RPF0535-Responding_to_Recent

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00:00:30.000 | It's Friday. That means I interact with you.

00:00:34.000 | Although, not Q&A today. Today I handle your comments.

00:00:37.000 | ♪

00:00:53.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:55.000 | the show dedicated to providing you with the tools,

00:00:57.000 | strategies, education, and inspiration that you need

00:01:00.000 | in order to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:01:02.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:01:04.000 | in 10 years or less.

00:01:05.000 | My name is Joshua.

00:01:06.000 | I am your friendly financial freedom podcast host,

00:01:10.000 | your financial philosopher,

00:01:12.000 | and your fellow freedom fighter.

00:01:14.000 | I gotta come up with more F-words to improve my alliteration.

00:01:18.000 | ♪

00:01:25.000 | Most of the time on Fridays, I do a live Q&A.

00:01:29.000 | However, the technology for today is not going to enable that.

00:01:32.000 | And so, what I want to do today is interact with your comments.

00:01:36.000 | I receive lots of great comments and feedback

00:01:38.000 | from many of you who listen to the show,

00:01:41.000 | and I really enjoy those comments and that feedback.

00:01:44.000 | I enjoy it.

00:01:47.000 | As a podcast host, the primary form of audience feedback

00:01:51.000 | comes in the form of a comment or an email.

00:01:54.000 | I do want to encourage you, and I'm going to incentivize you,

00:01:57.000 | to engage with me at RadicalPersonalFinance.com

00:02:01.000 | on the episode page.

00:02:03.000 | I receive many emails from listeners, which I appreciate,

00:02:07.000 | but I'm overwhelmed with the number of email responses.

00:02:11.000 | Many of the emails are kind notes,

00:02:14.000 | which come in at usually very useful times.

00:02:17.000 | I receive and I appreciate those private comments

00:02:20.000 | that I receive from you.

00:02:22.000 | Many emails come in in the form of extensive questions.

00:02:25.000 | I am not able, with the current time that I have allocated

00:02:28.000 | to handling email, I'm not able to interact with your questions,

00:02:31.000 | and so I frequently just put those aside

00:02:33.000 | and I don't answer them quickly as I would like.

00:02:35.000 | Here's how you can get a question answered.

00:02:37.000 | One, if you'd like it answered personally and privately,

00:02:40.000 | you can speak with me with a consulting phone call

00:02:43.000 | at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/phonecall.

00:02:46.000 | I don't often promote that as much as I should.

00:02:48.000 | I'm going to do more promotion of that in the future.

00:02:50.000 | But you can book a phone call with me at any time

00:02:52.000 | that you would like, and that will be one of your cheapest

00:02:55.000 | and most effective ways for you to get personalized advice.

00:02:59.000 | If you have not set that up in the past,

00:03:01.000 | let me explain how it works.

00:03:03.000 | I currently use a website called Clarity.

00:03:06.000 | It's Clarity.fm that you'll be directed.

00:03:09.000 | That link will forward you through to Clarity.

00:03:11.000 | You will be able to request a call with me.

00:03:13.000 | You make up a profile.

00:03:15.000 | I don't care what name you use.

00:03:16.000 | I don't care anything on that,

00:03:17.000 | but when you set up a Clarity call,

00:03:19.000 | you request a call with me.

00:03:21.000 | The way it works is you choose how long you want to talk to me.

00:03:25.000 | It can be five minutes.

00:03:26.000 | It can be an hour.

00:03:28.000 | And then the computer system is set up so that it will bill

00:03:30.000 | your credit card with whatever amount of time

00:03:33.000 | that you want to talk to me.

00:03:36.000 | The hourly rate that I bill is $300 per hour,

00:03:39.000 | which comes out to $5 a minute.

00:03:42.000 | The way that the computer system works is it will put you

00:03:46.000 | in a situation where you have a code that you call in.

00:03:51.000 | You can call in and I will call in.

00:03:53.000 | And then the exact amount of time that you're on the phone with me,

00:03:58.000 | you'll be billed for that exact amount of time.

00:04:00.000 | The computer tracks how long the two of us are connected.

00:04:03.000 | As long as we're connected, it'll keep track of that.

00:04:05.000 | Let's say that you sign up for a 30-minute call with me.

00:04:09.000 | Your credit card will be preauthorized for 30 minutes.

00:04:13.000 | You'll be billed for $150 in that context.

00:04:16.000 | And then if we cut the call short in 15 minutes,

00:04:19.000 | because I've brilliantly answered your questions

00:04:21.000 | and solved all of your problems,

00:04:23.000 | you will be refunded the balance of the 50% of the time to payment, $75.

00:04:28.000 | If we wind up talking for 60 minutes,

00:04:31.000 | because you're so overwhelmed and appreciative of all of the brilliant

00:04:34.000 | and insightful answers that I have for your situation,

00:04:37.000 | then you'll be billed an additional $150 to your credit card.

00:04:41.000 | That is the best and cheapest way that you can speak with me.

00:04:46.000 | There's no obligation.

00:04:48.000 | I don't sell products.

00:04:49.000 | I don't sell a single product.

00:04:52.000 | And yet I am a highly credentialed and competent financial planner.

00:04:58.000 | My registration with the CFP board is not valid at the moment,

00:05:01.000 | so I am not currently a certified financial planner.

00:05:04.000 | And some of my other things,

00:05:05.000 | I stopped using all the credentials and designations.

00:05:07.000 | But if you want to just speak to me,

00:05:09.000 | somebody who has been there, done that,

00:05:11.000 | and get specific advice on your situation,

00:05:14.000 | that is your best way to do it.

00:05:15.000 | I've done calls with people who are broke and in debt,

00:05:18.000 | and I've done calls with people who are multimillionaires.

00:05:22.000 | I've done calls on all kinds of subjects.

00:05:24.000 | And the only thing that I cannot give you advice on

00:05:28.000 | is I cannot tell you to buy or to sell securities.

00:05:32.000 | And in all of the time that I've done these consulting calls,

00:05:34.000 | I've never had anybody even ask me about that,

00:05:36.000 | because the buying and selling of securities

00:05:38.000 | is not particularly important to most of our financial plans.

00:05:42.000 | It's much more of the background, the structure, et cetera.

00:05:44.000 | But I've had so many people who've called me for a second opinion.

00:05:47.000 | That's always a good thing.

00:05:48.000 | They've called me for a specific question.

00:05:50.000 | It can be as short or as long as you want.

00:05:51.000 | That system is wonderful.

00:05:52.000 | And you know what?

00:05:53.000 | After doing this and talking to you about it extensively here today,

00:05:56.000 | I'm going to run a sale.

00:05:57.000 | So let me make up a coupon code.

00:06:00.000 | Okay, I've made up a coupon code.

00:06:02.000 | And to incentivize you to listen to the show,

00:06:04.000 | I will give you that coupon code at the end of today's call.

00:06:07.000 | And I will give you a substantial discount for using that coupon code

00:06:11.000 | if you would like to speak to me.

00:06:13.000 | I've just made up the discount program here as we go.

00:06:15.000 | So if you want to talk to me personally,

00:06:17.000 | that's the best way to do it, to get specific advice to your situation.

00:06:21.000 | And I don't know of a better offer that exists.

00:06:26.000 | A couple of housekeeping, if you request that,

00:06:28.000 | please give me at least 48 hours of lead time.

00:06:30.000 | The Stupid Clarity System, it's very good in some regards.

00:06:33.000 | I don't love it though because it doesn't allow me to tell you when I'm available.

00:06:36.000 | And so I frequently get requests for five hours from now,

00:06:39.000 | and I'm not available five hours from now.

00:06:42.000 | I need at least a couple of days of advance notice.

00:06:44.000 | I do those calls between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. during traditional business hours.

00:06:48.000 | That works the best with my obligations.

00:06:50.000 | But if you'd like a phone call with me, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/phonecall.

00:06:54.000 | RadicalPersonalFinance.com/phonecall.

00:06:56.000 | That will push you through.

00:06:58.000 | Number two, of course, is to gain access to these Friday Q&A shows that I do.

00:07:01.000 | But you'll hear more about that in the future.

00:07:04.000 | So that's the best way to interact with me personally.

00:07:06.000 | I'm not willing to allocate the time to giving away advice for free in the form of email

00:07:12.000 | or in the form in other ways unless it's serving my audience publicly.

00:07:16.000 | And so in my interest, if you book a phone call with me,

00:07:19.000 | that's a good and productive use of my time.

00:07:21.000 | They're simple for me to do.

00:07:23.000 | I answer your questions on the phone,

00:07:24.000 | and they result in a good revenue source for me personally as a professional.

00:07:28.000 | And then if you come on the show, that serves my interest because it allows me to use your questions

00:07:33.000 | to create valuable, important content and useful ideas for the podcast,

00:07:39.000 | which helps me to serve many other people.

00:07:41.000 | Those are the best ways for you to interact with me and ask me questions.

00:07:45.000 | In addition to that, however, if you have a comment for me,

00:07:48.000 | I would like you to come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com and leave it there

00:07:52.000 | instead of in a social media feed or instead of in email.

00:07:55.000 | It doesn't matter to me if your comment is supportive or critical.

00:07:58.000 | Just bring it by RadicalPersonalFinance.com and put it there.

00:08:01.000 | Here's why.

00:08:02.000 | I don't enjoy the social media environment, and let's talk with a few of them.

00:08:07.000 | I've removed myself from all of the social media platforms with the exception of Facebook and Twitter.

00:08:13.000 | Facebook, I don't enjoy Facebook because of the way that posts are characterized.

00:08:21.000 | Ignoring all of the damaging effects of Facebook and Facebook argumentation,

00:08:25.000 | the content is poorly stored and archived.

00:08:28.000 | It's not well connected to the subject.

00:08:31.000 | And so if there's a discussion that happens on a specific episode,

00:08:36.000 | if that happens on Facebook, that will be quickly lost to the history

00:08:39.000 | and is not available for somebody who two years from now wants to access that discussion.

00:08:43.000 | So if it happens on the actual episode page at RadicalPersonalFinance.com,

00:08:47.000 | that allows it to be appropriate to other people learning and seeing and interacting with it.

00:08:53.000 | That allows for good organization of the archives.

00:08:56.000 | I also don't like Facebook, how Facebook interacts with personal data.

00:08:59.000 | Because so many of us maintain Facebook profiles under our own personal names,

00:09:03.000 | our own personal information, that financial information is connected to your personal data.

00:09:08.000 | So you can't ask a personal question.

00:09:09.000 | My blog, I run some standard comment section.

00:09:13.000 | I don't care what name or what info you put in there.

00:09:15.000 | You can put in fake name and put in fake name at email.com.

00:09:18.000 | It doesn't matter to me.

00:09:19.000 | So all of those things are simple and accessible to you at RadicalPersonalFinance.com.

00:09:25.000 | And so you can have a little bit of security around your personal financial information.

00:09:31.000 | You should not put personal financial information on Facebook.

00:09:34.000 | It's an unsecure environment.

00:09:36.000 | So I don't like to interact with things there.

00:09:39.000 | I've been intending and intending to set up a forum for you all to interact more extensively.

00:09:43.000 | The problem in today's world is that so many people live on Facebook

00:09:47.000 | that Facebook groups are much more active than many forums because it's easier.

00:09:51.000 | You all have the app on your phone and it's easy just to put a comment there.

00:09:57.000 | I don't know. A bit of an ideologue.

00:09:59.000 | I look at it and I kind of ignore the popularity of it.

00:10:02.000 | And I say, "Well, what do I think is the best?"

00:10:05.000 | But the problem is that winds up costing you and your business.

00:10:08.000 | But come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com.

00:10:10.000 | Interact with me there.

00:10:11.000 | And I'm going to incentivize you to do that with this extensive introduction.

00:10:16.000 | I am today going to interact with your comments.

00:10:20.000 | I've got the comment page open and I'm going to share with you my answers to your comments here on the show

00:10:25.000 | and discuss various topics in response to your comments that come in at RadicalPersonalFinance.com.

00:10:34.000 | The first comment comes in from Marie who writes in response to my episode

00:10:40.000 | "What is the best advice to help you buy your first AR-15 rifle?"

00:10:43.000 | Marie writes in and says, "Joshua, I love your podcast and I was an avid supporter and patron,

00:10:48.000 | but this podcast veers into a hotbed of issues that I think aren't appropriate for this show.

00:10:52.000 | I wish you well, but I can't support this cause."

00:10:55.000 | Now, this is normal.

00:10:56.000 | Anytime I post a topic on--it's normal at this point.

00:11:00.000 | Almost any topic has people on all sides of issues that come in and want to share their perspective with me.

00:11:08.000 | What I find is there are a few things that are important for you to know.

00:11:13.000 | One, of course, I support your right and even your decision to live consistent with your values.

00:11:20.000 | All of us face very difficult circumstances and if you have values and ideas that are important to you,

00:11:27.000 | to live consistent with those is very--I believe is important.

00:11:31.000 | I find it much easier to interact with people who have consistent values,

00:11:35.000 | even if they differ from mine, than people who don't profess any values or don't profess any ideology.

00:11:41.000 | So I wish Marie all the best.

00:11:44.000 | I hope that she has a wonderful future and that it's filled with many good things.

00:11:50.000 | I don't expect agreement and I can understand her perspective about me talking about things like AR-15s.

00:11:57.000 | What I find usually, if you're a new listener and you--all of a sudden I do a show on something,

00:12:02.000 | there's usually a lack of knowledge of two things.

00:12:05.000 | First, you may not have been here from the beginning, but for me to talk about investing in an AR-15

00:12:09.000 | and how to get a good deal on one is exactly why I started a show called Radical Personal Finance.

00:12:16.000 | And it's nothing new. I've been talking about investing in guns since the very beginning.

00:12:21.000 | I've been talking about things that interest me that don't interest other people that aren't commonly told.

00:12:26.000 | But usually, as the show grows, a new listener will come in and I'll do 10 or 15 or 20 topics

00:12:31.000 | that are fairly mainstream stuff and they say, "Well, Joshua, he's a little bit nutty.

00:12:35.000 | He's got some unusual opinions."

00:12:37.000 | But the whole basis of this show is me talking about things that I find interesting

00:12:41.000 | that are not constrained by what's popular in the mainstream.

00:12:46.000 | And so that would be thing number one.

00:12:48.000 | Thing number two is if you're bothered by something that I say,

00:12:50.000 | I would encourage you to go back and listen to episode 379 of the show.

00:12:54.000 | That episode was titled "The Perils of Success"

00:12:57.000 | and it's about taking the filter off the content of RPF in order to maintain and grow my own success.

00:13:03.000 | I am fully aware that if I talk about something like buying an AR-15,

00:13:10.000 | then there are some people that are really frustrated by that.

00:13:13.000 | Now I can make an argument to you about why it shouldn't be that way.

00:13:19.000 | Buying an AR-15 should be no more controversial than having a Twitter account.

00:13:24.000 | The right to keep and bear arms for a US American should be as every bit as uncontroversial

00:13:29.000 | as the right to speak or the right to practice your religion without interference of government officials, etc.

00:13:35.000 | So it's a little bit annoying to me that it's not that way.

00:13:39.000 | But more to the point is I know that that will offend some people.

00:13:43.000 | So why do I do it?

00:13:45.000 | I would be bored stiff trying to create a personal finance show for you

00:13:51.000 | called "Normal Personal Finance".

00:13:55.000 | I don't have any interest in doing that.

00:13:57.000 | I would go back and I would work as a professional financial advisor.

00:14:00.000 | I would make about 10 times more money with about 10% of the time.

00:14:06.000 | I could do it. I know exactly how to practice in a way that serves clients

00:14:10.000 | and would be very, very inexpensive.

00:14:12.000 | I'm here in this space because I think it's fun and I think it's interesting

00:14:17.000 | and I have no interest in working for an NPR show.

00:14:21.000 | So that's why.

00:14:23.000 | Go back and listen to episode 379 called "The Perils of Success"

00:14:26.000 | and I'll help you understand why in order for me to survive and to be still here on the microphone to you,

00:14:31.000 | I quit worrying about popularity.

00:14:34.000 | I don't care.

00:14:36.000 | And one of my frequent comment is I will help you start your own personal finance show.

00:14:40.000 | Today, when I started, there were very few good personal finance shows.

00:14:43.000 | Today, there are many.

00:14:44.000 | So I'll help you go and find them.

00:14:46.000 | Next question comes in from Dale who writes in on an episode from long ago, episode 87,

00:14:52.000 | which was an interview with Joey Furman who wrote a pirate adventure novel to teach financial concepts.

00:14:58.000 | And Dale is a financial advisor from Canada and it intrigued him to start with the idea of writing his own book

00:15:06.000 | or his own ideas on the subject.

00:15:08.000 | And I think this is something that more and more of us need to do.

00:15:11.000 | When you get down to it, writing a book that is an allegory or writing a book that is a parable is really, really powerful.

00:15:19.000 | I'm going to do some stuff in future days on my favorite personal finance book of all time,

00:15:25.000 | which is--this is kind of bad if I can't summon the name of it--

00:15:32.000 | "The Richest Man in Babylon."

00:15:34.000 | "The Richest Man in Babylon" is a wonderful personal finance book.

00:15:38.000 | And recently I was talking with my wife and we were talking about education.

00:15:42.000 | Education and studying education is a really important topic to me.

00:15:46.000 | And we were talking about different books that have impacted us.

00:15:49.000 | And we've been deeply influenced by Charlotte Mason's philosophy.

00:15:53.000 | Charlotte Mason was a teacher in England about 100 and something years ago.

00:15:57.000 | And she wrote a number of books, but she developed this system of schools that was very helpful.

00:16:02.000 | And what I really like about Charlotte Mason is her approach to education.

00:16:06.000 | It's a comprehensive approach.

00:16:08.000 | My wife and I have talked a lot about the education for our children.

00:16:10.000 | We've tried to understand what are the ideologies, what are the frameworks that are important, what's essential, what's not essential.

00:16:16.000 | We've tried to study what the current data and research is showing, what the historical data and research is showing,

00:16:24.000 | and kind of how are we going to approach the challenge of our children's education.

00:16:29.000 | And Charlotte Mason has given me a few ideas that I found to be really helpful.

00:16:33.000 | But what I consider to be one of the most helpful things is her specification of something that she calls "living books."

00:16:41.000 | And she has her own ideology around what a living book is.

00:16:44.000 | But basically, it's a book that's alive.

00:16:47.000 | It's a book that's not boring.

00:16:49.000 | It's a book that allows ideas to flourish.

00:16:53.000 | And a living book can be a book that's related to really anything.

00:16:56.000 | So our children's books, we look for living books, books that talk about ideas that are beautiful and noble and good

00:17:02.000 | and praiseworthy.

00:17:04.000 | We look for books that are rich in imagery or rich in emotion or rich in artwork.

00:17:10.000 | There's just so much twaddle, is the word from the Charlotte Mason world.

00:17:14.000 | There's so much twaddle that is created in the world.

00:17:18.000 | And this twaddle, twaddle just means things that are worthless, cotton candy basically of literature.

00:17:25.000 | Twaddle is, look at the vast majority of books, the vast majority of TV shows, the vast majority of just stuff that we take in is twaddle.

00:17:31.000 | It's pointless.

00:17:32.000 | It doesn't do anything.

00:17:33.000 | It's like cotton candy.

00:17:34.000 | It goes in and it kind of feels good in your mouth for a minute and it makes you retch violently in the bathroom for the next few hours and puts cancer in your body.

00:17:42.000 | Yes, I'm being hyperbolic here.

00:17:45.000 | But the twaddle is what our society is consumed with.

00:17:48.000 | So a living book can be a book that is at any stage and of any subject.

00:17:54.000 | And it's a little bit hard to pin down.

00:17:57.000 | But it's the kind of thing where you know it when you've got it.

00:18:01.000 | You know it when you've got it.

00:18:03.000 | I've been reading recently to our eldest child, I've been reading the Marguerite Henry series of Misty of Chincoteague and Misty's Foal and some of these.

00:18:14.000 | I love the Marguerite Henry books when I was younger.

00:18:17.000 | And the books are vivid.

00:18:18.000 | They're powerful.

00:18:20.000 | The language is beautiful and it's insightful and it's rich.

00:18:24.000 | It's vibrant.

00:18:25.000 | It's fantastic.

00:18:27.000 | And you read that and it's so much more energizing than looking through and flipping through the latest young adult novel and the paranormal romance section at the Barnes and Noble.

00:18:36.000 | And so I've looked and I've tried to understand what this is.

00:18:40.000 | And all of a sudden I realized when I was looking at Your Richest Man in Babylon, I realized, I said, this book is a living book.

00:18:51.000 | It's a living book.

00:18:53.000 | And that's why I like it.

00:18:54.000 | It's not a textbook that says here are the seven steps that you need to become wealthy.

00:18:58.000 | It's a book that conveys an idea in a powerful way.

00:19:02.000 | The Richest Man in Babylon is a living book.

00:19:07.000 | And I realized I want to know what other financial living books are because I don't have many of them.

00:19:14.000 | So here's my question for you as a reader and as a listener of this show.

00:19:18.000 | If you know of a book that you think is a personal finance book that is a living book, as you understand that to be, it's okay if you don't know that.

00:19:25.000 | But just something that's been impactful for you, something that has been vibrant for you, I'd love to know what that is.

00:19:29.000 | Feel free to come by today's episode at radicalpersonalfinance.com and comment.

00:19:34.000 | Let me know what your living book is because I'd like to curate a little bit of a list of these.

00:19:38.000 | I get always asked for book recommendations on finance or top ten lists and things like that.

00:19:45.000 | And it's hard for me to know how to answer it because so much of material is related to a situation.

00:19:52.000 | And I always have to answer and say, "Well, what are you struggling with? Are you struggling with debt? Well, then is this a book?

00:19:57.000 | Are you struggling with a plan? Is this a book? Are you trying to investigate an investment idea? Well, it's this book."

00:20:03.000 | I don't know how to make these top ten lists. I don't think that way.

00:20:06.000 | But what I would love to do is I would love to highlight and profile more living books in the finance space.

00:20:13.000 | So in response to Dale, Dale, write one. I've read other ones.

00:20:18.000 | But also let's look for them and let's share those living books.

00:20:22.000 | Stavros writes in with response to last Friday's show where we were talking about the cost basis of rental property.

00:20:29.000 | And this is important because it's something that I got somewhat wrong on the show.

00:20:33.000 | And so I want to read his comment to fill you in on what I got wrong last Friday.

00:20:38.000 | Stavros writes in this comment. He says, "I wanted to weigh in on the cost basis of the rental property.

00:20:44.000 | I reserve the right to be wrong, but if it is a primary residence converted into an investment property,

00:20:50.000 | you haven't lived in it two or three out of the past five years,

00:20:54.000 | I believe that you cannot use your original purchase price,

00:20:57.000 | but I have to use the market price at the time of conversion into the investment property.

00:21:03.000 | Then the basis and depreciation is calculated from there.

00:21:07.000 | Improvements made prior to becoming an investment property would not calculate into basis.

00:21:13.000 | I was in a very similar situation to the caller. I bought an '05, converted in 2011, and sold in 2015.

00:21:19.000 | And all my research indicated that was the process for the basis calculation.

00:21:23.000 | My CPA confirmed. If I'm wrong, I need to get a better CPA and file an amended return

00:21:28.000 | because I'm owed some money from the government."

00:21:30.000 | So that is important for you to know with regard to last Friday's Q&A,

00:21:34.000 | we're talking about the adjusted cost basis of a personal residence that's been converted into a rental property

00:21:40.000 | and is being sold for a loss. You need to be aware of that data.

00:21:45.000 | Question comes in from Tom. Tom writes on episode 431, which was called

00:21:49.000 | "How a 22-year-old college grad should prioritize their step towards financial independence."

00:21:54.000 | Tom writes this, "As a young individual that is about to graduate college,

00:21:57.000 | but under different financial circumstances, I just don't hear the 'radical' financial advice.

00:22:04.000 | In fact, I would say it is 'traditional' societal norms that you are suggesting, and that is disappointing.

00:22:13.000 | You suggest that people are better off married.

00:22:15.000 | I would be interested in how you come to that conclusion for young people

00:22:18.000 | who face a social and economic environment much different than the generation's past.

00:22:25.000 | Financial independence, based on a dependency on societal norms, is not radical in my opinion.

00:22:31.000 | It's just more of the same."

00:22:33.000 | Well, Tom, there are a number of questions that you present here in your comment,

00:22:37.000 | and I want to answer those in just a few fold.

00:22:40.000 | Number one, with regard to the idea of radical financial advice

00:22:46.000 | versus traditional societal norms in the financial advice.

00:22:51.000 | I use the term "radical" in the name of this show to identify basically three things.

00:22:57.000 | One, I want it to be a hook, a marketing hook to you

00:23:02.000 | when you're browsing through a personal finance directory.

00:23:06.000 | In the world of online findability, it's important that if at all possible,

00:23:12.000 | you optimize the name of your product for computer bots to crawl and also for individual people.

00:23:20.000 | And so what I chose to optimize on was "personal finance."

00:23:24.000 | That's my interest.

00:23:26.000 | You'll notice I do some investment content, but this show is not about options trading.

00:23:30.000 | It's not my interest. My interest is personal finance.

00:23:33.000 | And so I've optimized for that.

00:23:35.000 | So if you do a search for "personal finance podcast,"

00:23:37.000 | you'll almost always find "radical personal finance."

00:23:39.000 | The second thing I wanted to hook you with was the idea of that word "radical."

00:23:44.000 | And it's interesting because it's a word that is subject to interpretation.

00:23:50.000 | One person's "radical personal finance" may be another person's "normal everyday humdrum thing."

00:23:56.000 | It's a very subjective word. There's no objective definition of the word "radical."

00:24:00.000 | So I created the show to hook you into at least giving it a try

00:24:05.000 | with a little bit of marketing, branding, hopefully, intelligence.

00:24:11.000 | That was the point.

00:24:12.000 | But also under that umbrella of "radical," it allowed me to profile different approaches.

00:24:18.000 | And I've tried to do that, interviewed people who do crazy stuff

00:24:21.000 | and go travel the world for a year and just completely upend everything.

00:24:24.000 | And the third thing, of course, is that word "radical" gave me the leeway that I wanted

00:24:28.000 | to talk about the subjects that I wanted to talk about without being constrained into a certain box.

00:24:32.000 | If the show was called "Trading Stock Options,"

00:24:37.000 | then I would have to just talk about trading stock options.

00:24:40.000 | I couldn't talk about buying an AR-15.

00:24:42.000 | But under that umbrella of "radical personal finance," I gave myself the liberty to talk about that.

00:24:48.000 | But here's the important thing about the word "radical."

00:24:51.000 | "Radical" does not equal "good."

00:24:57.000 | "Radical" could be good, or it could not be good, but "radical" does not equal "good."

00:25:07.000 | By the same token, "traditional" doesn't equal "good."

00:25:13.000 | It could be good or it could be very bad, but "traditional," the word is not synonymous with "good."

00:25:21.000 | There's a quote by G.K. Chesterton that I like, that I think shines an important light on this idea.

00:25:29.000 | The quote is this.

00:25:31.000 | Chesterton says, "The whole modern world has divided itself into conservatives and progressives.

00:25:39.000 | The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes.

00:25:43.000 | The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

00:25:47.000 | Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution,

00:25:52.000 | the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.

00:25:57.000 | Thus we have two great types, the advanced person who rushes us into ruin

00:26:01.000 | and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.

00:26:06.000 | He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine.

00:26:09.000 | Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob."

00:26:17.000 | So that focus on that idea.

00:26:19.000 | The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes.

00:26:22.000 | The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

00:26:26.000 | Now let me bring that from words that we usually align with politics

00:26:32.000 | and let me apply it to the words that you used in your comment.

00:26:36.000 | The business of radicals is to go on making mistakes

00:26:39.000 | and the business of traditionalists is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

00:26:42.000 | Or something else, that's a little bit clumsy.

00:26:45.000 | But the idea here is radical and traditional is not in and of itself

00:26:51.000 | a definition of good, it doesn't mean good or bad.

00:26:56.000 | Rather these words describe something that's simply out of step.

00:27:00.000 | Now let's talk about financial advice.

00:27:03.000 | I believe there are things that we could measure to be objectively good

00:27:07.000 | and objectively bad in the world of financial planning.

00:27:12.000 | Let's use something relatively uncontroversial such as personal happiness.

00:27:17.000 | Personal happiness and a sense of satisfaction.

00:27:20.000 | The question would be this, what is it that leads to a sense of personal happiness

00:27:24.000 | or a sense of personal satisfaction?

00:27:28.000 | Well that's what we talk about on the show.

00:27:30.000 | And I have some strong ideas about that.

00:27:33.000 | But I don't think that the radical path is always the path to personal happiness and satisfaction.

00:27:41.000 | I've tried to cover this with my comments about entrepreneurship and employment.

00:27:47.000 | I really love entrepreneurship.

00:27:50.000 | I think entrepreneurship is a wonderful tool to help you achieve a greater degree of freedom.

00:27:56.000 | And I believe that a greater degree of freedom can be a very powerful thing in your life.

00:28:03.000 | However, sometimes entrepreneurship can be way more difficult

00:28:10.000 | than the freedom that can be gained by employment.

00:28:15.000 | And a lot of that would be more subjective, more personal to you.

00:28:20.000 | Some entrepreneurs cannot imagine being anything but entrepreneurs.

00:28:26.000 | But many entrepreneurs cry themselves to sleep dreaming of a job.

00:28:31.000 | I recently was with my family at an RV park, a local park.

00:28:37.000 | We were testing out our rig in preparation for our forthcoming extensive travels,

00:28:41.000 | doing kind of a check on everything and making sure everything was good.

00:28:45.000 | And our next door neighbors at this particular park were both retired school teachers from the upper northeast.

00:28:52.000 | They had retired as school teachers.

00:28:54.000 | Both of them were science teachers, middle school and high school science teachers.

00:28:58.000 | Both of them retired in their mid-50s with full pensions from school teaching.

00:29:04.000 | Now, speaking very forthrightly, I, Joshua Sheets, I would love to be a school teacher.

00:29:14.000 | That deeply appeals to me.

00:29:16.000 | My favorite thing to do is to teach.

00:29:19.000 | I love to teach.

00:29:20.000 | I seriously considered being a school teacher.

00:29:24.000 | And I would love to be a school teacher within a system,

00:29:28.000 | within the system of government schools that provides a great degree of job security,

00:29:34.000 | provides great retirement benefits, provides a really easy schedule,

00:29:39.000 | and provides a very strong benefits for a life of freedom.

00:29:46.000 | I have a friend of mine who was a former client who in mid-life, late 40s,

00:29:52.000 | he went back, finished a college degree.

00:29:54.000 | He had previously been an entrepreneur, had run a successful business,

00:29:57.000 | went back, finished a college degree, and went back to teach high school history.

00:29:59.000 | I would love to teach high school history.

00:30:01.000 | There are so many benefits of being a school teacher from a radical personal finance perspective

00:30:08.000 | that I could lay out for you.

00:30:11.000 | The long hours, they exist sometimes, but a lot of that is due to the teacher's choice.

00:30:17.000 | It's not necessarily required.

00:30:19.000 | Some teachers do them, some teachers don't.

00:30:21.000 | They come from a family of teachers, including multiple government school teachers,

00:30:25.000 | and some teachers do them, some teachers don't.

00:30:27.000 | You don't have to be there for 15 hours a day.

00:30:30.000 | You can just be there for the required time and get your work done in the required time.

00:30:33.000 | The summer's off, you get two to three months off to travel.

00:30:37.000 | That's wonderful.

00:30:38.000 | Great pension benefits, if they continue, wonderful.

00:30:41.000 | So what's the point?

00:30:43.000 | Is it radical financial advice to recommend to somebody that they become a school teacher,

00:30:47.000 | work for 25 years, and retire with a tremendous pension?

00:30:51.000 | Get summer's off, get all the government holidays off,

00:30:54.000 | have a relatively easy job with regard to if you're a teacher at heart and you enjoy doing that?

00:31:00.000 | I would love to do that job.

00:31:02.000 | Is that radical financial advice?

00:31:03.000 | No, not in the sense of go and pursue entrepreneurship and self-employment.

00:31:08.000 | No, of course not.

00:31:10.000 | But is it good financial advice?

00:31:12.000 | I would say so if somebody can succeed in that environment,

00:31:17.000 | and if that environment would fit their personal goals,

00:31:22.000 | then I think that would be wonderful.

00:31:24.000 | No, it wouldn't work for me.

00:31:26.000 | I ultimately came to the conviction that I could not survive in that system.

00:31:30.000 | I'm too much of an ideologue.

00:31:32.000 | I would be fired.

00:31:34.000 | I don't think for being a bad teacher, but because I would do what John Taylor Gatto did.

00:31:40.000 | At least I think I would.

00:31:41.000 | Who knows?

00:31:42.000 | I've never been in that situation.

00:31:44.000 | So is that radical financial advice?

00:31:46.000 | Well, no.

00:31:47.000 | People have been saying for a long time, "Go get a job as a teacher."

00:31:50.000 | Or, "I've worked with a bunch of clients.

00:31:52.000 | I somehow ended up with a bunch of clients who were police officers and firefighters."

00:31:57.000 | These are wonderful careers from the perspective of early retirement.

00:32:02.000 | The military system.

00:32:05.000 | You go into the military system, put in your 20 years, retire with a pension.

00:32:09.000 | That's a wonderful plan for early retirement.

00:32:12.000 | But is it radical?

00:32:14.000 | I don't think so.

00:32:16.000 | I don't really think so.

00:32:18.000 | So the point is you need something more than radical to be a definition of good or bad.

00:32:23.000 | You need to understand a little bit more.

00:32:25.000 | Now let's talk about traditionalist.

00:32:27.000 | Because you say, "I suggest that people are better off married."

00:32:30.000 | Yes, I suggest that people are better off married because all of the data indicates

00:32:35.000 | that married people are happier, they're healthier, and they're wealthier.

00:32:41.000 | Now, that data must then be looked at a little bit deeper.

00:32:46.000 | I concede, for example, that your comment here, he says, "I would be interested in how you came

00:32:51.000 | to that conclusion for young people who face a social and economic environment

00:32:56.000 | much different than the generations past."

00:32:59.000 | Here's how.

00:33:00.000 | What's changing?

00:33:02.000 | Is what's changing that marriage doesn't provide those benefits?

00:33:08.000 | Well, I concede there are interesting arguments there.

00:33:12.000 | I think marriage still does provide those benefits.

00:33:15.000 | But the society that doesn't support marriage eliminates many of those benefits.

00:33:19.000 | I have frequently given advice to people who are considering marriage, said,

00:33:23.000 | "No, you definitely shouldn't get married, especially for men. Marriage is very dangerous."

00:33:28.000 | Marriage is very dangerous in today's world.

00:33:32.000 | But that doesn't mean that marriage is the problem.

00:33:36.000 | The idea of one man, one woman being united in a lifelong union, that's not a problem.

00:33:41.000 | That leads to great happiness.

00:33:43.000 | I informally poll a lot of my friends who are married, young people, some with children,

00:33:48.000 | some who don't have children.

00:33:50.000 | If they are well-connected and aligned with their spouse, especially men,

00:33:55.000 | I spend most of my time with men.

00:33:57.000 | So if they're well-connected with their wives and they're aligned with their wives

00:34:01.000 | and they have normal, healthy relationships, almost every time they tell me that they are

00:34:09.000 | so glad to be married, that they would never want to return to the world of dating,

00:34:15.000 | to the world of hookup culture, to the world of the one-night stand,

00:34:18.000 | to the world of trying to filter through all the girls and figure out what they're in it for.

00:34:24.000 | They all say that marriage is better, and I affirm that marriage is better.

00:34:30.000 | But that doesn't mean that marriage to the wrong girl is better.

00:34:35.000 | If you're married to the wrong girl, your life is most definitely probably not going to be better,

00:34:41.000 | and your financial life is probably most definitely not going to be better.

00:34:46.000 | So what's the problem?

00:34:48.000 | Well, what is it about traditional societal norms that are helpful or not helpful?

00:34:57.000 | To me, that's the appropriate question.

00:34:59.000 | Now, I would say that a traditional societal norm that affirmed the permanence of marriage

00:35:08.000 | was helpful in restraining people's desire and their ability to escape a hard situation.

00:35:18.000 | What I personally believe and teach, which is the biblical standard on marriage,

00:35:23.000 | is that marriage is designed for one man, one woman, for life.

00:35:29.000 | It's that simple.

00:35:31.000 | And all sexual activity should be relegated to one man, one woman, for life.

00:35:36.000 | Now, you can start with what I'm happy to start with, with a religious ideological basis for that,

00:35:42.000 | and you can look for external validation, or you can look to external validation.

00:35:48.000 | There's plenty of external sociological validation that you can pull for that.

00:35:52.000 | But in a culture that affirms one man, one woman, for life,

00:35:58.000 | there leads to a great degree of stability, and that stability leads to a great degree of peacefulness.

00:36:03.000 | Now, I don't think this is particularly easy to find in today's culture.

00:36:08.000 | One thing that my wife and I, before married, we both seriously searched this through and we professed.

00:36:13.000 | I jokingly say, which is a joke I stole from someone else,

00:36:17.000 | I jokingly say that I told her, "If you ever leave me, don't ever leave me, because if you do, I'm going with you."

00:36:22.000 | That's our commitment. No matter what, we're in it together.

00:36:25.000 | No matter what, we're in it together.

00:36:27.000 | And that brings security to my life. That brings security to her life.

00:36:32.000 | Now, of course, we could, of course, I could go off the deep end, she could go off the deep end.

00:36:37.000 | Those situations happen all the time, and they're very, very difficult.

00:36:40.000 | But ideologically, I'm not in it until I'm unhappy.

00:36:44.000 | My wife's not in it until she's unhappy. We're in it for life.

00:36:48.000 | That structure brings peace to a relationship, and it brings, it's valuable.

00:36:54.000 | So that's an aspect of traditional societal norms that I believe is fundamentally good.

00:37:00.000 | But there are traditional societal norms that I think are fundamentally bad.

00:37:05.000 | Perhaps at some point I'll discuss this.

00:37:08.000 | I've wanted to talk about marriage because it is such an integral aspect of finance, of personal finance.

00:37:15.000 | It's impossible to escape.

00:37:17.000 | But I've felt constrained due to the fact that I don't know if I'm qualified.

00:37:22.000 | I've read a lot. I've thought a lot. I have my own experience.

00:37:26.000 | But I think I'm probably coming to the place where I'm confident enough to share my experiences and my academic study, but not much more than that.

00:37:35.000 | I've only been married for, what, six years, something like that now.

00:37:38.000 | So that's, of course, in some ways a significant amount of time.

00:37:42.000 | That's if you study sociological marriage stuff, that's what's considered by sociologists to be a stable marriage.

00:37:48.000 | But anyway, the point of this, Tom, for you is the key is to look at it not based upon how radical or how traditional it is,

00:38:00.000 | but to look at it on its true merits.

00:38:05.000 | Traditional culture, here's one thing that's interesting with regard to marriage.

00:38:11.000 | I have studied this a lot and it sounds, Tom, like you as a young man, it sounds like I'm familiar enough with the language.

00:38:18.000 | It sounds to me that you're starting to wrestle with these subjects.

00:38:24.000 | You're starting to wrestle with the red pill ideology of marriage.

00:38:28.000 | You're starting to wrestle and say, "Well, what do I want to do as a young, about to graduate college man?"

00:38:34.000 | Here's what I would say without going into those things in detail.

00:38:38.000 | If you actually are willing and actually interested in data, you can find it.

00:38:45.000 | There are a lot of things of traditional societal norms that are really, really good for a good life.

00:38:54.000 | Living in a simple three-bedroom, two-bath house with a picket fence, with a white picket fence,

00:39:01.000 | as a man with a wife who loves you, who you go to work and you work a 40-hour job doing work that is productive and is a good use of your time,

00:39:10.000 | and your wife stays home with your children and you raise your children, you get to go home in the evening and be with your children.

00:39:15.000 | And then on Saturday morning, you get up and you take the children fishing or you take your wife out to a nice local restaurant

00:39:22.000 | and you go to church on Sunday morning, whatever traditional stereotype I can draw.

00:39:30.000 | Data-wise, that can be a very satisfying and happy life.

00:39:40.000 | That can be a very satisfying and happy life, but it's not guaranteed to be.

00:39:48.000 | That life could also be miserable.

00:39:50.000 | So go a little deeper than just radical versus traditional.

00:39:54.000 | Don't assume that everything that is traditional is by definition bad.

00:40:01.000 | A friend of mine who has never been...

00:40:03.000 | Good friend of mine, buddy I go motorcycle riding with, his license plate is always...

00:40:09.000 | Or his persona is always lone wolf.

00:40:14.000 | This friend of mine has never lived a traditional life.

00:40:18.000 | He's always been a lone wolf.

00:40:20.000 | He's always been a man going his own way.

00:40:25.000 | He's always done that.

00:40:28.000 | Now I'll tell you what, as I watched him go into his 50s,

00:40:34.000 | I've seen the envy and the jealousy that he has of being a lone wolf.

00:40:41.000 | Has a lot of health problems.

00:40:42.000 | It's not easy to be a lone wolf when you're dealing with health problems.

00:40:46.000 | Now of course we can all draw anecdotal evidence.

00:40:49.000 | My point is, look deeper.

00:40:52.000 | Look deeper.

00:40:53.000 | Don't just dismiss something because it's traditional,

00:40:56.000 | and don't just accept something because it's radical.

00:40:59.000 | That is just as harmful as just dismissing something because it's radical

00:41:03.000 | and accepting it because it's traditional.

00:41:06.000 | To use G.K. Chesterton's words, "Progressivism and conservatism are both wrong.

00:41:11.000 | They're just wrong for different reasons,

00:41:13.000 | and it always has to do with this moving of the goalposts."

00:41:17.000 | So look for things that are solid.

00:41:20.000 | My two cents.

00:41:23.000 | In that vein, I want to take this next comment.

00:41:25.000 | Came in on my recent show called "Spending Money to Save Money,"

00:41:29.000 | where Frank, my favorite commenter on Radical Personal Finance,

00:41:33.000 | Frank writes in and says, "I see that you're channeling Viktor Frankl today."

00:41:37.000 | Here's Viktor Frankl's quote, "Between stimulus and response,

00:41:41.000 | there is a space.

00:41:43.000 | In that space is our power to choose our response.

00:41:47.000 | In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

00:41:52.000 | Again, that's Viktor Frankl.

00:41:53.000 | Viktor Frankl's story is a tremendous story.

00:41:56.000 | He was a Jewish psychologist.

00:41:59.000 | I always get confused in my application of the word "psychologist," "psychiatrist."

00:42:02.000 | Forgive me.

00:42:03.000 | He was a Jewish psychologist who wound up in a Jewish--in a concentration camp.

00:42:09.000 | While he was there, he studied the human condition,

00:42:12.000 | and out of that came a book called "Man's Search for Meaning,"

00:42:14.000 | which is a tremendous book.

00:42:17.000 | In line with the previous comment about tradition and traditionalism,

00:42:23.000 | Frankl talked about how in that space between stimulus and response,

00:42:29.000 | there's an opportunity to choose,

00:42:31.000 | and to choose even in dreadful circumstances, to choose happiness.

00:42:37.000 | All I want to comment on that is, of course, it's a wonderful book,

00:42:39.000 | and I want to recommend it to you if you haven't read it.

00:42:41.000 | I'm overdue for a rereading myself.

00:42:44.000 | But in that book, I think--or in that comment,

00:42:48.000 | I think we see some of the wisdom of tradition,

00:42:51.000 | some of the wisdom of the ages.

00:42:53.000 | And I'm very concerned about the rejection,

00:42:57.000 | the outright, whole-scale rejection of traditionalism in and of itself,

00:43:04.000 | just because it is traditionalism.

00:43:06.000 | I was reading--I can't cite it for you--

00:43:09.000 | but I was reading a secular author who is by no means a political or religious conservative,

00:43:16.000 | and they were talking about this value of traditionalism,

00:43:20.000 | or valuing the traditions.

00:43:22.000 | And what we seem to have--and I don't know if it's ever not been thus--

00:43:26.000 | but what we seem to have is in some parts an outright rejection

00:43:32.000 | of the things that past generations found to be valuable.

00:43:37.000 | And friends, we are not so smart that we can just reject thousands of years of collected wisdom.

00:43:46.000 | Now, we should reject the things that are not good,

00:43:49.000 | but we cannot just reject the thousands of years of wisdom.

00:43:53.000 | And so to the previous commenter, and Tom,

00:43:58.000 | I would caution you, as a young man,

00:44:02.000 | be very careful to just simply reject the wisdom of the past.

00:44:09.000 | We are not that much wiser than our forebears.

00:44:15.000 | Our grandparents were not idiots.

00:44:20.000 | We should look carefully and critically at what they did,

00:44:24.000 | but we should not just reject the things of old because they are old.

00:44:29.000 | We are the inheritors of thousands of years of growth,

00:44:36.000 | of wisdom, of advice on how to live the good life.

00:44:40.000 | And so if you're not reading somebody like Viktor Frankl,

00:44:46.000 | or many thousands--hundreds of names that I could say here--

00:44:50.000 | from the last thousands of years,

00:44:52.000 | if you're not reading some of our forebears,

00:44:57.000 | I would commend to you that you're making a mistake.

00:45:00.000 | The good life is something that has been long studied.

00:45:05.000 | Now, we have to translate what the good life was a thousand years ago

00:45:10.000 | into our current technological environment,

00:45:13.000 | but we don't have to reinvent everything about it.

00:45:18.000 | We really can learn from the past.

00:45:22.000 | Next question came in from Matthew, who writes in saying,

00:45:26.000 | "Joshua, do you know what happened with pseudo-pay?

00:45:29.000 | They removed their app from the App Store,

00:45:31.000 | and I thought you might know, considering you are a customer."

00:45:34.000 | So, pseudo-pay, for those of you who are not familiar,

00:45:36.000 | is one of the more useful ways of slightly controlling your payment data.

00:45:43.000 | And I've talked about this in previous episodes of the show,

00:45:45.000 | also in interviews.

00:45:46.000 | There are three--I guess four--frequently used ways

00:45:50.000 | to slightly privatize your financial transactions.

00:45:54.000 | The three that I've mentioned, and the fourth is PayPal,

00:45:57.000 | and there are others as well,

00:45:58.000 | but the three that I've mentioned are pseudo-pay, Blur, and Privacy.com,

00:46:04.000 | of which I think Privacy.com is the easiest and certainly the cheapest,

00:46:08.000 | but Blur and pseudo-pay are also useful.

00:46:11.000 | So, a quick bit of background,

00:46:12.000 | if you're unfamiliar with the idea of privacy.

00:46:15.000 | Your financial privacy is extremely, extremely important.

00:46:18.000 | It should be important to you.

00:46:20.000 | You should consider privacy in your transactions,

00:46:25.000 | not for any reason that you may know today,

00:46:28.000 | that may or may not be important to you today,

00:46:31.000 | but just because it's important to you or not important to you today

00:46:33.000 | doesn't mean it's going to be important to you or not important to you a year from now.

00:46:36.000 | You never know when all of a sudden there's a lawsuit filed against you.

00:46:40.000 | You never know when all of a sudden your information

00:46:43.000 | is included in the most current data breach.

00:46:46.000 | Just this last week, there was a data breach from Orbitz, Orbitz.com.

00:46:50.000 | I think something like almost a million customer travel things were released.

00:46:56.000 | We live in a very strange and new time relating to the security of data.

00:47:02.000 | So, as you look to try to put some layers of privacy into your financial affairs,

00:47:08.000 | in looking at this privacy, you've got to think proactively about how to keep it.

00:47:12.000 | So, it would be, I would commend to you,

00:47:15.000 | it would be a little bit unnecessary and probably unwise for you just to use one checking account

00:47:20.000 | and then to swipe your one debit card every single time that you are going to pay for something.

00:47:27.000 | Your payment in that context might help you, for example,

00:47:32.000 | if you're fighting out of debt and that's your method of avoiding credit cards, that's fine.

00:47:36.000 | But once you've mastered that elementary level of not being in credit card debt, etc.,

00:47:41.000 | I think it should be wise for you to start to think about putting in place

00:47:45.000 | a few different aspects of protection for yourself.

00:47:49.000 | So, the way that you protect yourself is to anonymize your data a little bit.

00:47:54.000 | Now, there are simple ways to do it.

00:47:55.000 | Anytime that you have a transaction that you can use physical currency for,

00:48:01.000 | I think that you should do that.

00:48:02.000 | So, I recommend, I'm going to do a show probably soon about Cash is King,

00:48:07.000 | about whenever you have the opportunity to actually use physical currency, just use physical currency.

00:48:13.000 | The only downside to that is that it's a little bit harder for you to put into your accounting system.

00:48:20.000 | That is the only downside to using physical currency.

00:48:23.000 | And there are so many upsides because the less of a data trail that you can create for your finances,

00:48:29.000 | the better, the clearer the financial transactions, the better.

00:48:32.000 | So, physical currency is great.

00:48:33.000 | But what do you do in a context where you can't buy something with physical currency?

00:48:37.000 | Well, of course, you could just use your standard credit card, your standard debit card, etc.

00:48:41.000 | But the problem is now all of your financial transactions are automatically exposed to your bank.

00:48:47.000 | And so, wouldn't it be great if there were a way that you could add an additional intermediary

00:48:51.000 | and you could protect your financial privacy from your bank as well?

00:48:57.000 | Well, that's where these third-party applications come in that allow you to do that.

00:49:02.000 | And the three current prominent ones, and I hope there are many more, are Sudopay, Blur, and Privacy.com.

00:49:11.000 | And these services allow you to provide payment info that isn't immediately related back to your bank,

00:49:17.000 | where your bank doesn't see it immediately.

00:49:19.000 | Well, Sudopay just removed their app from the App Store.

00:49:22.000 | And according to their website, they're working on redoing it.

00:49:27.000 | And they're going to be launching a newer and better option.

00:49:30.000 | So, I don't have any inside information as far as what happened with Sudopay.

00:49:33.000 | There doesn't seem to be any problem with it.

00:49:35.000 | It seems like they're reworking the product.

00:49:37.000 | And my guess would be that they're trying to add some new features because my guess,

00:49:42.000 | none of this is publicly available data, but my guess is that Privacy.com has taken over a good bit of market share.

00:49:49.000 | And I don't--I mean, the market share for these applications is already tiny

00:49:52.000 | because most people are not thinking about it.

00:49:54.000 | Most people are used to just swiping their card.

00:49:56.000 | And so my guess would be they're trying to adjust some things so they can come back bigger and better than ever.

00:50:01.000 | I think Sudo, the app for the phone, seems to be doing well.

00:50:04.000 | But Sudopay probably needed to be adjusted.

00:50:06.000 | I have no inside knowledge of it.

00:50:08.000 | If or when I come up with that, I will talk about that.

00:50:12.000 | But I would encourage you, if you are in the habit of transacting everything just with your standard debit card

00:50:20.000 | or standard credit card, be very careful about that.

00:50:23.000 | Personally, my favorite of these products is Privacy.com.

00:50:26.000 | I need to reach out to them to see if they'll advertise on Radical Personal Finance

00:50:31.000 | because I think that would be so--it's such a perfect fit.

00:50:35.000 | I love their product. I use it all the time.

00:50:37.000 | So regardless, free advertising, Privacy.com is wonderful.

00:50:41.000 | It gives you the ability to create a new, basically sort of credit card,

00:50:46.000 | but works on the debit system for any new transaction.

00:50:49.000 | So you go to Privacy.com, and if you're going to buy something online,

00:50:52.000 | you just create a new one-time, basically burner credit card that you connect

00:50:57.000 | and that you make your payment with.

00:50:59.000 | And you can use this for recurring payments.

00:51:01.000 | You can use this for one-time payments.

00:51:03.000 | But it allows you to silo all of the financial transactions that you make

00:51:08.000 | so that when your credit card information gets exposed in your next--in the next data breach

00:51:15.000 | that comes in from Orbitz or whomever you're buying your plane tickets through,

00:51:19.000 | or when the U.S. government dumps your data on the internet,

00:51:23.000 | or when whatever website gets hacked,

00:51:27.000 | then you don't have to be so concerned about having to go through

00:51:30.000 | and rework all of your accounts.

00:51:32.000 | You just simply close that card and move on to the next thing.

00:51:35.000 | So I encourage you, consider using these options.

00:51:38.000 | They're really wonderful.

00:51:40.000 | If you have questions on financial privacy, I've thought about doing a whole series

00:51:43.000 | on kind of the framework on it.

00:51:46.000 | If that's something you're interested in, let me know.

00:51:49.000 | Let me do one more fun one here as we close the show.

00:51:53.000 | This one is kind of fun and lighthearted.

00:51:55.000 | This was a comment on Episode 518 for tools, tips, and techniques for cooking on the road

00:52:01.000 | so you can actually afford to travel with children.

00:52:04.000 | Madison writes in, she says, "I love Din Tai Fung.

00:52:08.000 | I was so happy when one opened here in the Bay Area."

00:52:11.000 | For those of you who didn't hear that show,

00:52:13.000 | Din Tai Fung is a wonderful restaurant that specializes in what are called Shanghai dumplings.

00:52:19.000 | Using the English version, the Chinese version would be something like Shui Long Bao.

00:52:23.000 | And they do have a location in the Bay Area, I think in San Francisco.

00:52:30.000 | They also have a location, I think, in Seattle.

00:52:33.000 | A number of years ago, my wife and I were in Seattle.

00:52:36.000 | It's nothing like the other ones, nothing like I expected the San Francisco one.

00:52:39.000 | But we made this long trek across Seattle just for the purpose of eating at the local establishment of Din Tai Fung

00:52:48.000 | to eat the Shanghai dumplings, the Shui Long Bao dumplings.

00:52:52.000 | And so they are wonderful.

00:52:53.000 | So if you're in the Bay Area or traveling to the Bay Area, try Din Tai Fung.

00:52:56.000 | There are other ones as well.

00:52:57.000 | Shanghai dumplings are not exclusive to that restaurant chain, and I'm sure there are others as well.

00:53:02.000 | Especially if you get into an area where there's a lot of great Chinese food,

00:53:06.000 | like my perception is in the Bay Area, that would be great.

00:53:09.000 | Also, Madison writes in and asks, "This is the episode where you mentioned the powdered milk.

00:53:15.000 | I stumbled upon using this when I didn't have any milk for baking.

00:53:18.000 | We never have it here either, and realized that I had loads of milk with my ingredients for backpacking food.

00:53:23.000 | Do you have any tips for mixing it well?

00:53:26.000 | I bought some little mixer balls to put in the Nalgene, but they don't seem to be all that effective.

00:53:30.000 | I tried mixing it with cold and hot water to try to see if it mixes better with a certain temperature as well,

00:53:34.000 | but honestly we don't use it enough for me to be able to discern the best methods."

00:53:38.000 | Well, Madison, I do, and it's very simple.

00:53:40.000 | So powdered milk, I think, is a really great option, and I'm really interested.

00:53:46.000 | One of my personal goals for the next couple of years is I want to learn more about how to cook and to use

00:53:52.000 | dehydrated and freeze-dried ingredients, because I think these are a really wonderful option in your personal pantry.

00:54:02.000 | The benefits of freeze-dried and dehydrated ingredients is, the benefits are, that you can have them on hand

00:54:10.000 | without fear of spoilage.

00:54:12.000 | We try in our household to buy and eat a lot of fresh vegetables, but it's always a challenge to know in advance

00:54:19.000 | exactly how many you're going to use, and it feels like we're often in the race to use up the vegetables.

00:54:24.000 | And so frequently you find that, well, they're getting a little bit old, or they're getting a little bit soft,

00:54:29.000 | and you can try new recipes that'll help you to use those old things, but that can be a challenge.

00:54:37.000 | So dehydrated and freeze-dried can just sit on the shelf, and it's so wonderful, and there's been a real revolution

00:54:42.000 | in technology to be able to dehydrate and freeze-dry meat and vegetables and fruits in a way that they can be

00:54:50.000 | reconstituted and used, and they're really, really good.

00:54:53.000 | So powdered milk is just the old standby.

00:54:56.000 | It's been around forever, and it used to be mainly used as a way of saving money.

00:55:01.000 | If I go back and read money-saving books from the '70s, '80s, '90s, you'll often find powdered milk there

00:55:07.000 | being an option.

00:55:09.000 | I haven't found it to be that big of a savings.

00:55:11.000 | Seems like fresh milk, as in pasteurized milk that you buy in the grocery store, varies in price,

00:55:17.000 | but in most of the places where we live, it's not that expensive.

00:55:20.000 | When I ran the math, I didn't find that powdered milk was a huge savings.

00:55:24.000 | And so if somebody is a major milk drinker, then I don't see a lot of benefit to using powdered milk

00:55:30.000 | because it's not quite the same experience as a normal jug of pasteurized cow's milk in terms of flavor,

00:55:36.000 | if you're accustomed to the flavor of cow's milk.

00:55:38.000 | But where it is so valuable is to have it always on hand, and you can have a bag of powdered milk,

00:55:44.000 | and you can make it up when you wake up in the morning, and you're going to make some biscuits or muffins,

00:55:48.000 | and you need milk, well, you could just make it up right then and use it.

00:55:51.000 | So I find it's really simple. I just put a little water in a quart jar,

00:55:54.000 | just put in the appropriate measure of powdered milk.

00:55:56.000 | The recipe that I use is one and a third cups of powdered milk for the brand I buy at the local restaurant supply store.

00:56:02.000 | One and a third cups of powdered milk dumped into a quart jar, put a little water in, and I just use a whisk,

00:56:06.000 | and it works out great.

00:56:07.000 | Now, for flavor, they do recommend on the package, and I have found to be true, it's good if it can sit for a while.

00:56:13.000 | So if you're actually going to drink it, then make it up in advance and put it in the fridge overnight.

00:56:20.000 | But a whisk works really well.

00:56:22.000 | A little water in the bottom, whisk it up, and then finish off with the water and a little bit of gentle whisking.

00:56:26.000 | I find there's no problem at all in mixing it up.

00:56:30.000 | But it's one of those solutions that I really love because you can have a large quantity of something on hand for if you need it,

00:56:37.000 | and you get pretty good results.

00:56:40.000 | And although it's only a little bit cheaper, at least with the local milk prices for cow's milk in my area,

00:56:45.000 | it's a little bit cheaper because you can mix it up little by little.

00:56:49.000 | There's a good savings there where you're not buying extra milk that you may not use.

00:56:53.000 | So if you haven't tried powdered milk, go for it.

00:56:56.000 | I love to read some of the old books.

00:56:58.000 | I like to read money-saving books from the '70s, '80s, '90s, wherever I can find them.

00:57:02.000 | I really enjoy those, and I think it's fun to see what tips apply today that didn't apply before and what tips don't apply.

00:57:10.000 | And here would be my closing comment for you.

00:57:13.000 | If you read those old books, what I have found is that reading them helps me to appreciate things that I don't appreciate today.

00:57:24.000 | I'm constantly amazed at how much it used to cost people to communicate.

00:57:31.000 | I'm constantly amazed.

00:57:34.000 | I would read these old books to save on long-distance phone calls, for example.

00:57:39.000 | The old money-saving frugality writers would say, "Well, write a letter instead,"

00:57:44.000 | because if you write a letter, you could send with a 20 or some 20 to 30-cent stamp.

00:57:49.000 | You could communicate a whole lot with a first-class letter that would cost you a whole lot on a phone call.

00:57:58.000 | And for me, I'm in an interesting situation where I'm right on a generational transition.

00:58:04.000 | I am currently 30--how old am I? 32? I guess I'm 32 years old.

00:58:10.000 | And as I look at that, I am the last generation for whom our modern digital environment was not always in my memory.

00:58:24.000 | I was in high school when cell phones became ubiquitous.

00:58:30.000 | So I remember all my friends getting cell phones.

00:58:32.000 | I remember my borrowing for years.

00:58:35.000 | When I was in high school, I would borrow my grandparents' cell phone.

00:58:38.000 | They had a cell phone, and they would just keep it for emergencies with them when they traveled.

00:58:42.000 | And then for a time in high school, I would borrow it when I had a special event so that I could have a cell phone with me.

00:58:47.000 | That was high school.

00:58:48.000 | So I'm basically a digital native in the sense that it was never foreign to me,

00:58:52.000 | but I'm not so much of a digital native as people younger than me to where I can actually remember the time before that.

00:59:00.000 | And so it's been interesting to me to be in this very small window of cross-generational experience to analyze that.

00:59:08.000 | So I remember sending and receiving letters, but I also--for me, email was an integral part of my life.

00:59:17.000 | So when I read someone and they say, "Oh, go and write a letter so you don't have to have a long-distance phone call,"

00:59:26.000 | I just find that so interesting.

00:59:28.000 | Or another family, one tip that I read in "How to Save Money" was to send a circular letter in your family.

00:59:33.000 | So you would start it--let's say there were multiple siblings and parents.

00:59:37.000 | One person starts it, writes the news of the day, and then sends it, forwards it to the next person.

00:59:41.000 | They go ahead and read that letter and add their own letter, and then it goes on to the next, and you add their own letter, and it kind of goes in a circle.

00:59:48.000 | Well, today, you bring that to the instant, constant communication that we all say enjoy on a global basis.

00:59:58.000 | It's amazing to me that that's just so much part of our lives, and we hardly think about it.

01:00:03.000 | At least I hardly think about it.

01:00:04.000 | Maybe you do.

01:00:05.000 | But it's so interesting.

01:00:07.000 | It's just so fascinating how quickly we can become desensitized to the value of that communication ability.

01:00:15.000 | To be able to flip out of a mobile computer that lives in your pocket and do an instant video chat with someone on the other side of the world for what is essentially free is amazing.

01:00:27.000 | Or other techniques from the old days.

01:00:31.000 | Somebody recommended in order to avoid having a phone, you could use a CB radio.

01:00:35.000 | That was an old thing.

01:00:36.000 | I was an amateur radio operator.

01:00:39.000 | I've been--long time, so I got my license when I was probably 10, 11, 12 years old.

01:00:44.000 | When I got my license, one of the cool things that we could do with amateur radio was to use what's called an auto patch function on our local repeater system.

01:00:54.000 | I could pull up the local radio, and for free, from my handheld VHF radio, I could pull up a computer, and I could use that computer with my special code to make a phone call without paying for a cellular connection.

01:01:10.000 | That was the coolest thing. When I was in high school, I would listen to the local repeater, and people would dial that up, and they would call in and make their phone call to call their wife and say, "Hey, I'm on my way home."

01:01:20.000 | That would, of course, be publicly heard, but it wouldn't cost them money to have a cell phone.

01:01:25.000 | What's the point?

01:01:26.000 | The point is, look at your life and appreciate those good things that you have today.

01:01:31.000 | Looking at older things can sometimes inspire that appreciation.

01:01:35.000 | But back to the bulk of today, which was that traditional conversation.

01:01:41.000 | Don't despise the value of traditionalists.

01:01:45.000 | For example, I look at that idea of that roving letter, and I long for that.

01:01:51.000 | I long to have just someone sit down and say, "Here's the chatty news of the day. Here's what I'm thinking about," without me having to persuade them or them having to persuade me with the latest thing that I read on Drudge Report,

01:02:04.000 | or CNN.com.

01:02:06.000 | I think that we can learn some new things and new ways to gain the benefits of the past and the benefits of the present and put them together.

01:02:17.000 | In my mind, that's the search for wisdom.

01:02:20.000 | I have decided I will give back to the promo code as I close the show.

01:02:25.000 | If you would like to take a consulting call with me, use the promo code "TaxTime2018."

01:02:33.000 | "TaxTime2018," I will do it for the sake of simplicity, all lowercase.

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01:02:54.000 | That gives you, as I release this today, March 23 to April 17, a couple of weeks.

01:03:00.000 | If you would like to talk to me in the next couple of weeks and ask me about any specific thing about your question, give phone advice.

01:03:07.000 | I've done several calls today, and every caller that I've had go by and look at my reviews.

01:03:10.000 | Almost all the callers have had a positive experience, whether their question was simple or not.

01:03:14.000 | Use the promo code "TaxTime2018" at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/phonecall.

01:03:20.000 | Oops, sorry. I just realized I don't actually need to give you that code here.

01:03:27.000 | What I've just done is I have dropped my hourly rate by 30%, and that will be effective for anybody who books at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/phonecall from now through April 17.

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01:04:23.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

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