RPF0559-Radical_Housing_Ideas_1_of_5-_Learn_the_Skills_and_Build_Your_Own_House
00:00:00.000 | Hey parents join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids
00:00:04.640 | day presented by Pear Deck.
00:00:06.320 | Family fun giveaways and exciting Kings hockey awaits.
00:00:09.400 | Get your tickets now@lakings.com/promotions and create lasting
00:00:13.360 | memories with your little ones.
00:00:14.840 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the
00:00:18.200 | knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and
00:00:21.960 | meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:27.120 | Today, I begin a five part series with some very short focused shows on some
00:00:32.160 | different approaches to housing that I hope might give you some creative
00:00:36.960 | inspiration to look at your own situation a little bit more thoughtfully.
00:00:42.320 | If you were to analyze the personal budgets of the average US American, or
00:00:46.640 | frankly, the average global citizen, as long as we're talking about a middle
00:00:50.840 | class or non-poverty stricken existence, the biggest expense that most of
00:00:57.040 | us incur is housing.
00:00:58.080 | If you're dealing with the very lowest class, the most desperately poor, the
00:01:01.600 | biggest expense there is usually food.
00:01:03.480 | And the housing is extremely makeshift.
00:01:06.120 | Picture a shanty town with walls and cardboard walls and just a, if fortunate,
00:01:12.600 | a metal piece of roofing.
00:01:13.920 | And for the most poor of the world's, for the world's most poor, one of the
00:01:18.560 | biggest expenses is food just because they don't even have the money for housing.
00:01:23.360 | But that's not the situation most likely that you're in or that I'm in.
00:01:27.480 | We're in a situation which housing is a big, big deal.
00:01:31.040 | And I think a lot about housing because I'm interested in so many different
00:01:34.280 | approaches.
00:01:34.920 | And I want to give you some ideas that I hope might help you to look at your
00:01:39.240 | situation and help to minimize your own housing costs.
00:01:43.680 | There are many ways that you can change the structure and the cost of your
00:01:48.200 | housing.
00:01:48.760 | And I want to encourage you not to be the kind of person who spends all your day
00:01:53.160 | working to pay for a house that stays empty most of the time.
00:01:57.960 | I've interacted and frankly stayed in so many houses where the house was empty
00:02:03.160 | during the day because the owners of the house were spending their time going to
00:02:09.000 | work to pay for the house that they didn't use.
00:02:11.240 | And so they got up early and they left the house before breakfast and the house
00:02:14.840 | was cold and hot and empty early in the morning.
00:02:18.320 | And they spent all day out of the house, but at the end of the day, they were so
00:02:21.160 | tired that instead of coming home and having the energy to actually use the
00:02:25.120 | house, they would go out to a restaurant and they would hire people at a
00:02:28.520 | restaurant to cook for them, coming home to an empty house, which was heated or
00:02:32.720 | cooled all day long for them.
00:02:34.080 | And they basically used it as a bedroom.
00:02:36.160 | I've been in so many houses where there's so many different, there's so much space
00:02:42.360 | that's unused and it just, it hurts me.
00:02:44.800 | The efficient side of me hurts me because I want to see that stuff used.
00:02:48.360 | So here are some ideas that I hope you'll consider if any of them may be
00:02:53.280 | practical to you or to anyone you know.
00:02:55.880 | The first idea is this.
00:02:57.400 | Is there a way that you could learn the skills necessary to construct for
00:03:03.200 | yourself an appropriate dwelling and eliminate the need to pay for an expensive
00:03:09.000 | dwelling?
00:03:09.640 | Years ago, I read an article in, I think it may have been Backwoods Home Magazine.
00:03:15.320 | I enjoy these Back to the Land magazines, Mother Earth News, Backwoods
00:03:18.520 | Home, things like that.
00:03:19.400 | But years ago, I read an article and the writer of the article was talking about
00:03:24.000 | how they had spent time working at basic entry-level jobs in order to develop for
00:03:30.040 | themselves the skills to build their own housing.
00:03:33.200 | And they were comparing mathematically the value that they gained from doing that
00:03:40.160 | versus the value that they gained from just simply paying a retail cost for a
00:03:44.560 | house.
00:03:45.480 | Now, I didn't sit down and create an elaborate spreadsheet to try to
00:03:48.040 | demonstrate this to you before today's show, but I do think it's very worth
00:03:53.320 | considering.
00:03:53.880 | I used to work in the construction trades when I was in high school.
00:03:57.360 | Primarily, I did some general construction.
00:04:01.080 | I worked on building a number of houses.
00:04:03.240 | I was very fortunate and privileged that when I was younger, my parents built their
00:04:08.440 | own house.
00:04:09.040 | And the way that they approached that, one of the reasons they built their own
00:04:12.320 | house was so that we children could have a chance to engage with the actual
00:04:16.760 | building of that.
00:04:17.520 | So my dad contracted out the construction of the shell of the house, the walls, the
00:04:22.560 | roof, the foundation, et cetera, which is some of the more time-consuming parts.
00:04:26.840 | But I was involved even as 10 years old, I was involved in many of the aspects of
00:04:32.040 | that construction project.
00:04:33.200 | I nailed a lot of the shingles on the roof.
00:04:35.560 | I pulled a lot of the wires under the help of, of course, my father who was doing
00:04:40.560 | the wiring on the house.
00:04:41.880 | I observed the process of plumbing.
00:04:43.640 | I helped and did a little bit of labor in the framing of the walls.
00:04:46.400 | I watched the guys put up the drywall.
00:04:48.200 | Now I was limited, of course, due to my age.
00:04:50.480 | My older brothers did a lot more than I did, but I was very involved in the
00:04:53.960 | process.
00:04:54.640 | I laid a lot of the floor.
00:04:56.120 | I refinished the floor.
00:04:57.520 | All of the way through, I was involved in the process.
00:05:00.960 | And so that exposure to construction gave me a great degree of personal confidence
00:05:05.440 | in my ability to tackle and do certain projects.
00:05:08.480 | When I was in middle school, I worked as a laborer on, again, doing some general
00:05:13.280 | carpentry, which was very useful, learning how to frame decks, frame roofs, frame
00:05:17.880 | walls, things like that.
00:05:19.120 | And then also I labored for a summer as a helper for a tile setter.
00:05:23.280 | And so I spent the summer doing all the jobs that a helper does of mixing up mud
00:05:27.880 | and grouting and finishing and chipping up floors, et cetera.
00:05:31.000 | But I learned that I could do tile.
00:05:33.480 | I could do these, learn these basic skills.
00:05:36.080 | And I've often thought what a value it would be for a young man or a young woman,
00:05:42.280 | especially during those high school years to have exposure to these certain trades.
00:05:47.600 | In hindsight, I could go back and I could see a 14 year old, a 15 year old, a 16
00:05:53.160 | year old, a 17 year old, and if that 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 year old were to spend their
00:05:59.040 | time each summer working in a different part of the construction industry, just
00:06:05.440 | during the summers, they would gain so much skill and competence with regard to
00:06:11.680 | carpentry or plumbing or electrical work in order to be able to do it themselves.
00:06:18.080 | When I was in college, I worked as a helper for somebody who was a master
00:06:23.480 | electrician, but was doing the work of putting an addition on their home.
00:06:27.360 | And I worked at every single stage of that project from digging the foundation.
00:06:32.600 | We dug it, we compacted it.
00:06:34.400 | We poured the cement and I gained access to every phase of that construction.
00:06:38.800 | Here's what I learned.
00:06:39.640 | Construction is actually pretty simple.
00:06:41.640 | Now, when you're actually working in a trade, you can pick up so much knowledge
00:06:48.200 | quickly, much quicker than almost any other, than any other methodology.
00:06:55.720 | And you can just higher on as an entry level laborer and gain a huge degree of
00:07:01.720 | experience as I learned as a seventh grader working as a tile laborer, a helper.
00:07:07.280 | I gained so much experience just in a couple of months of tile setting.
00:07:11.560 | So let's say that you're interacting with a 13 year old, a 14 year old, a 15 year
00:07:17.200 | old, and let's say that you don't just back into their summer employment by
00:07:22.880 | accident, but rather you work into it by design and you break down the major
00:07:28.360 | components of construction.
00:07:31.240 | One might be general carpentry.
00:07:33.880 | Another might be plumbing, electrical work, perhaps some
00:07:38.720 | flooring, perhaps some roofing, perhaps some Finnish carpentry.
00:07:44.200 | And what if you had two or three or four summers or even better?
00:07:48.760 | What if you had multiple month periods for somebody who was homeschooled and
00:07:53.960 | they could use their mornings for their, their, their academic work and their
00:07:57.600 | afternoons for their physical work.
00:07:59.880 | Think about how much a focused young person could learn.
00:08:04.000 | I'm convinced they could come out with a basic knowledge, a working knowledge
00:08:11.560 | of most construction techniques with a focused plan, like I've described.
00:08:17.200 | Even if they worked for free or they worked for 50% less wages, you know,
00:08:22.760 | right now to get hired on as a laborer on a construction crew, the going rate
00:08:27.520 | is about 15 bucks an hour, at least in most markets where I have seen.
00:08:30.760 | I was just passing through and I have noticed, which by the way, if you're
00:08:35.280 | not employed right now and you want to be employed, you better get out there and get
00:08:39.480 | a job.
00:08:39.960 | Unemployment is so low.
00:08:41.280 | I see help wanted signs everywhere.
00:08:43.040 | And the starting wage for entry level unskilled work right now seems to be
00:08:47.360 | about 13, $14 an hour in the retail environment.
00:08:50.400 | You go into the construction industry and it's higher.
00:08:52.680 | So 15 bucks an hour for an entry level helper.
00:08:57.920 | Maybe it's 12, maybe 13, your market may differ, but about 13, 14, 15 bucks an hour.
00:09:01.840 | Let's say that you hired on it less.
00:09:04.440 | Let's say you hired on it 10 because you were utterly unskilled, or let's say
00:09:08.800 | you're young and weaker than a strong adult would be, so you're not worth quite
00:09:12.920 | as much yet, but you could just learn and get paid to learn.
00:09:16.560 | You could come out of that type of environment with a huge degree of
00:09:22.800 | competence in these basic skills.
00:09:26.520 | That alone would give you the skills to build your own housing.
00:09:32.120 | Now here's a second thing to consider.
00:09:34.360 | There are so many good books and instruction manuals available to you
00:09:39.920 | entirely for free at your local library on modern construction techniques.
00:09:44.880 | There's so many good books on theory available for you that if you have a
00:09:50.040 | little bit of basic academic ability, you can work by day helping the electrician
00:09:56.160 | and study by night studying electrical theory.
00:09:58.680 | And in a couple of months of focused effort, you can attain your basic
00:10:04.000 | journeyman's level knowledge if you're academically competent.
00:10:07.200 | Now you won't have the experience requirements to apply for the licensing,
00:10:11.680 | but you don't need that.
00:10:12.480 | You just need the knowledge and the theory, and you can do it relatively
00:10:16.480 | quickly if you are skilled in this area.
00:10:18.760 | Which brings me to the third thing, YouTube.
00:10:22.560 | The power of YouTube and the power of the instructional content for any person
00:10:27.880 | to pull out their phone, shoot high quality videos, show what they're doing
00:10:31.880 | and give instruction for free is changing so many people's lives.
00:10:37.400 | From time to time, I come across these news stories and frequently it's
00:10:42.320 | somebody who's relatively unlikely, a single mother of three children who
00:10:46.280 | built her own house from watching YouTube.
00:10:49.480 | And I look at these things and I say, absolutely.
00:10:52.000 | How awesome is that?
00:10:53.360 | And it's true.
00:10:54.520 | It's possible.
00:10:55.200 | It's doable.
00:10:55.960 | So why not you?
00:10:58.680 | Or why not your children?
00:11:01.800 | Are your children given over to that type of skillset?
00:11:07.080 | Do they have that competence with their hands?
00:11:09.560 | Do they seem to be able to function well in that environment?
00:11:12.520 | If you haven't put them into that environment, why not?
00:11:15.840 | Why not give them a chance, give them some exposure?
00:11:19.400 | There's no reason at all why strong academics and strong physical
00:11:26.080 | manual skills shouldn't go together.
00:11:28.440 | Those things are perfectly compatible, but is that right for you or your children?
00:11:34.960 | Could you help a young person to develop those skills?
00:11:38.480 | Now, how would you actually apply this?
00:11:43.000 | Well, let's say that you develop those skills and you were able to work in
00:11:46.760 | these jobs and you were able to live cheap, hopefully with mom and dad, but
00:11:50.640 | you're able to live cheap and save your money, there's no reason in the world
00:11:54.400 | why a 14 year old, a 15 year old, a 16 year old shouldn't be able to put in
00:11:59.360 | three, four, five years of strong labor in a manual trade of some kind.
00:12:05.320 | And then by the time they're 18, 19, 20 years old, have 40, 50, 60, $100,000 saved.
00:12:14.520 | I love the account, the story of Steve Maxwell, who I interviewed on the show
00:12:20.000 | and how he's worked with his children, where all of his children were able to
00:12:23.960 | save and pay for their first houses, buying them debt free before they were married.
00:12:29.760 | I love that account.
00:12:31.560 | There's no reason why you can't do that.
00:12:33.720 | Now, if you've got 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, $80,000 saved by the time you're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old,
00:12:42.360 | let's say that you need to pull back to new work 30 hours a week, but you go ahead
00:12:47.240 | and put in another 30 to 40 hours a week on your own project over the course of one,
00:12:51.840 | two, three years, you can build for yourself quality housing.
00:12:55.960 | And it doesn't have to be weird housing.
00:12:58.440 | It can be normal, conventional looking housing in normal, conventional neighborhoods.
00:13:03.160 | There's no reason why you can't go ahead and pull your own permits.
00:13:07.440 | There's no reason why you can't do those things yourself.
00:13:11.320 | Now let's say it takes you a couple of years to get it done.
00:13:13.520 | That's fine.
00:13:14.480 | But I think it's entirely feasible that a motivated, diligent young person or older
00:13:21.920 | person for that matter, it's just harder when you gain more responsibility, it's
00:13:25.120 | harder to work cheaply so you can gain skill.
00:13:27.920 | But so this type of approach is I think more well suited for a young person, but
00:13:32.680 | there's no reason at all why a young person couldn't come out in their early
00:13:38.040 | twenties and construct their entire housing themselves and it'd be beautiful
00:13:43.120 | and functional, that skill set, those skills can be so valuable and you could
00:13:52.520 | build for yourself an entirely livable house.
00:13:57.640 | It could be conventional or it could be unconventional.
00:14:00.840 | That's up to you, but you could build for yourself an entirely workable housing
00:14:07.360 | arrangement and do it without borrowing a dime.
00:14:12.440 | Do it very inexpensively by putting in your own labor and your own skill.
00:14:18.800 | Now, given the slower pace, if you start to add the skills of scrounging around
00:14:25.680 | for materials, of learning how to work with the things that are less expensive
00:14:29.360 | than just everything that is on the retail market, you can do it at a
00:14:32.880 | dramatically lower cost.
00:14:35.440 | So I encourage you, give some thought to this approach, give some thought to
00:14:39.880 | these ideas and see if they might not be helpful for you or for a young person
00:14:45.200 | that you know.
00:14:45.880 | I know a whole lot of young people, 23 year olds, 25 year olds, 28 year olds,
00:14:53.040 | who would be a whole lot better off if they had dedicated their
00:14:56.520 | teens to this type of approach.
00:14:58.960 | And instead of working a job that didn't give them physical skills or skills that
00:15:04.280 | could be built on to something else, instead of wasting their time doing
00:15:08.760 | things that didn't build skills as a young adult, when they have the time
00:15:12.960 | to work inexpensively, now a whole lot of them that would be better off
00:15:16.800 | following this type of plan.
00:15:18.040 | So radical housing idea number one is this.
00:15:21.240 | Could you design the educational program for yourself to learn the skills in
00:15:26.360 | order to build your own house?
00:15:27.880 | I think you could, if you wanted to.
00:15:30.440 | Give it a thought, see if that's a helpful idea for you.
00:15:34.680 | Thank you for listening.
00:15:35.520 | You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that.
00:15:39.520 | And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies
00:15:44.320 | and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals.
00:15:49.000 | Before you go, three simple requests.
00:15:51.880 | One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's show,
00:15:56.200 | make a plan to take action on it.
00:15:59.360 | Listening does lead to learning, but learning in and of itself doesn't
00:16:04.360 | automatically lead to a life change.
00:16:06.880 | It's action that leads to a life change.
00:16:10.640 | So take action.
00:16:12.400 | Two, take something that was helpful to you in today's show and share it
00:16:18.080 | with somebody that you care about.
00:16:20.000 | I'm depending on you to be a co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the
00:16:26.880 | message that I'm seeking to share.
00:16:29.920 | That helps the person that you are engaging with.
00:16:33.040 | And it also helps you because teaching others is one of the most effective ways
00:16:37.800 | for you to learn and for you to cement your learning.
00:16:42.080 | Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you, and if
00:16:46.880 | you're gaining financial benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful
00:16:50.880 | if you'd consider paying me for this work voluntarily.
00:16:55.280 | Come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron and you can sign up there to support the
00:16:59.520 | show at whatever level you feel is right for you.
00:17:02.320 | This is a voluntary support.
00:17:04.200 | That's my Patreon page.
00:17:05.760 | You can support me with a dollar a month, $5 a month, $10 a month, any
00:17:10.320 | number that seems right to you.
00:17:11.840 | But if you're gaining financial benefit from this show, and if it's achieving
00:17:16.720 | financial results in your life, I'd be grateful for your financial support
00:17:21.680 | at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.
00:17:25.040 | patron.