RPF0631-Individual_Solutions_Can_Lead_to_Success_and_Happiness-Collective_Solutions_Lead_to_Frustration_and_Misery
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00:00:29.960 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:35.520 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:40.160 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:43.600 | Today on the show I want to talk to you about how to harness the power of individual solutions
00:00:48.560 | so that you can have a more positive frame of mind, a more optimistic view of the future,
00:00:53.920 | and more power in the present to actually accomplish the change that you would like
00:00:58.320 | to see.
00:00:59.320 | So, about 90 seconds of background.
00:01:01.720 | Over the last two weeks I have finished recording, outlining, and producing my newest course
00:01:07.900 | which is called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis.
00:01:12.080 | I'm really proud of it.
00:01:13.080 | It wound up being 13 hours and 3 minutes of very carefully edited and thought out content
00:01:20.000 | trying to answer all the questions that I could anticipate on how to survive and thrive
00:01:24.160 | during any coming economic crisis.
00:01:26.240 | I laid out a raft of solutions that I'll put up against anybody else's solutions in the
00:01:30.320 | world as being effective and low cost, or at least relatively low cost, good effective
00:01:36.480 | insurance policies to put in place in your life to protect you against an economic crisis.
00:01:41.640 | And yet the whole time I did that I was struck by how simple and feasible my solutions are
00:01:47.600 | for the average person, and yet how utterly impossible any collective solution is for
00:01:54.280 | the average person.
00:01:55.960 | And I see an epidemic of people who are increasingly committed to collective solutions being the
00:02:02.400 | only solution, and yet beating their head against the wall, and instead of finding peace
00:02:07.360 | and happiness and optimism and comfort, just finding frustration and anger and lashing
00:02:13.240 | out on all sides.
00:02:15.160 | And I want to help you avoid that if possible.
00:02:19.800 | I'm convinced that if you look at almost any problem, you will find that the individual
00:02:25.080 | solutions to that problem are powerful, and yet the collective solutions to that problem
00:02:30.400 | are almost impossible.
00:02:31.800 | I want to use two examples just as my archetypes, because I can't think of two bigger, more
00:02:37.840 | discussed problems than this.
00:02:40.000 | The first one is the economic debt crisis that I outlined in the past couple of shows.
00:02:44.880 | In exhaustive detail, I worked through the problem, I talked to you about what is at
00:02:49.320 | the root of the problem, I shared with you potential solutions and why those potential
00:02:53.700 | solutions might or might not work, and I laid out the situation.
00:02:57.640 | And I was very clear that I view the problem of national debt as insoluble.
00:03:03.460 | It is insoluble.
00:03:05.160 | And I have a few ideas on how I think it will go, and time will tell.
00:03:08.520 | In fact, in the How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis, I did a
00:03:11.680 | whole module on what I think will happen, which I didn't do here on the show publicly.
00:03:16.200 | In the course, however, I did a whole module on here's what I think will happen in the
00:03:21.120 | coming economic crisis, because I don't think it's a doomsday scenario, but neither is it
00:03:25.560 | all rosy and good.
00:03:28.280 | The other example that I want to use is the discussion of climate change, global climate
00:03:32.140 | change.
00:03:33.140 | And I thought about this a lot myself, and I had a listener of mine point this out as
00:03:35.760 | well, that basically these two problems face similar characteristics.
00:03:40.800 | They are massive, they are huge, they are long-running.
00:03:43.640 | The worst case scenario seems utterly abhorrent.
00:03:46.840 | And yet I would say that there are individual solutions to both of them, individual solutions
00:03:52.040 | that would lead to peace and prosperity, etc.
00:03:55.240 | Now let's talk about those individual solutions so that you can understand, and then I'll
00:03:58.680 | give you some other examples.
00:04:00.880 | If you want to be prepared to survive and thrive an economic crisis, your solution is
00:04:07.360 | very simple.
00:04:09.540 | You disconnect yourself from the economic systems that may fail, to the highest degree
00:04:16.160 | possible.
00:04:17.160 | You build resiliency and reserves into your own life and into your own lifestyle.
00:04:22.480 | You disconnect yourself from being completely controlled by the functions of the economy,
00:04:29.080 | and you create plans to go where things are better.
00:04:31.160 | That's the basic outline of the whole course, and I'm going to go into detail on all of
00:04:35.280 | those.
00:04:36.280 | And the same thing I think should apply to something like global climate change.
00:04:39.640 | If you are really concerned about global climate change, I want to see you put your money where
00:04:44.200 | your mouth is.
00:04:45.280 | I don't want to, if you're concerned about the rise in sea levels, then don't buy a house
00:04:50.360 | by the ocean.
00:04:51.880 | If you're concerned that the climate is going to become warm, don't live where it's already
00:04:55.480 | hot and it's just going to get hotter.
00:04:58.000 | Move where it's currently cold and we'll get more pleasant.
00:05:00.680 | If you're concerned that there will be massive swings, I think you need to plan for greater
00:05:05.660 | climate variability.
00:05:06.660 | One of my favorite guys on this would be Ben Falk.
00:05:08.880 | I've had him on the show many hundreds of episodes ago.
00:05:12.000 | But one of the things that he does in all of his permaculture design work is he designs
00:05:16.880 | for varying climates.
00:05:18.000 | And so if he lives in, I don't remember what zone of climate, of agricultural production
00:05:23.000 | he lives in, but if you live in, say, zone seven, you should put plants in your property
00:05:29.260 | that would thrive in zone eight, and you should put plants in your property that would thrive
00:05:32.360 | in zone six.
00:05:33.360 | And you should go ahead and plant your property now so that you have a suite of food-bearing
00:05:39.520 | plants that will thrive in different conditions.
00:05:41.980 | That way, if it's unusually cold, then your plants that are more well-suited for cold
00:05:46.760 | solutions will flourish more.
00:05:48.720 | If it's unusually warm, then your plants that are suited for more warm climates will flourish
00:05:53.640 | more.
00:05:54.640 | And you want to build that resiliency into your life.
00:05:56.160 | I want to do that in financial planning.
00:05:57.480 | I'm not knowledgeable enough to do that with things you grow, but I can do that with financial
00:06:02.040 | planning.
00:06:03.040 | And you hear that again and again, build resiliency into your life so that you can stretch, that
00:06:06.800 | you can grow, so you can take advantage of opportunities, so you can be protected from
00:06:10.480 | things that are coming.
00:06:11.840 | And so in many ways, I look at these solutions as very much—sorry, these problems as very
00:06:19.760 | much parallel.
00:06:21.260 | And what I look for on the climate perspective is, since I am incompetent to judge the argument,
00:06:27.680 | the scientific arguments, et cetera, I study them, I look at them, I'm open to various
00:06:31.640 | sides being right, but I often find there's so many assumptions that were built upon assumption,
00:06:36.080 | built on assumption, built on assumption, built on data.
00:06:38.720 | It's so complex that you look at it, and it's very hard for a layperson like me to draw
00:06:43.960 | a conclusion.
00:06:45.840 | And so what I look at, I look and say, "Well, what would I do if I believed this, and what
00:06:49.120 | would I do if I didn't believe this?"
00:06:50.320 | And I try to align my actions that way.
00:06:52.560 | And so I tell you as an individual, I'll know you're serious about climate change when I
00:06:57.280 | see you not owning waterfront property.
00:06:59.560 | In fact, I'll believe that businesses think that—know that they're serious about climate
00:07:03.440 | change when they start selling waterfront property, and when they start encouraging
00:07:07.000 | people to plant gardens instead of fertilizing with petroleum-based fertilizer, and when
00:07:11.480 | I see people talking about actual methods that individuals can do to lock up carbon
00:07:15.440 | in the ground by pulling it out of the atmosphere with good growth, et cetera.
00:07:20.320 | And I don't want to destroy, simplify what is difficult, but the point is, I look for
00:07:24.840 | individual solutions.
00:07:26.720 | And when I see people advocating for individual solutions and not just advocating for collective
00:07:31.320 | systems of control, then I want to follow what they have to say.
00:07:34.760 | And the same thing applies to debt.
00:07:36.360 | Now let me get back to areas where I know, and I'm a little more competent, which is
00:07:40.400 | money and debt.
00:07:42.440 | You can't solve the collective debt crisis.
00:07:45.920 | I can't solve the collective debt crisis.
00:07:49.160 | And I'm not going to waste much of any time talking about solutions or wrestling with
00:07:54.720 | that.
00:07:55.720 | I'm not going to be out arguing for higher taxes or lower taxes or change this or change
00:07:59.800 | that.
00:08:00.800 | I'm not going to waste my time with that.
00:08:01.800 | What I'm going to do is I'm going to look at it and say, "What can I as an individual
00:08:05.160 | do?
00:08:06.160 | How can I teach other individuals to do what I see able to be done?"
00:08:10.320 | And exactly the same thing, I'm not going to waste my time dealing with big, giant climate
00:08:14.880 | arguments and arguing about taxing the whole world to try to make things better.
00:08:18.440 | I'm going to look and say, "What do I see individuals do?"
00:08:21.400 | By the way, I would commend to you one piece of hope.
00:08:23.320 | If you are really struggling, if you, and I know many people are, where they, evidently
00:08:27.320 | this is an epidemic among young people, where you feel like there's no hope, there's no
00:08:30.880 | future, and people are talking about not having children.
00:08:33.200 | It's the big latest thing about, "We're not going to have children because how can you
00:08:36.160 | have children when there's a climate crisis coming," etc.
00:08:40.520 | If you feel that way, I would beg you, go and educate yourself on what some people in
00:08:45.480 | the world are doing with regenerative agriculture.
00:08:49.160 | The video that disabused me of any concern about climatological future, years ago I found
00:08:54.240 | Jeff Lawton's book, sorry, his old video called "Greening the Desert."
00:08:58.400 | Jeff Lawton was a permaculture designer who was given a plot of land near the Dead Sea,
00:09:03.440 | which is just a totally destroyed plot of land.
00:09:05.760 | He was given the task, "What can you do with this plot of land?"
00:09:10.160 | When you see the results that he got on a tiny little budget, and then you see the power
00:09:13.640 | that he has been able to, the things that he's been able to do over the past decade
00:09:17.400 | or two with very little money, it's life changing, it's world changing.
00:09:22.600 | I would guess, although I'm not sure, I would guess that Lawton has major concerns about
00:09:27.520 | the future of the planet.
00:09:29.000 | Obviously he does.
00:09:30.040 | But yet the thing is, he doesn't spend, at least in any of my knowledge, he doesn't spend
00:09:35.240 | any time worrying about that stuff.
00:09:36.920 | He just focuses on solutions.
00:09:38.960 | And that's what I would encourage you.
00:09:39.960 | If you're concerned about that, go and learn the solutions to it.
00:09:42.960 | Because if you can watch a man turn a destroyed piece of desert land with hardly any rainfall
00:09:47.160 | into a lush garden on a dime, it should give you some confidence that we can turn any desert
00:09:52.880 | of the world into an absolutely magnificent oasis given time, resources, and focus.
00:09:58.720 | So I hope that gives you help.
00:10:00.800 | But I want to stay where I'm competent, which is especially with finance, not with that
00:10:04.680 | stuff.
00:10:05.680 | And just say this, individual solutions are available to you.
00:10:08.720 | Let's say you're concerned about wealth, and you're concerned about, insert this group
00:10:13.920 | of people you care about, that's not wealthy.
00:10:17.560 | You probably can't do anything to help that giant group of people.
00:10:22.000 | But what you can do is you can get wealthy yourself.
00:10:27.240 | You can't get your preferred group to get wealthy, but you can become wealthy yourself.
00:10:31.480 | You can't control those people, but you can control yourself.
00:10:37.120 | And then if you control yourself, and you get wealthy, you can teach one person, and
00:10:41.840 | another person, and another person, and another person.
00:10:44.960 | And this is going to be far more effective for you than any advocacy for big forced solutions
00:10:51.920 | on people.
00:10:55.080 | Just choose an individual solution, and then teach that individual solution to another
00:10:58.200 | person.
00:10:59.600 | The pathology of thinking that you can control other people, no matter how well-meaning you
00:11:04.160 | are, will lead you to insanity.
00:11:07.160 | But you don't have to do that to make a change in the world.
00:11:09.880 | Just change yourself, and set an example for your neighbor.
00:11:13.280 | Set an example there.
00:11:15.520 | Collective solutions are always hard, but individual solutions are easy, or at least
00:11:20.400 | feasible.
00:11:21.400 | Interestingly, collective solutions rarely work, but individual solutions almost always
00:11:27.400 | work because the individuals have a stake in the game.
00:11:29.880 | They're willing to change their actions if it's not working.
00:11:32.760 | Collective solutions often don't work just simply because there's no accountability.
00:11:36.400 | Somebody will come up with some solution, some government will fund it to the tune of
00:11:39.920 | hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:11:41.440 | It won't work, but they won't ever admit that it won't work, they'll just ask for more money.
00:11:45.680 | But yet the individual looks at what's not working and says, "That didn't work, I'm
00:11:49.560 | going to change."
00:11:50.920 | As individuals, we can change on a dime.
00:11:52.440 | You don't have to depend on anyone else for your life decisions, just change yourself.
00:11:57.280 | Collective solutions will usually lead you to frustration, because you'll be frustrated,
00:12:01.000 | "Why don't these people see what I see?
00:12:03.000 | Why don't those people do what I think they should do?"
00:12:05.920 | Whereas individual solutions will usually lead you to satisfaction and confidence, because
00:12:10.240 | you'll make the decisions that you think are right, you'll test the results of those decisions,
00:12:14.520 | if you like the results, you'll do more of it, and you'll grow increasingly confident.
00:12:18.680 | So don't waste your time arguing for collective solutions, that means you'll probably fail,
00:12:23.440 | because you'll spend so much time and energy arguing for those things, you'll miss out
00:12:28.040 | on what's before you, on the simple things that you can do.
00:12:31.260 | Don't do it.
00:12:32.680 | Focus on your individual solutions.
00:12:35.080 | And I've talked about the debt crisis, you can put in place a strategy to survive and
00:12:41.960 | thrive in any coming economic crisis, you absolutely can.
00:12:46.200 | In every crisis, there are people who not only hang on, meaning survive, there are people
00:12:51.000 | who get rich, because they're prepared for crisis.
00:12:53.800 | Now you can study what happened, you can study what they did, and you can do the same thing.
00:12:57.740 | There's not a 100% guarantee, obviously, just like there's not a 100% guarantee that any
00:13:01.560 | of us are on the earth tomorrow.
00:13:03.380 | But there's a very strong guarantee, and you're going to have a lot more success if you make
00:13:07.520 | a plan for yourself and your family, than if you try to change the US federal government.
00:13:13.120 | With climate change, if you're concerned about climate change, make a plan.
00:13:17.920 | Figure out what you can do on your property to take carbon out of the atmosphere.
00:13:22.160 | I have immense respect for so many people that I have found who are so productive, and
00:13:26.840 | you study what they have done and how they have made their land productive and how they've
00:13:29.920 | used grass and vegetation to take carbon out of the atmosphere and all these things.
00:13:34.880 | I have immense respect for them.
00:13:36.740 | That is the thing to do.
00:13:38.120 | And then the same thing with people who drive big scale solutions, but pay attention to
00:13:42.280 | the people who move.
00:13:43.280 | If you're worried about it, move.
00:13:44.280 | Go where you're not going to be impacted, etc.
00:13:46.280 | And then there's so many other things, especially things that relate to finances.
00:13:49.560 | For example, over the last few months in the United States, I've watched the political
00:13:53.200 | argument regarding paid maternity leave.
00:13:55.520 | There's a big argument that in the United States, championed by President Trump's daughter,
00:14:00.280 | Ivanka Trump, that the United States should move to do what many of the governments of
00:14:05.920 | the world do, which is to mandate longer time stamps of paid parental leave after the birth
00:14:13.040 | of a baby.
00:14:14.720 | And then this also is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently made news about
00:14:20.440 | how they'd changed their parental leave policy, or at least their maternal leave policy, from
00:14:24.120 | one year to six months and why they were doing that, etc.
00:14:26.800 | Well, this is, of course, of interest to me because my wife and I are having another baby,
00:14:31.600 | and it's a fascinating thing, of course, to be in that situation.
00:14:34.460 | But I would just point out to you that you don't have to wait on a government law to
00:14:38.160 | try to force people to pay you for maternity leave.
00:14:42.640 | Just plan ahead and make a plan so that you can take time off.
00:14:46.920 | My wife has not had any working income since having a baby.
00:14:50.800 | That was because we made a plan and we did it.
00:14:53.360 | And the future of our life did not depend upon my convincing tens of millions of US
00:14:59.840 | Americans to try to support me so that I can take their money and support my family.
00:15:03.760 | That's my job.
00:15:05.280 | Our decision was very simple.
00:15:07.660 | We never spent the income that my wife earned when she was working and we were newly married.
00:15:12.880 | We never spent a dime of it.
00:15:14.240 | We lived in a $500 a month apartment.
00:15:16.200 | We saved like crazy.
00:15:17.340 | We learned how to be frugal.
00:15:18.800 | And because of that, when she came home and stopped working at an income-producing job
00:15:22.520 | and started working at a human-producing job, then we were able to have extended maternity
00:15:28.760 | leave without depending on other people.
00:15:31.560 | You can do that, too.
00:15:33.140 | Every single thing.
00:15:34.140 | You can do that, too.
00:15:35.480 | You don't have to convince people to try to say, "Well, you should cancel my student
00:15:38.500 | loan debt."
00:15:39.500 | Cancel your own student loan debt.
00:15:40.600 | I've paid off my loans.
00:15:41.640 | You can pay off yours, too.
00:15:43.160 | Get other people to stop borrowing money for student loans.
00:15:45.520 | I do that.
00:15:46.520 | You can do that, too.
00:15:47.520 | You don't have to come up with a coercive governmental solution and lobby for that,
00:15:51.680 | meanwhile putting your entire life on hold.
00:15:54.120 | There's no need for it.
00:15:55.520 | Just focus on an individual solution that you can do.
00:16:00.760 | You can do it.
00:16:01.760 | And you're going to be far more optimistic and far more confident in doing that.
00:16:06.320 | And you'll have a much better go of convincing others to follow you if you lead by example
00:16:11.860 | than if you try to force others to do something that they may or may not want to do.
00:16:15.840 | Now, is there a place for collective action?
00:16:19.000 | Maybe.
00:16:20.000 | I'm open to it.
00:16:21.400 | I think there may be times and there may be places where you have to have collective action.
00:16:26.440 | And I could make a list of specific issues where I think you do have to have collective
00:16:31.040 | action, where I think ultimately a collective solution is required.
00:16:36.000 | But what I would say is you will never get collective action to work until you have a
00:16:42.680 | long history of individuals who inspire other individuals.
00:16:48.720 | Forcing people to do something does not work in the long run.
00:16:53.120 | Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
00:16:56.800 | You can put a law on me, forcing something on me.
00:17:01.400 | But unless you convince me that it's the right thing, you're not going to get compliance
00:17:07.120 | from me.
00:17:08.120 | And I think you look at that, if you look at at least the US American society, look
00:17:11.320 | at the US American culture, as people go nuts trying to force other people and stop, and
00:17:16.040 | they've stopped respecting our individual autonomy to run our own lives, run our own
00:17:20.440 | lives as we see fit and be responsible for the results.
00:17:23.340 | And people try to step in and say, "Well, I'm going to take all these decisions for
00:17:25.920 | you."
00:17:26.920 | Nonsense.
00:17:27.920 | You're not making any progress.
00:17:28.920 | You're not winning any converts.
00:17:31.380 | So start with your individual action and recognize that you as an individual can put in place
00:17:36.160 | a plan that will provide you with almost any solution if you'll stop worrying about other
00:17:41.800 | people.
00:17:43.040 | If you've got $150,000 of student loan debt and you're sick and tired of having that student
00:17:48.120 | loan debt, you will not have that student loan debt paid off faster because you go and
00:17:53.000 | join Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
00:17:56.400 | It'd be much better for you to put the time in, go and get a couple extra jobs, live in
00:18:02.360 | your car, and pay off your student loan debt.
00:18:04.920 | And a year or two years from now, you'll be out of debt, you'll be free.
00:18:08.680 | Meanwhile, you'll watch a whole bunch of other people utterly miserable with the fact that
00:18:13.920 | their preferred political candidate lost, or even if they won, with the fact that they
00:18:17.320 | can't get the Congress to go along, or they can't get the people to do that, or the people
00:18:21.240 | rise up and start tax protests or something like that, you'll be free because you step
00:18:26.320 | up and pay off your student loan debt.
00:18:28.800 | If you want to have a baby and you want to have maternity leave for your baby, then sit
00:18:32.500 | down and make a plan to have that so that you can have maternity leave for your baby.
00:18:36.880 | Don't sit around and think, "Well, if we just elected the right person in office, and if
00:18:41.160 | Ivanka Trump could just convince President Trump to make this happen and we could just
00:18:45.360 | get the Congress to go along with it, then I could have a baby."
00:18:48.320 | It ain't gonna work.
00:18:49.320 | Because you're...
00:18:50.320 | Let me just say practically on that issue, it's not gonna work because you're not gonna
00:18:54.600 | be hired.
00:18:56.560 | And you can sue all day long, but at the end of the day, you're not gonna be hired.
00:18:59.800 | If somebody is concerned about you bringing a whole bunch of additional costs because
00:19:02.760 | now they gotta pay for your maternity leave, not gonna work.
00:19:05.640 | You're not gonna be hired.
00:19:06.900 | So now your job prospects are gonna go down even more.
00:19:10.120 | It's not gonna work.
00:19:11.120 | You cannot force people to do what you want them to do just because you want them to do
00:19:15.760 | it, just because you get together with a few tens of millions of other people.
00:19:19.000 | But what you can do is you can put in place a plan where you can have extended maternity
00:19:23.320 | leave.
00:19:24.320 | That's doable.
00:19:25.320 | So you can on the one hand sit around and spend the next few years of your life arguing
00:19:29.160 | and frustrated about getting things to change, and at the end of those few years, you won't
00:19:34.400 | have a baby and nothing will have changed.
00:19:37.280 | Or you can put a plan in place and say, "How do we trim our expenses?
00:19:40.200 | How do we increase our income?
00:19:41.640 | How do we have an extended maternity leave so that I can take care of my baby?"
00:19:44.400 | And a few years from now, have a baby, happy baby in your lap, and you can enjoy that,
00:19:48.800 | and you can go on with your life.
00:19:51.320 | Climate change.
00:19:52.320 | Don't try to get people to change their ideas on climate change.
00:19:55.280 | Just set an example for them.
00:19:56.980 | Show people what they can do.
00:19:58.720 | And on this issue, I beg of you, if you are a strong, if you're strongly concerned with
00:20:03.360 | climate change, I have looked for the ideas that people are proffering to say, "Hey, here's
00:20:09.400 | what you can do as an individual."
00:20:11.080 | I have looked for them.
00:20:12.240 | Do you know who I see doing the most of them?
00:20:15.080 | It's people who don't even think climate change is that big of a deal, for whatever reason.
00:20:19.400 | Now time will tell what the situation is, but if you'll focus on individual actions,
00:20:23.920 | then you'll be ready to take it on.
00:20:25.120 | You won't have a house by the edge of the sea.
00:20:27.540 | You won't be in a hot place that's going to get hotter.
00:20:29.920 | You won't be in a place where hurricanes are going to impact you.
00:20:32.560 | Move to the Rocky Mountains.
00:20:34.400 | Move to Canada.
00:20:35.400 | Move to a place where you're going to be less susceptible to climate change.
00:20:39.080 | And then I'll believe you, and I'll follow you, etc.
00:20:41.760 | The same thing with debt crisis, and many other issues.
00:20:46.040 | You and I are not going to solve the debt crisis.
00:20:47.960 | All we can do is sit back and watch what happens.
00:20:50.600 | Now I'm going to use my platform to try to talk about what I think should happen from
00:20:54.380 | time to time.
00:20:55.380 | I think there's time in that, just like it's good for us to talk about issues and have
00:20:59.560 | good arguments and debates, etc.
00:21:01.340 | We need to work through those things.
00:21:02.920 | And there are things of collective import.
00:21:05.320 | But you're going to listen to me a whole lot more when you can see that I have done what
00:21:11.200 | needs to be done in order to be protected from that.
00:21:14.080 | And I'm going to listen to you a whole lot more when I see that you take something seriously
00:21:17.760 | enough to take action.
00:21:19.280 | So that's the summary of what I want to share with you.
00:21:22.800 | Just recognize, when you face big problems, the collective solutions are hard, if not
00:21:28.240 | impossible.
00:21:29.240 | But the individual solutions are usually simpler, easier, or at least feasible.
00:21:36.240 | So start with what's simple and easier and feasible and do that first, and then possibly
00:21:42.080 | move on to a collective solution.
00:21:44.260 | The collective solutions rarely work, because you're not sure which one will work.
00:21:48.640 | But the individual solutions almost always work, because you can adjust and change.
00:21:52.880 | Those collective solutions usually lead to frustration.
00:21:55.920 | Whereas your individual solutions usually lead you to satisfaction and confidence.
00:22:00.560 | I want you to live a rich and meaningful life now.
00:22:03.920 | I want you to be inspired to live that life now and to build from a place of calm confidence.
00:22:09.280 | I want you to be in a strong position so that you can reach out and help the weak.
00:22:13.720 | But in order to do that, you and I both, and I'm preaching to myself, you and I both have
00:22:17.840 | to largely, not necessarily entirely, but we have to largely walk away from trying to
00:22:23.560 | force other people to do what we think they should do and seek to lead by example, by
00:22:29.960 | fixing the problems in our own life with the best solutions that we can.
00:22:34.560 | Then we may inspire a few of them to follow us.
00:22:37.600 | And if a few of us inspire a few of them, and a few of them follow and inspire a few
00:22:41.560 | more, in time the whole collective solution can be changed.
00:22:45.320 | But we don't start with the collective.
00:22:48.480 | Start with you and start with me.
00:22:50.900 | If you're concerned personally about facing an economic crisis of some kind, be it caused
00:22:55.280 | by the US national debt or be it caused by a job layoff or whatever, I would invite you
00:22:59.520 | to come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com and take a look at my newest course.
00:23:03.800 | I am extremely proud of it.
00:23:05.740 | It is really, really good.
00:23:07.540 | If you just come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com, click on store, sign up to buy the course.
00:23:10.840 | I have in that course dozens of ideas that could result in millions of dollars of profit.
00:23:17.400 | I've always struggled to try to profit in savings.
00:23:21.840 | I've always struggled to try to figure out how much of my stuff do I give away versus
00:23:24.760 | how much stuff do I sell.
00:23:28.360 | And it's hard because I feel like since I've learned everything I've learned just by reading
00:23:32.200 | books and it's all out there, I almost feel like, "Well, I should just give it all away
00:23:34.920 | in a podcast and make it simple for people."
00:23:37.240 | But I've chosen to do a couple of things.
00:23:39.800 | First, I'm focusing more and more of my time and attention on people who have specific
00:23:45.000 | questions and that means my students.
00:23:48.920 | So you'll notice, for example, if you were to go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com, I don't
00:23:51.480 | have a place for comments on the site.
00:23:53.480 | Now I might bring comments in the future, but comments are a very tiring thing because
00:23:56.960 | I want to answer everyone's questions and it's like, "How do I do that?"
00:24:00.400 | I can't make a collective solution, so I make an individual solution.
00:24:03.780 | By putting all the comments and the discussion behind a paywall, behind the course for my
00:24:07.840 | students, then I can spend time on that and really feel good about my investing that time.
00:24:12.320 | So I would invite you to give that a shot.
00:24:16.320 | The other thing that I do in a course and that I can do is I can always be a little
00:24:19.360 | bit more vulnerable.
00:24:21.720 | It's hard in the public sphere to say, "What am I going to put on the internet where anybody
00:24:25.300 | who wants to can grab a soundbite, etc."
00:24:27.840 | That's a little hard.
00:24:28.840 | But if I put it in a course, at least it takes the 99% of the people and just tosses them
00:24:33.240 | into the dust because most of the trolls and whatnot don't bother to actually pay for anything.
00:24:38.860 | And so if you want to discuss with me something like that, come on by and try that course.
00:24:43.360 | I've had wonderful feedback so far on people who really like it.
00:24:47.440 | So far, there have been high rates of satisfaction.
00:24:49.920 | We'll see as students continue the curriculum.
00:24:51.520 | I hope that remains true.
00:24:52.920 | But come on by RadicalPersonalFinance.com, click on the store and join me for how to
00:24:56.480 | survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis.
00:24:59.520 | You won't regret it.
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