RPF0313-Clark_Vandeventer_Interview
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00:00:30.800 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, we talk lifestyle design with a guy who did pretty
00:00:37.080 | well in the corporate world, had a high profile, high status job, left that to launch a dream
00:00:42.920 | of entrepreneurship, which wound up failing, then went on to run for office, political
00:00:48.080 | office, and then he lost.
00:00:51.720 | Wound up completely losing his shirt in that escapade, living in a garage with his in-laws,
00:00:58.680 | his wife and new babies, and then decided that, "Hey, actually, this low-stress life,
00:01:05.680 | even though I don't have any money, is actually pretty cool.
00:01:07.920 | I like being with my family, so how can I put together income from a variety of sources,"
00:01:13.400 | he now calls it patchwork income, "in order to support myself?"
00:01:17.800 | He's gone on to do exactly that over the last few years and work his way out of debt while
00:01:22.400 | traveling the world and adventuring with his family.
00:01:25.680 | It's well worth your time.
00:01:26.680 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:01:45.320 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:01:46.320 | I'm your host.
00:01:47.320 | Thank you for being with me today.
00:01:48.600 | This is the show where we work hard to figure out ways to build, live, and enjoy a rich
00:01:53.800 | life today while also building a plan and following it, of course, and actually doing
00:01:59.240 | it, building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:02:04.160 | Today's interview perfectly encapsulates both of those points.
00:02:15.480 | My guest is Clark Van Deventer.
00:02:17.360 | He is author of the book Unworking.
00:02:20.480 | Clark, through a listener of the show who had introduced us via email and reached out
00:02:24.800 | to him, it sounded like an interesting story, so I reached out to him for an interview and
00:02:27.560 | he sent me a copy of his book.
00:02:29.160 | The book really touched me.
00:02:32.560 | Somehow I guess it just spoke to me in one of those ways that sometimes you read a book
00:02:36.080 | and it just speaks to you at a certain time.
00:02:39.000 | It's almost like you have a conversation with the author at the appropriate time.
00:02:41.800 | You may pick up a book today and it doesn't mean anything to you.
00:02:44.720 | You pick it up a year from now and it, at that time, means something to you.
00:02:48.160 | I really enjoyed his book.
00:02:50.080 | In this interview, you're going to get a chance to meet the man behind the book.
00:02:53.000 | He does have that fascinating story that I shared with you right at the beginning.
00:02:58.360 | It's well worth your time.
00:03:00.440 | I feel like this interview brings out both of those themes that are so important to me
00:03:05.340 | and to this show going forward.
00:03:09.080 | Both of the themes meaning living a rich life today while also building a plan for financial
00:03:14.640 | freedom in 10 years or less.
00:03:17.580 | How can we enjoy the meaningful life today, not sacrifice it all on the altar of tomorrow,
00:03:23.720 | but rather how can we have it today while also continually building for the future?
00:03:30.000 | You'll hear in Clark's story exactly how he and his family are doing that.
00:03:33.960 | I also love interviewing people like this on the show who are doing it with family,
00:03:39.160 | with kids.
00:03:41.560 | I hope you find a lot of inspiration and encouragement in the episode today.
00:03:47.000 | Before I play it for you, sponsor of today's show is Paladin Registry.
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00:03:55.200 | What works is this.
00:03:56.200 | You say, "Josh, I want a good financial advisor."
00:03:58.200 | I say, "Okay.
00:03:59.200 | I'm going to try to give you some good information so you can know when you find one, but how
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00:04:10.220 | It's not easy.
00:04:11.220 | So Paladin is my best solution that I've come up with at least so far to answer that question,
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00:04:34.800 | They're applying for the job of being your financial advisor who are screened.
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00:04:40.360 | So if you're looking for a financial advisor, if you'd like to speak with somebody, start
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00:04:49.280 | I really don't.
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00:05:26.440 | Then they'll reach out to you and you can reconnect with them and interview them and
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00:05:34.960 | That's up to you, but at least we can give you a good screening starting point.
00:05:39.840 | Here's Clark.
00:05:42.760 | Clark, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:05:45.040 | Hey, it's great to be on the show.
00:05:46.720 | Thanks for having me on.
00:05:47.720 | All right, here's the test.
00:05:49.080 | You wrote a book called Unworking, Exit the Rat Race, Live Like a Millionaire and Be Happy
00:05:53.440 | Now.
00:05:54.440 | So, are you in the rat race?
00:05:56.840 | Are you living like a millionaire and are you happy today as we record this?
00:06:01.440 | Absolutely.
00:06:02.440 | Yeah, I was certainly long out of the rat race.
00:06:07.440 | Living like a millionaire.
00:06:08.440 | I've been told many times by people who are millionaires that they want to have my life
00:06:15.480 | and I sure am happy.
00:06:18.000 | I really am.
00:06:19.000 | Good, good.
00:06:20.000 | It's February 9, 2016 as we record this.
00:06:22.640 | Are you living your Lake Tahoe lifestyle at the moment?
00:06:25.160 | I sure am.
00:06:27.120 | We've been here in Tahoe.
00:06:28.360 | We had had a couple of years of what I call semi-nomadic living and had been in Tahoe
00:06:35.640 | last winter in a vacation, but this year I've kind of settled back in and gotten lots of
00:06:41.080 | days on the slopes so far this year.
00:06:43.960 | After two consecutive summers away from Tahoe, I'm looking forward to being back here in
00:06:48.600 | the summer again this year too.
00:06:49.840 | Awesome.
00:06:50.840 | So, I jumped into the middle of the story.
00:06:51.840 | Why don't you start back and tell us the story of how you went from a fairly mainstream existence
00:07:00.260 | to a fairly non-mainstream existence with a special emphasis on how it relates to money.
00:07:05.120 | Sure.
00:07:06.120 | Well, five years ago, a little over five years ago, I guess six years ago now, my wife and
00:07:13.840 | I, we were, I guess you would say, living the dream in some ways.
00:07:21.720 | I had a career with Upward Trajectory and then I mounded a campaign for Congress.
00:07:33.120 | I actually didn't know at the time what a huge risk I was taking in running for Congress.
00:07:41.200 | The risk was not so much cashing out my retirement to run for Congress, cashed out my retirement
00:07:50.640 | so that I would have money for my family to live off of to allow me to be a candidate
00:07:55.160 | full time.
00:07:57.080 | That was not the risk.
00:07:58.920 | The risk was spending a year of my life without any irons in the fire.
00:08:05.440 | As someone who has been self-employed for over eight years, you constantly have to be
00:08:11.600 | working on your next thing.
00:08:13.440 | And I spent a year without working on my next thing.
00:08:15.320 | So, when I lost my election, not only was I out of money, but I didn't have anything
00:08:21.440 | that was next.
00:08:23.520 | And within two months of losing my campaign for Congress, I went from, I guess, a rising
00:08:29.040 | political star and candidate for Congress to moving my wife and then two kids into my
00:08:34.880 | in-laws' garage.
00:08:37.120 | And we were just totally, not only broke, but just simply broken.
00:08:43.280 | And in that garage, the one thing I did have was time with my family.
00:08:49.240 | And I began thinking, "How?
00:08:51.240 | I don't want to give this up."
00:08:53.160 | You know, I don't want to give up all this time I have with my family, but I also need
00:08:57.400 | to figure out how to get us out of this garage eventually and how to get back on our feet
00:09:02.800 | financially.
00:09:03.800 | But I began to sense that the solution was not to go get a job.
00:09:08.540 | And so, at that time, my wife and I really began to say, "How can we make the money that
00:09:15.760 | we need to make and want to make, but not give up what we've come to value in our family
00:09:23.480 | time?"
00:09:24.480 | And so, at that point, we really began building our patchwork of income.
00:09:30.200 | And it's really income streams that are designed around the life that we want to live instead
00:09:36.760 | of getting a job and then buying the best life possible with the money that I make.
00:09:42.040 | So, on Radical Personal Finance, we talk a lot about financial freedom and financial
00:09:46.920 | independence and specifically in trying to figure out ways to get out of the rat race.
00:09:52.120 | One of those methodologies is doing what you're doing, unworking, unjobbing, basically putting
00:09:57.080 | together a series of different sources of income that may be different at different
00:10:02.840 | times of the year or just simply different smaller amounts of income that come from different
00:10:06.520 | sources in order to be able to sustain your living expenses.
00:10:09.480 | And it's one of the four primary methodologies of escaping the rat race.
00:10:14.120 | I want to ask, though, isn't this a whole lot more stressful?
00:10:18.760 | Because I'm an entrepreneur, and I'll tell you what, there are days that all I just want
00:10:24.280 | to do is go back and get a job.
00:10:25.880 | Don't you find this a lot more stressful than just working?
00:10:28.960 | Yeah.
00:10:29.960 | Sometimes I do think it would be a lot easier until I think about what I'd be giving up.
00:10:35.640 | And I will say that over time, when my wife and I really began working on our patchwork
00:10:40.440 | income approach, we had lots and lots of small patches.
00:10:45.800 | And there was a couple of years ago where we said, "You know what?
00:10:49.360 | Let's simplify this a little bit.
00:10:51.120 | Let's try to grow these two patches a little bit more and focus more of our income here
00:10:56.680 | and have maybe three or four medium-sized things instead of 12 small things because
00:11:02.880 | that's a lot easier to manage."
00:11:05.880 | But for me, one of the big things actually goes back to the garage.
00:11:10.800 | I remember there was a really low point.
00:11:13.680 | And sure, my wife and I had been talking about trying to really design a different kind of
00:11:19.040 | life, but still, I struggled with waves of depression in the garage just thinking, "What
00:11:26.960 | the heck happened to my life?"
00:11:30.040 | And in one week, I got three phone calls from three really exciting job opportunities.
00:11:41.320 | Just really interesting, cool opportunities.
00:11:45.240 | And my mind went to work about how each of these, "Oh, it'd be so cool to take this
00:11:48.720 | one," or, "This one would be good," or, you know, they were all interesting.
00:11:53.800 | And then, I still don't know why, but all three of those opportunities just disappeared.
00:12:01.960 | You know, I tried to call them.
00:12:03.120 | They wouldn't call me back.
00:12:04.600 | I don't know what happened.
00:12:06.400 | But I remember thinking at that time, like, "Wow."
00:12:09.400 | It was a real wake-up call because I realized that if I had taken any one of those jobs,
00:12:17.760 | that my life and my well-being was going to be in someone else's hands.
00:12:23.280 | And I really, I wanted to turn the tables.
00:12:25.760 | I wanted to be in charge of my own life and not be dependent on a job.
00:12:29.960 | And a lot of times, as my wife and I have built up this patchwork income, I think there's
00:12:35.520 | this false notion that we are living on the edge and it's risky.
00:12:43.080 | You know, what we're doing as entrepreneurs and living differently.
00:12:46.980 | And somehow, this idea of getting a job is the secure, safe path.
00:12:52.120 | But to me, that is completely backwards.
00:12:56.880 | If I have a job and I'm dependent on one income stream, my job, for my family's well-being,
00:13:04.080 | well, I could lose that job tomorrow.
00:13:07.400 | But with patchwork income and having multiple income streams, let's say something happened.
00:13:13.140 | One of my larger patches, I'm a consultant to nonprofit organizations and major gifts
00:13:19.880 | fundraising.
00:13:20.880 | I'll go back to my background prior to running for Congress.
00:13:24.880 | Well, if something happened and I lost all my clients and all of a sudden that money
00:13:31.920 | was gone, even if that happened, we wouldn't be destitute because we have other income
00:13:38.480 | streams that we can rely on.
00:13:41.160 | It would maybe get tight for a while, but we could rely on those other income streams
00:13:46.360 | while we work to build up new ones or rebuild old ones.
00:13:50.320 | The idea is if diversification is such a good idea for retirement investing, why isn't diversification
00:13:58.840 | for income throughout all of life a good idea?
00:14:01.720 | I think it is.
00:14:03.120 | Lee Drexel When you went from having – let me rephrase
00:14:10.280 | the question differently.
00:14:11.280 | In your book, you talk about – in a place, you talk about that you had this prestigious
00:14:16.920 | job working for the Reagan Ranch.
00:14:18.400 | You were hobnobbing with the politicians and doing the whole high consumption, high status,
00:14:25.480 | lifestyle job.
00:14:27.200 | You had that status in your community and you had the status when you traveled and Mr.
00:14:32.360 | Important.
00:14:33.640 | And then you quit that job with the goal of buying a cafe.
00:14:38.080 | And you write a paragraph in your book that says this, "I felt I had to quit because
00:14:42.640 | my passion for the job just wasn't there anymore.
00:14:46.000 | Sticking around just to collect a paycheck twice a month didn't seem right.
00:14:49.920 | I became convinced that if I stayed, I would become a shell of a man."
00:14:54.440 | Do you – this is a very – so I'm in your same generation and I haven't told you my
00:14:59.840 | story but in many ways, I've followed a similar path.
00:15:05.160 | And the note I wrote in my book next to that paragraph was I said this is a very millennial
00:15:11.280 | attitude.
00:15:12.280 | This idea of we're just going to go out and if I'm not passionate for the job, I'm
00:15:17.160 | not going to stick to it.
00:15:19.600 | Did you struggle a little?
00:15:20.960 | I mean, did you struggle with the idea of doing something for the sake of doing it?
00:15:26.600 | Do you feel like everything has to be around this sense of passion that if I somehow don't
00:15:31.680 | have a passion for it that I have to do it?
00:15:35.680 | What role does character and what role does just simply fulfilling family responsibilities
00:15:40.440 | play in your thinking?
00:15:42.880 | It's secondary.
00:15:47.600 | So while financial considerations came up as I prepared to leave my job, it was secondary
00:15:55.680 | to am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life.
00:16:01.400 | The night before I quit my job at the Riggin Ranch, my wife and I were talking.
00:16:06.620 | My boss was flying in from Washington DC the next day and I was going to have dinner with
00:16:10.800 | him that night to let him know my decision.
00:16:15.000 | And my wife and I were talking and I said, "I don't know.
00:16:19.680 | Should I do this?
00:16:20.680 | Should I go through with this?"
00:16:23.440 | And she said, "Well, what do you mean?"
00:16:25.840 | And I said, "Well, what if we can't make the money?"
00:16:29.280 | And she said, "If it's the money, quit."
00:16:34.760 | She said, "If there's other reasons you're thinking about staying, you should stay and
00:16:39.720 | sort through those.
00:16:40.720 | But if it's just the money, you should quit."
00:16:44.160 | And that was obviously a huge and powerful moment for me.
00:16:48.000 | But I think that the world collectively is poorer than it should be because people have
00:16:55.520 | settled for less than work that they love or work that they're called to or work that
00:17:02.040 | they're passionate about.
00:17:03.920 | And I think that if more of us chose to actually pursue life calling, pursue the things that
00:17:14.200 | we're most passionate about, I think the world would just be collectively so much richer.
00:17:20.480 | And so I think for me, there's a faith aspect in terms of really feeling for me at that
00:17:27.000 | time that God was leading me in a certain direction.
00:17:32.360 | I don't mean to go super spiritual, but I really felt like God wanted me to lead.
00:17:39.240 | I had written in my journal months earlier that I wrote that I had this increasing belief
00:17:50.120 | that I wasn't where I was supposed to be.
00:17:52.680 | And I can't imagine going back and reading that now and still being in the same place.
00:17:59.160 | I just sucked it up and continued to trudge along through life.
00:18:05.640 | And even when I was leaving my job to buy the cafe, that didn't work.
00:18:11.800 | This was right at the beginning of the financial meltdown, the Great Recession.
00:18:16.200 | And I think a good friend who worked in finance who I think understood, knew before I did
00:18:21.520 | that the cafe deal was not going to come together.
00:18:26.720 | He called me a couple of days before I quit my job and he said, "Clark, here's the deal.
00:18:31.240 | Let's just say that the cafe is not going to work out.
00:18:35.640 | Would you still quit?"
00:18:39.280 | And my answer was yes, because I really had this sense that I needed to move on.
00:18:44.960 | I needed to do something different.
00:18:46.640 | And yeah, just trudging along and putting my nose to the grindstone and all those analogies
00:18:56.260 | you could use, I felt like I was going to be a shell of a man if I just kept doing that.
00:19:01.520 | It's interesting.
00:19:02.520 | Now, I think sometimes it can be a useful exercise to go through and say, "Which bad
00:19:09.160 | option are you not okay with?"
00:19:13.360 | With my personal story, I closed a successful financial planning practice in order to start
00:19:17.760 | radical personal finance.
00:19:19.840 | And when I did that, I had thought it through and I had a lot of reasons.
00:19:24.360 | But ultimately, the question that swayed me was this question, "Would I rather try it,
00:19:33.840 | take this leap, make this decision that doesn't seem to be the thoughtful, careful one?
00:19:38.600 | Would I rather try it, fail, lose everything and start again?
00:19:43.600 | Or would I rather not try it, continue doing what I'm doing now, and then always wonder
00:19:48.040 | what if?"
00:19:49.040 | I came to the position where I feared the regret of not trying it more than I feared
00:19:56.920 | the pain of potential failure.
00:19:59.920 | That's such a great way of putting it.
00:20:04.120 | And the thing is, having gone through the experience and actually having lost everything,
00:20:11.320 | for me, the conclusion is, "Well, geez, losing everything wasn't that bad."
00:20:16.040 | Now, sure, there were dark moments along the way.
00:20:20.120 | But for me, the beauty of having risked it all in one turn of pitch and toss is because
00:20:30.480 | I failed and have come through, I have, in a sense, been freed from the fear of failure.
00:20:40.680 | Because I've lost everything and losing everything wasn't that bad, I feel this freedom and
00:20:46.020 | life to take risks and to go for it that I don't think I could have ever experienced
00:20:54.280 | if I hadn't, as you so well put it, realized that I would rather try and fail than to have
00:21:04.160 | not tried at all.
00:21:05.160 | What was the most difficult part of financial failure for you?
00:21:11.960 | Shame.
00:21:15.800 | Really feeling like I wasn't who I had told people I was or people had come to think of
00:21:26.800 | who I was.
00:21:27.800 | And as I talk about in my book, I really retreated from a lot of relationships.
00:21:35.560 | Many people did not know, many very good friends who had been friends for a long time, didn't
00:21:41.400 | know that I had lived in my in-laws' garage until well after we had moved out.
00:21:46.480 | And I had begun blogging at FamilyTrek.org and published a blog post about what had happened.
00:21:53.480 | And people were like, "I had no idea."
00:21:56.600 | Because I really just retreated.
00:21:59.800 | And that was really hard.
00:22:02.960 | You talk in the book about the impact of money on being able to build the life of your dreams.
00:22:12.720 | And by the way, I asked you a bunch of antagonistic questions, but I really have loved the book.
00:22:19.200 | I don't feel like, to me, they're not antagonistic.
00:22:22.240 | I get these questions all the time.
00:22:23.840 | I try to ask questions, difficult ones, that I think many listeners are probably thinking.
00:22:31.320 | But about 65% of the way through the book, and I found myself highlighting extensive
00:22:35.280 | passages.
00:22:36.680 | And I really resonated in many ways with your story because it expresses a lot of the lessons
00:22:42.880 | that I've learned more than probably anybody else or more than many other books.
00:22:47.240 | I just resonated with your personal path.
00:22:51.440 | But you made a comment in here that I underlined and highlighted and said – and it's this.
00:22:57.000 | Most people get the highest-paying job possible and then figure out how to arrange their life.
00:23:01.280 | And then they get a job and then buy a life commensurate to their income level.
00:23:07.280 | To these people, one's lifestyle is determined by how much money they have.
00:23:11.480 | I suggest that you not arrange your life around a job, but that you arrange your life around
00:23:18.480 | what you value most.
00:23:20.040 | Get a job that fits your life, not a life that fits your job.
00:23:23.840 | Why is this such a countercultural message?
00:23:26.280 | Gosh, that's a really good question.
00:23:32.120 | It's just not the way we've been taught.
00:23:39.320 | I do think there's a change that's slowly developing.
00:23:44.640 | If you go back to our grandparents, our grandparents, if they got a job, it was assumed that they
00:23:53.160 | would have that job forever.
00:23:58.280 | The employers took care of the employees.
00:24:01.120 | Oftentimes, if there was a new baby in the family, the person would get a raise.
00:24:06.200 | And that was normal.
00:24:08.960 | If you go to our parents' generation, our parents went to work assuming that they would
00:24:16.040 | work there forever.
00:24:18.200 | And then when that didn't happen, there was a bitterness that grew.
00:24:24.520 | And I think in our parents' generation, in terms of like, they had this assumption that
00:24:28.680 | they were going to work for this company forever, be taken care of, but the employers had no
00:24:32.860 | longer viewed employees as family.
00:24:36.920 | They were really renting employees, not bringing on family.
00:24:42.800 | I think what's happening now with the, I hate the word millennial, and I'm a little, I think
00:24:49.680 | too old to be a millennial actually.
00:24:51.760 | But I think what's happening now is that employees have turned the table and they're now renting
00:24:59.160 | jobs.
00:25:00.160 | So it's actually a quite fair and even relationship.
00:25:04.360 | Employers bring employees on without any expectation that they'll be there forever.
00:25:08.600 | Employees take a job without any expectation that they'll be there forever.
00:25:12.520 | And I think you're seeing a lot of people come and go from jobs a lot more quickly because
00:25:17.000 | of that.
00:25:19.000 | But this way of thinking in terms of lifestyle over money is just not what our parents' generation
00:25:29.480 | thought.
00:25:30.480 | It was put your head down until you're 65 and you've saved enough money.
00:25:37.880 | And the sad thing is that that generation is turning 65 now and all the things that
00:25:46.120 | they thought they were working towards their entire life, they're not there.
00:25:50.440 | They don't have the financial security they thought they would have.
00:25:55.240 | And of course there's no guarantees that we'll even get there.
00:25:59.840 | As I talk about in my book, there's an example.
00:26:03.800 | I met with a man who I'd known for a number of years and his wife had just been diagnosed
00:26:12.000 | with Alzheimer's disease.
00:26:14.520 | And he said to me, "You know Clark, I wish I had just retired two years earlier so I
00:26:21.480 | could have had those two years with her before the disease started to take her away."
00:26:26.640 | And I just remember thinking at the time, "Two years?
00:26:29.520 | Are you kidding me?
00:26:31.640 | I wish I'd lived my whole life differently."
00:26:34.040 | So put aside the financial issues, there's no guarantee that even if we managed to just
00:26:45.240 | do the right thing, the dutiful thing, and work all of our life and save all this money,
00:26:53.840 | that could all happen.
00:26:55.000 | And then your spouse could get a terrible disease or you could not make it yourself.
00:27:04.240 | And so it just seems like a backwards way of thinking to me.
00:27:10.880 | But I think that things are changing, that this younger generation is beginning to put
00:27:19.360 | priorities on some different things.
00:27:21.480 | It's definitely a major change.
00:27:24.120 | I've wondered a lot about the influences and reasons why.
00:27:27.320 | Maybe it's just that our parents probably raised this saying, "You can do whatever
00:27:31.560 | you want to do.
00:27:32.560 | You can be who you want to be."
00:27:34.000 | And some of us, I don't know why, some of us believe them.
00:27:37.560 | And then we look around and say, "Wait a second, I'm not doing what I want to do
00:27:40.760 | and I'm not being who I want to be.
00:27:42.760 | So let me make some changes."
00:27:44.000 | Well, I think also, my parents, I think, for example, they just think I'm crazy.
00:27:55.920 | And they, I think, wish that I were still a big, important person.
00:28:02.040 | And it's like, well, by my definition of success, I'm as or more successful than
00:28:13.160 | I was when I had the big job.
00:28:15.560 | Because I have achieved relative success.
00:28:17.880 | I'm not where I want to be.
00:28:19.160 | I've achieved relative success, though, on a path that I've chosen to go down.
00:28:25.200 | And I think it's difficult for my parents to, because they want to be able to be proud
00:28:32.960 | and say, "Well, my son is the deputy director of the Reagan Ranch."
00:28:37.000 | And that sounds like a really important job.
00:28:40.560 | But they don't know what to say about me now.
00:28:43.680 | It's like, "Well, he's living in Tahoe and he skis and, you know, just, okay, what's
00:28:49.400 | his job?"
00:28:50.400 | Well, I don't even know what his job is, really.
00:28:55.080 | I think they're looking for something to hang their hat on, where I'm quite content
00:28:58.960 | to ski and take off to Thailand for three months.
00:29:02.600 | - I think the social ties and the social influences are definitely one of the biggest things that
00:29:08.960 | keeps people from pursuing alternative paths of life.
00:29:13.960 | I've gone through, I guess, three major social transitions.
00:29:17.640 | Number one, in terms of the prestige of your job.
00:29:21.920 | When I graduated from college, I was working at a market research company.
00:29:26.480 | And I was basically a low and mid, lower mid-level, entry-level analyst.
00:29:31.600 | But based upon the title of my job position and based upon the projects that I was working
00:29:37.840 | on, I could certainly spin my job to sound very impressive.
00:29:42.680 | Because we worked with a lot of Fortune 500 clients and I was always working on some interesting
00:29:46.400 | work in the marketing space.
00:29:47.960 | And it would seem very, very impressive to somebody from the outside.
00:29:53.400 | But the reality of it was I was thankful to have the work, I was thankful to have the
00:29:57.920 | employment.
00:29:59.440 | But the day-to-day functioning of it was not a good fit for me.
00:30:02.680 | Pouring through Excel spreadsheets, pulling out marketing insights based upon the response
00:30:09.040 | of consumers didn't necessarily fit my idea of a great life.
00:30:14.000 | But it sounded prestigious.
00:30:15.840 | It sounded impressive.
00:30:17.320 | And I would go on business trips and fly into places and you fly in and you get the little
00:30:21.080 | black car from the executive shuttle service and you feel like a big shot on some of those
00:30:25.120 | things.
00:30:26.120 | I went from that to selling life insurance, which life insurance sales is probably – life
00:30:30.960 | insurance and my buddies in the car sales business is one of the least prestigious jobs
00:30:35.800 | ever.
00:30:36.800 | But the reality of the lifestyle is far better in terms of I've got total flexibility of
00:30:42.560 | time, massive income potential, the ability to do work that I cared about.
00:30:47.200 | And so socially though, it's not an acceptable social change.
00:30:50.560 | But the reality is it was a much better change.
00:30:52.880 | Well, built that up and then I moved into the investments business and then I had all
00:30:57.360 | these letters behind my name and I had all the social prestige back again.
00:31:00.640 | I wasn't just the lowly life insurance salesperson.
00:31:04.000 | And then I closed that to go out and do this weird internet thing.
00:31:09.080 | But I'll tell you, when it comes down to having a clear vision for your life, I'm
00:31:14.040 | living the best lifestyle I've ever lived.
00:31:17.200 | But I walked away from the BMWs and the Mercedes and all of my other financial advisors who
00:31:22.600 | said, "Joshua, what on earth are you doing?"
00:31:24.880 | And I was always kind of the odd duck.
00:31:26.720 | But to me, those things, those external factors were not important to me.
00:31:34.240 | What I wanted to do was to have my day go through – I wanted to go through my day
00:31:39.400 | based upon my own vision of how a day should run, not based upon what I needed to do to
00:31:43.300 | impress other people.
00:31:45.260 | But I'll tell you, it's hard and there are still times where those social pressures
00:31:50.940 | still press in on you.
00:31:53.780 | The social pressures are the biggest challenge that we face.
00:31:56.200 | Yeah, I think one important thing to clarify here though is that, at least for me, one
00:32:04.360 | thing I talk about in my book is, look, I'm not saying live like me.
00:32:09.760 | I'm not saying if you drive a BMW and you have all the expensive toys and all, I'm
00:32:19.840 | not saying there's anything wrong with that.
00:32:21.840 | I'm saying that most people have never thought about what they really want.
00:32:26.280 | They're not actually living by design.
00:32:28.400 | They're just following the crowd.
00:32:30.960 | And I think the important thing is to step back and go, "Does my life really line up
00:32:36.840 | with the things that I say that I value most?"
00:32:40.560 | One exercise I have in the book, a very practical one, is make a list of the four or five things
00:32:46.860 | in your life that you say are most important to you and then look at your budget.
00:32:52.240 | If the top four or five things that you say are most valuable to you don't show up as
00:32:59.360 | the top line items in your budget, that means that you're spending your life energy.
00:33:05.920 | All that money we make, we've just traded our time to get.
00:33:10.040 | So if the top items in your budget don't line up with the things that you say you value
00:33:14.840 | most, it means you're spending your life energy on things that ultimately don't matter to
00:33:19.000 | you.
00:33:21.560 | And then another way of looking at it for me is if my goal is to ski 50 days a year
00:33:27.320 | and to be able to travel extensively, it doesn't matter how much money you're going to pay
00:33:33.640 | me.
00:33:34.640 | If you want to pay me half a million dollars a year, a million dollars a year, but I have
00:33:39.320 | to move to Washington DC and I have to work 50 weeks a year and be on call and work 12
00:33:45.640 | hour days, it doesn't matter how much money you're going to pay me, that money doesn't
00:33:50.160 | help me achieve what I want in life.
00:33:53.560 | And so going back to the quote that you read from my book earlier about how most people
00:33:57.560 | just get the highest paying job possible and then buy a life with that money, no, that's
00:34:05.880 | not what we should be doing.
00:34:07.060 | We should be saying what do I want in life?
00:34:09.880 | What do I want life to look like?
00:34:12.080 | Okay now that I've figured that out, now I'll figure out how to make the money I need to
00:34:17.680 | have that kind of life.
00:34:18.680 | I got to ask, and this is one of my biggest questions throughout the book, you're describing
00:34:24.800 | a lifestyle that doesn't necessarily cost very much.
00:34:27.640 | How on earth do you afford to buy lift tickets to ski 60 days a year?
00:34:32.760 | Well you know one of the great secrets of the ski industry is that buying seats and
00:34:36.320 | passes is not expensive.
00:34:39.360 | So a season pass to, well like a Tahoe Epic Pass, so it gives you access to three incredible
00:34:49.400 | mountains, Heavenly, North Star, and Kirkwood.
00:34:52.280 | You're looking at 10,000 acres of skiable terrain.
00:34:57.480 | You can get that depending on the blackout days that you want for $450, $475.
00:35:05.760 | So let's just say it's $500.
00:35:06.760 | Well if I'm skiing 50 days a year, that's $10 a day.
00:35:13.200 | Now I always feel sorry for the people who show up and want to buy a single day lift
00:35:17.760 | ticket.
00:35:18.880 | Single day lift tickets are $119 or something.
00:35:22.120 | But yeah it's a lot cheaper to live in the mountains than it is to visit them.
00:35:28.280 | In your book you talk about the three tenets that you and your wife developed that fit
00:35:33.440 | your financial vision, which are number one, get out of debt, number two, keep our expenses
00:35:37.680 | low, and number three, only take on work that is location independent.
00:35:43.000 | Where do those come from and why are they so key to you fulfilling your vision for your
00:35:48.280 | life?
00:35:49.280 | Well first, get out of debt.
00:35:53.560 | I know that we're in tandem on this one.
00:35:57.160 | It's an anchor, something that's holding you back.
00:36:00.840 | If you have debt, you're paying for either yesterday's visions or yesterday's mistakes.
00:36:08.680 | Getting out of debt was a big priority for us.
00:36:12.520 | I'll confess we're not there yet.
00:36:14.240 | We still have student loan debt.
00:36:17.120 | But getting out of debt was and continues to be a big priority for us.
00:36:21.920 | Second, keeping our expenses low.
00:36:24.680 | It just allows us to be nimble.
00:36:27.680 | When I was, as you said, I can't remember how you phrase it exactly, like high income,
00:36:36.240 | high expense, when I was at the Reagan Ranch, my monthly, the nut that I had to crack just
00:36:43.760 | to pay the mortgage, utilities, insurance, you know, the basic things, was $10,000.
00:36:54.080 | I had to bring in $10,000 every month before I could even think about going out for coffee.
00:37:02.400 | And I just wasn't nimble.
00:37:04.400 | Now by having our expenses low, I'm much more nimble and can turn on a dime in a way that
00:37:14.520 | I never could have when our expenses were high.
00:37:18.880 | And then third, location independent.
00:37:20.520 | We just love to travel.
00:37:23.720 | We love being in Lake Tahoe now.
00:37:25.840 | But over the past couple of years, we've taken two six-week long trips to Central America.
00:37:33.160 | We did a two-month cross-country road trip.
00:37:36.560 | We spent three months in Thailand.
00:37:39.960 | And these are life experiences that just mean a lot to us.
00:37:43.720 | It's one thing that we value.
00:37:45.880 | And if we took on work that was not location independent, we would have to give up those
00:37:50.080 | things.
00:37:51.080 | And because travel and seeing the world is a priority for us, this was one more thing
00:37:58.120 | that we had to put into our kind of, you know, the work we take on has to fit within these
00:38:05.440 | things.
00:38:06.440 | Some people may not care about travel.
00:38:08.440 | So they wouldn't have to have that, you know, as one of their tenets for income.
00:38:13.640 | Wouldn't it make more sense, you said you still have student loans and you went from
00:38:19.800 | a place of being totally broke and in debt, wouldn't it have made a lot more sense for
00:38:24.000 | you to have used the connections and the status and the reputation that you developed to get
00:38:30.920 | a job as a consultant, earn a lot of money for a few years, pay off your debt, save a
00:38:37.480 | lot of money and have a greater financial cushion underneath rather than to try to put
00:38:42.120 | together this patchwork income?
00:38:44.040 | Wouldn't that make more sense?
00:38:45.240 | No.
00:38:46.240 | Why not?
00:38:47.720 | Because for two reasons, number one, I don't know.
00:38:52.680 | And this may sound fatalistic or may sound dramatic, but number one, I don't know that
00:38:57.840 | I have tomorrow.
00:39:00.040 | You know, and I talk in the book about an experience my wife and I had actually in our
00:39:04.680 | first date where, you know, we very likely could have died.
00:39:11.920 | So maybe that's dramatic, but the other point is that my son is eight now.
00:39:20.260 | My three-year-old son is gone forever.
00:39:22.600 | He'll never be back.
00:39:25.120 | And I can never get these years with my kids back.
00:39:30.080 | So I have in some ways chosen, I thought, what I really came to was I would rather work
00:39:38.720 | less in these years when my kids are young and actually maybe work a little bit more
00:39:43.960 | when they're 15 or 20 years old and less dependent on me.
00:39:49.800 | Now maybe the older version of Clark will regret that decision.
00:39:53.480 | It's possible.
00:39:55.600 | But I just have this real, I had this realization that the years that my kids were young were
00:40:04.840 | fleeting and I didn't want to be absent those years.
00:40:09.200 | I wanted to be present.
00:40:10.200 | It was a big thing that hung over me when we lived in the garage.
00:40:14.640 | My son at the time was three and my daughter was six months.
00:40:19.520 | And she slept in a crib a few feet away from us.
00:40:24.480 | And I remember every morning she'd wake up and she'd be stirring and kind of trying to
00:40:32.000 | get my attention.
00:40:33.000 | And every morning when I put my feet on the floor, she would clap because I was getting
00:40:36.640 | up.
00:40:37.920 | And I remember thinking I have no money and I live in my in-laws garage but my daughter
00:40:42.080 | still claps for me when I get out of bed.
00:40:45.160 | And during that time with them, I just realized I go back to the grind.
00:40:50.280 | If I just go make money, I'm going to miss this.
00:40:54.560 | And to me, it wasn't worth missing.
00:40:58.440 | Ted Keller: How did you deal with that within the context of your relationship with your
00:41:04.360 | wife?
00:41:05.360 | I know for a lot of husbands, that's a major challenge to say, "I need to support my family."
00:41:11.560 | And frankly, if I were living in a garage with my in-laws, I'd feel a little bit selfish
00:41:18.320 | about the idea of me chasing my dreams.
00:41:20.720 | At the end of the day, I didn't sign up just to live a life that was just focused on me.
00:41:25.960 | When I married, I became one with my wife and that means that it's no longer me, it's
00:41:32.560 | we.
00:41:33.560 | And so I've got to make sure that I'm taking care of the commitments that I've made and
00:41:40.280 | me living out my dreams is not the most important commitment.
00:41:43.960 | How did you deal with that in your relationship with your wife?
00:41:46.480 | David Bonilla: Well, for us, it was almost the opposite in the sense that when I was
00:41:53.200 | ready to take a job in the garage, my wife wasn't.
00:41:59.240 | I think she understood before I did that for us to build the kind of life that we really
00:42:05.000 | wanted to have, the solution was for me to not get a job.
00:42:11.200 | And I've always said that the great gift my in-laws gave me, it was not a garage.
00:42:17.640 | It was not just a roof over our family's head.
00:42:22.520 | The great gift they gave me was time because we were able to live with them.
00:42:29.960 | We lived in the garage for six months and then I spent another three or four months
00:42:37.520 | in a cabin in Lake Tahoe that my wife's grandfather owned rent-free.
00:42:43.680 | That time that we had, if I didn't have the family connections, I would have been forced
00:42:51.800 | to take anything.
00:42:55.240 | But because I had family supporting me, we were able to not just be desperate but to
00:43:01.040 | build by design.
00:43:02.960 | And I think this is actually a topic I want to take on in a second book.
00:43:08.960 | I think there's something to be said for these family connections in terms of supporting
00:43:18.080 | one another and empowering other people in our family to be there.
00:43:26.000 | Looking back at the time, moving in with my in-laws was such a shameful thing.
00:43:30.920 | And now I'm like, "It was awesome."
00:43:34.080 | And I think about my kids having lived with grandma and grandpa, what a rich time that
00:43:38.960 | was for them.
00:43:39.960 | And we still go back and spend, because we're location independent, we still go back and
00:43:44.000 | spend a couple of weeks or a month at a time with the in-laws.
00:43:49.800 | And I think we really need to do away with this idea that it's shameful that we go back
00:43:57.480 | and live with your in-laws.
00:44:00.560 | If you could live with your in-laws and use that time to build something meaningful and
00:44:05.800 | lasting, that shouldn't be a shameful thing.
00:44:09.040 | And my wife really was on board with that idea before I was.
00:44:14.720 | I think it was much harder for me living there than it was for her.
00:44:19.040 | And that may make sense in some ways.
00:44:22.920 | But she's always been right along with me in terms of this lifestyle design.
00:44:29.720 | And there's never been this, like I'm dragging her down this path or whatever.
00:44:38.920 | My wife and I really are partners.
00:44:40.960 | And whether it's our ideas about Pat's work income or living location independently or
00:44:47.920 | ideas about how we're raising our children or school choices we've made, sometimes people
00:44:53.800 | ask us, "Well, who had the idea first?"
00:44:57.000 | And my wife and I have no idea who had the idea first.
00:45:01.360 | These are decisions that we arrive at very slowly and we do it together by living a shared
00:45:07.680 | life and lots of wine.
00:45:12.360 | Good releases the tongue sometimes.
00:45:18.000 | Yeah.
00:45:19.000 | I can't tell you how many long, long, long, long talks we've had.
00:45:26.480 | It's never been any animosity.
00:45:29.240 | It's just like we're constantly talking about what we want.
00:45:33.720 | And by talking together, we continue to remain close and really of one mind despite radical
00:45:43.280 | changes in our life since we were married.
00:45:49.880 | What do you actually do to earn income to support your family now?
00:45:55.640 | We have a few patches.
00:45:59.080 | One and really our biggest patch is that I'm a consultant to non-profit organizations and
00:46:07.640 | major gifts fundraising.
00:46:08.640 | So a lot of my work actually I do Skype calls with fundraisers for these organizations when
00:46:14.800 | I'm coaching them and working through these issues with them.
00:46:18.040 | And then I do travel to meet with these groups and things like that.
00:46:23.720 | So in that sense, maybe I'm not entirely location independent and then I have to jump on a plane
00:46:31.120 | to be somewhere occasionally, but it's never been an issue for us.
00:46:37.040 | So I'll fly to Washington DC and spend a week in Washington DC or something.
00:46:42.080 | We're also credit card processing reps.
00:46:45.960 | So we have a company that we work with that provide all those terminals that you see at
00:46:53.580 | your favorite restaurant and coffee shop or whatever.
00:46:57.160 | If you go into by lunch at a restaurant here in Lake Tahoe and you charge $30, my wife
00:47:06.080 | and I will make maybe 50 cents on that transaction.
00:47:09.720 | But we do that a lot.
00:47:11.920 | It's a numbers game in terms of having volume as you know, your background.
00:47:16.400 | But that is great income for us because it's both passive and residual.
00:47:21.600 | We did a lot of work up front to build up that income base and now do very little work,
00:47:28.020 | maybe a few hours a month.
00:47:30.360 | And then that money just keeps rolling in.
00:47:33.140 | And then we have some smaller patches that we are developing.
00:47:36.940 | We have a website called TahoeSkiBum.com which is all about, as you would probably imagine,
00:47:43.420 | skiing and riding.
00:47:44.420 | Lake Tahoe, we built a pretty big audience.
00:47:46.420 | We're working to monetize the site.
00:47:49.780 | It's a very small patch right now but one that we think will be bigger.
00:47:54.420 | And my wife also designs websites, does business consulting, does mobile apps, lots of little
00:48:02.940 | things sort of around e-commerce and the web.
00:48:05.900 | So those are our patches as they are right now.
00:48:08.860 | And then there's lots of smaller ones, freelance writing that I do and other things.
00:48:15.900 | But those are the big ones.
00:48:17.580 | How do you fit your kids into a location independent lifestyle?
00:48:23.860 | Well, they come with us.
00:48:34.100 | For us, our bases really are Santa Barbara and Lake Tahoe.
00:48:38.140 | That's where their friends are.
00:48:39.140 | Those are the places we keep coming back to.
00:48:42.140 | And it's great to have been on the road for three months and to come home and immediately
00:48:50.580 | fall back into the same friendships and the same routines that we were in just before.
00:48:56.800 | Our kids have been traveling really since they were born.
00:49:01.860 | So for them, this is largely normal.
00:49:05.940 | At the end, this would have been March of '14, is when we moved out of our long-term
00:49:15.820 | lease that we'd had in Lake Tahoe, put all of our stuff in storage and began traveling
00:49:22.300 | for a couple of years.
00:49:26.300 | And it was kind of interesting how that worked out.
00:49:29.700 | Really all of us at the same time, me, my wife, and our kids were all craving being
00:49:35.660 | off the road and to kind of push pause and travel and come back to Tahoe and settle in
00:49:42.460 | for a while.
00:49:44.940 | And I think that was important to the kids, but it was important to us.
00:49:49.500 | It was kind of interesting how we all arrived at that point together.
00:49:52.700 | But our kids love to travel.
00:49:54.900 | I think they'd love to be at Grandma's house more.
00:49:57.100 | But it's interesting with them, too, the sense of pride that they have when they talk
00:50:03.020 | to people about where they've been.
00:50:06.140 | If you think about it, when you're six years old and you tell someone, "Well, I've been
00:50:09.780 | to Thailand," or some other side of the world, and the reaction they get from grown-ups is
00:50:13.620 | like, "Wow, you've been to Thailand?
00:50:16.260 | What does that do for my daughter's self-esteem?"
00:50:20.340 | That's the way people react to her when she says, "Yeah, I've been to Guatemala and I've
00:50:24.820 | been to Panama," and all these other places.
00:50:28.820 | The reactions that she gets are interesting.
00:50:33.580 | How do you handle their education on the road?
00:50:36.380 | Well, we've always homeschooled our kids.
00:50:42.140 | I don't like to call it homeschool.
00:50:46.380 | It's funny.
00:50:47.380 | When my kids were born, you should have seen them.
00:50:49.380 | They didn't know anything.
00:50:50.380 | They didn't know how to talk.
00:50:53.180 | They pooped their pants.
00:50:56.940 | So we've been homeschooling them, if you will, or educating them from the day they
00:50:59.820 | were born.
00:51:00.820 | That's just continued as they've reached school age.
00:51:08.500 | We call it hack-schooling, what we do.
00:51:10.940 | There's an unschooling movement that we've been heavily influenced by, but we also bring
00:51:17.460 | in more traditional schooling elements into our education with our kids.
00:51:26.020 | It's very organic.
00:51:29.100 | What you said earlier, wouldn't it be easier to just go get a job?
00:51:33.020 | Sometimes I feel that way about school.
00:51:35.220 | So take this experience we had in Bangkok, where when we were in Bangkok, we couldn't
00:51:44.980 | get on the BTS Skytrain, their metro that goes all around the city, until a few things
00:51:51.260 | happened.
00:51:52.260 | The kids had to read the map and figure out where we were.
00:51:55.660 | At the time, the kids were six and four.
00:51:58.580 | Then we had our baby with us, but we didn't require this of her.
00:52:04.100 | But the six and four-year-old, before we could get on the train, they had to figure out where
00:52:07.300 | we were, where we were going, how much money it would cost, multiply that by four, go take
00:52:15.180 | our cash money to the attendant, get the coins, and then get the tickets that we needed.
00:52:24.460 | So a process that could have taken me all of 30 seconds would take us as a family 10
00:52:31.900 | minutes, or 20 minutes.
00:52:35.700 | And it would have been so much easier to put my kids in school and not worry about this
00:52:40.460 | moment at the BTS Skytrain in Bangkok.
00:52:43.500 | But look at what my kids did there.
00:52:44.780 | They read maps.
00:52:45.780 | They did math.
00:52:47.540 | They had to work with someone, the attendant, to accomplish their goals.
00:52:52.220 | And so this has sort of been our approach to education over the years.
00:52:57.340 | And it's incredibly fulfilling and completely exhausting.
00:53:02.700 | So even like I say, I don't like to term homeschool because it implies that we do school at home,
00:53:06.780 | which we don't.
00:53:07.780 | Yeah, in some ways, I think it would be easier if we just sat down every day and did school
00:53:15.100 | at home from 10 to 2 or whatever.
00:53:19.420 | But no, it's like for us, education is every moment of every day.
00:53:24.700 | And it can be exhausting.
00:53:27.060 | Having said all that, now that we're back in Tahoe, my daughter really wanted to go
00:53:31.340 | to kindergarten.
00:53:32.500 | So she's actually enrolled in kindergarten now.
00:53:35.340 | But my eight-year-old son and my almost three-year-old daughter now just continue to go through
00:53:43.620 | life with us.
00:53:44.620 | Do you have thoughts on whether and how they will pursue perhaps a similar career strategy
00:53:54.540 | to you?
00:53:55.540 | What I mean is there's lots of people who make very cutting-edge decisions for themselves
00:54:01.420 | and say, "I'm not going to go with the status quo.
00:54:05.380 | I'm going to go ahead and blaze a different path."
00:54:08.300 | But then many of those same people will hold before their children the same normal cultural
00:54:15.980 | norms.
00:54:17.160 | You need to make sure that you have a good education.
00:54:19.380 | You need to make sure that you have a good job, et cetera.
00:54:21.260 | Do you have some ideas or thoughts or hopes for their future in terms of avoiding that?
00:54:27.140 | It's kind of funny, all the things that I've kind of like, "Ah, it doesn't really matter."
00:54:33.500 | Those are probably going to be the things that my kids build their lives around because
00:54:37.060 | they will think that I didn't put enough emphasis on them.
00:54:43.180 | But I think for us, the key is just trying to keep options open for the kids and educate
00:54:48.820 | them on some of the pluses and minuses of different lifestyle choices or how they choose
00:54:57.420 | to design their life.
00:54:59.620 | One of my goals for my kids is that by the time they're reaching adulthood, 17, 18, 19,
00:55:07.660 | whatever that is, one of my goals for each of my kids is to have helped them and taught
00:55:14.380 | them how to make $1,000 a month in a semi-passive residual way.
00:55:23.380 | Basically make $1,000 a month online.
00:55:26.620 | I feel like if I can do that, if you're 18 years old and you're making $1,000 a month
00:55:31.740 | in online income and you figured out that, that opens a lot of doors for you.
00:55:37.700 | First of all, if they wanted to travel and you're single and you're 18, you could probably
00:55:42.900 | travel forever on $1,000 a month.
00:55:46.740 | Or maybe they say, "Well, gosh, if I figured out how to make $1,000 a month, maybe I could
00:55:50.340 | make $2,000 a month."
00:55:53.580 | So that's one goal that we have with the kids.
00:55:58.220 | But what kind of life are they going to have?
00:56:02.340 | I mean, if my kids become doctors or lawyers, these are much more high-stress jobs and high-stress
00:56:11.620 | careers than we have now.
00:56:15.860 | All we can do is try to lead them and raise them right and get them to think about these
00:56:22.100 | kinds of questions.
00:56:23.100 | And they can make their own choices in terms of what they want their life to look like
00:56:29.140 | and what they feel called to do.
00:56:32.540 | Trey Lockerbie (00:15:40): With the patchwork income, sometimes it's
00:56:35.540 | higher, sometimes it's lower.
00:56:37.820 | Have you put in any place, any strategies that have helped you to avoid or limit the
00:56:45.300 | amount of credit card debt that you get into when income is low?
00:56:49.460 | David Bonilla (00:16:02): No, we don't have credit card debt.
00:56:57.060 | I think in part because I was just in a decision to not have credit card debt.
00:57:02.100 | And so for us, it was always like, "We've got to make more money.
00:57:06.740 | What am I going to do?
00:57:07.740 | I've got to make some calls.
00:57:11.740 | I've got to book another consulting gig.
00:57:13.700 | I've got to get a freelance writing gig because we need more money than we have right now.
00:57:18.100 | So I've got to go find it."
00:57:20.220 | It was never really an option to rack up credit card debt.
00:57:29.900 | And I think that it goes back to my first tenant, get out of debt.
00:57:34.860 | So last thing I want is new debt.
00:57:40.540 | So I think it really is, you have to discipline yourself or you have to give some things up.
00:57:46.340 | Well, it goes back to the second tenant as well, having fewer expenses.
00:57:52.500 | So the money you have to bring in this month that you're obligated to bring in is just
00:57:58.460 | a lower number.
00:58:01.420 | So it's tough.
00:58:03.940 | It's worked out for us over time.
00:58:07.580 | Never been in a situation really where we had to rack up credit card debt to buy groceries
00:58:15.020 | for our family.
00:58:16.020 | We're always able to go out and find one more thing.
00:58:19.820 | Last question, Clark.
00:58:24.180 | It's easy for…
00:58:25.180 | I mean, not say it's easy.
00:58:29.180 | If I were listening to this interview, one of the questions I would be having would be
00:58:32.460 | thinking, "Oh, it's easy for somebody who's been to the heights of prestige and
00:58:38.540 | success, made a lot of money, made six figures of income, lived in a fancy house, worked
00:58:44.980 | with fancy people.
00:58:46.180 | It's easy for that person to say, 'Well, listen, being broke is not such a bad thing.'
00:58:53.820 | But what about me?
00:58:55.540 | Maybe I've never made a lot of money.
00:58:57.680 | Maybe I've always been broke.
00:58:59.640 | Maybe my family comes from a very poor, disadvantaged part of society or part of the world."
00:59:08.100 | Does your philosophy fit that type of person?
00:59:11.700 | Do you have lessons that you'd like that kind of person to consider?
00:59:15.340 | Or is your philosophy only for those who've been privileged enough to reach the pinnacles
00:59:20.780 | of success and then realize, "Well, it's not always cracked up to be, so I'm going
00:59:23.940 | to design my life differently."
00:59:25.220 | Well, remember, when we really started rebuilding, I was in a shameful position, you know, really
00:59:34.420 | only by my own standards.
00:59:39.700 | I retreated from all past relationships.
00:59:43.460 | So when we began rebuilding our life, we weren't rebuilding our life with old connections.
00:59:48.460 | You know, we were doing it ourselves.
00:59:52.900 | Can't everyone do it?
00:59:53.900 | You know, I'm asked that question a lot.
00:59:55.900 | And my answer to that question is, "I don't know."
01:00:00.460 | You know, I don't know if everyone can do it.
01:00:03.380 | The question isn't, "Can everyone do it?"
01:00:05.620 | The question is, "Can you do it?"
01:00:07.820 | You know, do you believe that you have it in you?
01:00:10.540 | And I think that if you're listening to a podcast like this, chances are you do have
01:00:19.220 | it in you.
01:00:20.220 | And, you know, when we started out, when we moved out of the garage and moved up to Tahoe,
01:00:25.940 | we made $217 that month.
01:00:28.060 | That was what our patchwork of income brought in.
01:00:31.140 | And slowly but surely, we continued to build it up.
01:00:35.740 | Can everyone do it?
01:00:36.740 | I don't know.
01:00:37.740 | I'm not willing to say everyone can do it, but that's really not the question.
01:00:41.140 | The question is, "Can you do it?"
01:00:43.500 | And I think that if we begin to say we can and we begin to try to live epically today
01:00:50.660 | and to make the most of every day, I do think that you will see that a life of your own
01:01:02.060 | design isn't something that's reserved for a few lucky or a few special people.
01:01:10.660 | Can everyone do it?
01:01:11.660 | I don't know.
01:01:12.660 | But I think it's possible for far more people than who are currently achieving it.
01:01:18.340 | Clark, thanks for coming on the show.
01:01:20.900 | Tell us about all your websites, where people can buy the book.
01:01:24.100 | Give us all of your addresses.
01:01:25.100 | Sure.
01:01:26.100 | Well, you can go to unworkingbook.com.
01:01:30.820 | You can buy the book there at unworkingbook.com, but you can also read detailed chapter descriptions,
01:01:36.100 | the introduction, the prologue.
01:01:38.900 | Actually, the book starts out with a letter to my children.
01:01:42.860 | So unworkingbook.com.
01:01:43.860 | And then I blog haphazardly on family travel and lifestyle design at familytrek.org.
01:01:53.300 | And then, gosh, I'm on Twitter @clarkvand.
01:01:59.100 | And I'm around the interwebs.
01:02:01.060 | But go to familytrek.org or unworkingbook.com.
01:02:04.660 | You can find me.
01:02:05.660 | My challenge for you today as we go is to ask you, how can you take some of the lessons
01:02:13.580 | from Clark's story and apply them to yourself?
01:02:17.720 | Can you build a little bit of patchwork income?
01:02:19.420 | Can you lower some expenses?
01:02:20.420 | Can you eliminate some debt?
01:02:21.740 | How can you take some of the good things from his experience and then just put them in your
01:02:25.380 | own situation?
01:02:26.380 | You don't have to live his lifestyle.
01:02:27.980 | I don't want to live his lifestyle.
01:02:28.980 | I'm not really that into skiing.
01:02:30.460 | I don't want to move to Lake Tahoe.
01:02:33.940 | But I can learn from it and then I can apply it in my own life.
01:02:37.620 | And that's really what we've got to do is continually learn from these things and apply
01:02:41.820 | them in our own lives.
01:02:43.140 | I hope this has been useful.
01:02:44.580 | You may check out Clark's book Unworking.
01:02:46.580 | I really enjoyed it.
01:02:47.580 | Probably the most useful thing about – well, I really enjoyed the stories in the book.
01:02:51.660 | Probably the most useful thing about it, though, he's got a bunch of great journaling prompts
01:02:55.860 | in that book, a lot of great journaling prompts.
01:02:58.220 | In fact, it's probably worth the price of admission just for those alone.
01:03:01.780 | But frankly, that's my opinion on it.
01:03:05.820 | So check it out, Unworking.
01:03:07.780 | Link in the show notes for today's show.
01:03:10.500 | Check out his blog.
01:03:11.500 | All that stuff will be linked up in the show notes.
01:03:12.500 | Thank you all so much for listening to today.
01:03:14.460 | If you would like to continue supporting the show, please support the show at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.
01:03:19.580 | Got some bribes there for you, a couple of different levels of patronage.
01:03:22.540 | I've substantially simplified the patronage options for you, made it very, very simple.
01:03:28.060 | You can join at whichever level is right for you and you get access to our Friday Q&A calls,
01:03:33.660 | you get access to our Facebook group, etc.
01:03:35.620 | So please check out that information at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.
01:03:39.700 | Radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron for all those details.
01:03:41.940 | And hey, get out there and build a rich life and the plan for financial freedom.
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