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RPF0519-How_to_Get_More_Free_Stuff


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00:00:00.000 | Hey there treasure hunters and bargain seekers!
00:00:03.400 | Are you on the lookout for a local thrift store that has it all?
00:00:06.600 | Look no further!
00:00:07.840 | Pix Exchange is your thrifting paradise right here in the heart of Torrance.
00:00:11.920 | Pix Exchange offers a wide variety of new and used clothing, shoes, new scrubs, uniforms,
00:00:17.480 | new and used furniture, all at low prices.
00:00:20.280 | Don't miss out on the ultimate thrifting experience at our Pix Exchange parking lot anniversary
00:00:24.480 | sale at our Torrance location.
00:00:26.200 | Visit pixexchangehhh.org for more details.
00:00:30.400 | Would you like to be given more free stuff by others?
00:00:33.400 | Well today on Radical Personal Finance I'm going to share with you how that can happen
00:00:39.400 | for you.
00:00:41.480 | And the answer is elegantly simple.
00:00:46.480 | If you would like to be given more free stuff by others, then you should become known as
00:00:54.880 | someone who is a good receiver of free things.
00:01:01.880 | You need to become known as someone who can be given things, develop a reputation as somebody
00:01:06.480 | who values the things that others might give you.
00:01:11.520 | You say Joshua what difference does that make?
00:01:13.800 | It makes all the difference in the world.
00:01:16.920 | What I've learned is if you will develop a reputation as somebody who appreciates the
00:01:21.360 | good gifts that others give you, then people with good gifts to give will enjoy giving
00:01:29.600 | them to you.
00:01:32.840 | I didn't always feel this way.
00:01:33.960 | When I was younger I had a significant self-image problem.
00:01:39.080 | I lacked confidence in who I was and in the type of person that I was.
00:01:43.400 | I always wanted to appear to be rich.
00:01:45.520 | I was the kind of person who wanted to not look like I was in need.
00:01:49.080 | And so I would have been the kind of person who would have not wanted to receive things
00:01:54.280 | for free.
00:01:56.360 | I was reminded of this a year or two ago in some personal interaction with somebody that
00:02:02.440 | I know.
00:02:03.440 | And this person is very broke constantly.
00:02:07.080 | Throughout this person's entire lifetime they have always been broke.
00:02:11.560 | They are very poor at managing money.
00:02:14.320 | And when I say broke I mean seriously, seriously broke.
00:02:21.080 | Always.
00:02:23.720 | And what was interesting is I watched this person on multiple occasions over the course
00:02:27.440 | of a few weeks be offered gifts by other people that to me seemed like great gifts.
00:02:38.920 | Much of it was food and this person didn't have money for food, but yet they were offered
00:02:42.720 | gifts by other people.
00:02:44.520 | But because this person has so much pride about their money, and hint, hint, broke people
00:02:54.840 | are usually the most sensitive and proud about their money.
00:02:59.200 | Because this person has so much pride about their money I watched them systematically
00:03:02.720 | turn down these good gifts, these offers of good food and good things.
00:03:08.360 | I myself have tried to give this person good things and basically I've given up because
00:03:14.240 | I've realized they just aren't going to be a good receiver of things.
00:03:21.040 | On some of those occasions when I observed somebody offering this person good gifts of
00:03:25.880 | food, and I'm not talking about food that they pulled from a dumpster, good quality
00:03:29.220 | food that was being given away for free, I myself opened my mouth and said, "Well, I'll
00:03:34.120 | take it."
00:03:36.000 | Now what's funny is I have about a bazillion times more money than this broke person has.
00:03:43.840 | Yes, bazillion is a technical financial planning term that means lots, about a bazillion times
00:03:49.280 | more money.
00:03:51.360 | And yet here I am going ahead and taking the free things that they were being offered.
00:03:59.520 | But I've learned that if you'll develop a reputation as being somebody who is a good
00:04:03.760 | receiver of gifts and who appreciates it, then people will give you lots of stuff.
00:04:10.880 | And it'll be good stuff too, that's a real blessing to you.
00:04:15.000 | I'm not going to turn down free food when somebody wants to give me free food.
00:04:18.960 | What a blessing.
00:04:20.120 | What a blessing to my family, what a blessing to my budget.
00:04:22.360 | It allows me to save money, money may be used to grow my wealth, that it gives me the opportunity
00:04:28.800 | to bless someone else, gives me the opportunity to invite someone in for a good meal with
00:04:33.160 | food that I didn't have to pay for.
00:04:35.520 | What a blessing.
00:04:38.080 | And yet I've watched again and again as this broke person gets offered fewer and fewer
00:04:45.640 | good things because they're not a good receiver of things.
00:04:51.040 | I think most of us want to see the things that we have and that we're done with go to
00:04:56.480 | a good home.
00:04:57.960 | That's why when we're done with certain clothes or certain items and possessions that are
00:05:02.880 | no longer useful for us, most of us would prefer to take them down to a thrift store
00:05:07.800 | and make a donation to the local charity store rather than to toss them in the garbage.
00:05:12.000 | And I think that's proper.
00:05:15.080 | If we had the opportunity to give away food, for example, that was perfectly edible, most
00:05:20.280 | of us would rather see that food go to good use instead of it being poured down the garbage.
00:05:25.000 | Now whether that good use is to go into your dog's stomach or whether it's to go into your
00:05:29.320 | neighbor's stomach, that would depend, of course, on the quality of the food.
00:05:32.320 | But we want to maintain and to care for the things that we have.
00:05:36.080 | We have so much.
00:05:37.080 | We've been blessed with so much.
00:05:39.880 | And so it's important for us to use that and to make good use of it.
00:05:45.960 | But pride gets in the way for many people.
00:05:50.800 | Pride makes many broke people too proud to admit they're broke.
00:05:58.520 | It's amazing that it does seem to me that there is more pride related to money and financial
00:06:04.080 | topics among people who have no intelligent basis for pride, meaning poor people, than
00:06:11.720 | there is even among the wealthy.
00:06:12.960 | I couldn't cite any data to that.
00:06:15.720 | That's just been my own experience.
00:06:18.320 | Now maybe that makes sense or maybe it doesn't.
00:06:20.480 | We'll save that for another time.
00:06:22.340 | But I've observed that if you're poor and you're too proud to receive things from others,
00:06:28.620 | people will stop offering them to you and you'll probably never be anything but poor.
00:06:35.140 | I've also observed this too, of course, for people who either are rich or want to pretend
00:06:39.260 | to be rich, that they're often too proud to take things.
00:06:41.940 | What happens is you develop this reputation as not being a good receiver.
00:06:45.980 | I recommend that you flip that around or at least if you want to get more free stuff.
00:06:51.900 | Be a good receiver of gifts.
00:06:54.180 | Be somebody who knows how to take something and use it and recycle it and reuse it.
00:07:00.080 | If you do, you'll find hundreds of dollars of value flowing into your life without you
00:07:06.900 | having to work for it.
00:07:09.460 | Here are some simple examples.
00:07:12.220 | This one used to really bug me because I had family members who would do it and I just
00:07:17.180 | hated that reputation.
00:07:18.980 | I was lacking self-confidence.
00:07:20.940 | I didn't want to appear poor, etc.
00:07:23.660 | I used to have family members who if they were a big party and of course many times
00:07:26.660 | a host will prepare a lot of food for a party or they'll order a lot of food in for catering.
00:07:32.540 | Frequently when the host of a party has done that, the host is sick of the food or they
00:07:36.420 | just want everything cleaned up.
00:07:37.900 | They've done so much work to host a big party and there's so much food left over or perhaps
00:07:42.860 | they're a small family, they can't use it.
00:07:44.940 | They would love for somebody to take it off their hands.
00:07:46.820 | Of course, many people don't want to use leftovers.
00:07:49.100 | I've never understood this anti-leftover discrimination.
00:07:53.180 | Some people have this deep, deep discrimination against leftovers.
00:07:57.500 | But whatever.
00:07:58.700 | So they don't offer it to everybody.
00:08:01.380 | But there have been so many times where I've watched family members and friends and I've
00:08:06.420 | done it myself where you're at the end of a party and someone says, "Does anybody want
00:08:09.140 | the food?"
00:08:10.140 | You say, "I'll take it, sure."
00:08:11.820 | You may have 50, 100 dollars worth of food.
00:08:14.660 | And it's great food, very expensive food, very finely prepared, catered food, etc.
00:08:19.820 | And that may feed your family for a couple of weeks.
00:08:21.740 | Hundreds of dollars worth of value.
00:08:23.860 | You run the tax savings on that.
00:08:25.220 | You figure out how much you would have had to earn with all of your expenses, work expenses,
00:08:29.180 | and now all of a sudden it becomes very, very valuable.
00:08:32.700 | Or possessions, things that people are giving away.
00:08:36.120 | Many people have this built-in concern about not wanting to give away used items.
00:08:43.180 | There's this ethos in the US American culture that says that you should only give new things.
00:08:49.500 | Now, there's a time and a place for it.
00:08:51.340 | Of course, there are some things that are best given new.
00:08:54.340 | There are things that I would give used and there are things that I would not give used.
00:08:57.940 | Same for you.
00:08:59.780 | But there are people to whom I would never give used and there are people to whom I would
00:09:03.860 | happily give used.
00:09:06.040 | But I've got a whole lot more used things to give away than I have new things.
00:09:10.100 | And so whether it's being a happy recipient of toys that are passed along from another
00:09:14.500 | family or a bicycle that's passed along or clothing that's being passed along, if you'll
00:09:19.780 | just simply say yes when someone says, "Are you interested?"
00:09:23.580 | You'll develop a reputation as somebody who appreciates being given things and then people
00:09:27.900 | will look to give you more and more things and they'll always think of you first.
00:09:32.140 | Or at least that's been our experience.
00:09:34.660 | My wife and I have been so blessed over the years of people just giving us hundreds and
00:09:39.500 | hundreds of dollars worth of valuable items that have been so helpful to us.
00:09:48.780 | We've been given furniture for free.
00:09:52.860 | We've been given cookware for free.
00:09:56.300 | We've been given clothing for ourselves and for our children for free.
00:10:01.260 | With three children, we've hardly purchased more than 50 bucks maybe, 50 to $100 worth
00:10:08.740 | of clothing for our own children.
00:10:10.940 | And those were, as I specifically remember the outfits, those were some fancy outfits
00:10:15.600 | that my wife really wanted for the children.
00:10:18.100 | They weren't needed.
00:10:19.180 | They weren't necessary.
00:10:21.380 | What a blessing that's been for us as a young family with young children, not having to
00:10:25.240 | pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of clothing.
00:10:28.260 | Now when the clothing comes, frequently it comes in a big bag and you got to go through
00:10:31.220 | and sort it.
00:10:32.220 | Frequently it comes stained or dirty and you've got to go through and clean it.
00:10:36.620 | But I couldn't even calculate the value of that.
00:10:41.700 | With the exception of a few basic birthday presents here and there, my wife and I have
00:10:46.220 | never purchased toys for our children.
00:10:49.780 | We live in a sea of toys that are constantly floating through our house.
00:10:56.460 | Now part of that comes from knowing other people with children who – their children
00:11:00.340 | are done with the toys and they're ready to pass them along.
00:11:02.520 | Part of it comes because my wife is the world's greatest trash picker.
00:11:05.460 | My children think that all the world's best toys come from trash piles.
00:11:09.220 | There is so much.
00:11:10.660 | We live in a lower class neighborhood and there's so – people in lower class neighborhoods
00:11:14.480 | throw everything away.
00:11:16.340 | Brand new stuff thrown away all the time.
00:11:18.020 | I'll do a show separately on that in the future about what we've learned living in
00:11:21.460 | a lower class neighborhood.
00:11:22.460 | But one thing we've learned is that poor people throw everything away.
00:11:25.820 | So brand new stuff, tags on it and my wife is amazing.
00:11:29.260 | She's an amazing trash picker.
00:11:31.460 | I cheat trying to get her to set up an Instagram account or a blog or something of the stuff
00:11:35.100 | that she finds.
00:11:36.740 | But I – she doesn't want to do it.
00:11:39.260 | But we're talking hundreds of dollars in a year of stuff that she finds.
00:11:44.140 | I want to be not overly hyperbolic in my language but I mean this week she found a Kindle.
00:11:49.780 | She finds blankets.
00:11:50.780 | She finds animals.
00:11:51.780 | So our kids think all the greatest toys come off of trash piles.
00:11:54.460 | We bring them home, clean them up, make sure if it's anything that could carry germs
00:11:58.260 | that's disinfected and save in working order and all that.
00:12:02.100 | But it leads to such utter and embarrassing abundance for our children.
00:12:09.740 | They have this constant stream of stuff flowing in and then when we're done, we clean it
00:12:13.340 | up and we pass it along somewhere else.
00:12:15.420 | I don't mean to go into trash picking but part of it is just having the reputation of
00:12:20.980 | somebody who's not going to turn up their nose.
00:12:24.860 | Remember that friend that I was talking about earlier?
00:12:27.740 | In the past, I've given that person things.
00:12:31.060 | Sometimes I've given that person used items.
00:12:34.300 | Sometimes I've actually bought new things knowing that this person is in need, knowing
00:12:38.740 | that they probably are the kind of person who would very much turn up their nose if
00:12:42.140 | I give them something used because of course that's beneath them.
00:12:46.620 | Knowing that, I've purchased new things.
00:12:51.340 | You know what I found?
00:12:53.180 | They were just as bad of a receiver of new things as they were used things.
00:12:59.380 | It was amazing, really amazing to see.
00:13:03.900 | I couldn't believe it, how somebody with so little could be so proud that even the
00:13:11.900 | new things, they didn't say no, but even the new things couldn't be accepted with
00:13:18.340 | simple gratitude.
00:13:20.740 | Friend, you don't want that reputation because it's destructive to your soul and it's
00:13:28.420 | bad on your pocketbook because you've got to buy everything for yourself.
00:13:34.780 | Now obviously my friend who's very broke and very poor has no need.
00:13:38.980 | If they have no need, why would I give them anything?
00:13:42.300 | So I don't give them things anymore.
00:13:44.300 | But you know what?
00:13:46.620 | I'm happy to take the wonderful things that I'm given.
00:13:51.420 | Here's my challenge to you.
00:13:53.060 | The next time somebody says, "Would you like such and such?"
00:13:56.540 | Just train yourself to say, "Yes, absolutely."
00:14:00.140 | Now you may need to follow it on with a couple of clarifying things.
00:14:03.540 | Here would be some recommendation to you.
00:14:07.300 | One, you may need to say, "If I can't use it, I'll find somebody else that can
00:14:10.940 | use it."
00:14:13.820 | Because when you're given a lot of things, you can't keep everything.
00:14:17.900 | There's no room in my house to store all of the wonderful things that we're given.
00:14:21.900 | So what we do is we go through and we take the things that are good for us, then we pass
00:14:25.380 | them along to others.
00:14:27.340 | And then that way, in the same way that we are blessed by others, we can pass that blessing
00:14:31.660 | along to others.
00:14:34.140 | And this makes a real difference because for every poor person who is too proud to say
00:14:38.980 | yes to a good gift, my guess is there are a dozen that are not and that who will genuinely
00:14:45.620 | appreciate the good things that are given.
00:14:48.100 | Now you may have to go outside of your circle of influence.
00:14:52.220 | You may have to go outside your current sphere of friends.
00:14:56.660 | But there are some people around you who would really appreciate those nice things if you
00:15:00.460 | can get them into the proper hand.
00:15:03.060 | One of the challenges of recycling is getting the good stuff into the right person's hand.
00:15:09.900 | But you can do it.
00:15:11.380 | And sometimes it'll take a little bit of time, but it's really worth it.
00:15:15.060 | You know, half the things that my wife finds on the trash piles, well, she'll come home
00:15:18.780 | with bags of clothes.
00:15:20.060 | This week she came home with bags of clothes.
00:15:22.580 | Somebody was moving, they obviously couldn't move with them.
00:15:24.980 | Go ahead and wash them and we pass them along to go through.
00:15:28.560 | Maybe there's something in it for us.
00:15:30.080 | Maybe there's something in it for someone that we know.
00:15:32.300 | But then we just pass them along and we package them up and send them to Haiti.
00:15:36.780 | I'd a whole lot rather see a bag of clothes get washed and cleaned and sent down to Haiti
00:15:42.580 | where they can do some good versus tossed in a garbage heap in South Florida.
00:15:48.500 | What a waste.
00:15:50.380 | So perhaps you can be the one who can just pick through something and pass it along.
00:15:53.900 | Now you do need to be careful, of course.
00:15:55.900 | There are problems.
00:15:56.900 | You know, my grandfather was a farmer and he had about a 30-acre junkyard with all of
00:16:02.460 | the stuff.
00:16:03.460 | Now in those days, that was important.
00:16:04.820 | You had to do that.
00:16:06.060 | You had to keep all your old tractors and all your old stuff around for parts so that
00:16:09.140 | you could go and scavenge.
00:16:10.140 | And my grandfather, people would come from miles around to use his junkyard.
00:16:15.500 | I don't have 30 acres to dedicate to a junkyard.
00:16:19.780 | So I've got to be careful that we don't hoard things.
00:16:22.540 | And you should not hoard.
00:16:24.860 | You shouldn't just pile everything up and let it accumulate until your house looks like
00:16:29.340 | something that ought to be on a TV show dedicated to hoarding.
00:16:32.700 | Be careful, of course, with your time.
00:16:34.020 | You don't always have time to go through everything and to fix everything up and to do that.
00:16:39.060 | But frankly, those risks are very, very low.
00:16:43.380 | So here is my recommendation.
00:16:47.420 | Next time somebody says, "Would you like such and such?"
00:16:51.380 | Just say yes.
00:16:52.380 | And if you'll say yes, you'll start to develop that reputation as somebody who really appreciates
00:16:58.180 | the good things that you're given, whether they're new or used.
00:17:03.020 | And if your experience is anything like mine, I'll bet that there will be hundreds and hundreds
00:17:09.620 | of dollars worth of value that will flow into your life from others simply who want to give
00:17:16.480 | things to a good home.
00:17:18.840 | If you want to be given more things, just become a good home.
00:17:25.140 | Here's one more tip in closing.
00:17:27.000 | If you're looking for something, talk from time to time about the things that you're
00:17:30.580 | looking for.
00:17:31.900 | Let people know what you're in the market for so that they can keep their eyes open
00:17:36.180 | for you.
00:17:37.180 | I experienced this recently.
00:17:38.340 | I talked about how our blender, we had this cheap blender that we got somewhere and it
00:17:42.980 | was just steadily dying.
00:17:44.140 | Every time I would use it, the motor would send off a whiff of smoke and the smell of
00:17:50.020 | smoke, not an actual whiff of smoke, but it would just kind of smell that electric burning
00:17:53.400 | smell that makes you say, "This motor is not going to last too long."
00:17:57.480 | And so we've been keeping our eyes open, just waiting on a deal.
00:18:00.380 | And so I mentioned it on the show in passing.
00:18:05.040 | And I've had so many of you wonderful people just write to me.
00:18:07.640 | I had people write to me and talk to me about the virtues of a Vitamix, which by the way,
00:18:11.480 | I forget your name to the listener who sent me that, sent me the analysis, the financial
00:18:15.360 | analysis of how valuable a Vitamix is.
00:18:17.520 | Yes, I agree.
00:18:18.520 | It was well done.
00:18:20.600 | And I've been thinking for a few years about getting a Vitamix.
00:18:23.080 | Just haven't – it's not worth the $300-something to me yet.
00:18:25.680 | I need to be sure that I'm going to be using it enough.
00:18:28.280 | But I had a listener who said, "We just got a new Vitamix.
00:18:30.840 | We'd love to send you our old blender," and packaged it up and shipped it to me.
00:18:34.960 | That thing is awesome.
00:18:36.280 | It's wonderful.
00:18:37.640 | It's absolutely wonderful and it's such a blessing.
00:18:41.200 | So thank you to the listener who sent that.
00:18:42.920 | I appreciate it very much.
00:18:44.080 | It's a real blessing and it makes way better waffles than our other one did.
00:18:50.440 | But I use that as an example that if you let people know what you're looking for, then
00:18:54.680 | they can activate a network and they'll look for it for you.
00:18:57.920 | We do this frequently.
00:18:58.920 | If I'm going to need to get an appliance or something or we're on the market for something
00:19:02.240 | or we're running short on something, we just tell people, "Hey, by the way, keep your
00:19:05.240 | ears open."
00:19:06.860 | And so many times when you tell somebody, "Hey, keep your ears open for such and such.
00:19:12.040 | We're looking for such and such.
00:19:13.840 | We're looking for a new rocking chair.
00:19:15.440 | We're looking for some new clothes for the baby.
00:19:18.520 | We're looking for whatever," and mention that to a few people, especially the good deal
00:19:24.640 | hounds that you know, and all of a sudden, so frequently, a few weeks later, it shows
00:19:30.120 | up.
00:19:31.120 | It's totally for free.
00:19:32.120 | "Oh, I saw so-and-so was getting rid of it," or, "I mentioned to so-and-so that you were
00:19:34.720 | looking for such and such," and here it is.
00:19:38.280 | So be a good home and then share with others what you're looking for.
00:19:42.480 | And when you start to use these networks, these informal networks, it can put major
00:19:47.760 | money to your bottom line, which you can use for other more pressing expenses.
00:19:52.640 | There are some things that you can almost never find in the used market or that never
00:19:56.100 | find in the free market by getting the things that you can in the used and the free market
00:20:00.360 | that frees up money for those things or just frees up money for stacking up and investing.
00:20:07.440 | Try it.
00:20:08.440 | I bet you'll like it.
00:20:11.720 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.
00:20:17.360 | Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com.
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