RPF0520-2018_Plans
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00:00:30.400 | Beginning very soon perhaps, in as few as a couple of months, my family and I are packing
00:00:35.280 | up our RV and we are going to take a grand tour of the United States.
00:00:41.080 | And we'd like to come see you, if you'd like to see us.
00:00:44.280 | Today I'm going to tell you about that.
00:00:45.600 | [Music]
00:01:01.600 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:01:05.000 | skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:01:09.480 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:01:12.560 | My name is Joshua and I am your host.
00:01:16.000 | Today I'll tell you about our 2018 plan.
00:01:17.600 | Yes, I know it's February, but hey, you got to get things at least somewhat settled before
00:01:22.840 | you start talking about them, right?
00:01:24.400 | At least I feel like I do.
00:01:26.000 | [Music]
00:01:34.000 | Today's episode of Radical Personal Finance will be very focused on just a little bit
00:01:36.920 | of personal story, me interacting with you, a little bit of background.
00:01:40.720 | I don't have a formal teaching outline that will be a lot of story, but if you care to
00:01:45.440 | listen to the story, it should help you with a little bit of analysis, some ideas that
00:01:48.680 | you may apply to your own life.
00:01:49.920 | I don't claim to do everything well, but I don't think that that is the basis of being
00:01:55.400 | able to share with one another and being able to help one another.
00:01:58.360 | Sometimes it's helpful to hear somebody else's thinking and their own method of analysis
00:02:02.960 | and you can either see something good, which you can take and apply to yourself, or you
00:02:07.480 | can see something bad, which you can take and apply to yourself in avoiding something.
00:02:13.720 | Frequently, if you listen to other people talk about their plans, you'll notice in their
00:02:18.240 | own mistakes and in their own problems, you'll notice some things that you can put in place
00:02:24.520 | to protect yourself.
00:02:26.000 | So as I share with you a little bit about my analysis and my family and life and a little
00:02:30.640 | bit – a few of the things that we're doing, I hope you'll find it instructive in a positive
00:02:34.680 | sense, but if not, I hope you'll at least find it instructive and you can learn from
00:02:39.880 | our mistakes.
00:02:40.880 | So let's get right to it.
00:02:41.880 | Short story up front, we are planning this year in 2018 to do some major traveling.
00:02:48.720 | We intend to do a multi-month round-the-country RV tour.
00:02:51.640 | I'll be loading up my family, my wife, my three children, our two dogs, and we'll be
00:02:56.440 | hooking up to our 30-foot travel trailer and pickup truck and we're going to travel around
00:03:01.000 | the country, which we are very much looking forward to.
00:03:04.760 | I'm going to be a little bit vague with you on dates and details because – mostly
00:03:09.840 | because they're not set in stone at the moment.
00:03:12.280 | But my intention is to leave here in the springtime, perhaps as soon as April 1, and to be on the
00:03:18.280 | road for – throughout the spring, summer, and probably fall, maybe shorter, maybe longer.
00:03:23.420 | But that is our intention as far as our traveling dates.
00:03:26.760 | As far as the itinerary of where we're planning to go, that also is very flexible.
00:03:31.000 | I'll tell you a little bit in a few minutes about how you can help us set the itinerary.
00:03:35.680 | But in short, we'll be starting at our home here in South Florida and we at least want
00:03:41.600 | to wind up in the Mountain West to visit my family who lives out in the Mountain West.
00:03:46.960 | I want to visit my 103-year-old grandmother who has not yet met two of my children.
00:03:51.820 | So we'd like to take them out and visit her out in the Mountain West.
00:03:55.780 | So whether we'll go straight up through the country on a diagonal tour from Miami
00:04:00.080 | to Seattle, I don't know.
00:04:02.000 | Whether we'll cruise up through the Northeast and go up the East Coast and then go across
00:04:06.580 | the middle of the country and then come back down and do the circle tour, we haven't
00:04:09.480 | decided those details yet.
00:04:11.200 | But you can help us decide those.
00:04:13.380 | We do have a good long list of friends that we want to visit and destinations that we
00:04:17.440 | have planned.
00:04:18.440 | But we will be, as I'll explain to you in a moment, we'll be traveling slowly and
00:04:22.000 | flexibly, which is about the only way that I think that parents can handle a trip like
00:04:26.520 | this with young children.
00:04:27.920 | Now, a little bit of background for you.
00:04:30.320 | On Radical Personal Finance, I talk quite a bit about unusual lifestyles and I've
00:04:35.440 | talked a lot about people who engage in long-term perpetual travel, either long-term trips or
00:04:41.440 | even of many months or many years.
00:04:45.320 | I've interviewed plenty of people, especially families who've done this.
00:04:49.100 | Many people who are pursuing early retirement are traveling in this way.
00:04:53.560 | And so it's a theme that I have featured many times on the show and talked about how
00:04:58.440 | to do it.
00:04:59.440 | I've appeared on various travel podcasts and talked about the financial planning aspects
00:05:03.120 | of it.
00:05:04.120 | But for my family and for me, travel hasn't really been a big goal for our life at this
00:05:11.280 | point in time.
00:05:12.860 | And so this planned trip that we have here in 2018 is not the culmination of a long-planned
00:05:19.320 | big goal really in any way.
00:05:22.280 | Sightseeing is not a major goal for me at the moment.
00:05:25.680 | I've been very fortunate, very privileged to travel throughout much of the United States.
00:05:31.040 | At this point in my life, I think I've been to either 46 or 47 of these United States.
00:05:36.280 | I'm missing Hawaii, North Dakota, and Minnesota.
00:05:42.200 | I think other than Hawaii, North Dakota, and Minnesota, I have been to all of these 50
00:05:47.600 | United States.
00:05:48.600 | So we'll try to make up at least North Dakota and Minnesota on this trip.
00:05:51.580 | So I can make it up to 49.
00:05:52.960 | At some point we'll wind up in Hawaii, but that's never opened up.
00:05:56.280 | So I've been very fortunate in my life, though I am in my early 30s.
00:06:00.880 | I haven't yet – I mean, I've been very fortunate to travel with more than many people.
00:06:04.600 | I've been very fortunate to travel to many international destinations as well, to at
00:06:09.400 | least a couple dozen countries, which is far more than the average person and certainly
00:06:12.920 | far more than the average American and the average global citizen.
00:06:17.680 | And so because of that, I have been very blessed and privileged to see many sights.
00:06:22.520 | And I've recognized that although I enjoy sightseeing, sightseeing isn't a core motivator
00:06:28.680 | for me.
00:06:30.360 | There are very few sights that I really want to see that I feel like, "Oh, if I just
00:06:34.960 | see these things, then my life will be complete."
00:06:37.640 | I have enjoyed seeing many great sights.
00:06:41.240 | It's really remarkable to stand in the Sistine Chapel and look up and see the painting on
00:06:48.360 | the ceiling or to stand in the Duomo and admire it or to stand in the Colosseum – just using
00:06:54.040 | some examples from Rome – to stand in the Colosseum and imagine what happened there.
00:06:59.600 | I've been very privileged to walk on the Great Wall of China and to consider what thousands
00:07:05.520 | of years of history has produced and to see that.
00:07:08.920 | I've walked in Tiananmen Square and seen some of those incredible things.
00:07:12.720 | I've been to some really out-of-the-way places too.
00:07:15.880 | My wife and I, when we were newly married, we traveled to Haiti.
00:07:19.480 | And I always loved – in South Florida, we have a massive Haitian population of Haitian
00:07:24.080 | immigrants and I always enjoy being able to talk with them about all the interesting places
00:07:27.680 | I've been in Haiti and the sights that we've seen there.
00:07:31.720 | So whether it's from the well-known, such as the Sistine Chapel to the Basson Rue in
00:07:38.280 | Haiti or to the Palace of Saint-Souci, all of these little places, I've been very fortunate.
00:07:44.360 | But still, I don't have a list of sights I want to see.
00:07:48.120 | And I've never really been that interested in perpetual travel either.
00:07:51.580 | In many ways, me personally, I see travel and perpetual travel as in many ways problematic.
00:07:59.320 | There's difference if I just travel and there's problems if my whole family travels constantly.
00:08:03.480 | But although you can build communities on the road, it seems very transitory to me.
00:08:10.280 | And I think that one of the major benefits of life is to put down roots in a community
00:08:14.580 | and to build because when you can build with people and in a neighborhood and in a community,
00:08:21.040 | you can really have an impact, really have an impact in that place.
00:08:25.040 | And as a society becomes very much transient, we lose our connection to a place.
00:08:30.920 | And so this is not a moral argument that it's wrong to travel.
00:08:35.840 | Just for me, it's not been something that appeals to me very much.
00:08:39.640 | For me, what I find the most impactful about travel is when travel has meaning and purpose
00:08:45.620 | that goes beyond just simply taking in the sights.
00:08:48.900 | Now that meaning and purpose can mean different things.
00:08:51.520 | It can be travel that involves work based upon the work that you do.
00:08:57.160 | If you go and travel to a city to do an assignment there, whether it's to give a speech or to
00:09:02.760 | research and take local water samples to test the environment or to go into to make a sales
00:09:08.600 | call, then I find that the associated travel with that, as long as you're not on too tight
00:09:14.200 | of a schedule, can be very enjoyable and very meaningful.
00:09:16.960 | It's great to fly and schedule meetings on Friday and Monday and take Saturday and Sunday
00:09:22.240 | and take in the sights.
00:09:23.800 | That's really ideal.
00:09:25.080 | I find that travel is really impactful if there's a purpose to the trip.
00:09:29.440 | That purpose can be the work involved in the trip.
00:09:31.800 | We're going to deliver something to a certain place or we're going to preach and to interact
00:09:37.720 | in certain churches or we're going to engage in a humanitarian project in a certain place.
00:09:42.160 | Then that greater meaning, to me, has real purpose and there's an output to the work
00:09:47.400 | where we don't just come home with a photo album filled with photos, which is great,
00:09:53.000 | and a mind full of memories, but we come home with the satisfaction of having worked and
00:09:57.120 | having accomplished something significant.
00:10:00.120 | I think travel that's part of a quest or a big goal can be very meaningful.
00:10:07.480 | For example, whether it's to travel the length of the Pan American Highway or to do some
00:10:13.440 | great challenge when I was younger, I really wanted to participate in the Mongol Rally,
00:10:17.520 | which is this utterly ridiculous thing that started probably a decade ago where these
00:10:22.640 | people will buy a – will either take a – will drive from London to Mongolia to – what's
00:10:29.760 | the capital of Mongolia?
00:10:32.160 | I think it's Ulaanbaatar.
00:10:33.160 | They'll drive a car from London overland to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
00:10:38.680 | But as part of the Mongol Rally, part of the design is that instead of driving a reasonable
00:10:44.920 | vehicle as in a four-wheel drive, put-together, kitted out expedition vehicle, you have to
00:10:51.200 | drive a ridiculous vehicle.
00:10:52.720 | In the old days, it was an old, cheap, underpowered little compact car.
00:10:57.600 | I always wanted to participate in the Mongol Rally when I was younger because that quest,
00:11:01.800 | that challenge, that adventure really appeals to me.
00:11:04.820 | So all of those things for me have meaning and I love to travel when it has a greater
00:11:10.200 | meaning but not just for a sightseeing perspective.
00:11:13.920 | In other ways also at this stage of our life, travel hasn't been a big deal simply because
00:11:17.640 | our children are not at a great age for traveling in the sense of they're not at a great age
00:11:23.240 | to be able to appreciate the benefit.
00:11:25.980 | For years, I've planned that when my children are later older in life and able to embrace
00:11:31.580 | the educational opportunities of it, I've for years planned to take a year or two and
00:11:36.320 | load up an RV and travel all around the United States and show my children all of the 50
00:11:41.640 | United States, go to all the 50 state capitals and interact with the history, the rich history
00:11:47.400 | of the United States of America and in a way that's meaningful for them.
00:11:52.000 | So I've long planned to do that.
00:11:53.620 | But at this point in time, a dirt pile in Florida is about the same as a dirt pile in
00:11:58.480 | Maine and has about as much attraction.
00:12:01.120 | The touring Appomattox doesn't exactly have the impact at this stage of my children's
00:12:06.840 | lives.
00:12:07.840 | And there are many challenges of traveling with small children.
00:12:11.460 | So that was an extensive way of simply saying that travel has not been a significant goal,
00:12:17.560 | at least not at this stage of our life.
00:12:20.520 | It's not been something that has been long planned.
00:12:23.960 | So why are we traveling this year?
00:12:25.520 | Well, there are personal reasons which involve my family and business reasons which involve
00:12:30.040 | you.
00:12:31.180 | But the personal reasons are a fewfold.
00:12:33.520 | Number one, my wife and I have a number of friends that live across the United States
00:12:37.120 | that we would like to visit and that we've wanted to visit for quite a while, people
00:12:41.360 | that we've wanted to keep in touch with.
00:12:44.000 | I don't do very well at keeping in touch with people virtually.
00:12:47.480 | I don't enjoy writing emails.
00:12:50.880 | I don't enjoy interacting on virtual mechanisms.
00:12:54.040 | I don't enjoy talking on the phone.
00:12:55.240 | I'm a face-to-face kind of guy.
00:12:57.880 | But it's hard to justify the time and money to just trot across the country, the drop
00:13:04.320 | of a hat, to visit somebody, especially given the size of my family at the moment.
00:13:09.560 | When you have many people that you're trying to coordinate together, airplane tickets become
00:13:14.600 | significantly costly.
00:13:17.360 | And with the age of my children, road trips are not as easy as I imagine they'll be down
00:13:23.160 | the road.
00:13:24.280 | So we have a number of friends that we'd like to visit, but there hasn't been a good opportunity.
00:13:27.240 | And so we've seen the opportunity right now to go and to visit some of our friends and
00:13:31.520 | be able to renew relationships that we've had that are important to us.
00:13:36.720 | Additionally, perhaps more pressing, we have outgrown the house that we're living in right
00:13:42.560 | now.
00:13:43.560 | Now, about a year – no, actually, two and a half years ago, we sold – my wife and
00:13:46.920 | I, we sold a house that was larger and more comfortable for us.
00:13:50.760 | And we sold that house for a number of reasons.
00:13:52.560 | Number one, it was a lifestyle choice to allow me to build the business of Radical Personal
00:13:58.160 | Finance with fewer financial pressures by removing the obligation of a mortgage, lowering
00:14:04.040 | overall expenses.
00:14:05.040 | We moved from a middle-class to upper-middle-class neighborhood into a lower-class neighborhood
00:14:09.880 | rental apartment.
00:14:11.660 | And it's been great for us.
00:14:12.660 | It's been really, really good.
00:14:13.720 | There was also a guess on my part with regard to market conditions.
00:14:19.320 | When I was analyzing the local real estate market, I looked around and I said this was
00:14:24.080 | a good time to sell when we actually sold.
00:14:27.280 | And I was anticipating a few things.
00:14:29.440 | Number one, we'd lived in the house long enough to be able to take the proceeds from
00:14:32.760 | the gain in the property, income tax-free, which is always nice when you've lived in
00:14:36.720 | a place for at least enough years to take that gain income tax-free.
00:14:40.120 | I love tax-free money.
00:14:41.300 | When you can give money that's free of income taxes and free of payroll taxes, I mean I
00:14:45.400 | love that.
00:14:46.400 | And that exclusion on increase in value of a personal residence is extremely valuable.
00:14:52.360 | And so we had built in a nice little bit of equity.
00:14:54.300 | We had bought right.
00:14:55.300 | We had bought at a deal and we bought at a low point in the market.
00:14:58.440 | And in my analysis of market conditions, I felt like it was a good time to sell.
00:15:03.560 | I was expecting – my prediction at the time was that some point towards the end of 2016
00:15:11.260 | or during 2017, it was my prediction that we would be into a recession in the US American
00:15:18.240 | economy.
00:15:19.360 | That was my expectation and there were good reasons for it.
00:15:21.920 | There were good symptoms of it and good indications of that.
00:15:25.440 | And I was wrong.
00:15:28.560 | I was flat out wrong on my timing, which is important to always acknowledge.
00:15:32.620 | When you predict something and get it wrong, it's important to look and say, "Well,
00:15:35.480 | why was I wrong?"
00:15:36.480 | You should not expect the growth of growing economy to continue as it has.
00:15:42.940 | Now, it could be that recession is right around the corner.
00:15:45.700 | We are long overdue for recession.
00:15:48.500 | But my particular timing of my crystal ball was not appropriate.
00:15:53.140 | The second concern that I had with local market conditions is that where we live in Palm Beach
00:15:58.020 | County, Florida, local market conditions have become disconnected from the broader economy.
00:16:03.420 | This led to a major problem here in our local housing market, just like it has for many
00:16:09.820 | of you who are listening.
00:16:11.900 | In general, housing should be connected to the labor market.
00:16:16.660 | If you have a local market where people are earning wages, they need a place to live.
00:16:22.700 | And so housing should have a connection to wages.
00:16:25.680 | But in localized pockets, that normal connection, those normal markets become disconnected.
00:16:31.180 | It can become disconnected due to heavy impact of high-income earners, especially if there
00:16:39.020 | are significant regulations.
00:16:41.420 | For example, if you were to go back about 60, 50 to 70 years and you were to go into
00:16:46.300 | a place like Manhattan in New York, you would find that a plumber could live right next
00:16:52.460 | to a banker because housing was very much connected to wages.
00:16:57.120 | But as New York and other major cities have kept very tight codes on the ability to expand
00:17:03.720 | and to build more buildings, what's happened is that as the local population center has
00:17:12.400 | grown and wages have become more specialized, you've had many higher-income earners become
00:17:17.660 | concentrated in that specific area.
00:17:20.720 | And because builders have been restricted by zoning regulations, et cetera, from building
00:17:25.120 | more affordable housing units and meeting that market demand, then the lower-wage workers
00:17:30.640 | are pushed out from the city center.
00:17:34.360 | And so as those lower-wage workers are pushed out from the city center, that leads to the
00:17:38.200 | process of gentrification.
00:17:39.380 | The city center starts growing up more and more and more and you get into these unusual
00:17:44.080 | situations, whether it's Seattle, whether it's New York City, whether it's Boston, whether
00:17:48.160 | it's Los Angeles, San Francisco.
00:17:50.960 | And the very high-income earners continue to raise that – those local market prices
00:17:59.120 | and it makes it hard to analyze the market.
00:18:02.200 | And I couldn't of course hope to analyze every market.
00:18:06.760 | What's happened where I live in Palm Beach County is we've had a similar effect.
00:18:11.040 | But that similar effect has not been due to wage growth and income growth but due to retirees
00:18:16.840 | coming down.
00:18:17.840 | So Palm Beach County is not – South Florida is not part of the south.
00:18:22.400 | The further south you go in Florida, the more everything looks like New Jersey and New York.
00:18:28.760 | So southern culture has basically fallen apart.
00:18:31.920 | If you get south of Orlando, you don't have southern culture anymore.
00:18:35.440 | You have the northeastern culture because the huge amount of our residents in South
00:18:40.400 | Florida are from New Jersey and New York and other northeastern states, Maryland and Delaware,
00:18:46.000 | et cetera.
00:18:47.000 | Connecticut, places with high taxes and high cost of living.
00:18:51.000 | And so it's led to a very unusual and strange market where if you come down to South Florida
00:18:57.520 | – and this has only happened along the coast.
00:18:59.120 | It doesn't happen on the interior of Florida.
00:19:01.220 | But on the east coast of Florida and the west coast of Florida, you'll have so many people
00:19:05.360 | who move down from New York and New Jersey and they're moving out of very high real
00:19:10.740 | estate price – very high real estate – areas with very high real estate prices due to the
00:19:16.800 | significant buildup in the high population.
00:19:20.600 | And they're looking at South Florida real estate prices and saying, "Man, this is
00:19:23.880 | a steal."
00:19:24.880 | And when you compound that with the second factor, which is the removal of state income
00:19:29.120 | taxes, it's not unusual for a New York or New Jersey resident to move down to South
00:19:33.720 | Florida and to put themselves in a situation where they're saving tens of thousands of
00:19:37.680 | dollars per year on income taxes.
00:19:41.440 | It's very easy for a wealthy northeasterner to move down to South Florida and because
00:19:49.240 | there are tens of thousands of dollars per year of savings on income taxes and they can
00:19:55.560 | cut their house cost in half and still finance the entire thing and still be out as a net
00:20:02.040 | gain.
00:20:03.440 | Commuting between South Florida and the northeast is very easy.
00:20:06.840 | There are constant cheap, easy airplane flights.
00:20:10.760 | You can get there in – there are direct flights everywhere from South Florida throughout
00:20:14.800 | the northeast.
00:20:15.800 | In a few hours, you can be there.
00:20:17.320 | So it's easy to commute back and forth for business and this has led to a real change
00:20:21.800 | in our local real estate market.
00:20:24.280 | What's happening though is the same process that's happened in many other places where
00:20:29.040 | for those who are not involved in living off of their retirement portfolio, which is the
00:20:34.840 | huge amount of people, for those who are younger people, working class people – I hate that
00:20:40.680 | term and here I am using it – blue collar, low and medium wage earners have been systematically
00:20:49.080 | frozen out and the housing market locally where I live has systematically changed.
00:20:53.920 | The median house price if we go by listing prices in Palm Beach County is about $340,000.
00:21:00.360 | The median rental price for a rental unit is about just under $2,000 a month.
00:21:07.120 | When you start translating those out – and again, those are median prices.
00:21:11.640 | Remember, 50 percent higher and 50 percent lower when we're judging the median price.
00:21:17.040 | That leads to major costs, major increases in housing.
00:21:20.360 | Now the question of course is where can that go?
00:21:24.520 | What direction does housing go?
00:21:26.200 | When you try to analyze the local market, what it means is you can't connect it to
00:21:31.080 | wages.
00:21:32.080 | Wage growth is slow.
00:21:33.120 | If it exists – I wouldn't say it's nonexistent but it's very, very slow in most wage-earning
00:21:38.840 | occupations.
00:21:40.360 | So you can't connect housing to wages.
00:21:42.320 | Now you're in a situation where you're connecting housing to immigration trends and
00:21:46.320 | to portfolio values.
00:21:48.160 | It's a lot easier for a retiring Northeasterner with a $3 million investment portfolio to
00:21:55.520 | pay more and to buy a nicer house when they have a $3 million portfolio than when their
00:22:01.720 | portfolio is cut to $2 million due to a recent stock market decline.
00:22:08.240 | So these are the factors that make analysis of economic conditions where I live very difficult
00:22:13.680 | and make trend prediction very, very challenging.
00:22:17.080 | You're dependent on the stock market, dependent on immigration flows.
00:22:19.760 | You're dependent on retirees, the number of people retiring, et cetera.
00:22:23.240 | Those have a major effect because most of even the actual wage occupations in South
00:22:27.720 | Florida where I live are built around that retirement occupation.
00:22:31.640 | We have no heavy – very little heavy industry.
00:22:34.080 | Most of the wages are service wages that are related to serving the affluent retiree.
00:22:41.460 | So that's the economic analysis at least that I have applied and it's led to a giant
00:22:45.600 | question mark.
00:22:46.600 | What does the future hold?
00:22:47.600 | Well, it's hard to predict that when you can't look at trends that are trackable.
00:22:52.120 | You can certainly look at trends of immigration, look at trends like that.
00:22:55.480 | But when you can't look at trends from – of wage growth and business growth, et cetera,
00:23:02.560 | it makes it very challenging.
00:23:04.880 | I don't think it makes sense to try to make personal decisions, personal financial decisions
00:23:09.840 | based upon market analysis.
00:23:11.880 | I really don't.
00:23:13.680 | For example, when we sold our house, I didn't sell it because I thought the real estate
00:23:18.060 | market was going to go down.
00:23:20.320 | If we had wanted to live there on an ongoing basis, we would have kept it regardless of
00:23:25.160 | whether it goes up or down.
00:23:28.040 | But if you make a decision from a personal lifestyle perspective, then I think it makes
00:23:32.960 | more sense to look at the market and say, "Now, let me integrate this with the market."
00:23:39.340 | If you want to sell because you want to move, then go ahead and look at the market and say,
00:23:44.080 | "Is there an advantageous time or an advantageous way to sell?"
00:23:47.640 | Because our personal decisions to sell our house were to – were personally based about
00:23:55.800 | – around improving our lifestyle.
00:23:58.160 | At this point in time, our – and our personal decisions for moving out of the apartment
00:24:01.480 | that we're living on are also personal lifestyle.
00:24:04.840 | The simple reality is we've outgrown the apartment that we rented.
00:24:08.800 | The biggest influence is actually with my work.
00:24:12.960 | When we first moved into this apartment, we had just had our second child and that child
00:24:17.700 | was a baby.
00:24:19.440 | Most of the sound was able to be contained.
00:24:22.680 | Children at that age slept for longer – sleep for longer periods of time than older children
00:24:26.880 | do.
00:24:27.880 | It was relatively easy to engage them in one of the distant bedrooms so that I could record
00:24:32.580 | my show and I could work with relative quiet.
00:24:35.760 | So at first, it was fine.
00:24:37.320 | Then as the children got louder, it became worse.
00:24:41.760 | So I made some improvements.
00:24:43.240 | I put in some soundproofing curtains in my office and that helped me to continue to do
00:24:47.800 | the show for you and continue to work.
00:24:50.440 | But as the children have grown older, then of course their geographic range has increased.
00:24:55.840 | So at this point in time, they're much less content to be confined to one bedroom during
00:25:00.960 | the time when I'm working, which can be anywhere from an hour or two to record a show to extensive
00:25:05.860 | hours if I'm trying to record other audio for other products – projects.
00:25:10.400 | So it's gotten bad.
00:25:11.400 | And even the layout of the apartment has resulted in the way for the children to access the
00:25:15.920 | backyard is right through my office.
00:25:19.040 | And so over the past months, there have been systematic growing pains and at this point,
00:25:23.080 | we need to make a change.
00:25:24.080 | It's not – it doesn't have to be done.
00:25:25.640 | We found workarounds but in the sense of – there's not – it doesn't have to be this week.
00:25:30.600 | But the writing on the wall is very, very clear and we need to change.
00:25:34.080 | The problem is I can't really stomach the idea of moving right now where we live in
00:25:37.840 | Palm Beach County.
00:25:38.840 | I can't stomach the idea of buying a house at current real estate prices.
00:25:42.960 | The value for the dollar, especially for someone like me whose income is not connected to geography,
00:25:50.560 | the value for the dollar is so low.
00:25:53.560 | The prices in our local area have increased so significantly on cost of living that it's
00:26:01.160 | hard to see the value.
00:26:03.080 | The local culture, it's hard to want to commit to purchasing a house in the local
00:26:08.440 | culture just given the constraints of Palm Beach County and the uniqueness of where it
00:26:16.320 | is and what is happening in the local area.
00:26:20.040 | And in looking at the rental market, it's hard to see the value in the rental market.
00:26:24.560 | It's a little bit stomach twisting for me to think about what's available in the local
00:26:29.880 | market at the current prices.
00:26:32.000 | That said, I don't have any clear indication that we should move or that we want to move
00:26:38.440 | to any other place.
00:26:39.920 | And so it's kind of been in a limbo, a place of limbo for us in many ways.
00:26:45.120 | Our reasons for living in Palm Beach County have never been financial.
00:26:48.700 | Financial for me is secondary consideration as I'm sure it is for you.
00:26:53.640 | You can move to the cheapest place in the world, but you're going to be there for some
00:26:57.120 | reason other than financial.
00:26:59.000 | I found – I was recently looking at a traveler who was showing videos of an apartment that
00:27:05.800 | you can rent in Togo for $20 a month.
00:27:10.760 | This would allow you to live on – with all costs of living, housing, food, everything,
00:27:18.200 | on nothing more than a few hundred dollars a month.
00:27:21.960 | But you're going to be living in Togo.
00:27:23.160 | Now, I've never been to Togo.
00:27:26.340 | Maybe someday I'll have the chance to go.
00:27:28.640 | And if you're in Togo, I'm so glad you're listening.
00:27:32.040 | But this particular apartment, I doubt that many of you would want to live in even though
00:27:36.520 | it's $20 a month.
00:27:38.000 | So we don't choose where we live based just on finances.
00:27:41.280 | We choose where we live on other reasons and then we do a financial calculation and every
00:27:45.820 | place has advantages and disadvantages.
00:27:48.280 | I want to do a separate show on recognizing the resources of where you live.
00:27:52.900 | But it's important not to think that the grass is greener in another place.
00:27:57.560 | It's important to start by recognizing that everywhere you live, you have certain advantages
00:28:01.760 | and certain disadvantages.
00:28:03.520 | You live in the middle of Kansas on a giant farm.
00:28:06.680 | You have certain resources that are there that you don't have in other places.
00:28:10.360 | If you live in downtown Manhattan in a little bedroom – one-room apartment, you have certain
00:28:16.440 | resources that you don't have when you're in Kansas.
00:28:19.960 | So my reasons and our reasons for living in Palm Beach County have never been financial
00:28:25.860 | in analysis.
00:28:28.360 | Quite simply, for all of my adult life, I have been here in faith.
00:28:33.120 | I've had the faith that this is where God wanted us to be.
00:28:36.400 | I've lost that faith.
00:28:38.240 | But I also don't have faith to move anywhere.
00:28:40.120 | And so in the interim, we've decided to go and to travel and that has seemed to be
00:28:47.120 | the best course of action.
00:28:49.040 | Those are the primary reasons for traveling.
00:28:50.960 | Now let me go to the business reasons which is hopefully where we can connect with you.
00:28:56.240 | One of the major costs that I have learned is a major cost for me.
00:29:01.280 | Taking the path in entrepreneurship that I have taken has been the social isolation and
00:29:07.800 | this is reflected in a couple of ways.
00:29:10.920 | Number one, it's reflected in my actual ability to interact with listeners.
00:29:17.600 | I appreciate the interaction that I get but it's very different for me to be able to
00:29:21.960 | sit and talk with you face to face and to see you and to get your measure and for you
00:29:29.400 | to get mine in a face to face format versus at the other end of a digital point of communication.
00:29:38.920 | Now I'm so blessed that the vast majority of my interactions with you have been positive
00:29:45.200 | and I hear your heart when I read your emails and your interactions.
00:29:49.400 | It's so helpful to me but it's still different and those types of interactions are often
00:29:55.160 | overwhelming to me.
00:29:56.160 | It's often so much that it's hard for me to emotionally commit to that whereas if I
00:30:01.720 | can see you face to face, it makes a big, big difference.
00:30:04.760 | The thing that I have most enjoyed over the years is meeting you when I've been out
00:30:09.360 | and about.
00:30:11.080 | When I've been out at an event or been out and you've come to South Florida and we've
00:30:15.400 | interacted, that makes all the difference in the world because it allows me to really
00:30:19.920 | – well, to see you.
00:30:23.080 | It makes all the difference in the world.
00:30:24.800 | The other thing that has been a major impact is the challenge of working alone in the sense
00:30:30.560 | of as a solopreneur as they're often called and also just working physically alone in
00:30:37.000 | my house.
00:30:38.000 | There are challenges to both of those.
00:30:40.920 | When I – for all of my adult life, I desired to have a business and a job where I could
00:30:49.800 | do my work alone from my house with nothing more than a laptop computer.
00:30:56.460 | That was a goal of mine since high school.
00:30:59.480 | Now it took a circuitous path for me to accomplish it but I have accomplished it.
00:31:06.200 | I was naive in thinking that it was without its own challenges.
00:31:11.360 | I thought that it was always going to be great and I had some opportunities along the way
00:31:16.000 | where I learned that it wasn't necessarily as great as I thought it was going to be.
00:31:21.680 | But working entirely alone, physically alone over the last few years has confirmed that
00:31:27.480 | it's very, very challenging to do.
00:31:30.240 | It's challenging in the ebb and flow of my house.
00:31:32.760 | It's very challenging to be working at home in this mixture of being available versus
00:31:38.920 | not being available.
00:31:40.460 | There is a great, great benefit for men to be able to go out of the house, a great benefit
00:31:46.040 | for my wife for me to be out of the house.
00:31:47.880 | This is a great benefit for me to go out to an external location which of course I could
00:31:52.560 | do.
00:31:53.560 | I could rent an office and I've investigated and considered doing that at different times
00:31:58.520 | but it hasn't seemed the right path.
00:32:01.440 | But in the future, I think I will.
00:32:02.440 | I think I need an office that is physically outside of my house in order for me to be
00:32:06.720 | the most effective and the most productive.
00:32:09.240 | The second thing that's challenging is working alone without the presence of physical co-workers.
00:32:13.440 | It makes my – when you lack physical co-workers and I have virtual co-workers that work with
00:32:20.240 | me but when you lack physical co-workers, it makes it very challenging to get a sense
00:32:26.560 | of the value of your ideas and to weigh them accurately.
00:32:31.680 | I am an idea person.
00:32:33.920 | I have dozens of what I think are brilliant ideas on a daily basis.
00:32:38.340 | The challenge is to filter those ideas effectively and narrow them down and then to stay committed
00:32:43.920 | to the ones that are truly going to be the most effective.
00:32:48.280 | This is very challenging without a team to help, without a team of people who have other
00:32:54.680 | ideas and who can say, "Well, that's a good idea but that's not a good idea for
00:32:57.960 | right now."
00:32:59.520 | I frequently – my mouth overloads me again and again and again and I've learned to
00:33:03.520 | be more careful with it after falling through on some of my ideas.
00:33:08.680 | I keep most of them to myself.
00:33:10.400 | I've learned tools of challenging my ideas but still, it's very challenging to do alone.
00:33:15.720 | So I either have to – in the future with my business, I either have to build a team
00:33:22.120 | of people who can help me with that feedback, who can help me with that accountability in
00:33:28.520 | the sense of following through on the ones that are the best and who can help me with
00:33:33.360 | that perspective.
00:33:34.360 | It's very easy for me to get lost in my own head and to lose perspective on what's
00:33:40.200 | actually important, what's actually useful.
00:33:44.040 | I was speaking with an advisor of mine the other day and we were talking about this and
00:33:49.560 | he was bringing it back to the action orientation and his comment to me was, "Joshua, let's
00:33:54.600 | talk about how effective are you with helping people take action."
00:33:58.320 | This is I think one of the major challenges that I've recognized that I'm not as effective
00:34:02.840 | as I want to be at helping people take action.
00:34:05.720 | I am intensely philosophical as a person and I think a lot about the philosophy and I get
00:34:10.200 | excited about ideas less than I get – more than I get excited about actions.
00:34:16.080 | The example that I gave to my business advisor was I said, "I am profoundly intrigued by
00:34:23.160 | weird topics that have no relevance to my audience.
00:34:27.200 | I am – I was writing this outline for gold and silver investing one time for a course
00:34:36.840 | that I want to teach on gold and silver investing.
00:34:39.960 | So I went through and I researched all the laws on which types of gold coins and silver
00:34:44.800 | coins can be purchased in which ways with reporting to the US national government and
00:34:51.040 | which can be bought privately, which can be sold privately and all of these weird, arcane,
00:34:57.840 | totally impractical ideas."
00:34:59.960 | Now I was thoroughly enjoyed that process of figuring out how to unlock that little
00:35:04.520 | nut.
00:35:05.520 | I thought that was so interesting and so fun but it has zero practical value for 99.9%
00:35:14.480 | of you.
00:35:17.840 | And so I need someone often to keep me accountable and say, "Joshua, how are you giving something
00:35:21.280 | that's action?"
00:35:22.760 | And so I want to continue to develop that because I'm not – I don't want to just
00:35:26.360 | talk to make myself feel good or just talk to explore interesting concepts that I think
00:35:30.640 | are interesting.
00:35:31.640 | I'm here for a purpose.
00:35:32.640 | I'm here to make a difference.
00:35:34.080 | I want to make a difference in your life.
00:35:35.200 | I want to help you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement that you need to
00:35:41.040 | actually practically, actionably live a rich and meaningful life now and actually practically,
00:35:47.800 | actionably build and execute on a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:35:52.280 | That's my mission.
00:35:54.080 | And so I need that feedback.
00:35:55.480 | I need those feedback mechanisms.
00:35:57.000 | Now there are many ways it can be done.
00:35:58.480 | I have people who help me with that, who help me with that feedback, who give me a good
00:36:01.720 | slap in the face when I need it and say, "Joshua, wrong direction."
00:36:05.440 | That's really helpful.
00:36:06.680 | But what I want to do more of is I want to interact with you.
00:36:10.680 | And so what we've decided at this point is we're going to do some traveling and
00:36:13.760 | we're going to integrate some of our personal goals and also some of the business goals.
00:36:17.600 | And we want to accomplish as we travel some business plans.
00:36:23.320 | So here's what we have planned.
00:36:25.040 | During 2018, we will be traveling the country for an extended period of time.
00:36:30.880 | I'm thinking spring, summer and fall.
00:36:33.520 | But we are not on any tight schedule.
00:36:35.760 | We'll put all of our things at home and in storage so that the future is not committed
00:36:40.280 | to – we don't have any specific dates that we want to specifically come back to.
00:36:45.000 | And in fact, in order to be able to survive this adventure, which I will share with you,
00:36:48.840 | one of our strategies for surviving it at our current stage of family life is to have
00:36:53.920 | a very small number of commitments on dates.
00:36:59.600 | Give you two examples.
00:37:00.600 | We'll give you an example of what I'm saying.
00:37:05.760 | As we travel, it's important that we be able to enjoy the day-to-day function of our
00:37:11.880 | family, that we're able to enjoy the day-to-day reality of travel, the place that we happen
00:37:17.600 | to be, to interact with the people with whom we come in contact.
00:37:21.520 | But I also have many commitments to you, to work with you from a business perspective.
00:37:26.960 | And my primary commitment is to work with you in this way, in this digital format.
00:37:32.560 | I'm not trying to say I'm going to stop doing all of the digital work that I do and
00:37:37.160 | move it to entirely physical.
00:37:40.400 | My primary focus is digital because digital interaction allows a scalability that is not
00:37:46.120 | possible in other ways.
00:37:49.760 | But in order to survive that process, it's very important to us that we not be locked
00:37:54.080 | into a rigid schedule.
00:37:56.440 | So we will be going a few days at a time, planning at most a couple of weeks in advance,
00:38:01.160 | and be very much flowing with the ebb and flow of daily life rather than a big commitment
00:38:08.280 | of specific places to go.
00:38:10.640 | I could, for example, I could organize a tour of the United States with – we're going
00:38:16.720 | to do – here are the top 30 cities where I have listeners and I'm going to do a seminar
00:38:21.200 | in the top 30 and interact with you in that format and schedule it all out months in advance.
00:38:25.800 | That could be done very profitably and very effectively.
00:38:29.800 | That's not something that I wish to engage in at this point in time because of the simple
00:38:33.560 | stress of hitting those dates and committing to those dates and doing that.
00:38:37.960 | I don't have any interest in that.
00:38:40.360 | But we will be traveling and along the way I'll be working with you continually here.
00:38:43.240 | You as a listener will notice very little change in what I'm doing with you.
00:38:48.480 | However, along the way, I am going to interact with a lot of people who I've wanted to
00:38:52.760 | connect with in person.
00:38:54.360 | I want to record and find more interesting stories for you, more interesting interviews
00:38:59.380 | with people who are doing interesting things.
00:39:01.960 | I like to do those digitally and I will continue.
00:39:05.160 | I haven't canceled interviews on Radical Personal Finance.
00:39:07.720 | I've just canceled them for the last few months.
00:39:09.480 | They will be back in the future.
00:39:11.680 | But I also do them in person and I want to do – I want to learn how to do a little
00:39:15.480 | bit more effective storytelling with some different audio techniques as I'm able to.
00:39:19.680 | I want to bring you interesting stories and interesting interviews with the type of person
00:39:24.520 | who is unlikely to easily appear in a digital format.
00:39:28.760 | I believe this is a major missing piece in the modern world.
00:39:34.880 | There are so many people who come out and run the podcast circuit.
00:39:39.920 | But this tends to be a certain type of person.
00:39:43.840 | The people who come out and run the podcast circuit and get on all the personal finance
00:39:47.280 | podcast tend to be younger rather than older.
00:39:51.280 | They tend to be very tech savvy and they tend to have a one way of thinking about it.
00:39:57.960 | But financial independence and financial freedom is not fully populated by this person only.
00:40:03.380 | You may get that impression because that's all you hear.
00:40:06.140 | But the reason you hear that is because that's the type of person who is interested in promoting
00:40:11.320 | themselves and their work.
00:40:13.280 | For example, a blogger who is promoting their personal finance blog is much more likely
00:40:18.480 | to appear on a personal finance podcast than the wealthy independent person three doors
00:40:24.200 | down from you that you've never talked to about money because they have something to
00:40:28.040 | promote or the person who is promoting their course or their product or their service or
00:40:32.040 | their financial work or whatever it is.
00:40:35.380 | They have an incentive to appear on a podcast.
00:40:38.060 | Very few people want to expose the personal details of their life and very few people
00:40:41.920 | want to go and be interviewed on a show like mine unless there's some personal benefit
00:40:46.520 | for them.
00:40:47.720 | So the second thing is they tend to be from one stream, this type of person who is doing
00:40:54.000 | it.
00:40:56.640 | So that's why there's kind of a sameness to many of the types of guests that we get.
00:41:00.880 | But there are so many other interesting people out there.
00:41:04.720 | There are interesting people with interesting stories to share.
00:41:09.080 | My grandparents on both sides of my family were financially independent in a way that
00:41:14.720 | many people are financially independent.
00:41:17.800 | On the one side, my grandfather was a schoolteacher.
00:41:21.080 | He taught school and he taught at the college level.
00:41:24.120 | My grandmother was a schoolteacher, taught at the primary and secondary level.
00:41:28.360 | As teachers, they developed teachers' pensions and they had income and they were financially
00:41:32.720 | independent and retired based largely upon their teachers' pensions.
00:41:35.960 | I had a number of clients who were financially independent upon teachers' pensions.
00:41:40.880 | That's a very viable way to path towards financial independence but you don't hear a lot of that
00:41:45.400 | on a podcast.
00:41:47.520 | Those types of people have an interesting way of progressing forward.
00:41:51.200 | I've shared before the stories about my grandfather who was a teacher.
00:41:54.720 | He retired three or four times but every time he retired, he found that it wasn't for him.
00:41:59.480 | He worked until his mid-80s and when he did finally retire, that was a major mistake because
00:42:03.480 | then he got old and sick and he died 10 years later.
00:42:06.200 | But he was old and sick along the way in a way that if he kept working, if he figured
00:42:10.080 | out ways for him to continue working, he wouldn't have been old and sick.
00:42:13.460 | Those are the stories of your neighbors.
00:42:16.960 | That's a very accessible story for you.
00:42:19.800 | Now on the flip side, my other side of the family, my grandfather on the other side of
00:42:24.000 | my family was a farmer.
00:42:26.040 | Farmers have this interesting problem of financial independence.
00:42:28.760 | They can become wealthy but all their wealth is illiquid.
00:42:32.200 | It's basically tied up in land.
00:42:33.440 | The way the farming business works, at least traditionally, is you work so you can make
00:42:37.640 | the payments to the bank.
00:42:39.360 | But in terms of lifestyle, there's a difference of lifestyle.
00:42:41.920 | It can be financially lucrative or financially non-lucrative but there are independence of
00:42:47.440 | lifestyles.
00:42:48.920 | Those are the types of stories that are harder to get without going and getting them in person.
00:42:53.840 | So I want to bring you some of those interesting stories.
00:42:56.040 | I also want to interact with you both collectively and individually.
00:43:03.480 | As we travel, we'll do a number of small meetups.
00:43:06.680 | I'll announce those from time to time and we'll do them very informally.
00:43:11.040 | I'm not interested in trying to build something where we have giant events with hundreds of
00:43:15.440 | people.
00:43:16.440 | I don't enjoy being with hundreds of people all at once.
00:43:21.880 | It takes a lot of energy to do that well.
00:43:24.300 | But I love to sit and talk with half a dozen of you or a dozen.
00:43:28.280 | That's my favorite.
00:43:29.280 | So I'll share with you from time to time where we're going to be and we'll have some informal
00:43:32.360 | meetups and if you can come and meet me and hang out with me and my family, we'd love
00:43:35.720 | to do that.
00:43:36.840 | In addition to that, I'd love to schedule some small seminars along the way.
00:43:41.960 | What I would think would be really effective is to get together for about a day and I have
00:43:47.240 | various curricula that I've developed that on various topics.
00:43:51.440 | Just to get together for about a day and give you a one-day boot camp on a particular area
00:43:56.200 | of finance, whether this is from a planning perspective, whether it's from a technical
00:44:02.040 | perspective, etc.
00:44:03.360 | And then give extensive time to Q&A and give extensive time to interacting with you personally,
00:44:08.640 | working on some of your personal problems to help you develop a roadmap to that.
00:44:13.080 | So I'd love to schedule some one-day seminars along the way and I think that would be really,
00:44:18.320 | really, really, really productive.
00:44:21.120 | What it would also help me to do is that feedback of what's actionable and what's not helps
00:44:25.360 | me to edit the type of ideas that I share with you here on the podcast to make them
00:44:32.680 | more actionable.
00:44:34.880 | There's a place for philosophy and there's a place for action.
00:44:39.320 | Over the years, I was deeply frustrated with other commentators' obsessive focus on action
00:44:45.680 | and I felt like somebody should articulate the philosophy a little bit better.
00:44:49.400 | I've done that in many areas, trust me.
00:44:51.360 | You haven't even scratched the surface of it in other areas.
00:44:54.680 | But I've gone too far in the direction of philosophy and not enough in the direction
00:44:57.840 | of action.
00:44:58.840 | And I want to adjust that and come back to that balance that has been missing in some
00:45:04.080 | of my personal work because I want to hold those together.
00:45:07.460 | If you only have philosophy, you got a problem.
00:45:10.400 | If you only have action, I think you've got a problem.
00:45:12.760 | But action buttressed by philosophy, to me, that's the most powerful.
00:45:20.400 | So that's our outline.
00:45:21.800 | In short, we're not going on this particular trip that we have planned simply for personal
00:45:27.840 | reasons of sightseeing, although we look forward to much sightseeing.
00:45:31.480 | We're not going on this personal trip simply for the purposes of visiting our own friends
00:45:35.800 | and family, although we look forward to visiting our friends and family that we've wanted to
00:45:39.400 | interact with.
00:45:40.740 | We're not going on this trip simply to interact with you, whether that happens individually
00:45:45.760 | or in a group format, although we look forward to that.
00:45:48.800 | We're not going on this trip simply to do seminars and make money on the way through
00:45:55.680 | doing a one or two-day seminar with you, although we look forward to doing that as well.
00:46:02.280 | But on the whole, the combining of all these things together has come together in a way
00:46:06.580 | that I think we're really excited about.
00:46:08.240 | So we're going to be doing the grand tour of 2018.
00:46:11.040 | Now, as I go, a few comments about how you can help and exactly what we'll be doing.
00:46:20.440 | I haven't decided the extent to which I will share with you everything that we're doing.
00:46:27.960 | It will probably be in the middle.
00:46:30.640 | I won't keep – I won't relate all of the work of Radical Personal Finance to our traveling.
00:46:36.920 | To me, that would be counterproductive and it would cost me in terms of the things that
00:46:40.360 | I want to accomplish.
00:46:41.600 | But I'll also not share everything that we're doing and everywhere we're going simply because
00:46:46.600 | that's a very stressful way to live and my family's privacy is important to us.
00:46:51.600 | So I will share with you here on the show and in other venues what we're doing and
00:46:55.760 | the types of things that we're doing, but it won't be totally digitally available to
00:47:02.040 | you.
00:47:03.040 | What I would like you to do is follow along.
00:47:04.520 | I hope you enjoy the adventure.
00:47:05.640 | I know that many of you have shared with me that you enjoy a little bit of the personal
00:47:11.560 | finance discussion, the financial planning context.
00:47:14.360 | But what you most enjoy is hearing a little bit about our story and I've tried from the
00:47:17.320 | beginning to share with you very transparently the good and the bad so that you can learn
00:47:22.560 | from our good example and from our bad example.
00:47:26.680 | But what I would like you to do is share with me a few things.
00:47:29.620 | Number one, and the format for reaching me is either to use the contact form on the website
00:47:35.140 | or email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.
00:47:38.720 | Please in your note put in that email either in the body of the email or in the subject
00:47:43.920 | line use the hashtag #2018roadtrip, so 2018 road trip for me.
00:47:49.560 | That will help me to filter and to collect things from the spam filter.
00:47:52.760 | It'll also help me to organize the communication on this topic with me.
00:47:58.720 | But here are the things that I would love for you to take a moment and provide me feedback.
00:48:03.840 | Number one, if you know of an interesting story, an interesting person or an interesting
00:48:08.800 | thing that you would like me to see and to do, then let me know about that.
00:48:16.200 | Let me just give you one example.
00:48:17.960 | For years I've intended to interview the urban farming guys from downtown Kansas City.
00:48:25.960 | Their story, a group of families who I think were originally connected if my research is
00:48:33.200 | correct, I think they were originally connected through a church in Olathe.
00:48:36.680 | A group of families decided that they would move into the inner city in Kansas City to
00:48:42.360 | one of the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods in inner city Kansas City.
00:48:49.880 | They moved there intentionally and they started living there and they started working to bring
00:48:55.680 | new resources to that local community.
00:48:58.520 | They lived in the community.
00:48:59.660 | Some of them worked outside of the community.
00:49:01.720 | They started to build urban gardening and urban farming initiatives.
00:49:06.760 | They began working with various types of new – some of the modern farming technology
00:49:12.880 | that's been developed, whether it's aquaponics and some of the other things that are really
00:49:16.680 | intriguing.
00:49:17.760 | They built a maker space, a large workshop for the community and they've just started
00:49:24.640 | trying to meet the needs of the community.
00:49:26.900 | Over time, more families moved in.
00:49:28.280 | They bought more property and they bulldozed some old houses.
00:49:31.840 | They fixed up other houses and they really have made a tremendous difference in there
00:49:36.880 | in the local community.
00:49:39.260 | So such – and a tremendous difference on some of the metrics, the measurable difference
00:49:44.920 | in crime in the local area as well, etc.
00:49:48.560 | I'd love to go and visit those guys.
00:49:50.240 | I've been wanting to get them on the show for years.
00:49:51.880 | I just haven't gotten around to it.
00:49:53.040 | I have hundreds of people on my list of people to interview.
00:49:55.600 | I'd love to go and visit those guys and see with my own eyes what has happened because
00:50:00.040 | it's one thing to hear from somebody.
00:50:02.360 | It's another thing to see.
00:50:03.480 | I want to see those types of things that are happening because these are the ways that
00:50:07.520 | individuals can make a difference.
00:50:10.520 | I get so tired of the collectivism in the US American culture, the idea that you have
00:50:16.960 | to go and start some big organization or get some government initiative to make a difference.
00:50:23.560 | You don't.
00:50:24.560 | That's the worst way to go about it in my opinion generally for most problems.
00:50:29.000 | Collectivism doesn't work.
00:50:30.400 | Going and trying to get your favorite politician in will not work.
00:50:33.240 | It will not make a difference.
00:50:35.000 | What does make a difference is you and your friends choosing something wrong in your area,
00:50:44.360 | whether that's a question of injustice that needs to be solved, a victim that needs to
00:50:48.960 | be defended so justice can be served, whether it's a specific problem that you see in
00:50:53.680 | your local area.
00:50:54.680 | That's what makes a difference is you as an individual saying, "I'm going to work
00:50:58.840 | on this problem."
00:50:59.840 | When you start working, a couple of your friends and your family will get involved and people
00:51:04.160 | will start to notice and things will change over time.
00:51:07.640 | I want to profile those types of stories because those things are important.
00:51:12.080 | I want to see big changes happen.
00:51:14.320 | I don't just want to see you and me get rich.
00:51:17.560 | I want to see communities continue to be transformed.
00:51:21.840 | But collective government action is not going to make the difference.
00:51:26.800 | More welfare programs will do nothing but drive more and more people into poverty.
00:51:31.560 | A higher minimum wage will do nothing more than result in higher unemployment as it always
00:51:36.960 | has done.
00:51:37.960 | I'm sick and tired of seeing the people and the communities that are impacted by this
00:51:42.880 | negatively.
00:51:43.880 | I'm not going to start on that.
00:51:47.520 | I get tired of it.
00:51:48.520 | So I want to see those things.
00:51:49.520 | You know of something interesting.
00:51:50.800 | You know of somebody who's doing something really impactful, a cool work, a cool person,
00:51:55.320 | especially if they're the kind of person who doesn't often get media attention.
00:51:59.820 | I'm not interested in having newspaper stories written about people.
00:52:02.400 | I want to do real – I want to expose you to their story.
00:52:06.080 | So if it's the type of – if you know of something that we'd like to be – that
00:52:08.880 | you think would make for good interaction, please tell me about it.
00:52:12.240 | Write me an email and tell me about it.
00:52:13.880 | Tell me where it is.
00:52:14.880 | Put the city and the town in there.
00:52:16.200 | If possible, put it in the subject line or right up front so I can organize things.
00:52:20.320 | And then describe to me a little bit about the person that you know or the project that
00:52:23.720 | you know of or the initiative that you know of and pique my interest on it.
00:52:27.880 | So I'll put those things on our travel schedule as we can fit them in.
00:52:32.360 | I'll look for those interesting stories and try to shine a light on them, whether
00:52:36.400 | it's in an audio format, whether it's in writing.
00:52:39.200 | I don't know whether it's in video.
00:52:43.160 | As I'm able to, I'll try to shine a light on them.
00:52:45.680 | For you to know about them and for you to take those ideas and to look in your own local
00:52:49.800 | area.
00:52:50.800 | If you know of an interesting story, let me know.
00:52:54.080 | No matter where in the country it is, just write to me and let me know.
00:52:57.680 | If you would like to see me and my family along the way, write to me and let me know.
00:53:03.400 | Again, use the hashtag #2018RoadTrip and let us know.
00:53:06.280 | If you'd like to invite us to come and to see you and stay with you, we'd be happy
00:53:12.980 | to consider doing that.
00:53:14.640 | We are self-contained.
00:53:15.640 | I have a 30-foot travel trailer and a pickup truck, so probably about a 50-foot long rig
00:53:21.120 | total.
00:53:22.120 | So just need a place to park that.
00:53:23.280 | But let us know.
00:53:25.120 | If you'd like to invite us to come and say, "Hey, come and see us and stay with us,"
00:53:30.800 | most likely the answer will be we'd love to, but we're obviously not going to be
00:53:38.160 | there.
00:53:39.160 | But I'd love to know where you are and I'd be happy to interact with you personally.
00:53:42.760 | If you would be interested in getting together with me for something like a one-day seminar,
00:53:48.920 | let me know that and how I would do it.
00:53:50.400 | Let me just give you an idea of how I would do it.
00:53:52.560 | Number one, I have structures of things that I can teach.
00:53:57.260 | When I go to – I have a portfolio of speeches and outlines that I developed over the years.
00:54:03.000 | And so when I'm asked to speak to an event, I spoke to a Kiwanis club recently, I just
00:54:06.680 | go and I say, "OK, what can I put together that's a 20-minute version?"
00:54:10.100 | And everything is infinitely expandable or contractible.
00:54:12.000 | So we can take a 20-minute version or the two-day version.
00:54:14.320 | Just depends on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to get on a subject.
00:54:18.360 | But what I'm anticipating is I would deliver to you something like a half-a-day seminar
00:54:26.800 | on prepared outlines.
00:54:28.920 | And then if I were – let's say I'm in Kansas City and I say we're going to do
00:54:31.280 | a Kansas City seminar, I'll write you an email before that and I'll – let's
00:54:36.120 | say 20 people are going to come.
00:54:37.720 | I'll write you an email to the 20 of you who are in Kansas City who are going to come
00:54:41.400 | to a one-day seminar and ask what questions you want to talk about.
00:54:43.800 | We'll work that in.
00:54:44.800 | There will be an extensive amount of time to interact, ask your questions, et cetera.
00:54:50.520 | I'll charge you for it.
00:54:52.000 | I don't wish to try to deliver high-priced seminars but I also wish to not deliver low-priced
00:55:00.160 | seminars.
00:55:01.160 | So I'm thinking something like a couple hundred bucks in that range to come to a one-day seminar.
00:55:11.000 | Schedules are to be determined at this point in time but that's about what I'm thinking.
00:55:14.680 | That gives me room enough to make it worth my while to find a facility and to make it
00:55:19.840 | worth my while financially for me to disrupt other schedules for that seminar.
00:55:24.040 | So if you would be interested in coming to a seminar, write to me and let me know and
00:55:27.480 | let me know the kinds of things that you would enjoy learning or the kinds of things you
00:55:30.240 | would most like to see in that.
00:55:32.120 | And based upon audience feedback, I will look forward to putting that together.
00:55:36.880 | And finally – well, before finally, depending on the number of responses I get with interest
00:55:44.320 | in a seminar, I will adjust our travel schedule accordingly.
00:55:47.320 | Let's say I'm going through North Carolina.
00:55:49.400 | I will come to Charlotte and spend some time in Charlotte where I might otherwise avoid
00:55:53.280 | the city.
00:55:54.280 | Not that there's anything wrong with Charlotte.
00:55:56.440 | I've just been there many times.
00:55:58.440 | But I'd be happy to come to Charlotte and do a seminar in Charlotte if a bunch of you
00:56:00.840 | are in that area.
00:56:01.840 | I will look at that geographic location and try to communicate with you on that.
00:56:08.200 | One thing in terms of expectations, I have no idea how many listeners will write to me
00:56:13.760 | or not.
00:56:14.760 | I have no idea.
00:56:15.760 | It could be a handful.
00:56:16.760 | It could be many hundreds.
00:56:18.840 | But I would just simply caution you and I'm sure you know this but I do think it's important
00:56:23.320 | to say.
00:56:24.320 | If I say, "Thank you so much for the invitation but we can't come, please in advance determine
00:56:29.200 | not to be offended by that."
00:56:31.440 | I am – we have not yet decided our travel schedule.
00:56:35.200 | Now it may be that we're not coming to Maine.
00:56:37.400 | I don't have any intention to come to Maine right now.
00:56:39.600 | Although I have been to Maine and I think Maine is a great place.
00:56:42.640 | We don't have any intention of coming to Maine but I may come – who knows?
00:56:44.720 | I may come there in the future.
00:56:46.400 | So I'd love to hear from you.
00:56:47.880 | If you'd like to just write me a short note, it can be as short or as long as you want.
00:56:51.040 | But I would love to hear from you.
00:56:52.280 | But just please know that two things.
00:56:55.320 | I of course won't be able to come everywhere.
00:56:57.360 | I of course won't be able to respond to every kind of invitation.
00:57:01.640 | And number two, expect me not to commit very far in advance because in order to make this
00:57:07.840 | particular approach work the way that my wife and I want to make it work, I will not be
00:57:11.560 | making commitments long in advance.
00:57:14.000 | I'm not going to say, "Here's where we'll be in June."
00:57:16.520 | In June, we'll see where we are and we'll be adjusting the pace of our travel as we
00:57:22.360 | go through it.
00:57:23.360 | That's the whole point of an RV is not to be locked into a specific schedule where I've
00:57:27.920 | got to hit these marks that are scheduled out.
00:57:31.560 | If it were just me traveling by myself, that type of travel is no problem.
00:57:35.680 | You can sketch out your marks and I would tell you four months in advance.
00:57:38.520 | But that would destroy me at this point trying to hit that type of schedule.
00:57:43.040 | That would be so stressful.
00:57:44.040 | I probably wouldn't even embark on that type of trip at this point.
00:57:49.040 | And that my friends is all I wanted to share with you for today.
00:57:51.380 | So I invite you to write to me.
00:57:52.600 | Use the hashtag #2018roadtripplease so I can organize your note.
00:57:57.720 | But pique my interest.
00:57:59.120 | Pique my interest on your story.
00:58:00.420 | If you'd like to be on the show, tell me a little bit about your story.
00:58:03.120 | Pique my interest about your neighbor next door or the guy down the road that has a cool
00:58:06.920 | story but who would be the kind of person who would be unlikely to want to come on a
00:58:11.080 | podcast.
00:58:12.080 | I'll bring you shows from a campground.
00:58:14.040 | I mean, tell you what, there are a lot of wealthy, financially independent people traveling
00:58:18.640 | the country.
00:58:19.640 | I'll bring you some of their stories from the local campground.
00:58:22.480 | If you'd like to come to a seminar, let me know that.
00:58:24.920 | If you'd just like to see us, let me know that.
00:58:27.480 | Write to me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com or use the contact form in the website.
00:58:32.440 | My wife and I are very excited, very much looking forward to this trip and I will, of
00:58:36.800 | course, share it with you here and more in other formats as well.
00:58:41.840 | Thank you for listening.
00:58:42.960 | It's an honor and I do pledge this to you.
00:58:45.200 | My commitment to you is primarily to you, not in person but to you who give me the honor
00:58:54.400 | of your time and attention for many hours.
00:58:57.320 | I will be here to continue to serve you in this format for many days in the future.
00:59:04.060 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.
00:59:09.680 | Find out more at radicallifemedia.com.
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