RPF0376-How_to_Be_FI_at

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00:00:30.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, we answer this listener email question.

00:00:35.000 | "Hey, Mr. Sheets, I'm a home-educated 13-year-old fan of your podcast.

00:00:39.000 | I love how in-depth, interesting, and out-of-the-box it is.

00:00:42.000 | I used to listen to the Dave Ramsey show a lot, but that got really bland,

00:00:44.000 | so my dad suggested your show. I love it.

00:00:47.000 | I've been listening pretty much daily since January of this year,

00:00:50.000 | and you've inspired me to become financially independent before age 30.

00:00:56.000 | Right now, I'm saving 70% of my income from working at my parents' dental office

00:01:01.000 | and trying to develop skills that will get me closer to that goal,

00:01:04.000 | such as math, coding, and finance, all things I love learning about

00:01:08.000 | and think have the best potential to help me become financially independent.

00:01:11.000 | Do you have any advice for a 13-year-old listener like me?"

00:01:16.000 | [Chuckles]

00:01:17.000 | Well, Zach, boy, do I ever.

00:01:20.000 | I hope you don't regret writing me,

00:01:22.000 | and I hope this is a useful discussion for you because I've got some advice and some thoughts.

00:01:28.000 | [Music]

00:01:44.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:01:46.000 | the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight,

00:01:50.000 | and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:01:54.000 | even if you're 13 years old,

00:01:56.000 | while also building a plan for financial freedom by age 30 or sooner.

00:02:02.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host.

00:02:05.000 | Today, sit back, get ready, and I'll do my best to give you some ways

00:02:10.000 | to guide the young people in your life as I give advice to Mr. Zach.

00:02:15.000 | [Music]

00:02:17.000 | This question that Zach is asking is a question that's near and dear to my heart

00:02:21.000 | because in many ways, you know, it's always a balance.

00:02:25.000 | I don't want to go back and talk about, "Oh, I wish I had done such and such,"

00:02:28.000 | but in many ways, I always ask and I always say,

00:02:31.000 | "Man, if I had only known then what I know now about money.

00:02:34.000 | Man, if I'd only known then what I know now about the opportunities,

00:02:37.000 | what I would do differently."

00:02:39.000 | And so you're going to get a little bit of that in today's show

00:02:42.000 | because I can easily imagine myself to be in Zach's shoes,

00:02:46.000 | and I can easily imagine that you've--just the opportunities.

00:02:54.000 | So today, I'm going to give my advice to Zach,

00:02:56.000 | and it's going to center on two things.

00:02:58.000 | Number one, what practically to do in order to achieve financial independence

00:03:02.000 | by age 30, which is his primary goal.

00:03:04.000 | And then number two, we're going to dig into the second part of his question,

00:03:07.000 | which is where he's talking about--it was the next question.

00:03:11.000 | I'll just go ahead and read it to you for context.

00:03:13.000 | He says, "As for a specific question, I was wondering

00:03:15.000 | whether you would recommend I continue doing high school at home

00:03:18.000 | or attending our local public school.

00:03:21.000 | I'm really interested in taking classes since those could help me finish college faster.

00:03:24.000 | As far as I could tell, the pros of public school would be,

00:03:26.000 | one, I'm pretty extroverted, so being able to hang out with my friends every day sounds fun.

00:03:31.000 | Two, the high school in our district is ranked 10 out of 10,

00:03:34.000 | so it's supposed to be a good school academically.

00:03:36.000 | Three, it might be a good way to get a feel for going to a normal school

00:03:40.000 | and getting used to staying at the teacher's pace,

00:03:42.000 | other skills I might need for college easier.

00:03:44.000 | Four, the transcript is automatic, but in home education,

00:03:46.000 | you have to detail everything yourself and make sure it fits with requirements.

00:03:50.000 | The cons would be that I love being home educated, number one.

00:03:53.000 | Number two, I'm an independent learner, and I can learn faster just reading something

00:03:57.000 | and taking a test than sitting in class for an hour.

00:03:59.000 | Three, I'd probably have less time in a public school as opposed to home education.

00:04:03.000 | Other than hanging out with friends, writing my fantasy novel, and playing music,

00:04:06.000 | I want to spend my free time as a homeschooler learning skills,

00:04:09.000 | experimenting with starting a business, and studying--

00:04:11.000 | Four, I'd have to stick with the class, but with home education,

00:04:14.000 | everything's based on your pace, so you can go faster.

00:04:16.000 | Five, I love how we could take vacations or days off sporadically,

00:04:20.000 | but in public school with such long summer breaks, et cetera,

00:04:23.000 | you can't miss a day comfortably.

00:04:25.000 | Six, I'd have to wake up early. Thanks for all your time, Zach.

00:04:31.000 | Zach, I love--I struggled with where to start with this question

00:04:35.000 | because it's two parts.

00:04:36.000 | One is talking about financial independence

00:04:38.000 | and giving you a game plan to get there by 30,

00:04:41.000 | and that's the really important part, but it is dependent upon which you choose.

00:04:47.000 | If you choose to stay in school--excuse me, stay in a home education environment

00:04:51.000 | or stay in a government school environment.

00:04:54.000 | Let's start with talking about financial independence,

00:04:57.000 | and let me give you some ideas on a game plan to get there by 30.

00:05:01.000 | In order to do that, I have to assume that you are going to stay in the home education track.

00:05:08.000 | I don't have to assume that, but your options are so much stronger in a home education track.

00:05:14.000 | This is the second time I hit record and started,

00:05:16.000 | and the first time I started with answering your pros and cons

00:05:19.000 | and doing my best to destroy any reason why you would ever want to go to the government school,

00:05:23.000 | but I realized that I needed to flip it, so I hit stop.

00:05:27.000 | After being 20 minutes in and now flipping it,

00:05:29.000 | we're going to start with financial independence,

00:05:31.000 | but we're going to come back to your pros and cons.

00:05:33.000 | I'm going to talk about them for your specific scenario.

00:05:37.000 | I am convinced without question that if you follow a good game plan,

00:05:45.000 | if you educate yourself and if things go well,

00:05:48.000 | you could reach this goal of financial independence by 30.

00:05:52.000 | Now, obviously, I have to assume some things.

00:05:54.000 | I don't know a lot about your situation,

00:05:56.000 | so I'm going to paint with a broad brush here,

00:06:00.000 | but I want to give you some coaching tips and some ways that I would get there if you were my son.

00:06:05.000 | I think a lot about this because I have two kids,

00:06:07.000 | and I think a lot about their educational plan.

00:06:10.000 | With you being 13 years old, it's perfect.

00:06:14.000 | In my mind, when I see a 13-year-old, I desire to treat you as a man, not as a boy, as a man.

00:06:22.000 | I've been convinced of this for quite a while.

00:06:24.000 | After studying the average age of adulthood historically,

00:06:28.000 | I remember back in episode 125 of Radical Personal Finance,

00:06:32.000 | I came across an article written by a man named Dr. Vern Poythress,

00:06:36.000 | who's a fascinating guy.

00:06:38.000 | He has a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University and a PhD in theology.

00:06:43.000 | He works as a theology professor, or whatever the theological equivalent of that is,

00:06:46.000 | of a PhD. I don't know if it's a PhD or not.

00:06:48.000 | He works at Westminster Theological Seminary.

00:06:50.000 | I had him on the show, and we did episode 125,

00:06:52.000 | which was called "Establishing Rites of Passage to Ease the Transition to Adulthood."

00:06:57.000 | Basically, the point of that show was that you can set it out for your kids,

00:07:02.000 | a transition to adulthood at age 13.

00:07:05.000 | That's historically the average age of adulthood.

00:07:08.000 | I just did a show on my other podcast, which is Encouraging Christian Fathers.

00:07:12.000 | It's another podcast I do.

00:07:14.000 | I talked about ages of maturity.

00:07:15.000 | With my children, one of my mental goals is from their current age through about age 13

00:07:22.000 | to teach them everything they need to know to function in a world of adults

00:07:26.000 | and to function as an adult.

00:07:29.000 | Now, obviously, in our culture, the U.S. American culture,

00:07:32.000 | we have substantial challenges to being fully independent.

00:07:37.000 | You're not considered to be an adult for the purpose of writing contracts

00:07:41.000 | or signing contracts until the age of 18.

00:07:43.000 | You can't get a driver's license until about 16.

00:07:46.000 | You can't get married.

00:07:48.000 | You can't do some of these other things.

00:07:50.000 | So you obviously have to take it with a grain of salt.

00:07:53.000 | But there are a lot of things that you can do,

00:07:55.000 | and you can actually get around many of those limitations.

00:07:59.000 | You don't need a driver's license in a world of Uber.

00:08:02.000 | I know one young man, I've been trying to get on the show, but he makes--

00:08:05.000 | how old is he?

00:08:06.000 | He's about 13 now, and he makes in excess of six figures.

00:08:10.000 | And he runs this massive business,

00:08:13.000 | and with a world of a cell phone and an Uber account, you can do it.

00:08:18.000 | And if you've got the family support to help you with the contracts,

00:08:21.000 | the appropriate business structures, et cetera, you can get around this.

00:08:25.000 | There's no reason why you got to wait until you're an adult to achieve these goals.

00:08:31.000 | So here are my coaching tips for you.

00:08:33.000 | Now, let's start with academics because academics are extremely important in our culture.

00:08:39.000 | And assuming that you are academically capable,

00:08:43.000 | I would encourage you to maintain a consistent focus on your academics.

00:08:48.000 | And I'd encourage you to get your basic level of academics completed as soon as possible.

00:08:55.000 | In our U.S. American context today, I think that if you're academically capable,

00:09:01.000 | I think that a bachelor's degree from an accredited college is the minimum.

00:09:06.000 | This is the high school degree of the past.

00:09:08.000 | One of the things that always happens with degree inflation,

00:09:10.000 | that today to stand out, you've got to have advanced education beyond a bachelor's degree.

00:09:15.000 | So I view getting a bachelor's degree as basically a minimum.

00:09:20.000 | In today's educational context, in today's employment context,

00:09:25.000 | if you have a bachelor's degree from an accredited college, that will open up doors to you.

00:09:31.000 | Many jobs, it's just a screening device for many jobs.

00:09:34.000 | Whether you like it or not, it will open up more things for you.

00:09:38.000 | And so I think for children, for my children, I will encourage them to get that basic level of education done

00:09:45.000 | because it will provide a good fallback mechanism.

00:09:48.000 | Having coached some people who don't have a college degree,

00:09:52.000 | having coached some people who don't have a lot of skills, it's tough.

00:09:57.000 | It can be really, really tough.

00:09:59.000 | Do not hear me saying that the college degree will somehow make a difference in your life

00:10:04.000 | in the terms of opening up happiness or necessarily opening up massive doors for you to be competent or to make a lot of money.

00:10:13.000 | It doesn't necessarily do that.

00:10:15.000 | We'll talk in a moment about what you have to decide to do, but it is an important and valuable safety net.

00:10:22.000 | Now, how I think you should do it is I think you should just simply skip your high school plan and do college instead of high school.

00:10:31.000 | And there are tons and tons and tons of home-educated men and women who have done this,

00:10:36.000 | who by the age of 18 are able to finish a fully accredited college.

00:10:40.000 | And there are a couple of reasons for this.

00:10:41.000 | Number one, college has become in many ways so low in expectations and material that in many degrees, it's easier than high school used to be.

00:10:50.000 | Now, that's not true in things like hard sciences, but in most degrees, especially many generalized degrees, it is.

00:10:58.000 | When you're making college decisions, I think you need to clarify what you're trying to accomplish, and I think of it as two things.

00:11:04.000 | Number one, do you just need a degree?

00:11:07.000 | Do you just need to check the box on a job application that, "Yes, I have a four-year college degree," or like me, check the box on the CFP application,

00:11:15.000 | "Yes, I have a four-year degree," or what was it?

00:11:18.000 | I was doing something and I had to send them over a copy of my diploma.

00:11:21.000 | "Yes, I have a four-year degree."

00:11:23.000 | They don't care what it's in.

00:11:24.000 | They don't care what the subject is.

00:11:27.000 | Most people don't use their degrees in their careers in any way.

00:11:30.000 | You just have to check the box that says, "Yes, I have a four-year degree."

00:11:34.000 | So is that what you're doing or are you trying to get an education in a specialized area?

00:11:39.000 | Those things are very different.

00:11:41.000 | The mistake that many young men and women make is they think that they're trying to get an education by going in and getting a college degree,

00:11:47.000 | and they choose to do something like I did and major in international business or major in communications or major in some other pointless major like that.

00:11:56.000 | My degree in international business is of no value to me whatsoever in the business world except for the fact that it got me through the screening process, and that's what degrees primarily are.

00:12:08.000 | That is very different than somebody who's studying organic chemistry or somebody who's studying advanced mathematics or advanced aeronautical engineering.

00:12:18.000 | And for them, their degree is very focused on a career, very focused on an area of specialty.

00:12:25.000 | They need that education.

00:12:27.000 | They need that education that comes in the college environment.

00:12:30.000 | So let's start with the degree.

00:12:32.000 | If the world in a dozen years or ten years looks – I have a three-year-old son.

00:12:37.000 | So if the world in ten years looks like it does today, and who knows, we're just guessing, here's how I will be encouraging my 13-year-old son.

00:12:45.000 | I would tell him, "Your job is to get your degree done as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible,

00:12:53.000 | and it only simply needs to be an accredited degree in just about anything that strikes your fancy from an accredited college."

00:13:02.000 | Now, the best ways to get that is a combination of four things.

00:13:05.000 | Number one, AP classes, and number two, CLEP tests.

00:13:09.000 | AP classes and CLEP tests are, what you've already mentioned, a way to get college credit for high school work.

00:13:16.000 | As my wife and I have talked about the educational plan that we have for our son's education over the next dozen years,

00:13:23.000 | I don't see any point not to make high school-age education focused exclusively on CLEP tests and AP classes.

00:13:34.000 | I don't see any reason not to.

00:13:36.000 | If you're going to go through the hassle of taking a marine biology class, just make sure that you're actually going to pass the CLEP test at the end of it.

00:13:43.000 | In fact, I personally—we're not going to go into my educational philosophy right now.

00:13:47.000 | It would be far too much for the context of one show, but I think that that should be the primary point of high school.

00:13:52.000 | So with my children, what I would do is make a deal with them and say, "Let's figure out what tests you're going to take."

00:13:58.000 | Basically, the high school marine biology test or the high school human anatomy class or whatever it is, what we do is we buy a CLEP preparation book,

00:14:07.000 | the textbooks that are going to get you through the CLEP test.

00:14:09.000 | You study the book. There's no tests. There's no anything along the way.

00:14:13.000 | There's just one final exam at the end of it, and your success is based upon passing the CLEP test or the AP test.

00:14:19.000 | You can do that, and there are so many people both in government schools and private schools and in home education context who can pass many of them.

00:14:28.000 | I went into college just through AP. I didn't know what I was doing at the time.

00:14:33.000 | I didn't take CLEP tests like I should have, but I went in with many, many college credits just through passing AP exams.

00:14:38.000 | There's no reason if you're going to study something, there's no reason not to sit for the AP exam.

00:14:43.000 | If you're going to study something, there's no reason not to prepare diligently for the AP exam to get a three, four, or five on it so that you're done with it.

00:14:51.000 | Again, if you're academically competent, I would structure my high school work around those AP classes and CLEP tests, but they should fit into the requirements of a college degree.

00:15:04.000 | Number three would be local community college.

00:15:07.000 | Very familiar now with the concept of dual enrollment.

00:15:10.000 | I have a friend of mine who's in a government school program in Boca Raton, but all of his classes, even within the context of the government school program, are done at Florida Atlantic University, and they're college classes.

00:15:21.000 | So his program is within the context of the government schools at age 19, he's going to graduate with a bachelor's degree.

00:15:28.000 | It's pretty great, really great.

00:15:30.000 | So it could be done whether you're in a government school or not, but you can do this easily for yourself without being in that context.

00:15:36.000 | And then number four, the big one, is distance learning.

00:15:39.000 | There are a ton of opportunities for you to do distance learning with a university that will grant you an accredited degree where you just simply get the books, you finish the requirements, you pass the test, and you're done.

00:15:52.000 | And this is the powerful way, if you're academically competent, to get your degree done in no time.

00:15:58.000 | And so you should give serious thought and research time to figuring out what are the degree requirements from one of these institutions, and putting together a combination with their academic advisors of AP classes, CLEP tests, some local dual enrollment community college courses, and distance learning with an accredited university or college to be able to get some kind of bachelor's degree in something that suits your fancy.

00:16:25.000 | That way you can check the box.

00:16:27.000 | And you can do this by 18.

00:16:30.000 | If you don't know how many educated students who've done it, just get online and start looking.

00:16:34.000 | There are tons of them who've done it.

00:16:36.000 | Or go to your local homeschool co-op and start talking to people.

00:16:38.000 | There are lots of stories out there.

00:16:40.000 | If you're academically capable, that should be a goal of yours to have that done.

00:16:45.000 | Because that will give you a substantial boost on many of your competitors, and it will give you a valuable fallback plan.

00:16:52.000 | You never can predict in life exactly when you're going to hit setbacks.

00:16:57.000 | And yes, I'm in favor of business.

00:17:00.000 | Yes, you're going to work on business.

00:17:01.000 | But you know what?

00:17:02.000 | There have been a lot of people who've gone out and started a business, failed, lost everything, and needed to go back and get a job.

00:17:11.000 | And one of the important ways to prepare yourself for a resilient adulthood is to make it easy on yourself to be able to go and get a job whenever you need one.

00:17:20.000 | And a college degree will get you there.

00:17:23.000 | But you don't need to wait and go the route that everyone else goes.

00:17:26.000 | You can make the next four years and get it done.

00:17:31.000 | Tons of people are doing it.

00:17:32.000 | It can cost you $10,000 to $20,000 depending on how you do it.

00:17:35.000 | You can do it cheaper.

00:17:36.000 | You can do it for a few thousand dollars if you really hustle, if you're really good.

00:17:39.000 | CLEP tests are inexpensive AP exams.

00:17:41.000 | Get online.

00:17:42.000 | Start reading about how other people have done it.

00:17:44.000 | And there's tons of ways that you can do it.

00:17:45.000 | But I don't want to spend all the time in today's show on that.

00:17:47.000 | Now, that's just getting the degree.

00:17:50.000 | Now, what about if you do have a particular area of skill or a particular area of interest in some kind of specialized area of research?

00:17:58.000 | I don't get that sense from your email.

00:18:00.000 | But for the context of other listeners who do have that interest, I want to make sure we cover this because it is valuable to attain advanced education in an area where you have skill.

00:18:12.000 | You're very skilled with chemistry.

00:18:14.000 | Like I said, you know, study organic chemistry.

00:18:15.000 | You're excellent with mathematics or something like that.

00:18:18.000 | Well, if that's the situation, you should still follow my advice and fulfill most of the general requirements of your degree at that point in time using your high school studies.

00:18:30.000 | Do your general studies in your high school scenario.

00:18:33.000 | But you'll probably look to finishing up the last couple years of your work at a university that specializes in your area of interest.

00:18:41.000 | You're going to want to be under great teachers to guide you.

00:18:45.000 | You want to study under the world-class leaders in a field when you have a specialized area of interest and you're sure that you're competent and skillful there and you're really interested in it.

00:18:54.000 | You're going to want to get under the best teachers in the world.

00:18:57.000 | And so here again, your goal should be skip the first few years of general stuff and get to the point where you can jump right into the meat of your area of study with the goal of quickly transitioning up to master's level focus, master's level education.

00:19:12.000 | If you have an area of specialized interest, then I think you should be working to be at the organization where – the school where you're at least going to be focusing and moving up through master's if not PhD level.

00:19:26.000 | And so you should be focusing on preparing yourself for that.

00:19:30.000 | Now, all of that assumes that you're academically capable.

00:19:33.000 | And from what you're describing, I'm going to bet that you are.

00:19:37.000 | But just ditch the high school stuff and just do college instead.

00:19:42.000 | Today's generalized – again, non-specialized.

00:19:46.000 | I'm not saying that a chemistry degree is the same as any kind of high school degree in the past.

00:19:52.000 | But today's just generalized, non-specialized college degrees, the kinds that are minted all over the place, a degree in communications, a degree in business management, blah, blah, blah.

00:20:02.000 | This stuff is done in – it's the same level as high school used to be.

00:20:06.000 | You can do it.

00:20:07.000 | Lots of examples to point to.

00:20:10.000 | Now, if you're not particularly academically capable, don't stress out about academics.

00:20:19.000 | You should work with your parents and work with a mentor, an academic mentor to see if you can still finish up those things.

00:20:26.000 | But if you're not academically capable, one of the benefits is don't beat your head against the academic side of things.

00:20:31.000 | We're going to talk in a moment about getting a job and apprenticeship.

00:20:34.000 | But far better to just do the basic requirements of some basic reading, writing, and arithmetic and build a major skill in something that's going to suit you well.

00:20:43.000 | Spend these years during high school – yes, you need to finish your GED.

00:20:46.000 | You need those type of requirements, the generalized education.

00:20:49.000 | But that's pretty simple.

00:20:51.000 | Spend this time then not pursuing the college route, not pursuing the academics route unless you're good at it.

00:20:57.000 | Spend this time pursuing the apprenticeship route in a skilled society – excuse me, in a skilled occupation.

00:21:03.000 | You can make six figures as an accomplished welder.

00:21:06.000 | I have friends of mine who are electricians and make six figures, plumbers, all kinds of specialized skills that can be applied and you can do fantastically well.

00:21:15.000 | There's almost no competition in these areas if you're good and if you're hardworking.

00:21:21.000 | Many of these skilled trades people are desperate to get people into the skilled trades.

00:21:27.000 | It's a graying workforce and it's just going to get worse.

00:21:32.000 | And so don't waste your time if you're not academically capable beating your head against the academic wall.

00:21:37.000 | Go where you are good.

00:21:38.000 | One rule of success is go where you can compete well.

00:21:41.000 | Don't try to compete against people who are way better than you unless you have an inside track.

00:21:46.000 | Go where you can be the top dog.

00:21:48.000 | Go where your skills take you.

00:21:50.000 | So I think academics are very important in our society and they're worth your attention.

00:21:54.000 | And it's especially worth your attention and your focus as a backup plan.

00:21:59.000 | If you go the mainstream academic route, you will find it much more challenging to be financially independent.

00:22:06.000 | You can graduate from college at 22, get a job, live on 25% of your income for the next seven years and you can do it.

00:22:13.000 | But it will be much more challenging than if you do some of the ways that I'm going to suggest for you.

00:22:18.000 | I would suggest that in addition to academics, you focus on getting a job.

00:22:25.000 | Now we're talking about business and I talk a lot about business on the show, but I think it's easy to get these things out of whack.

00:22:33.000 | Business is important.

00:22:36.000 | But in the beginning, especially when you're young, you need to earn money, gain exposure to many different things, and learn how to work with people.

00:22:46.000 | And a job is a great place to learn that.

00:22:49.000 | You talk in your pros and cons about being put into a social environment.

00:22:53.000 | Well, you can do a social environment where you sit back and waste 50% of your time doing nothing and 50% of your time listening to somebody lecture.

00:23:02.000 | Or you can learn a social environment where you earn money.

00:23:05.000 | You can get the social skills.

00:23:07.000 | You can get the challenges of working with people in the context of a job.

00:23:12.000 | And at your age, together with your parents, I would recommend that you take advantage of the family opportunities that you have.

00:23:19.000 | It sounds awesome to be able to work in your parents' dental office, but also consider working for other employers other than your parents.

00:23:27.000 | There are lots of advantages to working with family, but there are lots of advantages to working with other people as well.

00:23:34.000 | Your family job gives you broad access to the business.

00:23:38.000 | There's nothing that your parents are not going to allow you to work in.

00:23:41.000 | Now, of course, you have to prove yourself, but if you want to get involved in bookkeeping, they're not going to say, "No, you've got to just answer the phones."

00:23:47.000 | They're going to say, "Okay, let's learn about it."

00:23:51.000 | You can get involved in these areas in a family business.

00:23:54.000 | You can get involved in marketing.

00:23:56.000 | You can get involved in the family website.

00:23:58.000 | It's harder to do that with other employers.

00:24:01.000 | So it's a big benefit to working with family.

00:24:04.000 | But there are big benefits to working for other people.

00:24:07.000 | When you work with your parents, you have the dynamics of the parent-son relationship.

00:24:12.000 | When you work with other people, you get to learn the dynamics of the employer-employee relationship.

00:24:18.000 | When you work with your parents, you're working in a familiar business.

00:24:21.000 | The family knows all about it.

00:24:23.000 | When you work with other people, you get exposure to many other types of businesses, many other types of backgrounds.

00:24:31.000 | You'll gain access to a tremendous variety of experiences, and you'll gain a broader mentorship.

00:24:38.000 | Your parents will always be in your life as mentors.

00:24:42.000 | But if you just work for them, you'll find it more challenging to gain other mentors than if you go and start working with other people strategically.

00:24:49.000 | So look at the opportunities around you and in conjunction with your parents and their advice and their authority,

00:24:55.000 | look for opportunities to have part-time job or part-time work.

00:24:59.000 | It's okay if it's seasonal. It's okay if it's continual.

00:25:01.000 | But look for various jobs that you can do and try to do a couple of things.

00:25:05.000 | Try to work in a variety, a diversity of jobs, and try to look for a job that requires a skill or that leads to a trade of some kind.

00:25:15.000 | Now, in the beginning, you probably won't have the skill.

00:25:18.000 | But if possible, make choices that are going to put you in a position where you're working into skilled positions.

00:25:26.000 | Now, all jobs are going to have some skill that could be developed.

00:25:30.000 | You can take something that's very basic, something like waiting tables.

00:25:34.000 | And if you start your work as a server in a restaurant, you can learn excellent serving skills and apply them and move on to a five-star steakhouse.

00:25:44.000 | Or you can start with the most basic of high school jobs of scooping ice cream at the mall and you can build the skills of owning the business.

00:25:52.000 | But if you're going to work, why not focus on something that's going to lead more readily into skills that are going to weed out more of your competition?

00:26:00.000 | You mentioned in your email that you have skills in things like math or coding and finance and you love learning about that.

00:26:07.000 | Well, then if you have that interest, then take something that's going to require you to sink your teeth into some sort of hard work such as bookkeeping.

00:26:17.000 | And this would be where you could take something like bookkeeping.

00:26:20.000 | You could learn and help and volunteer with your parents, perhaps under their accountant.

00:26:25.000 | You could go and volunteer with a local accountant and get a job just helping either an intern or just intern for free for a little bit and then you prove yourself to be good and they'll start paying you.

00:26:35.000 | You can do data entry and you start to have access to his bookkeeping and start to have access to his tax software.

00:26:41.000 | Now, get in and in your off time, if he allows you or she allows you, great.

00:26:46.000 | But if not, in your off time, get in there and just try to start running some basic returns.

00:26:50.000 | And you can take a skill and an interest in bookkeeping and translate that into your own little mini tax practice by running some returns.

00:27:00.000 | There's no reason why at this point in time you can't learn the skills to, together with your accountant, do the basics of running tax returns for people.

00:27:09.000 | And you can now take that and develop that into a side business.

00:27:12.000 | So you take a job that leads to a skill that opens up a business.

00:27:15.000 | And it's far easier to do that in something where you're taking a basic job, data entry, account reconciliation, but where it's got a path in than trying to do that with scooping ice cream.

00:27:26.000 | So if all you've got is an opportunity to scoop ice cream, go for it.

00:27:30.000 | You can get rich through McDonald's and McDonald's University when you start flipping burgers.

00:27:34.000 | Lots of people who've done it.

00:27:35.000 | I had a couple of clients who worked for McDonald's, started on the line flipping burgers and were making six figures in their organization when I was doing financial advice.

00:27:43.000 | But I think it's better if you start in other areas.

00:27:48.000 | Look for those skills and work your way through.

00:27:54.000 | Don't be scared to challenge yourself.

00:27:56.000 | Take advantage of the opportunities that are present in your situation.

00:27:59.000 | But don't be scared to challenge yourself and take things that come from a diversity of backgrounds.

00:28:05.000 | It's easy for me to look at your life and think about a blueprint in my head.

00:28:08.000 | But your reality is you're going to experience different things as you go through them.

00:28:11.000 | I've done really diverse things and I valued many of them.

00:28:15.000 | I value the time when I used to do lawn service and mowing grass and weed eating people's yards.

00:28:20.000 | I taught wakeboarding and water skiing.

00:28:23.000 | I worked on a farm.

00:28:24.000 | These are just a really diverse set of backgrounds and I learned some skills.

00:28:28.000 | But because of the diversity, I got to know myself.

00:28:31.000 | So when you get into a job, don't necessarily overwhelm yourself with the idea that it's got to be a 20-year plan.

00:28:37.000 | If you've got a job and you can just volunteer with an accountant for tax season for a few months

00:28:42.000 | and then you find out that that's not for you, skip it and move on.

00:28:48.000 | Now, if you find an area of a lot of interest, then seek to become not just an employee but an apprentice under a mentor.

00:28:59.000 | The role of apprentice and mentor is something that has largely been lost in our culture and it's very sad.

00:29:07.000 | But you want to develop skills and then you want to find somebody who can lead you into something that you're interested in

00:29:12.000 | and apprentice under them.

00:29:15.000 | Learn their business skills.

00:29:17.000 | Follow them.

00:29:19.000 | An apprenticeship is different than a job.

00:29:21.000 | It's a mindset where you're going to go in and you're going to learn.

00:29:23.000 | A job is where you're just doing things to get a paycheck.

00:29:25.000 | An apprenticeship is where you think, "I think I'm interested in this field.

00:29:27.000 | I'm going to learn."

00:29:29.000 | So an apprenticeship is different than a job.

00:29:31.000 | A job can become an apprenticeship but not all jobs lead to apprenticeships.

00:29:35.000 | So seek out the opportunities that are there for you.

00:29:39.000 | Now, why jobs?

00:29:40.000 | Well, if you have a business idea, build a business.

00:29:46.000 | But the reality is that you need capital to start a business.

00:29:51.000 | You need experience and you need ideas.

00:29:54.000 | It's easier to go and find jobs that are interesting and jobs that give you capital than it is to build businesses in those things.

00:30:01.000 | So if you have a business idea, build it.

00:30:03.000 | But all your businesses don't have to work out for the long term.

00:30:06.000 | Just try things and see how they work.

00:30:09.000 | If I were you, I would recommend that you work on a consistent schedule where you're doing a balance of these things.

00:30:17.000 | So if I woke up in your shoes, one of the major skills that you need to learn as a young man is you need to learn how to manage time,

00:30:23.000 | how to budget your time.

00:30:25.000 | Here's how I would do it.

00:30:26.000 | At this stage, at 13 years old, you probably need about 9 to 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager.

00:30:32.000 | Don't do what your buddies do.

00:30:36.000 | Teenagers generally do not sleep enough.

00:30:39.000 | Stay up too late, get up too early to get to class at 7 o'clock.

00:30:43.000 | Don't do that.

00:30:44.000 | You need sleep.

00:30:45.000 | It's important for your health.

00:30:46.000 | It's important for your growth.

00:30:47.000 | It's important.

00:30:48.000 | So you need about 9 to 9.5 hours of sleep.

00:30:50.000 | So if you're in bed at 9.45 and asleep at 10 o'clock at night, you'll wake up about 7 or 7.30.

00:30:56.000 | So at this point in time, if you demonstrate competence and maturity, your parents should allow you to have some control over your schedule.

00:31:04.000 | Get up, have breakfast, do academics from 8 to noon.

00:31:08.000 | Commit about four hours a day to academics.

00:31:11.000 | Take a break.

00:31:12.000 | Maybe you can work out where you have a job from 1 to 5.

00:31:15.000 | That'd be ideal to have an afternoon job for about four hours.

00:31:18.000 | And there are lots of business people that would hire you to work for them halftime.

00:31:23.000 | Take another break for dinner and then in the evening you do your side business.

00:31:27.000 | If you have a business idea, you're coding something, you're building websites, you're editing videos or just any hobbies.

00:31:33.000 | You're playing music.

00:31:34.000 | You're writing your fantasy novel.

00:31:35.000 | Do that from 7 to 9 o'clock at night and then devote an hour or so in the evening to reading that's not related to academics.

00:31:41.000 | So read from 9 to 10.

00:31:43.000 | That's an ideal schedule for somebody like you.

00:31:46.000 | Now, if you're doing that five days per week, here are the results that you can have.

00:31:49.000 | If you're on a five-day work week where you do like Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday like many people do.

00:31:54.000 | If you do that, you'll have on that schedule 8 to noon, you do about 20 hours of study in a week.

00:31:59.000 | That's ideal.

00:32:00.000 | And in a home education context, you don't have to deal with the ridiculousness of homework.

00:32:04.000 | You're just doing studies.

00:32:06.000 | You do it every day and there's generally no deadlines of when things have to be done.

00:32:09.000 | You just need to work diligently for four hours a day.

00:32:12.000 | 20 hours of study, 20 hours of work.

00:32:14.000 | 20 hours of work is great.

00:32:15.000 | It gives you a significant amount of income.

00:32:17.000 | We'll calculate income in a minute.

00:32:19.000 | Then you have 10 hours of business or hobbies plus all day on Saturday.

00:32:23.000 | So hopefully that's another 8 or 10 hours for a total of 18 to 20 hours a week working on your business or your hobbies.

00:32:29.000 | Because those hobbies are things that might lead to other business opportunities.

00:32:32.000 | They might lead to jobs.

00:32:33.000 | So you want to keep a balance here.

00:32:36.000 | That would bring you, if you follow that study, that would bring you to about 60 hours of work in a week between those three things, balancing studies, job, earning income, and income.

00:32:44.000 | Earning income and business and hobbies that you're exploring which may or may not earn an income.

00:32:49.000 | That's a pretty ideal work schedule for a young man.

00:32:53.000 | You have 168 hours in a week that you've got to budget.

00:32:56.000 | So at 168 hours a week, you need 9.5 hours of sleep per night.

00:33:00.000 | That comes out to about 66 hours of sleep per week.

00:33:05.000 | You have 20 hours of academics, 20 hours of job, 20 hours of business or hobbies.

00:33:10.000 | That's 60 hours a week.

00:33:12.000 | Sundays, you take one day off for rest, for worship, for a free day.

00:33:16.000 | That leaves you with about 27 hours unaccounted for over the other six days or four and a half hours a day where you deal with your meals, your daily ablutions, your time with family and friends, reading, basketball, hanging out, watching YouTube, whatever you do.

00:33:31.000 | That would be a really good balance.

00:33:36.000 | Now, if you're working a six-day week, which I think is also ideal, if your family is – if your parent's schedule is where they work five days and they're off two days, then I think you should adjust to that so that you can prioritize being with family and doing your business and your hobbies in the context of families on Saturday and Sunday.

00:33:55.000 | But if they're not or if your parents work a six-day week, then six-day week is simpler.

00:33:59.000 | You just do the same thing every day six days.

00:34:01.000 | 66 hours of sleep, 9.5 hours a night.

00:34:04.000 | Eight to noon, academics every day.

00:34:06.000 | If you do it six days a week, that's 24 hours of academics a week.

00:34:09.000 | One to five every day, if you have a job that you can get into, a six-day job, that leaves you with 24 hours of work a week and then seven to nine gives you about 12 hours of business or hobbies.

00:34:19.000 | Again, you got your 15 hours of worship, rest, free time on Sunday and you have still the same 27 hours of flex time or four and a half hours a day.

00:34:28.000 | Now, are you ever going to follow a schedule exactly like that?

00:34:31.000 | Of course not.

00:34:33.000 | But it is directionally appropriate in the sense of a third, a third, a third is ideal.

00:34:39.000 | Figure out where and how you can do your 60-hour work week and divide the time up in something like that, giving good amount to academics, to working for somebody else to earn money, and then opportunities to explore your businesses and your hobbies.

00:34:55.000 | There's plenty of time in that schedule to sleep well, to have hangout time, to have meal time, to have family time, and still do all three of those things.

00:35:05.000 | The key is to have a schedule that works for you and to have a target for the appropriate allocation of your 168 hours a week.

00:35:13.000 | Now, your age peers do not do this.

00:35:17.000 | The only time commitment or scheduling they do is what they're forced to do.

00:35:21.000 | They got to show up at school and do what?

00:35:22.000 | Average school day is about eight and a half hours.

00:35:24.000 | That's far too much time.

00:35:26.000 | And the worst thing about it is it's wasted, most of it.

00:35:29.000 | As you know from being in a home education context, most homeschoolers I know, you could probably finish in about two or three days, but it takes you eight hours to do it in a school.

00:35:39.000 | It's far too much time.

00:35:40.000 | You have eight and a half hours of school time in a day.

00:35:44.000 | You can't think that much time.

00:35:46.000 | That's why you have so much downtime.

00:35:47.000 | You can't do productive, hard learning for eight and a half hours.

00:35:51.000 | You're lucky if you get a few hours.

00:35:54.000 | So you have the opportunity if you schedule your time appropriately to have that plus the balance of the job and the business and the hobbies.

00:36:02.000 | Your major goal at this stage is to build income.

00:36:05.000 | And income comes – again, we just covered academics.

00:36:08.000 | Now we're going to income.

00:36:09.000 | Income comes from applied knowledge and skill in the marketplace.

00:36:12.000 | And there's a balance between how much time do you put into jobs versus businesses.

00:36:17.000 | I think you should start with prioritizing jobs over businesses.

00:36:22.000 | Now, it's possible that you have some area of significant specialization that you can build a business in.

00:36:28.000 | You have a great hobby.

00:36:30.000 | But I don't hear that here in your story.

00:36:32.000 | Some people have it.

00:36:33.000 | I remember the story I read about the 15-year-old who was designing prosthetic limbs, just an amazing story of doing it all himself and had an extreme focus.

00:36:43.000 | If you've got that major skill or if your music skills or your fantasy writing skills are that good, then go ahead and adjust your time to that.

00:36:52.000 | But the jobs give you skills that you're going to be able to use down the road as a backup plan.

00:36:59.000 | And they pay you to learn and network while you figure out your areas of business interest.

00:37:03.000 | Profits are better than wages, which is why I want to give time to profits.

00:37:09.000 | But profits come when you have some of the basic business skills.

00:37:15.000 | Very important.

00:37:16.000 | Now, we've covered income.

00:37:17.000 | Let's talk expenses.

00:37:19.000 | At this point, spend as little as possible.

00:37:21.000 | And I think if you're saving 70 percent of your income, that sounds ideal.

00:37:24.000 | That's great.

00:37:25.000 | If you're anywhere in this 50 to 75 percent savings number, I'm super pumped.

00:37:29.000 | I think that's awesome.

00:37:30.000 | Now, the challenge is to figure out what's going to be different at 13 versus 18 because at this stage, I would guess that your parents are supporting all of your living needs.

00:37:38.000 | They're paying for your food.

00:37:39.000 | They're paying for your clothes.

00:37:40.000 | They're not charging your rent, et cetera.

00:37:42.000 | At 13 years old, you don't have a car or associated costs with transportation at this point in time.

00:37:47.000 | So you want to recognize that there are things that are worth spending money on and you want to prioritize that.

00:37:52.000 | That might be some experiences as you're building and enjoying your social life with friends.

00:37:57.000 | You might be paying for dinners out.

00:37:59.000 | You might be paying for trips to cool destinations.

00:38:03.000 | You're going to need to buy some – make some capital expenditures.

00:38:07.000 | You're going to buy a computer, buy a car when needed.

00:38:10.000 | So you got to plan for those.

00:38:11.000 | But do keep those things low.

00:38:13.000 | Keep those expenses low.

00:38:16.000 | Don't be scared to invest but keep the expenses low.

00:38:19.000 | Now, realistically, how much are you going to earn and what can you be saving?

00:38:23.000 | I don't know what your parents are paying you but let's just assume that you're making $10 an hour.

00:38:26.000 | At 13 years old, there's no reason why you can't make $10 an hour, especially, again, if you're working in an area of where you're actually having a job.

00:38:35.000 | I mean when I was 13 years old, I made $10 an hour just simply working as a helper for a tile job.

00:38:41.000 | If you're making less than $10 an hour, go find some work that's harder to do and you'll make more money.

00:38:46.000 | 20 hours of work per week, let's say you work 50 weeks a year, that comes out to about $10,000 per year of gross income.

00:38:55.000 | As you raise your skills, you can raise your wages.

00:38:59.000 | $15 an hour would be very reasonable in many entry-level and just past entry-level jobs.

00:39:05.000 | A hardworking teenager could very easily be worth $20 an hour as long as you're doing something where there's skill.

00:39:10.000 | You're coding. You're programming. You're doing something where you've had to work to develop skill.

00:39:16.000 | So realistically, if you're earning $10,000 to $15,000 to $20,000 per year, realistically, you could save $7,000 to $10,000 per year at this stage.

00:39:26.000 | If you earn $10,000, you're living on 30%. You're saving 70%. That's $7,000.

00:39:31.000 | As your income goes up, you could save, again, $7,000 to $10,000.

00:39:35.000 | That leaves you with somewhere between $70,000 to $100,000 in the bank when you turn 20.

00:39:41.000 | All of this assumes you don't figure out how to make far more.

00:39:44.000 | I'm just trying to be very realistic and give you a lot of low-hanging fruit.

00:39:50.000 | You can do that working four hours a day at a job over the coming years, and you can wind up at 20 with $70,000 to $100,000 in the bank.

00:40:00.000 | Now, $70,000 to $100,000 in the bank does not buy you financial independence as measured by your ability to simply live off of that.

00:40:10.000 | What it does buy you is financial independence to start anything you want.

00:40:18.000 | If you pursue my plan, you'll have a broad network of people.

00:40:21.000 | You'll have had a half a dozen to a dozen different employers that you've worked with.

00:40:25.000 | In just a moment, I'll give you more ideas of how to maximize those relationships.

00:40:28.000 | You'll have a broad survey of interests because you've been pursuing hobbies.

00:40:32.000 | You've been trying businesses here and there. You've been participating in different things.

00:40:36.000 | Now, you'll be able to know yourself a little bit more.

00:40:39.000 | When you strike out here at about 20, you'll have a college degree under your belt and $100,000 in the bank.

00:40:46.000 | You can pursue just about anything.

00:40:49.000 | And then in the next decade, from 20 to 30, you can build something really, really solid.

00:40:54.000 | Now, we don't know what that is, and there's no way to know at 13, which is why you need exposure to as many things as possible.

00:41:00.000 | You want to be widely read. You want to be widely experienced. You want to be widely visited.

00:41:03.000 | You want to be widely studied.

00:41:05.000 | This gives you ideas, and you look for the market opportunities, and who knows what they'll be in seven years.

00:41:11.000 | But you can figure them out.

00:41:13.000 | Now, investments. I would encourage you to invest primarily in yourself at this stage and invest in education.

00:41:24.000 | You're going to get very little benefit from investing in external investments and a huge amount of benefit from investing in yourself and in your education.

00:41:34.000 | So prioritize that. That doesn't mean that you should spend a lot of money.

00:41:38.000 | It doesn't mean you should spend a lot of money on a college degree, as you well know and as I've tried to say, a college degree, unless you're an extreme specialist.

00:41:44.000 | And even there, if you're an extreme specialist, here should be your litmus test for that.

00:41:48.000 | Make somebody pay you to go to their college.

00:41:50.000 | If you're really good, they'll pay you to come and study with them.

00:41:53.000 | So don't do this stuff where you're going to go spend $100,000 on a degree.

00:41:57.000 | Get it cheap. Get it fast.

00:41:59.000 | And if they want you, if you're good enough at that area to come and be their math whiz, then make them pay you for it by giving you scholarships and full rides.

00:42:07.000 | But you can invest in yourself and your education.

00:42:09.000 | Buy the books. If you need to buy the courses or conferences, invest in tools, tools of production.

00:42:15.000 | If you've earned a couple thousand dollars and you need to buy a computer that's competent to be able to do video so you can start videoing weddings on the weekend as your part-time business to make you more money than you'd make at $10 an hour job, do that.

00:42:26.000 | You need that tool.

00:42:28.000 | Now, at this stage, your parents will probably do things like split it with you.

00:42:31.000 | Take advantage of them all you can.

00:42:34.000 | Invest in skills.

00:42:37.000 | Figure out what those skills are.

00:42:39.000 | If you're going to code, you're going to need to learn those skills.

00:42:42.000 | Take the computer classes.

00:42:43.000 | Don't waste your time going to the local government school and taking a generalized computer class.

00:42:48.000 | Go where the adults go and take their computer class because that's a computer class that might result in you actually earning money.

00:42:57.000 | Invest in your network.

00:43:00.000 | If you're working in the dental business, go to the dental association meetings with your dad.

00:43:04.000 | If you're volunteering as a bookkeeper or working as a bookkeeper with a CPA, go with them to the CPA meetings.

00:43:11.000 | One recommendation for you, I think every young man, take one adult out for lunch every week.

00:43:18.000 | You pay and you interview them for your advice.

00:43:22.000 | Invite one adult that you admire and respect out for lunch every single week and interview them over lunch.

00:43:31.000 | Take a notebook.

00:43:32.000 | Ask good questions.

00:43:33.000 | Find out what they do.

00:43:34.000 | Find out what their regrets are in life.

00:43:36.000 | Find out about any careers they think are interesting.

00:43:39.000 | And if you do that, let me give you an idea.

00:43:42.000 | Let's say you do that 50 weeks out of the year.

00:43:45.000 | Fifty weeks out of the year times seven, that's 350 different lunches.

00:43:51.000 | As you systematically work to build your network of mentors, those 350 people will be really, really significant to you.

00:44:03.000 | What it means when you have a network like that where you've done something that all your buddies are not going to be doing,

00:44:09.000 | you take them out for lunch, you pay, and you say in exchange, "I just want to ask you questions," is you've got 350 people you can call when you need a job.

00:44:17.000 | You've got 350 people you can call when you need an investor.

00:44:22.000 | You've got 350 people you can call when you need advice.

00:44:29.000 | And as you study the science of networking, a couple of book recommendations.

00:44:33.000 | When I was in high school, I read – it's still good, although it's a little out of date now – a book called Never Eat Alone by Keith Farrazi, F-E-R-A-Z-Z-I, Never Eat Alone.

00:44:43.000 | Another book is read Tom Stanley's book on networking with the affluent.

00:44:49.000 | Practice the advice in that.

00:44:53.000 | But when you think about success, if you're stuck in a high school classroom and you can't go out to lunch one day a week, you're going to have a lot harder of a time doing that.

00:45:02.000 | It's still possible, but you're going to have a harder time.

00:45:05.000 | Don't be scared to pile up cash at this phase of your life.

00:45:11.000 | When you're young and when you're working over the short term, you shouldn't worry too much about your current rate of return.

00:45:16.000 | There's a paradox here with time and returns.

00:45:20.000 | Young people should study charts of compound interest and see how important having a long time horizon is on your wealth growing and see the impact of percentage rates of return.

00:45:34.000 | Rate of return matters over the long term and time matters over the long term.

00:45:39.000 | But in the early years of a rate of return growth of a compounding system, your rate of return is not as important as the amount of money that you save.

00:45:49.000 | And when you're young, your biggest returns are not going to come from buying stocks.

00:45:54.000 | Your biggest returns are going to come from finding opportunities that you can exploit.

00:46:00.000 | So pile up cash and then look for opportunities to invest that cash intelligently.

00:46:07.000 | As you're working and earning money from a job, look for ways that you can earn profits from investments in business.

00:46:15.000 | Profits are better than wages, but usually you need wages to lead to money that you can invest for profits.

00:46:22.000 | If you have the skills and interests, buy a car cheap and fix it up and sell it.

00:46:27.000 | That would be a great way to take something where you are apprenticing with a local mechanic shop in the afternoon.

00:46:33.000 | If you have a skill in that area, then apply those skills to your own opportunities in the evening.

00:46:37.000 | That would be ideal.

00:46:39.000 | If you are working as a programmer and you're building some websites, then take some of the money and build yourself a little website and go and get local business people and invest into profiting off of building their websites for them while you're working for somebody else.

00:46:54.000 | If you're in a rural area, buy some cows and grow them, buy them young, grow them and sell them.

00:47:03.000 | If you see a cheap house for sale and you are building construction skills by volunteering or working with a local handyman and you're building skills, then go ahead and use the money that you're piling up and buy it and flip it and rent it.

00:47:15.000 | That's your night and weekend job.

00:47:17.000 | Buy it and flip it and sell it or buy it and keep it and rent it.

00:47:20.000 | There is no reason why you can't do these two things together.

00:47:25.000 | If you're working computers, you see a website that's for sale and it interests you, save the money and buy the website.

00:47:31.000 | Optimize the business model behind it and keep it for the profit or sell it.

00:47:36.000 | So the job gives you capital to start your business.

00:47:39.000 | Look for the opportunities of where you do develop unusual skill, unusual talent or find unique opportunities.

00:47:49.000 | It's very hard to predict those things in advance.

00:47:52.000 | So expect to try and do many things over time.

00:47:55.000 | But if you're aware that they're going to come along, then you'll see them.

00:47:59.000 | You'll see them when they come.

00:48:01.000 | These are some of the opportunities that are available to you and these are some of the things that I would be doing.

00:48:08.000 | I would pursue, like I said, that third, third, third.

00:48:12.000 | Start with the third, third, third plan and then look for the times and the places where you need to adjust.

00:48:19.000 | Example, you're doing 20 hours a week of academics, 20 hours a week at a job, 20 hours a week on your sideline business.

00:48:27.000 | Maybe your business is making wedding videos or doing – maybe helping local businesses with their Facebook marketing.

00:48:35.000 | Now all of a sudden, you get more clients for the Facebook marketing than you can handle.

00:48:39.000 | Well, in that situation, then you can say, "Well, where am I going to pull this from?"

00:48:43.000 | Maybe you start working less at the job or maybe you pull it from academics.

00:48:47.000 | If you recognize that, "Wait a second. I've got a business that's really going here.

00:48:50.000 | I've got strong job experience. Maybe I don't need this academic focus," then you can pull back from there.

00:48:56.000 | Your parents have legal requirements of what they legally have to make sure that you do as far as minimum educational standards.

00:49:01.000 | But you can adjust those things and deal with that pretty simply.

00:49:04.000 | But focus on this diversity while you're going forward so that you can figure out where that specialty will come in the future.

00:49:14.000 | Now let me go through your pros and cons because you gave me this list of pros and cons about continuing to do your home education versus attending the local government school.

00:49:23.000 | I hope some of the possibilities that are open to you are a little bit inspiring.

00:49:26.000 | But here are some – start with your pros of reasons to go to the government school.

00:49:33.000 | Number one, you say, "I'm pretty extroverted. So being able to hang out with friends every day sounds fun, although I'm sure high school isn't just hanging out."

00:49:40.000 | I would submit to you, Zach, that hanging out under school rules is a terrible way to hang out.

00:49:49.000 | If you want to hang out with people, ditch the classes and go hang out outside of school.

00:49:55.000 | Go play basketball with your buddies in the afternoon or evening if that's what you want to do.

00:50:00.000 | It's like people who say, "I want to go to college so I can party."

00:50:03.000 | That's a dumb reason to go to college. Go get an apartment next to campus.

00:50:06.000 | Skip college so you can party more.

00:50:09.000 | You'll meet all the college people and have all the fun and you don't even have to tell anybody that you're not enrolled.

00:50:14.000 | It's a much better plan.

00:50:17.000 | Now, even when you're talking about hanging out with friends, one of the challenges, who are your friends and where are they coming from?

00:50:23.000 | Because if you're not in the government school system, you get to choose the reference group of people that you want to be with and you get to hang out with them intentionally.

00:50:34.000 | One of the major damaging effects of school is that it forces you into a peer group and you have no ability to choose.

00:50:45.000 | That's only the case in school. That's not the case as an adult.

00:50:52.000 | As an adult, if I don't like somebody or if I'm being bullied by somebody, I get up and leave.

00:50:59.000 | That's how adults handle it. You either deal with the conflict or you leave.

00:51:04.000 | Yes, you need conflict resolution skills. We all work at difficult jobs. We've got difficult people.

00:51:09.000 | You don't just bail on somebody at the first sign of problems.

00:51:14.000 | But, man, you look at bullying in schools, you start studying the statistics on bullying, both extreme forms and mild forms.

00:51:21.000 | It is an utter disaster. And yet, what opportunity do we give the kids?

00:51:27.000 | You're forced to sit back and take it.

00:51:30.000 | It has tremendously damaging effects.

00:51:35.000 | Don't put yourself into that situation where you face that.

00:51:38.000 | Choose your friends and the people that you want to be around because you admire them.

00:51:43.000 | You want to be with them. You want to model them. You want to emulate them.

00:51:47.000 | And then do your hanging out under your own terms.

00:51:50.000 | Passing notes back and forth while sitting to a boring lecture from a bad teacher is not a great way to hang out.

00:51:57.000 | It's one of the major benefits of home education. You get to choose the people to emulate.

00:52:05.000 | The number one objection that I hear from people about home education is, "Well, what about socialization?"

00:52:11.000 | No offense. It's the dumbest, most asinine objection in the world.

00:52:17.000 | People are always worried about, "Well, homeschoolers are weird."

00:52:20.000 | If you look at weird homeschoolers, here's a simple fact.

00:52:23.000 | If you look at weird homeschoolers, go and look at their parents.

00:52:25.000 | The reason they're weird is not because they're educated at home.

00:52:29.000 | The reason they're weird is because their parents are weird.

00:52:31.000 | Just like if you go into a government school and you find the weird kids, the reason they're weird is often because their parents are weird.

00:52:38.000 | It's a stupid objection.

00:52:42.000 | The bigger problem is the flip side.

00:52:45.000 | Who do you want to teach your kids?

00:52:48.000 | Who do you want to socialize your kids?

00:52:51.000 | Zach, who do you want to socialize you?

00:52:53.000 | Do you want to model and emulate people that you admire, that you respect, people that are the way that you want to be?

00:53:00.000 | Or do you want to be stuck into an environment where you've got a bunch of other 13-year-olds that are trying to figure out their way in the world,

00:53:05.000 | and half of them want to beat you up, and half you insert it here.

00:53:09.000 | But it's not a good plan.

00:53:11.000 | Go hang out with your friends, but do it in a different environment.

00:53:15.000 | The high school in our district is ranked 10 out of 10, so it's supposed to be a good school academically.

00:53:19.000 | Here's some things on ranking.

00:53:21.000 | Supposed to be a good school academically.

00:53:24.000 | First of all, what does 10 out of 10 ranking mean?

00:53:27.000 | First question you have when you ever hear of ranking is, "Who's doing the ranking?"

00:53:32.000 | I want to figure out what it means.

00:53:33.000 | People say, "I want to buy a house in a good school district," or, "Our district has really good schools."

00:53:37.000 | As measured by what?

00:53:39.000 | We have A-rated schools.

00:53:41.000 | What does that mean?

00:53:43.000 | Does it mean something that you care about?

00:53:44.000 | Who's doing the ranking?

00:53:46.000 | You see these signs on the side of the road, "World Famous Ribs" or "World's Best" blah, blah, blah.

00:53:52.000 | Says who?

00:53:53.000 | We can all make up something.

00:53:55.000 | Who's actually doing the 10 out of 10 ranking?

00:53:57.000 | It's one thing if the school district is doing it based upon their rankings.

00:54:00.000 | It's another thing if a national organization is doing it or US News publishes their best high schools in the nation.

00:54:06.000 | That's different than if the Palm Beach County School District is ranking this school a 10 out of 10.

00:54:11.000 | So understand who's doing the ranking.

00:54:13.000 | Second question you should ask when you hear numbers or things like that, "Who is included in the reference group?"

00:54:18.000 | Because the sample set makes a huge difference.

00:54:22.000 | 10 out of 10 and who's in that comparison?

00:54:27.000 | Happens all the time.

00:54:28.000 | Somebody is the best athlete in their school.

00:54:32.000 | All of a sudden, go into a different sample set and they're not actually that great of an athlete.

00:54:35.000 | They're just the best athlete in their school.

00:54:37.000 | So always dig in and I'm not hammering too much on the 10 out of 10, but always dig into a reference group.

00:54:42.000 | If you see a poll, who was surveyed?

00:54:44.000 | How did they come up with those people that were surveyed?

00:54:47.000 | Third question, on what criteria are they ranked?

00:54:51.000 | What does 10 out of 10 mean?

00:54:53.000 | Is it based on test scores?

00:54:54.000 | Are those test scores quantitative test scores?

00:54:56.000 | Is it a qualitative survey?

00:54:59.000 | Which tests?

00:55:01.000 | What's the content of those tests?

00:55:04.000 | You can dramatically improve the educational outcome as measured by test scores if you dramatically decrease the challenge of the test.

00:55:13.000 | Another thing, ask yourself, "Do you care about that benefit?

00:55:16.000 | What's the benefit of getting those test scores?"

00:55:18.000 | I've never seen any reliable data that indicates a predictive or causative factor of test scores or academic grades and things like level of wealth achieved during lifetime or life happiness as reported by a certain job.

00:55:37.000 | If it exists, send it to me.

00:55:38.000 | I'm happy to find it.

00:55:39.000 | I've never seen it.

00:55:42.000 | Now, I'm not saying that these are not at all -- like I'm not saying it's the opposite.

00:55:47.000 | For example, there are lots of multimillionaires who are very happy with life who did well in school.

00:55:52.000 | But there are lots of millionaires who are very happy with life who didn't do well in school.

00:55:57.000 | I'm just saying it's not a predictive factor.

00:56:03.000 | Now, there's a huge correlation.

00:56:05.000 | There's a huge predictive factor between those who are successful in high school and those who will be successful in college.

00:56:12.000 | So there's a huge -- it's both causation and correlation.

00:56:17.000 | If you get good grades and you do well on tests, you're likely to get into colleges and you're likely to do well at college.

00:56:23.000 | But that benefit doesn't connect to your career satisfaction.

00:56:28.000 | So always ask, "Is this test worth even doing well on?

00:56:31.000 | Does it matter?"

00:56:32.000 | Fourth question when you look at numbers like that is how are the criteria weighted?

00:56:36.000 | What's the formula?

00:56:38.000 | So if you have a thing where it's 10 out of 10, is that 10 different factors?

00:56:41.000 | Or is that one factor that's weighted dramatically high and another factor that's weighted dramatically low?

00:56:46.000 | And yet for you, the dramatic factor is the one that's underweighted.

00:56:50.000 | Is it test scores and qualitative satisfaction measurements?

00:56:54.000 | Let's say the 10 out of 10, let's say that 70 percent of the weight is given to test scores but 30 percent is given to how happy the students are.

00:57:02.000 | Well, the test scores to me don't matter but the happiness does.

00:57:06.000 | So if you have something that's underweighted, this is not how the 10 out of 10 scores work.

00:57:10.000 | I'm just giving you this to try to help you as a 13-year-old to think critically of numbers that you read.

00:57:16.000 | For you, what matters is how happy are the students.

00:57:20.000 | But if that's underweighted, you can't use that as a predictive formula.

00:57:26.000 | Fifth question, what's the alternative?

00:57:28.000 | Is there some other alternative that's even better?

00:57:31.000 | School A is ranked 10 out of 10 and they're the best in the district of bullying.

00:57:36.000 | Bullying is included in the formula.

00:57:38.000 | So you're confident that of all the schools in the district, my experience of bullying is probably statistically going to be less likely at this school.

00:57:48.000 | But that's because 25 percent of the students are bullied here versus 50 percent at another school.

00:57:55.000 | Well, what's my alternative?

00:57:56.000 | I could study at home and I won't be bullied at all.

00:58:00.000 | Okay.

00:58:01.000 | Make sure you factor that in.

00:58:03.000 | Or test scores are predictive of this.

00:58:06.000 | So this school is a 10 out of 10 at SAT scores.

00:58:10.000 | Great.

00:58:12.000 | I know that of all the schools in the choice, my SAT scores would be higher there.

00:58:16.000 | But go take that and look up the performance of home-educated kids in that same district.

00:58:22.000 | What you find when you study it is that the data, the objective academic data on test scores and everything is always higher for home-educated students.

00:58:31.000 | So you're going to do better off if you don't do that.

00:58:35.000 | Sorry.

00:58:36.000 | Obviously, I'm trying to persuade you in a different direction.

00:58:40.000 | Next, you say it might be a good way to get a feel for going to a normal school and make getting used to staying at the teacher's pace and other skills I might need for college easier.

00:58:48.000 | You would definitely learn this skill.

00:58:50.000 | When I went from home education into a high school environment.

00:58:55.000 | But the question with skills is do you need to learn the skill?

00:58:59.000 | All skills are not created equal.

00:59:01.000 | Most skills can and should be learned when they're needed and not before.

00:59:07.000 | So you can learn how to sit under a boring teacher when you're sitting in a college class, which is something you need for something that you care about.

00:59:15.000 | You don't need to learn and practice that skill in advance.

00:59:19.000 | You can learn test skills when you need to take a test.

00:59:23.000 | A simple example, it's one of the things.

00:59:25.000 | I need to be able to take a test.

00:59:28.000 | Students in mainstream schools are so over-tested.

00:59:31.000 | There's no benefit to it.

00:59:32.000 | There's no benefit to the student.

00:59:33.000 | The only benefit is to the people who are trying to get more money based upon being tested.

00:59:40.000 | You could spend all of your career for the first 10 years of your education not taking a test.

00:59:46.000 | And then you can go and in a couple of weeks of practice PSATs and practice SATs, you can learn and practice all of the test-taking skills that you need to ace the SAT.

00:59:54.000 | You don't have to spend 10 years preparing for it.

00:59:57.000 | The same thing should be studied with skills.

00:59:59.000 | You don't need all skills up front.

01:00:01.000 | You just need to know how to go out and get a skill when you need it.

01:00:05.000 | That's why the fundamental skill that should be coming from education is not any particular knowledge.

01:00:09.000 | The fundamental skill should be coming is how to get education when you need it.

01:00:17.000 | Next, you said the transcript is automatic but in home education, you have to detail everything yourself and make sure it fits with the requirements.

01:00:23.000 | You should already be detailing everything yourself, period.

01:00:27.000 | And you should never be relying on a transcript to do anything for you just like you should never be relying on a resume to do anything for you.

01:00:34.000 | In today's world, transcripts and resumes are ways that bureaucracies check the box to indicate that they aren't discriminating against people while they give the job to the person who actually had a website, who actually had a personal connection.

01:00:45.000 | You publish the job so you don't get sued for discrimination.

01:00:49.000 | Meanwhile, you give the job to the person that's the best for it.

01:00:53.000 | And so a transcript is a terrible way to demonstrate proficiency.

01:00:57.000 | A website of an area of interest that you have is much, much better.

01:01:02.000 | And you should already be doing that.

01:01:04.000 | I would strongly recommend to you if you are home educating or if you're educating at home, your children should have their own WordPress site and their essays and their work and things should be listed on that site.

01:01:16.000 | Now, you can do it privately.

01:01:17.000 | We have to be careful of that.

01:01:18.000 | But you should have an external portfolio because a portfolio is a much easier way to demonstrate skill than a transcript.

01:01:29.000 | So don't worry about the transcript even if you're at a government school where you're getting an automatic transcript.

01:01:35.000 | That's still not enough.

01:01:36.000 | You need to do better.

01:01:37.000 | Now, what about the cons?

01:01:38.000 | You say, "I love being home educated."

01:01:40.000 | That's a big deal, especially for your parents to know because at 13, you're transitioning to a different phase of maturity and your opinions and your desires are going to be much more important for you and also for your parents to know.

01:01:51.000 | So pay attention to what you love about home education and try to be specific.

01:01:56.000 | You said the con of going to school would be that I'm an independent learner and I can learn faster just reading something and taking a test and sitting in class for an hour.

01:02:03.000 | Of course, you are because you're home educated.

01:02:05.000 | That's the whole point is you become an independent learner.

01:02:08.000 | If you didn't have the skill of becoming an independent learner, your parents would have stuck you in a school a long time ago for your own good.

01:02:14.000 | Home education only works if a child can develop the skills.

01:02:17.000 | Now, that you have the skill, you can capitalize on it.

01:02:20.000 | This is the key skill of education, which is knowing how to learn because once you've learned how to teach yourself something, you can take that to anything that you want to accomplish, anything that you want to do, and you can teach yourself how to do it.

01:02:32.000 | So what do you need to learn?

01:02:37.000 | Well, you first need a desire to learn.

01:02:40.000 | You need to find information that you can consume on the topic you're trying to learn about, and you need knowledge and understanding of how to go through the information.

01:02:48.000 | So if you're trying to make an intelligent decision for your education, ask yourself, "Do I need a teacher?"

01:02:53.000 | The answer to that question is almost always yes.

01:02:56.000 | We all need great teachers.

01:02:59.000 | People make the mistake when they think they don't need teachers.

01:03:03.000 | We all need teachers. Teachers write to me sometimes, especially with a show like this.

01:03:06.000 | If you're a teacher and you're listening to something that's so strongly opinionated as the last hour has been, say, "Well, you're mad at teachers."

01:03:14.000 | No, I don't attack teachers. We need great teachers.

01:03:18.000 | I'm a teacher. I'm teaching right now in the context of this show.

01:03:22.000 | But the next two questions about teachers are the ones that people don't ask.

01:03:25.000 | You need to ask yourself, "Who do I need to teach me, and how should they teach me?"

01:03:32.000 | Start with how.

01:03:33.000 | Some information in some subjects is best gained from a book, some from a podcast, some from a recorded class, some from hands-on instruction in a group setting, and some from one-on-one hands-on instruction.

01:03:52.000 | Studying about the history of the Peloponnesian War is pretty easily done with a simple book.

01:03:58.000 | I'm not aware of any new groundbreaking research that's being done on the Peloponnesian War.

01:04:03.000 | Just figure out what the best book is and learn from that teacher who wrote the book.

01:04:07.000 | Read the book and be done.

01:04:09.000 | Some information comes great from a podcast.

01:04:11.000 | Radical Personal Finance is intended to fit into a podcast format.

01:04:15.000 | A recorded class laying out the parameters of the Civil War is a great way to learn.

01:04:20.000 | And there's no benefit to getting a teacher on some of these topics that are well-established.

01:04:24.000 | Just find the recorded lecture.

01:04:27.000 | Now, that's very different than somebody that you need to review your custom computer program that you're building and to give you feedback on its simplicity, on its elegance, or whether you put too many wrong turns in there.

01:04:40.000 | And sometimes when you're doing original groundbreaking work, you need that one-on-one instruction.

01:04:48.000 | So it's a major problem if you are an independent learner.

01:04:57.000 | It would be a downside for you to go and say all of a sudden jump into a scenario where you got to make do with mediocre teachers teaching at the same thing.

01:05:04.000 | A couple of great teachers, we all have a couple of them, but the majority are – it's going to be a Pareto principle.

01:05:09.000 | 80% of them are not going to be very good.

01:05:11.000 | 20% of them are going to be really good.

01:05:13.000 | And 20% of 20%, the top 4% are going to be awesome.

01:05:16.000 | And that's in every school.

01:05:18.000 | But you can go and choose the awesome ones from the world's environment instead of from the 122 that are at the local school.

01:05:28.000 | Major mistake people make with education is they don't set out a clear goal for the education and then design a plan to get there.

01:05:36.000 | They just wander in and say somebody else is going to teach me.

01:05:40.000 | You got to start with how do you need to learn and who's needed to teach you.

01:05:43.000 | Some knowledge is general.

01:05:46.000 | Simple example, anybody who knows how to read and write can teach anybody else to read and write with a few supporting materials, a simple book and a couple of exercises.

01:05:55.000 | Any home-educating mom and dad can attest to this.

01:05:57.000 | It is not that difficult to teach most children to write and to read.

01:06:01.000 | Now, some knowledge on the other hand is specific.

01:06:05.000 | But you don't need to get there until you have a problem with the first thing.

01:06:09.000 | If a child has problems learning how to read, that's when your parents go to a specialist and you figure out which specialist.

01:06:16.000 | Is the problem their eyesight?

01:06:17.000 | Are they dyslexic?

01:06:18.000 | Do they have a low IQ?

01:06:20.000 | And then you work with a specialist from there.

01:06:22.000 | But don't start with recognizing that you need it with thinking you need a specialist when you don't.

01:06:27.000 | So for you, Zach, as a home-educating student, this gives you the opportunity to choose your teachers from the world's best teachers.

01:06:35.000 | It gives your parents the opportunity to bring to you the world's best teachers in that specialty.

01:06:41.000 | And you have the freedom to actually work with them.

01:06:43.000 | And when you combine the fact that general knowledge is gained best from a book or from a publicly available lecture, and then you find that teacher who's the specialist, you have a much stronger learning foundation than trying to go into a factory where everybody has to learn the same thing and the teachers all are teaching based upon whatever the common core standards are.

01:07:01.000 | You said, "Another con, I'd probably have less time in a public school as opposed to home education other than hanging out with my friends, writing my fantasy novel, and playing music.

01:07:11.000 | I want to spend my free time as a homeschooler learning skills, experimenting with starting a business, and studying CLEP."

01:07:15.000 | If you go to a school, you will utterly waste some of the most valuable hours of your life.

01:07:19.000 | The young adult years from 13 to about 20 are incredibly valuable because you can try things without the pressure of financial success.

01:07:31.000 | You're not supporting yourself financially yet, and you're not supporting a family financially yet.

01:07:38.000 | That means that you have the freedom to try things that don't have a financial benefit.

01:07:44.000 | Those of us who are supporting ourselves and supporting a family don't have nearly as much opportunity to try those things.

01:07:51.000 | We don't have nearly as much opportunity to invest the hundreds or thousands of hours that are required to build competence in an area without knowing if it's going to be of a financial payoff.

01:08:00.000 | So you can take what your peers have been doing eight or nine hours a day doing, and you can do that in about two hours a day, which frees up the other six hours a day to do all kinds of other things.

01:08:14.000 | So don't waste these years where you don't have the pressure of making a ton of money.

01:08:20.000 | Skip the pointless classes. Skip the class time. Skip the busing to school. Skip the lunch.

01:08:26.000 | You can dramatically compress your learning time.

01:08:32.000 | You can go so much faster. Let's go to the next one.

01:08:35.000 | You said, "I have to stick with the class, but with home education, everything's based on your pace, so you can go faster."

01:08:40.000 | You can go faster for so many reasons in home education.

01:08:43.000 | Number one, the one that you said, speed of learning.

01:08:45.000 | You can learn at your own speed. You're not stuck with the peer group that all has to move together as a class.

01:08:51.000 | One of the most difficult things teachers who are responsible for class face is differing learning speeds.

01:08:58.000 | How do they help each child to learn without losing the fast ones to boredom and the slow ones to confusion?

01:09:07.000 | So it's a benefit that you can go both fast and slow.

01:09:12.000 | It's actually a benefit in home education that you can go slow because sometimes you need to go slow to master a concept.

01:09:18.000 | There's a saying from the world of shooting that slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

01:09:23.000 | That's the little saying. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

01:09:27.000 | The idea is you want to master your basic movements and your basic – you want to master the basics before you move on to the advanced stuff

01:09:38.000 | because if you master the basics, if you're smooth, you'll actually be fast in the long term.

01:09:42.000 | In the education, the key is to master something and then build on that.

01:09:46.000 | You want to learn slowly sometimes so you don't have to go back and repeat, and then that helps you to learn fast in the future.

01:09:51.000 | Home education is faster because you're focused on learning, not on tests.

01:09:55.000 | You don't have to take nearly so many tests, and you don't have to teach to the tests.

01:09:59.000 | You can teach to the education, not to the test.

01:10:02.000 | It's faster because you're focused on information that you need.

01:10:05.000 | You're not wasting time on all the pointless stuff that's thrown in for political purposes and for social accommodation.

01:10:10.000 | You just focus on what you need to know.

01:10:12.000 | It's faster because you're able to learn with the most efficient materials for your learning style.

01:10:16.000 | Sometimes some subjects are best for books, for people who learn well from books, sometimes lectures, but you can choose.

01:10:22.000 | You can go faster because you can skip a lot of the pointless activities, the quizzes, the reviews, et cetera.

01:10:27.000 | You can go faster because you can work during a time of day or in a work environment that's best for you.

01:10:34.000 | You don't have to do all the work at 8 a.m. if 8 a.m. is not good for you.

01:10:39.000 | You don't have to do it all at 2 p.m. if that's not good for you.

01:10:41.000 | It's faster because you can integrate your schooling with life and business.

01:10:47.000 | Here would be some of probably the biggest things.

01:10:50.000 | Teachers do everything they can to make their education practical and meaningful.

01:10:57.000 | When you're designing a class, you're trying to figure out how do I make this relevant?

01:11:01.000 | But teachers are usually stuck with an outline of expectations that they have to teach, especially now.

01:11:08.000 | Common Core across the country says they have to teach what these things are, and if it's on that, they've got to make sure it's taught to.

01:11:13.000 | But education is far more effective if it's practical.

01:11:19.000 | In some classes, it is.

01:11:20.000 | A computer teacher in a computer class will assign their student to make a video of their family vacation.

01:11:24.000 | That's really practical.

01:11:26.000 | But a lot of times, the English teacher doesn't know how to do that.

01:11:29.000 | But if you're in home education, you can make your academics connect to your jobs.

01:11:34.000 | You can make it connect to your business.

01:11:36.000 | One of my heroes in this area, Jonathan and Renee Harris from the website 10K to Talent, they've been on the show before.

01:11:42.000 | But they do a great job.

01:11:44.000 | For example, all their kids have an area of focus and an area of skill, and their English assignments are practical.

01:11:50.000 | For example, their son Caleb was a knife maker.

01:11:53.000 | And so his English assignments are to write his newsletter to his audience.

01:12:01.000 | There's no reason why you have to come up with some stupid essay that's made up.

01:12:06.000 | Why not take the skill of writing and apply it to writing an email newsletter to your business audience?

01:12:12.000 | Or take the video project that you need to do for your computer class and go ahead and produce a front-page introduction video or product video for your business or product idea.

01:12:21.000 | Your speech for your speech class doesn't have to be on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

01:12:27.000 | Your speech for your speech class can be about your plan to build your own house because you've been working with a construction guy, learning the skills of construction, and you're going to start building your own house for yourself debt-free at the age of 17.

01:12:37.000 | So you have so many opportunities to integrate your schooling with life and business and to gain academic credits from your business and from your job.

01:12:47.000 | It doesn't have to be disconnected.

01:12:49.000 | You say, "I love how we could take vacations or days off sporadically but in public school with such long summer breaks, you can't miss a day comfortably."

01:12:57.000 | Big benefit here.

01:12:59.000 | One of the things with home education is you can work in a more intelligent annual and weekly schedule than you can when you're stuck on a normal academic school year.

01:13:07.000 | Now, when I was young, I couldn't stay in school.

01:13:09.000 | All I wanted to do was get into summer break.

01:13:12.000 | Then at the end of summer break, I was ready to go back to school.

01:13:15.000 | But one of the things that you can do in home education that we'll see – I think we'll probably do in my family but we'll see.

01:13:22.000 | Some of this is theory and you have to see how it works with your kids but especially you at this point, Zach.

01:13:27.000 | You can do away with the whole academic year and summer vacation thing.

01:13:32.000 | Summer vacations are a real pain because they mess up your whole learning process.

01:13:36.000 | You lose a week at the front end getting back into the routine and trying to get caught up and remember what you learned last year and you lose a week at the back end.

01:13:45.000 | In your home education, you can forget national holidays.

01:13:50.000 | You'll take some of them but you don't have to take them.

01:13:53.000 | If you're on a schedule where you could do Saturdays and just work six days a week on your schooling, a couple hours of study every morning, it's far more efficient.

01:14:02.000 | I don't take weekends off.

01:14:04.000 | I take Sundays off but on Saturdays, I get up early just the same as any other day.

01:14:08.000 | Study in the morning.

01:14:10.000 | Now, if you think about this, let's calculate what you can do for your goals versus your peers.

01:14:15.000 | Let's say that you do six days a week and you just study for three or four hours every morning year-round and you skip the days of studying when you have a better event scheduled, a special days activity, a family vacation.

01:14:26.000 | You're going to a convention or a conference.

01:14:28.000 | You have visitors in town that you're going to take to the beach.

01:14:30.000 | You have a special trip planned, etc.

01:14:32.000 | But you don't do it on an arbitrary calendar basis.

01:14:34.000 | You do it when you have something that's motivating to you.

01:14:37.000 | Well, take – that's how I would run my schedule if I were in your shoes.

01:14:42.000 | You have 365 calendar days in a year.

01:14:44.000 | Pull off 52 Sundays off.

01:14:46.000 | Take one day a week off and you're left with 313 working days.

01:14:50.000 | Now, let's say that you skip 50 or 60 days a year but instead of doing it all at once on a summer vacation, you do it when you actually have a holiday that you want to celebrate or a trip.

01:15:01.000 | You have a special outing or a vacation.

01:15:03.000 | If you pull off about 60 days, 63 days, you wind up with about 250 working days in a year.

01:15:09.000 | That's what you have as a home-educating student.

01:15:12.000 | Now, compare that to 180 days of school in a government school.

01:15:16.000 | But then, of course, you've got to adjust that number.

01:15:18.000 | Pull off, I don't know, maybe five or ten days wasted at the beginning to get back in the groove of school after forgetting everything and two weeks of review at the end of summer to try to get your math skills back.

01:15:27.000 | That was always a problem for me.

01:15:28.000 | I struggled in math when we started again.

01:15:30.000 | Ten days wasted at the end of the year doing tests and getting ready for summer break and teachers have to arrange their syllabus where they have a little bit of wiggle room.

01:15:38.000 | Then ten days lost through the year on testing and state testing and homecoming and snow days or hurricane days or whatever.

01:15:46.000 | So let's say you get 150 good solid working days out of the year in a government school system.

01:15:52.000 | You can easily do 250 days consistently three hours a day instead of needing 150 eight hours a day.

01:15:59.000 | Remember, you can get done in two or three hours a day what they get done in eight and a half hours a day.

01:16:03.000 | If you do 250 days and they do 150, you've got a hundred-day advantage.

01:16:12.000 | That is a huge advantage over your peers, a huge advantage over your peers.

01:16:20.000 | Remember, you want to keep that advantage split out into an appropriate outline of academics, jobs, and business and hobbies.

01:16:29.000 | You'll go so much farther faster.

01:16:32.000 | So now maybe you need to drop – again, if family schedule, parents are off on Saturdays, do the five-day work.

01:16:39.000 | Do the five-day week.

01:16:40.000 | I think in those cases, it makes sense to work on five days.

01:16:43.000 | But maybe just do an hour or two on Saturday morning.

01:16:46.000 | Do a math lesson, something like that.

01:16:49.000 | Make a huge benefit there.

01:16:51.000 | So you can go so much faster with that.

01:16:53.000 | You talk about I have to wake up early.

01:16:55.000 | As you grow and mature and catch a vision for the work that your life will be, your trouble with getting out of bed will change.

01:17:03.000 | At this point in time, you need a lot of sleep.

01:17:05.000 | Here's the key.

01:17:06.000 | As you age, your sleep schedule will adjust.

01:17:08.000 | The key for you to be able to wake up without struggling to wake up is have a consistent bedtime and stick to it.

01:17:14.000 | Have a consistent bedtime.

01:17:16.000 | A good walk is a great bedtime and then allow your body to rest for as long as it needs.

01:17:21.000 | Waking up early is only hard – waking up in the morning and waking up early is only hard if you didn't go to bed on time.

01:17:28.000 | You have huge opportunities to do – to handle that for yourself.

01:17:34.000 | So here's the question.

01:17:35.000 | Can you become financially independent by 30?

01:17:38.000 | I'm sorry.

01:17:39.000 | For those of you listening, I dragged a little bit through all those.

01:17:41.000 | But I wanted to answer its pros and cons here instead of in an email.

01:17:45.000 | You can.

01:17:46.000 | Maybe.

01:17:47.000 | As always, it depends on your income and your expenses and your investments.

01:17:52.000 | One of the major things you have to watch out for is there's a real weakness of being young and single and thinking that you can live on nothing.

01:17:58.000 | And if your definition of financial independence is that you can live on $1,500 a month, that's really tough to do, really, really tough to do as an adult with a family.

01:18:10.000 | So don't buy into this idea I'm just going to live on nothing.

01:18:13.000 | You're not.

01:18:14.000 | But you can't do it.

01:18:16.000 | I think realistically with the outlines that I've described, I think you could arrive at 18, 19, 20 years old.

01:18:23.000 | I've seen it.

01:18:24.000 | I've seen people do it.

01:18:25.000 | I've interviewed people on the show.

01:18:27.000 | I interviewed Steve Maxwell.

01:18:29.000 | His kids did it.

01:18:30.000 | I think you could arrive at 18 years old with your college work done.

01:18:36.000 | I think you can arrive at 18 years old with $50,000 to $100,000 in the bank from part-time jobs.

01:18:42.000 | I think you can arrive at 18 to 20 years old with significant vocational skills being applied in a series of businesses as you look for the opportunity.

01:18:52.000 | If you arrive at that age, if you arrive at 20, 70, 50, 75, $100,000 in the bank, job skills, network, college degree done, from 20 to 30, you can take that foundation of education.

01:19:09.000 | You can make millions in your 20s.

01:19:12.000 | Now, you don't actually need millions, but you can do it.

01:19:15.000 | Now, we don't know what it'll be.

01:19:18.000 | We can't predict that in advance.

01:19:20.000 | But I know on the foundation of education that I said of strong academics, strong personal discipline and self-management skills, strong job skills developed from actually having years of work in many different jobs,

01:19:35.000 | and business and hobbies that you've been developing on the side and working to see what works.

01:19:40.000 | There's no question that from 20 to 30, you can save and earn the couple million bucks that you need to really make this plan work.

01:19:49.000 | I'm convinced of it.

01:19:51.000 | I wish I'd known when I was 13 what I just said.

01:19:55.000 | So, Zach, I hope that's useful to you.

01:19:57.000 | I'm excited for you, man.

01:19:59.000 | Happy to correspond with you any more that you'd like.

01:20:02.000 | You got a tremendous opportunity.

01:20:04.000 | Thank your parents for giving you this opportunity.

01:20:07.000 | And in the meantime, don't lose sight.

01:20:09.000 | Money is not everything.

01:20:10.000 | Financial independence is not everything.

01:20:12.000 | You can arrive at 30 and be financially independent, but guess what?

01:20:16.000 | What are you going to do at 31?

01:20:17.000 | Don't limit your goals to financial goals.

01:20:19.000 | Financial goals are very poor goals in the sense that they're not an end in and of themselves.

01:20:27.000 | Okay, so you got a million dollars.

01:20:28.000 | Now what?

01:20:29.000 | The only way that financial goals work is if they're a means to an end, something that's more important to you.

01:20:34.000 | So I want to be financially independent so I can do--

01:20:39.000 | That's the only reason it works.

01:20:41.000 | The goal of being financially independent can be as unfulfilling as any other goal.

01:20:44.000 | But if it's a means to an end, I think it would be great.

01:20:49.000 | I hope this has been useful.

01:20:50.000 | For those of you who have children, I hope this is useful.

01:20:53.000 | I know these are not normal concepts, but my show is called Radical Personal Finance for a reason.

01:20:59.000 | I have seen so many examples of this that I am convinced that the path that I laid out for Zach is absolutely doable.

01:21:09.000 | And really worth it.

01:21:10.000 | It comes with a lot of long-term benefits.

01:21:12.000 | It's not overly workaholic.

01:21:13.000 | It's not overly play.

01:21:15.000 | When you start challenging some of these things, you find that it's very easy to really build a lot of skill in some of these things.

01:21:22.000 | So I hope this has been useful for you.

01:21:24.000 | Time will tell.

01:21:25.000 | I've got a three-year-old.

01:21:26.000 | As parents, you always have to look at the skills of your kid and the situations of your kid and adjust.

01:21:32.000 | So this is all very generalized.

01:21:34.000 | Zach will have to figure out for himself what would actually work.

01:21:37.000 | But thank you so much for listening to today's show.

01:21:39.000 | If you'd like to support the work that I'm doing here at Radical Personal Finance, I'd be deeply grateful for that.

01:21:43.000 | You can become a patron of my show at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:21:47.000 | Radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:21:51.000 | If you'd like to speak with me about some kind of personal area of your own situation, I do phone consulting.

01:21:56.000 | You can book a phone call with me at radicalpersonalfinance.com/phonecall.

01:22:00.000 | Radicalpersonalfinance.com/phonecall for all of that.

01:22:04.000 | Thank you so much for listening, and I will be back with you very soon.

01:22:07.000 | [Music]

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