00:01:50.000 | So this was my first time hosting a large conference call

00:01:54.000 | like this, so I was a little bit unsure of the etiquette

00:01:56.000 | of how to ask the next person to go and all of those things.

00:02:01.000 | So forgive my stumbling starts.

00:02:02.000 | I'm getting a little bit better.

00:02:03.000 | I've done three of them since then for patrons again.

00:02:06.000 | But this one, I thought it was just interesting.

00:02:08.000 | There were some interesting questions.

00:02:09.000 | I thought it'd be fun to go ahead and release to you all.

00:02:11.000 | So I'm going to release the audio for, again,

00:02:14.000 | forgive my stumbling starts and also forgive the audio quality.

00:02:18.000 | The audio quality is not up to my usual standard simply due

00:02:20.000 | to it being on a phone line.

00:02:21.000 | And I didn't record the high-fidelity audio on my end.

00:02:24.000 | I just recorded the phone line.

00:02:26.000 | So it should be legible for you, but enjoy that.

00:02:30.000 | Before we get to that, two quick things.

00:02:32.000 | And actually, I'm going to skip the ending announcements today,

00:02:34.000 | and I'm just going to play this Q&A and not do a closeout for you.

00:02:39.000 | But two things.

00:02:40.000 | Let's take care of the sponsors of the day.

00:02:42.000 | Sponsor of the day number one is Patrick Snow, the publishing doctor.

00:02:46.000 | Patrick was recently on the show.

00:02:48.000 | It was episode number 252, immediately before this one.

00:02:52.000 | So he was on the show with a full interview talking about publishing

00:02:56.000 | your own book.

00:02:58.000 | And I definitely would strongly recommend if you've ever thought about

00:03:00.000 | publishing a book or if this is something that you might be interested in,

00:03:03.000 | check out that interview with Patrick and consider speaking with him to see

00:03:08.000 | if he might be able to help you publish your book.

00:03:11.000 | Patrick is my publishing coach working on the first Radical Personal Finance

00:03:15.000 | book, and he is helping me with that process.

00:03:18.000 | I'm publishing it myself and going through all that process with him.

00:03:21.000 | He's got all of the -- it's been great.

00:03:23.000 | He's got all the resources.

00:03:24.000 | He's got all the guidance.

00:03:25.000 | He's got all the suppliers.

00:03:26.000 | He's even got the templates of how to actually write a book.

00:03:30.000 | So if you don't know how to approach it, he'll teach you actually the process

00:03:34.000 | of how to actually sit down and begin your writing process.

00:03:38.000 | And don't necessarily just sit down in front of a blank page.

00:03:40.000 | That's kind of a difficult way to do it.

00:03:43.000 | Connect with him and see if he might be able to help you out.

00:03:47.000 | A place to check him out is PatrickSnow.com, or if you're interested in

00:03:50.000 | publishing, go to ThePublishingDoctor.com.

00:03:53.000 | There's also another interview that he's published on The Publishing Doctor

00:03:56.000 | that you would enjoy listening to on the right-hand side.

00:03:58.000 | There is an interview with him talking about publishing and speaking.

00:04:02.000 | The best way to get in touch with Patrick, if you're interested,

00:04:04.000 | he will offer you a complimentary 30- to 60-minute consultation to find out

00:04:10.000 | your situation and see if he might be able to help you or not.

00:04:13.000 | The best way to do that is to text him at 206-310-1200, 206-310-1200.

00:04:23.000 | And that phone number will be in the show notes for today's show.

00:04:25.000 | So again, with your phone, just pull up the show notes, click on that text

00:04:28.000 | number, and shoot him a text message, and send him your name and your area

00:04:32.000 | code -- excuse me, your time zone, name and your time zone, and he will

00:04:36.000 | arrange a time to connect with you.

00:04:38.000 | Sponsor of the day number two is You Need a Budget.

00:04:40.000 | This is the budgeting software that I use to run my personal family budget,

00:04:44.000 | and it is excellent.

00:04:46.000 | Budgeting is one of the foundational skills.

00:04:49.000 | It is one of those core attributes.

00:04:51.000 | If you look at any of the work on millionaires, millionaires all -- I shouldn't

00:04:56.000 | say all -- a very high proportion of millionaires report having a budget,

00:05:01.000 | much higher than people who are not rich.

00:05:03.000 | So budgeting is one of the core skills, but it's challenging to do when you've

00:05:07.000 | got all these different accounts and you've got the money and the bank

00:05:09.000 | account.

00:05:10.000 | It's easy if you just had dollar bills sitting on your desk, but it's hard

00:05:13.000 | when it's just money sitting in your bank account.

00:05:15.000 | You Need a Budget is the budgeting software system that makes that easy.

00:05:19.000 | They've got a really great computer program.

00:05:22.000 | They've got a really great smartphone apps.

00:05:23.000 | It is excellent, excellent, excellent.

00:05:25.000 | When I found You Need a Budget for the second time, I immediately knew that

00:05:29.000 | it was really good, and I switched all of my personal accounting over to the

00:05:33.000 | You Need a Budget software.

00:05:35.000 | If you'd like to listen to an hour-long interview and discussion and hear my

00:05:38.000 | own personal story with You Need a Budget, listen to episode 246 of the show

00:05:43.000 | with the founder of You Need a Budget, a man named Jesse Mecham.

00:05:46.000 | Or if you'd just like to give it a shot, try a 30-day free trial at

00:05:51.000 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/ynab.

00:05:54.000 | So just type in radicalpersonalfinance.com/ynab, Y-N-A-B, acronym for

00:05:58.000 | You Need a Budget, and you'll be able to download the software.

00:06:01.000 | It's the full version of the software, no hidden features or anything like that.

00:06:05.000 | It's the full version, 30 days.

00:06:06.000 | It'll work for you with 100% functionality for 30 days.

00:06:10.000 | If you don't like it after 30 days, then just cancel it and take it off, and

00:06:15.000 | then you won't pay anything.

00:06:16.000 | You don't even have to put your credit card number in to activate it.

00:06:18.000 | But after 30 days, if you want to continue using it, then you'll pay for the

00:06:22.000 | software then.

00:06:23.000 | I can't remember.

00:06:24.000 | It's like $60, something like that.

00:06:25.000 | So well worth it.

00:06:26.000 | Well worth it.

00:06:27.000 | Check it out, radicalpersonalfinance.com/ynab.

00:06:32.000 | Only other announcements since I'm going to skip the ending announcements today.

00:06:35.000 | If you like the show, please tell a friend.

00:06:37.000 | Tell them to search their app store on their phone for Radical Personal Finance

00:06:41.000 | and consider becoming a patron of the show also.

00:06:44.000 | This phone call that you're about to hear was a recording, again, of a

00:06:49.000 | conference call that I did for all patrons.

00:06:51.000 | And that was a unique thing for all patrons.

00:06:54.000 | But I'm also doing, continuing to do these phone calls every week during

00:06:57.000 | October and November for patrons who are supporting the show at $10 a month

00:07:01.000 | and up.

00:07:02.000 | So if that is you, go ahead and check the Patreon page for the information.

00:07:07.000 | And if that's not you, go ahead and join.

00:07:09.000 | And I will be hosting the audio of these calls on the Patreon page of the

00:07:14.000 | past ones so that you can listen to those bonus episodes.

00:07:17.000 | And if you go ahead and join now at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron,

00:07:21.000 | you'll be able to join the weekly calls here during the month of October

00:07:25.000 | and November.

00:07:26.000 | And so with that, here is the call.

00:07:28.000 | [Phone ringing]

00:07:30.000 | There we go.

00:07:31.000 | And we're going to get started.

00:07:32.000 | So I'm not -- this is just simply a phone only.

00:07:34.000 | I'm not going to be sharing a screen.

00:07:36.000 | That's actually one of the things that reasons why I'm doing a phone

00:07:39.000 | conference.

00:07:40.000 | I realized I've been offering for all the patrons of the show a monthly Q&A

00:07:45.000 | call.

00:07:46.000 | And what I intended to do was I intended to do that as a Google Hangout.

00:07:50.000 | And I never grew up in the era of phone conferences.

00:07:54.000 | For me, you know, doing a conference is just always a video conference.

00:07:58.000 | But with moving the last couple of months and various things,

00:08:01.000 | it's been challenging for me to do the video thing consistently.

00:08:03.000 | It requires me to have a good internet connection.

00:08:06.000 | It requires me to put on a shirt that I feel happy, you know,

00:08:09.000 | showing up on a video camera with.

00:08:10.000 | It requires me to have a good background.

00:08:12.000 | And so what I decided to do is instead of doing the video conference,

00:08:16.000 | just do a phone conference.

00:08:17.000 | And so I wanted to do it today because I missed some of the patron benefits.

00:08:21.000 | I'm here to answer questions one by one.

00:08:24.000 | I'll answer as many questions as I can.

00:08:26.000 | And I'll answer as many questions as I can.

00:08:29.000 | I'll spend as much time here as I can, and we'll just see how it goes.

00:08:32.000 | But I'm fully available to you guys.

00:08:34.000 | I hope it's easier for you to call in and easy for me to answer.

00:08:37.000 | Let me start with just who would like to ask a question,

00:08:40.000 | and we'll kick it off and get right to the content.

00:08:42.000 | Who wants to go first?

00:08:44.000 | Hey, Joshua.

00:08:46.000 | Yeah, Susan, go ahead.

00:08:47.000 | Yeah.

00:08:48.000 | It's kind of a question, kind of a comment.

00:08:51.000 | And maybe this just applies to me because I'm older,

00:08:54.000 | but I'm not as technically savvy.

00:08:58.000 | But I was wondering if maybe, like,

00:09:02.000 | with all of the different technologies that you're using,

00:09:05.000 | and I think kind of the Facebook one that you were planning on doing,

00:09:08.000 | are you still planning on doing that, like, every other Friday or something?

00:09:11.000 | Because I haven't -- and I know you've been having problems,

00:09:13.000 | but I don't know if it ever worked.

00:09:15.000 | I don't know, like -- I was wondering if you can do step-by-step instructions

00:09:19.000 | on how to get into some of this stuff and what we're supposed to do

00:09:22.000 | and what level of person it's for, patron it's for.

00:09:25.000 | Right.

00:09:26.000 | So with the patron program,

00:09:28.000 | the basic thing that I was looking to do with the patron program,

00:09:32.000 | most of the content is found on the actual Patreon site.

00:09:36.000 | And I have been slow on delivering the content.

00:09:39.000 | I've just been overwhelmed on my end.

00:09:41.000 | And over the last month especially,

00:09:43.000 | I've made good progress on really increasing things.

00:09:46.000 | But on the patron site, if you go right to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance,

00:09:52.000 | that works in many ways almost like a Facebook wall does.

00:09:56.000 | So that's where I'm posting the show episode that's coming up,

00:09:59.000 | taking specific questions on there.

00:10:01.000 | You can comment and coordinate with other people who are patrons of the show.

00:10:05.000 | At the $25 and up level, that is where there's access to the Facebook group.

00:10:11.000 | So if you are at the $25 and up level

00:10:14.000 | and you don't have access to the private Facebook group,

00:10:16.000 | then make sure that you email me,

00:10:18.000 | joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, and I'll make sure that you have access.

00:10:22.000 | I try to do a good job of staying on top of that.

00:10:24.000 | And then in that group, there's over 60, about 65 members there right now,

00:10:28.000 | all of whom are interacting and answering each other's questions,

00:10:32.000 | some really smart people there.

00:10:33.000 | And then that's where I try to spend a good time every other day or so,

00:10:37.000 | going into that group and trying to answer questions there personally.

00:10:41.000 | So some of what you're talking about was me trying to do Google Hangouts.

00:10:47.000 | And the Google Hangout system was just a disaster.

00:10:49.000 | It always had problems.

00:10:50.000 | I never got the right people invited.

00:10:52.000 | It just didn't work.

00:10:53.000 | And so I scrapped that whole thing and gone to this for now.

00:10:55.000 | And we'll see if I switch to another platform in the future.

00:10:59.000 | That help, Susan?

00:11:01.000 | Yeah, I guess that didn't answer the question,

00:11:03.000 | because I guess I need to up my level, because I was thinking.

00:11:08.000 | I thought the $10 got to at least the Facebook, but I guess not.

00:11:12.000 | But that gets you something, obviously, right?

00:11:14.000 | Right.

00:11:16.000 | The reason for the confusion may have been what I did with the original

00:11:21.000 | people who signed up for the original membership program.

00:11:25.000 | Then with that group of people, I was charging $10.

00:11:29.000 | And so all of those people were grandfathered in at the $25 level.

00:11:35.000 | The $10 a month gets you access to the live monthly Hangout,

00:11:38.000 | and that's what I haven't been able to deliver the last two months.

00:11:41.000 | So going forward over the next eight weeks, once a week,

00:11:46.000 | I'm going to be doing one of these conference calls,

00:11:48.000 | and that's open to the $10 and up level,

00:11:51.000 | where I'll be answering as many questions.

00:11:53.000 | We can talk specific -- not specific,

00:11:55.000 | and answer any question, and I'll do my best to help out.

00:11:58.000 | So next question.

00:12:01.000 | Hey, Josh.

00:12:02.000 | Josh, I'm up.

00:12:03.000 | This is Nate.

00:12:04.000 | Can you hear me all right?

00:12:05.000 | Nate, I can hear you.

00:12:06.000 | Welcome.

00:12:07.000 | Let's go with your question first.

00:12:10.000 | So I wanted to ask you a question related to social capital

00:12:13.000 | versus financial capital.

00:12:15.000 | Right.

00:12:16.000 | So I don't know if you want me to provide some context

00:12:19.000 | on how that relates to my situation?

00:12:21.000 | Yeah, please do.

00:12:22.000 | Okay.

00:12:25.000 | Basically, your podcast has had a major impact on my life this last year,

00:12:31.000 | probably 75% of the reason why I was able to quit my job.

00:12:35.000 | And just from listening to your podcast,

00:12:38.000 | I'm super stoked to be a member, a supporter.

00:12:42.000 | I really appreciate everything you do.

00:12:45.000 | And I'd kind of like to just get your advice on our situation.

00:12:48.000 | I kind of consider us cash flow retired at this point.

00:12:52.000 | We don't have huge savings or investments or anything,

00:12:55.000 | but I have some online businesses.

00:12:58.000 | I sell handmade products on a couple different websites through Etsy

00:13:02.000 | and others and covers all of our expenses plus a couple thousand dollars a month

00:13:08.000 | that we're able to save.

00:13:11.000 | At this point, it only takes four to ten hours per week to manage everything,

00:13:14.000 | so I have a lot of free time on my hands.

00:13:17.000 | My wife doesn't need to really work, so she has a lot of free time on her hands.

00:13:20.000 | It's myself, my daughter, and we've got another one on the way in March.

00:13:27.000 | Congrats.

00:13:29.000 | Thank you.

00:13:30.000 | But we've just been using our time to develop fun hobbies that are financially

00:13:34.000 | beneficial, which we kind of learned through your interview with Jacob Lund Fisker.

00:13:39.000 | So we're focusing on valuable hobbies like biking, filmmaking, gardening.

00:13:45.000 | I'm just getting into hunting and foraging, permaculture-type stuff.

00:13:49.000 | And your interview with Curtis Stone has got me now interested in this urban

00:13:53.000 | farming thing.

00:13:55.000 | And I've sort of launched one this year,

00:13:58.000 | HugsFarm.com, Hugs Urban Farm, it's an urban farming thing.

00:14:02.000 | And I'm getting a lot of pushback from my wife because she sees all the huge time

00:14:08.000 | that it's taking me, the huge time commitment and the low payout.

00:14:12.000 | And it's really good work.

00:14:15.000 | I really enjoy being out in the sun, and I'm definitely starting to see some of

00:14:19.000 | the social capital that comes along with it.

00:14:21.000 | But it's a huge input, and my process for making my handmade products online is

00:14:26.000 | totally repeatable.

00:14:28.000 | I have it like fully systemized.

00:14:30.000 | I'm an engineer nerd type person.

00:14:32.000 | And in a few weeks, I can get another one of those going that's making good

00:14:36.000 | profit.

00:14:38.000 | And then I'm still around to hang out with her more and stuff.

00:14:41.000 | But yeah, I'm just trying to kind of struggle to make a strong case of how the

00:14:47.000 | social capital is worth a lot to my wife.

00:14:51.000 | So I was wondering what your opinion is on that, the social capital versus

00:14:55.000 | financial capital, and any opinions on situations when one might be worth

00:15:00.000 | pursuing over the other, et cetera.

00:15:03.000 | Is she upset about the fact that she thinks you should be making more money

00:15:06.000 | with your time?

00:15:07.000 | Is that what the conflict is?

00:15:09.000 | I think she just -- she's kind of a wanderlust, and she likes to travel around.

00:15:13.000 | And we've been doing quite a bit of traveling these last couple years.

00:15:17.000 | And the farming, the gardening thing, and pulling on that and starting to sell

00:15:22.000 | the restaurants, it's just putting a lot of time into it.

00:15:25.000 | And I love it.

00:15:27.000 | But she's more time of her just hanging out with Josie by herself now rather

00:15:32.000 | than having me around.

00:15:34.000 | And they hang out with us too on the farm, but she's a 2-1/2-year-old, so she's

00:15:38.000 | more ripping stuff out of the ground and destroying it than helping.

00:15:41.000 | So I'm just trying to make the case of how -- what your opinion is of how, if I

00:15:48.000 | keep building this and develop good relationships in the community, is that worth

00:15:52.000 | more, you think, than pursuing like real financial independence, I guess it

00:15:57.000 | would be, where I should just keep trying to build the online businesses and get

00:16:01.000 | us to a place where we can just be considered financially retired on paper, I

00:16:08.000 | guess?

00:16:10.000 | What's your primary reason for doing the farming?

00:16:14.000 | What's motivating you to do it?

00:16:17.000 | Well, I started doing it just as a value-added hobby.

00:16:22.000 | Growing our own food, hunting our own food, stuff like that, it just -- it pays

00:16:25.000 | dividends and it's -- I enjoy it a lot.

00:16:27.000 | I've always kind of been -- I grew up on a little bit of a hobby farm, so I've

00:16:31.000 | always enjoyed that connection to my food.

00:16:35.000 | And then I just started selling stuff to a couple chefs I knew in town, sort of

00:16:39.000 | friends of mine, and there was more demand, and now I'm getting -- I have

00:16:43.000 | press -- there's a magazine in town that's published an article on our farm, and

00:16:47.000 | it's kind of like building itself.

00:16:49.000 | And I really enjoy it, so I kind of feel compelled to keep it going.

00:16:54.000 | And I just love it.

00:16:56.000 | I mean, and Michelle likes it, too.

00:16:58.000 | My wife likes it a lot when she's helping.

00:17:00.000 | She just struggles with, you know, having a two-and-a-half-year-old now, another

00:17:04.000 | one on the way, so she's kind of tied up with that more.

00:17:07.000 | And we switch off every once in a while, but I just work a lot faster, more

00:17:11.000 | efficiently, and more organized than her, so I've been doing the majority of it.

00:17:15.000 | Right.

00:17:17.000 | So here are some thoughts that occur to me in thinking about the question.

00:17:20.000 | I don't think of it being a social capital versus financial capital.

00:17:26.000 | The point that I try to make on the show and that I see is that we don't do a very

00:17:30.000 | good job in our culture of recognizing the value of social capital.

00:17:35.000 | We're trained to only measure things in terms of financial results.

00:17:41.000 | But if you look at life a little bit more broadly, you can see that social capital

00:17:47.000 | does have a tremendous value, and I'll give you two examples at opposite ends of

00:17:51.000 | the spectrum.

00:17:53.000 | When I graduated from college, I decided I wanted to go on a road trip, and I had

00:17:58.000 | some time off.

00:18:00.000 | I quit my job, and I wanted to go travel.

00:18:03.000 | So I went on Facebook, and I sent a mass email to everyone in my email address

00:18:07.000 | book.

00:18:08.000 | I went on Facebook.

00:18:09.000 | I Facebooked every one of my friends, and I said, "I'm taking a road trip.

00:18:12.000 | I want to come visit you if I'm able to, and where do you live, and can I come see

00:18:18.000 | you?"

00:18:19.000 | And I got back dozens and dozens of responses.

00:18:21.000 | I took those responses.

00:18:22.000 | I charted them on a map of the places where I had an invitation to come and spend

00:18:27.000 | the night.

00:18:28.000 | I charted them on a map with people that I knew, and that was how I set out my

00:18:32.000 | itinerary, was I went from place to place, a friend's house to friend's house.

00:18:36.000 | Usually stayed one night, sometimes two, sometimes three, but usually I just

00:18:40.000 | stopped and kind of went on to the next place.

00:18:43.000 | And I traveled for just under two months.

00:18:46.000 | I went from Florida as far west as Colorado and up to Canada, and then all the

00:18:50.000 | way back to Florida.

00:18:52.000 | And I didn't spend a night paying for lodging, and I didn't sleep in my car.

00:18:56.000 | I stayed at a friend's house every night.

00:18:59.000 | And so the point of that is that just simply by just knowing casual acquaintances

00:19:04.000 | and friends across the country, that I didn't need to spend $50 a night or $800

00:19:10.000 | a night for hotel stays.

00:19:13.000 | So if I were to take that and add it on to what I do now with Radical Personal

00:19:19.000 | Finance, now that effect would be even more amplified.

00:19:23.000 | And so even though with Radical Personal Finance I'm not yet making a million

00:19:27.000 | dollars a year with it, it's allowed me to build a worldwide network where I've

00:19:32.000 | received invitations from people all over the world to come stay with them.

00:19:37.000 | And if I wanted to go and travel with my family, then I guarantee all of you on

00:19:41.000 | the call today and many people all around the world, if they knew I were coming

00:19:45.000 | to Italy or knew I was coming to Georgia or knew wherever, I would have

00:19:49.000 | invitations, and many of you would invite us to stay the night.

00:19:52.000 | Many of you would feed us dinner.

00:19:54.000 | So there's a real social benefit to this business, and that was something that

00:19:59.000 | I didn't have with my previous firm.

00:20:02.000 | So I walked away from more money at my previous firm, but now I have the

00:20:07.000 | potential to make more money now, and I have a much broader range of benefits.

00:20:12.000 | So from the little scale to the big scale, a few weeks ago I read a book called

00:20:18.000 | "Clinton Cash," and it was all about President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton

00:20:23.000 | and what they've been doing since Bill Clinton was out of office.

00:20:26.000 | And one of the things that he's done is he's leveraged his connections and his

00:20:32.000 | place of being the president, and he's leveraged that to, I think, build a

00:20:37.000 | network of--I don't remember the exact numbers, but something that went from

00:20:40.000 | being worth a few million bucks when he left office to being worth, I think,

00:20:45.000 | $300 million, something like that, with speaking fees.

00:20:49.000 | He's gotten paid speaking fees as high as, I think, $1 million to go and give

00:20:54.000 | a single individual one-hour speech around the world.

00:20:59.000 | Now, what he was actually doing in that talk was he wasn't just getting paid

00:21:07.000 | for the content of the hour, but he, according to the author Peter Schweitzer,

00:21:11.000 | wrote the book, and this is the case he sets to prove, he's peddling his

00:21:15.000 | influence, and he is selling his influence around the world and selling the

00:21:19.000 | influence of his wife as Secretary of State, and that has resulted in him and

00:21:24.000 | his foundation and them becoming very, very wealthy because of the influence

00:21:27.000 | that they're peddling.

00:21:29.000 | So my point with demonstrating social capital is that if you look at the world,

00:21:34.000 | if you don't have social capital, then you've got to rely entirely on financial

00:21:38.000 | capital.

00:21:39.000 | If you don't have friends around the country, you've got to pay for a night

00:21:42.000 | in a hotel all around the country.

00:21:44.000 | But if you have friends all around the country, you don't really have to stay

00:21:46.000 | in a hotel and you can leverage your friends.

00:21:50.000 | This is what poor people can do, and this is also what rich people do.

00:21:53.000 | If you look at the things that people get done, the person who, you know, for

00:21:58.000 | example, if you're going to join a board, a nonprofit board, your requirements

00:22:06.000 | to join a board are the ability to leverage influence.

00:22:10.000 | Either that influence comes from your ability to write big checks or that

00:22:14.000 | influence comes from your ability to compel other people and encourage and

00:22:17.000 | persuade other people to write big checks.

00:22:19.000 | So the point is to demonstrate that building social capital is valuable and

00:22:26.000 | you don't just have to be a millionaire.

00:22:28.000 | If you can control the money, partly through social capital, you can accomplish

00:22:33.000 | massive change even if you're not rich.

00:22:37.000 | So that's one aspect of it.

00:22:39.000 | When it comes to actually deciding what to do, I think a thoughtful way to

00:22:43.000 | approach that would be to say, "Let me get clear on what the change is that I'm

00:22:48.000 | actually trying to accomplish, and let me see how can I affect it."

00:22:53.000 | If you look at the way that the mega-rich people run their money, you go through

00:22:57.000 | a series of steps.

00:22:59.000 | The first step is building basic financial security, and you can go back to my,

00:23:04.000 | you know, seven steps of financial security.

00:23:06.000 | I won't go through that whole thing.

00:23:07.000 | Basically, you go through financial security, you go through some, you know,

00:23:11.000 | getting out of debt, you go through some basics of building a comfortable,

00:23:15.000 | luxurious lifestyle for yourself, and then you go through maintaining

00:23:19.000 | financial independence.

00:23:21.000 | Once you get to financial independence, what you find is that people spend their

00:23:25.000 | time and their money investing in the causes of change that are important to them.

00:23:30.000 | So whether it's Bill and Melinda Gates trying to wipe out, you know, various

00:23:36.000 | diseases and trying to vaccinate every child throughout the world, or whether

00:23:39.000 | it's Warren Buffett trying to, you know, contributing millions of dollars to

00:23:43.000 | Planned Parenthood, and thanks to his wife, Suzy, because that was a cause for him,

00:23:49.000 | or whether it's the local business person who's trying to accomplish something,

00:23:52.000 | you see that people focus on the change that they want to see.

00:23:55.000 | So my point is, why should I bother to wait to be a mega-billionaire?

00:24:00.000 | I don't need to be a mega-billionaire to make a change.

00:24:02.000 | So when you come down to something like urban farming, the reason that that's

00:24:05.000 | important to me is because I see that one of the causes that I want to promulgate

00:24:11.000 | is personal freedom, self-reliance, and independence, and that's the anarchist

00:24:16.000 | streak that I have to encourage people to be able to provide for themselves.

00:24:20.000 | So when people take over control of their own food supply and are able to feed

00:24:24.000 | their families, when people take and build community in their local space of--

00:24:30.000 | when people take and build community in their local space, what they're actually

00:24:34.000 | doing is they're taking back sovereignty over their own situation,

00:24:39.000 | and taking back control over their food might lead them to setting up

00:24:42.000 | a local economy. Setting up a local economy might lead them to get out

00:24:45.000 | of other systems that I don't particularly love that run our nation

00:24:49.000 | on a national basis. So even if you look at social capital, I've been able

00:24:54.000 | to leverage the message that was important to me of urban farming

00:24:59.000 | and local autonomous food production without having to go into it myself.

00:25:07.000 | So you've got to look at your life and ask yourself, "Why am I doing

00:25:10.000 | what I'm doing?" If your family is suffering because of your building

00:25:15.000 | a local farm, well, I wouldn't make that trade. I'm not doing local farming

00:25:20.000 | myself because at the moment I have much bigger opportunities

00:25:24.000 | with radical personal finance. And if I spend time out in the yard,

00:25:29.000 | digging in my yard, that's time that I can't be putting into another project

00:25:33.000 | where I can reach thousands more people. But I'm still accomplishing

00:25:36.000 | with the leverage of my social capital. I'm still influencing people like you

00:25:41.000 | and several others who write me notes and giving them an opportunity

00:25:45.000 | for an independent business that they can do in their own backyard.

00:25:48.000 | And that's helping them to build financial independence,

00:25:51.000 | and that's accomplishing my goals. So my goals are to help people

00:25:54.000 | build independence, and the farming is just a tool in that.

00:25:57.000 | Go back to your goals. Consider what your goals are, and then ask yourself,

00:26:01.000 | "Is what I'm doing, how does it fit into that in the scope of my life?"

00:26:05.000 | Is that helpful, Nate?

00:26:08.000 | That's extremely helpful and extremely valuable. But I don't know

00:26:12.000 | if I can repeat all that to my wife. Can you send me that recording?

00:26:16.000 | I think right now it should be recording, so I think we're good.

00:26:22.000 | Cool. Yeah, I really like the idea you said about building a local economy

00:26:29.000 | and how through social capital you are essentially building a local economy.

00:26:33.000 | And organizing and running a local economy is just guaranteed to trickle down

00:26:38.000 | into wealth in your life. And sometimes I hate this.

00:26:42.000 | I hate to equate friendships with calling it capital, equating it with financial means,

00:26:47.000 | but it just feels good, so that's why I've been doing it.

00:26:51.000 | It's obvious how good it feels, and you just start to realize it's more about money.

00:26:56.000 | But it's really helpful how you kind of explain how the financial rewards

00:27:01.000 | pretty much always come from doing that.

00:27:05.000 | Right. Thank you so much.

00:27:09.000 | Good. I hope it's useful.

00:27:12.000 | I wrote down your website. Tell me again. It was hugsurbanfarm.com?

00:27:18.000 | It's actually just hugsfarm.com.

00:27:22.000 | You'll see Hugs Urban Farm, our logo on there and everything when you go there.

00:27:26.000 | Hugsurbanfarm@gmail.com is just my email.

00:27:30.000 | It's pretty exciting.

00:27:33.000 | Cool, man. Keep up the good work. That's awesome to hear.

00:27:36.000 | And if I can help in any way, once you get it going, let me know.

00:27:40.000 | As far as track your numbers, track your experience, and maybe I'll have you on the show.

00:27:45.000 | We'll do an interview at some point to share it with others.

00:27:48.000 | Since the Curtis Stone interview, I know of at least a half a dozen listeners

00:27:52.000 | who have started their own urban farm, started microgreens businesses, things like that,

00:27:57.000 | to bring in some extra money and start to build a little bit of autonomy for themselves.

00:28:01.000 | I love hearing those stories.

00:28:03.000 | I'm just getting the microgreens going right now and winding down the farm for the season.

00:28:08.000 | I'm super psyched, and I'll definitely keep in touch.

00:28:11.000 | If you ever want to hear more about stuff I'm doing with Handmade, that's really cool, too.

00:28:17.000 | I kind of etched it all out, sent it to my little brother and sister, so I've got an outline.

00:28:22.000 | It's kind of fun to talk about, too.

00:28:24.000 | Shoot it over, and then I'll read the outline, and we'll correspond,

00:28:26.000 | and maybe that will be helpful to other people on the show.

00:28:29.000 | So, yeah, shoot me an email. Awesome.

00:28:31.000 | All right, thanks, Josh. I appreciate everything.

00:28:33.000 | No problem. Next question. Who's got a question?

00:28:37.000 | Joshua, this is Mark from Grand Rapids.

00:28:39.000 | Hey, Mark.

00:28:40.000 | I have a question about--hi.

00:28:43.000 | I have a specific question about when you would want to consider gifting appreciated assets

00:28:51.000 | from a taxable account in lieu of doing a cash donation.

00:28:56.000 | When is that beneficial to a dual-income family, so in a high-tax bracket?

00:29:06.000 | I don't know if you need more details than that or not to answer the question.

00:29:13.000 | I've heard about this as a strategy, but I don't really know too much about it

00:29:17.000 | or when we'd want to consider that.

00:29:19.000 | It's a simple answer, so let me just give you the simple answer,

00:29:22.000 | and if I need more details, I'll tell you.

00:29:24.000 | The rule with appreciated assets is, number one, you gift them when you don't want to own them anymore.

00:29:30.000 | So if you know that I don't want to own them and I want to make the gift,

00:29:34.000 | then you look to say, "What's the best asset for me to give?"

00:29:38.000 | An appreciated asset, let's say that you've got $100 of cost basis,

00:29:41.000 | you paid $100 for it, and the asset is worth $200.

00:29:45.000 | So you want to give a contribution of $200 to a charity.

00:29:49.000 | If you sell the asset in the open market for $200,

00:29:54.000 | then you're going to incur the tax on $100 worth of gain.

00:29:58.000 | So you sell it for $200, you pay the tax at $15, and you can only give $185 to the charity.

00:30:05.000 | If you gift the appreciated asset, the $200 to the charity,

00:30:10.000 | you can give them $200 and you take the full deduction of $200,

00:30:15.000 | whatever the fair market value is of the asset.

00:30:18.000 | So the rule is you always gift appreciated assets instead of cash

00:30:23.000 | if you have them to give and you decide if you want to get rid of them.

00:30:27.000 | Let me give you the other side so it's clear.

00:30:30.000 | If you have depreciated assets, you paid $200 for the investment,

00:30:34.000 | you lost money, and now it's worth $100,

00:30:38.000 | then the rule with depreciated assets is you always sell the asset first,

00:30:42.000 | take the loss on your taxes, and then gift the cash.

00:30:46.000 | So if you sell the asset for $100, then you recognize the $100 loss,

00:30:53.000 | and then you go ahead and give the $100 to the charity.

00:30:56.000 | So if you don't want to own the asset, if you're happy with it,

00:31:00.000 | and if the charity actually has the ability to receive the asset,

00:31:04.000 | take care of the title transfer, and sell it,

00:31:07.000 | then you always want to gift the appreciated asset and not cash.

00:31:11.000 | Okay. So the key piece to that seems to be if you want to sell it anyway,

00:31:17.000 | but what if it's just depreciated?

00:31:20.000 | I mean, is there any advantage to -- if we can do either,

00:31:24.000 | we can give to the charity from cash or we can sell some of our --

00:31:29.000 | or not sell but transfer some of our appreciated assets directly to the charity.

00:31:34.000 | Is there any benefit to doing that,

00:31:36.000 | or is it only if you wanted to get rid of it anyway?

00:31:39.000 | Does that make sense?

00:31:41.000 | What type of asset and what type of dollar value?

00:31:46.000 | Let's say $2,000, and it's a mutual fund in a taxable Vanguard account,

00:31:52.000 | just an index fund.

00:31:54.000 | And what's the appreciation in the account?

00:31:56.000 | What's the cost basis of the account?

00:31:59.000 | This is hypothetical, but --

00:32:01.000 | Okay.

00:32:03.000 | So I guess pick a number.

00:32:07.000 | Let's say it's 30% higher than when I bought it a couple years ago.

00:32:13.000 | All right.

00:32:14.000 | Well, if we're talking about --

00:32:17.000 | so usually when people are going to get into the world of gifting appreciated

00:32:20.000 | assets, most of the time you're going to be dealing in, okay,

00:32:25.000 | I've got a $200,000 piece of property,

00:32:27.000 | or I've got a $60,000 classic car or something like that,

00:32:31.000 | where you're talking larger numbers.

00:32:34.000 | If you're talking about a couple thousand bucks, in the scale of your life,

00:32:38.000 | it's probably not that big a deal.

00:32:40.000 | And so look at what the actual benefit is of the transaction

00:32:46.000 | and ask yourself if it's worth it.

00:32:48.000 | Let's say that we're talking about a $2,000 gift, and you've got a 30% gain.

00:32:54.000 | So let's say your cost basis is $1,500.

00:33:02.000 | Well, if you gift a $2,000 asset -- excuse me,

00:33:06.000 | if you gift a $2,000 appreciated asset to the charity,

00:33:10.000 | then you're going to avoid paying the tax on the $500 worth of gain.

00:33:16.000 | Well, if you're paying a 15% long-term capital gains rate,

00:33:19.000 | that's saving you 75 bucks.

00:33:22.000 | So is the savings of 75 bucks worth the hassle of doing the paperwork and all

00:33:27.000 | of that?

00:33:28.000 | I would probably -- maybe, maybe not.

00:33:30.000 | But that is that you're basically just saving the tax on the appreciated

00:33:34.000 | asset.

00:33:35.000 | So it's got to be worth the hassle to deal with it.

00:33:38.000 | If it's a marketable security, you can just go out and buy the same thing.

00:33:44.000 | You can give the $2,000 and then take cash from your checking account

00:33:49.000 | and go and buy the Vanguard mutual fund again at current rates.

00:33:52.000 | Then, yeah, there's no reason not to.

00:33:54.000 | It's just worth the hassle.

00:33:56.000 | Usually with appreciated assets, you're going to get into that when we're

00:34:02.000 | talking a $50,000 piece of land and you don't want to recognize it and pay

00:34:06.000 | $5,000 of capital gain.

00:34:09.000 | Sure.

00:34:12.000 | I think I understand.

00:34:14.000 | And I guess to be a little bit more specific,

00:34:16.000 | so instead of doing like a monthly gift to our church of cash,

00:34:22.000 | I was thinking of instead either doing a monthly or annual,

00:34:27.000 | if it's easier, just an annual one-time gift of $2,000,

00:34:30.000 | $3,000 or whatever.

00:34:32.000 | If I could find a way to automate that like I do with just the cash gift,

00:34:36.000 | would that be something to do if it wasn't too much of a hassle?

00:34:41.000 | It sounds like, hey, if it's not too much of a hassle,

00:34:43.000 | it would be beneficial on your taxes to be able to do that.

00:34:47.000 | Like you said, I would just go -- I'd still have the cash then that I would

00:34:52.000 | have otherwise donated, so I would just go and buy more of the Vanguard fund

00:34:57.000 | or whatever to replace it in my account.

00:34:59.000 | It sounds like there is some benefit there.

00:35:01.000 | It's just a question of how much it is.

00:35:03.000 | Right, right.

00:35:04.000 | And it's got to be practicality.

00:35:05.000 | Is the church a big church where they've got somebody who's used to that,

00:35:09.000 | or is it a small church, 200 people type of thing?

00:35:11.000 | Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:35:13.000 | I know they do have the capabilities, but since I've never done it,

00:35:16.000 | I don't know how well it works or if it's a manual process

00:35:21.000 | or if I can just tell Vanguard here, send it here every month or what.

00:35:25.000 | And that's something I'll have to do some research on.

00:35:27.000 | But, yeah, thanks for your call on that.

00:35:30.000 | I appreciate it.

00:35:31.000 | Yeah, for sure.

00:35:32.000 | It could totally work.

00:35:33.000 | My guess is, depending on the size of the church,

00:35:35.000 | so some churches would have the staff and the infrastructure ready

00:35:39.000 | where they could actually do that.

00:35:40.000 | But a small church is probably going to be more hassle,

00:35:43.000 | and basically what you'd be doing is asking, say, the treasurer

00:35:47.000 | or somebody like that who might be a part-time volunteer

00:35:49.000 | to do a bunch of paperwork, title transfer, liquidate the asset.

00:35:54.000 | And if you're doing it for $75, I think it's probably more hassle

00:35:58.000 | than it's worth.

00:35:59.000 | But if you're doing it as a one-time thing, you've got a $10,000 inheritance

00:36:04.000 | or whatever, then do that.

00:36:06.000 | So just ask yourself if it's worth the scale.

00:36:08.000 | Conceptually, it'll work.

00:36:11.000 | Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

00:36:12.000 | Do you have any plans to do a podcast on charitable giving in general,

00:36:17.000 | like different strategies and things?

00:36:20.000 | I've got like six books that I want to go through

00:36:22.000 | and talk about charitable strategies.

00:36:25.000 | The challenge for me is simply at this point in time figuring out

00:36:30.000 | what's the next thing that I should really be focused on

00:36:33.000 | and what's the priority.

00:36:36.000 | So at some point I will, yeah.

00:36:38.000 | But in essence, it's simple.

00:36:39.000 | Appreciated assets always give the asset, not the cash.

00:36:42.000 | Depreciate it, sell the asset, give the cash.

00:36:45.000 | Awesome.

00:36:46.000 | Thank you very much.

00:36:47.000 | Cool.

00:36:48.000 | You're welcome, man.

00:36:49.000 | Next question.

00:36:50.000 | Who wants to go?

00:36:52.000 | Hi, Joshua.

00:36:53.000 | It's Nick here.

00:36:54.000 | Nobody else has something to ask?

00:36:57.000 | All right.

00:36:58.000 | Go, Nick.

00:36:59.000 | I've got like four questions I owe you answers on Q&A,

00:37:02.000 | and I apologize.

00:37:03.000 | They're on my list, and I haven't done them yet.

00:37:05.000 | That's okay.

00:37:06.000 | Some of those I can be patient on.

00:37:08.000 | I was thinking just based on listening to some other people's questions,

00:37:12.000 | I guess I had a pointed question here.

00:37:16.000 | Depending on how I calculate things and how my expenses go the next few years,

00:37:21.000 | I'm anywhere from, you know, four to 14 years from financial independence,

00:37:26.000 | depending on how things go, at least what I consider to be financially independent.

00:37:30.000 | And I have a whole range of questions about, you know,

00:37:33.000 | becoming self-employed from being a current employee and all that stuff.

00:37:38.000 | But one thing that's kind of been gnawing at the back of my mind is about once --

00:37:45.000 | let's say tomorrow magically I hit the number that's in my head to become

00:37:49.000 | financially independent, and I wanted to flip the switch

00:37:52.000 | and turn those, you know, savings vehicles into distributions to myself

00:37:58.000 | to start living off of that money.

00:38:01.000 | The reason I'm curious about it so early is just because it's always a mental

00:38:07.000 | weight on me to know if once I hit that number if it's actually going to mean

00:38:10.000 | anything.

00:38:12.000 | And specifically, let's say I have, say, half of my money in, you know,

00:38:19.000 | Vanguard index funds, and the other half are between me and my wife are in IRAs

00:38:25.000 | and 401(k)s that, you know, the financial institutions that our company has picked.

00:38:31.000 | What is the -- other than changing from, say, you know, 95% stocks and 5% bonds

00:38:36.000 | in my Vanguard index funds and maybe switching around the allocations

00:38:39.000 | appropriately, what is the actual distribution of income look like from having,

00:38:45.000 | say, you know, a pot of savings to actually living off of that savings?

00:38:49.000 | What are the mechanisms that happen there when you make that switch?

00:38:54.000 | If that question makes sense.

00:38:57.000 | Right. I understand.

00:38:59.000 | By the way, first of all, congratulations on the baby.

00:39:01.000 | I forgot to say that.

00:39:03.000 | Thanks. Thank you.

00:39:04.000 | I got the email.

00:39:06.000 | I appreciate your letting me know.

00:39:08.000 | Yeah, that's one of the reasons my expenses are unknown for foreseeable next year.

00:39:13.000 | We'll see how they level out with my cash flow statements.

00:39:16.000 | Indeed. Indeed.

00:39:18.000 | The making of that switch is -- the answer to the question is the frustrating answer of it depends.

00:39:26.000 | But I'm going to give you some scenarios so that it's not -- and I'll just leave it as it depends.

00:39:30.000 | It depends on what are the sources of income.

00:39:33.000 | It depends on what is the age of retirement.

00:39:36.000 | It depends on what's the makeup of the assets.

00:39:39.000 | And it depends on what is the goal of -- what are you actually going to do

00:39:43.000 | during financial independence.

00:39:45.000 | You've got to realize with regard to the financial independence community, almost nobody actually fully retires.

00:39:53.000 | So the number of people who are actually following the plan of saying I've saved a million dollars

00:39:59.000 | and now I'm going to sit back and do nothing, almost nobody actually does that.

00:40:07.000 | Almost everybody who becomes financially independent continues to work in some way

00:40:12.000 | or has some source of income and they just have the confidence and the satisfaction of knowing,

00:40:18.000 | well, at least I don't have to.

00:40:20.000 | I'm doing this because I want to and not because I have to.

00:40:23.000 | And you can go through everything --

00:40:25.000 | Yeah, that's exactly where I'm trying to get to, just to have those bases covered

00:40:29.000 | so I can go do more meaningful work in the world and affect more people possibly,

00:40:33.000 | including making my own work more rewarding.

00:40:37.000 | That's exactly my goal.

00:40:39.000 | Right. I guess I can't divorce that from the actual distribution because it will affect --

00:40:45.000 | Right. And so what I am convinced of, and this is my opinion,

00:40:50.000 | I'm convinced we ought to at least acknowledge that.

00:40:53.000 | And as proof of that, for example, I just interviewed a couple of weeks ago from FinCon,

00:40:58.000 | I just interviewed Brandon, a mad scientist, and his wife, Jill,

00:41:01.000 | and I'm going to be playing that interview at some point on the show in the next few weeks at least.

00:41:04.000 | And so Brandon, he hit his financial independence date and he's still working

00:41:08.000 | because his employer offered him a job and he likes doing it and his wife is working.

00:41:12.000 | So even though he has the ability, he's actually still saving,

00:41:17.000 | even though he hit financial independence.

00:41:19.000 | Jacob, early retirement extreme, he took a job, not because he had to, but he took a job.

00:41:24.000 | Pete, Mr. Money Mustache, he makes more money now on his blog than he ever did before as an engineer.

00:41:31.000 | And I'm sure, although he doesn't say this on the blog and I have no inside knowledge,

00:41:35.000 | I would be willing to bet a good amount of money that he's not living off of his index funds,

00:41:39.000 | that he's spending the money from his earned income.

00:41:42.000 | And so what this opens up, I believe, is that you don't have to wait to be, you know,

00:41:48.000 | to have the $1.925 million to pretend like you're financially independent.

00:41:55.000 | You need $30,000 or $130,000 or $430,000 to get you through.

00:42:01.000 | Now, what you really need is what you're asking about, which is the income plan.

00:42:06.000 | And that's where it comes down to what are the numbers.

00:42:08.000 | The reality is most people who are pursuing this early retirement,

00:42:13.000 | early financial independence lifestyle, they're going to be earning something.

00:42:20.000 | And so what I would be concerned, what I wouldn't want to see doing,

00:42:23.000 | let's say that you were a 65-year-old retiree.

00:42:25.000 | As a 65-year-old retiree, then the planning process is a little bit simpler.

00:42:32.000 | We know what your Social Security distributions are.

00:42:34.000 | We generally are going to be able to sketch out a lifestyle that is going to be fairly --

00:42:40.000 | you're going to have a good sense of where you are.

00:42:43.000 | Most people who are 65 years old and retiring aren't sitting down and saying,

00:42:47.000 | well, I don't know, I might have more kids, we might want to move, I might want to pay for this.

00:42:51.000 | Most retirees, they've had those major expenses.

00:42:54.000 | And so we can sketch out you want to live on $5,000 a month.

00:42:57.000 | And then you say, based on our assets, we're going to set up -- you've got Social Security of $2,000 a month.

00:43:03.000 | We're going to set up annuity payments of $2,000 a month.

00:43:06.000 | That gives you a baseline income of $4,000.

00:43:08.000 | Then we're going to take X percent distributions from the 401(k),

00:43:12.000 | and that's going to cover you anywhere on the extra $2,000.

00:43:15.000 | If you have lots of surplus of money, retirement planning is easy.

00:43:20.000 | So for people that have $5 million in the bank and they want to spend $8,000 a month,

00:43:25.000 | that's easy because you don't have to worry about fluctuation.

00:43:28.000 | And you can put a lot of -- you can keep the account invested aggressively.

00:43:33.000 | You can keep it primarily in stocks.

00:43:35.000 | Because you've got such a margin of safety, you can go for highest overall rate of return.

00:43:40.000 | When people are just barely squeaking by with retirement, they just have enough,

00:43:45.000 | then what happens is you actually have to go safer in order to guarantee that minimum lifestyle.

00:43:49.000 | And so the flexibility, if somebody is willing to be flexible with their income,

00:43:55.000 | the toughest type of traditional retirement planning to do is somebody who is not willing to be flexible with their income.

00:44:02.000 | I've got to have $5,000 a month.

00:44:04.000 | If the market's down and I have $3,000 a month, that's a total failure.

00:44:08.000 | I've got to have this level.

00:44:09.000 | Well, in that case, you move in the direction of safer investments, less volatility,

00:44:13.000 | more fixed products, annuity products, guaranteed streams of income, things like that,

00:44:18.000 | because they're not willing to be flexible.

00:44:20.000 | You have somebody that says, "Hey, I could live on three or I could live on seven,

00:44:23.000 | and it's not really that big of a deal."

00:44:25.000 | Now you can go away from guaranteed products.

00:44:27.000 | You can go to a more volatile investment portfolio,

00:44:30.000 | which in the aggregate will produce a higher total return with more fluctuation.

00:44:35.000 | For the early retiree, you can do the same exact thing.

00:44:38.000 | All right, I'd like to spend $4,000 a month.

00:44:41.000 | I could get by on three because I have no debt or minimum mortgage, but I'd like to make seven.

00:44:46.000 | I think I might make a couple thousand dollars a month with this part-time deal.

00:44:50.000 | In that case, I would just be okay with doing from time to time distributions from a stock portfolio,

00:44:55.000 | where you look and say, "What's the dividend rate of my portfolio?

00:44:58.000 | Could I live on the dividends, or do I have a piece of real estate,

00:45:02.000 | and so I can keep invested for maximum return?"

00:45:05.000 | If I were, say, how old are you going to be in four or five years, Nick?

00:45:10.000 | About 41.

00:45:13.000 | Okay, so if I were 41, and I were, without giving away any of your personal details,

00:45:18.000 | if I were going to be 40, and that was what I was shooting for for my financial independence day,

00:45:23.000 | knowing that I've got a couple of part-time businesses,

00:45:25.000 | what I would do is I would have some assets that are very, very stable from a cash flow perspective.

00:45:33.000 | I would probably do that with a couple of pieces of real estate.

00:45:37.000 | If you're okay with a little bit of management or something like that,

00:45:40.000 | because that's very, very stable from an income perspective,

00:45:45.000 | then I would set up the taxable portfolio,

00:45:49.000 | and I would try to see if I were willing to live on just the dividends plus a little bit.

00:45:54.000 | Then I would keep enough money in cash to know that I've got at least a year's worth of wiggle room of cash,

00:46:03.000 | and then I would just take distributions from my taxable account based upon looking at the market.

00:46:09.000 | If I'm looking at the market and I say things are feeling relatively high,

00:46:14.000 | I would go ahead and pull some money to the side off the market.

00:46:17.000 | If things weren't, then I would go ahead and leave that,

00:46:20.000 | and I would balance it based upon my earned income.

00:46:27.000 | The technical answer, and I'm going to go into, as soon as I can,

00:46:31.000 | I'm going to get out some retirement planning shows.

00:46:33.000 | The problem is that most of the research is built around age 65 retirees,

00:46:39.000 | and even most of that research assumes some base level of income.

00:46:42.000 | There's not a ton of formal academic research from somebody saying,

00:46:47.000 | "I've got $2 million in my Vanguard total stock market index fund,

00:46:51.000 | and I'm just going to do a few percent distribution off of it."

00:46:53.000 | It probably should work.

00:46:55.000 | The research indicates that it should work,

00:46:58.000 | because when the portfolios are stress-tested, they last for longer than 30 years.

00:47:04.000 | But in terms of actually you yourself, I would take a more flexible approach,

00:47:08.000 | recognizing I'm going to make some money, I'm going to spend some dividends,

00:47:13.000 | I've got various asset classes that I'm going to be spending.

00:47:16.000 | I don't know if I answered the question or if I just talked around it.

00:47:18.000 | Was that helpful at all?

00:47:20.000 | No, that was very helpful.

00:47:22.000 | Specifically, I think what you triggered on there is that I need to look into

00:47:27.000 | what my income plan will be.

00:47:29.000 | That's not a term I had really formalized, but that's exactly what I need to do.

00:47:34.000 | Specifically, I didn't want to, let's say, like I said, magically tomorrow I hit that number,

00:47:39.000 | and I turn around and say, "Okay, that's the number I hit.

00:47:41.000 | Let me go ahead and start taking distribution in whatever way I could

00:47:44.000 | from whichever accounts that I have," and then find out that, "Oh, my God,

00:47:49.000 | half of my accounts, which are locked up in IRA, qualified accounts,

00:47:53.000 | are not accessible at all without major penalties."

00:47:56.000 | So really I think the devil's in his eagle's there.

00:47:59.000 | I need to look into each of those accounts I have and start asking questions of each account,

00:48:05.000 | what are the rules surrounding this rather than it just being some amorphous blob

00:48:09.000 | that gets piled into one big lump to say, "Is that the number or not?"

00:48:13.000 | I need to understand each of those piles individually and what the rules are

00:48:17.000 | surrounding them, and I don't understand that at this point.

00:48:19.000 | It's just like a target number without any rules for distribution known to me right now

00:48:25.000 | because I'm ignorant of that right now.

00:48:28.000 | So I think that's what I need to concentrate on if I want to feel more comfortable about that.

00:48:31.000 | But, yeah, it's always good to have that reminder of, like, I'm conservative,

00:48:36.000 | so I want to have that basis taken care of.

00:48:39.000 | I'm flexible, of course, but I want that lower floor to be taken care of,

00:48:42.000 | whether it's through real estate or through my other dividends that I can take

00:48:48.000 | or whatever the mechanism I have to change to make a good dividend base happen.

00:48:53.000 | But, yeah, it's always good to get the reminders that I don't have to wait for the

00:48:57.000 | absolute number because, I mean, as I've told you before, I do have a sneaky suspicion

00:49:01.000 | that if I were to quit tomorrow and find more fulfilling work, I might even bring in

00:49:06.000 | more money than I do now.

00:49:07.000 | Maybe not.

00:49:08.000 | Maybe I would bring in $0, but I just don't know.

00:49:11.000 | I always have that in the back of my mind and think of doing it earlier,

00:49:14.000 | and then reality sets in and two kids set in, and I think, "Well, I'll just stay with the job

00:49:18.000 | that's very secure."

00:49:21.000 | Right.

00:49:22.000 | And it's so hard.

00:49:25.000 | I hate being wishy-washy on answers, but the reality is it's got to be such a personal decision.

00:49:30.000 | The message that I feel is not prevalent is the message that I say,

00:49:35.000 | "Recognize the fact that you're probably never going to retire."

00:49:39.000 | Some people retire if they work a career or a job, and then they retire and move into

00:49:44.000 | kind of the golden years.

00:49:45.000 | Some people do it, but not many.

00:49:47.000 | And recognize that especially people who are financially independent,

00:49:50.000 | many of them are not going to want to do that.

00:49:53.000 | So recognize that you don't have to wait to have the number hit based upon your 4%

00:49:58.000 | or 3% withdrawal rate.

00:50:00.000 | Recognize that for the 23-year-old person, $50,000 in cash gives you the money to leave the job

00:50:11.000 | that you hate, fly across the country, join the organization that you would volunteer your time

00:50:15.000 | with for free if you weren't.

00:50:17.000 | So we can be very personal, and each of us can lay out a plan that's exactly appropriate to us.

00:50:24.000 | So I will try to do -- there's not a good -- there's not good content out there for people

00:50:33.000 | who are planning financially independence as far as their actual distribution plan.

00:50:37.000 | I'll put a note on my show idea and try to use an example of how it could be done.

00:50:44.000 | Where you're going to spend your taxable accounts.

00:50:48.000 | I'll try to think about -- see if I can create a compelling show on the topic to give some more

00:50:56.000 | technical answers.

00:50:58.000 | But there are dozens of solutions.

00:51:01.000 | You could take the taxable account, put -- keep enough money on the side to get your business going,

00:51:07.000 | figure out what your floor is.

00:51:09.000 | If you retire at 40, buy yourself a 20-year annuity with a lump sum which gives you a floor of

00:51:15.000 | income for 20 years, leave all the money in the retirement accounts growing at stock plans.

00:51:21.000 | It's got to be -- that's where you need your financial advisor.

00:51:25.000 | You've got to go through those projections with somebody who can go through what's the budget,

00:51:30.000 | what's the top range, what's the bottom range, what are your assets, what are your plans, et

00:51:34.000 | cetera.

00:51:36.000 | I hope one of those guys you emailed me about, continue to give me feedback.

00:51:40.000 | I hope one of those guys works out for you.

00:51:42.000 | >> All right.

00:51:43.000 | I will do.

00:51:45.000 | Thanks again.

00:51:47.000 | I'll let someone else ask a question.

00:51:49.000 | Just with talking with the financial advisors, hopefully I find the right one at some point.

00:51:53.000 | You talk about early retirement a lot of times.

00:51:56.000 | When you combine they're not experienced with early retirement and I'm not -- don't have the

00:52:02.000 | vocabulary to describe what I need, it becomes a very confusing conversation pretty quickly.

00:52:07.000 | I appreciate the tools.

00:52:09.000 | I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

00:52:11.000 | We're actually on our way very shortly to meet with one of the people from the Paladin registry

00:52:16.000 | right now.

00:52:18.000 | Thank you very much.

00:52:20.000 | I'll keep you in the loop.

00:52:22.000 | >> For sure.

00:52:24.000 | Who else?

00:52:26.000 | Who has a question?

00:52:28.000 | >> Hey, Joshua.

00:52:30.000 | >> Rick.

00:52:32.000 | >> Go ahead, Rick.

00:52:34.000 | >> A quick question for you and I apologize if you've already answered this because I did come on

00:52:39.000 | late.

00:52:41.000 | And that is I noticed in your signature that you are providing a 30 or 60 minute consultation on a

00:52:50.000 | fully written financial plan.

00:52:53.000 | Is that current?

00:52:55.000 | Is that something you're doing now?

00:52:57.000 | >> Yes, I'm in the process of launching that this week.

00:53:00.000 | And I've worked out the details on that.

00:53:03.000 | So, yes, I am willing to provide and I should advertise it.

00:53:08.000 | I will provide a 30 to 60 minute free no obligation complimentary consultation with anybody who

00:53:16.000 | might be interested in coaching just to check about and talk about personal private details.

00:53:21.000 | And the best way to do it is to if you're interested in that, the best thing to do is you can email

00:53:27.000 | me or sometimes email goes to spam.

00:53:30.000 | If you're interested in coaching, just text me.

00:53:32.000 | My cell phone number is 561-386-6034.

00:53:38.000 | Again, 561-386-6034.

00:53:41.000 | And you can just text me your name and your time zone and we can find a time that works well for

00:53:46.000 | that.

00:53:48.000 | And I'll just describe a little bit of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

00:53:52.000 | So long term with radical personal finance, I do not want to do -- I do not want to be an

00:53:58.000 | individual financial advisor.

00:54:00.000 | I walked away from that business because there are lots of people who can do that really well.

00:54:05.000 | And I'm hoping to find more of them to build a network.

00:54:08.000 | But I'm not -- I don't want to be an individual financial advisor.

00:54:11.000 | So coaching is not advice.

00:54:13.000 | But there are still -- there's a massive need for people who can actually provide big picture

00:54:19.000 | personalized wealth coaching, wealth creation coaching.

00:54:22.000 | And that's what's missing in the financial advice space.

00:54:25.000 | Most financial advice is oriented around you've got a lot of money, let me tell you what to do

00:54:30.000 | with your money.

00:54:32.000 | And very little is oriented around you're broke, let me tell you how to get money.

00:54:36.000 | Now there are some people that are starting it.

00:54:38.000 | That's why I've tried to support XY Planning Network.

00:54:41.000 | They're doing a good job there.

00:54:43.000 | And I'll try to support and promote anybody else who's doing it.

00:54:46.000 | But there's tons of books out there on it.

00:54:49.000 | And there's not a lot of great information for helping people think it through.

00:54:52.000 | So I'm bringing on a limited number of clients.

00:54:55.000 | I haven't set the total number.

00:54:57.000 | But I think I'm probably going to cap it at 10 right now.

00:54:59.000 | And I'm going to be working over the next two months with 10 individual clients for

00:55:05.000 | individualized wealth creation coaching.

00:55:08.000 | And it's not going to be cheap, but it's also not going to be out of sight.

00:55:11.000 | At the moment, the packages -- and I've got to publish the page.

00:55:14.000 | I'm working on the page to actually formalize this.

00:55:17.000 | But at the moment, the packages are from $1,500 to $4,500.

00:55:21.000 | And these are limited-time engagements with a certain number of phone consultations,

00:55:27.000 | email consultations, things like that, with a lot of homework in between.

00:55:32.000 | And what I'm doing with that coaching program is, number one, I'm trying to provide it

00:55:36.000 | as a service to help some people get some more personalized plans and approaches.

00:55:42.000 | It also helps me because it's immediate income as I continue to build the income

00:55:47.000 | base behind Radical Personal Finance.

00:55:50.000 | And I'm using that data with the curriculum that I've developed that I'm going to be

00:55:55.000 | walking coaching clients through.

00:55:57.000 | I'm using it to test it with individual people, get feedback before I publish the

00:56:02.000 | comprehensive self-help resources, before I publish the book, before I publish the

00:56:08.000 | curriculum, before I publish the seminars, the audio products, those types of things.

00:56:13.000 | And so I've got the curriculum designed, and I'm testing it with the up-front

00:56:17.000 | coaching clients.

00:56:18.000 | And then I'm building it out for where I can develop products and sell those

00:56:25.000 | products into the general marketplace.

00:56:28.000 | So that is new.

00:56:29.000 | I just added it to the signature, to my email signature in the last couple of days.

00:56:33.000 | I haven't -- I've mentioned it on the show here and there, but I'm right now working

00:56:37.000 | on publishing the page with my web designer on a different website, publishing the

00:56:41.000 | coaching page and putting the information out.

00:56:43.000 | The difference between coaching and financial advice and financial planning,

00:56:48.000 | number one, I have not established an RIA, a Registered Investment Advisory Firm,

00:56:52.000 | so I will not be giving any specific advice on sell the security, buy that security.

00:56:58.000 | I can give overall generalized input, but I won't be -- I don't sell any products.

00:57:03.000 | I'm not selling any -- no insurance policies, no investment products, anything like

00:57:07.000 | that.

00:57:08.000 | And I'm not going to be doing -- I'm not going to be delivering a financial plan

00:57:13.000 | with a specific projections of financial planning software, 132-page report of

00:57:20.000 | here are the projections.

00:57:22.000 | I'll do them by hand and give some big-picture advice.

00:57:26.000 | And frankly, clients don't read the 130-page either.

00:57:30.000 | I've only had about -- in the time that I was doing financial advice and delivering

00:57:34.000 | 130-page reports, I probably had five clients who actually would go through page

00:57:39.000 | by page, and those were wonderful clients.

00:57:42.000 | And there's one former client who's actually on this call, and you know who you are.

00:57:48.000 | That's familiar.

00:57:50.000 | Susan Harris.

00:57:51.000 | I wanted you to say your name, but go ahead.

00:57:54.000 | Susan is actually a former client of mine who started listening to the show after I

00:57:58.000 | left the financial advice business.

00:58:00.000 | And Susan, you were one of about five clients out of over 1,000 people who actually

00:58:04.000 | went page by page through the financial plan and understood each and every page.

00:58:09.000 | So at this point, my intention is to do financial plans on one page and give people

00:58:14.000 | a clear rail to run on for a wealth plan, not just, okay, here's the standard

00:58:22.000 | application of your portfolio, because in the scope of life, that stuff's meaningless

00:58:25.000 | to people.

00:58:26.000 | So that's the answer, Trick.

00:58:28.000 | Does that answer the question?

00:58:29.000 | That's what I'm doing.

00:58:31.000 | Yeah, that definitely helps.

00:58:32.000 | And with that said, maybe a follow-up to that would be, you've mentioned before

00:58:38.000 | financial advisor, podcast, or coaching as well.

00:58:41.000 | Is that also in the pipeline, or are you putting that on the back burner at this

00:58:45.000 | point?

00:58:46.000 | It's in the pipeline.

00:58:48.000 | So here's the problem I face in the business.

00:58:51.000 | And as with anything, I'm working my way through the entrepreneurial process.

00:58:56.000 | And right now, I'm in the teenage stage of a business, the rough adolescence, as

00:59:01.000 | Michael Griver would call it, the difficult adolescence, where at the beginning, I've

00:59:07.000 | gone through a personal transformation.

00:59:09.000 | When I started Radical Personal Finance, I was just tired.

00:59:12.000 | I was tired of employees.

00:59:14.000 | I was tired of assistants.

00:59:15.000 | I was tired, and I was just kind of tired.

00:59:18.000 | So my vision at that time was I just wanted to do me and my microphone and sit in the

00:59:23.000 | back of my RV and record my dinky little podcast and publish it and just do that.

00:59:28.000 | So it took about four, five, six months for me to kind of decompress and realize, well,

00:59:33.000 | I could do that, but I think I need to build something bigger, and to realize, to prove

00:59:39.000 | out that, yes, the demand for good information and good advice is out there.

00:59:44.000 | And yes, I am willing to go ahead and build the actual business.

00:59:47.000 | So after that point in time, I started working on the infrastructure, hiring the right people,

00:59:53.000 | hiring the web developer instead of me dealing with it, hiring a designer instead of me dealing

00:59:58.000 | with it.

00:59:59.000 | Next month, I'm hiring the audio editor instead of me doing it.

01:00:02.000 | So that frees up time.

01:00:04.000 | And then also, once I dropped my consulting contract, that opened up more time for me

01:00:08.000 | as well.

01:00:09.000 | And so at this point, I'm building the larger business of Radical Personal Finance.

01:00:15.000 | And so it's taken time for me to build out the capacity to be able to handle the coaching,

01:00:21.000 | to be able to handle this.

01:00:22.000 | The Financial Advisor podcast is a market that I believe exists with regard to the info

01:00:31.000 | products.

01:00:32.000 | But when it comes down to actually serving the Financial Advisor marketplace, I thought

01:00:36.000 | I could do it, but I realized I'm just not that excited about it.

01:00:39.000 | So I'm not excited about creating a once a week Financial Advisor-focused podcast.

01:00:44.000 | There's lots of Financial Advisors that listen to Radical Personal Finance.

01:00:47.000 | And so in essence, I just decided I'm not as excited about that as I am excited about

01:00:52.000 | other things.

01:00:53.000 | I've still got the Simple website up.

01:00:55.000 | I've got a few people that have signed up on the email list of interest.

01:00:59.000 | And as I outsource, I'm writing the Radical Personal Finance book right now.

01:01:04.000 | I'm going to build out from that a series of talks that are going to come from that,

01:01:09.000 | a series of self-coaching products, a series of seminars.

01:01:14.000 | As I build that out, then I'll continue to do that.

01:01:18.000 | What I've realized, though, is I've had a number of people who are Financial Advisors

01:01:21.000 | who've reached out to me for kind of some coaching on the actual media side.

01:01:25.000 | And so I probably should do like a special one-time conference call or something for

01:01:33.000 | some of you guys who are from that perspective and just share what I've learned to try to

01:01:37.000 | help because this is absolutely the future.

01:01:40.000 | Doing your own media and creating good access to people for Financial Advisors is absolutely,

01:01:47.000 | I'm convinced, is the future for any type of service business.

01:01:51.000 | And that's what we need to be doing now.

01:01:53.000 | Not trying to do what I'm doing as far as this crazy lots of content, all the focus,

01:01:57.000 | but just communicating with clients in a very focused, specialized way.

01:02:02.000 | So it's on the back burner right now because there are bigger opportunities in front of

01:02:04.000 | me, but I do intend at some point to get around to it.

01:02:08.000 | Okay, great.

01:02:09.000 | Thank you, Joshua.

01:02:10.000 | And as an aside, if you're ever curious, I set up my full proprietor RIA in 2010.

01:02:17.000 | So if you ever wanted to find out what that was like, if you ever do consider that path,

01:02:23.000 | let me know and I'll be happy to share my experience.

01:02:25.000 | Yeah, for sure, man.

01:02:27.000 | I think it's awesome that you had done it.

01:02:29.000 | I had gone through and I wrote the, I went through all the process and then just the

01:02:34.000 | last minute I pulled the papers from it.

01:02:37.000 | And by the way, I do have still here on, I got, what's his name, the book, the Boston,

01:02:45.000 | here's the Boston Economics guy, Kotlikoff.

01:02:47.000 | I bought his book and I've got it.

01:02:49.000 | I've still got your question of your review of it.

01:02:52.000 | So at some point I may review the book for you.

01:02:55.000 | Yeah, that was an old question.

01:02:57.000 | I didn't think, I thought that one had fallen by the wayside by now.

01:03:00.000 | So cool.

01:03:01.000 | I'm glad you got the book.

01:03:02.000 | I think you'll really enjoy his perspective being a little different than the mainstream.

01:03:06.000 | I do like, I always, I quote his numbers on unfunded liabilities.

01:03:10.000 | He is at the high end, but I've never seen, you know, with 200 and what's the up to

01:03:15.000 | 220, $230 trillion of unfunded liabilities in a total government debt, inclusive of

01:03:20.000 | unfunded liabilities that we face.

01:03:22.000 | I've never seen a credible, I haven't seen an article that credibly discounts his numbers.

01:03:28.000 | Most of the estimates are in the hundred trillion dollar numbers, but I just always use his

01:03:33.000 | $220 trillion number myself until I find someone that can discredit him.

01:03:36.000 | But he's done good work.

01:03:38.000 | So a little leftist in my face, but whatever.

01:03:41.000 | Yeah.

01:03:42.000 | He's done a lot of good work in social security strategies as well.

01:03:46.000 | I'm pretty familiar with all his work on that.

01:03:48.000 | And he has a new book on that as well.

01:03:50.000 | That just came out.

01:03:52.000 | Yep.

01:03:53.000 | Yep.

01:03:54.000 | I've seen that.

01:03:55.000 | So awesome.

01:03:56.000 | So yeah, if I can help Rick, let me know.

01:03:57.000 | Who's next?

01:03:58.000 | Hey Josh, I just wanted to make a quick point.

01:04:02.000 | A little while back you were asking if anybody would be willing to volunteer for, to help

01:04:06.000 | you with anything.

01:04:07.000 | So I responded, but I don't know whether you get some of my stuff, but if there's

01:04:13.000 | anything I can help you with, let me know.

01:04:15.000 | It would only be maybe a couple hours a week or something.

01:04:18.000 | So, you know, take it for what it's worth or whatever, but you can always contact me

01:04:21.000 | to see if it's something I could help you with.

01:04:24.000 | I have to check this fan folder, Susan.

01:04:26.000 | I haven't gotten, I didn't get that email from you.

01:04:29.000 | I have gotten emails from other, from some other listeners and the challenge, and thank

01:04:33.000 | you very much for being willing to do that.

01:04:35.000 | The biggest challenge for me has been figuring out what and how to outsource and how to actually

01:04:42.000 | do that, designing the business.

01:04:45.000 | And that was where when I didn't, I didn't design radical personal finance right from

01:04:50.000 | the beginning because I designed it as just kind of, I just wanted to sit down with me

01:04:54.000 | and my microphone.

01:04:55.000 | I intentionally didn't plan out the scale of the business and how to do that.

01:05:00.000 | At this point in time, I have gone forward and kind of planned some of those things out,

01:05:05.000 | but I'm still finding challenge of how to, how to outsource tasks.

01:05:09.000 | And so it's been a challenge, but thank you.

01:05:12.000 | I will keep that in mind.

01:05:13.000 | Yep, sure.

01:05:15.000 | Yeah.

01:05:16.000 | Hello.

01:05:17.000 | Hi, Joshua.

01:05:21.000 | This is Mike.

01:05:22.000 | Hey, Mike, go for it.

01:05:24.000 | Hey.

01:05:25.000 | So this is a little, I mean, this is talking about long-term planning, but we're considering

01:05:31.000 | long-term care insurance.

01:05:33.000 | And I was wondering what your opinion was on that.

01:05:35.000 | I've read conflicting things.

01:05:38.000 | So I'll give you the big picture scenario and then you can, you might need to give me

01:05:46.000 | more specifics, but let me give you the big picture answer.

01:05:49.000 | Long-term care insurance is unaffordable for anybody with less than maybe say three to

01:05:56.000 | $500,000 of assets.

01:05:58.000 | It's very important for people with say $300,000 to a couple million dollars of assets.

01:06:05.000 | And it's not strictly necessary for people who are going to have more than a couple million

01:06:11.000 | bucks at retirement, but it can be a really good buy as a hedge against the potential

01:06:20.000 | risk.

01:06:21.000 | The challenge is that the marketplace has changed dramatically over the last two to

01:06:28.000 | three years.

01:06:29.000 | And the policies were in the past much more generous than they are now.

01:06:35.000 | And you've got to buy it at the right time in your life to be able to afford the premiums.

01:06:42.000 | And so big picture, there's nothing wrong with the product.

01:06:48.000 | It needs to be carefully bought and it needs to fit properly into the comprehensive plan.

01:06:53.000 | I actually own long-term care insurance.

01:06:55.000 | What happened when I was in it for me and for my wife, even at my age, because when

01:07:00.000 | I was with Northwestern Mutual, it used to be you could buy big, big policies with unlimited

01:07:07.000 | benefits.

01:07:08.000 | And then systematically some of the companies systematically started pulling back on benefits.

01:07:19.000 | And so Northwestern Mutual was one of the last three companies to offer long-term care

01:07:26.000 | policies with a lifetime benefit period.

01:07:28.000 | And I actually bought insurance for me and for my wife at that time because I could still

01:07:34.000 | get the unlimited benefits.

01:07:36.000 | And it's really a useful product from a tax perspective.

01:07:39.000 | It's got a unique niche.

01:07:40.000 | And if you have the right type of corporate setup, you can fully deduct the premiums and

01:07:45.000 | get the benefits tax-free, which is unique.

01:07:47.000 | So that's my big picture answer.

01:07:48.000 | You want to give me more specifics and ask me about your situation?

01:07:51.000 | I'll try to give you more commentary.

01:07:53.000 | Well, I mean, my wife and I are in our low to mid-30s, so we're not old.

01:08:00.000 | But my wife has some Alzheimer's in her family history.

01:08:06.000 | So we're just trying to protect our assets moving forward in case something happens.

01:08:11.000 | Are you fully on track for traditional retirement where you could expect to be well-funded for

01:08:17.000 | retirement at the age of, say, 60, 65, that type of traditional retirement age?

01:08:24.000 | Absolutely.

01:08:25.000 | But the plan is for us to have a kid in the next couple of years.

01:08:30.000 | And we have enough in the savings to where we could just live off of her salary.

01:08:35.000 | So that's sort of the plan right now.

01:08:38.000 | What type of work do you do?

01:08:41.000 | I'm a software engineer.

01:08:44.000 | Do you have disability income insurance?

01:08:48.000 | Yes.

01:08:49.000 | Okay.

01:08:50.000 | So you want to maximize your disability income insurance before you get to long-term care

01:08:56.000 | insurance.

01:08:57.000 | You're in one of those areas where it's hard, without going through a ton of details,

01:09:03.000 | it's tough to -- it's tough for me to give you an answer.

01:09:10.000 | You're in the difficult space.

01:09:12.000 | In general, here's my approach to long-term care.

01:09:14.000 | The advice that you get out there in the marketplace is usually advice that says, "Wait until,"

01:09:19.000 | for example, Dave Ramsey or Suzy Orman always said, "Wait until you're 60."

01:09:24.000 | And so there are a lot of people who will parrot that advice to get into web forums

01:09:28.000 | and things like that.

01:09:29.000 | I've never been able to figure out any rational reason to wait for a certain age to buy long-term

01:09:34.000 | care insurance.

01:09:35.000 | And the challenge is when you're 60, it gets so expensive when you get into the 60s that

01:09:40.000 | many people find it difficult to stomach actually spending the money on the premiums.

01:09:47.000 | So that's a real challenge when you get to be that age.

01:09:52.000 | So I've never been able to prove to myself that waiting until a certain age was a good

01:09:57.000 | idea.

01:09:58.000 | I'm open to somebody who could convince me of it, but I've never been able to prove it.

01:10:01.000 | What I have --

01:10:02.000 | Go ahead.

01:10:03.000 | I was going to say the only caveat to that is I've read -- I don't know if it's true

01:10:08.000 | or not -- that you can go ahead and buy it when you're younger, but then there's so much

01:10:13.000 | instability in that space.

01:10:15.000 | Like you were saying, that things could change and you could just lose everything that you

01:10:21.000 | had put into it if they totally changed the rules.

01:10:25.000 | Right.

01:10:26.000 | So let me address that in just a second because that is a concern, but that's overblown, in

01:10:32.000 | my opinion.

01:10:33.000 | I'll talk to you about the state of the market.

01:10:35.000 | Let me just make a note.

01:10:36.000 | So I can make sure to come back to that.

01:10:38.000 | So how I've approached the buying decision is let's talk in order of risk.

01:10:44.000 | So for somebody like you guys, okay, we're young, we're doing well financially, we're

01:10:48.000 | saving for gold, and what we're thinking about risk is to think, "Is this a risk that we

01:10:55.000 | face that we're concerned about?"

01:10:57.000 | And so the answer is yes, we're concerned that my wife might have Alzheimer's disease,

01:11:01.000 | and so therefore we want to protect against that.

01:11:04.000 | That's not, however, a high priority risk.

01:11:06.000 | So you want to start with making sure that you're on track for all the rest of your plans.

01:11:10.000 | That's why I ask about retirement.

01:11:12.000 | And so how I approach it is to say, I would ask you if I were doing individual planning

01:11:17.000 | for you, Mike, I would say, "Are you on track for traditional retirement?"

01:11:21.000 | Yes.

01:11:22.000 | "Do you have life insurance and disability insurance, which are much higher probabilities

01:11:27.000 | and likelihoods than long-term care needs?"

01:11:31.000 | If so, yes.

01:11:32.000 | Okay, do we have additional money that we could, do we want to hedge against this risk

01:11:38.000 | with additional money, and is this thing to make sense in our overall portfolio?

01:11:43.000 | And if you, you know, we make plenty of money, we're saving well, we are not sacrificing

01:11:49.000 | our lifestyle, you know, at this point, let's see, my long-term care premiums for my wife

01:11:53.000 | and for me are what, 60 bucks a month?

01:11:56.000 | Yeah, about 60 bucks a month.

01:11:58.000 | I've got a, I've got a Cadillac policy with pretty decent benefits, with a pretty decent

01:12:02.000 | benefit amount, so it's got all kinds of fancy inflation options.

01:12:05.000 | So 60 bucks a month is not going to materially impact, you know, it's not going to make a

01:12:11.000 | huge difference whether I buy it or not.

01:12:14.000 | And I like having the confidence of it being there.

01:12:17.000 | So that's how I would approach it at your age.

01:12:20.000 | As long as you're on track for other things, then yes, you can check it out.

01:12:24.000 | State of the market.

01:12:25.000 | Here's what's challenging.

01:12:26.000 | When you get into the state of the market, and this was why I went ahead and bought when

01:12:29.000 | the unlimited benefit period was available.

01:12:31.000 | If I developed early onset Alzheimer's or I had a car accident that caused me to need

01:12:39.000 | ongoing care, my policy would never run out of money.

01:12:42.000 | And so at 30, that's a really compelling scenario because I've got a, I've got a dramatic potential

01:12:50.000 | benefit for a very small cost.

01:12:52.000 | And those policies, to the best of my knowledge, nobody is offering unlimited benefit periods

01:12:58.000 | anymore.

01:12:59.000 | New York Life was the last one to pull their product and they pulled it back in about 2012,

01:13:04.000 | 2013.

01:13:05.000 | I could be wrong.

01:13:06.000 | Somebody could have offered it, but I haven't heard of it, of anybody still offering it.

01:13:11.000 | So now how you price a policy is you build the policy in based upon an amount of money

01:13:16.000 | and you say, what's the total benefit value that I'm going to try to plan for?

01:13:23.000 | So you might plan for a policy that has a total of $500,000 of benefits in the contract.

01:13:28.000 | And so it's a little bit more challenging now because you don't have that unlimited

01:13:32.000 | option to figure out what's the right fit from the contract perspective.

01:13:36.000 | There were a lot of companies that jumped into the long-term care insurance marketplace

01:13:40.000 | that thought they were going to make a killing and they thought they were going to make a

01:13:45.000 | killing.

01:13:46.000 | And the insurance industry priced insurance policies originally based upon some assumptions

01:13:56.000 | from disability insurance, certain lapse ratios and things like that.

01:14:00.000 | They priced that into the products and the majority of companies dramatically underpriced

01:14:04.000 | their products.

01:14:05.000 | And since that time, there was a huge amount of turmoil in the marketplace where there

01:14:13.000 | was a huge amount of turmoil in the marketplace and many companies lost money.

01:14:17.000 | They stopped selling the products.

01:14:19.000 | They increased premiums across the board, et cetera.

01:14:24.000 | You cannot buy, again, to the best of my knowledge, you cannot buy a contract that is using insurance

01:14:32.000 | lingo called non-cancelable.

01:14:34.000 | Non-cancelable means that the insurance company doesn't have the rights to raise your premiums.

01:14:39.000 | All insurance companies have the right to change premiums on enforced long-term care

01:14:44.000 | insurance policies if they want to.

01:14:46.000 | So you can't buy a policy, even my policy, Northwestern Mutual has the right to raise

01:14:50.000 | the rates on me if they need to, not as an individual but as a class of insureds.

01:14:54.000 | So they can raise it on all males between the age of 30 and 45 that fit this demographic.

01:15:00.000 | They can do that.

01:15:01.000 | So in long-term care, this was a little bit of a holdover from my selling days when I

01:15:07.000 | was selling for Northwestern Mutual, but I still believe it to be true.

01:15:10.000 | Company matters.

01:15:11.000 | And I would not shop based upon price.

01:15:14.000 | I would shop based upon company.

01:15:16.000 | So there I would recommend you start with some of the big mutuals.

01:15:19.000 | Start with Northwestern Mutual, New York Life.

01:15:22.000 | Check out their products.

01:15:24.000 | Let's see, who are the other?

01:15:25.000 | Lincoln is a big player in the long-term care marketplace.

01:15:28.000 | They have a lot of business.

01:15:30.000 | Start with them, but look for stability of company.

01:15:33.000 | I think that matters.

01:15:34.000 | What happens when the company stops selling the product or they get rid of it, what they'll

01:15:38.000 | do is they will at time write off the business.

01:15:43.000 | They set up a trust fund and then they take the policies and they move them over into

01:15:48.000 | the trust fund.

01:15:50.000 | And they fund it and then that trust fund is accountable to pay off claims that are

01:15:56.000 | going to come out of that pool.

01:15:58.000 | So if it's poorly managed, then what can happen is the trust fund can become toxic

01:16:04.000 | and people bail.

01:16:05.000 | The healthy people that can get new insurance, they bail and they go on their way.

01:16:10.000 | And then the fund falls apart because that's continually increased premiums and the only

01:16:15.000 | people that keep the policies are the ones who are sick.

01:16:17.000 | So that can happen if a company is poorly managed and that has happened.

01:16:21.000 | So in long-term care, a long-term care policy is a very different thing than a 10-year

01:16:26.000 | level term life policy.

01:16:28.000 | I would go with one of the quality companies that are going to have a longer-term focus

01:16:32.000 | on the business versus just whoever's cheapest.

01:16:35.000 | Okay, great.

01:16:38.000 | Thank you.

01:16:39.000 | Yeah, hopefully that helps.

01:16:40.000 | I'm sorry I can't be more specific.

01:16:42.000 | In your situation, I would say it's probably a toss-up.

01:16:46.000 | If you – what I like about long-term care, I can run it through the business, fully

01:16:50.000 | deductible.

01:16:51.000 | That saves me a little bit of money.

01:16:53.000 | And then the benefit on the back end is tax-free.

01:16:55.000 | So plus when you're young, it's so cheap.

01:16:58.000 | If Northwestern Mutual canceled the policy, I'm out, what, $600 to $700 a year for a

01:17:03.000 | few years.

01:17:04.000 | And if I decided to walk from it, it's not that big a deal.

01:17:08.000 | It's cheap enough when you're in your 30s that as long as you're on track for retirement,

01:17:12.000 | as long as you've got life insurance, disability insurance, and you're funding other short-term

01:17:16.000 | goals as well, then toss it in.

01:17:18.000 | You're probably not going to miss $60 a month.

01:17:21.000 | All right.

01:17:22.000 | Excellent.

01:17:23.000 | Thank you so much.

01:17:24.000 | Who else?

01:17:25.000 | Joshua, I know you're over your hour's time, so you don't have to answer this right

01:17:30.000 | now if you don't want to.

01:17:31.000 | But I took your advice a while back when we got together, and I sold my house up north

01:17:35.000 | because I wasn't really making a killing.

01:17:37.000 | Awesome.

01:17:38.000 | Yeah.

01:17:39.000 | So now I don't know what to do with it.

01:17:40.000 | By the time I dish out some money here and there and stuff, I'll probably have like

01:17:43.000 | $100K that I'm not really quite sure what to do on that, even thinking maybe annuity.

01:17:47.000 | I don't know.

01:17:48.000 | So think about it.

01:17:49.000 | You don't have to answer it right now.

01:17:50.000 | I know other people might have questions.

01:17:52.000 | I set aside on my schedule two hours, so I wanted to take as many questions as I could

01:17:56.000 | for up to two hours.

01:17:57.000 | Oh, okay.

01:17:58.000 | Good.

01:17:59.000 | So I'll answer.

01:18:00.000 | I'll give you just a quick thing.

01:18:01.000 | Did you ever connect with the person who took over your accounts when I left Northwestern

01:18:04.000 | Mutual?

01:18:05.000 | No.

01:18:06.000 | They've been calling, but I haven't.

01:18:08.000 | Okay.

01:18:09.000 | At least meet with them and just talk to them and just see.

01:18:13.000 | I think the person who should be calling would be the Marks office, or it might be somebody

01:18:19.000 | else, but it's probably Marks office.

01:18:21.000 | So set up a thing there and they can help you by going into the numbers, rerunning a

01:18:26.000 | financial plan and talking about it and talking about details of it and in your situation

01:18:34.000 | because it needs to fit into the overall plan.

01:18:38.000 | I would say don't worry about just keeping it in cash right now.

01:18:42.000 | Just be happy you have the cash sitting aside and you're not going to spend it.

01:18:45.000 | Just set it aside and think about it in a longer term basis.

01:18:48.000 | You need to again find another advisor who can work with you on details.

01:18:54.000 | Consider also reaching out to the person who is advising you on your 401(k) plan and see

01:18:59.000 | if they can help you out.

01:19:01.000 | Okay.

01:19:02.000 | All right.

01:19:03.000 | Yep.

01:19:04.000 | That's it for me.

01:19:05.000 | Thank you.

01:19:06.000 | This is great.

01:19:07.000 | No worries.

01:19:08.000 | Who else?

01:19:09.000 | I've got time.

01:19:10.000 | Anyone else want to ask questions?

01:19:11.000 | Joshua, this is Mark again.

01:19:12.000 | Go ahead.

01:19:13.000 | I don't know if anybody else had a question that hasn't asked anything yet, but nobody

01:19:17.000 | was saying anything.

01:19:18.000 | I thought I'd jump in.

01:19:21.000 | You don't have to go into too much detail on this just because I actually have to drop

01:19:28.000 | off here in about 10 or 15 minutes.

01:19:30.000 | Some of your recent podcasts have inspired my wife and I to take a look at maybe some

01:19:37.000 | side income businesses, either franchise or some web business or something like that.

01:19:44.000 | We've never done anything like that before.

01:19:46.000 | We're both employed right now, and that's all we've ever done.

01:19:50.000 | I don't know if you have a couple of quick hit type considerations, things that we should

01:19:57.000 | think about as we start to think about not necessarily a specific type of business in

01:20:02.000 | that, but just considerations from moving from just solely earning W-2 income to starting

01:20:09.000 | a business and what kinds of things we would need to think about.

01:20:14.000 | I know there's tech implications and some other things, but it's a pretty broad question.

01:20:20.000 | I don't know if you have a way to answer that.

01:20:24.000 | Yeah.

01:20:25.000 | It's an interesting question.

01:20:28.000 | I'll just give you some big hits.

01:20:31.000 | Just kind of my general business advice.

01:20:35.000 | Number one, go slow.

01:20:37.000 | You have no reason to move fast if you have a good situation.

01:20:42.000 | There's no reason to try to jump into something quickly when you can just simply focus on

01:20:50.000 | – by the way, I'm sorry.

01:20:53.000 | Right when I was answering, I got distracted by the question in the chat that Jonathan

01:20:57.000 | asked.

01:20:58.000 | Jonathan, I'll ask the question on the phone here in a minute.

01:21:00.000 | Jonathan's asking for some questions in the chat to find out who's also in the California

01:21:04.000 | area.

01:21:05.000 | Check that out in the chat if you're on a computer, which he is.

01:21:09.000 | Sorry, I apologize for getting distracted, but I realized I wanted to answer those questions

01:21:13.000 | people are listening on a computer.

01:21:15.000 | In general, start slow and do explore something for fun and look for opportunity.

01:21:20.000 | Don't worry about any of the stuff that people get concerned about.

01:21:25.000 | You don't need to worry about entity selection.

01:21:27.000 | You don't need to worry about tax implications.

01:21:29.000 | All that stuff is actually really simple.

01:21:31.000 | It's not hard to do, and it's really not a big deal to start a business.

01:21:35.000 | The key to starting a business is just simply getting a customer.

01:21:39.000 | As soon as you can get your first customer, you're in business.

01:21:44.000 | Look around and look for opportunity or look for need.

01:21:49.000 | Try to do it based upon an understanding of your personality, based upon an understanding

01:21:57.000 | of your goals, based upon an understanding of what you're actually trying to accomplish.

01:22:04.000 | If you start with that, then explore things.

01:22:09.000 | The business can be as simple as, I don't know, one of these things you see, the guy

01:22:14.000 | is going out.

01:22:15.000 | There was a TV show I saw one time, it was something like Dirty Jobs, but it's different,

01:22:19.000 | where people are out hunting truffles in the woods and making decent money.

01:22:25.000 | People up in Alabama are hunting truffles in the woods and selling them and making money

01:22:29.000 | on that.

01:22:30.000 | I've got a friend of mine who's a commercial fisherman.

01:22:33.000 | For him, his perfect business is going out and fishing every day because he loves it.

01:22:39.000 | For me, that's exactly the opposite.

01:22:42.000 | You don't have to be limited to the online world, the online stuff.

01:22:45.000 | For me, I don't want to go out on the boat every day, but for him, he loves it.

01:22:49.000 | Find the customer first and then let the customer create the business.

01:22:53.000 | The mistake that most entrepreneurs do is they spend too much time planning, then they

01:22:57.000 | buy a bunch of stuff before they have customers.

01:23:00.000 | They're out saying, "Well, I've got to set up an LLC and I've got to go and do this and

01:23:04.000 | buy business cards," and things like that.

01:23:08.000 | What they really should just simply do is go and see if they can sell some services.

01:23:13.000 | If you do that, then you'll be focused on where you get feedback from the marketplace.

01:23:21.000 | The next thing is look at what your actual benefits and advantages are that other people

01:23:27.000 | might not have.

01:23:28.000 | If you're trying to start a business and you don't want to invest any money in it, then

01:23:33.000 | what is your knowledge and expertise that you can apply that other people don't have?

01:23:38.000 | That's what radical personal finance was.

01:23:40.000 | It cost me very little to start it, but I looked at the marketplace and I said, "I have

01:23:43.000 | knowledge, expertise, and ability that many people don't have."

01:23:47.000 | Many people would struggle to do what I do as far as creating this type of content.

01:23:52.000 | I don't struggle.

01:23:53.000 | It comes naturally to me.

01:23:55.000 | On the other hand, if you've got half a million dollars and you're trying to figure out, "I've

01:23:59.000 | got half a million dollars," recognize that's a huge advantage and let the marketplace screen

01:24:05.000 | out all the competition of people who don't have half a million dollars to invest.

01:24:09.000 | You go and figure out where you can compete in a way that they don't have.

01:24:14.000 | In general, a good book to read on it, I would recommend Michael Masterson wrote a book called

01:24:19.000 | "Ready, Fire, Aim."

01:24:20.000 | I thought he did a good job in that book of laying out the process of business and walking

01:24:25.000 | through the different stages.

01:24:27.000 | The second thing as far as education, read Michael Gerber's book, "The E-Myth," stands

01:24:32.000 | for "The Entrepreneur Myth," and design your business intentionally, recognizing that the

01:24:38.000 | job of a business is to create a product or service that the marketplace desires and wants

01:24:44.000 | and create profit for you, the owner, and that profit has to be substantial enough for

01:24:50.000 | you to want to continue in business.

01:24:52.000 | Design your business intentionally, and that's the best general advice I could give you.

01:24:57.000 | Quick question here, Jonathan asked in the chat, and I didn't advertise this, but you

01:25:04.000 | could actually listen to this call on the computer and not just on the phone.

01:25:07.000 | Jonathan asked in the chat who also is from the California area.

01:25:12.000 | Rick, was that you who's from near Reading, California?

01:25:15.000 | All right.

01:25:23.000 | Well, hey, this is Evan.

01:25:27.000 | I'm actually in California as well, but I'm in the Orange County, California area.

01:25:31.000 | Okay.

01:25:32.000 | All right.

01:25:33.000 | So, Evan, shoot me an email later.

01:25:34.000 | There's another listener who lives near you, and we're just asking in the chat to connect,

01:25:40.000 | and I'll just connect you.

01:25:42.000 | If you guys want to be connected, I'll connect you guys, and you can see if you can form

01:25:47.000 | some kind of in-person relationship, which would be cool.

01:25:50.000 | That was just the question I wanted to respond to.

01:25:52.000 | Yeah, sounds great.

01:25:54.000 | Did that help with the question about business?

01:25:57.000 | Did that help at all?

01:25:59.000 | Yeah, very much.

01:26:00.000 | Thank you very much.

01:26:01.000 | Okay.

01:26:02.000 | Anybody else want to ask a question?

01:26:04.000 | I have another half hour or we can end it.

01:26:06.000 | I don't want to belabor it, but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you guys want.

01:26:10.000 | Hey, no, should I start?

01:26:13.000 | Go ahead.

01:26:14.000 | Go ahead.

01:26:15.000 | No, no, no.

01:26:16.000 | Yeah, throw another.

01:26:17.000 | All right.

01:26:18.000 | All right.

01:26:19.000 | Hold on.

01:26:20.000 | Hold on.

01:26:21.000 | 412 area code.

01:26:22.000 | Go.

01:26:23.000 | All right.

01:26:24.000 | Sorry.

01:26:25.000 | Hey, this is Nick again.

01:26:26.000 | I can't stick around for the answer, unfortunately, but I'll listen to the recording wherever you

01:26:32.000 | make it available if you want to answer this question, but I'm hopping in to see that financial

01:26:37.000 | advisor right now.

01:26:38.000 | But one question I kind of was curious to have your take on is day to day I find it

01:26:45.000 | more and more difficult to, I guess, balance just the organization of living life and being

01:26:56.000 | able to systemize things that need to be systemized and living organized and feeling like you're

01:27:01.000 | struggling with the chaoticness of trying to start a side business, whatever that may

01:27:07.000 | be.

01:27:08.000 | I have three or four things going on right now, which is one of my problems.

01:27:11.000 | I lack focus.

01:27:12.000 | But if you had to pick one thing, which is between the two of getting your life organized

01:27:17.800 | first where you feel stable enough to go forward with a venture or just doing the venture first

01:27:23.800 | and the other stuff will just fall by the wayside if it's less important.

01:27:28.160 | What's your take on that?

01:27:29.160 | Because I always struggle with that.

01:27:30.640 | Should I get my life more organized or should I be really hammering down and focusing on

01:27:34.960 | these on, you know, pick up side venture and focus on it?

01:27:40.160 | I'd just be curious to hear your answer on that.

01:27:41.880 | But I do have to run in to meet the advisor now.

01:27:44.920 | So thank you for that.

01:27:45.920 | And bye to everybody.

01:27:46.920 | For sure.

01:27:47.920 | I'll go ahead and answer it and I'll post the recording for you.

01:27:52.120 | So it's an interesting question.

01:27:53.680 | My answer to it is that I think the idea of getting your life organized for most of us

01:28:02.200 | who would be on a call like this is it's absurd.

01:28:07.440 | We're never going to, it's never going to happen.

01:28:09.320 | And the reason I say that is because I used to stress out about getting everything done

01:28:13.880 | and well, someday I'm going to get everything done.

01:28:16.280 | Someday I'm going to get it on top of things.

01:28:17.880 | And then I realized that any time that I started to get on top of things, I would just add

01:28:23.200 | more things on top of the list.

01:28:26.400 | And that for people who are, I'm not sure what the right word is, but I guess I would

01:28:34.400 | say for people who are big picture thinkers, who are courageous, who are success oriented,

01:28:39.560 | we're never going to finish everything because as soon as you get to the end of your list,

01:28:43.420 | you're immediately looking for the next thing to do.

01:28:46.160 | You've already added four more ideas.

01:28:48.600 | And so the type of person who is going to accumulate money, the type of person who's

01:28:52.200 | going to start a business, not the type of person who's just going to sit around and

01:28:56.520 | who's going to sit around and have everything done.

01:29:01.920 | So the way that I've come to handle it, maybe you disagree, maybe you agree.

01:29:04.240 | I don't know.

01:29:05.240 | I've come to just simply walk away from the expectation that I'm ever going to get on

01:29:08.680 | top of everything, that I'm ever going to be organized, that any of those things are

01:29:12.800 | ever going to happen completely and focus first on saying, what are the things that

01:29:19.720 | I want to get done and what are the things that must get done?

01:29:22.960 | And instead of focusing on having everything under control, just simply focus on doing

01:29:28.360 | the highest priority things.

01:29:30.480 | And for me, what I find is that if I focus on doing the highest priority things and let

01:29:35.480 | other things suffer, there's never enough time to do everything and there's always enough

01:29:40.840 | time to do the most important things.

01:29:42.980 | So if I know what my priorities are and I put hard deadlines around those, then I'll

01:29:49.560 | be able to move forward.

01:29:51.400 | So what happens is, give you some examples from my life.

01:29:54.880 | I know that, for example, one of my highest priorities and values is time with my family.

01:30:01.520 | So I know that when it's time for breakfast or when it's time for dinner or when it's

01:30:04.680 | time for lunch, I generally don't work through breakfast or dinner or lunch unless I'm out

01:30:09.440 | of town.

01:30:10.440 | And so whether I'm done for the day or not, I'm quitting and I'm going to go and spend

01:30:14.920 | time with my family.

01:30:16.920 | And that allows me to make sure that my highest priority things are done.

01:30:21.520 | And if I don't get the show out, I don't get the show out.

01:30:23.160 | If I don't get the email sent back, I don't get the email sent back.

01:30:26.280 | Then also in the morning, what I try to do is just spend time first focusing on what

01:30:32.280 | is the most important thing.

01:30:34.520 | And what I find is I have to maintain two different, I guess, productivity systems.

01:30:40.480 | I have to maintain the productivity system that's based on my goals.

01:30:44.560 | And by productivity system, I just mean a list, whether it's a list in a notebook or

01:30:48.040 | I use a couple of different apps.

01:30:49.320 | I use an app called Goals on Track.

01:30:51.480 | I use an app from time to time called Nozbe.

01:30:54.320 | I almost need to maintain two different things, one that's based upon goals and the other

01:30:58.480 | that's based upon everything else.

01:31:00.520 | And so first I want to start by focusing on my goals.

01:31:04.680 | If my goals say I want to get stronger, then I need to get to the gym.

01:31:08.520 | If my goals say I need to get my business started and I need to get that done and push

01:31:12.280 | everything else back, in that way I'm at least getting the things that are most important

01:31:17.400 | to me.

01:31:18.400 | And then just scheduling time from time to time to review those priorities and doing

01:31:21.040 | that.

01:31:22.040 | I think it's a hopeless type dream to have the idea of ever getting organized.

01:31:26.360 | I don't know any successful entrepreneur, any person who's made a big splash and a big

01:31:30.760 | impact who's fully on top of everything.

01:31:34.440 | It's always a little bit chaotic.

01:31:36.360 | And I think one of the aspects of being successful in business is learning to be okay with a

01:31:41.120 | little bit of chaos, but also having the systems to make sure the most important things get

01:31:45.520 | done.

01:31:46.520 | So that's my answer.

01:31:47.520 | Hopefully that's helpful.

01:31:48.520 | Evan, I think you were fighting with Nick.

01:31:52.080 | Go ahead.

01:31:53.080 | Yeah, I just wanted to kind of piggyback on the side business and goals and focusing question.

01:31:59.640 | For someone who knows that they want to do something on the side and maybe the situation

01:32:04.760 | is a little bit more urgent, maybe it's not, but can't decide on what that thing is, do

01:32:08.960 | you have any recommendations for how to work through that process and actually thinking

01:32:13.840 | what you might be good at doing and what you actually want to do on the side versus just

01:32:19.560 | wanting to make extra money?

01:32:21.320 | Well, if you have any idea whatsoever, go do it and see what the marketplace says.

01:32:28.240 | Because what happens is as you start to move and you start to take action, all of a sudden

01:32:33.720 | opportunities come your way.

01:32:37.200 | And in the last, I've been doing radical personal finance a year and a half now, and in the

01:32:41.400 | last year and a half, I have had more business opportunities come across my desk than I can

01:32:47.440 | count and more connections and more relationships and more opportunities and more paths that

01:32:53.320 | I could pursue.

01:32:54.320 | I've got product ideas left and right.

01:32:56.000 | I've got business ideas left and right.

01:32:58.400 | But if I had just simply sat around and thought and thought and thought and thought, then

01:33:02.480 | I wouldn't know what those things are.

01:33:04.120 | So if you have any inkling of an idea, then I say go and start.

01:33:08.720 | And this is so if I'm giving career advice, I give the same advice to people who are,

01:33:13.080 | you know, if I'm talking to a 15 year old, if you have that, I pity and I hate what we

01:33:19.320 | do to kids, where we force kids to spend the first basically 20 to 25 years of their life

01:33:27.520 | spending time on schooling, and they don't get any practical experience with different

01:33:33.280 | things.

01:33:34.280 | And so they spend the first 20 or 25 years of their life spending all this time sitting

01:33:39.000 | in class when the class is basically designed to prepare them for the next thing.

01:33:44.240 | And they have zero, many people have very little practical experience in something that

01:33:49.960 | actually matters.

01:33:51.640 | What happens is in if you if we quit that, or it's one of the best things that my dad

01:33:59.920 | ever did for me, was he worked and worked and worked to get me involved in all kinds

01:34:05.160 | of different jobs.

01:34:06.840 | And looking back on it now, I never realized when I was younger, how hard that was for

01:34:11.560 | him.

01:34:12.560 | It would have been a lot easier for him to just pay me an allowance and give me money

01:34:16.360 | to spend than it was for him to take me around and take me to all of my different jobs every

01:34:22.320 | day or, you know, every Saturday if it was during the school year or however it was.

01:34:27.640 | It would have been a lot easier for him to just simply 20 bucks a week wouldn't have

01:34:32.440 | made a big difference in his life versus the cost of the time to get me to me and all my

01:34:36.560 | siblings.

01:34:37.560 | Remember, I'm the youngest of seven to get me and all my siblings to all of our jobs.

01:34:42.400 | But the confidence that it gave me by going by by working all these different jobs and

01:34:48.640 | doing all these different things, I actually I know who I am better than most people my

01:34:54.200 | age and knowing who I am has come through doing all these different jobs.

01:34:59.080 | So by doing all these different jobs, I've had the opportunity to I've had the opportunity

01:35:05.120 | to be exposed to different industries, different things.

01:35:08.160 | And I've made notes mental and physical of the attributes of things that I like and that

01:35:13.200 | I don't like.

01:35:14.480 | And so radical personal finance is a reflection not of just an idea that came out of the blue,

01:35:21.080 | but it's a reflection of a design that came to me when I was kneeling on the floor laying

01:35:27.120 | tile and grouting a tile floor with my back aching saying, "I don't want to do this

01:35:31.840 | for a living."

01:35:32.840 | And it was coming from driving around in a car selling life insurance policies saying,

01:35:39.120 | "I don't want to drive around in the car all day.

01:35:41.360 | I want to be able to sit at home and spend my time building."

01:35:44.920 | So from a kid perspective, that made a huge difference in my life and I'm so grateful

01:35:49.920 | for that.

01:35:50.920 | And I think that the best thing that we can do for kids is expose them as broadly as possible.

01:35:58.360 | And then if they want to go deep in a subject, then let them go deep.

01:36:01.360 | I hate, I love the fact that a lot of times a 14 year old or 15 year old young man or

01:36:06.560 | woman might be working.

01:36:08.240 | But if you're just working as a cashier at the local grocery store, that's good.

01:36:12.000 | It's better than doing nothing.

01:36:13.840 | But it's not nearly as good as if you spend three months working as a bagger at a grocery

01:36:18.360 | store, three months on a construction crew, three months working on a farm, three months

01:36:24.000 | working in an office doing all these things because then you can start to see who am I.

01:36:28.480 | So rant on kids over, what about us as adults?

01:36:32.240 | Well, the same thing applies to us as adults.

01:36:35.600 | In general, most of us have had a vision held in front of us by our parents.

01:36:40.800 | You know, you're going to go and be a doctor.

01:36:42.520 | You're going to go and be a law student, an attorney.

01:36:44.980 | You're going to go and do this or go and do that.

01:36:47.240 | And we follow in this one course without getting feedback from the marketplace.

01:36:51.880 | And so my answer to anybody who's interested in something is don't go and don't go and

01:36:58.040 | spend too much time really pursuing something until you've gotten into it.

01:37:02.620 | Don't go and open a restaurant without going and first getting a job as a bar back carrying

01:37:07.960 | dishes to see if you like the restaurant environment.

01:37:10.640 | You know, don't go to law school unless you've gone and worked as a paralegal or been an

01:37:14.920 | assistant to see if you like actually like the environment.

01:37:18.160 | Go and get as much experience as fast and cheap as possible before you go and spend

01:37:25.080 | a lot of time and commit a lot of resources to something and then make the opportunity

01:37:31.600 | push its way back to you and say, yes, I really the opportunity that you should be following.

01:37:37.400 | So build the flexibility in your life to try different jobs, try different industries.

01:37:41.960 | And the same thing with businesses, try a bunch of businesses and see what you like

01:37:47.120 | and see what you don't like.

01:37:49.080 | And you've got to.

01:37:50.400 | That's why it comes back to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell as fast as you can.

01:37:55.360 | Don't commit a lot of time and a little a lot of money to something until you're sure

01:37:59.560 | that you've that this is what you need to do and test the ideas as quickly, as cheaply

01:38:05.680 | as possible, recognizing that it's only one out of one idea out of 10 that's actually

01:38:10.440 | going to really probably pan out, maybe less, maybe more, maybe less, maybe two out of two

01:38:16.120 | out of 10.

01:38:17.120 | You know, back to the 20 percent deal.

01:38:20.280 | But recognize that most ideas aren't going to pan out.

01:38:22.880 | So the goal should be to get the idea to fail as quickly as possible and make the idea prove

01:38:29.160 | itself that it's really a good idea.

01:38:31.320 | So that's how I approach it.

01:38:32.480 | That's how I think about it.

01:38:34.920 | And based upon all the entrepreneurs I know, based upon studying people who are successful,

01:38:41.080 | I find that to be a good strategy for many things in life.

01:38:46.280 | Great.

01:38:47.280 | Yeah.

01:38:48.280 | Thank you.

01:38:49.280 | That's that's very helpful.

01:38:51.880 | Just trying it seems to be where I get hung up.

01:38:53.760 | So I'll try to take that advice to heart.

01:38:57.360 | And trying it is going to mean something different for every industry and for every for every

01:39:03.360 | industry.

01:39:04.360 | So that's one example of trying it.

01:39:05.600 | It could mean something as simple as, you know what, I don't know what I want to do

01:39:09.880 | with my life for the next, you know, once a week I'm going to call somebody that I know

01:39:15.920 | and admire and respect and I'm going to take them out for lunch and I'm going to ask them

01:39:21.440 | about their journey and just ask them a question that could allow people.

01:39:25.200 | I've done that.

01:39:26.280 | And that allows you to try occupations in ways that you never would have been able to.

01:39:31.440 | You could say, what do you love about this?

01:39:32.840 | What do you hate about this?

01:39:35.200 | It could be as simple as that.

01:39:36.820 | It could be as simple as let me take a class.

01:39:39.040 | Let me find out for Lynda.com or Coursera or go on YouTube and watch some videos and

01:39:45.600 | keep notes.

01:39:46.600 | I try to keep a notebook and any time I'm interested in something, make a note of why

01:39:50.840 | am I interested in that and what is it that reflects like and ask yourself the question,

01:39:55.880 | what why does that appeal to me?

01:39:59.280 | And then by factoring that in, you know, when I was younger, I always wanted to be a truck

01:40:03.240 | driver.

01:40:04.240 | I know very clearly why that appeals to me.

01:40:06.400 | I don't want to drive a truck every day.

01:40:07.800 | But what I like is I like the ability to go here, go there, see different things every

01:40:12.360 | day.

01:40:13.360 | And so for me, one of the things I didn't like about my financial advice practice is

01:40:17.040 | I needed to be in West Palm Beach, whereas what I like about Radical Personal Finance

01:40:20.880 | doesn't matter where I am.

01:40:22.480 | So my desire to be a truck driver when I was a kid, I know why that appeals to me.

01:40:27.920 | And now I can design that into my life now.

01:40:29.720 | So take good notes on yourself.

01:40:31.720 | Gotcha.

01:40:32.720 | Will do.

01:40:33.720 | Thank you.

01:40:34.720 | All right.

01:40:35.720 | Let's see.

01:40:36.720 | Anyone else have a question?

01:40:37.720 | Hey, Joshua, this is Nicole.

01:40:38.720 | First off, thank you for all you're doing.

01:40:42.720 | It's just fabulous.

01:40:44.200 | And I'm always delighted to share with someone your podcast and connect them with you.

01:40:50.440 | I am thinking about passive income streams.

01:40:53.640 | I'm probably four years or so away from financial independence and outside of our Vanguard portfolio

01:41:05.040 | that will support that lifestyle down the road.

01:41:08.320 | I'd love to have some additional revenue streams.

01:41:10.640 | You talked about it a little bit, more stable ones.

01:41:13.400 | When I think about passive income, I always hear real estate.

01:41:16.320 | I hear, of course, your portfolio and the market, that sort of thing.

01:41:20.520 | It feels to me like there's probably some pseudo passive income opportunities out there.

01:41:25.520 | You had one on that sounded like a little bit of a passive income stream with vending

01:41:30.400 | machines recently.

01:41:31.400 | Are there others that come to mind that someone could, with just a little minimal effort,

01:41:40.840 | participate in in their later years when they're looking for passive income?

01:41:45.840 | It's a fun question.

01:41:50.400 | Let me answer it in two different ways.

01:41:51.960 | First, by talking about passive income and second, by talking about investing.

01:41:56.440 | I personally do not believe that there is any source of actual passive income that exists

01:42:03.520 | except for dividends on large publicly traded companies.

01:42:09.680 | That's the only form of passive income that I think is actually passive income.

01:42:14.040 | If you can amass enough capital to buy shares of Coca-Cola Corporation and you can adjust

01:42:19.160 | your budget to live on the dividends from Coca-Cola Corporation, that is actually passive

01:42:24.280 | income or GE or whatever company you want to put together.

01:42:27.400 | If you can put together a portfolio of large publicly traded companies that are well diversified

01:42:35.200 | and if you can live on the dividends, that's actually passive income.

01:42:39.360 | It requires you to do nothing, absolutely nothing.

01:42:42.880 | If enough dividend income is flowing into your account every quarter that gets you through

01:42:47.600 | that quarter with regard to your income, you are truly, absolutely 100% financially independent.

01:42:55.640 | Now you don't have to get all the way to dividend income to be able to also have passive income.

01:43:03.000 | So speaking simplistically, I'm going to do a show, the show after today's, the show,

01:43:11.880 | two shows from now is scheduled to be a show on annuities.

01:43:14.920 | And so you could take a pile of money and you could annuitize it and that could be passive

01:43:22.080 | income where you're just receiving a lifetime annuity and whether that was because you won

01:43:26.320 | the lottery and you took the lifetime income option or because you took your million dollars,

01:43:30.620 | you turn it in for a life income annuity, that's passive income.

01:43:33.800 | It just shows up every month and that could be expanded.

01:43:36.520 | Maybe you have enough income from oil and gas ownership to pay you money, but that's

01:43:41.280 | passive income where you're not involved at all in the management.

01:43:45.480 | You're not involved in anything except just spending the money.

01:43:49.400 | If you were a trust fund kid and your, you know, your mom and dad left you 30 million

01:43:53.640 | bucks and with Northern Trust, Northern Trust will manage your passive income for you.

01:43:58.720 | They'll put the, they'll put the money in your, in your account every single month.

01:44:02.160 | That's passive income.

01:44:04.080 | Everything short of that is not truly passive income.

01:44:07.200 | It's closer to passive income, but it's not passive income.

01:44:10.200 | And so the question is how much involvement am I going to get into?

01:44:14.960 | So real estate, the way that it's commonly thought of something like buying single family

01:44:20.040 | houses, renting them out, that's not passive income.

01:44:23.280 | That's a mix between investing and business.

01:44:26.560 | You've got to do some kind of business work associated with that.

01:44:30.760 | And you've got a, and it's a mix of investment and business.

01:44:33.560 | The reason that's so appealing and the why that's often referenced is because it's so

01:44:38.040 | accessible.

01:44:39.200 | It's one of the most accessible business investments that you can make where you've got a part

01:44:43.600 | time business and you've got an investment portfolio.

01:44:46.440 | And because of the business associated with it, you can have a higher rate of return.

01:44:51.880 | The overall rate of return from a portfolio is going to be driven based upon your level

01:44:58.000 | of involvement.

01:44:59.400 | So the more involved you are with the, with the, with the investment, the higher the rate

01:45:06.760 | of return that you should get.

01:45:08.140 | Think about somebody like a, think about something like somebody like a hotel magnate.

01:45:13.440 | Think of someone like Conrad Hilton, the founder of the Hilton Hotels.

01:45:18.200 | His wealth increased much, much bigger than anybody else.

01:45:26.200 | You know, his wealth increased because of his level of involvement with Hilton Hotels.

01:45:31.800 | And he put in a ton of work up front.

01:45:33.960 | Then over time he transitioned to a chairman position and then over time his role became

01:45:38.920 | much more laid back.

01:45:40.660 | Think of any business tycoon that you come up with and you'll find that same exact strategy

01:45:45.740 | where what they do is they start by, they start by putting in a ton of work and then

01:45:51.180 | they gradually pull back, but it's still not passive income.

01:45:55.100 | So that's how I think about passive income as far as scale.

01:45:59.340 | If you've got tons of money, you can achieve true passive income from other people managing

01:46:05.160 | your portfolio, other managers, other, you know, if you hire the Coca-Cola board of directors

01:46:11.040 | to run your company for you, they're the ones who will show up to the management meetings.

01:46:14.700 | They're the ones who will keep an eye on the CEO.

01:46:16.760 | You've also hired the CEO of Coca-Cola to take care of his management team.

01:46:22.040 | You've hired them to run the company and you've hired a bunch of managers, but your rate of

01:46:25.720 | return is going to be lower at that than it is if you're the CEO and if you're the chairman

01:46:30.240 | of the board of directors.

01:46:31.240 | Now, so that's, that's my comments on passive income.

01:46:33.840 | Switch now to investing.

01:46:35.800 | The key I think with investing is simply to look at all investments based upon some simple

01:46:40.960 | attributes.

01:46:41.960 | The number one goal of an investment is to produce cash for you.

01:46:45.520 | And so you should compare your investments across the board based upon what is the cash

01:46:50.080 | that's going to be created by these investments?

01:46:52.880 | What are the risk attributes of those investments and how am I going to integrate these investments

01:46:57.640 | into my life?

01:46:58.920 | We don't teach in our culture investing.

01:47:00.900 | The only people that teach investing are the financial advisors who have mutual funds to

01:47:05.320 | sell you.

01:47:06.320 | And so that's why in general, you know, people only think of investing at, I can buy mutual

01:47:11.240 | funds or I can buy real estate.

01:47:14.000 | That's about it.

01:47:15.000 | If people were to ask about that, but there are many more options.

01:47:17.960 | You can buy a local Dunkin' Donuts franchise.

01:47:20.060 | You can open up a local Marriott hotel subsidiary.

01:47:24.860 | You can buy a 50% equity stake in the local lumber yard.

01:47:29.760 | You can put your equity to work opening a chain of supermarkets.

01:47:34.980 | You can be a hard money lender with local real estate investors who don't have any money.

01:47:40.720 | You can be the hard money lender who backs their deals for them.

01:47:44.320 | So you can put all of those things are legitimate investments.

01:47:47.760 | They all have different characteristics of risk and return and require different levels

01:47:51.960 | of expertise.

01:47:53.320 | And that's why I think we've got to understand ourselves, understand what we know and what

01:47:59.720 | we are going to be involved with, and then go and look at the marketplace and say, what

01:48:04.720 | is it that, what should I be focused on?

01:48:08.560 | Think of the reality TV shows that you know about the gold digger, the guys that go dig

01:48:12.920 | gold in Alaska.

01:48:14.840 | So those guys are trying to leverage some kind of specialized knowledge, excuse me,

01:48:20.400 | some kind of specialized knowledge that they have of Alaskan gold fields to go out and

01:48:24.160 | strike their fortune.

01:48:25.160 | They're putting in a lot of work to hopefully make an outsized rate of return.

01:48:29.200 | I'm not going to go invest in Alaskan gold fields.

01:48:31.120 | I don't know anything about it.

01:48:33.000 | But if I accumulated money from another source of business, I could go and be a capital backer

01:48:39.600 | for them and make some and be the person who puts up the stake that they use to go and

01:48:43.560 | make the money.

01:48:44.560 | I'm investing where I know with Radical Personal Finance because I know this market, I know

01:48:48.880 | the online business world, I know the investing world and I'm leveraging what I have behind

01:48:53.480 | me to create a business that should create much outsized rates of return.

01:48:58.320 | So in my mind, it has to start with business and for somebody, you know, if you're an employee

01:49:02.800 | and you have a high degree of specialized knowledge such that you can command a high

01:49:06.760 | price from the marketplace, then that's probably where you should focus your time doing a really

01:49:11.320 | good job there and then saving the money and you're not going to have time to go and figure

01:49:15.040 | out should I buy this West Texas oil field or that West Texas oil field.

01:49:19.000 | So you go ahead and just buy shares of Exxon Mobil, you know, through the context in your

01:49:23.200 | case what you said with your Vanguard index fund.

01:49:25.880 | But other people who want to get there a little bit faster who don't have the expertise you

01:49:30.640 | have in the employment situation, they might go and start the local plumbing company, etc.

01:49:34.960 | So to me, I see them all as integrated and the key is for us to know our goals, our abilities

01:49:40.440 | and then set out a customized specialized wealth creation plan that fits our actual

01:49:45.800 | goals.

01:49:46.800 | That's my answer.

01:49:47.800 | Awesome.

01:49:48.800 | Thank you.

01:49:49.800 | It's a yeah, as I think about what you're saying, the passive income, something didn't

01:49:56.000 | sound right to me about it.

01:49:57.880 | And I think you put it in words better than I could saying that you have to leverage some

01:50:03.120 | specialized knowledge and put hard work in to get that above market return.

01:50:07.400 | And it's not truly passive.

01:50:08.960 | You're putting time and energy into it.

01:50:11.440 | Right.

01:50:12.440 | I think there's a false perception of passive income opportunities out there like real estate

01:50:18.560 | like you said.

01:50:19.560 | Yeah.

01:50:20.560 | I wish we could come up with a different name.

01:50:23.040 | So I'll tell you as an example how I think of passive income.

01:50:26.360 | I don't expect radical personal finance to ever be passive.

01:50:30.420 | And especially because I put myself and I hope it's useful.

01:50:33.640 | I figure because you all listen to the show that it can be a useful, I guess, context,

01:50:38.520 | you know, metaphor for me to use.

01:50:39.880 | I don't expect it to be ever passive because I'm kind of at the front of it.

01:50:43.120 | But what I'm intentionally trying to do is not trade my time for dollars.

01:50:50.640 | And so even though it's not going to be passive, my focus is always on how can I build leverage?

01:50:57.920 | So for example, I mentioned I'm doing coaching.

01:50:59.480 | All right.

01:51:00.480 | Well, I'm doing coaching, but I'm not building a coaching business because if I were, if

01:51:04.640 | I wanted to build the coaching business, I should have stayed as a financial advisor

01:51:08.000 | because I had much better profit margins in that business.

01:51:10.680 | The coaching business is a means to an end.

01:51:13.240 | And I don't want the bulk of my income to be based upon me.

01:51:15.840 | As much as I enjoy helping people, I don't want the bulk of my income to be based upon

01:51:19.800 | me helping somebody one-on-one.

01:51:21.640 | I want it to be built upon me helping creating a product or a book or a podcast that helps

01:51:27.800 | a hundred thousand people at one time.

01:51:30.100 | And so that way, if each of those hundred thousand people says that's worth a buck,

01:51:34.080 | they can send me a buck in exchange for something that took me 10 hours to create.

01:51:37.920 | And now my hourly rate is much, much higher.

01:51:40.320 | It's not passive, but it's much more in the direction of where I can put an online store

01:51:44.840 | up.

01:51:45.840 | Those products can sit there.

01:51:46.960 | They can sell night and day.

01:51:49.280 | I need to manage a minimal staff, et cetera.

01:51:51.520 | So there's always a path for all of us to take our skills and knowledge and work our

01:51:56.120 | way through and find the situation that's the best fit for us.

01:52:04.040 | Any other questions?

01:52:05.040 | Who else would like to ask a question?

01:52:06.160 | My voice is about shot.

01:52:07.160 | We've got 12 minutes, so we can cut it off here, but I'd be happy to answer any of the

01:52:10.440 | questions for the next 12 minutes that anybody has.

01:52:18.200 | Going once, going twice.

01:52:21.680 | All right.

01:52:23.680 | Thank you all so much for being on today's call.

01:52:26.560 | I appreciate you being here.

01:52:27.560 | This was really fun.

01:52:28.560 | I will be doing, again, many more of these for those of you who are members of the show

01:52:34.600 | at 10 bucks and up patron over the coming weeks.

01:52:39.600 | I'll give some thoughts of moving the times around as you guys have suggested so that

01:52:44.000 | maybe more of you can participate.

01:52:45.760 | I really enjoy, they won't be two hours, but they might be an hour.

01:52:49.720 | And I really enjoy talking with you guys.

01:52:51.320 | Hopefully this has been useful and I really appreciate answering the questions.

01:52:56.680 | In conclusion, thank you guys so much for your support.

01:53:01.680 | Much of you on the line are patrons of the show and I've intentionally built the show

01:53:08.840 | the way that I have based upon the patrons first, just to see if I could do it.

01:53:13.400 | And it makes such a huge difference to be able to have you as individual patrons supporting

01:53:19.520 | the show.

01:53:20.520 | And I really love the way it incentivizes me.

01:53:23.360 | And it's really awesome to talk with you guys.

01:53:25.600 | It gets a little lonely sometimes behind a microphone because you're just one person

01:53:28.520 | speaking out into the online world, but it's really awesome to be able to be in a situation

01:53:34.280 | like this and talk with you face to face.

01:53:35.800 | So I wish you a beautiful rest of your day and I wish you all tremendous success and

01:53:41.080 | fulfillment in every area.

01:53:42.280 | And thank you all so much for calling in.

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