RPF0344-Mr._Groovy_Interview
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00:00:32.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:33.000 | the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills,
00:00:36.000 | insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now
00:00:41.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:45.000 | My guest today is Mr. Groovy from the website freedomisgroovy.com.
00:00:49.000 | Mr. Groovy, you reached out and you called me out on Twitter.
00:00:52.000 | And you said, "Let's see if I can get any personal finance bloggers to pay attention."
00:00:55.000 | I remember that.
00:00:56.000 | Yeah, you did.
00:00:57.000 | You had emailed me as well, but your email was buried in the deluge.
00:01:01.000 | And you said, "I've got an idea, and I'm daring any personal finance people to take a look at it."
00:01:06.000 | I admired your spunk.
00:01:08.000 | The chutzpah.
00:01:09.000 | I like that. Your chutzpah, exactly.
00:01:11.000 | There we go.
00:01:12.000 | So we're going to get to the idea that we're primarily here to discuss,
00:01:15.000 | which is your idea for a junior IRA.
00:01:18.000 | I think it will be an interesting discussion.
00:01:20.000 | But before that, I'd love to learn a little bit about your story and your background
00:01:23.000 | and where you came from, especially as it relates to money.
00:01:26.000 | Sure.
00:01:27.000 | I'm originally from New York.
00:01:29.000 | I don't know if you could tell by my accent.
00:01:30.000 | Didn't have a clue.
00:01:31.000 | Okay.
00:01:32.000 | And again, if I speak too fast or you don't understand me, I won't be insulted if you say,
00:01:37.000 | "Hey, Mr. Groovy, back up. Do it again."
00:01:39.000 | Like I said, I'm from New York.
00:01:41.000 | And I got married in 2002 to Mrs. Groovy.
00:01:47.000 | And we were struggling in New York.
00:01:50.000 | We were getting hammered.
00:01:51.000 | It's tough.
00:01:53.000 | And to give you an idea, this is 2003.
00:01:57.000 | I had a 600-square-foot condo, a box, and our taxes were $3,800 a year.
00:02:04.000 | That's crazy.
00:02:06.000 | And just to show you, this was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back.
00:02:11.000 | 2003, my mortgage company sends me that letter, "What's your taxes going to be the following year?"
00:02:17.000 | They were going from $3,700, $3,800 to $5,400.
00:02:22.000 | Wow.
00:02:23.000 | And I turned to Mrs. Groovy and I said, "What the heck are we doing here?"
00:02:26.000 | And on top of that, our condo was falling apart, so we had an assessment.
00:02:31.000 | Our monthly HOA was going from $280 to $467.
00:02:36.000 | I said, "We're out of here."
00:02:38.000 | And that's kind of how it started, believe it or not.
00:02:41.000 | We gave ourselves a three-year plan.
00:02:43.000 | We said--because around this time, believe it or not, we also discovered Dave Ramsey.
00:02:49.000 | And his idea of shedding debt, living below your means, appealed to us.
00:02:57.000 | It just hit us.
00:02:58.000 | It said, "This makes so much sense."
00:03:00.000 | So we wanted to do that, and we said we can't do that in New York.
00:03:05.000 | And Mrs. Groovy, when she was--she's from Brooklyn, by the way.
00:03:09.000 | When she graduated high school, she spent a summer in North Carolina.
00:03:14.000 | So I said--and she said she loved North Carolina.
00:03:17.000 | I said, "That's fine by me.
00:03:19.000 | Anything's better than New York."
00:03:20.000 | So we had our three-year plan.
00:03:22.000 | And the reason why we had the three-year plan, one, we wanted to shed all our consumer debt.
00:03:27.000 | We weren't going to shed the mortgage, but we wanted to shed the consumer debt
00:03:31.000 | and develop a transition fund.
00:03:33.000 | We didn't know if we were going to have jobs when we get down to North Carolina.
00:03:36.000 | And so I said 2006--and the reason why we chose 2006, because that's when I had 20 years at my government job
00:03:45.000 | and I would have an enhanced pension.
00:03:48.000 | So it made sense not to walk away from that.
00:03:51.000 | And we were very, very fortunate.
00:03:53.000 | 2006 rolled around.
00:03:55.000 | We sold our one-bedroom condo.
00:03:57.000 | Joshua, get this.
00:03:59.000 | I bought it in 1998 for $70,000.
00:04:04.000 | We sold it in 2006, which happened to be the height of the real estate craze, for $340,000.
00:04:11.000 | [Laughter]
00:04:12.000 | Yeah.
00:04:14.000 | Wow.
00:04:15.000 | So we said--and oddly enough, we chose Charlotte, North Carolina,
00:04:20.000 | and the only reason we chose Charlotte, North Carolina--when we started doing our research,
00:04:25.000 | we started driving down to North Carolina and checking out different areas.
00:04:30.000 | A week before our first trip, there was an article in a New York Times travel section about Charlotte,
00:04:35.000 | how it was an up-and-coming city, things that happened in there.
00:04:38.000 | So we said, hey, let's take a ride down to Charlotte.
00:04:41.000 | And we really did love it.
00:04:43.000 | We checked out the Raleigh area.
00:04:45.000 | I'm trying to think if we checked out--we checked out the Asheville area.
00:04:49.000 | But Charlotte just seemed to fit, so we decided on Charlotte.
00:04:52.000 | And that's basically how it happened.
00:04:56.000 | We were very, very fortunate.
00:04:58.000 | We were able to come down to Charlotte, buy a house outright.
00:05:01.000 | So in 2006, we went from a precarious financial situation to an amazing financial situation.
00:05:10.000 | We had no debt.
00:05:12.000 | We owned our house outright.
00:05:14.000 | And kind of the cherry on the top, Mrs. Groovy kept her New York job.
00:05:19.000 | They liked her, and they let her telecommute.
00:05:22.000 | Wow.
00:05:23.000 | So like I said, everything just--we were very fortunate.
00:05:27.000 | And I had a government job, so I built up a lot of time.
00:05:32.000 | I basically had a year's worth of income from my New York job.
00:05:38.000 | And there was no pressure on it for me to get a job right away.
00:05:44.000 | So I took my time.
00:05:45.000 | I ended up getting a nice gig down in Charlotte.
00:05:48.000 | So in 2006, we had very nice income, no debt, no kids.
00:05:54.000 | That makes it a lot easier too.
00:05:56.000 | Able to save 50% of our salary right off the bat.
00:06:00.000 | That's awesome.
00:06:01.000 | And so you've continued that for the last decade?
00:06:03.000 | Yes.
00:06:04.000 | Yes.
00:06:06.000 | You know, one thing about Mrs. Groovy and I, we're not--I don't know.
00:06:11.000 | We're not into a flashy lifestyle.
00:06:13.000 | I don't need a Lexus.
00:06:15.000 | My 2004 Camry is fine with me.
00:06:19.000 | A great Saturday night for us, Joshua?
00:06:21.000 | Dairy Queen, having a blizzard.
00:06:23.000 | We're very happy.
00:06:25.000 | So we didn't do any--we didn't get a McMansion.
00:06:27.000 | We didn't--you know, we just got a modest home, and we live a modest lifestyle.
00:06:33.000 | No--we're not reinventing the wheel, so to speak.
00:06:36.000 | Right, right.
00:06:37.000 | Are you--so I talk a lot about financial independence and early retirement,
00:06:43.000 | and I had the sense that you've kind of connected some with that type--with that community.
00:06:49.000 | Are you guys still working?
00:06:51.000 | Are you retired?
00:06:52.000 | We are going to retire this October.
00:06:54.000 | That's exciting.
00:06:56.000 | It is.
00:06:57.000 | It is, and, you know, it's funny because I give Mrs. Groovy credit because she discovered Dave Ramsey.
00:07:03.000 | And probably around 2013, 2014--I'm not sure the exact year--I discovered Mr. Money Mustache.
00:07:10.000 | And I don't know--you're probably well aware of him.
00:07:14.000 | He had a famous post where he said as long as you save 25 times your annual expenses,
00:07:22.000 | you can retire, and I'm saying, "Hmm, I bet you we're pretty close."
00:07:27.000 | So, you know, last year we ran the numbers, and we were above that.
00:07:33.000 | I--to tell you the truth, I thought I was working until '67,
00:07:36.000 | and because of Mr. Money Mustache, the idea got in our heads that, hey, we could pull this off a lot sooner.
00:07:44.000 | So, yeah, we--as I call it, I call it the mustachian threshold.
00:07:49.000 | We're past the mustachian threshold.
00:07:52.000 | We could retire.
00:07:53.000 | What age will you be in October?
00:07:55.000 | We're old.
00:07:56.000 | I'll be 55.
00:07:57.000 | Oh, uh-huh, so old.
00:07:59.000 | What are you going to do for the next 50 years of your life?
00:08:01.000 | Oh, good question, Josh.
00:08:03.000 | It's funny because, I mean, one of the reasons why we got into blogging is because--to give us something to do.
00:08:12.000 | Also, I thought our story was interesting.
00:08:14.000 | I thought our experiences were interesting, that people could be motivated or get something out of it.
00:08:20.000 | So I actually had a blog or a post one week where I said what I'm going to do, and it's kind of weird, but here we go, Joshua.
00:08:30.000 | I'm going to pick up garbage.
00:08:32.000 | I'm going to bake bread.
00:08:34.000 | I'm going to blog, and I'm going to travel.
00:08:37.000 | That's what I'm going to do in retirement.
00:08:38.000 | And as we get later into the podcast, I gave myself another chore to take care of, which is a junior IRA.
00:08:47.000 | Cool.
00:08:48.000 | We'll get to that in a second.
00:08:49.000 | Don't retire until you're very clear on what you want to do.
00:08:51.000 | Otherwise, retirement will kill you.
00:08:53.000 | Yes.
00:08:54.000 | You got the only way to successfully retire is to transition from something that is less compelling to something that is more compelling, and going from something to nothing is not a good plan.
00:09:04.000 | No.
00:09:05.000 | Your story is remarkable because I would bet that there are thousands of other families just like yours in the Northeast who could easily make a similar transition.
00:09:20.000 | And just simply in the numbers that you outlined, you go from – so how much were you and your wife earning when you were in New York City?
00:09:29.000 | All right.
00:09:30.000 | At the time, when we left in 2006, probably around $130,000.
00:09:37.000 | Combined?
00:09:38.000 | Yeah.
00:09:39.000 | Okay.
00:09:40.000 | Now, she kept her New York job with a New York income but moved to a lower-cost living place.
00:09:45.000 | And then when you got a job in North Carolina, did you replace your New York income?
00:09:50.000 | Was it less?
00:09:51.000 | No.
00:09:52.000 | No.
00:09:53.000 | I took about a $35,000 hit.
00:09:55.000 | Okay.
00:09:56.000 | Do you have any sense of what happened with your expenses?
00:09:59.000 | Yeah.
00:10:02.000 | I'm trying to at least – well, they went down to – just for example, we were tracking our expenses.
00:10:12.000 | I think 2006, we were averaging our expenses.
00:10:18.000 | We spent about, I would say, $6,500, $6,800 a month.
00:10:24.000 | Now, very rarely do we go over $2,000 a month.
00:10:30.000 | So – and just for example, when I left New York, my taxes on a 600-square-foot condo were $5,400 a year.
00:10:40.000 | I have a 2,000-square-foot house right now.
00:10:43.000 | And last year was the first year my taxes went over $2,000.
00:10:47.000 | So I would say our expenses went down at least a half, maybe two-thirds.
00:10:53.000 | And I would bet that – let's see.
00:10:56.000 | Excuse me.
00:10:57.000 | North Carolina does have a state income tax.
00:10:59.000 | Was it 5%, 5.5%?
00:11:00.000 | I think 5.75, something like that.
00:11:03.000 | So I would bet you had some tax savings, some income tax savings.
00:11:07.000 | But even if you – I was just trying to kind of mentally run the numbers here.
00:11:10.000 | Even if you went from 130 and you took a $35,000 pay cut when you were re-employed in New York and North Carolina, you would have had a savings.
00:11:19.000 | Number one, you were at – that was at the higher marginal bracket.
00:11:22.000 | So you would have had some savings from tax savings, some savings from changing from New York City and New York state taxes to North Carolina taxes and just a dramatically different cost structure.
00:11:34.000 | And as you said there, now, you sold at a fortuitous time.
00:11:38.000 | But $340,000 pull out $70,000 of basis.
00:11:44.000 | I mean you were sitting on $270,000 of gain and probably at least $300,000 of equity.
00:11:50.000 | And just simply by moving out of the overpriced region of the country to a more moderately priced region of the country, that dramatically affected your situation right there.
00:12:02.000 | And that's $300,000 tax-free.
00:12:04.000 | Exactly.
00:12:05.000 | And you throw in all the other costs of living.
00:12:08.000 | You throw in the lifestyle costs.
00:12:09.000 | You throw in having a city that's – you don't have to take a taxi everywhere in.
00:12:14.000 | It's just – I appreciate you, the New Yorker, sharing the story.
00:12:20.000 | I honestly scratch my head many times and I just say, "Why on earth do normal people live in places like Chicago or New York or Boston?"
00:12:31.000 | Now, I understand why Donald Trump lives in New York City.
00:12:35.000 | I understand why a hedge fund manager might live there.
00:12:39.000 | But I never understand why do normal people live there.
00:12:42.000 | Why do middle class people live there other than simply the inertia of, hey, this is where we're from?
00:12:49.000 | Exactly.
00:12:50.000 | And just – I'll throw this out.
00:12:53.000 | It affected me for a while but then I woke up.
00:12:57.000 | When I was growing up, I thought New York was the center of the universe.
00:13:00.000 | If you didn't live in New York, well, your life is horrible.
00:13:05.000 | And the first inkling I got that there is life outside of New York, oddly enough, I went to Buffalo University.
00:13:12.000 | When I graduated high school, I went to Buffalo University.
00:13:15.000 | And Buffalo, a small town relative to New York, and people were nice.
00:13:22.000 | There were plenty of things to do.
00:13:24.000 | It was a nice place to live.
00:13:25.000 | This was obviously in the early '80s, not now.
00:13:28.000 | But it was the first time it was in my head that New York is not the center of the universe.
00:13:34.000 | You can go other places and still live a rewarding life and have a good time.
00:13:40.000 | So I was definitely open to living in New York.
00:13:44.000 | And like I said, it's – my brother-in-law, he lives in Manhattan.
00:13:49.000 | He does the galleries.
00:13:51.000 | He does the restaurants.
00:13:52.000 | He does the shows.
00:13:53.000 | He does the museums.
00:13:55.000 | I certainly didn't do that stuff.
00:13:57.000 | I sat in my living room.
00:13:58.000 | I could sit in my living room in North Carolina.
00:14:00.000 | I don't need to sit in New York and eat Doritos.
00:14:04.000 | So – and most people like that.
00:14:06.000 | Most people aren't going to galleries, aren't going to lectures at NYU.
00:14:11.000 | They're just – occasionally, they'll go into Manhattan to see an Islander Ranger game.
00:14:17.000 | So once I got over that mental hump, so to speak, that there are nice places in the United States outside of New York,
00:14:26.000 | I was open to it.
00:14:27.000 | My biggest – the only thing that was really keeping me in New York, like you said, inertia, but the family and friends.
00:14:36.000 | I love my family.
00:14:37.000 | I love my friends.
00:14:38.000 | But when all is said and done, you got to do what's best for you.
00:14:43.000 | And it just didn't make sense staying in New York.
00:14:46.000 | I'll forgive you for thinking that New York City was the center of the universe because I went for years,
00:14:50.000 | thought the United States was the center of the universe.
00:14:53.000 | And then I started traveling.
00:14:54.000 | I said, wait a second.
00:14:55.000 | I love it.
00:14:56.000 | I love it.
00:14:57.000 | Absolutely.
00:14:58.000 | Absolutely.
00:14:59.000 | All right.
00:15:00.000 | Let's transition here to discussing the junior IRA.
00:15:04.000 | I am going to hereby anoint you and exalt you to be the grand high exalted mystic ruler of the United States.
00:15:12.000 | And I now give you the command authority to do whatever you want to solve the IRA problem for juniors.
00:15:20.000 | Now, describe to me your plan.
00:15:22.000 | Joshua, it's not earth shattering.
00:15:27.000 | All it is, it's a Roth IRA for minors that doesn't have a work requirement and can be funded by anyone or any institution.
00:15:37.000 | That's it.
00:15:38.000 | And that's all we need.
00:15:40.000 | So what's the back story on why you started thinking about this?
00:15:44.000 | I have a cousin who actually just recently moved down to North Carolina, and her and her husband are pharmacists.
00:15:53.000 | And they have two young kids, you know, eight, five.
00:15:58.000 | And believe me, my cousin, I love her.
00:16:01.000 | She's one of the sweetest people I ever met in my life.
00:16:03.000 | But she's into that consumerist thing.
00:16:07.000 | So these kids have so much stuff, you know, you wouldn't believe.
00:16:12.000 | I go into their house.
00:16:13.000 | I think I'm at -- I don't know.
00:16:15.000 | I'm at Macy's.
00:16:16.000 | I go into their room.
00:16:17.000 | There's so many figurines, toys, and electronic equipment.
00:16:23.000 | It's ridiculous.
00:16:24.000 | So Mrs. Groovy and I, we, you know, come Christmas time, we wanted to get the kids something.
00:16:30.000 | And we didn't want to -- you know, they have enough stuff.
00:16:34.000 | You know, we would have loved to have given the gift of, you know, compound interest, the gift of capital, something that, you know, it goes into an account and they don't touch it for the next 40 years.
00:16:48.000 | Because they said they already have enough stuff.
00:16:51.000 | And we started doing some research, and there's really nothing out there.
00:16:55.000 | I mean, there are some people and some organizations who are making some effort, but nothing really worked.
00:17:02.000 | And then it just hit me one day.
00:17:04.000 | I said, you know, why can't the parents just open up a Roth IRA for these kids?
00:17:08.000 | And I'd rather give $50 and put it into the kids' Roth IRA.
00:17:14.000 | Does that make sense?
00:17:15.000 | Yeah, definitely.
00:17:17.000 | So, I mean, that was kind of like the -- I don't know, the genesis.
00:17:21.000 | That's how it started.
00:17:22.000 | And then I started looking into it.
00:17:24.000 | And like I said, there are some -- you know, people are trying to be creative, probably too creative because they're trying to reinvent the wheel.
00:17:33.000 | We got a perfect platform.
00:17:35.000 | We got the infrastructure.
00:17:37.000 | All we have to do is just tweak the law a little bit, and we could do a lot of damage or a lot of good.
00:17:45.000 | So here we come to -- well, before I kind of start rebutting because I want to argue with you about this.
00:17:50.000 | Sure, sure.
00:17:51.000 | Go on.
00:17:52.000 | But go ahead and describe to me -- you designed this thing in a nutshell.
00:17:57.000 | And so you think that baby comes into the United States.
00:18:01.000 | They go home with a birth certificate and a junior IRA.
00:18:06.000 | Describe to me more of the characteristics that you designed for this hypothetical account.
00:18:12.000 | Yep.
00:18:13.000 | Basically, as you said, baby's born, leave the hospital with a birth certificate and a junior IRA.
00:18:20.000 | Now, at this point, it would be the guardian's or the parent's job to pick a custodian for the junior IRA and, you know, Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, et cetera.
00:18:32.000 | Then I tweak it a little bit from the Roth IRA.
00:18:37.000 | My contribution limit is $1,000.
00:18:41.000 | And again, that $1,000 can come from the parents.
00:18:44.000 | It can come from grandparents.
00:18:46.000 | It can come from uncles.
00:18:47.000 | It can come from churches, charitable organizations, whoever.
00:18:51.000 | And whoever makes a contribution, there's no tax deduction.
00:18:56.000 | You don't get any benefit from it.
00:18:57.000 | You're given it because you just want to help secure a child's retirement.
00:19:03.000 | Let's see.
00:19:04.000 | What else?
00:19:05.000 | Let me just scroll down here.
00:19:07.000 | Excuse me one second.
00:19:08.000 | Now, initially, I was considering that the federal government would provide some seed money.
00:19:13.000 | I would say if the federal government would kick in $1,000 and whatever state the child was born in would kick in another $1,000, that would be a great way to jumpstart this process.
00:19:24.000 | But we'll talk about that in a little bit.
00:19:26.000 | I decided to scrap that idea.
00:19:29.000 | And then, again, the child would have $1,000.
00:19:33.000 | We contribute to this junior IRA every year until they're 18.
00:19:36.000 | And when they're 18, it becomes a Roth IRA.
00:19:41.000 | And it follows the normal rules.
00:19:43.000 | I mean I would tweak it a little bit.
00:19:45.000 | I would like to see where junior IRA converted Roth could not – you could not take any money out until you were 59 and a half.
00:19:54.000 | But that's negotiable.
00:19:57.000 | What are your thoughts on that?
00:19:59.000 | Well, I'm going to uphold my thoughts for just a minute until you fully explain the concept.
00:20:05.000 | Let me ask.
00:20:06.000 | So in designing this, the primary thing that you're trying to accomplish is helping young people to have massive amounts of money simply due to starting early, right?
00:20:17.000 | Exactly.
00:20:18.000 | Now, did you anticipate – were you considering – and again, this is all just mind games for fun.
00:20:23.000 | I think it's a fun conversation.
00:20:25.000 | Were you anticipating that, for example, Social Security would be removed because they have a Roth IRA or junior IRA?
00:20:35.000 | Or were you anticipating that any other changes would be made?
00:20:38.000 | No, it was going to augment all the existing financial vehicles or retirement vehicles.
00:20:45.000 | Social Security would remain the same.
00:20:48.000 | If you had a workplace retirement vehicle, a 401(k), 403(b), that would remain the same.
00:20:57.000 | This would kind of sit on top.
00:20:59.000 | At least get – especially young people started early.
00:21:02.000 | Take advantage of that power of compound interest.
00:21:06.000 | That was the whole idea.
00:21:08.000 | Also, I said to myself, if people started early, if you contribute $83 a month when you were zero, I mean that would be – and continue doing that until you were 60, that would be $1.3 million.
00:21:23.000 | So not lifting very much.
00:21:26.000 | So that was kind of the whole thought.
00:21:29.000 | I mean is that –
00:21:31.000 | Yeah.
00:21:32.000 | So let's put some numbers to it just for fun.
00:21:34.000 | Let's say – just to give people an idea.
00:21:38.000 | Let's say that you had somebody starting with $1,000.
00:21:41.000 | Let's put that in as $1,000.
00:21:43.000 | And let's say that they're going to access the account when they're 65.
00:21:46.000 | And let's use 10% to have some nice, high, exciting, juicy numbers here.
00:21:51.000 | No payments but starting with $1,000 for – no, because of no payments.
00:21:56.000 | No payments for 65 years starting with $1,000 would be about a half a million dollars at 65.
00:22:03.000 | Now, if you wanted to add some payments per month, let's put in 20 bucks a month for a payment.
00:22:08.000 | So now if you just put 20 bucks a month or at 600,000, you put in 100 bucks a month into an account like this and we're at a million bucks.
00:22:17.000 | So if you want to help your kid become a millionaire at 65 years old, you can do it, 1,000 bucks on the day that they're born and 100 bucks a month.
00:22:26.000 | And the 10% investment return left alone for 65 years will accumulate to be a million bucks.
00:22:34.000 | So it does a good job of showing how – if you start and you grow and especially if you can do it free of taxation, the money can grow substantially.
00:22:48.000 | Now, here's the problem with your plan.
00:22:51.000 | Whatever gave you the idea that the federal tax code was written to benefit people?
00:22:57.000 | I have no counter to that.
00:23:03.000 | So what's your political background because on your site, you have this great little graphic called "Take a Hit of Freedom."
00:23:10.000 | What's your political perspective that you come from and philosophy?
00:23:14.000 | I don't want to turn people off.
00:23:18.000 | It's kind of – I was born in '61.
00:23:22.000 | I'm not really a child of the '60s.
00:23:24.000 | It's kind of – I've always been intrigued by it.
00:23:27.000 | But I'm definitely – I'm to the right of Attila the Hun.
00:23:31.000 | OK. So you're over on the libertarian side or just right-wing republican?
00:23:35.000 | Yeah, I would say libertarian.
00:23:38.000 | I worked in government for 20 years.
00:23:42.000 | I've seen how the sausage is made.
00:23:45.000 | And my advice to people is depend on government as little as possible.
00:23:51.000 | I don't know – people's experiences with government are different than mine because I don't think it really does anything well.
00:24:00.000 | And I'm not saying that's their intent, the typical government employee.
00:24:06.000 | I just think the – I call it the inherent limitations of government.
00:24:11.000 | You've got a conscripted clientele.
00:24:15.000 | If you're bad, you don't go out of business.
00:24:17.000 | You've got basically tenured employees, and there's a tendency to get soft and not do a good job.
00:24:24.000 | I've seen it. I've seen it.
00:24:26.000 | I worked in a highway department, and I would say on a typical day we gave the taxpayers about two or three hours of work.
00:24:33.000 | And that's – I'm sure there are other government agencies at different levels that may do better.
00:24:40.000 | But I don't think we were that far off the norm.
00:24:42.000 | And again, I'm not saying they're bad people.
00:24:44.000 | I know the people I work with were basically good people, but they adapt their behaviors to their environment.
00:24:53.000 | And it just – like I said, I prefer less government.
00:24:58.000 | I would love to be able to unbundle some of the government services.
00:25:04.000 | Hey, if you want government to take care of your retirement, hey, go at it.
00:25:10.000 | But me and I would advise people – like I say, it's – people get upset about this.
00:25:18.000 | They go get emotional.
00:25:19.000 | I think if you have a – I call it a prime culture.
00:25:24.000 | You have your work. You don't dabble in drugs.
00:25:31.000 | You try to be a good person.
00:25:33.000 | You don't need as much government as, let's say, the mainstream tells you you need.
00:25:38.000 | Does that make sense, Josh, or am I going too far off?
00:25:42.000 | No. Hey, we're not scared of controversy around here.
00:25:45.000 | The reason I was asking about that is – and you – because in your original proposal that I had read, you used the number of $3,000.
00:25:54.000 | And so let's – and so what happens – what's interesting is if you start with $3,000 and in your original proposal you said $2,000 coming from the government and $1,000 from other sources.
00:26:05.000 | If you just put in $3,000 into that calculator like we just did, 65 years, 10% rate of return as an average over the course of 65 years, $3,000 winds up being about a million and a half dollars.
00:26:21.000 | And so what this demonstrates is it demonstrates the utter absurdity of a program like Social Security because when you recognize that if you just set aside – now, again, we're assuming here that the capital markets continue functioning.
00:26:34.000 | Like they have. We're assuming that the future looks like the past, which is always dangerous.
00:26:39.000 | There are going to be changes.
00:26:40.000 | But you could see how in the private world, $3,000 at the start of a person's life can be multimillions of dollars to provide for their retirement security.
00:26:48.000 | If we just push that number out to 70 here – let me switch the number to 70.
00:26:52.000 | So because that's the average retirement age, 2.3 – so $2,369,000 starting with $3,000 at age zero and then at 70, $2,369,000.
00:27:04.000 | Two and a half, so $2.4 million.
00:27:06.000 | Now, that ought to be enough to pay for a lifestyle of luxury for a 70-year-old.
00:27:14.000 | And you would think if you thought for a moment, you would think, well, wait a second.
00:27:18.000 | Why don't we do this under a program like Social Security?
00:27:20.000 | It will never happen, Mr. Groovy, because you have to deal with the incompetence of bureaucracy.
00:27:28.000 | Yeah, yeah. No, I agree.
00:27:30.000 | I mean part of the reason – it's – I don't like Social Security in the sense that it's a pay-as-you-go.
00:27:38.000 | What we contribute right now is not being – it's not accumulating in some fund, some account for us.
00:27:45.000 | It's just – it's going out.
00:27:47.000 | And we get to do it to future generations when I reach 67, 70.
00:27:53.000 | I don't like that. I'd rather not be dependent on future workers.
00:27:57.000 | I'd rather, if I can, take care of this myself.
00:28:01.000 | So I'm with you. I agree 100 percent.
00:28:05.000 | My fear is it's a political non-starter.
00:28:10.000 | People are – like I said, people, like at least 50 percent of the country, they love government.
00:28:18.000 | If you even talk about diverting some of the money from Social Security to pre-fund someone's retirement, first thing you'll hear out of their mouth is you're privatizing Social Security.
00:28:30.000 | It's an outrage, and I don't know if that could be overcome.
00:28:35.000 | I don't believe it ever will be.
00:28:38.000 | Bush 43 tried.
00:28:40.000 | Yeah, exactly.
00:28:41.000 | I read his autobiography, and one of the things he talked about, he talked about it was that he says in his autobiography, he says it was one of his biggest regrets, that he really thought he could do some good and there was just such pushback.
00:28:54.000 | And there's no – I mean it's – I love that you went through the work to kind of think and say, well, look, if we just tweak this a little bit and we adjusted this and we made this available, then who knows?
00:29:04.000 | Maybe they'll come out – what happened to the MyRA?
00:29:09.000 | Remember somehow people were – there's still the MyRA accounts that technically exist, but …
00:29:14.000 | Is anybody using them?
00:29:16.000 | No.
00:29:17.000 | OK.
00:29:18.000 | That's the thing.
00:29:19.000 | I haven't checked the numbers to be – to give actual data to that.
00:29:23.000 | But they're basically non-effective and because all the people who want to contribute, there are plenty of ways to do it.
00:29:30.000 | And the people who don't, they don't want to contribute.
00:29:34.000 | They need the money.
00:29:35.000 | That's always the challenge.
00:29:37.000 | Right.
00:29:38.000 | It's – there are so many good ideas.
00:29:41.000 | I mean my idea, I'd one-up you.
00:29:43.000 | I'd just get rid of the income tax and then the whole thing is fixed and – or at the very least, just go to a flat tax.
00:29:52.000 | I'd probably give up my hardcore give up the income tax stance if we went to a flat tax.
00:29:59.000 | What was it?
00:30:01.000 | What's his name?
00:30:02.000 | The guy who was running for president, Cruz, Ted Cruz.
00:30:08.000 | He was arguing for – was it 10 or 15 percent flat across the rate?
00:30:12.000 | I'd give up every bracket, every exception.
00:30:14.000 | I'd even give up capital gains if you just put a flat tax because then it aligns incentives.
00:30:19.000 | And all of these things that we go through, we can come up with these plans.
00:30:23.000 | But ultimately, at the center of it stands the problem of the fact that we're adjusting our investment activities in order to avoid the reach of the tax man.
00:30:35.000 | It's crazy.
00:30:37.000 | It's crazy and like I said, I'm with you.
00:30:42.000 | I mean we're definitely kindred spirits.
00:30:44.000 | Let's put it that way.
00:30:45.000 | I didn't know if we would be or not because I thought it was interesting because I hadn't read a bunch on your blog.
00:30:50.000 | But I just thought it would be an interesting discussion either way.
00:30:52.000 | So talk to me – go ahead.
00:30:54.000 | A little sidetrack.
00:30:56.000 | A while back, you did your soliloquy.
00:30:59.000 | Is that the right word?
00:31:00.000 | On education, on college education.
00:31:03.000 | I'm walking.
00:31:04.000 | I'm doing my daily walk.
00:31:05.000 | I'm listening to that.
00:31:06.000 | I'm going, Josh, it was in my freaking brain.
00:31:08.000 | That's exactly the way I think.
00:31:11.000 | That's great.
00:31:12.000 | So tell me in researching for this interview, I told you to go and find some alternatives that you can actually do today.
00:31:19.000 | So talk to me about some of the alternatives for those parents who have children that would love to do more that we actually have in today's world.
00:31:27.000 | Like I said, there are definitely alternatives out there.
00:31:29.000 | They're all – like I said, they're good but they're tough.
00:31:35.000 | One of them is Spark Gift, which I think is a very clever idea where you could buy fractional shares of, let's say, Disney stock and gift it to a child, which is awesome.
00:31:47.000 | I mean I think it's a – like I said, I'd rather give – I don't know what Disney stock is these days.
00:31:53.000 | One-tenth of a share to a child than another gift card so they could buy more stuff.
00:32:00.000 | Again, that's an option.
00:32:03.000 | I don't think it's optimal because I said who – the parents would be the guardians of this stock.
00:32:10.000 | Are they going to hold on to it until the child is 18?
00:32:13.000 | Is the child going to hold on to it?
00:32:15.000 | So I mean it's not a bad idea.
00:32:18.000 | It definitely works.
00:32:19.000 | It could help people out.
00:32:21.000 | The next one I found was from Rick Edelman.
00:32:25.000 | He has something called the Ricky Trust.
00:32:28.000 | Basically, it's – again, you're putting money into a child's account that he can't touch until he's 59 or 60, and it's a great idea.
00:32:38.000 | But for the Ricky Trust, you need a lawyer, and that's $400, and the minimum investment is $5,000.
00:32:46.000 | Again, that's going to help some people out.
00:32:49.000 | Great idea, great workaround, certainly better than anything we have right now.
00:32:54.000 | But part of my idea of thinking about the junior IRA, I try to think of worst-case scenarios.
00:33:01.000 | Let's say I'm thinking of the welfare mother with three kids.
00:33:07.000 | The Ricky Trust isn't an option.
00:33:10.000 | So that's what I say.
00:33:11.000 | It's a great idea.
00:33:12.000 | It could definitely help some people out, but it's definitely people with means.
00:33:17.000 | It's the 1%ers who could more likely take advantage of the Ricky Trust than the average person.
00:33:24.000 | Another one I saw that was pretty interesting – well, let's see.
00:33:34.000 | I don't know.
00:33:35.000 | Let's see if we want to get into that.
00:33:39.000 | Well, are you familiar with Senator Bob Kerrey from Nebraska?
00:33:43.000 | No, I'm not.
00:33:45.000 | Yeah, he was a senator from Nebraska in the '90s, and in the late '90s, he came up with an idea called Kids Save,
00:33:53.000 | which is very similar to my Roth IRA – excuse me, junior IRA.
00:33:58.000 | And he's kind of revived it.
00:34:00.000 | He's no longer a senator.
00:34:02.000 | I think for a while he was a president of the New School in Manhattan.
00:34:07.000 | Now I think he's aligned with some foundation, and they're trying to get that going again.
00:34:15.000 | So, well, that's a tangent.
00:34:19.000 | We may discuss that later.
00:34:21.000 | The other one, technically you can still get a Roth IRA for your child.
00:34:29.000 | Any parent can set up this account for their children.
00:34:33.000 | The only problem is it has to come from – the child has to work.
00:34:38.000 | And again, this is geared towards parents who – let me see.
00:34:43.000 | Let me get that website.
00:34:44.000 | I'm sorry, Joshua.
00:34:47.000 | I should have been more prepared.
00:34:48.000 | No problem.
00:34:50.000 | Yeah, I'll expand the concept.
00:34:51.000 | Any parent who – so the rules, the reason why you have to have a junior IRA concept instead of a Roth IRA for kids is that you're only eligible to participate in a Roth IRA.
00:35:02.000 | You're only eligible to participate in a Roth IRA if you have earned income.
00:35:06.000 | Exactly.
00:35:07.000 | So your zero-year-old or your one-year-old doesn't have earned income to contribute to the account.
00:35:13.000 | So until or unless you can help them to have earned income, they can't participate in a Roth IRA.
00:35:20.000 | But if you can work out a way to allow, enable, equip, facilitate your child receiving some kind of earned income, then you can go ahead and you can establish for them a Roth IRA and then you can make contributions into that account.
00:35:36.000 | And a simple way to do that is just for the parent to do a matching contribution.
00:35:41.000 | So if you can arrange for your child to earn $1,000, go ahead and give your child $1,000 and then use that $1,000 to spend or to invest or to save, teach them their money management with that, and you go ahead and put their earned income into the Roth IRA.
00:35:57.000 | And you can put all of it into the Roth IRA.
00:35:59.000 | And when you're a child filing tax returns, you're generally going to be at a fairly low or nonexistent income tax bracket, especially in the first few thousand dollars of income.
00:36:09.000 | And so it's a good way to go ahead and get some money into an account where it can grow over a child's lifetime with no taxation under current tax law.
00:36:17.000 | Joshua, I found this woman. Her name is Natalie Morris.
00:36:23.000 | If you Google that, she has a website, and she set it up for her kids. And her and her husband, they're into real estate. They have an LLC. And I think they have obviously age-appropriate jobs for their kids through this LLC.
00:36:40.000 | And I think they limit it to $600 a year because I think that's when – I think if it's under $600 and less, you don't have to worry about Social Security taxes.
00:36:50.000 | So there are options, but you've got to be somewhat sophisticated to take advantage of a Roth IRA for a child.
00:36:59.000 | Right, right. And I would encourage listeners to go back and listen to the recent episode I did on teaching – what do I think it's – I think I titled it something like how to teach your 8-year-old to invest where one of the balancing points is children.
00:37:14.000 | So it's my belief children should be working. It's cruel to children not to teach them to work.
00:37:21.000 | And so a lot of people would fight me over those words. But you want to teach children to work.
00:37:26.000 | And so go ahead and employ them. Employ them in your household. Employ them in your business. Go ahead and pay them. Help them to get other jobs.
00:37:33.000 | And then use that income in – if you want to go ahead and do it, use that income to set it up and to establish the Roth IRA.
00:37:40.000 | And then you can help them to start to get some of these benefits that Mr. Groovey is talking about under existing tax law.
00:37:49.000 | Yeah. And like I say, they're all workarounds. And I just say to myself, we have a retirement crisis in this country.
00:37:58.000 | Joshua, hardly a week goes by where I don't see an article about how Americans aren't saving enough. And I just say to myself, why are we making this so hard?
00:38:07.000 | Right. Well, here's why. It's not hard. And so that's where – again, we're going to get into political ideology.
00:38:14.000 | But I'll just tell you my opinion, too, guys. Sit and talking. It's not hard to save for retirement. You proved it.
00:38:20.000 | You were working a government job. You were living in the northeast. You said, "This is crazy. I'm going to pay off my debt.
00:38:25.000 | I'm going to save some money, save a transition fund. I'm going to move to a better place, and now I'm going to focus on living a simpler, less expensive lifestyle."
00:38:33.000 | The reason why we have a retirement crisis is that people do not have the character or the skills to save money. That's it.
00:38:40.000 | It has always been very, very easy in the United States of America for those who had the character and developed the skills to build wealth.
00:38:48.000 | That's why the vast majority of our millionaires are first-generation rich. They did it.
00:38:52.000 | But the problem is that most people don't have the character and they don't have the skills.
00:38:56.000 | And don't expect it to get any better until you substitute a system where people are taught that character, where people are taught those skills.
00:39:05.000 | I could take this conversation to a bunch of areas of how you do that.
00:39:09.000 | But don't expect it to change. It's not going to change. Don't expect the government systems to change.
00:39:15.000 | Because when you look at even just the voting blocs, the older dependent population will continue to vote themselves money until ultimately the federal government goes bankrupt.
00:39:31.000 | That's the only solution that I see to it.
00:39:34.000 | Until what? Greece?
00:39:35.000 | Yeah, and it will happen. I don't know whether it will be a couple decades or a decade or four decades. I don't know.
00:39:41.000 | But I place zero priority for me or my family on expecting any kind of federal entitlement programs.
00:39:52.000 | But what we can do is we don't have to sit around and whine about it. Those things will play themselves out in the coming decades.
00:39:58.000 | Anybody who's paying attention to it knows that Medicare is bankrupt, knows that Social Security is bankrupt.
00:40:06.000 | It's already been adjusted. It will be adjusted a bunch more times to continue the gains.
00:40:10.000 | The key is to say what can we do and what can we do for ourselves.
00:40:14.000 | So what we can do is we can decouple ourselves and we can become less dependent on those systems.
00:40:20.000 | We can get involved and support the people around us and put the infrastructure in place so that when the federal systems fail, that we're in place to help them.
00:40:31.000 | Because we have a responsibility. For example, I have a responsibility for the widows and orphans that are all around me.
00:40:37.000 | I have a responsibility for those who are in need. So I need to be working and preparing now to support those people who aren't going to be supported in the future.
00:40:46.000 | And we have the responsibility and the opportunity to transform the next generation because it's amazingly transformative for your niece or nephew's favorite uncle to –
00:40:58.000 | it's amazingly helpful for your niece or nephew's favorite uncle to give them some shares of stock and teach them how stocks work.
00:41:04.000 | But you can take that as an uncle and you can ramp that up and you can teach them to work.
00:41:09.000 | You can teach them about job skills. You can teach them about business skills. You can teach them about investing.
00:41:14.000 | And if you just simply teach young men and women the concept of compound interest, they get it. They will get it.
00:41:21.000 | And then you can transform people's lives.
00:41:23.000 | And I haven't taught my kids yet about compound interest, but give them about five more years and they will know about it.
00:41:31.000 | Because that was when I understood compound interest and someone explained – and I learned it from a book that I found from a library.
00:41:38.000 | Just a simple little compound interest chart. Here's two savers. One saver starts at 18 and saves until 25.
00:41:44.000 | The other guy kicks in at 25. Kids will get it.
00:41:47.000 | And so take the time and invest the time and energy into teaching them, and that will have tremendous effects throughout society.
00:41:56.000 | Josh, let me ask you a question. You've seen or you know the basic outline of my plan.
00:42:03.000 | What don't you like about it? What are the flaws that you see?
00:42:07.000 | I don't have a – I'll link to the blog post so listeners can read it.
00:42:13.000 | Here at this point, I don't have any problem with your plan.
00:42:20.000 | I have zero interest in pursuing anything with regard to legislation or government influence.
00:42:27.000 | I see it as a total waste of time and I don't wish to be involved in any way.
00:42:32.000 | So what I – that's how I treat it personally.
00:42:36.000 | It's not that I don't have any problem with it, but there are so many great solutions that could be done.
00:42:41.000 | People thinking, careful, considerate people who are accounting for the risks.
00:42:48.000 | They're accounting for the problems. They're accounting for the rebuttals and the objections.
00:42:53.000 | People sit in think tanks up in Washington and around the Beltway and write papers that are brilliant.
00:42:59.000 | But they never does anything, and so I have no interest in participating in that losing game.
00:43:04.000 | I'm doing it as far as I'm concerned with radical personal finance.
00:43:07.000 | I'll just do an end run around them and I'll teach people how to build freedom for themselves and that over time will have an impact.
00:43:13.000 | You always have to change the hearts and minds of people before the government gets involved.
00:43:20.000 | And I also – I mean just – these are my opinions.
00:43:24.000 | I'll just label them as opinions.
00:43:26.000 | As far as I can tell, the federal government will have very – will look very different a half a century from now.
00:43:35.000 | I see no way for – I see no way for the current systems to be resuscitated.
00:43:43.000 | So I don't think that – I don't think there's any problem this year or next year.
00:43:48.000 | But in 30 years or 40 years or 50 years, I just don't see it.
00:43:53.000 | And so what happens is when economic forces press on people, look at how deeply society changed as a result of 2007, 2008.
00:44:02.000 | Now, it's been an interesting ride since then.
00:44:05.000 | But that changed a generation.
00:44:08.000 | That changed how people are affected and the cycles, the best I can guess, these cycles of economic cycles are going to continue to get deeper and stronger.
00:44:19.000 | And so the next recession, there's certainly a possibility and I would say a good possibility that it will be deeper and longer than the last one was.
00:44:30.000 | And that starts to affect people.
00:44:32.000 | And at some point in time, the checks from Washington either dry up or they're worthless and people have to have new solutions.
00:44:39.000 | No, I – Joshua, believe me.
00:44:42.000 | Like I said, we're kindred spirits.
00:44:44.000 | I agree.
00:44:45.000 | Even Mrs. Groovy said this is tilted at windmills.
00:44:48.000 | So yeah, I'm with you.
00:44:51.000 | And I also think that – I think it's a waste of time to pursue anything at a national level.
00:44:57.000 | No, I'm not saying that nobody should do that.
00:45:00.000 | But the biggest political opportunity for people who want to make change is in their local – it's county, city, county, et cetera.
00:45:13.000 | That's where the change happens.
00:45:14.000 | And so I just – I personally don't see any reason to be involved in national politics or to do – or to pay much attention because there's no possibility of changing those.
00:45:25.000 | But on a local level, you can change those.
00:45:28.000 | So people can go in and they can – you can go into the Charlotte school system and you can put in place a better system of education to teach second graders.
00:45:37.000 | You can go in and you can run for a local election and shrink the local budget.
00:45:41.000 | You can affect those things.
00:45:43.000 | And so that's – I don't have any problem with the proposal.
00:45:46.000 | I wanted to give you some airtime and publish it.
00:45:49.000 | But that's why I don't get involved in those.
00:45:52.000 | And you're not wrong.
00:45:54.000 | Like I said, it's a tough problem.
00:46:00.000 | And like I said, I just – we're kicking around some ideas.
00:46:05.000 | And I agree.
00:46:06.000 | I agree.
00:46:07.000 | You don't want to say it's hopeless.
00:46:10.000 | And I agree with you.
00:46:12.000 | It's – you can prepare yourself.
00:46:16.000 | You could do a lot of workarounds and that's probably your best bet.
00:46:21.000 | Right, yeah.
00:46:22.000 | And I mean you look at on taxation on every level.
00:46:25.000 | And so all of the problems that we can identify, they have a solution that somebody can do today or they will be able to do.
00:46:34.000 | So if you want to escape income tax, move.
00:46:36.000 | You want to lower your sales taxes, in the future – I mean 3D printing is going to revolutionize things.
00:46:44.000 | Now it will take another decade or something for it to be perfected.
00:46:47.000 | But all of the systems of control that large federal – that our large federal government has relied on to support itself and to exert influence and control are steadily going to dissolve.
00:47:03.000 | And if you look at – I pay a lot of attention to schooling trends for example.
00:47:08.000 | There is a mass exodus out of government schools.
00:47:10.000 | Now, it's still at the very beginning.
00:47:12.000 | It's still in the smaller stages.
00:47:14.000 | But when you look at it percentage-wise and you look at how things gain traction and you look at those movements, those are the things that I watch and that I think will have influence and control over time.
00:47:27.000 | Agreed.
00:47:28.000 | I said to myself, I don't know what the government schools can teach you right now that you can't learn yourself if you wanted to learn it.
00:47:35.000 | I don't know what they're doing that it costs $10,000 per pupil.
00:47:39.000 | Pupil per year.
00:47:40.000 | You can't do it yourself.
00:47:41.000 | Teachers unions.
00:47:42.000 | Yeah.
00:47:43.000 | You said it.
00:47:44.000 | You were in the highway department, man.
00:47:46.000 | Take that and multiply it times more.
00:47:48.000 | Absolutely.
00:47:49.000 | When I get into these discussions, people talk about crony capitalism.
00:47:52.000 | I said, don't forget crony socialism.
00:47:54.000 | That's a big problem too.
00:47:56.000 | I mean the teachers, as far as they're concerned, any money that goes to education, that's their money.
00:48:01.000 | No one else can touch it.
00:48:03.000 | If you look – I mean you can see it at every level.
00:48:05.000 | The school districts, they got to have the students coming.
00:48:07.000 | Why do you have free breakfast?
00:48:09.000 | I mean it's all follow the money.
00:48:12.000 | And so these things take time.
00:48:14.000 | You have to be patient.
00:48:16.000 | But there are all kinds of people who recognize – there are teachers all around the world who look at someone like Salman Khan and say, "Listen, this guy is an OK teacher.
00:48:24.000 | I can do better than that."
00:48:26.000 | And they leave the system and they go do something better.
00:48:30.000 | And this leaves time where it looks on the outside like everything is hunky-dory.
00:48:39.000 | But what you have is the formerly strong corporation that existed has been gutted.
00:48:47.000 | And so those things have an impact over time.
00:48:50.000 | You just have to be patient to see the effects of it.
00:48:53.000 | And I see them loud and clear as far as I'm concerned.
00:48:56.000 | I mean look at – you on – with writing your blog and being on this show, you can reach – you just reached in this interview thousands of people, probably in excess of 10,000 people all around the world.
00:49:09.000 | When has it ever been possible before in human history for two unknown dudes sitting here having a discussion, airing points of view that are uniquely our own to reach thousands of people?
00:49:21.000 | So now you're making me nervous.
00:49:23.000 | I wasn't nervous just now.
00:49:25.000 | Well, that's good.
00:49:26.000 | So be optimistic about the future and keep writing and keep – I like the idea.
00:49:32.000 | If a junior IRA were an option, I would probably toss $1,000 into one just in case.
00:49:38.000 | I'd also expect the officials to change just like they've changed on almost every law to change the rules at some point.
00:49:46.000 | I'd keep a close eye on them.
00:49:48.000 | But I'd watch it and I'd take advantage of it for as long as I could myself.
00:49:52.000 | Josh always said one of the things I like about you and why I'm a fan is because you give the unknown, the guy in his pajamas with a blog, an opportunity just to voice his ideas.
00:50:05.000 | I really appreciate that, not just for me but for the other people you've given this opportunity to.
00:50:13.000 | I thank you for doing that.
00:50:15.000 | I do it – it's very important to me to do so because – well, I mean it's – experts have their place.
00:50:24.000 | But I don't believe most of them and it's difficult to call them out.
00:50:29.000 | And what happens is that real people, the story that you shared on this interview, that's a story that has resonance with some members of the audience who will sit and look at their situation and say, "Wow, Mr. Groovy did it.
00:50:42.000 | He sounds like a nice guy but he's got that New York accent.
00:50:47.000 | He can't be that smart."
00:50:49.000 | Absolutely.
00:50:50.000 | They'll say, "If he can do it, I can do it."
00:50:53.000 | Josh, would you mind if I let you talk to Mrs. Groovy for a little bit?
00:50:57.000 | She's a big fan of yours and she just wanted to say hello.
00:51:00.000 | Sure, absolutely.
00:51:01.000 | Are you there, Mrs. Groovy?
00:51:02.000 | I'm making the transition.
00:51:03.000 | Hold on.
00:51:04.000 | OK.
00:51:05.000 | Hi, Joshua.
00:51:09.000 | Welcome.
00:51:10.000 | We heard your husband's side of the story.
00:51:12.000 | Did he tell us a bunch of lies or was it actually the case?
00:51:16.000 | No, he talked so loud I was in the other room with the door closed and I could hear him.
00:51:22.000 | So I hear that you are the one who is the savior of the family.
00:51:29.000 | You're the one who found Dave Ramsey.
00:51:31.000 | You're the one who got you guys started on the initial stages of cleaning up the messes and getting stable.
00:51:38.000 | What was it that opened the door to you starting to make those initial changes?
00:51:44.000 | Definitely Dave Ramsey.
00:51:47.000 | He gives me a little bit too much credit.
00:51:49.000 | I think him finding Mr. Money Mustache.
00:51:53.000 | Just before that, he mentioned how he thought he was going to retire at 67.
00:51:59.000 | I was like 44 when we got married.
00:52:01.000 | 67? Are you kidding me?
00:52:03.000 | Over my freaking dead body.
00:52:07.000 | We've just seen too much in our family and friends and death and people dying old, people dying young.
00:52:14.000 | It was just, I don't know, a lot of thoughts I think all came together.
00:52:19.000 | The New York thing was really strange though, the impetus to leave New York and that three-year plan because I always had it in the back of my mind when we got married because I don't have that much family in New York.
00:52:30.000 | He was the one to suggest it.
00:52:32.000 | So that totally blew me away.
00:52:35.000 | I don't think he told you this, but one day after that I looked at him and I said, "You know, that day you told me you wanted to leave New York, I was doing mental backflips."
00:52:45.000 | But I don't know.
00:52:49.000 | He's really the numbers guy.
00:52:52.000 | He says I'm like the crusher of his dreams sometimes.
00:52:57.000 | I'm the one who has to pull him back from things.
00:53:00.000 | He wanted, let's say in New York, we redid our condo.
00:53:03.000 | I mean, yes, we sold it for $340, but Joshua, we are like a realtor's dream.
00:53:09.000 | We stage, we move stuff out, we have a routine in the morning for hiding things.
00:53:14.000 | We had two cats at the time.
00:53:17.000 | He wanted to do cobalt blue countertops in a remodel in that one-bedroom condo.
00:53:23.000 | [Laughter]
00:53:26.000 | He's laughing.
00:53:28.000 | I'm like, "Are you kidding me? People in this building are going to die here.
00:53:32.000 | They haven't even replaced their Formica. We're getting better Formica. Believe me, we'll be fine."
00:53:37.000 | Things like that.
00:53:39.000 | I kind of put the brakes on things, but I really credit him to being the thinker in this family.
00:53:45.000 | I just kind of hold him back sometimes.
00:53:47.000 | What's been the most difficult thing for you to figure out how to get on the same page?
00:53:52.000 | What's been really tough?
00:53:54.000 | I don't want to seem Pollyanna, but we think so much alike in that regard.
00:54:01.000 | We're very different people. I'm type A. He is totally laid back.
00:54:06.000 | Aside from this interview with you, which he was really rearing to go and making the connections and stuff,
00:54:13.000 | I'm usually the one behind going, "Did you answer your comments today?
00:54:17.000 | Are you going to post tomorrow? What the hell are you doing?
00:54:20.000 | That website looks like crap."
00:54:25.000 | When it comes to money, we're really on the same page.
00:54:29.000 | I tell you, the only thing that's been a hard decision is when his family started to relocate to North Carolina,
00:54:37.000 | they decided to move three and a half hours north of us.
00:54:40.000 | This has been like the bane of my existence because we got here first.
00:54:45.000 | There were reasons for it. My niece, my sister-in-law's daughter, has type 1 diabetes.
00:54:52.000 | They wanted to be north and be near Chapel Hill and Duke and that hospital system.
00:54:56.000 | I get it. But of course, she's the daughter in the family.
00:55:00.000 | My mother-in-law and father-in-law wanted to move near her, so everybody moved towards them.
00:55:05.000 | Now we're all getting older, and we need to move near them.
00:55:09.000 | I like the Charlotte area better. He does too, in fact.
00:55:13.000 | But we need to be near family.
00:55:15.000 | This is a little bit more of a complicated decision because my mom passed a few years ago,
00:55:23.000 | and she had an identical twin sister that my brother and I are now responsible for.
00:55:28.000 | We were not going to move her to New York where my brother is because the expenses are outrageous.
00:55:33.000 | We moved her here. She's been in assisted living. She's now in a nursing home.
00:55:38.000 | It's like, "What do we do with her? She's in a really good place, but we can't leave her here.
00:55:42.000 | We're three and a half hours away."
00:55:44.000 | It's logistical stuff, Joshua.
00:55:47.000 | It's not emotional, psychological type of, "Well, he wants to spend on this, and I want to spend on that."
00:55:54.000 | When it comes to money, I just think we lucked out because we knew our values were the same,
00:56:00.000 | but we didn't really discuss money before we got married.
00:56:03.000 | You'd think in our 40s, we'd find one.
00:56:07.000 | I mean, I knew he put his college on his credit card.
00:56:10.000 | He knew I had a little bit of student debt.
00:56:13.000 | Did he tell you how we met?
00:56:15.000 | No, he didn't.
00:56:17.000 | We both, as old fogies, went back for our master's degrees.
00:56:20.000 | Really?
00:56:21.000 | Yeah, at Baruch College in New York.
00:56:24.000 | I lived in the neighborhood, so it was walkable for me.
00:56:28.000 | He bought his condo because it was a five-minute walk from the train station from the Long Island Railroad
00:56:33.000 | so that he could run into Manhattan after work.
00:56:36.000 | That was the reason for him lucking out with that condo.
00:56:40.000 | We met there during a final.
00:56:43.000 | We weren't even in the same class, but he had gotten called in to work during a snowstorm,
00:56:48.000 | like an all-hands-on-deck kind of thing.
00:56:50.000 | Everybody had to work.
00:56:52.000 | He ended up taking his final during my final with the same professor, different class,
00:56:56.000 | and we had a mutual friend.
00:56:58.000 | Wow.
00:56:59.000 | We went out that night.
00:57:00.000 | The rest is history.
00:57:02.000 | Well, just as an aside, I'm a Brooklyn girl.
00:57:04.000 | I grew up with a lot of craziness.
00:57:06.000 | The night that we met, I saw the biggest bar fight I have ever seen in my life.
00:57:12.000 | Paddy wagons were in the street.
00:57:14.000 | Girls were knocking each other out.
00:57:16.000 | We ended up picking a bar.
00:57:20.000 | It was right before Christmas.
00:57:21.000 | We ended up picking a bar where this--I think it was like an IATSE union hall was around the corner,
00:57:26.000 | and the guys had been drinking there since the morning.
00:57:31.000 | My friend bowed out and went home, and later on in the evening, we were going to go to another bar,
00:57:37.000 | Mr. Groovy and I, so my friend bowed out.
00:57:39.000 | Later on, he emailed me, and he said, "I hope you took him to a better place."
00:57:45.000 | I emailed him back.
00:57:46.000 | I'm like, "You're not going to believe it, but a fight broke out in the second bar we went to."
00:57:52.000 | Ah, New York.
00:57:54.000 | New York.
00:57:55.000 | Skyscrapers and everything.
00:57:58.000 | You know where that line's from, right?
00:58:00.000 | I don't.
00:58:01.000 | Oh, Stevie Wonder.
00:58:03.000 | Okay.
00:58:04.000 | I'm ignorant.
00:58:05.000 | I'm an ignoramus when it comes to pop culture.
00:58:07.000 | Oh, it's old pop culture.
00:58:09.000 | Stevie Wonder, living for the city.
00:58:13.000 | So that's it.
00:58:14.000 | I mean, we say we're boring, and we're glad to be boring.
00:58:17.000 | We kind of think the same.
00:58:19.000 | We don't really need much out of life to be happy.
00:58:21.000 | Our health, our family, our friends, our house, which we're going to be downsizing, in fact.
00:58:29.000 | All is good.
00:58:30.000 | All is good in groovy land here.
00:58:33.000 | I could tell just by the name.
00:58:36.000 | Well, thank you to both of you for coming on and sharing your story and sharing your ideas.
00:58:40.000 | And I love the fact that you're blogging and writing about it to share that with others as well.
00:58:45.000 | Thank you.
00:58:46.000 | And thank you so much for your site and for having us on.
00:58:48.000 | And also, just, you know, we listen to a lot of podcasts because we walk every day.
00:58:52.000 | And I always tell Mr. G that I like you because you're very well thought out.
00:58:57.000 | You're not just up there winging it and slapping this stuff out there.
00:59:01.000 | You know, I really see the connection that you make with people.
00:59:04.000 | I really got a kick out of when you were talking to that family.
00:59:08.000 | I called them the Von Trapp family, the ones that were living on the bus.
00:59:11.000 | Uh-huh.
00:59:12.000 | [Laughter]
00:59:14.000 | And you were talking about how you'd hit your head in their home.
00:59:17.000 | [Laughter]
00:59:18.000 | And they were like, "No, no, we could raise the ceiling for you."
00:59:21.000 | [Laughter]
00:59:22.000 | No, I just like your style.
00:59:24.000 | It's really wonderful.
00:59:25.000 | Thank you.
00:59:26.000 | I appreciate the compliments.
00:59:27.000 | And thank you guys for coming on.
00:59:28.000 | Thank you.
00:59:29.000 | Thank you for listening to this episode of Radical Personal Finance.
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