RPF0350-Immaterial_Aspects_of_a_Rich_Life_Now
00:00:00.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, we talk about living a rich life.
00:00:06.360 | Here's my question.
00:00:08.320 | What is a rich life?
00:00:27.240 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast.
00:00:29.040 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:00:30.400 | Thank you for being with me.
00:00:31.400 | This is the show where I work hard to provide you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and
00:00:37.280 | encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan
00:00:42.400 | for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:45.080 | Today we tackle that slogan that I've made up.
00:00:47.640 | I begin the process of explaining what I mean and where it came from.
00:00:59.680 | Throughout the course of Radical Personal Finance, I've looked for a tagline, a slogan
00:01:04.320 | for the show.
00:01:05.320 | Radical Personal Finance, when I chose the name of the show, I was pretty satisfied with
00:01:08.400 | it because I knew it expressed the thought of what I wanted to express.
00:01:13.040 | But I wanted a way to kind of define it a little bit more.
00:01:16.240 | And if you're a long-time listener of the show, you'll hear me in different episodes
00:01:20.000 | struggling for that tagline.
00:01:21.720 | I tried all kinds of different things.
00:01:24.360 | Ultimately, where I settled and I've settled so far, who knows, it may change in the future,
00:01:28.920 | but I settled on this concept of a rich life now and financial freedom.
00:01:34.280 | And I've been using that slogan for a while without ever particularly doing a standalone
00:01:39.400 | show on explaining what I mean for – by that.
00:01:44.080 | What I mean by a rich and meaningful life now and what I mean by a plan for financial
00:01:48.440 | freedom and why 10 years or less, I've never really defended those concepts.
00:01:53.520 | And so today I want to expand on what I mean by those words in hopes that it'll be helpful
00:01:59.380 | and useful to you because I do believe that they express my goal, my desire, my heart
00:02:06.520 | for how I hope that this content will serve you.
00:02:10.040 | And I think that that'll be very, very useful.
00:02:11.600 | Today we're going to talk about what is a rich life.
00:02:15.080 | And then in a future show, we're going to talk about how to live – because today we're
00:02:19.760 | not going to focus on what is a rich life as measured by materialism.
00:02:23.720 | In a future show, we're going to talk about how to live a materially rich life now because
00:02:27.840 | both of those things are important.
00:02:29.240 | Today we're going to discuss many of the immaterial things, but the material things
00:02:32.760 | are also important.
00:02:34.360 | And then in the future, we'll talk about financial freedom, why I'm choosing that
00:02:36.960 | word financial freedom and why 10 years or less.
00:02:40.880 | Because all of these things are very important to me.
00:02:44.000 | But today we kick it off by talking about living a rich life, what that means and how
00:02:47.960 | to do it.
00:02:49.000 | Before I get to this topic, the sponsor of today's show is YNAB.
00:02:52.300 | You need a budget.
00:02:53.300 | This is the budgeting software that I use each and every day.
00:02:55.400 | A few minutes ago, I just was working on my own budget.
00:02:57.720 | I keep one budget for my business, one budget for my personal non-business life, and that's
00:03:02.960 | it.
00:03:03.960 | I keep all of my transactions in YNAB.
00:03:05.920 | I have since the third or fourth quarter of 2015 last year and I absolutely am thrilled
00:03:13.920 | with the software.
00:03:14.920 | It makes so many things extremely useful.
00:03:17.520 | It's the best proactive forward-looking budgeting software that I know of.
00:03:23.080 | If you run a small business, you can also use it.
00:03:25.400 | And here I mean a pretty small business, something like I run which is using a cash basis of
00:03:31.000 | accounting and you just are keeping a simple number of accounts.
00:03:35.580 | You can use YNAB for your business software as well.
00:03:38.000 | That's what I do and I use it for my business budget as well.
00:03:40.480 | It's not a double entry system.
00:03:41.720 | So if you need a double entry system because of the size of your business, you need to
00:03:44.200 | look elsewhere.
00:03:45.280 | But if you're just running a side hobby, maybe a simple side hustle of some kind, use
00:03:50.120 | YNAB for your business as well.
00:03:51.760 | You can try a free 30-day trial.
00:03:53.240 | Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/YNAB.
00:03:56.960 | YNAB is an acronym which refers to you need a budget, affectionately referred to as YNAB.
00:04:04.120 | Now let's talk about living a rich life.
00:04:06.180 | Many people have a dream of being rich.
00:04:11.520 | Many people have a dream of being rich but they don't have it – they don't have
00:04:18.320 | that as a goal.
00:04:19.320 | They don't have something clarified of what being rich actually means.
00:04:23.620 | Now there are some concepts that if I start going through some of the concepts that most
00:04:26.780 | of us would agree on, many people have some vision or some impression of material riches
00:04:33.000 | depending on where you are in the world and in what stage of economic development.
00:04:37.240 | Material riches might mean having enough food in your stomach, might mean not having to
00:04:40.280 | wonder where your next meal comes from.
00:04:42.760 | Material riches might mean having – driving a car that doesn't break down on you continually.
00:04:46.520 | Material riches might mean having a house that has a roof over it that doesn't let
00:04:50.080 | the rain through.
00:04:51.480 | But material riches might also be a shiny black Mercedes-Benz or a house with a pool
00:04:56.840 | or a fancy private jet.
00:04:59.600 | There are all kinds of different definitions of riches, different dreams that people have.
00:05:04.880 | But most people have this dream of being rich but they've never sat down and thought about
00:05:09.000 | what does it actually mean?
00:05:10.180 | What does rich mean to me?
00:05:14.360 | The dictionary definition of rich is one of those definitions that has many, many entries.
00:05:19.200 | A dictionary has at least 19 or almost 20 different definitions, some of which apply
00:05:23.840 | to wealth, for example, having wealth or great possessions, abundantly supplied with resources,
00:05:30.120 | means or funds, wealthy.
00:05:32.800 | Another definition, having wealth or valuable resources, of great value or worth, valuable.
00:05:39.880 | You talk about rich food or costly, expensively elegant or fine as dress or jewels.
00:05:45.960 | You can talk about rich as abounding in desirable elements or qualities.
00:05:49.840 | You can talk about rich as abundant, plentiful or ample.
00:05:53.240 | There are other aspects of rich as well.
00:05:57.800 | So it's a word that we use a lot of times but we don't sit down and describe it.
00:06:01.040 | So what I desire for you and also for myself is to live a rich life.
00:06:07.800 | And in the definition of rich life, I believe we need to talk about the things that are
00:06:11.040 | immaterial as well as the things that are material.
00:06:15.240 | Today we talk about the things that are immaterial because material things come and go and you
00:06:20.240 | can live a rich life in many ways independent of the expression in the physical world if
00:06:28.040 | you're clear on the immaterial aspects of riches.
00:06:32.320 | So I sat down and I made a list of things that to me are hallmarks of a rich life.
00:06:37.840 | I don't claim this to be an exhaustive list.
00:06:40.160 | It's just simply a list I wrote down and I thought had some useful things for you to
00:06:43.520 | consider.
00:06:44.520 | So when I make this list, what I want you to think about is does this – do these ideas
00:06:50.440 | connect with your perception of what it means to be rich?
00:06:56.640 | And is there a way that you can move towards a rich life now?
00:07:00.880 | So let's talk about the first thing.
00:07:03.320 | To me, one of the biggest aspects of a rich life is to be rich in freedom and independence.
00:07:10.720 | When generally people think about the idea of being a millionaire, it's not so much
00:07:15.360 | what their bank statement would look like with a one and six zeros behind it as expressing
00:07:21.760 | their net worth.
00:07:23.920 | Generally what people perceive with the idea of being a millionaire is independence, freedom,
00:07:29.880 | the ability to live by your own code, the ability to live based upon what you want to
00:07:34.760 | do, the expression of autonomy and self-direction, your ability to live free of the man telling
00:07:44.960 | you when to come and when to go and what to do while you're there.
00:07:48.440 | That's probably an almost universal desire is for us to be able to live as we believe
00:07:55.400 | is right and to do as we want to do.
00:07:58.560 | And without financial independence, it is certainly difficult to live a truly free life.
00:08:06.440 | You can gain expressions of it and I don't think you need to wait until you are fully
00:08:11.640 | financially independent in order to have expressions of freedom and independence.
00:08:17.320 | But without question, financial independence makes it easier.
00:08:22.040 | Financial independence brings with it the ability for you to be truly independent intellectually,
00:08:28.520 | truly independent with regard to your opinions and your perspectives and your views on the
00:08:32.720 | world.
00:08:34.080 | Anytime you're accepting money from somebody, it almost always comes with strings attached.
00:08:40.680 | And so many people would like to be free of those strings.
00:08:44.300 | The person who gives you money is usually doing it with some strings attached.
00:08:51.480 | We all know where our bread is buttered and this happens from the micro to the macro.
00:08:54.560 | The simplest one that most of us experience is the idea of employment.
00:08:59.160 | When your employer writes you a paycheck, it comes with strings attached.
00:09:02.280 | You're expected to do a certain job.
00:09:04.400 | You're expected to do it under certain conditions.
00:09:06.880 | If a condition of your employment is that you're there to open the doors of the shop
00:09:10.600 | at 9 a.m. to let the customers come in, well, you got to be there at 9 a.m.
00:09:15.480 | If the condition of your employment is you need to produce work of a certain type or
00:09:19.240 | a certain quality, well, you got to get that work out.
00:09:22.880 | That's the condition of your work.
00:09:24.180 | And if you want to continue receiving that money, you've got to have these certain results.
00:09:29.680 | This goes from the micro to the macro.
00:09:32.840 | Watch in government circles is probably the easiest things to do.
00:09:35.960 | What is it?
00:09:36.960 | How is it that government and politicians hold control over other people?
00:09:42.280 | Well, it's based upon the flow of funds, the flow of money.
00:09:46.140 | This happens on an international basis.
00:09:48.040 | What is a primary tool of large countries that are seeking to exert their influence
00:09:53.780 | and their will all around the world?
00:09:55.960 | Money.
00:09:56.960 | The United States does this through the World Bank, through the International Monetary Fund.
00:10:02.880 | Lending money comes with strings attached.
00:10:04.680 | There's a great book, well worth your time if you're interested in international affairs.
00:10:10.040 | It was published at least a decade or so ago, John Perkins, Confessions of an International
00:10:14.400 | Hitman.
00:10:16.520 | And he talks about his involvement of how the US government specifically exerts its influence
00:10:21.440 | and control all over the world through money, very euphemistically called foreign aid, control.
00:10:29.960 | Now we do the same thing from – for example, in the US and I'm sure in most countries
00:10:33.840 | and governments around the world, it's practically universal.
00:10:36.040 | We do the same thing within a country, within a society.
00:10:39.160 | The federal government exerts its influence over state governments based upon the flow
00:10:43.760 | of money.
00:10:44.760 | What's the proof of this?
00:10:46.640 | Well, think about the recent – all of the recent transgender fights going on in the
00:10:51.360 | United States.
00:10:52.360 | What's the stick that the federal government is attempting to hold over the states based
00:10:57.100 | upon their participation or non-participation with the federal mandates?
00:11:02.320 | Well, we're going to cut off funding.
00:11:04.600 | We're going to cut off your education assistance.
00:11:08.120 | So if your state doesn't step up and do what we think is right, we're going to cut
00:11:11.160 | off these billions of dollars and now as a state governor, you're going to have to
00:11:14.680 | stand up and tell your citizens, yes.
00:11:16.200 | We're taking this stand that we believe is right and it's going to cut off the funding.
00:11:21.240 | Always comes down to money.
00:11:23.160 | What was – what's the carrot or the stick that's used?
00:11:26.080 | Well, we'll give you money if you participate in it.
00:11:28.400 | Education, it's easy to see it in there.
00:11:30.000 | Think about how did the federal government incentivize the various state governments
00:11:34.800 | to participate in the common core standards.
00:11:36.720 | Well, if you participate in common core standards, you'll gain access to this funding.
00:11:41.960 | If you don't, you won't.
00:11:44.880 | Same thing with all government programs.
00:11:46.960 | So we see that on a government basis.
00:11:48.800 | It's always easy because a lot of that information is public and you can see it working.
00:11:52.760 | But this happens on a personal basis.
00:11:55.480 | Generally when you're given money, it comes with strings attached.
00:11:58.920 | When you work for a company, you have a responsibility to represent that company in a positive light.
00:12:05.920 | You will necessarily censor your opinions and your perspectives to please your employer
00:12:11.280 | because if you become a liability, political liability, you express opinions that are unpopular,
00:12:18.920 | your employment will terminate.
00:12:22.000 | So without financial independence, it's very difficult to live as truly free.
00:12:28.920 | Now is it possible to ever become truly, absolutely, completely free?
00:12:34.920 | Personally I doubt it because all of us are responsible to somebody.
00:12:40.800 | For example, I've worked very hard to build this independence into my income stream.
00:12:46.760 | I'm not financially independent to the point where I'm able to live purely off of the income
00:12:50.160 | from my investments.
00:12:51.480 | But I am very independent with regard to my business where I've sought and worked very
00:12:56.720 | hard to build an independence where I don't have a corporate structure over me.
00:13:02.080 | I don't have a boss that I have to please other than myself.
00:13:06.640 | Now does this mean that I'm fully independent?
00:13:09.320 | No.
00:13:10.520 | Because who do I have to please?
00:13:11.840 | My customers.
00:13:13.800 | I have to please you, my listening audience.
00:13:17.320 | Now you have to define who are your customers.
00:13:18.920 | This is one of the challenges with accepting advertising on Radical Personal Finance.
00:13:22.600 | If I accept advertising, I need to please my advertisers.
00:13:25.480 | And so I know that comes with a cost.
00:13:29.320 | I have to please you, my customers.
00:13:30.320 | This is why I've worked hard to set up the patron program and all of that because I want
00:13:33.680 | my fundamental allegiance to be serving you.
00:13:39.240 | But I'm still not fully independent.
00:13:41.100 | Even if I were financially independent, I could live off of the income from my investments,
00:13:44.920 | would I still truly be free?
00:13:47.520 | I don't think so.
00:13:48.520 | I mean there is a point at which you could get there.
00:13:51.000 | But at the end of the day, you're still responsible for those investments.
00:13:53.680 | If I own stock in a company, well, that company has got to please its customers.
00:13:58.440 | If I own real estate, that real estate has to serve the needs of its inhabitants.
00:14:04.280 | So you can move closer and closer towards this type of freedom.
00:14:09.040 | I think it's probably not fully achievable.
00:14:12.400 | Maybe I'm wrong.
00:14:14.160 | But at any rate, I believe that we should all seek to live as free as possible of the
00:14:19.120 | charity or financial input or strings that come from other people.
00:14:24.360 | I don't think this is necessarily right or wrong as far as, well, you're wrong if you
00:14:29.120 | take this input.
00:14:30.120 | You're wrong if you have a job and you have to go and build a business.
00:14:32.320 | No.
00:14:33.320 | But it's going to come with a cost.
00:14:35.240 | And if you desire to live a rich life, that rich life can be measured in terms of freedom
00:14:39.980 | and independence.
00:14:41.400 | So seek to live rich now with regard to enjoying the maximum amount of freedom and independence
00:14:50.040 | that you can build for yourself.
00:14:51.440 | This is a progressive scale.
00:14:54.400 | But it's not only achieved when you're old and rich and financially independent.
00:14:59.320 | You can move towards it based upon the decisions that you make today.
00:15:03.520 | And the fundamental theme that I desire for you to see throughout radical personal finance
00:15:09.120 | is that you can make consistent choices that will lead you toward a lifestyle of greater
00:15:14.480 | freedom, greater autonomy, and greater independence.
00:15:19.280 | And this can be tremendously helpful to you as you develop other things that are important
00:15:25.400 | to you.
00:15:27.320 | The next aspect of living a rich life now is living a life that's rich in choices.
00:15:33.240 | Financial independence gives you choices.
00:15:34.880 | It gives you options.
00:15:37.040 | You have the choice to get up and go to work or to stay home and read a book.
00:15:43.100 | Having those choices is incredibly valuable.
00:15:47.080 | One of the things that causes people to feel a great amount of stress is feeling like they
00:15:50.160 | don't have a choice.
00:15:51.160 | If you're doing work that – think about the idea of human slavery, human chattel slavery.
00:15:58.440 | In this idea of slavery, what is so bad about slavery?
00:16:04.120 | Is it the actual work that's involved?
00:16:06.960 | Well, sometimes it is.
00:16:09.120 | If you study the history of slavery in some parts of the world or in some slave-owning
00:16:13.320 | societies historically, whether historical societies or current societies where slavery
00:16:18.560 | is encouraged, it's deprivation of physical comfort.
00:16:23.520 | Like there's just some serious abuse of people involved in it.
00:16:28.040 | But many times in slavery, in many slave masters, there's been very little actual physical
00:16:36.980 | abuse of the slaves.
00:16:39.720 | But is it still unattractive?
00:16:42.400 | Well, most of us would say yes.
00:16:45.640 | And here I'm not talking about the morality of it.
00:16:47.640 | I'm just talking about the practical expression for the sake of demonstrating the point.
00:16:51.920 | It's unattractive because you have no choice.
00:16:55.280 | What's so difficult about being a prisoner?
00:16:57.120 | It's not the physical conditions.
00:17:00.000 | Prisoners usually have a bed to sleep in.
00:17:01.760 | A lot of times they have climate control.
00:17:04.260 | They can do things in the United States.
00:17:05.920 | We have pretty comfortable prisons.
00:17:07.280 | They can have a TV connection, maybe an internet access.
00:17:10.920 | They can read books.
00:17:11.920 | They can learn.
00:17:12.920 | They have a library.
00:17:13.920 | They have weightlifting equipment depending on what level of your incarceration.
00:17:17.480 | But it's that deprivation of choice, that deprivation of freedom that has the biggest
00:17:21.480 | impact.
00:17:25.520 | Same thing with slavery, the deprivation of choice.
00:17:28.640 | If you have the choice, you might do exactly the same things on a daily basis that a prisoner
00:17:36.040 | would do.
00:17:37.080 | And yet you would experience a great deal of fulfillment in those things because you're
00:17:43.300 | doing it based upon your own choice.
00:17:46.100 | You might do exactly the same things that a human slave might do.
00:17:50.040 | But because you're doing it by choice, you might not sense the negative aspects of it.
00:17:56.160 | So you want to live a life that's rich in choices.
00:17:58.760 | Well, financial independence gives you choices, but there are different expressions of that.
00:18:02.080 | Million bucks in the bank, that gives you choices.
00:18:03.740 | But you know what?
00:18:04.740 | So does $10,000 in the bank.
00:18:07.200 | Because to a person who doesn't save any money and who's never saved money, $10,000 in the
00:18:11.560 | bank gives them the option of walking out of one job and walking into another one.
00:18:16.720 | Gives them the option of picking up, loading up their car and driving from one city to
00:18:20.440 | another.
00:18:21.440 | Gives them the option of changing from one career to another.
00:18:23.260 | Gives them the option of moving out of a dangerous situation.
00:18:27.300 | And so to live a rich life, you want to develop for yourself a maximum number of choices.
00:18:32.500 | How do you see this theme expressed in radical personal finance?
00:18:35.420 | Well, first, again, obviously, constantly we're working towards becoming financially
00:18:38.740 | independent as defined by being able to live off of the income from your investments.
00:18:42.540 | However, I also talk about savings.
00:18:44.620 | Also talk about low expenses, maintaining expenses at a very low level.
00:18:50.060 | The reality is, and I freely share many of my expenses on the show, not to impress you
00:18:54.940 | with how rich or how poor I am, but to demonstrate and impress upon you the value of having low
00:19:00.100 | expenses.
00:19:01.100 | If you have low expenses, you have choices.
00:19:02.980 | I have very few fears of running radical personal finance and starting an entrepreneurial endeavor
00:19:08.860 | because I have very low fixed expenses.
00:19:12.540 | And so I'm willing to run the risk of failure in my own business pursuits because I know
00:19:18.360 | there are plenty of jobs that I can go and do.
00:19:20.500 | I can take an entry level job doing manual menial labor and I can support my family such
00:19:25.740 | that we have a roof over our heads and food that we eat.
00:19:28.940 | If I make poor investments and we lose all of our money, it's going to be okay.
00:19:38.180 | Low expenses give you choices.
00:19:40.740 | So I desire that same sense of freedom for you.
00:19:45.300 | I desire for you to have a lot of choices.
00:19:47.620 | And there are tools and things that we constantly talk about to try to make sure that you know
00:19:51.620 | that you have many choices.
00:19:53.820 | One goal I have is often to profile different people's experiences, people living different
00:19:58.040 | lifestyles than you so that you recognize that you have a choice about where you live.
00:20:02.940 | You have a choice about what you do.
00:20:05.300 | You have a choice about how you live.
00:20:08.260 | I use the extreme examples to impress that upon you, that you have a choice.
00:20:12.980 | Now you may continue to choose to live where you live, to do what you do, to live as you
00:20:18.620 | live, but doing it from a place of choice, having purposefully chosen that, will change
00:20:24.900 | your experience of it.
00:20:27.260 | That leads to a rich life.
00:20:31.900 | Another expression of living a rich life is to live a life that's rich in time and time
00:20:37.460 | freedom.
00:20:39.700 | In many ways, time is the essence of life.
00:20:42.660 | It's how we define life.
00:20:45.220 | Study of time is a fascinating study philosophically, but I think it's fair to say that time is
00:20:51.100 | the stuff of life.
00:20:52.100 | What you experience is right now, the present moment.
00:20:55.140 | In many ways, when I talk and do private coaching with people and talk to them, what I generally
00:20:59.860 | hear is a desire to have control over time.
00:21:05.620 | That's what many of us want, is control over our time.
00:21:09.260 | This ties in with choice, but we want to have the choice of what to do with our time.
00:21:14.380 | My desire is that you can achieve that quickly.
00:21:18.340 | I don't think you need to wait a decade to achieve that.
00:21:20.060 | I think you can achieve it in a few months.
00:21:22.180 | Switch to a job where you have control over your time.
00:21:24.500 | Now you also will have responsibilities, but you can gain this control over your time with
00:21:31.140 | choices.
00:21:32.820 | You can also choose to surrender this control over time in order to have other benefits.
00:21:40.420 | Recently, I did a private consulting call with a listener who is a physician.
00:21:46.980 | By the way, if you want to do a private consulting call with me, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/phonecall
00:21:52.660 | and I do private consulting calls with you if you'd like to consult on your personal
00:21:56.020 | situation.
00:21:57.020 | I was speaking with this listener, and this listener was a physician, a fairly high-earning
00:22:03.020 | specialty physician making plenty of money.
00:22:06.220 | As I was speaking with this listener, they expressed that they were thrilled with their
00:22:09.660 | practice.
00:22:10.660 | They were thrilled with their business.
00:22:11.900 | It was extremely profitable, but they weren't so thrilled with the lack of financial independence.
00:22:17.500 | In talking through that situation, I asked this listener, I said, "What is it that bothers
00:22:21.820 | you about...
00:22:23.600 | Why do you feel like you need to be financially independent?"
00:22:25.940 | Because from my perception, this person was experiencing all of the freedom.
00:22:29.940 | They were living a great lifestyle.
00:22:31.280 | They had a great family life.
00:22:32.900 | They had a lot of benefits.
00:22:34.580 | They had a lot of vacation time.
00:22:36.300 | They had tons of money, et cetera.
00:22:38.780 | I said, "What's stressing you out?"
00:22:41.460 | Well, what was stressing out was as a physician, I have to be on call at a certain time.
00:22:46.580 | I have to be there on these hours and I don't have freedom over it.
00:22:50.140 | Well, my advice to this person was politely get over it in the sense that you have so
00:22:56.300 | many other benefits and you have so much flexibility of time that your need to be there with a
00:23:03.180 | patient at 8 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday morning as they go into surgery, your need
00:23:07.500 | to be there with that patient.
00:23:09.500 | This is a very small price to pay in exchange for everything else that you achieve.
00:23:15.860 | It's a small price to pay in exchange for the money that you earn, which can buy you
00:23:20.740 | additional freedom in the future.
00:23:21.740 | It's a small price to pay for the amount of vacation time that you have.
00:23:24.700 | It's a very small price to pay.
00:23:26.900 | So here, just simply recognizing that can help you to live a life that's richer.
00:23:32.580 | But having control and having a richness of time, the control over time and choices of
00:23:38.580 | what to do with your time will help you to experience a rich life.
00:23:43.260 | This is one of the things that I enjoy the most about my own business pursuits, that
00:23:50.260 | I can choose what I do with my time.
00:23:52.580 | Now, this is a double-edged sword.
00:23:56.020 | It comes with a tremendous responsibility.
00:23:57.260 | It's challenging and I struggle many times with knowing how to handle it.
00:24:01.920 | But one thing that running your own business does give you is it gives you the ability
00:24:05.540 | and the opportunity to make a choice on a daily basis of what to do with your time.
00:24:12.780 | When you take the choice of time and mix it with some of the other choices, the financial
00:24:17.740 | choices like having low expenses, now you have the ability to pursue the things that
00:24:22.540 | you think are important, whether they're connected to money or not.
00:24:27.620 | Next aspect of living a rich life is living a life that's rich in relationship value.
00:24:35.500 | Time is the stuff of life and relationships are the stuff of life.
00:24:40.480 | The quality of your experience of life will in many ways be determined by the quality
00:24:45.340 | of your relationships.
00:24:48.100 | This is an area that many of us can make significant improvements by simply recognizing it and
00:24:53.020 | focusing on it.
00:24:55.660 | I need to do more shows on the topic, but I believe that if it requires money to spend
00:25:01.140 | on relationships, you probably should do that before you should buy stocks.
00:25:07.100 | Someone can work a job that the actual functions of it he doesn't necessarily feel all that
00:25:12.540 | enthusiastic about, but if he's working that job with people that he enjoys being with
00:25:17.740 | and if his home life is in good repair and in good shape, his experience of life is going
00:25:23.420 | to be pretty high quality.
00:25:26.300 | On the same hand, many of us have experienced the joy of doing something that's fun, that
00:25:31.700 | we like to do, the physical act or the physical work, but when you're doing it with people
00:25:35.700 | that make you miserable or if you have a miserable home life, your experience of that job is
00:25:41.300 | pretty, pretty rough.
00:25:44.540 | So by investing in the quality of your relationships with your immediate family members, investing
00:25:50.220 | in the quality of relationships with your coworkers, with your customers, with your
00:25:53.940 | employees, with your friends, this will lead you to the experience of a rich life.
00:26:04.620 | When you get old, you're going to look back and reflect on your relationships, and based
00:26:11.020 | upon what you do with those relationships, your aging process will be very different.
00:26:19.940 | I have no desire to be an old rich person, meaning rich in financial wealth, who has
00:26:30.660 | destroyed all the love that others have for me based upon my actions and behavior.
00:26:38.600 | Far better to be completely financially broke but be surrounded by people who love you and
00:26:47.240 | who care for you than the opposite.
00:26:54.480 | Far better to experience that.
00:26:55.820 | It's one of the things where I have a personal real just frustration with how in the US American
00:27:01.700 | society we view children.
00:27:03.620 | I'd rather have children who love me and pour into their lives and take the cost of that
00:27:11.820 | and get to experience the joy of relationship throughout my entire life than place the priority
00:27:18.160 | and emphasis on financial gain for myself and wind up without relationship wealth, without
00:27:26.000 | relational wealth.
00:27:27.900 | Now it's not an either or.
00:27:30.860 | You can only have one or the other.
00:27:32.340 | I believe you can have both.
00:27:34.400 | But if you have to choose, you can guess where my choice will be.
00:27:41.060 | I'll pick relationships.
00:27:46.300 | Living a rich life means that you live a life that's rich in meaning and impact.
00:27:52.460 | Man has a deep desire for immortality and impact beyond the grave.
00:27:58.580 | I think it's very healthy to always recognize that life ends in death and that you and I
00:28:05.500 | are in the process of dying.
00:28:08.700 | I always shrink away from people who want to talk about death euphemistically.
00:28:13.140 | I think it's a very bad cultural trend that we don't face death.
00:28:20.180 | We try to hide death away and not face it head on.
00:28:23.220 | Guess what?
00:28:24.220 | You're in the process of dying and that should have an impact on you today.
00:28:29.780 | It should have an impact on how you live.
00:28:32.980 | Now you could take that in many different directions.
00:28:35.580 | I won't try to decree for you how you should take that at this moment.
00:28:38.980 | But simply to say that at the end of your life, you're going to be looking back and
00:28:42.220 | wanting to see a life that had meaning and impact on things that are important to you.
00:28:52.100 | So rich life is one that has meaning and impact that will go beyond your own life.
00:29:00.100 | A rich life is a life that's rich in experience, especially a life that's rich in a diversity
00:29:05.640 | of experience.
00:29:09.060 | One of the most pleasurable, rich things that you can do in your life is to learn new things.
00:29:17.140 | Learn and apply new things, new skills.
00:29:19.620 | It's a great danger in looking to always be entertained because entertainment is generally
00:29:26.420 | passive.
00:29:28.020 | But if you can engage in something that's active, you'll get far more appreciation for
00:29:32.260 | the activity out of it.
00:29:33.940 | What I encourage is don't just live in one way.
00:29:37.620 | Look at diverse experience.
00:29:42.740 | One of the challenges of wealth is you often lose appreciation for it.
00:29:48.400 | If you live in a place where lobster is cheap and you eat it all the time, it's no longer
00:29:52.100 | a special event.
00:29:53.100 | Eat enough lobster, I've heard from those who've lived in such places, they say eat
00:29:57.780 | enough lobster, it tastes like soap.
00:30:00.620 | I believe it.
00:30:02.420 | Because if you do the same thing over and over again, it becomes somewhat boring.
00:30:06.620 | It becomes somewhat the same.
00:30:07.740 | So challenge yourself.
00:30:10.940 | I think we can challenge ourselves and intentionally create a diversity of experience if we focus
00:30:17.060 | on it.
00:30:18.500 | If you're used to living in material comfort and material luxury, challenge yourself by
00:30:24.060 | living without material comfort or without material luxury.
00:30:27.300 | It's relatively easy to do.
00:30:29.620 | Go camping.
00:30:30.660 | Make yourself do without material luxury, material comfort.
00:30:34.860 | When you go home, you'll appreciate your nice soft bed a little bit more.
00:30:40.400 | Or if you're used to living a rough and difficult life, figure out a way that you can treat
00:30:44.760 | yourself to some material luxury, material comfort.
00:30:47.740 | It's very accessible.
00:30:49.940 | Many times people spend all their time eating every Wednesday and Friday night at TGI Fridays
00:30:55.280 | and feel like, "Well, I can't ever buy the $300 meal."
00:30:59.020 | Well, you can.
00:31:00.460 | Take a few weeks and don't eat at TGI Fridays and save up and go and enjoy the special experience.
00:31:07.580 | You're going to really enjoy it.
00:31:09.820 | You'll enjoy it especially because it's unique.
00:31:12.060 | It's diverse.
00:31:13.640 | Seek out a diverse experience with people, diverse exposure to people who live all in
00:31:18.320 | different ways.
00:31:21.260 | This often is reflected in people's goal of travel.
00:31:24.560 | Some people like travel.
00:31:25.560 | Some people don't like travel.
00:31:26.560 | But to me, one of the biggest benefits of travel is diversity of experience.
00:31:31.320 | You face new things.
00:31:32.320 | You face new ideas.
00:31:33.320 | You face new philosophies.
00:31:34.320 | You're going to be challenged.
00:31:35.320 | If you want to travel, go for it.
00:31:37.960 | But don't feel like if you can't travel that you can't do it.
00:31:40.600 | Just reach out beyond your comfort zone and invite somebody to dinner in your neighborhood.
00:31:46.120 | I have a Mexican family staying with me right now with me and my family.
00:31:50.840 | It's been fantastic.
00:31:53.000 | Spend all kinds of time talking about it.
00:31:54.520 | We've been talking about – they're tried and true Mexicans, lived there their whole
00:31:58.240 | life in their late 40s.
00:32:02.520 | So we're talking about it and it's so interesting to talk about Donald Trump and
00:32:06.440 | his comments on Mexicans with a Mexican family.
00:32:09.360 | It's a lot more interesting than talking about Donald Trump and his comments with Mexicans
00:32:12.880 | with all my white friends.
00:32:15.620 | Do this with – invite your Asian neighbors over.
00:32:18.560 | Invite your – if you're a Christian, invite your atheist neighbors over.
00:32:22.440 | If you're an atheist, invite your Christian neighbors over.
00:32:26.040 | Seek to gain from someone else's experience and all of a sudden you'll start to really
00:32:29.920 | enjoy things a little bit more.
00:32:31.600 | You'll start to be challenged in what you think.
00:32:34.040 | You'll start to appreciate different perspectives, different opinions.
00:32:38.000 | Again, you don't have to travel to do this.
00:32:41.040 | Just set aside on your weekly calendar one night per week and invite a different one
00:32:45.640 | of your neighbors over every week.
00:32:48.320 | My family has Tuesday night.
00:32:49.480 | Every Tuesday night we have somebody different over for dinner.
00:32:52.400 | That gives me an opportunity to expose my children to all kinds of different perspectives
00:32:56.920 | and all kinds of different ideas.
00:32:58.960 | That leads to me being challenged and exercised and it leads to a rich life.
00:33:04.560 | It doesn't cost that much to have somebody over.
00:33:06.880 | Add an extra five bucks.
00:33:08.160 | You're going to be eating food anyway.
00:33:10.200 | Put an extra cup of rice in the pot and throw an extra steak on the grill.
00:33:13.600 | It's about five bucks extra.
00:33:16.960 | What you gain from it will go far beyond the expense because now you'll have a diversity
00:33:23.200 | of experience and you'll be challenged in your perspectives and in your opinions.
00:33:27.200 | You'll see the world differently.
00:33:29.800 | That's a rich life.
00:33:35.520 | Another aspect of living a rich life is live a life that's rich and full of hard work.
00:33:40.960 | There's a great danger in the US American culture.
00:33:46.000 | There's a great danger in the financial independence early retirement movement.
00:33:51.640 | I don't know if it's called a movement but perspective.
00:33:57.040 | The danger is to seek ease and relaxation.
00:34:02.960 | The danger is to seek recreation.
00:34:07.760 | Some of the most miserable people in the world are those who don't have any work to do.
00:34:16.000 | Hard work has huge benefits.
00:34:20.160 | There's a Bible proverb that teaches, "In all toil, there is profit, but mere talk tends
00:34:26.720 | only to poverty."
00:34:27.720 | I like that proverb.
00:34:29.960 | A couple of different ways you can look at it.
00:34:32.200 | But I just love the idea, "In all toil or in all work, there is profit."
00:34:37.240 | Think about how satisfying it is to engage in something difficult and to finish it.
00:34:44.080 | Think about how satisfying it is to look out at your front lawn and it's just covered in
00:34:47.840 | weeds and it needs some work and you go out there and you toil and you sweat and you mow
00:34:51.360 | the lawn and you pull the weeds and you spruce things up and you get to the end of that afternoon.
00:34:56.920 | You sit down on your front porch and you look at the lawn and it makes you go, "Ah."
00:35:02.880 | Does something in you.
00:35:04.200 | It's a huge danger for those of us who are so-called knowledge workers and that we don't
00:35:08.400 | get that same sense of satisfaction.
00:35:12.800 | Tradespeople who work with their hands are much more mentally healthy than those of us
00:35:17.720 | who are knowledge workers because you can see the results of your effort.
00:35:21.440 | You can see the results of your work.
00:35:23.760 | Hard work feels good.
00:35:25.640 | Recreation and relaxation and rest and rejuvenation only feel good when they come after the hard
00:35:31.800 | work.
00:35:33.520 | When they become the priority, they become very empty and very hollow.
00:35:40.800 | So don't be scared of hard work.
00:35:43.080 | Wade in, roll up your sleeves and tackle it, whatever that work is.
00:35:47.240 | I'm not implying that because you're financially independent means that you can't work hard,
00:35:57.360 | but your experience of financial independence will be much better if you just simply take
00:36:00.600 | some of the work that you've been doing for money and you apply it to things that you
00:36:03.960 | may or may not do for money, but work hard.
00:36:12.120 | And finally, my final expression, perhaps the most important one as a rich life, is
00:36:16.840 | a life that's filled with spiritual peace, peace with God, because on that basis, everything
00:36:24.560 | else can go away, but yet that peace can be experienced now and that sense of richness
00:36:33.600 | can be experienced.
00:36:34.760 | And this is entirely independent of all of the other factors.
00:36:43.520 | One of the most influential, one of the most important factors, it's the one where if everything
00:36:48.120 | else is taken away from you, if you have no independence, if you have no choices, if you're
00:36:53.800 | a slave, if you have no control over time, if you have difficult relationships, if you
00:36:58.920 | are doing things that are not meaningful and impactful, if you're doing things that are
00:37:04.400 | the same all the time, so you have no diversity of experience, well, if you're at peace with
00:37:10.400 | God, it's a rich life.
00:37:14.400 | It's the cornerstone.
00:37:18.600 | And it fundamentally transforms the experience of everything else.
00:37:24.160 | Now all of these things are immaterial.
00:37:28.280 | Haven't talked about houses and cars and fancy clothes and fine wine.
00:37:34.560 | But guess what?
00:37:35.560 | If you have all of these things, those immaterial...excuse me, those material things, they're nice to
00:37:41.600 | have.
00:37:42.600 | I enjoy going to sleep in a nice soft bed.
00:37:46.720 | I like having a fancy phone.
00:37:49.840 | Enjoy having enough food in my stomach.
00:37:52.960 | But we all know that the material things are temporal.
00:37:57.480 | And these immaterial aspects are far more important.
00:38:00.920 | They make a far bigger difference.
00:38:06.960 | But in some ways, they're far harder to achieve.
00:38:08.760 | They're far harder to get clarity.
00:38:10.680 | They require much more work, much more searching.
00:38:13.680 | It's a lot easier to set a goal and say, "I'm going to buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle
00:38:19.400 | and fulfill my dream of owning a Harley-Davidson."
00:38:21.520 | Much easier to do that than to say, "I'm going to have a goal of getting at peace with God."
00:38:27.200 | The Harley-Davidson is tangible.
00:38:31.920 | It's concrete.
00:38:34.560 | You can make a goal.
00:38:35.560 | You can make a plan.
00:38:36.560 | You can set out, "Okay, it's going to cost me $25,000.
00:38:38.360 | I can save it a savings rate of $500 a month.
00:38:40.680 | Therefore, based upon my savings rate, it's going to take me this number of months."
00:38:45.280 | That's why we tend to jump towards those things.
00:38:50.160 | Most of us probably have some tangible and material goals.
00:38:52.360 | I've been enjoying a few months ago, I got some paddle boards.
00:38:56.360 | And just a week or two ago, I went ahead and bought a small RV.
00:38:59.680 | I've been enjoying that, fixing it up, fixing a couple of things that need to be fixed to
00:39:03.040 | make it truly roadworthy.
00:39:04.600 | If you want to see a picture of it, it's on my Instagram page, instagram.com/joshuasheets.
00:39:10.360 | But it's great.
00:39:11.360 | But you know what?
00:39:13.360 | If you take a tangible...
00:39:15.040 | If I took that tangible goal, that RV, and if my life were a life of turmoil, if my relationships
00:39:22.600 | were out of line, if I was experiencing stress and conflict in all parts, the experience
00:39:29.040 | of using that material item, the RV would be very different.
00:39:33.720 | So these are the hard things.
00:39:36.240 | These are the difficult things to work through.
00:39:39.200 | But they have a far bigger influence than those concrete materialistic things.
00:39:47.960 | So before you jump to, "I want a big fancy house and I want a fine wardrobe filled with
00:39:53.160 | fancy clothes," spend some time thinking through, "What is your definition of a rich life?"
00:40:04.360 | Spend some time considering these ideas of mine and then make your own list.
00:40:10.120 | Again, I don't claim that this list is in any way exhaustive or complete.
00:40:13.880 | It's just a list I made up.
00:40:16.600 | But I think there's some food for thought here.
00:40:18.520 | I think these things will make a difference for you.
00:40:20.760 | And when you are seeking to live a rich life now, you don't need to be a millionaire to
00:40:25.040 | get these things in line.
00:40:28.480 | You don't need to ever be a millionaire to live a rich life.
00:40:34.440 | When you think about the people who are many times most honored and respected, it almost
00:40:40.880 | never had anything to do with their financial wealth.
00:40:49.600 | Many times the people who had the most financial wealth in history often face the least respect.
00:40:56.000 | And they had to work to do something to gain social respect.
00:41:00.200 | It's often a guilt complex with many people who achieved great wealth and they try to
00:41:05.040 | do something different.
00:41:08.420 | But think about historical figures that you admire and respect.
00:41:13.800 | Think about presidents of countries, American presidents.
00:41:17.400 | Is there an American president that you admire or respect?
00:41:21.720 | Think of that person.
00:41:22.720 | Now ask yourself, how wealthy were they?
00:41:26.440 | Do you have any idea?
00:41:29.160 | Most of us don't.
00:41:31.800 | No idea.
00:41:34.340 | Think about a social figure, somebody who was influential in society, an actor, an actress,
00:41:40.640 | a scientist, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin.
00:41:46.680 | These people that had influence, do you have any idea how rich Einstein was or how rich
00:41:49.720 | Darwin was or how rich Newton was?
00:41:53.680 | We don't know.
00:41:56.480 | We know their name because of something else.
00:41:59.800 | Think about religious figures, philosophers.
00:42:02.840 | Gandhi, there's a famous picture of what he died with when – I think he's like a white
00:42:10.440 | toga and a pair of spectacles, a pair of sandals and a bowl and a spoon I think was all he
00:42:15.120 | owned.
00:42:16.120 | Jesus Christ, the most influential man in history, didn't even own the clothes on
00:42:21.640 | his back at the end.
00:42:25.200 | We often forget that in a materialist culture.
00:42:27.800 | We forget that these people had an impact that went far beyond money.
00:42:34.160 | We spend all of our time chasing money and we neglect the greater things.
00:42:40.720 | Don't let that happen to you.
00:42:44.880 | If this show has been useful to you, at least to inspire you to think, again, write down
00:42:50.120 | your own list.
00:42:51.440 | Make sure that you're clear on what is a rich life.
00:42:54.480 | I don't mind if it's different from mine.
00:42:57.400 | Maybe who knows, maybe I'll do a show like this in a couple of years and maybe my things
00:43:01.840 | that are on this now will change.
00:43:05.240 | But you can live a rich life now.
00:43:07.560 | It takes intentionality.
00:43:09.560 | It takes thought.
00:43:10.800 | It takes hard work.
00:43:11.800 | It takes design.
00:43:12.800 | It often doesn't take money.
00:43:16.600 | Some of these things do take money.
00:43:17.840 | We'll talk about money later.
00:43:20.720 | We always talk about money.
00:43:21.720 | But many of these things don't take money.
00:43:25.240 | Rich in relationships, you could take the same money that you're going to spend on dinner
00:43:29.080 | tonight with your spouse.
00:43:31.840 | But if you turn off the TV, take the food, put it in a basket and take it out to a park
00:43:37.160 | where you can watch the sunset, your experience of that dinner will be very different.
00:43:45.600 | Take that workday lunch that you were going to spend with a co-worker and just mindlessly
00:43:49.480 | toss off the 15 bucks for lunch and call an old friend.
00:43:55.040 | Set up lunch with the old friend.
00:43:56.440 | All of a sudden now, your experience will be different.
00:44:00.840 | Anyway, I've made the point enough times.
00:44:03.840 | Thank you all so much for listening.
00:44:06.040 | I think the next show we'll talk about material wealth.
00:44:08.400 | We'll talk about ways to get a great bargain because material things matter.
00:44:12.280 | They are important.
00:44:13.960 | It's a fallacy to think that you can focus entirely on the so-called spiritual aspects
00:44:19.760 | of wealth and not pay attention to the physical aspects of wealth.
00:44:22.880 | Material things are important.
00:44:25.540 | Everything in life is connected.
00:44:26.540 | The spiritual and the physical are fully connected.
00:44:29.360 | But tomorrow maybe we'll talk about that.
00:44:31.720 | That's my intention right now.
00:44:32.720 | Thank you so much.
00:44:33.720 | And then we'll come back and in future shows we'll talk about financial freedom, what I
00:44:36.840 | mean by financial freedom and why 10 years or less and what I actually mean by that.
00:44:42.480 | Thank you so much for listening.
00:44:43.480 | If you'd like to support the work that I'm doing, please consider becoming a patron of
00:44:45.600 | the show, radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.
00:44:46.600 | The way I set that program up is very important.
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00:44:57.240 | You can vote with your dollars.
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00:45:06.720 | You just click cancel.
00:45:09.320 | Probably the best feedback mechanism ever.
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